Luo Wenzhou waited patiently for a while, then continued. “Your photographs were so clear that I could count the pits on people’s faces. We’ve already verified the identities of everyone photographed and summoned them for questioning. It would’ve been even better if we’d had their contact information and addresses. Why didn’t you compile those too?”
As Luo Wenzhou spoke, Xu Wenchao’s unfocused gaze fell upon his face. After a while, Xu Wenchao’s eyes seemed to focus, and he responded, “It’s no use.”
“What did you say?”
“It’s no use,” Xu Wenchao repeated quietly. “You won’t find any evidence, and the people in the photos will never admit it.”
At this point, Xiao-Wu had finally been shocked fully awake by his superior and the suspect. Through his earpiece, his colleagues updated him on everything that had happened today, finally catching him up. Furious, Xiao-Wu slapped the table. “We won’t find any evidence? The blood and weapons in there aren’t evidence? The photos aren’t evidence? What the fuck would you want as evidence?”
Xu Wenchao glanced at Xiao-Wu calmly, a hint of sadness and pity in his eyes. “Those photos are from years ago.”
Xiao-Wu didn’t understand. He wanted to grab this monster by the collar and shake him, forcing him to make sense. But Luo Wenzhou already knew what Xu Wenchao meant. The “customers” that Su Luozhan had spoken of only purchased the girls. They didn’t participate in anything after the fact. Did they know what would happen to those girls afterward?
Under the circumstances, Luo Wenzhou wasn’t giving them the benefit of the doubt. He was sure they knew. But they wouldn’t have to admit it. “I didn’t know where the girl came from.” “I was introduced by a friend—I only went a few times.” “How could they have been kidnapped? How could they have been killed? They told me they were doing that willingly.”
Even if they found the victims’ bodies, they would’ve been dealt with in a way that made it difficult to find any clues on them. In all likelihood, law enforcement wouldn’t find any direct evidence linking those men to the more recent kidnappings. The photos in the urn proved only that they had sexually assaulted girls at some point in the past. If those photos had been taken before the child-prostitution law was abolished, then—following the principle of lighter punishment—even if the all-powerful Heroine Lang arrested all five of the men in the photos, she’d merely have caught a few perverts participating in child prostitution, and they’d be fined and imprisoned for three to five years at worst.
But would this case, which had spanned over twenty years, really only have five perpetrators? And was three to five years a long enough time to pay for these crimes?
What a cruel joke!
“Their sentences will be our problem as public security officers. Thanks for your concern,” Luo Wenzhou said, not batting an eye. “But however considerate of us you are, we won’t be giving you a banner. Why not come clean about what you’ve done? In my opinion, even if other people get away with it, you—Xu Wenchao—can’t deny that you repeatedly participated in the kidnappings of young children, murdered them, and then dumped their bodies. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“So as an outsider, I’ll ultimately have to face all the consequences. What an absurd thought.” Xu Wenchao unclasped his hands and spread them. “To be honest, I never touched Su Luozhan or the others. And I never took a single dollar. I’m not a monster.”
Luo Wenzhou chuckled coldly. “Then what did you do? Snap photos and then take care of the aftermath? What a model citizen you are.”
“I did it for Su Xiaolan.” Xu Wenchao looked down, his gaze far away. “I was drawn to her the first time I saw her at school. There was something special about her. I’d never seen another girl like her. I tried to get close to her, but she was too solitary. She kept missing classes. Other than our homeroom teacher at that point, Wu Guangchuan, no one seemed to know how to get in touch with her. And when we got to eighth grade, our new homeroom teacher often wasn’t sure where she’d gone either. That was when I realized she only seemed to care about Wu Guangchuan.”
“So you started following Wu Guangchuan even before Guo Heng?”
“Did I even need to follow him?” Xu Wenchao smiled bitterly. “My mother lived with me by the school, but she also had her elderly parents to take care of. She was always traveling between them and me, so she was only around at mealtimes. Su Xiaolan was my first love, the kind you think about all day and night. Once, I woke up in the middle the night—as young boys do, Sergeant Luo, I’m sure you understand—took out a photo I’d secretly taken of Su Xiaolan during a school celebration, and put it beside my bed to ‘relieve stress.’ My bed was right next to the window, and in the summer, I didn’t draw the curtains. So I happened to see Su Xiaolan and Wu Guangchuan returning home.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“After midnight,” Xu Wenchao specified. “Wu Guangchuan was very careful. What I saw later…far exceeded my expectations. And you know how young people’s imaginations can be a little vague around the edges. I was so shocked that I forgot about anger and jealousy. I saw the whole thing from beginning to end. It wasn’t until daybreak that I realized something was wrong. Wu Guangchuan was a teacher, so hadn’t this been a crime? I was disgusted, and I wondered whether she was being forced. So I set an alarm, readied my binoculars, and got out the camera and lenses that I’d spent ages begging my family for.”
Luo Wenzhou held back Xiao-Wu, who was about to interrupt. “How did you discover that Su Xiaolan wasn’t just a victim?” he asked calmly, twirling a pen around his fingers. “Wu Guangchuan didn’t bring other kidnapped girls home, did he?”