After hurrying back to Nanshan City, Zhao Zhi had no time to linger at home. Avoiding surveillance, he went to the nursing home and said that it had been a long time since he and Hu Changquan had sat down to talk over a meal. He offered to cook and make a plate of Hu Changquan’s favorite stir-fried river snails to go with some drinks.
Hu Changquan wanted to help, but Zhao Zhi told him to find the latest operating statements because he wanted to look at them later. Hu Changquan suspected nothing and obediently went to rummage through the filing cabinet. Zhao Zhi pretended to cook while fastening TNT behind the gas line.
When the river snails were ready, Hu Changquan was delighted. Zhao Zhi, however, pretended to receive a phone call and said he had to leave immediately. Hu Changquan said regretfully, “Then next time I’ll cook for you. I recently learned a new dish…”
After going down the mountain, Zhao Zhi pressed the remote-control button. Amid the thunderous explosion, the once peaceful nursing home turned into a sea of fire.
Cheng Cu listened until his eyes seemed ready to split with rage, unable to imagine what kind of demon lived inside the neatly dressed man before him. Zhao Zhi calmly raised his face and curled his lips into a mocking smile, mocking himself as much as the police. “You caught me. I admit it. But those people weren’t exactly innocent either.”
Cheng Cu could not take it anymore. He slammed the table and shot to his feet. “How were they not innocent? They worked hard their entire lives and paid to spend their final years in peace. Why should they have to serve as tools in your bullshit karmic accounting? What right did you have to decide whether they lived or died?”
Zhao Zhi stared for a moment, then said with complete indifference, “But I did decide whether they lived or died. Isn’t that a fact?”
Cheng Cu stormed out of the interrogation room, face full of fury. Thinking of all those elderly people who had died in agony in the fire for such an absurd reason, he gripped the balcony railing tightly with both hands.
At the same time, Chen Zheng was still watching the monitor. Zhao Zhi remained in the interrogation room, though the questioning had been temporarily suspended. At first glance Zhao Zhi looked calm, but his shoulders were trembling faintly. Chen Zheng thought, No. This isn’t the whole truth. He rushed back to set that fire, and now he’s confessing to the police so easily. He’s hiding something deeper.
What is it? Chen Zheng frowned in thought, while a voice in his head said, Calm down. Don’t let emotion take control.
Perhaps that was exactly what Zhao Zhi wanted: to provoke the police, let their emotions take control, and make them overlook something they might otherwise have realized.
Chen Zheng opened the window. Cold air poured in, cutting across his face like sharp blades. What exactly was Zhao Zhi hiding?
Cheng Cu’s cursing came from outside. After listening for a while, Chen Zheng finally understood. At the beginning of the year, Cheng Cu’s grandfather had nearly moved into Canyang Nursing Home. Grandpa Cheng had looked into it himself and learned that Canyang’s service was excellent and its fees were low enough to be covered by his pension, so he would not burden his children. Cheng Cu did not want his grandfather living in a nursing home. No matter how good it was, it was not home. His grandfather had even gotten angry with the younger generation and insisted on going.
But all the back-and-forth had delayed things, and by the time they finally agreed to send him there, there were no places left. The thought terrified Cheng Cu now. If they had simply gone along with his grandfather at the time, Grandpa Cheng might have been one of the elderly people burned to death.
“Captain Cheng, you’re the head of Major Crimes. This is exactly when you need to stay calm.” Chen Zheng set a freshly mixed cup of coffee in front of him. Cheng Cu lifted his reddened eyes and looked at him, seeming to want to say something.
Chen Zheng said, “I’m an outsider. Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t be directing your work here. But I used to be a criminal investigation captain too, and calming down Major Crimes captains was something I did often.”
Cheng Cu gradually settled down. A few drops of coffee splashed from the cup in his hand.
Chen Zheng said, “There’s something strange about the way Zhao Zhi is confessing. We can’t follow the direction he’s pushing us in. If we do, we may lose our chance to uncover the truth.”
Cheng Cu drained the coffee in one go. “Brother Chen, if it were you, what would you do next?”
Chen Zheng leaned against the edge of the desk and was silent for a moment. “Carry out the routine background checks.”
Cheng Cu froze. Chen Zheng continued, “With a case this serious at a nursing home, the normal approach would be to investigate every elderly resident and their family, along with the background of every staff member. But because this case is connected to Luo Yingqiang, and because we caught Zhao Zhi so quickly, those routine checks were never done. Maybe that’s exactly what he wanted.”
