GUO HENG WAS WAITING outside the noisy reception room. Someone must’ve thought that he was a sorry sight and brought him a chair; seated, he faced the back door of the on-duty room, but the officers had gone somewhere and hadn’t turned off the TV before leaving. On the dingy screen, a local news station was reporting on last night’s dramatic rescue operation at the youth center.
Guo Heng craned his neck to see the screen, automatically straightening his hunched back and sitting up properly. Prisoners were sometimes rounded up to watch TV together—usually the news or a moral-education program. Strict prisons even required the prisoners to sit up straight as they watched.
Twenty years of incarceration had turned a man in his prime into an old man who could never slump freely again.
“Guo-shu,” Luo Wenzhou called.
Guo Heng reflexively straightened even more, as though checking his own posture, then looked down. He seemed a little desolate; when his taut face slackened, wrinkles carved a rippling network over his skin. “Sorry to interrupt your work,” Guo Heng said in a low voice. “I’m just…worried about how many people showed up. Did I kill the wrong man back then?”
Luo Wenzhou hesitated, then pulled two cigarettes out of his pocket. He lit one and handed it to Guo Heng. “Do you remember that little girl you saved back then?”
“Yes.” Guo Heng nodded immediately. “She was really skinny. Looked a little older than Feifei. Pretty girl. What was her name again?”
“Su Xiaolan.”
“Yes, yes. That was it.” Guo Heng brought the cigarette to his lips carefully, took a huge drag, and held the smoke in his mouth, unwilling to waste it by breathing back out—perhaps a habit he’d picked up from prison. “It’s been so many years,” he said with a sigh. “Wonder how that kid’s doing. When I first got out, I wanted to go see her, but then I figured she might’ve been married with kids by then. Who’d want to remember the kind of thing that happened when she was a kid? It was better not to bother her.” As he spoke, a rare smile appeared on his typically rather sorrowful face. “To be honest, over these last twenty years, I’ve never regretted what I did. If I’d been too cowardly to do it, that girl might’ve died. I’m just an old man with no family or career; who cares if I go to prison for a few years? If all that was enough to save a life, it was worth it.”
Luo Wenzhou’s lips twitched. Looking at Guo Heng’s face, he had no idea where to start. Was he supposed to tell this man, “You might really have killed the wrong person. That girl you saved is the actual culprit”?
This man’s tragic life, his strict posture as he sat, and the way he held his precious cigarette—wouldn’t telling him turn all that into one huge joke?
“Officer Luo?” Guo Heng seemed to have suddenly remembered his objective. “You still haven’t told me what’s with all these people. Was Wu Guangchuan not the killer after all?”
“Guo-shu, I need you to try to think back to something for me.” Luo Wenzhou braced a hand on the back of Guo Heng’s chair and rested his weight on it. “Look at me and think carefully. The day you killed Wu Guangchuan, how exactly did you find him?”
Guo Heng paused, not understanding why Luo Wenzhou would ask such a thing. “I told you. There was a boy…”
“He paged you. He was a student at Brocade Junior High named Xu Wenchao, and he investigated Wu Guangchuan with you. I know. After he paged you, do you remember what he said?”
His cigarette between his lips, Guo Heng furrowed his brow. He thought about it for a long time. “I think… I think he said, ‘He took her away at school.’ Yes, that’s right. It was vague, and he didn’t mention a name. When I saw the message, I felt my hair stand on end. I ran to find a public phone and call him back.”
Luo Wenzhou paused. “You called him back, and then? Please go into detail.”
“Then I asked him what was going on and went to find him at the school entrance. He led me to Wu Guangchuan’s house, and the rest was history.”
Luo Wenzhou narrowed his eyes. “That means Xu Wenchao was waiting for your call. After all, junior high students didn’t have cell phones back then, right? Where was he waiting?”
“Near the school. Brocade had good infrastructure; there were a lot of new phone booths around it. That was usually how he contacted me.”
“How long did it take you to reach him?”
“Maybe five or six minutes.”
“So Xu Wenchao paged you, then waited for your call. He explained the situation, and then it took you five or six minutes to reach Brocade Junior High to meet him. After that, you set off together. The whole thing would’ve taken around ten minutes…?” Guo Heng nodded, and Luo Wenzhou continued, “You two spotted Wu Guangchuan. You told Xu Wenchao to go get somebody, and you followed Wu Guangchuan to his door, right? How far was his house from where you guys found him?”
