14
I can't count the number of times I've been sitting in a police station interrogation room again. But this time is different.
In the past, I had always answered questions one by one, explaining the situation according to the police's requirements. This time, I told the whole story myself, chronologically laying out the case, starting with how the truth of the case was discovered and ending with Li Tianci's mysterious disappearance from the secret room.
The case officer in charge was an elderly police officer with graying temples. He folded his arms across his chest and examined me with the same cautious eye as one would examine a picture frame hung askew on the wall. A young officer was typing away on a keyboard, his expression initially stern, but as he listened, the corners of his mouth gradually lifted.
As I spoke, I gradually realized that I was telling a very bizarre story. If you haven't experienced it yourself, I'm afraid no one would believe it. To a third person, after hearing it, it might seem like the fantasy of a schizophrenic.
After the entire confession was complete, the old officer remained silent, pondering. The young officer peeked out from behind his laptop screen and asked, "Did Miss Li Zitong see the murderer you mentioned, disguised as a reporter, when she arrived at the scene?"
"No."
"Does that mean you were the only one who saw him from beginning to end?"
The smile on his face was somewhat mocking. I suppressed my anger and replied calmly, "That's right."
"I say, you're probably a mystery fan, and you've read a lot of Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, right?"
The old officer turned and glanced at him. The young officer quickly stopped talking, lowered his head, sat up straight, and put his hands on the keyboard, ready to continue recording.
"We have a rough idea of the situation. Thank you for coming here to provide the clues." The old police officer leaned forward in his chair, fingers pressed together, and said in summary, "But I must remind you that investigating cases is very dangerous and not a joke. Especially since human lives are involved. If there is any mistake, your life will be at stake. We are all adults, so we should understand the interests involved, right?"
I nodded repeatedly.
"If you have any new clues in the future, call the police immediately. Don't try to investigate on your own. Also, we'll have to send someone to investigate your destruction of physical evidence at the scene. Although the evidence collection is complete, we might have to return to investigate if new clues arise. And you, on the other hand... keep your phone on during this time. We might need to call you back to cooperate with the investigation at any time. Do you understand?"
I agreed repeatedly, and the two of them let me out without saying anything else.
Li Zitong said she would wait for me to come out, but when I left the house, no one was there. Just as I was wondering, I received a call from her, saying that she would meet at a bar called "Muse" in the city center instead.
At 3 p.m., the bar epitomized the word "shabby." The lights were off, a mop and bucket sat by the bar, and the bartender yawned as he used an ice pick to break ice. Without the stage-like lighting, the prints, guitars, and motorcycles—the decorations—looked dull and dull. The entire bar was occupied by a single customer, sitting in the back booth. Li Zitong sat alone in the gloom, where no natural light could penetrate.
I sat down opposite her and she looked apologetic.
"I wanted to wait for you to come out. But after sitting in the police station's reception hall for too long, I felt a pain in my heart and a chill all over my body. I wanted to drink something to warm myself up."
Her mood was clear enough, needless to say. Just looking at the table revealed her mood. It was piled high with cocktails in a riot of colors and containers. Old fashioned glasses, martini glasses, highball glasses, flutes, hurricane glasses, sherry glasses... She probably genuinely intended to get drunk, even if it meant drinking enough to cause liver fibrosis.
"I guess the glasses for the whole bar are here," she said jokingly. "You're late. I wish you'd seen the bartender's face when I said, 'Two of everything on the menu.'"
"It's not good to drink too much at this time in the afternoon," I advised.
She took a sip of what looked like a mint julep. "It's not bad. I only come to bars at this time. If I went to a noisy evening party, I'd definitely be surrounded by people taking pictures and asking for autographs. Even if I dress discreetly, I'll still be recognized dressed like this."
She was dressed quite plainly, a V-neck T-shirt, a white sweatshirt, and washed-out jeans. Her hair was tied back, and she wore ordinary glasses instead of sunglasses. Her demeanor was almost that of a high school student.