Understanding dawned on Cheng Cu. “No wonder he deliberately tried to rile me up! Brother Chen, thanks!”
Chen Zheng shook his head. “There are still a lot of things I haven’t figured out either. Especially…”
Cheng Cu asked, “What?”
Chen Zheng only had a vague suspicion. “Zhao Zhi said he used to go to Huaili Town with Luo Yingqiang all the time, so he should have known the vegetable growers there very well. But aside from Sui Ning, he didn’t mention anyone else. I keep feeling… there’s something hidden there.”
Chen Zheng’s explanation was vague, and Cheng Cu did not fully understand it either. Time was tight, so he immediately took people out to complete the routine checks. Chen Zheng thought of Li Sifeng, the executive who had attempted suicide. He was another person holding a key to the case.
Li Sifeng had been moved into intensive care not long ago. The doctors said his condition was poor, and no one could say whether he would wake up. The corridor outside his room was crowded with members of the Li family and Li Sifeng’s subordinates. Both of his children were overseas and already on their way back. His wife, Ms. Yong, had cried until she was nearly beside herself. His subordinates and relatives kept comforting her with hopeful words none of them could guarantee.
What Chen Zheng heard most often was, “Mr. Li is a good man. He’ll definitely be all right!”
Li Sifeng was a good man. But were Sui Ning and the other executives and partners Zhao Zhi had killed not good people too? Then why, among the people who had struggled alongside Luo Yingqiang in the early days, was Li Sifeng the only one still sitting securely at Luo Yingqiang’s side?
Among Yingqiang Group’s current management team, Li Sifeng was the only old-timer who had “never left.” Everyone else had been handpicked later by Luo Yingqiang. Li Sifeng was nominally the second-in-command at Yingqiang Group, but from what the police had learned, he did not actually manage anything. He was essentially a mascot Luo Yingqiang kept around to show that he remembered those who had shared his hardships.
Chen Zheng approached Ms. Yong. Her emotions had calmed slightly, and she looked at him with tear-filled eyes. Chen Zheng said, “If it’s convenient, I’d like to talk.”
Suppressing her grief, Ms. Yong nodded. “You want to know about the relationship between our Old Li and Luo Yingqiang?”
Chen Zheng said, “I can find the public version of their relationship at Yingqiang Group. What I want to know is why Mr. Li would choose this moment to…”
Ms. Yong choked on a sob, then politely raised a hand in apology. “Things have already reached this point. Old Li tried to kill himself because he blamed himself too much. I’m afraid he was also trying to protect our family. There’s no reason for me to keep hiding things.”
Ms. Yong and her husband Li Sifeng had both been born into comfortably well-off families. They received good educations from childhood, had never known hardship, and when they were young they had many unrealistic, beautiful ideas about the world. Luo Yingqiang once sold fried rice near Li Sifeng’s company, and both husband and wife praised his cooking.
Unlike the other street vendors who were simply trying to scrape together a living, Luo Yingqiang had grand ambitions for the future and loved listening to Li Sifeng talk about the business world. Li Sifeng was guileless, and Luo Yingqiang’s eager attention made him open up. Later, when Luo stopped selling fried rice, Li still worried about what he would do next and thumped his chest, promising that as the older brother, he would definitely help.
A year later, Luo Yingqiang got into the vegetable business and came to Li Sifeng. Without hesitation, Li helped him with access to sales channels. At that time Luo Yingqiang was genuinely grateful and never quibbled over profit sharing. Li Sifeng often told his wife that he had made the right investment and that Luo Yingqiang would definitely become someone important.
He was right. Luo Yingqiang had identified the right opportunity, and the plain, hardworking image he presented in those early years attracted quite a few “angel” investors born with silver spoons in their mouths, people like Sui Ning and Li Sifeng. All of it pushed Luo Yingqiang into the center of the era’s economic boom. But once his power surpassed everyone who had helped him, he changed. He could still share wealth, but he could no longer tolerate anyone questioning him or looking down on him.
Li Sifeng had always been mild-mannered, with little will of his own and no interest in meddling, which was why Luo Yingqiang’s blade had taken so long to turn toward him. But over the years, Ms. Yong and her husband watched the people around Luo disappear one by one, while Luo Yingqiang himself became harder and harder to recognize.
Was he Mr. Luo, the charitable entrepreneur admired by the citizens? Or a demon who quietly erased anyone who opposed him? Ms. Yong could no longer tell.
