WHILE TAO RAN LED A TEAM out of the city, Luo Wenzhou and Fei Du were driving back.
The sun was setting, but the summer humidity still made it so hot that it was hard to keep one’s eyes open. Yancheng Municipal Bureau had finally quieted down a bit; when Luo Wenzhou got back, his colleagues had recorded most of the information from the victims’ families, and all that was left was for those families to return home and await news. A few people who lived too far away—or refused to give up—remained pacing around the bureau, and the staff and officers could only arrange for them to go eat in the cafeteria.
Luo Wenzhou twisted open a bottle of water, then stole two packets of instant coffee from Lang Qiao’s desk, dumped them into the bottle, and shook vigorously. The instant coffee refused to dissolve fully; some clumps still floated in the water, giving the mixture a unique color and an even more unique taste. Under Fei Du’s shocked gaze, he chugged almost half the bottle.
“What are you looking at?” he demanded of Fei Du. “I’m not drinking piss.”
Fei Du felt like his eyeballs had somehow swallowed a big gulp of that cold perfumed-oil coffee. He felt his stomach protest; looking away quickly, he stared at the photos they’d dug out of the urn.
“Even if they have strict rules on who could become a ‘group member,’ isn’t five suspects too few? Over the course of two decades, hundreds of girls have gone missing.” Fei Du lightly tapped the photograph in his hand. “Besides, these look pretty new. They’re probably from recent—”
Suddenly, he fell silent. Luo Wenzhou glanced questioningly at him.
Wrapping an eyeglass-cleaning cloth around his hand, Fei Du carefully picked up a photo. It showed a man gazing upward. He looked refined; he was around forty years of age and not bad-looking.
Everyone captured in these photos had been snapped from several angles. The pictures seemed to have been taken covertly, and Su Xiaolan had probably chosen those in which the men were easiest to recognize. In his other photos, this man looked either wretched or sinister; only in the photo Fei Du held was his expression less distorted and more clearly human.
“He looks familiar,” Fei Du muttered to himself, rubbing his chin. “Familiar… But I can’t place him, so I must not have met him for business. When I accept a business card, I always take note of the facial features of whoever I got it from. Then I write a description on the back of their card afterward, so that I won’t make things awkward by taking too long to remember them the next time I see them. That isn’t someone I hang out with either. My social group’s not that large, and even if someone new was brought in, it wouldn’t be an…unremarkable old man like this. His face only rings a faint bell, so we must only have met once. I don’t commit people to memory unless I speak to them or stare at their photo for over ten seconds. Even then, I don’t remember people for more than a month, which means I’ve seen him in the last thirty days.”
Sipping his piss-like coffee, Luo Wenzhou listened with great interest as Fei Du analyzed his memories. Fei Du was familiar with himself the way a nerd was familiar with the components of his computer: He treated his brain like a treasure trove, and he could talk about it precisely, objectively. He couldn’t remember every single thing, but all his actions followed certain patterns.
It was like he routinely opened up his brain to analyze and deconstruct every single thought.
Just now, Fei Du had quickly gone through what he’d done over the past month. The only places he’d gone in the last thirty days besides his office, his apartment in the city, a few entertainment spots, and his friends’ homes were the hospital and the care home. A middle-aged man with a beard and long hair—that wasn’t really the appearance expected of someone who worked in a medical facility. The man wore an understated midrange Swiss watch, which meant he had some money. He wasn’t a waiter—but he wasn’t exactly rich either, so logically, he wouldn’t show up in the kinds of places where Fei Du’s clique liked to hang out…
At that moment, Lang Qiao burst in, distressed. “Boss, you’re finally back! I never want to handle victims’ families again! I—”
Luo Wenzhou raised a finger to silence her.
“The musician,” Fei Du said suddenly.
Lang Qiao looked baffled. “Musician?”
“His photo was on the wall at that racing club in Xiling. He wasn’t playing the club the day Qu Tong went missing, because the boss had invited an indie band. Yeah… If the suspect followed Qu Tong’s bus and encountered the passengers being held hostage, then if they were unfamiliar with the area, they would’ve left and avoided the whole situation, not run with the opportunity.”
“No wonder the security cameras never picked him up. He’s from the area. Su Xiaolan’s services require a ‘membership,’ so these scumbags must have ways to introduce new people to the ‘club.’ Even if the main culprits refuse to admit anything, would those guys be as stubborn?” Luo Wenzhou turned to Lang Qiao. “You don’t want to take care of the victims’ families, so how about making arrests?”
Hearing the word “arrests” injected Lang Qiao with adrenaline. Her mopey attitude vanished into thin air, and she took the photos and sprinted away without another word.
Luo Wenzhou picked up the file and kicked a napping coworker awake. “Get up. Come question Xu Wenchao again with me.” The officer followed Luo Wenzhou out.
Fei Du stood and stretched gingerly. The oppressive stench of cigarettes and perfumed oil was all around him here, and he didn’t feel like he could stay any longer. Just as he was about to leave, however, Luo Wenzhou returned.
“I have a few things to tell you,” Luo Wenzhou said, “but I have to take care of some serious business first. Don’t leave. You can wait in my office.” He rushed off again.
Fei Du hesitated, having taken only a single step. After a moment, he retracted his leg.