by Zijin Chen
“Ms. Zhu, could you please tell us what happened that night?” Lin said.
“I was holding the fried rice, and I walked to this spot here. I saw him on the fitness equipment over there.” She pointed at the disc where Xu Tianding had stretched his oblique muscles. “I put the takeout box on the grass and was about to leave—”
“Just a minute.” Lin smiled knowingly. “Did you forget to collect his payment?” He watched her face carefully.
Huiru answered without missing a beat. “When he came into the restaurant, he said he wanted fried rice. I told him we wouldn’t make it because he had ordered food without paying so many times. He tossed a hundred-yuan note at me and said that it was payment for the past orders and that night’s order. He would do whatever it took to make me deliver that rice.”
Lin nodded. Judging by her expression, she was telling the truth.
“Continue,” Lin said.
“Then he approached me. He wanted me to sit and chat and have a drink with him. He said that he bought a six-pack just for me. I refused, but he grabbed me so I couldn’t leave. He dragged me very forcefully. I resisted, but I’m not that strong, so I couldn’t get away. He dragged me all the way to the grass behind the fitness equipment.”
“Where exactly?”
She walked to a place on the grass and pointed. “About here.”
“Alright. Please continue.”
“Then he groped me. I fought against him but it was really tiring. Finally I pushed him away and ran straight for the road, screaming for help. He was still coming after me, but fortunately my friend walked past, so he gave up. But right before I reached the road, I tripped and fell, and that’s how I got hurt. I don’t know where he went after that.”
“So when you were struggling to get away, where was the takeout box?”
“I set it on the ground and didn’t pick it up again,” she said confidently.
“Do you remember where you fell down?” Lin asked.
“I tripped on a sharp rock over there.” Huiru took them to the rock. A sharp edge was pointing out of the dirt, which was exactly how they left it.
Lin squatted down to look at it. He took a pair of gloves out of his pocket and extracted the rock from the mud. Upon close inspection he did see a trace of blood. He put the rock in an evidence bag and handed the bag to Song. “What’s your friend’s name?” he asked. “Could you give us his contact information?”
Huiru gave Guo Yu’s name and number, and Song wrote it down.
“Do you still remember approximately how long your fight with Xu Tianding lasted?”
“Umm . . .” Huiru tapped her foot in thought. “Just a few minutes.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“About four or five minutes, I think.”
“After you were hurt, did you and your friend go directly home?”
“No, I couldn’t walk. I was afraid that . . . that . . . you know, that guy would come back and get me, so I massaged my ankle for a bit and then my friend took me home.
“How long did you and Guo Yu stay here?”
“Hmm, a long time I think. About ten minutes.”
Lin gritted his teeth. He couldn’t poke any holes in her story. Could it really be possible that she had nothing to do with Xu Tianding’s murder?
“Well, he tried to assault you, but he didn’t get very far. Why didn’t you report it to the police?
“Report it?” Huiru did not attempt to hide her disdain. “Even if the police locked him up, they would release him again in a few days. And as soon as he was released, he would come to the restaurant for revenge. My brother and I run a small business; we can’t afford to get into trouble like that. We have no choice but to take whatever comes our way.” She looked up.
Lin shifted on his feet, feeling awkward. When a civilian didn’t want to report an incident to the police, it meant the police were doing something wrong. “Oh, one more thing. You and Guo Yu were by this road for quite some time. Did anybody walk by?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember who?” This could officially take her off the list of suspects.
“No, I didn’t see anyone that I knew,” Huiru said, shaking her head.
It was a normal answer, Lin admitted to himself. When you pass a stranger on the street, you’re not going to remember what they look like a few hours later, let alone a few days.
“Do you know if one of them was walking two dogs on that night? One man said he was walking his dogs and saw a young man and a young lady on the side of the road. Perhaps he saw you two.”
Lin had invented the man with the two dogs, but he wanted to see how Huiru would react.
