“Hey, I think that’s the logo for the fancy hotel north of here,” Lang Qiao said suddenly. “Isn’t their buffet snooty as heck? How come they’re even open this late? And…and they do delivery? I can’t believe they’d lower themselves to serve commoners like that.”
“Not even food shuts you up, huh?” Veins bulged at Luo Wenzhou’s temples. “Where are all these questions coming from? If you don’t want to eat, get back to work!”
Lang Qiao studied Luo Wenzhou’s expression, and her long-dead girlish enthusiasm suddenly returned to life. Such a romantic midnight meal really didn’t suit Sergeant Luo’s jianbing-and-hot-soy-milk lifestyle, and Lang Qiao’s mind lit on an entirely new possibility. “Hold on, Boss,” she blurted. “Did someone special deliver a romantic dinner because they want to get in your—ow!”
Luo Wenzhou’s paper ball had smacked her on the forehead.
Playing oblivious, he stubbornly skipped over all questions related to the meal and picked up where he’d left off, now surrounded by the aromas of the food. “You guys eat. I’ll continue. I need to split us into two teams. The first team will look up all lost-child cases from the counties and areas under our jurisdiction, focusing on each child’s age, gender, and appearance at the time when they disappeared, in addition to the case summary. Let’s go through all the cases from the last two years and narrow them down step by step using those criteria.”
“You don’t think Qu Tong was the first one?” Tao Ran asked, a piece of beef rib in his mouth.
“The culprit followed Qu Tong for a long time without leaving any signs, and although the situation changed in a very sudden way, he managed to take her away very calmly. That means he had a clear goal. He was stalking her to kidnap her; it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. So I think Qu Tong might not have been the first,” Luo Wenzhou said in a low voice. “We’re at a dead end for evidence on the present case, so we’ll look into past cases instead. Anyway, I need you guys in the second group to dig up everything you can on Su Luozhan, Su Xiaolan, and Xu Wenchao. I want report cards, bank accounts, phone records, personal computers—anything you can find.”
Time was tight, and these tasks were vital. All the officers began either taking notes or making phone calls. Even their sumptuous midnight feast felt heavy and sorrowful now, and none of them had brainpower to spare for guessing the truth behind the meal.
Luo Wenzhou grabbed a roasted chicken wing with a napkin, gnawing it as quickly and as clean as a plague of locusts devouring a field. “You’re going to need all the energy you can get, so eat your fill—but then get moving. Xiao-Lang, come act as coordinator.”
“Aren’t we going to keep questioning Su Luozhan, Boss?”
“It’s useless,” Luo Wenzhou sighed. “An adult, you can try to piss off, scare, or mislead. But that Su Luozhan… When you sit in front of her, she doesn’t think of you as an equal. Maybe, in her eyes, humans are like lambs—prey or food. Besides, she’s too young for her statement to be admissible in court; we’d only be able to use it for reference. We need to close this case properly. The father of a victim twenty years ago is standing outside in the hallway right now. I’m sure none of us want this to drag on until we retire, so let’s be quick.”
Data organization was boring; it didn’t give anyone a rush, and the early morning hours were especially hard to stay awake through. The officers had to rely on subpar coffee to keep their energy up. There was basic information on all the lost-child cases: girl or boy, age, where and how they went missing. But as for what kind of kid the missing child was; what they liked; their temperament; and whether their families still jolted awake from nightmares, prepared to spend the rest of their lives searching hopelessly—none of that appeared on paper. The tragedies stacked up on top of each other as the officers’ tired eyes skimmed case after case. They were like the epitaphs of disaster victims: shocking, yet dull.
Soon, the sky brightened. At this point, the meeting room surfaces were strewn with coffee cans and cigarette butts.
“Last year, there were thirty-two missing girls between nine and fourteen, not counting the ones who left letters saying that they were running away or whose bodies were found later. The year before that, there were thirty-one. Appearance-wise, if we exclude the girls who hit puberty early and looked more like adults, and the ones who had yet to start puberty and looked like they’d just lost their baby teeth, that leaves twenty-six last year and twenty the year before.”
Luo Wenzhou poured his tea onto a wet wipe and rubbed his face with it. “What about the kids wearing floral dresses?”
“Seven last year. Eight the year before that.” Lang Qiao looked up. All their colleagues were yawning; she was the only one in the room whose bloodshot eyes showed no sign of sleepiness, and her face was deathly pale in the glow of the computer. “Sergeant Luo—everyone—I think you need to look at this.”
Lang Qiao connected her laptop to the meeting-room projector, and a summary report appeared on the projection screen. Tao Ran’s yawn got caught halfway out of his throat.
The fifteen girls all looked distinct from one another individually, but setting their pictures side by side like this somehow diluted their unique characteristics. What stood out was the peculiar stage they were all in: too old to be a “little girl,” too young to be a teenager. They all looked alike; at first glance, it was hard to tell who was who.
Tao Ran murmured, “No way…”
The girls were like a handful of dried flowers spread out on the ground. Drowned in the sea of lost-child cases, they’d slowly become yet more unresolved cases in a pile of old papers, disappearing without a trace. It was just coincidence that anyone had realized the girls were flowers growing on the same vine.
That poisonous vine grew in a deep forest under splendid sunlight, its root system expansive, its branches and vines spread quietly to create an invisible net. Just one small segment of it sent shivers down one’s spine.