Eventually Li Sifeng was the only old associate left at Luo Yingqiang’s side. No matter how sheltered the couple had been growing up, they were not so naive that they could not imagine what had happened to those people. Luo had spared them only because they were obedient.
By then Luo Yingqiang was a man who could make the wind and rain in Nanshan City. Ms. Yong knew her family had no way to fight him. If they stayed in Nanshan City, sooner or later Luo would turn on them. She urged Li Sifeng to leave Yingqiang Group as soon as possible, to show Luo that they were obedient and would never threaten his position or his assets.
But Li Sifeng was unable to leave.
Ms. Yong could not understand it. “Why? If all of us old-timers leave, Yingqiang Group will truly belong to him alone. Why still isn’t he satisfied?”
Li Sifeng sat down in despair. Merely thinking of Luo Yingqiang’s smile made him shudder. “He needs us to stay. If not a single old-timer is left, what will people think of him?”
“He… he actually said that to you?”
“Yes. He wants us to keep obeying. Honey, there’s no way we can escape him!”
In recent years, Li Sifeng had walked on eggshells at Yingqiang Group, terrified that one careless mistake would cause Luo Yingqiang to erase him without anyone noticing. Outsiders envied him for being able to sit securely as the group’s second-in-command without working, but only he and Ms. Yong knew how tormenting their lives had become. The year before, Li Sifeng had been diagnosed with depression. But what difference did that make? He still had to play the idle executive at the group.
When news came that Luo Yingqiang had been killed, Ms. Yong felt, beneath her shock, an unexpected sense of relief. Luo Yingqiang was dead. The shadow hanging over their heads had finally dispersed. From now on, they were free!
But Li Sifeng reacted strangely. He locked himself in the study and sobbed uncontrollably. At first Ms. Yong thought he was mourning their old friendship. Whatever kind of person Luo Yingqiang had become, the dead were still dead, and in the end he had never actually harmed their family.
Li Sifeng clutched his Buddhist prayer beads and said, “Retribution. It’s all retribution! Luo Yingqiang’s retribution has come, and ours won’t be far behind!”
“What do you mean, ours won’t be far behind? We haven’t done anything bad!” Ms. Yong shouted.
“Does being his accomplice not count? Does knowing what Luo Yingqiang was doing and pretending not to know, just so we could cling to our lives, not count? We’re finished. Now that Luo Yingqiang is dead, we’ll be next!”
Since being diagnosed with depression, Li Sifeng sometimes spoke incoherently. Ms. Yong assumed this was another such episode. She hurriedly gave him his medication, told him not to think wildly, and comforted him that after a good night’s sleep everything would be all right.
Yet in the dead of night, Li Sifeng attempted suicide.
“He spent his whole life naive and weak and didn’t make many correct judgments, but he wasn’t wrong about that.” Tears slid silently down Ms. Yong’s face. “We really were his accomplices. This is our retribution.”
Meanwhile, Major Crimes completed its identity verification and background checks on everyone connected to the nursing home.
Director Hu Changquan had also lived an unfortunate life. What police learned was similar to what Zhao Zhi had uncovered, except that Hu Changquan’s child was not the only child from a Huyun Tea Factory family in Junan City who had gone missing. Hu joined the other workers in searching for their missing children and even formed a mutual-aid group, but none of them ever found the children.
Perhaps remaining there kept reopening the wound. Hu Changquan no longer wanted to stay in Junan City, so he came to Nanshan City to make a living. There he met Zhao Zhi, who was looking for a puppet director, and landed the job that would eventually cost him his life.
The string of disappearances in Junan City was worth investigating, but neither the Nanshan police nor Chen Zheng had the time or manpower to do so now. On the nursing home’s staff list, one caregiver was missing.
Cheng Cu looked at the list and asked Director Fu, “You’re sure a young caregiver named Yin Shuwen has disappeared?”
“Of course. Yesterday morning he was still…” Director Fu suddenly stopped. “Still…”
Cheng Cu asked, “What did Yin Shuwen do yesterday morning?”
Director Fu raised a hand, looking astonished. “I don’t think I saw him yesterday. The day before yesterday… I don’t think I saw him then either. That’s not right. He should’ve been here these past few days.”
Cheng Cu immediately sent the other officers to ask about Yin Shuwen, then continued, “When did he start working here? What kind of person is he?”
Director Fu recalled nervously that Yin Shuwen was a fair-skinned young man with a scholarly air, almost like a university student. Besides formal staff, the nursing home also hired caregivers. Because they were responsible for elderly residents, they did not hire just anyone. A caregiver first had to be compassionate, and then willing to work hard.
