Chapter 16
“THE GAMBLING PARLOR was demolished, then rebuilt, then demolished again. It’s now a business building. If bodies were hidden there, they’d definitely have been found during the rebuilds. As for any other information, it’s been too long; we won’t have all the records from back then. We’re not going to find anything quickly.” Lang Qiao glanced at the camera feed of Su Luozhan, who had her cheeks in her hands, and shuddered. “Also, can we even trust what this little maniac says?”
“We can only use her statements as reference. I think her personality is a bit histrionic.” Luo Wenzhou stared at the feed, unblinking. After some thought, he continued, “At least we know how the crimes were committed now—an adult worked together with a young girl. First they followed the target, then the girl gained the victim’s trust. Once they’d been in contact with the victim a few times, they led her away.”
“The day I moved, Chenchen was followed.” Tao Ran mulled that over, then added, “If the person Fei Du noticed that day was her accomplice…”
“Let’s call him Suspect A.” Luo Wenzhou pulled out a sheet of A4 paper, wrote an A, and circled it. “And let’s call the man driving the car in Qu Tong’s case Suspect B. We don’t know yet whether A and B were the same person, but I’m leaning toward no.”
“Why?” asked Lang Qiao.
Luo Wenzhou tapped the table with the pen cap. “The frequency of the kidnappings. If Suspect A started following Chenchen the day Tao Ran moved, then as of last night, it’s been nearly a month. Let’s not worry about whether A had the wherewithal to follow two different girls who live in completely different areas—let’s just say he does. If someone has the patience to follow a victim for a month, though, then two cases within a five-day period would be way too fast for them. And then there’s the third person, Xu Wenchao. He does have an alibi for the night Qu Tong disappeared, so we know he can’t be B. What role did he play?” Luo Wenzhou wrote Xu and Su on the paper and drew a line between the two names. “After Su Luozhan drugged Chenchen and tied her up in the old apartment, she returned home like nothing had happened. She wasn’t afraid that Chenchen would wake up and run away, nor that she’d make noise and get discovered. Why not?”
Lang Qiao understood immediately. “Because she knew her accomplice would take over at the apartment!”
“Right. But the accomplice didn’t go. Su Luozhan was alerted by a call from the teacher from the youth center, and that’s when she ran to the apartment to see whether Chenchen was still there. When she did find Chenchen, she called Xu Wenchao twice.” Luo Wenzhou darkened the line between Xu Wenchao and Su Luozhan a few more times, then extended it downward, into two branches. “Zhang Yuchen was terrified that night, so for now, let’s put her testimony aside. From this information alone, there are two possibilities: Either Xu Wenchao is Suspect A—the one who followed and tried to kidnap Chenchen—or Xu Wenchao is Su Luozhan’s ‘manager,’ and they help a third party kidnap young girls. Su Xiaolan had been sick for a long time, and there are things Su Luozhan can’t do by herself—she needs an adult.”
The first time Xu Wenchao was summoned by the police, he’d been surprised; he hadn’t known where he made a mistake. He answered every question very carefully and was even willing to come off as slow. At that point, he probably hadn’t even known about Su Luozhan leaving the recording at Qu Tong’s home, and he probably never expected the police to connect Qu Tong’s case with one two decades ago—until Tao Ran unwittingly alerted him during the questioning.
Through their conversation, Xu Wenchao probably figured out what Su Luozhan had done. Then the police started following him, and when he received two calls from Su Luozhan, he realized he was going to be arrested, so he got his statement ready.
“So what you’re saying”—Tao Ran lowered his voice unconsciously—“is that it’s just like the girl said: Xu Wenchao is only a last-minute cleaner.”
“That…that doesn’t mean what I think it means, does it?” Lang Qiao whipped around to look at Luo Wenzhou. “Does he get rid of… What about Qu Tong, then? Is there really no more hope for her?”
“Last night, Su Luozhan held Chenchen captive in an old apartment building,” Luo Wenzhou said. “Chenchen should’ve been handed over to Xu Wenchao, but we’d summoned Xu Wenchao to help with the investigation, so he never showed up. Still, there was a lot of blood on the fabric in the music box in Su Luozhan’s bedroom. But Forensics didn’t get a luminol reaction consistent with that amount of blood in the old apartment. That means the apartment might just be a transfer point, not the actual scene of the crime.”
“Then where could the crime scene be?” asked Tao Ran.
“Wait! No… Hold on!” Lang Qiao hurriedly retrieved a piece of paper from a stack of files. “Have you guys forgotten something? Twenty years ago, Xu Wenchao went to a disgustingly expensive private high school. When he grew up, he spent his time just playing with photography equipment. Now he’s a freelance photographer with a car, a residence, and no mortgage. His family is filthy rich. And let me be frank: Even if you’re a real freak, if you have the money, you can always find a way to buy whatever you want. Why would he work with Su Luozhan to do such deranged things? He doesn’t need the money, so what’s in it for him?”
Everyone fell silent.
She had a point. How did a man who grew up middle class or better, with both parents present, whose life had been smooth sailing, get entangled with the Su family? If not for Su Luozhan deciding to imitate Su Xiaolan’s ‘signature’ for fun by leaving a recording at Qu Tong’s home, plus Xu Wenchao’s own mistakes, who would ever have suspected him?
At that point, an officer poked his head in. “Sergeant Luo? That old Guo guy, the one who showed up first, is looking for you.”