THE SOLEMN MEMORIAL HALL was stifling. The building’s cooling system was probably meant as refrigeration, not air conditioning, and an eerie chill greeted them as they entered. Several employees eyed Luo Wenzhou’s badge suspiciously, not understanding why an officer would investigate an urn.
“What would you like to see?” asked a manager as he tapped his card and led them in. “We’re not involved in illegal activities, only metaphysical ones. Since when does law enforcement involve itself in things like that?”
Luo Wenzhou looked calm and steady, but it was all for show. He’d just survived Fei Du’s full-fledged come-on, and his ears still seemed to ring with Fei Du’s husky voice, stirring him up inside. Desperately wanting the whole world to shut up, he retorted impatiently, “Well, what if someone put a bomb in an urn?”
The manager gave him a shocked look. He clearly thought Luo Wenzhou was a particularly inventive madman.
Funeral urns covered an entire wall; the small cubbies went all the way from the floor to the ceiling. Su Xiaolan’s was in a corner.
“Area C, Unit 106: Su Xiaolan,” the manager read off, verifying the name. “That’s her. Her daughter and fiancé placed her here. You can ask whatever questions you need. I’ll give you some space and return in twenty minutes.” With that, he pressed his hands together, bowed to Su Xiaolan’s photo, and stepped out.
Fei Du reached for Su Xiaolan’s photo, but Luo Wenzhou slapped his hand away, then pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket. He examined the crystal frame to see if it had any additional layers. Once he was satisfied that it was completely normal, he handed it to Fei Du and set about looking through Su Xiaolan’s personal effects.
“This photo is interesting,” said Fei Du.
“So interesting,” Luo Wenzhou said, still going through the woman’s things. “It’s the same one we have in the case file from twenty years ago.”
Inside the crystal frame was a photo of Su Xiaolan as a young girl with lots of long, thick hair, red lips, and pearly teeth. Under the cold, eerie light of the urn wall, she almost looked a bit demonic.
This ad hoc storage space for urns wasn’t very big. A single glance was all it took to see everything that a family had brought in. In addition to the photo frame, Luo Wenzhou found an old dress, menthol cigarettes, and lipstick—all common objects for a woman to be buried with, nothing special.
“Honoring the dead is just a ritual for the living. The photo of the deceased that people set out often represents how their friends and family saw them. If the photo is selected by someone who lived with the deceased, it’s often recent; if they didn’t live close to the deceased and see them often, the photo might represent a significant memory. If the deceased had a strong personality, their friends and family could honor their wishes and use the photo that the deceased would have been happiest with—for instance, one that documented their greatest accomplishment. Those are the most common scenarios.” Fei Du tapped the crystal frame. “So was age twelve or thirteen the most significant time in Su Xiaolan’s life? What about after? Was she already dead to certain people?”
Luo Wenzhou had been making sure that he hadn’t missed anything. Before he could respond to Fei Du, his phone rang, “Song of the Fifth Ring”9 blaring in the memorial hall. The melody echoed as it rose and fell, like something out of a horror film, and Luo Wenzhou broke out in goosebumps.
The manager who’d “stepped out” suddenly appeared out of nowhere, saying weakly, “Please switch your phone to silent, Officer—be respectful in a public area. You’re disrupting people’s rest.”
“Bro,” Luo Wenzhou said murderously, “if I weren’t being respectful, you’d already be lying on the ground.”
The manager didn’t dare try to reason with a barbarian. He shrank back.
Luo Wenzhou picked up the call with an ugly expression. “What did you find, Tao Ran?”
“The neighborhood Xu Wenchao led Guo Heng through twenty years back is still there.” Tao Ran tugged the collar of his uniform, sweltering under the sun. He took the phone call as an opportunity to jog over to a shaded spot under a tree, where he stood fanning himself with a photocopy of an old map. “God—I’m about to melt. This neighborhood is called Xiangyang Community, and it was one of the first batches of commercial housing twenty years ago. At the time, it was pretty snazzy. An old man playing chess downstairs said lots of rich students rented these residences because of the neighborhood’s proximity to Brocade.”
“What about that wall?” Luo Wenzhou asked. “Guo Heng said he could see Wu Guangchuan’s house through openings in the wall. Can you estimate the location?”
“The area has been rebuilt so many times that it’s unrecognizable now. You sure know how to assign an impossible task, Boss.” Tao Ran sighed. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, then saw an equally sweaty colleague wave to him from not far away. They’d asked a few survey workers from a nearby construction site to come help them work out the old map from what was currently there, using Xiangyang Community as their starting point.