But Luo had taught Huiru how to handle these tricks. She knew not to help the police answer more specific questions. If you knew the answer you could say it; if you didn’t you should say that you didn’t know.
“I don’t think I saw them.”
Lin nodded and remembered the beer can with the fingerprints on it. “Did you touch any of Xu Tianding’s beer?”
“No. He wanted me to, but I didn’t drink a single drop.”
“Did your hand ever touch one of those beer cans?”
“No.”
“What were you wearing that night?”
“Um, a purple collared shirt.” Huiru knew that the surveillance tapes would prove that she wasn’t lying.
“Could you bring that shirt to me so we can take a look at it?” Lin asked.
“The shirt?” She hesitated, like she didn’t understand why it was necessary.
“Don’t worry, this is part of our routine investigation. We will return the shirt to you as soon as we’ve finished.”
“OK.”
Lin and Song followed her to her apartment block. She handed the shirt to them, and Song and Lin made their way back to the police station.
Song waited until they were out of earshot before saying, “Lieutenant Lin, surely Zhu Huiru can be taken off the suspects list now.”
Lin had a frown on his face. “Her answers were airtight.”
“You mean you still think she has something to do with the case?”
“She was a little bit unnatural. I just have this strange feeling that she’s lying to us,” Lin said. He wasn’t willing to say outright that he thought she did it.
Investigator Song, on the other hand, was ready to strike her off. “But most people are nervous when they are interrogated by the police, especially in a murder case. We now know what happened that night. We know that Xu deliberately asked for his fried rice to be delivered to the park, and deliberately bought all that beer, so he would have a chance to assault Zhu Huiru. Her description of Xu matches what everyone else has said about him. The autopsy shows that Xu had fried rice in his stomach. He didn’t eat it when Huiru first arrived, because he was thinking about something other than food. But after she left, he probably started to eat. Plus Huiru and her friend Guo Yu left the scene at 10:42 p.m., but Xu died at 10:50 p.m. That’s a very strong alibi.”
Lin didn’t agree or disagree with Song. “OK, let’s find out a little bit more about this Guo Yu,” he said. “If we don’t find any discrepancies between their statements, then we can confirm that they have nothing to do with this murder.”
Huiru walked all by herself back to the noodle restaurant, her heart beating wildly. It seemed like she had passed this test. She hoped that the police would stop bothering her, at least.
Chapter 28
In one of the offices of the West Hangzhou Bureau, Investigator Li reported his latest findings to Lin. “Dr. Gu ran the tests on Zhu Huiru’s shirt and didn’t find any traces of blood on it.”
“I see,” Lin said.
“We just typed up Guo Yu’s statement,” Li said, handing his boss the document. “His answers are consistent with Zhu Huiru’s story. We didn’t find a single discrepancy. He came home late after working overtime. His employer confirmed that. He was eating at the noodle restaurant when Xu Tianding entered, thr
ew a hundred-yuan note on the table, and ordered fried rice. Xu said that Zhu Huiru should deliver it to the park. After she left, Guo felt very worried for Ms. Zhu’s safety. He was afraid something bad would happen. So he followed her. When he first got to the river, he didn’t see anyone. About five minutes later he saw her running across the grass away from the river, Xu chasing behind. Just before she reached the road, she tripped and fell. He hurried to help. That was when Xu noticed Guo and retreated, presumably to the park. Ms. Zhu massaged her ankle for a long time, but it hurt too much to walk. Finally they decided that Guo should carry her home. He guessed that someone walked past during those ten minutes, but he doesn’t remember who they were or what they looked like. Neither of them grew up in Hangzhou, so they don’t know very many people in the area.”
“Huh.” Lin said thoughtfully. “So he’s Ms. Zhu’s boyfriend?”
“No.”
“No?” Lin asked.
