Translated by: QuantumC

1.29.2020

In the dimly lit room, the Luminol solvent were sprayed, and light blue shined everywhere. The floor, the ceiling, the creases on the door...large surfaces of light blue formed a dazzling wall paper.

The sofa was moved away, and there were old dry blood hidden underneath. It contrasted against the spotless light-colored wooden floor and the contrast was so chilling. No one knew how long it had been hidden there. Now it"s finally time to see daylight again.

The walls were covered by sound insulation materials. In the middle of the living room there was a wall full of photographs. Beautiful scenery of the country side were placed artfully and almost gave the room a sense of culture -- if not for the shining light blue Luminol solvent on them.

A large painting of "the shepherd" was hung in the bedroom. The picture frame was more than one meter tall and looked quite heavy. One of the technical staffs studied it for a while and sensed something odd. When taking it down, they found a screw head camera hidden underneath. The lens was conveniently looking out from the shepherd"s eye, making the girl"s sweet smile look rather mysterious.

The tightly locked storage room next to the bedroom stored a variety of knives and ropes that only a professional forensic doctor could recognize the use of.

Yet all of the above were not as chilling as the life-sized photograph on the south-facing window pane.

"Vice Captain Tao, look! The windows here are the old double panes. Between the panes someone placed a light shielding curtain like those that you see in the hotels. Then the photo was sticked to the outer side of the inner pane." The technical staff told Tao Ran, "Like this, even if the sun exploded on the outside, all the light can be caught by the light shield, and not much could make it to the photo...Tut tut, he was engineering the heck out of this!"

The picture was enlarged to a well-calculated size such that in the darkness, when standing in the room it really looked like the night view out of that window: the street was narrow, and the old buildings scattered around. A distant street light stood some hundred meters away. The flower bed lacked care and the flowers grew wildly with the weeds. Somehow a corner of it withered, exposing a faint light from the shaded bas.e.m.e.nt. Looking from the angle of the window, one could see a blurry face of a girl.

It was an important piece of evidence. Two technical staffs carefully went up and took down the photograph together with the window pane.

Tao Ran opened the curtains and the windows. In the next moment, his pupils constricted. The heavy sweat from running around in the scorching sun suddenly waned like retreating tides: 

What he saw was the rulers and rocks that were used to mark the entrance of Wu Guangchuan"s apartment outside. Their position fitted perfectly with the images on the poster.

"Vice Captain, Vice Captain!" The intern who was left by the others downstairs to question the management staff darted towards them, and started reporting in the hall way, "They"ve admitted! They say that the apartment was rented out to multiple tenants at the same time. But the tenants didn"t seem to live here. They might be people that worked in nearby office buildings and used the rooms to take mid-day naps. The management said that they don"t really cook, and the water and electricity bill weren"t high, so there probably isn"t any potential threat. I...Holy smokes!!"

"Be careful! This is a crime scene!"

"Don"t go in if you"ve got clumsy hands! Stay out!"

The intern was gagged by the "grand sight" in the room and was yelled at by his senior colleagues.

"No potential threat..." Tao Ran stared at the window blinklessly, "Can we get hold of the owner?"

"O..Owner is abroad. I tried calling but the number was a fake. There"s got to be another way." The intern suddenly remembered something else, "Oh, and...Vice Captain, the parking slot for 201 is occupied by an SUV!"

The Traffic Authority Bureau quickly located the car owner"s information. It was neither the owner of the apartment, nor anyone related to the crime case. The registered owner of the car was a random old man. His registered address was still at Yan Cheng, but he had moved somewhere else long ago. Upon receiving the police"s call, the old man was quite baffled at first. When hearing the police asking about his plate however, he started to panic a little.

Upon further inquiry, it was found that although the plate belonged to him, the car did not.

After retirement, the old man moved to another city to live with his daughter. Because it was hard to get a plate number these days with the lucky-draw system and what not, the old man decided to rent out his plate number at Yancheng to make some free money. He only needed to show up at the Yancheng DMV during the annual registration. Nothing too troublesome, especially since the renter was even paying for his traveling.

"I...will I be fined for this? Will my driver"s license be taken away?" The plate owner kept pleading, "Officer, I really didn"t ask for much...only $2000 per year. I can show you the contract..."

"You rented out personal plate illegally, and signed a contract for it? "Tao Ran was speechless, "who signed your contract?"

"Oh...it was a woman, Su...Su something. Oh, Su Xiaolan!"

Tao Ran hung up the phone and turned around: "Get me the tracking of this SUV! I want everything from today to the day that Qu Tong went missing."