Yin Shuwen was young, modest, and good-looking. At a glance, he seemed to have grown up in a comfortable family and never lacked money, someone driven by kindness to fulfill a sense of social responsibility.
Yin Shuwen had come looking for work on his own in the summer two years earlier. Director Fu had liked him immediately, but worried he would not be able to endure the hardship, so she told him to try it for a few days. To her surprise, he was nothing like a pampered young master who had never lifted a finger at home. He was willing to do dirty and exhausting work, was full of energy every day, and always wore a smile. Many of the elderly residents liked him and said seeing him felt like seeing their own grandson.
The nursing home provided staff dormitories, and Yin Shuwen had a room of his own, but he did not stay there every night. Director Fu did not know where his home was. She guessed he might own a place somewhere in the western outskirts, otherwise commuting would have been inconvenient.
Cheng Cu studied the nursing home’s building layout. There were three buildings in total. The dormitories and offices were both in Building 1, meaning Yin Shuwen’s room was in the same building as the center of the explosion, Hu Changquan’s office. The other two buildings had also been affected by the blast and fire, but their stairwells had not collapsed. Only Building 1 had been reduced completely to ruins.
Cheng Cu’s brow furrowed tightly. Could the explosion’s true purpose have been to erase as much evidence of Yin Shuwen’s presence at the nursing home as possible? But would destroying one building be enough? The moment the police began investigating, they were bound to learn Yin Shuwen existed.
Director Fu had nothing but praise for Yin Shuwen. He seemed almost like an angel who wanted nothing, descending on the nursing home only to give and never to receive. “Right, Xiao Yin was a man, but he was very sensitive. I saw him cry several times.”
Cheng Cu immediately asked, “Cry? Why? What was happening when he cried?”
“When he saw elderly people suffering through illness, or when he listened to them talk about missing their families. You know how it is. A lot of families send old people here because they don’t want to take care of them. We can provide the best service we can, but we can’t replace family. So some of the elderly cry when they think of their families, and when they cry, Xiao Yin cries with them. I don’t have that kind of empathy.”
Major Crimes asked the other staff about Yin Shuwen as well. Their opinions matched Director Fu’s. Everyone thought he was an exceptionally good person, but none of them could explain why this good person had suddenly vanished. One of them was certain the last time they saw Yin Shuwen had been on the afternoon of the fourteenth, when he sat in the courtyard with the elderly residents in the sun. He was gone by dinner, and they assumed he had finished work and gone home.
The surveillance system in Building 1 had been destroyed in the explosion. The other cameras could not be viewed yet either, but technical-investigation officers said restoring the footage was only a matter of time.
Chen Zheng returned to the municipal bureau from the hospital, while Cheng Cu had also come back from the western outskirts. Once they pooled the information from both sides, Chen Zheng frowned. “Zhao Zhi really was misleading us.”
“But what’s the point?” Cheng Cu could not understand. “We still found out Yin Shuwen exists. Once the footage is restored, we should be able to see what he looks like.”
Chen Zheng said, “What if the thing he wanted to erase wasn’t the surveillance footage?”
Cheng Cu said, “Footprints? Fingerprints? DNA!”
Chen Zheng stared at the stack of investigation reports on the table and suddenly fell silent. Cheng Cu paced back and forth. “Brother Chen.”
Chen Zheng said, “Yin Shuwen’s surname is Yin. I just remembered that Zhang Yinan’s mother, who died years ago, was also surnamed Yin. Yin Xiaoyang.”
The two victims in the foot-spa case were Luo Yingqiang and Zhang Yinan. Although the police investigation was currently focused on Luo Yingqiang and most people believed Luo had been the killer’s true target while Zhang Yinan had simply been killed along the way, what Ming Han had learned in Huaili Town troubled Chen Zheng greatly. The suspicions surrounding Zhang Yinan’s family were no fewer than those surrounding Luo Yingqiang, and his mother, Yin Xiaoyang, was rumored to have had some kind of relationship with Luo.
Not long ago, when Zhao Zhi had been questioned, he had clearly known Huaili Town extremely well, yet had not mentioned Yin Xiaoyang even once.
Cheng Cu caught on. “You mean Yin Shuwen might be connected to Yin Xiaoyang? What the explosion erased was possible DNA evidence. If we find Yin Shuwen’s DNA, maybe it’ll match Zhang Yinan’s?”
