XU WENCHAO HAD COME to the station twice in one day, and in doing so, had gone from “individual assisting the investigation” to “suspect.” This time, he’d been arrested at home in the middle of the night, so he didn’t look great; he was haggard from lack of sleep, and there was even visible stubble at the corners of his mouth. He also wasn’t nearly as polite now. He sat with his hands clasped in his lap, something in his pale face indescribably unbalanced.
“I didn’t.” Xu Wenchao’s tone was helpless, even innocent, but he spoke sharply. “Let me repeat myself: I’ve never kidnapped any girls, and I’ve never killed any. You’ve seen my dashcam history. You’ve followed me illegally and tapped my home. Now that you guys have violated my basic human rights, have you found any evidence of crime?”
The interrogator was a very young officer named Wu. He loathed perverts who pretended to be upright citizens, like this suspect. “Su Luozhan kidnapped a girl from her school, tortured her, and tried to kill her, although she was unsuccessful,” he said coldly. “She called you twice from the scene of the crime; she also identified you as an accomplice in front of everyone. What do you have to say to that?”
Xu Wenchao leaned back in his chair. “A phone call and a statement from a child, and I’m a murderer,” he remarked in that uniquely mild tone. “Well, now I know that if someone insists on your guilt, the cops will find something to prove it.”
“Why did Su Luozhan call you?” Xiao-Wu pressed. “Why would she want to frame you?”
When Xu Wenchao looked up, Luo Wenzhou saw his eyes clearly through the security camera. A bad feeling came over him. This man was too calm, too confident—he wasn’t panicking at all. As if he held a secret trump card.
“Because her mother and I were lovers,” said Xu Wenchao. “Yes. I didn’t tell you when I visited this afternoon…because I was afraid of the trouble it would cause me. I’d liked Su Xiaolan since I was a kid, but she didn’t like me. She preferred that chaotic, dangerous life of hers. It wasn’t until she was at the end of her life that she was willing to show me a little warmth. I was grateful to her for it; I even wanted to marry her. If she had lived, I’d have been Su Luozhan’s stepfather by this point. Now, though, it’s tricky for me to adopt her, because we’re not connected at all legally. It’s going to take time to figure something out. I’ve been doing my best to provide for her in the meantime. She calls me whenever she needs something. That’s normal.”
“But when she called you today, you didn’t pick up.”
“Because I realized my phone had already been tapped,” Xu Wenchao said frankly. “Even if it wasn’t her who’d called—if it was someone delivering takeout or a real-estate telemarketer—I wouldn’t have picked up either. Officer, haven’t I got the right to maintain some freedom under the crushing weight of state power?”
“So Su Luozhan is framing you?”
“I don’t know why she would implicate me. If she really did, I’d be very sad. Her mother always kind of neglected her. I’d say I’m the more responsible parental figure. Su Xiaolan always let the kid roam free, so she does some things that cross the line. I’ve tried to teach her better, though. Maybe she felt like she had to rebel against me because of that.” Xu Wenchao paused briefly. “Or maybe she doesn’t know what she’s saying, and someone’s influencing her.”
Xiao-Wu slapped the table. “Don’t give me that shit! The survivor said that Su Luozhan called you, then said, ‘If he won’t come, I can do it myself!’ And you hired a cleaner to go to that place regularly. The bills are paid from your account! Why maintain an old apartment in a building that’s about to be torn down? You’re clearly hiding something! If we hadn’t been watching you, that kidnapped girl might not have lived to see the morning!”
Xu Wenchao snorted. “How do you make the leap from maintaining an old apartment to kidnapping and murdering someone? Using that logic, all this city’s crime should be pinned on the municipal government.”
“Didn’t he say that he suffered brain damage from his childhood fever?” Luo Wenzhou asked his coworker, raising a surprised brow. “He seems pretty clever now. Can stupidity be intermittent?”
“If he keeps denying it, Sergeant, we’ll have no other evidence. Should we hook him up to a lie detector?”
“Not yet. Go look into his accounts, his credit cards, his properties and cars… Take his photo and go talk to all the major car rental companies. And check with his personal connections. The car he was driving when he kidnapped Qu Tong probably wasn’t his, because there was nothing suspicious about the dashcam footage from the day she disappeared. That means he wasn’t driving the car that’s registered as his, and I doubt he could just hide an extra big metal box with four wheels.”
The officer in the interrogation room kept at it. “Let me ask you again: Where were you on the night of the twenty-seventh?”
“At home, reading.” Xu Wenchao’s expression didn’t change. “I’m a freelancer. I don’t need to work every day. It’s normal for me to read at home.”
“If you were reading at home, why did you rent a car?”
That was a bluff. Xu Wenchao may not have been driving his own car that day in Xiling, but if he drove a car he owned under someone else’s name or one borrowed from someone else, it would be traceable. The police could look into it easily. A much better choice would have been to rent a vehicle from a black-market rental car company. Some such companies were outright illegal and remained well under the radar. That was perhaps the most likely route for Xu Wenchao to have taken.
Luo Wenzhou closed his mouth and crossed his arms in front of him. He concentrated, waiting for Xu Wenchao’s explanation. But Xu Wenchao raised a brow, looking genuinely surprised. “What are you talking about, Officer?”
“On the night of the twenty-seventh, you followed a school bus leaving Xiling and waited for an opportunity to kidnap one of the eleven female students aboard. Along the way, you happened to witness the bus getting hijacked. A girl named Qu Tong managed to escape from the bus while this was happening, and she ran into you and Su Luozhan. She trusted you, asked you for help, and got in your car. But she’d actually run right into your trap!”
Xu Wenchao laughed in disbelief, shaking his head. “This is—”
“The security cameras outside the museum caught your car license plate!” Xiao-Wu interrupted sternly. “What else do we have to say?!”
“Officer,” Xu Wenchao asked calmly, “what time on the twenty-seventh?”
“You don’t know?” Xiao-Wu asked stonily.
“I really don’t.” Xu Wenchao raised both hands in a gesture of helpless surrender. “All right—it seems like you guys are so intent on eliciting a confession from me that you won’t tell me the exact time. Still, I need to stand up for myself. If this happened before midnight, I probably wouldn’t have had time to get over there. You know where I live. It would take me at least three hours to drive to Xiling—and that’s with good weather and no traffic. On the evening of the twenty-seventh, I ordered takeout at around 8:30 p.m. There are records of the order number and the delivery time. If I’m lucky, the delivery man might even remember me.”
Luo Wenzhou’s heart sank. His gut feeling had been right.
“I suggest you go verify what I just said, then declare my innocence.” Xu Wenchao looked down at his watch. “But it does seem like I’ll be spending the night here. When can I contact a lawyer? Oh, right—I still don’t know what exactly Su Luozhan did, but she’s young. Can you guys please go easy on her? If necessary, I’ll take responsibility as her guardian.”