"Would you like a drink?" She slid her fingers along the edge of the table. "You can choose any kind."
I shook my head and declined. My mind was already a mess and I didn't want to add to the confusion with the addition of alcohol.
"I have a question for you. Please tell me the truth without reservation," I asked sincerely. "Have I acted strangely lately? For example, maybe my memory is distorted, or I mentioned people who weren't there when I was speaking."
"How could that be?" Li Zitong laughed, but it was a shallow smile, more like a comforting one. "Why are you suddenly doubting yourself? I can guarantee that you are perfectly normal."
"I thought I had solved the case... but maybe it was just a lookalike. And ultimately, everything is just my speculation, without any legally defensible evidence."
"But if he really is a reporter unrelated to the case, nothing would happen even if you called the police. Why would you run away?"
I felt like I was sleepwalking. "But then again, was that considered escaping? To me, it was more like he vanished from the chamber of secrets... It's so strange, I can't explain it anyway. I'm even starting to suspect that the whole thing was just an illusion."
"No." Li Zitong stared blankly at the martini glass and thought for a moment. "Could it be that the room has an escape route or some other mechanism? He's lived there alone for many years. If it's true, as you say, that he's been carrying a bloody crime, he must be secretly terrified, afraid that the truth would be exposed and he would be arrested. It's normal for him to set up a mechanism as a retreat in advance."
I shook my head. "That's unlikely. An escape route large enough for an adult would have to be quite large and difficult to conceal. Furthermore, in the past few months, first the weathered remains were found there, then Li Kaiyi's murder occurred. Investigators must have turned the room upside down. If there was a secret passage like that, it would be impossible to hide."
"But what if his method of hiding the escape route was ingenious? Like the murder through the window using a videotape, where the evidence was right there in plain sight, yet no one noticed it for years."
I lowered my head and pondered for a while, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't imagine any miraculous, earth-shattering method that could get someone out through the wall. So I became more and more suspicious that everything was just an illusion.
"But I..."
"Shh, stop talking." She put her index finger in front of her mouth. "Don't overthink it. You haven't had much rest since yesterday, and you've been through so much. Anyone would be exhausted. Clear your mind and get some rest. Maybe tomorrow morning the problem will be solved naturally."
"Okay." I sighed, picked up a glass of something bright red that looked like a Margarita, and drank it all in one gulp, but I couldn't taste any sourness at all.
"If you don't want to drink, don't touch that stuff." She looked me in the eyes and said, "Let's go out and get some fresh air."
Walking out of the dim bar, the early summer sun was bright and dazzling. The sky was as clean as a man-made diamond, without a trace of impurities.
Despite having drunk quite a bit, Li Zitong's face showed no sign of drunkenness. He spoke clearly, his words ending concisely, and his steps were precise as he walked down the stairs. He was just a little too excited.
She dragged me around the town, retracing the route to elementary school. She marveled at the grocery store still open outside the school gate and bought dried plums, popping candy, Maltesers, cat ears—snacks I couldn't afford as a child and, as an adult, no longer had any appetite for. She wanted to go inside the school, but, as expected, the security guard stopped her.
Feeling unsatisfied, she came out again and insisted on taking me to visit her former junior high school. The route took her through a completely renovated commercial district, and she insisted on not using her phone's navigation system, relying instead on her memory to navigate the narrow alleys. We quickly got lost, but even then, her excitement remained undimmed, chattering away like a sparrow.
Without warning, she stopped laughing and her voice calmed down, "How did we get here?"
The alleyway before me was ordinary, but of course I knew where it was. As a child, I'd been forced by Zheng Kun and his duo to observe the music store from here several times.
"Let's go back and take the original bus route." I knew she didn't want to go any further.
The bus I used to take when I was a child has not changed its route yet.
I don't know if it's because the town's population has dwindled, or if young people these days all have cars. The bus service is no longer popular, and few people are riding it. Besides Li Zitong and me, everyone else is a group of elderly people with white hair and beards. We sit in the front and back rows, just like we did when we were kids.
