Chapter 8
LIANHUASHAN HAD UNDERGONE an entire makeover over the past twenty years, and it now looked nothing like it used to.
The streets and buildings complemented each other; they all had the same modern style, even more stylish than that of Yancheng. The only sign of the area’s hasty transformation was that the trees by the roadside had yet to grow into a canopy of green, revealing the hastiness of the area’s “makeover.”
Luo Wenzhou drove in circles for a bit before he found the unremarkable newsstand. A man wearing reading glasses sat hunched over inside it. He might have been middle-aged, but it was also plausible that he was quite elderly. Going only by his face, he didn’t seem to be at retirement age yet—but he had an aura of death about him like a man with one foot in the grave.
It was the hottest part of the afternoon, and the streets seemed almost to sweat under the sun. Luo Wenzhou pushed his sunglasses atop his head and approached the newsstand. “A cold bottle of soda, please.”
The newsstand owner set his book aside, bent over, and pulled out a bottle with a thick layer of frost clinging to its surface. Luo Wenzhou stepped under the shade of the newsstand’s parasol, twisted open the lid, and downed half the bottle in one gulp. He’d worked overtime, spending the day in battles of wits against his retired colleagues. With Deputy Lu’s support, he’d positioned himself as asking about an old case and tried in all kinds of roundabout ways to determine whether there was anything suspicious about the people he’d spoken to. Unfortunately, all of them came from the same system, so they all used the same methods to try to trick information out of each other. All that back-and-forth was like a harem drama—it was exhausting.
Luo Wenzhou’s brain now felt wooden, and his eyes were glazed. Shocking himself with the chill of the cold drink, he let himself space out for a while, leaning against the large parasol.
When the newsstand owner realized that he wasn’t leaving, he said, “I have ice pops too, young man. Do you want one?”
Luo Wenzhou collected himself and waved a hand at the newsstand owner. “I just filled my stomach up with bubbles—no room for anything else. I’m simply taking a break here.”
“All right,” the owner replied, then brought out a plastic stool for his customer. “Sit. It’s such a hot day, everyone’s struggling. What do you do?”
Luo Wenzhou set his bottle down on his knee, then shook it a few times. “I’m a police officer.”
The owner, who was stepping back over the newsstand’s threshold, froze when he heard the word “police.” After a while, he turned back, folding up his reading glasses. “I applied for unsupervised release,” he said in a low voice, lips trembling. “The government approved it.”
Luo Wenzhou nodded. “I know. I’m not here to cause you trouble, Guo-shu. I just want to talk to you about Feifei’s case twenty years ago.”
The newsstand owner, Guo Heng, had killed Wu Guangchuan and gone to prison for it. Later, his sentence was commuted, and he’d been released two years prior after serving his reduced sentence without parole. He’d obviously lost his previous job. Twenty years had passed, and everything was different. His family, parents included, had left or passed away, and his wife had separated from him before he even committed the murder. He had no friends or loved ones; he was completely alone. Upon release, he returned to find Lianhuashan unrecognizable, but he’d opened a small business to sustain himself.
“There’s nothing to say.” Guo Heng’s face darkened. “She’s been dead twenty years, and I personally sent her killer on his way. Then I was put on trial and did my time. That’s all. What more do you want?”
Luo Wenzhou tried to take an even softer tone. “Look, I’m not here to pour salt into your wounds for fun. We have a case now where another little girl has disappeared. There are signs that the two cases are linked.”
“What signs?” Guo Heng asked coldly.
“The missing girl is eleven, and when she disappeared, she was wearing a floral dress. Three days after she went missing, the culprit sent the parents a recording. In addition to the girl’s cries, there were other noises, like someone shaking a metal box of bells.” Knowing that Guo Heng had his guard up, Luo Wenzhou tried to look frankly into his eyes. He left out unnecessary details, explaining everything as concisely as possible. “A more experienced colleague who was there for that case twenty years ago says that the circumstances are the same as when Feifei was kidnapped, so I wanted to come ask you—”
“Ask?” Guo Heng said curtly. “More like interrogate. The killer’s dead. The only people who remember that case are me and the police. Of course, a police officer would never do anything bad, so it must be me, the one with a history.”
“I’m not just talking to you. I already visited all the officers who worked on the case,” Luo Wenzhou said, his tone unchanging. “I don’t suspect you of anything. I just want to get a detailed understanding of what—”
Without warning, Guo Heng exploded at Luo Wenzhou. “Back then, I begged anyone at all to listen, and none of you would!” he roared. “Now that I’ve killed a man and gone to jail, you come asking about it?! My daughter’s been dead more than twenty years! I don’t want to talk about her. I don’t want to think about her! What the fuck were you all doing back then?!”
Luo Wenzhou opened his mouth, but just barely managed to swallow down the excuses on his tongue. He just said in a low voice, “I’m sorry.”
“Leave! Go! Get lost!” Guo Heng grabbed Luo Wenzhou’s shoulder and tried to push him away. “I have nothing to say. If you think I’m suspicious, come arrest me. That’s nothing new to me anyway. There’s nothing to tell you beyond that. Next time, remember to show your badge as soon as you arrive! If I knew you were a police officer, I wouldn’t have sold you so much as a drop of spit.”
“Guo-shu…”
Guo Heng’s eyes were red, and a vein at his temple throbbed. “Fuck off!”
Luo Wenzhou wasn’t known for his patience and understanding. But at this moment—however bad his temper—he just couldn’t get angry. As the blazing sun beat down on him, he shut his mouth and ran the tip of his tongue over his teeth, counting each one of them. Then he took out his wallet, retrieved a photo, and handed it to Guo Heng.
“This girl’s name is Qu Tong,” he said. “Come fall, she’ll be in sixth grade. Her grades are good, and she was participating in Number Sixteen Junior High’s recruitment summer camp a year early. She’s mature for her age, and she’s always been part of her class council. But she’s been missing for five days now. You must know what that means, Guo-shu. I’ve heard that you studied a lot of child kidnapping cases back then, so you must recognize that the chances of finding her at this point are minimal.”
Guo Heng’s gaze slowly fell on Qu Tong’s photo. The two men faced each other under the summer sun, the past twenty years like a chasm between them. After a long time, Guo Heng’s ragged breathing finally calmed.
“We can’t give up until we’ve at least found her body,” Luo Wenzhou said. “Those kids whose bodies were never found were so unfortunate. We can’t let what happened to Guo Fei happen again. But we’ve got no other clues, so I had no choice but to come ask you for help. Do we have to wait until this bastard has kidnapped seven children and left behind some clue for this to end?”