“Not far. Just around the corner.” Guo Heng considered it. “Maybe…a little more than fifty yards… Less than a hundred for sure.”
“Wu Guangchuan took Su Xiaolan from the school to his house. You and Xu Wenchao left from the school too. How did you reach Wu Guangchuan’s house before they did, despite the ten-minute delay?”
“The kid took me through a shortcut, and Wu Guangchuan wouldn’t have risked taking the main roads. He probably had to leave through the school’s back door and go around to avoid a large residential area. But we went right through it, basically in a straight line. The residential districts at the time all had walls around them, but those weren’t very tall, and they had decorative openings made of roof tiles built in. Through those openings, I saw Wu Guangchuan pulling the girl along. I really was young then—after I told the boy to go, I jumped one of those walls and followed them.”
Luo Wenzhou got out a little notebook. “Can you give me a rough sketch of the locations you just mentioned?”
Guo Heng paused for a moment. Then, looking thoughtful, he sketched a rough map, correcting a few spots repeatedly. “What is it? Why are you asking me this?”
“I’m not sure,” Luo Wenzhou said lightly. “Considering where the investigation is now, Guo-shu, things might not turn out as you’re expecting. Will you be able to handle that?”
Guo Heng froze for a moment, then put his hand on the back of his chair and stood up slowly.
“I’ll do my best to give you an explanation soon.” With that, Luo Wenzhou hurried out.
Outside, he ripped Guo Heng’s sketch from his notebook and handed it to Tao Ran, who’d been waiting and now stood next to him. “Can you find out what neighborhood this was? It’s from twenty years ago. Does it still exist?”
Tao Ran took his time turning the paper around and around, examining it. “Wu Guangchuan’s house is long gone. We had someone look into the state of the crime scene back when we first sensed that this case had something to do with the one twenty years ago. Brocade Junior High relocated from that area too. There’s now a gym where Wu Guangchuan’s house used to be, but this area looks like… Hold on. I have to go take a look!”
Fei Du sauntered over to them. Luo Wenzhou knew that it was him without even turning around, because everyone else at the Yancheng Municipal Bureau was busy; they either walked quickly or jogged outright. Fei Du was the only one whose footsteps were as leisurely as always.
The young man wiped his glasses with a corner of his shirt, then settled them back on the bridge of his nose. His aura had seemingly shifted from the sentimental young man who’d kept an eye on Su Luozhan to sinister aristocrat. If he’d gone to see the girl looking like this, she wouldn’t have said a word to him. “Do you know about Fuyuan Memorial Hall?” he asked, dragging out his words.
“The memorial hall at Fuyuan Funeral Home?” Luo Wenzhou hesitated. “Isn’t that where they keep people’s ashes?”
“Su Xiaolan’s ashes are there. Xu Wenchao arranged it. Her personal belongings are with those ashes, apparently. You should go take a look. Maybe there’s something useful there.”
Luo Wenzhou grimaced, deep in thought. “Su Luozhan said something?”
“No way,” said Fei Du. “That little brat’s way too cunning; she’d never give something like that away. I guessed it. I kept thinking, if you’ve got a bunch of weak, cowardly stalker clients, then besides providing what they want, you need something on them to at least shut them up. You’d need to keep it someplace very specific, ideally somewhere like a bank safe, with surveillance cameras everywhere and twenty-four-hour security. But it has to actually be safe—not like a bank, where the police could find it easily. If it were me, I think I’d decide that my best bet was storing it with someone’s ashes. Fuyuan Memorial Hall has very strict rules, apparently. The only people allowed in are family members who’ve completed the right paperwork, and an employee lets them in after tapping their card. Visits from mourners have to be prebooked by the cardholder, unlike a visit to a graveyard. Some graveyards are way too lax these days. They’ll just let anyone waltz in.”
Luo Wenzhou held his tongue. He didn’t know what Su Xiaolan had on her clients, but Fei Du sure had something on him. He’d left it behind in the graveyard with that bouquet of little white flowers.
“I didn’t mean anything in particular by that.” Fei Du spread his arms with a smile. “I just don’t see why else Xu Wenchao wouldn’t have gotten Su Xiaolan a grave, despite handling her funeral. He doesn’t seem short on cash. How about it? Can I trouble you to drive me out there, Sergeant Luo?”