Several people fell silent with a tacit understanding for a moment.
Finally, Xie Lin asked: “Where is that neighbor of Xue Mei’s?”
The recording personnel on the side answered: “His detention period ended, he paid the fine, and has already been released.”
The buzz-cut guy was on his day off today. He was at home wearing thermal underwear, playing computer games. Beside the computer sat a cup of freshly steeped instant noodles, emitting swirling hot steam.
He hadn’t even taken two bites of his noodles when the doorbell rang.
Through the crack of the door, he saw half of a suit jacket. The shirt cuffs were rolled up a few times, and a ring was worn on the finger. Xie Lin greeted him through the crack: “Eating? We met last time, you still remember, right.”
“I remember,” the buzz-cut guy opened the door. “Why are you guys here?”
Xie Lin wasn’t the only one who came. Besides him, there were three uniformed investigating detectives behind him, plus the gloved man who was arrested by the police on the road with him last time.
The buzz-cut guy couldn’t understand what this situation was.
He nervously wiped the back of his hand on his pant leg: “Um, besides the peeping, I haven’t done a single other thing…”
The group ignored him. After making him open the door, they walked inside one by one.
Only one person remained standing outside the door, unmoving.
After Xie Lin entered, he also noticed one was missing. Turning his head, he saw Chi Qing hadn’t moved a single step: “Why aren’t you coming in?”
Chi Qing scanned the buzz-cut guy’s room. His tone was cold, the disgust in his eyes undisguised: “The room is small, there are too many people, and it’s not tidy inside. Are those reasons sufficient?”
The buzz-cut guy: “…”
Xie Lin thought to himself, Who told me to find such a difficult assistant to deal with. “Sufficient.”
He added: “Wait at the door for a bit. The incident happened suddenly, didn’t take your special situation into consideration. Next time I’ll remember to bring a bottle of disinfectant for you, spray wherever you walk, until you’re satisfied.”
“…”
That wasn’t necessary either.
Chi Qing provided another approach to solving the problem: “No need to go through the trouble, you can simply choose not to bring me.”
“That won’t do,” Xie Lin said without missing a beat. “I’d rather it be a bit troublesome.”
While speaking, one of the detectives had already gone in and done half a lap, finally stopping in front of the wall.
The detective pointed at the wall and asked: “That hole, why is it plugged up.”
It was nearing evening, and Xue Mei’s room had its lights off and curtains tightly drawn. It was so dark there wasn’t a trace of light. That dark little hole in the wall looked exceptionally profound, hanging there like a pair of pitch-black, bottomless eyes.
That hole had been temporarily plugged up by the buzz-cut guy—after learning a murder had occurred next door, he never dared to look into that hole again.
“I was scared, Comrade Police,” the buzz-cut guy said with a bitter face. “Someone died next door after all. Who wants to look up and see a murder scene, wouldn’t that make me a psychopath.”
The detective said in wonder: “You peeped on someone, doesn’t that make you a psychopath already.”
The buzz-cut guy: “…………”
The buzz-cut guy still couldn’t guess the reason they came over this time, until they made him take out the stuff plugging the hole, and then had him adjust the light source in his own room to the state it was in when he peeped on Xue Mei in the middle of the night before. Because he was afraid of being discovered when peeping late at night, he would turn off all the lights in the room.
After turning off the lights, the room was pitch black.
He couldn’t see anything and could only hear Xie Lin’s highly recognizable voice: “So you didn’t turn on the lights in your room, what about Xue Mei’s room?”
The buzz-cut guy recalled: “She slept early, got into bed by eleven.”
Xie Lin: “She didn’t turn on the lights either?”
The buzz-cut guy: “Sometimes she didn’t turn on the lights, sometimes she’d turn on a bedside lamp, I think. Anyway, it wasn’t very bright, couldn’t see clearly what she was doing.”
According to what he said, the detective turned on the bedside lamp in Xue Mei’s room. It wasn’t until the light source states of both rooms became exactly the same as when the buzz-cut guy used to peep on Xue Mei that Xie Lin motioned for him to step forward: “Go over.”
The buzz-cut guy: “—Ah?”
Xie Lin: “Do exactly what you did when you peeped before. Lean over.”
The buzz-cut guy didn’t understand, thinking to himself, Did these people come all this way just to watch me perform peeping?
But no matter how confused he was, he could only obediently comply.