The road had been expanded to more than twice its original size. The site of Wu Guangchuan’s house now lay beneath the pavement. It was a good thing the roads were pretty empty in the summer afternoon. Two officers, each carrying a leveling staff, stood in the middle of the road two yards apart. That was where Wu Guangchuan’s front door would have been.
Following the weed-infested outer wall of Xiangyang Community, Tao Ran told Luo Wenzhou, “I think he was probably between buildings seven and eight. Guo Heng said that he was facing a corner but had a view of Wu Guangchuan’s house dozens of yards away… It’ll be pretty tricky to find, Wenzhou. The building’s bike storage unit is here, and there’s a little path that’s tight for even one person—I barely fit sideways. Xu Wenchao led Guo Heng here… But how did he even find this place?”
Before he finished speaking, they both received a text from Lang Qiao. She was at Brocade Junior High, and she’d found some old records. Xu Wenchao’s address while attending was Xiangyang Community Building Eight, Unit Three, Apartment 201.
Gripping his phone tightly, Tao Ran turned to look at the mottled walls of the old building next to him. Then he hastily extracted himself from the cramped alleyway, turned, and ran up to the second floor of Building Eight. A rusted-over window along the exterior walkway, although covered in a layer of grease, happened to face the same direction as the window in Apartment 201’s master bedroom. Tao Ran’s eyes widened, and he got closer. From the window, he had a clear view of his colleagues holding the leveling staves. There were some rocks a few yards behind them indicating where Wu Guangchuan’s basement would’ve been. In the past, many people had rented or sold their basements, so they weren’t enclosed and they often had windows. The house was usually surrounded by a metal railing, with flower beds right outside, to prevent anyone from falling off the ledge outside the basement door or from spying on what was happening inside.
Twenty years ago, this city hadn’t been what it was today. After 9:00 p.m., the streets had been pretty much empty; there weren’t many night owls. Those few who lived in darkness had to survey their surroundings carefully, confirming that it was indeed the dead of night and that no one was around, before they could take off their mask, unleashing the depravity and desire within, and letting loose in a basement that could never see the light of day.
Could a pair of eyes have been watching everything from above back then, from a fateful angle that saw straight past the bushes?
Tao Ran was covered in both sweat and goosebumps. He burst into the office of the homeowner’s association and slapped his badge down on the table. “Tell me who owns Apartment 201, please. Has it been sold in recent years?”
“Apartment 201?” The employee flipped through their records. “No. It still belongs to the original owners.”
Tao Ran took a few quick breaths. “Their family name is Xu?”
“Not Xu, Sun. They’re an old couple.” The employee turned to the building manager. “Right, Zhao-jie?”
“Yeah, they aren’t young. They have a daughter, and I think she’s almost forty now.” The middle-aged woman poured Tao Ran a cup of water. He thanked her, but couldn’t help feeling disappointed. For some reason, in the hallway just now, he’d had a hunch that there was something in Apartment 201. Turned out he was just jumpy.
Tao Ran was about to bid them goodbye when he heard Zhao-jie say, “Their daughter’s doing well for herself. She lives abroad now, and she moved her parents there to live with her. I chatted with the husband back then, and at that point, he told me they wanted to sell the place. Not sure what happened—maybe they couldn’t find a suitable buyer?—but the property never changed hands. They might’ve rented it out. Either way, someone’s been paying the bills…”
Zhao-jie stopped suddenly, exchanging an awkward glance with her coworker.
Catching the glance, Tao Ran tried to ask, “Do you know who the tenant is, ma’am?”
She chuckled, then looked down awkwardly. “I’m not sure. I don’t really cross paths with them. You can pay the bills online these days, so there’s no reason for the residents to come to us anymore.”
Tao Ran’s looked over at the large words pasted on the wall: Eliminate safety hazards by cracking down on group rentals. His expression darkened. “Hold on. You guys aren’t illegally renting to big groups, right?”
The looks on their faces immediately changed. “No, no,” Zhao-jie said hastily, “there’s no way we’d do that. We’re very strict here. We forbid group rentals. It’s just… Oh, maybe that family has bad luck, because the tenant keeps changing. But I promise it’s not a group rental! Listen—”
Tao Ran shot to his feet. “Give me the key!”
He understood now. This sly building manager had made money by silently allowing group rentals in her building. She’d accepted payments from Apartment 201, and when she saw that it was always someone different coming and going from 201, she just assumed it was a group rental.
But was it?