Wu Zhibin froze for a long time. No one had ever thought about it in this direction before: “Why do you ask?”
“A page is missing from my brother’s notebook.”
Xie Lin flipped the notebook on the desk to the very last page.
If one did not look closely, they would not notice the subtle, jagged tear along the inner seam at all.
Xie Lin’s finger lightly traced the seam: “And judging by ‘his’ age, ‘Z’ is about the same age as us. Ten years ago, he would have only been thirteen or fourteen. Yet, he possesses this level of understanding of the old case. So, could he have been the third survivor in that case back then? And moreover, a survivor intimately connected to the killer from back then?”
Wu Zhibin was so shocked by this hypothesis that he couldn’t regain his senses for a long while: “But the killer had always lived alone and had no children.”
Precisely because he had no children, the final conclusion back then was that he actually wanted a “child.” If he had married and had children normally, his child would have been just about the age to attend junior high school—which was why all the kidnapped children fell within this age range.
This had always been the mainstream view.
……
If he had a child of his own, why did he need to kidnap so many other children?
Sitting to the side, Chi Qing said, “We haven’t figured out the logic behind this question yet either.”
Just as they walked out of Wu Zhibin’s office, Ji Mingrui, who was munching on a youtiao (fried dough stick), said, “You two, come over here for a second.”
His tone was solemn, as if he had made a major discovery.
Xie Lin: “What’s up, catching up on old times?”
Ji Mingrui said aggressively, “This morning, the two of you went to a Western restaurant and ate shrimp toast rolls and grilled bacon, yet you brought me soy milk and youtiao?”
“……?”
Before the two of them could even ask how he knew what they had eaten for breakfast, Ji Mingrui swallowed the youtiao in his mouth and explained, “I just received another tip-off call. Someone said they saw you at the restaurant. During the 21 minutes and 39 seconds you and Chi Qing were having breakfast, the entire restaurant was trembling in fear, hoping we would dispatch officers immediately to arrest you.”
Xie Lin: “Speaking of which, I really want to ask: when exactly is the news about me going to be taken down?”
Ji Mingrui: “It’s not easy to take down, and besides, the public’s attention is entirely on the primary school bus.”
Xie Lin: “Not necessarily. I think they’re paying plenty of attention to me.”
“……”
Ji Mingrui thought to himself: That’s because you look too flashy. Do you really not have any self-awareness?
Chi Qing had been observing the surroundings and noticed that the office was very empty; both Su Xiaolan and Jiang Yu’s desks were unoccupied.
Recalling how the two of them had been wailing and howling at the funeral back then—making his ears ring—Chi Qing asked, “Where are they?”
Ji Mingrui: “They went to investigate suspicious individuals in Tianxin Neighborhood. A few families had rather unusual domestic situations, so they brought them back for a focused screening.”
“In the interrogation room?”
A moment later, a hand clad in a black glove pushed open the observation room door.
It was not the first time several of them had gathered in this room. When they entered, Jiang Yu happened to be interrogating a woman.
Compared to when they first met—when he seemed like a very obedient, inexperienced “rookie patrol officer”—Jiang Yu now looked quite authoritative. He looked down and flipped through the papers on the desk: “So you live alone?”
Sitting opposite Jiang Yu was a middle-aged woman.
The woman looked to be around forty-five years old, with exceptionally long hair, wearing a dusty-looking navy blue coat.
Xie Lin swept a glance over her and said casually, “Unless her family’s financial situation is relatively poor, she must be a very frugal and nostalgic person. The items all over her body look very old, with a history of at least five years or more. The gold bracelet on her wrist has a dull color, she’s wearing old cloth shoes, and her clothes are also in a style from many years ago.” Xie Lin’s gaze landed on the woman’s dry long hair, which hung all the way to her knees even after being braided. He continued, “She hasn’t even cut her hair.”
The ancient and worn aura of this woman was incredibly thick.
If one didn’t look at the calendar and didn’t know what year it was, her quiet presence made her look like an old acquaintance walking right out of the past.
The woman had plain features, a very typical southern Chinese appearance, and her speaking tone was very calm. However, her occasional coughing, along with the hoarseness and tone caused by excessive coughing, formed a bizarre contrast.
“Cough… cough-cough, I live alone.”
Xie Lin didn’t hear anything wrong with this, but he noticed Chi Qing—who had originally found an empty seat to sit down and scroll through his phone—suddenly raise his head.
Jiang Yu: “Would you like some water?”
Just as Jiang Yu finished asking, Su Xiaolan had already taken a step ahead, poured some water, and handed it over.
The woman formed a fist, pressed it to her mouth, and said while coughing, “Thank you…”
Jiang Yu waited until she finished drinking the water before flipping to the next page of the papers in his hand. There wasn’t much else to ask; bringing this woman in was only because her neighbors reported that she rarely went out and stayed home all day, making her behavior seem suspicious: “Alright, that’s all. There’s nothing else to ask. You may leave first.” After saying that, Jiang Yu raised his voice to the people outside, “Call the next one in.”
Inside the observation room.
Xie Lin had been observing Chi Qing’s expression. He knew this man too well; the moment Chi Qing raised his eyes, Xie Lin knew something was off: “Is there a problem?”
