Lang Qiao frowned, confused. “They said her home environment wasn’t great, right? For days, her parents didn’t even realize that she was missing. How did she manage to go to a private school?”
“She was a dance student. The teachers in charge of her elementary school dance troupe liked her a lot and recommended her to Brocade. Back then, if you specialized in dance, they would waive your tuition in part or even in full. But between her family and dance practice, Su Xiaolan often missed class, so she had a hard time getting along with her peers and didn’t have any friends. Wu Guangchuan was her seventh-grade homeroom teacher. Taking advantage of her social isolation, he repeatedly enticed and coerced her, then violated her.”
“If Wu Guangchuan kidnapped and killed six girls, why did he let her live? That’s kind of unusual,” Tao Ran noted.
“I’d only just entered the force at the time of the case, and I was just an errand-runner for the special investigation team, so I wasn’t very involved,” Deputy Lu said, thinking back. “The killer was dead, so we couldn’t question him. All our conclusions were just based on the more senior officers’ deductions after the fact. But there were two possible reasons. One: Many people knew that Su Xiaolan and Wu Guangchuan were very intimate. If anything happened to her, the police would likely have found out about him, so for the killer, Su Xiaolan was a highly risky target. One officer even suggested that, to Wu Guangchuan, the other six girls were just substitutes for Su Xiaolan. The second possibility was just a guess, but among the seven girls, Su Xiaolan’s family situation was unique. The culprit couldn’t torture her family with a phone call. So if those phone calls held some special significance for the culprit, he couldn’t have gotten that satisfaction in Su Xiaolan’s case.”
Luo Wenzhou nodded. The entire thought process seemed sound. They had a witness and physical evidence, and they’d identified appropriate logic and motives in the killer. The only problem was that the killer from twenty years ago was dead, so who had taken Qu Tong? And who else knew about the pencil case and the bells?
Perhaps only Guo Fei’s family…and the old officers who’d worked on the case originally, including Deputy Lu.
Facing Deputy Lu, everyone else in the meeting room fell silent, but Deputy Lu himself was unperturbed. Patting Luo Wenzhou on the shoulder, he broke the silence by telling the younger officer, “You should be in charge of this. If you run into any problems, report them to Lao-Zeng. I’ll step back to avoid any conflicts of interest, and I’ll write down where I’ve been these last few days. I imagine it could be tricky for you all to investigate the other guys who handled this case, so I’ll give them a heads-up about you to keep them from taking it as an insult and refusing to cooperate.”
“We’ll also have to talk to the families of victims from the Lianhuashan case,” Luo Wenzhou said, navigating the awkwardness with ease. “It’s possible they said something to someone. Also, Su Xiaolan was with Wu Guangchuan for the longest, so she might know something. The three of us should split up. Tao Ran, continue tracing where those eighteen kids have been. Look into the boys’ whereabouts too, just in case. Xiao-Lang, you’re in charge of investigating Qu Tong’s place. Bring a team with you, and make sure you check all the security footage from nearby stores and shops. Leave the rest to me.”
All that was left was work that had the potential to offend, whether by investigating senior veteran cops or by visiting past victims.
Tao Ran wanted to say something, but Luo Wenzhou raised a hand to stop him. “Go on. Save your breath. It’s been over twenty years. The evidence in that case is long gone, and most of the direct witnesses are dead, so there’s very little hope of finding anything on that end. It’s your work that’s of the utmost importance. What if that kid’s still alive?”
Now that Luo Wenzhou had put it that way, Tao Ran didn’t dare delay further. He and Lang Qiao both left.
Lu Youliang ripped open another pack of cigarettes and pushed it toward Luo Wenzhou. “Leaving the honorable-yet-difficult work to yourself. Strong work ethic.”
Luo Wenzhou accepted the cigarettes, put one between his lips, then stuffed the rest unceremoniously into his pocket. “If I go, I’ll get some attitude at worst. If they go, someone might physically kick them out. Of course, whether I achieve any results after suffering through that attitude will all depend on you.”