"Vice Captain Tao, this car doesn"t have GPS tracking or dashboard cam. We can only pull the footages of the surveillance camera on the roads. On the day before Qu Tong"s parents received the recording, this car went out of town via the southern airport way, then took the Yan-Gang freeway. Two hours later it got off the freeway and got on the interstate. Half an hour later, it drove off the interstate and out of the cameras" sights. On the next day, it came back to Yancheng via the same route. Along the way it didn"t stop for gas anywhere."

This means, after the car left the interstate, it did not go very far.

"Where did he leave the interstate? Are there anything around?"

"Some natural villages...the Seside sanatorium, some pick-your-own farms, and a village for oil painters."

Sea Side?

Tao Ran moved closer to the wall of pictures. One of the photos was a snap shot of waves flapping the reef under a golden sun.

"Find out the location of all the photos. Let"s go!"

Tao Ran and his men were going out of town, while Luo Wenzhou and Fei Du were going in.

Although the sun was setting, the steamy summer heat still made it hard to open one"s eyes. It was finally quieter at the Yan Cheng Police Bureau. When Luo Wenzhou got back, the recording and filing jobs were almost completed, and the victims" families were sent home to wait for updates. A few of them still lingered at the Bureau, some had nowhere to go, others were unwilling to leave. So the officers on duty arranged for them to have dinner at the cafeteria.

Luo Wenzhou opened a bottle of water and poured in two bags of instant coffee that he took from Lang Qiao"s table. With a couple hard shakes, the instant coffee unwillingly dissolved in the cold water. The resulting color was...very interesting. The smell was even more interesting. Then, under Fei Du"s astonished eyes, he downed half a bottle and then said, "What are you looking at? I"m not drinking p.i.s.s."

Fei Du felt that the stomach on his retina -- if he had any -- was aching as if his eyes had just drank a mouthful of cold sesame oil. He quickly turned his eyes away and focused on the pictures they dug out from the ash box.

"More than twenty years, over a hundred missing girls...granted that they had a strict admission rule for "members", wouldn"t five suspects be too few?" Fei Du lightly flicked one picture, "Also, these look quite recent. Probably only a couple years old..."

Suddenly he stopped talking.

Luo Wenzhou looked at him inquisitively. Fei Du carefully used his gla.s.ses cleaning cloth to picked up one of the photos. It was a photo of a man in his 40s from a top down angle. He looked quite decent, good looking even.

Each person had several pictures from different angles. They all seemed unaware of the picture-taking. The other pictures of this man"s face were all distorted, either by climaxing or by hostility. Only this one had less emotion and looked more of less like a human.

"This person looks a little familiar." Fei Du rubbed his chin, "familiar, but I can"t quite remember. So it cannot be someone from work: When I get people"s name cards I would pay attention to their facial features and write them down on the back of the card to avoid the awkwardness of forgetting their faces later. It can"t be among my gang either: I only hang out with a handful of people, and I"m pretty sure none of them would take someone like him...too ordinary, and old. I am not very good at remembering faces. So I"d probably forget a face of a one-time encounter if the encountering happened more than a month ago. That means, I must have seen this face somewhere within that last 30 days."

Luo Wenzhou drank his p.i.s.s-like coffee while enjoying Fei Du"s dissection of his own memory -- his understanding of himself is like a geek with his computer: precise and objective. Although he doesn"t remember every single pa.s.sing event in his life, all of the behaviors have an understandable pattern, and are hence traceable.

It seems like something he did regularly: opening up his brain and pulling out the strains of thoughts to study them closely.

Within less than a bottle of coffee"s time, Fei Du had quickly combed through his itinerary in the past month: mid-aged man, with an immanent mid-end swiss watch on his wrist...that means he lives quite comfortably, and probably doesn"t frequent the venues where the second-gen rich kids hang out.

At that time, Lang Qiao"s head poked in with a sad puppy face: "Boss, thank G.o.d you"re back! I don"t ever want the job to console the victim"s family again! I ..."

Luo Wenzhou raised an index finger at her.

"A band member." Fei Du suddenly said, "There was a photo of him in the Xiling racing club. On the day of Qu Tong"s case, he wasn"t at the club. So the manager there invited an outside band...yes, the bus hijacking was a once-in-million-years incident. When it happens, those that are unfamiliar with the surroundings would almost surely abandon plan, rather than stealing the lost sheep."

"No wonder we couldn"t find him on any of the security cameras on the road. With the "membership" policy in this group, these "customers" were probably here by invitation, so they might know each other. With this lead, the other four should be easy to find. The mastermind is tight-mouthed, then let"s crack those ghostlings."  Luo Wenzhou turned to Lang Qiao, "So you don"t like consoling the families huh. Fancy making some arrests then?" 

Hearing the word "arrest" was like receiving a shot of chicken blood for Lang Qiao. Without another word, she turned 180 degrees from languishing to dashing away with the pictures.

Luo Wenzhou took the files under his arm and kicked awake one of the napping colleagues in the office: "Wake up. Come, let"s question Xu Wenchao again."