His past history of peeping allowed him to accurately find the position of the peephole from memory even in a pitch-black environment. He felt his way along the wall, crouched down, and put his eye up to it. Aligning his clear black-and-white eye with the hole in the wall, from his angle, he could exactly see that small bedside lamp emitting a faint warm yellow glow, as well as the bed Xue Mei used to lie on.
A few seconds later, Xue Mei’s tightly closed bedroom door was opened by someone.
The buzz-cut guy tried hard to widen his eye so he could see more clearly. Upon seeing movement, he said: “Someone came in…”
Xie Lin: “Continue.”
“What else did you see?” Xie Lin continued.
“That’s… Xue Mei’s boyfriend?” The buzz-cut guy repeated the scene before his eye. “I see him walking a lap around the room, then going out again, oh, and then pushing the door open and coming back in. Then there’s no more movement. Wait, Comrade Police, what exactly do you want me to look at?”
They were actually conducting a test.
The person who entered the first time was indeed Xue Mei’s boyfriend, but the man who went in after he went out was another person they specifically found whose body shape was similar to Xue Mei’s boyfriend’s.
Clearly, under the condition of insufficient light, the buzz-cut guy couldn’t distinguish between two people with similar body shapes but completely different facial features.
They couldn’t help but recall the two seemingly ordinary sentences the buzz-cut guy had said in the interrogation room back then.
—“Her boyfriend came often. He’d come every few days, and when he did, he’d usually stay the night.”
—“Sometimes it would already be very late at night and Xue Mei would already be asleep, but he’d still come to see her, then hold her while he slept.”
So, through that hidden little hole, he thought the person he saw was Xue Mei’s boyfriend, but in reality, the person he had been seeing all along wasn’t the same person at all. The killer, whose body shape was similar to Xue Mei’s boyfriend’s, frequently sneaked in secretly at night and blatantly slept in the same bed with Xue Mei… When the buzz-cut guy peeped into the opposite room time and time again late at night, the killer was separated from him by only a single wall. He couldn’t see the other party’s face or hear his voice; he could only see his ghost-like, quiet silhouette.
No one knew why he was able to come and go freely.
Standing in the dark, Xie Lin asked him: “What would that person who appeared late at night usually do? Can you still remember? The more detailed, the better.”
After learning the truth, the buzz-cut guy’s palms sweated. He swallowed a gulp of saliva, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and said with a trembling voice: “He, sometimes after he quietly opened the door and came in, he would stand quietly by Xue Mei’s bed and stare straight at her, standing there for a long time. Then he would wander around the room and look through her things.”
Some scenes that he hadn’t thought much about at the time now felt eerie upon recalling them.
He must have used drugs—pouring anesthetic on a handkerchief, then secretly covering Xue Mei’s nose to prevent her from suddenly waking up in the middle of the night.
Once Xue Mei fell into a deep slumber, he would stroke Xue Mei’s hair, her face, her slender legs exposed outside the blanket…
In this eerie, quiet, and unnoticed late night, he could stand in this private room and scrutinize wantonly, flipping through to see what she ate for dinner, what new words were added to her diary…
As the buzz-cut guy thought about it, even as a grown man, he almost screamed out loud: “He would also look at her phone!”
Nowadays, unlocking phones relied on fingerprints and facial recognition. As long as Xue Mei was lying in bed, he only needed to sit on the edge of the bed, unplug the charging phone, and then gently grab Xue Mei’s hand hanging off the side of the bed. Immediately after, the light on the phone screen would flash, and the phone would be unlocked.
He could grasp almost all the information in Xue Mei’s life. He could enter her social media apps at will, see what she chatted about with her friends, what time she went to work, which days she had off, and what things she felt happy or troubled about recently.
“After he finished looking at the phone, he would go to the bathroom to take a shower. I wouldn’t keep looking then. After ten or twenty minutes passed, he would lift Xue Mei’s blanket and get into bed.” The buzz-cut guy recalled that blurry figure in his mind. At the time, he had half his face pressed tightly against the wall, staring intently at the other party from an unknown corner. “I don’t know what time he left. By the time I woke up in the morning, he was already gone. Only Xue Mei would turn off her alarm, get up, brush her teeth, wash her face, and change clothes alone. Because she didn’t show any abnormalities, I never thought in that direction.”
After speaking, he couldn’t help but think: Thank goodness the killer didn’t discover this hole in the wall. If he had seen it at the time, the next one to die would very likely be me.
The buzz-cut guy finished his recollection, and the detective turned on the lights in the room. Everyone had an expression of terror on their faces. Only their Consultant Xie had a normal expression, and that Second Consultant surnamed Chi standing at the door went even further—after hearing the story, he narrowed his eyes and yawned.