“Those guys from back then have mostly either left, died, or worked here their entire lives and all retired. And now Lao-Zhang’s been transferred,” said Deputy Lu, a little melancholic. “I’m the only one left leading you bunch of rascals. I haven’t got too many years remaining before I retire too.”
“Isn’t retirement good?” Luo Wenzhou chuckled. “I dream of retiring. Wake up without an alarm, go wherever I want, get paid every month, travel the world with my partner—and, when I take the subway, the little brats will all have to give me their seat.”
Lu Youliang really wanted to help Luo Wenzhou in his career. Luo Wenzhou was a little young, but Deputy Lu didn’t plan to retire imminently; if he spent his remaining years mentoring and supporting Luo Wenzhou, there was no reason the sergeant couldn’t succeed. Hearing such unambitious talk, however, Deputy Lu was suddenly angry. He pointed at Luo Wenzhou. “You don’t even have a partner. Shut up. If you’re going to keep talking like that, you can scram.”
His cigarette in his mouth, Luo Wenzhou picked up the file and got ready to scram.
When he reached the door, Deputy Lu stopped him. “Have you got a general sense of what’s going on with this case?”
One hand on the meeting room door, Luo Wenzhou thought about the question. “Two mysteries from twenty years ago were never solved. One: Where did the missing girls’ bodies go? Two: What was Wu Guangchuan’s motive for calling the parents? I’ve discussed this case with a friend before, and he said it sounded like Wu Guangchuan’s main target wasn’t the kids but the parents. That doesn’t quite fit the usual psychological profile of a pedophile… I also feel like these two cases are connected, but they might not have been perpetrated by the same person.”
“How do you mean?”
“Making a call is a completely different thing from actually going to the victim’s home,” said Luo Wenzhou. “The former is hidden behind the scenes, and the latter is the action of someone who can’t resist the spotlight. It’s much higher risk, which means the culprit isn’t just much more familiar with how the police go about things, they’re also more arrogant.”
✦ ✦ ✦
YANCHENG WAS LIKE A RIVER. After a decade of pollution control, you could now see its bottom; the water was too clear to hide anything. But although the river seemed clean and safe, there were always turbulent rapids and hidden currents.
Qu Tong’s chances of survival were dwindling, but to the missing girl’s peers, this was just a normal summer vacation. It was all boring classes and extracurricular activities. They awaited the drowsy daze of adolescence to the cicadas’ weak, sickly cries.
Chenchen’s parents were running late. She waited for them at a bus stop near the back entrance of the youth center, carrying an art portfolio on her back. Bored, she took out her tablet to play with—and suddenly, a shadow fell over her. She looked up and saw a blind, hunched-over old man approach and turn to face her, seemingly by coincidence.
For some reason, Chenchen felt uneasy and thought of what Fei Du had told her. She carefully moved a few steps to one side, to stand closer to the crowd awaiting the bus, keeping an eye on the man. At that moment, the bus arrived. The crowd of people boarded, leaving the stop empty except for Chenchen and the “blind” man.
He appeared to smile as he approached her, his cane tapping the ground. Chenchen’s hair stood on end. She turned to run back inside the youth center, but as she turned the corner, she bumped into someone and knocked them over. The other person cried out in surprise, spilling the items they’d carried all over the ground.
It was a girl just slightly older than Chenchen. She wore a floral-print dress and had her hair in pigtails. Chenchen hurried to apologize. “S-sorry.”
The girl glanced at her, not seeming angry at all, then bent to pick up her books. “Why are you running?”
Chenchen quickly helped her. “There’s someone weird over there,” she said, pointing. “I’m a little scared.”
The other girl glanced in the direction Chenchen pointed. “Where? There’s no one there.”
Chenchen looked. The bus stop was now empty. There wasn’t anyone.
The other girl looked at Chenchen. “What grade are you in?”
“I’ll be in sixth grade soon.”
“Oh, I’m a year older than you.” The girl used one arm to hold her books and helped Chenchen up quite naturally with the other. “Are you scared? Why don’t I keep you company for a while?”
Chenchen wanted nothing more.
“I take a summer photography class here.” The girl looked down at Chenchen with a smile, her long eyelashes fluttering. “My name’s Su Luozhan.”