The two walked out of the office. Fei Du stood up and did a very restraint stretching. Surrounded by the smell of second-hand smoke and sesame oil, he felt that this wasn"t a place to hang around for long. Right when he was about to leave though, Luo Wenzhou came back.

"I have something to tell you." Luo Wenzhou said, "But I"ve got things to take care first. Stay here. Or you can wait in my office."

Then he quickly walked out again.

Fei Du paused. The foot that had already made half a step outward hesitated, but finally retracted.

Xu Wenchao was, after all, not as heartless as Su Xiaolan. He apparently didn"t sleep the night before.

His eye sockets were sunken. He was ready for a marathon of interrogation -- which was Okay: he had clear alibi for both of the two abduction cases.

And precisely because of this, Su Xiaolan dared to give out his name.

The Yan Cheng Police Bureau was not like any remote satellite police departments. Here all behaviors and all procedures were tightly monitored. They would never dare to torture a 13 year old girl with any extreme tactics.

This meant that so long as they do not get any solid evidence against him, they"ll have to let him go once the 24th hour strikes.

However, it"s been almost a full day yet no one paid him any attention.

It was as though all the police in the Bureau had forgotten that he existed.

Xu Wenchao"s face remained emotionless. But the seemingly endless waiting had worn away part of his confidence. He started to second guess himself: did they completely buy in to his alibi? Did they give up on his interrogation?

It sounded good...but if so, why didn"t they let him go?

As Xu Wenchao was tossing and turning in his mind, Luo Wenzhou walked in with his man.

"Apologies, for the cigarette smell." Lou Wenzhou pulled over a chair and sat across the table from him, "But then it was mainly for s.n.a.t.c.hing your fox tail -- we were up all night, you see."

Xu Wenchao was slightly surprised. He adjusted his sitting posture unnoticeably, then presented Luo Wenzhou with a pair of unfaltering eyes: "About this case, I really have nothing else to say."

Luo Wenzhou smiled at him, then asked with a very casual tone: "What"s your relation with Su Luozhan?"

"I am her mother"s fiancee." Xu Wenchao answered while withholding his temper, "Officer, I have already answered this question before."

"I know that you were Su Xiaolan"s fiancee." Luo Wenzhou raised one brow and suddenly threw him a "you know what I mean" look, "I just want to check whether you"re marrying Su Xiaolan for your undying love towards that fallen woman,  or were you after her daughter?"

Xu Wenchao reacted with shock at first. Then, with widened eyes, he replied angrily: "Officer, will you take full responsibility for what you say?!"

Luo Wenzhou wasn"t disturbed: "Su Xiaolan was raising a daughter alone, with no real job and no impressive education. Her source of living was a mystery. There were many rumors floating around about how she made ends meet. As for Mr. Xu, you lived an affluent life, no? With a house, a car, and an above average look, you were probably many woman"s ideal partner. So tell me, if all you said was true, why didn"t she agree to marry you?"

"Marriage and love cannot be measured by material standards." Xu Wenchao sneered, barely keeping his courteous manner, "Besides, those are private matters between me and her. I think..."

Luo Wenzhou cut him off: "She didn"t marry you...was it because she despised your money, or was it that you didn"t really want to marry her?"

Xu Wenchao replied frigidly: "What does it have to do with this case? You can ask me anything related, even though I am completely innocent. But you cannot insult my..."

Luo Wenzhou cut him off again: "Insult your love? The love that you stuck on the south-facing window pane of Number 8 Xiangyang Road, room 201?"

Xu Wenchao"s whole body froze. The redness on his face waned like retreating tides.

The interrogation room was dead silent.

The officer who was taking notes on the side had been on duty for the whole night and was just awaken from his doze by Luo Wenzhou minutes ago. While struggling to catch up with the sea of new information, he flipped the note pages to cover up a yawn. But the yawn got stuck in his throat as he was almost choked by the surprise. He stared at Luo Wenzhou like a wooden chicken, flabbergasted by what he"d just heard. Then he turned to Xu Wenchao, jaw still dropped.

Xu Wenchao heard thundering in his ears. The fret that was instigated by Luo Wenzhou"s words now acted like a wire lead. A blast of thunder had stricken him and the spark had flared up into uncontrollable flames. He struggled to squeeze out a denial from his throat: "What...are you talking about?"

"Xiangyang Road, Building 8. One of your photography projects from younger days is still hanging on the window pane. " Luo Wenzhou slowly but clearly spat out these words, "There is blood stain on the scene, which means that we can trace the DNA. The SUV on the parking slot of that apartment contains your hair. What"s more, there"s the photos that were taken from those peeking eyes behind the picture frame -- handed to me by none but Su Xiaolan her self."

He smiled and knocked on the table: "Mr. Xu, can we talk now?"