After Chi Qing finished yawning, he asked: “About done? Can we leave now.”
“…”
The investigating detectives were still immersed in the spine-chilling atmosphere. In a normal person’s concept, “home” is always the safest place. Once this sense of security is shattered by someone, it’s very hard to remain indifferent.
A detective couldn’t help asking: “Aren’t you scared?”
Chi Qing: “I’m more scared of the hygiene conditions here.”
The hallway was piled full of sundries. As a qualified homebody, the buzz-cut guy upheld the fine tradition of not easily going down to throw away garbage as long as it could still be piled up at the door. Chi Qing very carefully chose a relatively safe place to stand.
Chi Qing raised his eyes and looked at the buzz-cut guy: “Your garbage has been piled up for several days, it’s time to throw it out.”
…
Compared to the story, the reaction of their General Bureau’s second consultant seemed a bit more terrifying.
The detective looked at Xie Lin again, and found that although Xie Lin didn’t yawn, and was even comforting the buzz-cut guy, he habitually carried a bit of a smile when speaking: “It’s fine, you don’t need to worry too much. As long as you didn’t see his face, he won’t take too big a risk to return to a place where he committed a crime.”
Previously, he felt Consultant Xie looked very approachable, but at this moment, this smile always made people feel a bit creeped out.
Perhaps people who can become consultants… are all quite out of the ordinary.
The detective could only think this in his heart.
But regardless, they were a step closer to the truth behind Xue Mei’s murder today.
On the way back, Xie Lin summarized: “The next day when Xue Mei got up, she didn’t notice any abnormalities, indicating the killer carefully cleaned up every time before leaving to ensure no traces were left behind. He should be a person who acts with considerable caution.”
“The killer’s physical characteristics can also basically be confirmed. Height and posture are both highly similar to Xue Mei’s boyfriend. Based on these characteristics, pull the nighttime surveillance near the complex and screen all suspicious personnel again.”
“Furthermore, he entered through the front door and could freely enter and exit Xue Mei’s room. It’s highly likely he had a key in his hand.”
Sitting in the back seat, Chi Qing couldn’t help but think: Then where did the key come from?
What kind of person would hold the key to someone else’s home?
The second victim, Yang Zhenzhen, had only just arrived in Huanan City not long ago. Did she also experience the same encounter as Xue Mei?
That day Su Xiaolan brought her back to her residence from the bar. She had a huge fight with her boyfriend, and her boyfriend accidentally pushed her down. After she woke up and went to bed to rest, did the killer also open her bedroom door just like he entered Xue Mei’s house?
“Xue Mei and Yang Zhenzhen both dealt directly with the landlords,” the detective said. “They didn’t go through a third party, so we’ve also been investigating information on the landlords’ side all along, including the landlords’ previous tenants…”
Chi Qing was sitting beside Xie Lin, deep in thought. Xie Lin took the water the detective handed to the back row, and very naturally handed the water to him first.
Ever since Chi Qing recovered from his out-of-control state, he no longer had the habit of actively touching Xie Lin’s hand, and his mental state had also improved a lot. Xie Lin noticed these subtle changes. As he handed over the water, he asked: “No treatment today.”
Chi Qing: “No need.”
Xie Lin changed his way of asking: “Then are you going to my house tonight?”
Chi Qing fully demonstrated what it meant to turn his back on someone ruthlessly: “Not going.”
“Don’t want to treat your illness anymore?”
The out-of-control state had recovered, so Chi Qing had no reason to keep pestering him, nor did he have a fetish for holding hands with someone all day. Normally, as long as he wore gloves and avoided alcohol, he could maintain a normal life.
“Not treating it,” Chi Qing said. “Late stage, incurable, can’t be treated well.”
Xie Lin: “…”
After saying that, when Chi Qing took the water, he still touched Xie Lin’s hand through the glove. He didn’t even react immediately. It wasn’t until the car had driven a distance and he had drunk a small half of the bottle of water in his hand that he suddenly thought: Did I just touch Xie Lin’s hand?
Logically speaking, even while wearing gloves, he would try his best to avoid any action that might cause physical contact.
The scenery outside the window fluttered past.
Chi Qing screwed the cap back onto the bottle, then looked down at the pair of black gloves on his hands. After thinking for a long while, he realized that the “treatment” during this period seemed to have had an effect, even though this effect was not within his previous expectations: not only was he no longer repulsed by Xie Lin, but since an unknown time, he had even grown accustomed to his touch.