Chen Zheng said, “Director Fu said you could tell at a glance Yin Shuwen was raised in a wealthy family, pampered and never made to suffer. So what kind of family did he actually grow up in?”
Cheng Cu’s eyelid twitched. “Could Yin Shuwen be Yin Xiaoyang and Luo Yingqiang’s child? Is that why he’s connected to Zhao Zhi?”
By then the surveillance footage had mostly been restored. Chen Zheng and Cheng Cu stared at the monitor together. Just as Director Fu had said, Yin Shuwen was indeed a delicate-looking young man, and his manner was unlike that of an ordinary caregiver. He did not particularly resemble anyone. Deciding he was Yin Xiaoyang’s child merely because they shared a surname would be extremely rash. But both his arrival at the nursing home and his disappearance before the explosion cast enormous suspicion over him.
There was no record of him in the household-registration system. The identity card he had shown Director Fu was fake. Perhaps Yin was not even his real surname. If so, why had he chosen that name?
Zhao Zhi was brought into the interrogation room again. This time, the person sitting across from him was not Cheng Cu, but Chen Zheng. Zhao Zhi frowned as he studied Chen Zheng, as though deciding which of the two men would be harder to deal with.
Chen Zheng laid the printed surveillance screenshots in front of Zhao Zhi one by one. Zhao Zhi lowered his eyes to the images, while Chen Zheng watched his face. The moment Zhao Zhi clearly saw the person in the photograph, his breathing visibly caught. Veins tightened at his temples, and his lips pressed together several times. But when he looked up and met Chen Zheng’s eyes, he had already forced that surprise firmly back under control.
“What are you showing me this for?” Zhao Zhi’s voice carried a trace of hurried tremor, though it was faint. Perhaps he believed he had concealed it well.
Chen Zheng tapped the photograph with a finger. “This man is Yin Shuwen. He was a caregiver at your nursing home. Do you know him?”
Zhao Zhi shook his head. “I told you. I was only the financial backer behind the scenes. Other than Hu Changquan, I didn’t know anyone there.”
“Really?” Chen Zheng gathered the photos and tapped their edges against the table to square them. “Then what were you nervous about just now?”
Zhao Zhi’s pupils contracted. He struggled to control his expression. “Nervous? I was only looking at the pictures you gave me. That’s all.”
“But I’ve realized he may be the real reason you blew up the nursing home.” Chen Zheng said, “You wanted to erase as much evidence of his presence there as possible. You didn’t have much time. An explosion was the best method.”
Zhao Zhi sat absolutely still, seemingly as steady as a mountain, but the points of light in his eyes flickered uncontrollably.
Chen Zheng said, “You knew perfectly well you couldn’t erase every trace of him. He worked there for two years. Forget the elderly residents, the staff certainly remembered him, and some of them may even have taken photos with him. But none of that mattered. As long as his DNA disappeared, you would have achieved your goal.”
Zhao Zhi opened his mouth. After a long while, he let out a scoff. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why would I care about the DNA of someone I don’t know? Haven’t I made myself clear enough? The nursing home was a tool for offsetting my karma. Those elderly people enjoyed the life I gave them, yet I still suffered retribution. They deserved to die!”
“That’s exactly how you tried to provoke my colleague, hoping to interfere with the police’s next stage of investigation.” Chen Zheng gave a small laugh too. “Yin Shuwen’s surname is Yin.”
Zhao Zhi’s face stiffened, and his voice rose despite himself. “So what?”
“You said you used to go to Huaili Town with Luo Yingqiang all the time and dealt with the vegetable growers there. Are you telling me you never heard of a woman named Yin Xiaoyang?” Under Chen Zheng’s gaze, Zhao Zhi’s expression grew more rigid by the second. “All the growers knew she might have had something going on with Luo Yingqiang, yet you refused to mention her even once.”
“Because those are all baseless rumors. Boss Luo’s relationship with Yin Xiaoyang wasn’t what people outside said it was.” Zhao Zhi lowered his head.
“Oh?” Chen Zheng said. “Sounds like you know quite a lot. So what kind of relationship did they have?”
Zhao Zhi was silent for a long time before saying, “The dead deserve respect. I don’t want to bring up things from the past.”
“So much for ‘the dead deserve respect’!” Cheng Cu slapped the table. “You obviously caught him completely off guard. He doesn’t know how to respond!”
Chen Zheng sat down to rest and asked, “Still no word on Yin Shuwen?”