Someone was killed in a police station — murdered in such a cruel way, actually. It would definitely have a bad influence.
Soon, several top leaders of the station arrived, including Director Zhou. After a quick brief by a cop, Director Zhou’s face crinkled as if his skin was overlapping layer by layer. He immediately waved his hand and bawled out:
“About this, no news will be released. It must be highly classified! He who talks about this will be punished!
“Tonight no one is going to sleep. We shall look into it! Thoroughly! I don’t think that killer can grow three heads or six arms, he couldn’t have killed a person in a police station without leaving anything behind!”
News block-out was something they definitely should do now. Silver District had already become so unstable and precarious; everyone was scared, and women were terrified to go out alone in the night. If rumor got out that a murder had happened in the police station, it would be a huge strike on the whole society!
Even a cop in a police station couldn’t survive, then what would happen to ordinary people? Therefore, before the killer was caught, this special murder should be kept out of the public attention!
Professional autopsy team and other concerning authorities started their investigation at once. An elder female cop persuaded Su Bai to stand up and also walked him back to his room.
All the people in the station seemed to have known about his romantic relationship with that dead cop girl. Even Director Zhou came to comfort him; he told him to drop all his work at hand and use some rest because if he went back to work right now, his emotions might cause mistakes.
Su Bai had pretended to be mourning with rage and sorrow all this time, and he was indeed exhausted; after all, he was no actor.
The noodles on the desk were poured into the trash can. Then he poured himself a glass of water. The water was no longer warm, even a little cold, but it seemed to be exactly what he needed right now.
After drinking up the whole glass of water, Su Bai took a few breaths and sat by the bed.
Next, he seemed to come up with something; so he immediately walked out of his room, went upstairs and stopped in front of the room at the corner of stairs. At this moment, some cops were looking through the stuff in that room, but their work seemed to be finished. When Su Bai showed up by the door, the cops went out and one of them patted on his shoulder:
“I’m sorry for your loss, bro. We had looked into her room, but there was nothing unusual. That son of a bitch must have sneaked in and found a random target, just as he always did, without any special purpose. You can go in now… Her stuff will be kept until her family take them away, but you can have something as a souvenir.”
The cops comforted Su Bai and left. Su Bai walked into this dormitory room
It was a simple room. There was only a bed, some bedclothes and a small desk.
Not much stuff on the desk either, just several notebooks and pens.
Su Bai looked through the notebooks. There was no diary. Apparently, the cop girl in love with Liu Yang did not have a habit of writing a diary, unlike Liu Yang who was a little shy and liked to keep a diary.
There was indeed nothing special in the room. Su Bai sat by the desk and rubbed between his eyebrows.
He thought the plots had changed, but when Director Zhou ordered the information block-out, things seemed to be following their original ways after all.
The case of Silver District had been unsolved. Therefore, it might be said that the killer had deliberately committed a murder inside the police station, but the news were kept in by the authorities so the public wouldn’t know; afterwards, the case was never solved, so the details were never released, and the murder in the police station was kept out of public’s attention all the time.
The killer was able to kill in the police station?
And he had left nothing behind after killing people in succession.
It suddenly occurred to Su Bai — could the killer be someone in the police station?
If he could think of this, then so could someone else in the police station.
But it was actually quite simple to confirm whether the plots had changed. Tomorrow— no, since it was already past midnight, after daybreak, it could be judged by whether the woman with the surname of Deng would still die as she did in the original story.
All of a sudden, Su Bai’s eyes caught sight of something. He saw something in a corner under the desk. He lowered his head and picked it up— it was a small piece of a broken tape.
Tape?
Su Bai looked around again, but found no recording machine.
He felt the tape with his finger, and his eyes narrowed. This was a police station in a story world where a serial murder took place and there were so many weird whirlpools here; so Su Bai must not let go of any detail he could get.
Then, Su Bai suddenly remembered that he had found lyrics of several songs in Liu Yang’s notebook, which were all popular at the time. Apparently, Liu Yang had been listening to music. Unlike the future times, high-end digital products like computers and cellphones were far from popular or even being seen, so common people relied more on radio and recording machines when listening to music.
Since Liu Yang had written down all these lyrics, he must posses a recorder. Otherwise, it would be impossible for him to remember all the lyrics after listening to the radio only once.
But Su Bai was sure that there was no recorder in his room.
So, as a further guess, what would they do when they were together since Liu Yang and the dead cop girl were in love?
Listen to the music together?
Then one of them must have had a recorder and a lot of music tapes!
But there wasn’t any in his room and there wasn’t any in this room either, how was that even possible?
Su Bai walked out of the dead cop girl’s room and started searching in the corridor.
Such search might require some luck, but it was not aimless; this was the first day Su Bai had entered the story, which meant some things or tracks might still leave many clues even thought they were wiped off designedly.
Just as he expected, he found a trash can in a corner at the end of the corridor. He opened its cover, stretched out his hand and went through the trash, despite the bad smell. His eyes were caught by a recorder.
Besides it, there was a white bag containing many tapes.
He picked up the recorder and the bag. Then, when he was about to leave, he saw a mess of an extracted tape in a corner of that trash can.
Instinctively, he got a premonition that this messed tape was the most valuable of them all!
He picked up that messed tape, kept his head down and went directly downstairs to his own room with all the tapes and that recorder.
Then he locked up his door, took out the recorder and put in an unbroken tape for a start. Soon after he hit the “play” key, a song of Little Tigers[1] came out.
While listening to the music, Su Bai kept dealing with the extracted tape. That was not difficult. When the song ended, Su Bai had finished his work: he had took out an unbroken tape, drew out its tape strip and rolled the extracted tape strip on it. Then he checked it carefully and put it into the recorder.
There came a husky rubbing sound and then a voice:
“Today is May 15th, 1998. He said he had kept a diary; I wanna keep a diary as well, but I don’t want to use a pen and paper. So I have decided to use a recorder! Ha ha, I’m smart, aren’t I?”
It was the voice of that dead cop girl.
Su Bai listened carefully. Dates were stated in the beginning of every piece of recording, like a diary. It was recorded once in two or three days.
Finally, it came to July 16th, 1998, the day when the latest case happened.
“July 16th, 1998. The serial killer appeared again. After all these, years he now appeared again. Damn it! Why isn’t this monster in hell? He came out to kill again… But this time, I’m gonna catch him and make him pay for all those women he killed!”
Positive, optimistic, lively… Sounded really like that chubby girl in Su Bai’s mind: a rather optimistic girl.
But the voice that came next made his eyes wide open:
“Ha, such a childish girl. If you can catch the killer, what are we doing here...”