"It's incredible. So many buildings have been built, but the bus routes haven't been changed..." Li Zitong kept talking, but his eyes were looking out the window, and his pupils reflected the empty street scenes that were almost the same everywhere.
"I say, you're hiding something from me, right?" I interrupted her. "You want to say it but don't know where to start."
She looked at me again, "Is it exposed?"
"Give me a hint, what kind of thing."
"About the murder."
"Oh." I hesitated, not knowing whether I should continue asking.
"I think I've figured out what you couldn't figure out before." She took the initiative to reveal the answer, "The motive for the murder."
"Which case?"
"Let's talk about Li Kaiyi's case first. He was probably murdered because of the 'Dawn Star' crown."
"Why?"
"Do you know why I went to his house to pay my respects? Because I heard from the police that his grandson needed major heart surgery, but his family couldn't afford it. It was quite pitiful."
“There is always something hateful about a pitiful person.”
"As far as I know, Li Tianci has always had a bad habit of gambling and owes a lot of money. When it comes to urgently needing large sums of cash, the two of them can be said to hit it off. This is a perfect match that they can exploit. Li Tianci lost both his parents when he was young, and there are almost no people from his previous generation alive. I have no blood relationship with him. The closest blood relationship is my second uncle."
I came to my senses. "They had anticipated this. After the Dawn Star was stolen, the police would immediately find the body prepared in the old house, identify it through DNA, and would definitely ask Li Kaiyi for cooperation."
"That's right. During the DNA test, as long as Li Kaiyi successfully cheated and provided a fake sample, Li Tianci's suspicion of committing the crime would be completely eliminated."
"But whose body is that?"
"Some poor soul whose name I don't know."
I fought back the urge to vomit. "If they had a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship, why did Li Tianci turn hostile and resort to violence in the end?"
"I'm afraid it's because of an uneven distribution of the spoils. Li Tianci has a fatal advantage over Li Kaiyi. To keep them in check, he certainly wouldn't dare hand over 'Dawn Star' to his second uncle, so he'd have no choice but to sell it himself. But the public price of 'Dawn Star' is 258 million yuan, and the actual cost is probably less than 100 million yuan. If it were sold on the black market, the price would be significantly lower. Li Kaiyi is a greedy man, and he'll definitely feel his share is too little. He'll eventually threaten Li Tianci with the leverage and report it to the police. Eliminating the insider becomes Li Tianci's only option."
I remained silent. For Li Tianci, with so many lives already on his hands, he had nothing to worry about. Choosing to strike after the funeral was probably also an attempt to pin the blame on Li Zitong and completely deflect suspicion.
"Then there was the death of my father, Li Xueqiang. He used to be a good man, but unfortunately he fell too quickly, becoming addicted to alcohol, gambling, and other cheap entertainment. After my mother died, I ran away from home because I couldn't stand his violence. From then on, I was afraid that Li Tianci would have to bear his violence alone."
"He could even do this to his own son?"
"A normal person wouldn't do that. But he was somewhat mentally ill. After drinking, he threw a kitchen knife at me, and it hit the wall next to my ear. That's why I decided to run away. Li Tianci probably also felt his life was in danger, so he had to take the initiative. After killing the first person, his mentality and life trajectory completely changed. If I hadn't chosen to escape and run away from home..."
"It's not your fault. Ultimately, it's their own choice."
Li Zitong shook his head. "The topic has become heavy. We clearly agreed to forget about these things tonight. Who brought it up first?"
“It seems to be me.”
"You can't just break the rules." She smiled again, a smile that was hard to tell if it was real or fake. "Choose your own punishment. Truth or Dare?"
If I had to choose, I'd go with the dare. In this situation, if I spoke the truth, there was no guarantee the conversation wouldn't get even more serious, triggering the next round of punishment games. It was like an infinite recursion.
"Well, dare you to go back to high school with me."
"Sure, we can get off at the next stop and walk the same way to school as before."
"That's not a big dare. You have to sneak into the school with me."
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