Lang Qiao scowled at his retreating back, her hands planted on her hips. “I heard there have been enough official complaints about that old geezer to fill a shoebox. How’s he still that cocky?”
Luo Wenzhou glanced sideways at her, putting a cigarette in his mouth. “Aren’t you scared that he’ll make life hard for you if we don’t manage to take him down now?”
“Ha!” Lang Qiao rolled her eyes. “He can try. If worse comes to worst, I’ll just quit and make a living off my good looks.”
“How can a lady be so shameless?” A smile flickered across Luo Wenzhou’s lips, but quickly faded. “That Ma Xiaowei is either the perpetrator or witless, but I’m leaning toward the latter. If I killed someone, I’d find some reasonable excuse to give afterward. Even ‘I didn’t hear anything; I was watching TV at home’ would be better than that ghost story he told the police. Also, considering that we haven’t found any trace of the perpetrator at the crime scene, our suspect is probably cold-blooded and careful, with a clear understanding of how police investigations work. I doubt it’s this silly kid.”
“I don’t think it’s him either.” Tao Ran hesitated, then quickly summarized what Fei Du had said to him the previous evening. “Going on that, we should start by looking into He Zhongyi’s personal connections. For instance, who gave him that phone? And maybe we can talk to the person who lent him the shoes.”
Luo Wenzhou hesitated. “Hmm. You’re saying his shoes were borrowed? That idea’s pretty—”
“It’s not my idea,” said Tao Ran.
Luo Wenzhou was taken aback for a moment. Then, swiftly enough that he seemed almost to read Tao Ran’s mind, he processed the other man’s implication and furrowed his brow. “Fei Du? I told you, it’s best to keep him separate from these things.”
“I know. Last night was an accident,” Tao Ran said, nipping that line of conversation in the bud. “But what do you think of that reasoning?”
“It checks out. Let’s look into those shoes.” Luo Wenzhou nodded. “Tao Ran, keep pursuing the case. Lang Qiao, watch over the special investigation team working on Ma Xiaowei. He’s beyond fishy. See what else he knows. And be on your guard against Wang Hongliang’s subordinates, in case they try to pull something. I’ll take care of Fatty Wang in the meantime. Call if you need me, though. All right, let’s go, hotties—we’re doing unpaid overtime today.”
The conversation had left Lang Qiao brimming with curiosity, so the moment Luo Wenzhou left, she hurried after Tao Ran. “Deputy Tao, were you talking about that cute guy from yesterday? Who was he? How come the boss said not to let him touch the case?”
“Of course it wouldn’t be right to involve him in the case,” replied Tao Ran evasively. “He’s not a cop.”
“Then how come the boss nodded as soon as he heard that that idea was his?” Lang Qiao persisted. “Is he like Detective Conan?”
When Tao Ran sighed and turned to look at her, Lang Qiao widened her already extremely evident eyes, batting her eyelashes at him.
“You’ll get wrinkles from blinking like that,” said Tao Ran. Lang Qiao hurriedly placed her fingers on her temples and the corners of her eyes, pressing them flat. Tao Ran thought for a moment, then explained simply, “Wenzhou and I handled a case together seven years ago that Fei Du reported.”
At that point, Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran had just graduated, and both young men had about as much experience as they did hair above their lips—which was to say, nearly none. Luo Wenzhou, the son of an official, was especially cocky and stubborn, unwilling to bend himself to accommodate anyone else. He saw himself as bursting with talent, the best in the world—that Englishman Sherlock Holmes could eat his heart out. It was as if, rather than going to work every day, Luo Wenzhou were going out to save the galaxy—but his standards far exceeded his abilities, and he was unreliable on the job. During the basic stage of his practical training, he would be sent to settle small community disputes, only to transform them into full-on wars.
One evening, few staff were on hand at their station; the rest had been assigned to a multilateral venture to catch a group of robbers with widespread operations. Officers from the city bureau, several district bureaus, and even a few smaller stations had been moved onto that initiative. Only Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran, two kids their superiors deemed more trouble than they were worth, had been left on duty at the station.
“We got a call from the one-ten emergency line8 saying that a kid in our area wanted to make a report,” Tao Ran went on. “He’d gotten back from school for the weekend and found his mother’s dead body at home. That kid was Fei Du. He was still in high school back then.”
Lang Qiao was shocked.
“Later on, our investigation determined that his mother had killed herself. Wenzhou went to tell him in person, but Fei Du didn’t believe him. I think they even argued about it… Anyway, since then, they haven’t really seen eye to eye.” As he spoke, they reached the entrance of the district bureau. “You can probably tell that Fei Du’s from a well-off family. His father was a businessman, and he spent a lot of time away on work trips. He didn’t return until days after the incident. As a kid, Fei Du was a bit of a loner; none of the nannies his father hired for him ever lasted. Most of the time, he was alone in that big house where his mother died.
“This was the first proper case Wenzhou and I had ever handled, so it meant something special to us. We never forgot it. And it was so sad to see that kid without anyone to watch over him that sometimes I’d pick him up and look after him for a few days. He spent more time with us back then, and we gradually realized that the kid had a special talent.”
“For what?”
Tao Ran paused, then said softly, “Crime.”
Not “deduction,” Lang Qiao immediately noticed. Not “investigation.” Crime, specifically. But before she could press any further, Tao Ran fell silent, waved her off, and strode swiftly away.