Chi Qing looked at the woman and said, “She seems a bit familiar.”
“Familiar?”
“Her voice is a bit familiar,” Chi Qing thought for a moment and said. “I think I’ve heard it somewhere.”
As they were speaking, the woman suddenly coughed violently a few more times.
Those few hoarse coughs echoed in Chi Qing’s ears, instantly dragging his memory back to a few days ago.
A few days ago. Tianxin Neighborhood.
It was also a woman’s coughing. Back then, that woman had been coughing while muttering in her mind: [Cough-cough, my son is coming back today.]
[My son is coming back today.]
[My son is coming back…]
Through the transparent observation window, Chi Qing watched as the woman finished her questioning and walked to the door. She hunched her back again, unable to stop herself from letting out a few more muffled coughs.
Removing the distortion of the voice from back then, the degree of overlap between the two voices was extremely high.
Chi Qing leaned forward and pressed the intercom button connected to the adjacent room.
This way, the words he spoke on this side could be heard by Jiang Yu in the next room: “Wait a moment. Does she have a son?”
Suddenly being asked, Jiang Yu looked up in confusion: “Ah? No, her son passed away ten years ago.”
Both Xie Lin and Chi Qing were highly sensitive to the phrase “ten years ago”: “Ten years ago?”
“What is her name?”
“Yang Yan.”
“Yang Yan?”
A line of words simultaneously surfaced in both of their minds, written in Xie Feng’s handwriting: 002, attending Experimental Attached Middle School, Father (Deceased), Mother (Yang Yan).
……
The mother of one of the victims from the kidnapping case ten years ago was living in Tianxin Neighborhood?
Was this a coincidence?
Although he didn’t understand why the two of them were asking this, Jiang Yu sensed that something was amiss. He turned to the woman and said, “Wait a moment, I still have some questions to ask you.”
The woman turned around, coughing.
However, Chi Qing said, “There might not be any need to ask further.”
“?!”
Why was it that they could never keep up with the train of thought of these two?
Chi Qing had no way to explain the voice he had heard, let alone his deduction based on that voice: what kind of person would obsessively repeat the same sentence three times in their mind? When he first heard those three sentences, they didn’t feel like much, but thinking back on them now, he realized how abnormal they were.
The kidnapping case ten years ago had taken her son away. Yet, she still wore her old clothes, muttering that her son was coming back…
In the end, Chi Qing could only state his conclusion simply: “Because she highly likely has psychological issues.”
As if validating Chi Qing’s words.
Jiang Yu had uttered the words “your son” but before he could say the second half of his sentence, the woman—who had seemed perfectly fine moments ago—actually revealed a trace of a smile upon hearing the word “son.” She caressed the old gold piece on her wrist and spoke as if talking to herself: “Yes, I have a son. Where is my son? My son is waiting for me at home. My son is still waiting for me at home.”
“Your son—” Jiang Yu was lost for words.
The words he failed to finish were: Your son passed away.
The woman continued incoherently, “My son is 13 this year… no, he’s 23.”
“My son is very good. He has always listened to me since he was little.”
“He ranked first in the entire grade during his last mock exam. My son’s grades are very good.”
“……”
Ji Mingrui listened in dumbfounded silence. He truly hadn’t expected that even after interrogating her for so long, neither Jiang Yu nor Su Xiaolan had realized that the person opposite them was mentally unstable.
—But how did Chi Qing know?
He shifted his gaze away from the woman named Yang Yan and saw Chi Qing half-closing his eyes, looking just as reluctant to stay here as he had during his very first visit to the police station. The only difference was that this time, there was someone beside him acting up and teasing him without any restraint.
Xie Lin’s hand would touch him from time to time—sometimes brushing his hair, sometimes tugging at his sleeve.
Only this man could touch him like this. Anyone else would have been thrown out of the observation room long ago.
Chi Qing felt a complex mix of emotions in his heart.
He had never imagined that he would meet this “mother” who had lost her child ten years ago in such a manner.
The case from ten years ago had passed for a long time, but on this mother, everyone deeply felt that time ultimately failed to wash anything away. Grief only settled deeper and deeper. Every family that lost a loved one might have to spend their entire lives trying to heal this scar.
Su Xiaolan couldn’t help herself: “Don’t ask anymore. Let her go home.”
Besides, asking a mentally unstable person further questions would only be in vain.
Yet, a seed of unease was quietly planted in everyone’s hearts: how did everything happening recently have so many connections to the case ten years ago? This went for Z, and now for Yang Yan too.
Click.
Yang Yan returned to Tianxin Neighborhood, pulled out a ring of keys from her coat pocket, and turned on the light after opening the door.
The furnishings inside the house were very ordinary, carrying a worn-out, lived-in feel. The corners of the floral tablecloth on the dining table were slightly singed with a yellowish tint, showing that the woman indeed stayed at home all day and kept the house very neat. But in stark contrast to all of this warm, domestic scenery, the words coming out of Yang Yan’s mouth made one’s blood run cold.
Addressing the completely empty room, the woman said, “Mom is home.”