“Guo’s coworkers described him as very timid,” Li explained. “At first he told us that he and Ms. Zhu were just friends. Only after we pressed him did he admit that he liked her. He was very shy about it and asked us to not tell her.”
“Is that a believable answer, in your opinion?”
“Yes, he is widely known as an introvert. Next, he said that at 11:00 p.m. he went to a twenty-four-hour convenience store near his apartment to buy dressings and antibiotic ointment for Ms. Zhu. Dr. Gu estimates that the killer spent at least half an hour making those thin cuts on the victim’s body. There’s no way a young lady like Ms. Zhu could have done something so grotesque. And Guo was in the convenience store at eleven; there is surveillance footage to prove that. He wouldn’t have had the time to do it.”
Lin nodded but did not speak. It all checked out, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the way Ms. Zhu looked uneasy when he saw her that morning. Was she simply nervous about speaking to the police? Or was she feeling guilty?
“Lieutenant Lin?” Li said. “Their statements are consistent and match the facts. Neither of them had enough time to commit the crime. We can rule them off as suspects, right?”
“Yes, let’s go in another direction,” Lin said. He didn’t have any choice.
At that moment, a group of officers from the task force knocked and entered. One of them said, “Lieutenant Lin, we looked for a murder weapon that matched the cross section of the wound that Gu gave us, and we found this paring knife.”
He handed the knife to Lin and continued. “This knife is sold in many of the supermarkets and stores in the area. We tried to find a record of a recent purchase but couldn’t.”
Lin looked at the knife and put it on his desk. “How are the interviews coming with those who had a dispute with the victim?” he asked the group.
“We spent a lot of time speaking to Xu’s friends, including Zhang Bing, and came up with a list of about seventeen people who might have held a grudge against Xu. Some were attacked by him; some say he owed them money. One man told us that Xu was seen torturing a dog. The dog was rescued by a Good Samaritan, but Xu wanted him back, so the man finally bought the dog for three hundred yuan. And those are only the people Xu has wronged recently. We were unable to get the names of all the students who were bullied into giving him money, restaurants where he ate without paying, or people that he harassed on the street.”
“What a mess,” Lin said, knitting his eyebrows. “But we don’t have any other choice. We have to investigate them one by one.”
“I would start with the man who was beat up by Xu at the outdoor market on the evening of the murder,” the officer suggested. “We spoke to him already, and he claimed he was at home that evening. The only person that can vouch for his whereabouts is his girlfriend. He was adamant that he would never kill someone for something so insignificant. Should we bring him to the station?”
“No,” Lin said tersely. “If we bring him in without cause or any evidence, then we should be bringing in everyone on that list. We have to be more careful—otherwise he might file a complaint.”
“So what do we do?” the officer asked, at his wits’ end.
“Try speaking to the girlfriend; it might be easier to tell if she’s lying.” Lin said.
“I guess we don’t have any choice,” the officer agreed.
Lin clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “OK. You’ve all worked hard today. It’s about time we went home. We’ll continue this tomorrow.”
He picked up the knife and followed them out of the office.
Chapter 29
It was dinner time, and the restaurants near Luo’s apartment were all bustling.
Luo approached the noodle restaurant, but all of the tables were taken. He was about to leave when he saw Guo Yu sitting at a table and giving him a look. As always, he stayed where he was and casually checked his surroundings before walking into the restaurant and sitting next to Guo Yu.
The minute Luo sat down, Guo Yu whispered, “The police came to see me today.”
Luo smiled almost imperceptibly. He knew that Guo must have answered the questions well, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. “The police asked me some questions too,” he said.
“Why . . . why would they speak to you?” Guo Yu said, raising his eyebrows.
Luo gave him a discerning look, and Guo Yu quickly went back to eating. “The police are investigating anyone who has a connection with the thug and might hold a grudge against him.”
Guo Yu put down his chopsticks. “Why would you hold a grudge against him?”
“I bought his dog for three hundred yuan, remember?” Luo said.
“That . . . that counts?”
“The police might think that I resented him for making me pay so much. So they came and asked me some questions.”
“How did they find you?”
Luo leaned in a little closer. “They said they asked Zhu Fulai, Huiru’s brother. Fulai was there when I bought the dog and knows my face. I have ordered delivery several times, so he has my number.”
“So what did you say?” Guo Yu asked, growing anxious.
Luo spoke calmly. “I happened to be at home, so I said I would meet them at the entrance to my apartment building. They asked me what I was doing that day and I said I was out on a walk. When I showed them my work credentials, they were convinced.” Guo Yu didn’t know exactly what Luo did for a living, but he knew that he had money, so he guessed it was for some important company. It made sense that as soon as the police saw his work certificate, they believed that he wouldn’t kill someone just for three hundred yuan.
“How about you? How did your little chat go?” Luo asked.
“I did everything the way you taught me, and they believed me,” Guo Yu answered.
“Did they ask you to describe your relationship with Huiru?”
“Yeah. I said we were just friends and then when they asked me repeatedly, I said that I liked her but wanted to keep it a secret. I heard that they spoke to my colleagues too.” Guo Yu smiled with a touch of pride. “I think I did pretty well.”
“Very good,” Luo said, nodding. “You probably won’t have any more trouble then.”
“So it’s over?” Guo Yu said, in disbelief.
“I think so. Even if they do come again, just stick to the story. By the way, where is Huiru? Is she making a delivery?”
“Yeah. She was here when I first arrived and then she left to deliver some noodles. I spoke to her for a little bit, and she said everything went OK.” Guo Yu looked relieved as he picked up his chopsticks.
“Stop smiling; it’s too obvious.” Luo said.
“Oh.” Guo Yu wiped the smile off his face.
At that moment a plainclothes officer walked into the noodle restaurant. Neither Luo nor Guo Yu could tell that he was with the police.
Chapter 30
Lin changed into casual clothes when he was finished with work and walked to the scene of the crime. His heart was filled with conflicting emotions as he stood by the canal.
What should have been a straightforward homicide case had suddenly turned into a complete quagmire. He felt like his head was bursting with information.
In the past, whenever he handled a case involving gangsters, he usually apprehended the suspect within a few days. Typically the killer was not very good at covering his tracks. Whenever there was not enough evidence, they would just speak to the friends of the victim and identify a suspect in a short amount of time. They were weak people—as soon as they saw the police at their door, they were quick to show guilt.
He had never seen a case where the killer was willing to spend tens of thousands of yuan to destroy the crime scene.
Then there was the fact that the killer dragged the body into the trees and spent at least half an hour making shallow cuts into the corpse. He still didn’t understand the underlying reason for this, but it showed that the killer was of a different caliber.
The killer knew to remove all footprints and wipe the cans clean of fingerprints. This was important. The cans were bought in order to get Ms. Zhu to drink and stay with Xu Tianding. They weren’t meant for anyone else. So after Ms. Zhu left, who saw Xu? Why would they touch the cans but not drink them?
It would be easy to explain if Zhu Huiru were the killer. She might have touched the cans inadvertently and wanted to wipe the cans clean to make herself look innocent. But Xu was killed after she left the park. Surveillance cameras didn’t lie. Guo was in a convenience store at 11:00 p.m., so he wouldn’t have the time to make all those shallow cuts on the body. And no matter how he tried, he couldn’t find any problems with their statements.
What could have possibly happened that night?
Lin realized he was hungry. He turned back to the residential area to find a restaurant.
He entered Chongqing Noodles and recognized Huiru’s brother. Guo Yu was seated at one of the tables, but since Lin wasn’t the one to take his statement, he didn’t recognize him.
Zhu Fulai immediately recognized Lin. He shuffled over and said, “Hello, Officer. Would you like to order? Or did you have . . . have more questions for us?” There was a trace of panic in his voice.