The Untouched Crime

by Zijin Chen

  “He’ll get the death penalty.”

  “Good. That’s good,” Luo said, nodding slowly.

  “So do you have anything to say?” Yan asked.

  Luo let out a long exhale and looked back at Yan. “I’m not involved in this case in any way.”

  “Luo!” Yan shouted. “Why won’t you confess?”

  “You can arrest me right now, if you have sufficient evidence.” Luo’s voice was hard.

  “All this time I thought you had principles! But you have none whatsoever!”

  “I’m very tired. I would like to go home and rest,” Luo said.

  Yan stood up and left without a word.

  Chapter 68

  “You want to let Luo go home? Did I hear you correctly?” Zhao shook his head emphatically. “No. Absolutely not. Zhu Huiru and Guo Yu aren’t giving in either. Now would be the worst time to let him go.”

  “They’re not confessing?” Yan was surprised.

  “We interviewed them separately and even let them see Luo in custody. But they say the same thing every time. I can’t just walk them to the main entrance and then summon them back every twenty-four hours, can I?”

  Yan thought for a minute. “Luo taught them exactly what to say. It would be hard to get them to slip up in the short term, but if we kept at it long enough, I’m sure they would confess eventually. Luo is another story; there’s no way we would get it out of him unless he wants to cooperate. How about we let him go home and rest?”

  “You want me to be nice to him because he’s your friend!” Zhao said, looking betrayed.

  “Well, yes, but I just told him the truth about his wife and daughter. I think if we keep him here for much longer, he would really suffer.”

  Zhao looked Yan up and down. Finally he nodded reluctantly. “If Ms. Zhu and Mr. Guo haven’t confessed by tomorrow, I’m going to bring Luo back in. And I’m going to have my men follow him.”

  “Thank you.”

  Zhao looked up impatiently. “I’m not doing it as a favor to you, and I’m not going easy on that criminal. I’m sticking to the law,” he said, stretching back.

  Ten minutes later, Yan saw Luo to the main entrance.

  “Thanks,” Luo said with a nod.

  “You killed so many people just to bring one person to justice. I understand it, but at the same time I can’t accept it,” Yan said.

  Luo looked at the ground before turning to leave. After a few steps, he turned back to Yan. “You were right about everything—except one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Yan said, frowning.

  “I still have principles. When Li Fengtian is formally sentenced I’ll voluntarily come back here and tell you everything.”

  Yan looked at Luo for a long time. He smiled and nodded. Luo needed to be sure that Li Fengtian was brought to justice. He needed to do this for his wife and daughter.

  “I’d like to ask you something, Professor,” Luo said, with the tiniest hint of a smile. “How did you know it was me?”

  “I knew that you were the answer, and then I worked backward from there,” Yan said honestly.

  “Really?”

  “It was just like a quintic equation. Not even the world’s most brilliant logician could find the answer with the regular methods. I knew that the killer left all the clues on purpose and that the victims were killed in order to mobilize the police to find one particular person. Now where would I find someone with such a unique motive? In this situation, mathematics recommends using substitution. So I came up with a possible solution, and calculated all the details to see if they would fit. I was lucky enough to guess correctly on the first try. Do you remember when we met a few weeks ago?”

  “Did I give something away?” Luo asked.

  “You didn’t, but your car did.”

  “My car?”

  “You bought your own apartment in an upmarket area, which made sense. You can certainly afford it. But you completely neglected furnishing it.”

  “But why does that matter? I’ve never cared about any of that.”

  “Exactly. Your house was the way I expected it to be—you were still the same person who didn’t care what others thought. But then you told me that you bought a fancy car and took the bus to work. You claimed you liked having a car to cruise around. That highlighted two contradictions. First, not decorating your house and buying a luxury car are polar-opposite actions. Second, you told me you didn’t care whether others saw you driving it, because you just wanted to enjoy it for yourself. The only reason you bought it was to commit crimes. Most people don’t think the driver of a luxury car would be suspicious. The pervert who saw you on the night you killed Sun Hongyun wasn’t caught by the police for a long time, and that was partially because he drove a BMW. After I knew it was you, I put all the details into the equation, and the truth gradually became clear.”

  “Well, that goes to show that logic is better than physical evidence,” Luo said with a sigh.

  “But if you never helped Ms. Zhu and Mr. Guo, I wouldn’t have met you or suspected you either. You probably regret helping them now,” Yan said, looking at Luo.

  “Five years ago, you helped a young person destroy evidence that proved he killed his own father. Eventually the truth came out. Do you regret helping that boy?” Luo asked.

  Luo turned to leave as Yan stood there, shocked.

  Two brilliant men with totally different personalities had made the same decision when they came across an innocent on the wrong side of the justice system.

  Chapter 69

  Luo watched the scenery glide past the window as the taxi drove him home. It felt like he was reliving the past eight years all over again.

  From the moment his wife and daughter went missing, he spent every waking minute looking for them or thinking of them, holding on to the hope that they were still alive.

  Now his tiny flame of hope had been extinguished.

  For eight years, he had gone back and forth between Hangzhou and Ningbo, begging the Hangzhou PSB, the Ningbo PSB, and the Zhejiang PSB to investigate the case.

  But without the bodies or any traces of blood, the case could not be classified as a homicide. It was still treated as a missing-person case—not even Luo’s special connections could change that. The head of the Ningbo PSB wanted to help and ordered a major investigation, but nothing was found. In Hangzhou, the head of the Zhejiang PSB called for his officers to find the culprit, but there simply weren’t enough clues. The Hangzhou PSB couldn’t collect the fingerprints of everyone in west Hangzhou for a missing-person case.

  For five years, he didn’t receive any new information about his wife and daughter.

  Three years ago he had handed in his resignation, gravely resorting to his last hope for finding the man.

  He committed serious, shocking crimes to mobilize the Hangzhou police to help him find the garbage collector, the man he would later learn was named Li Fengtian.

  Every crime was committed with the express purpose of transferring the information he knew about that man to the crime scene so the police would pick it up.

  Even though he was successful, he regretted all the things he did to get his answer.

  The taxi slowed to a stop at the end of a street, not far from Chongqing Noodles. “What’s going on up there? The road is blocked. I need to turn around,” the driver said.

  “Mmm,” Luo said absentmindedly.

  The driver looked carefully at Luo. This was one of his strangest customers.

  The taxi driver made a U-turn in the middle of the street.

  Suddenly Luo’s attention returned to the present. He saw people all over the sidewalk and police tape cordoning off some of the restaurants. Uniformed offices were pointing and shouting. Luo’s favorite noodle restaurant seemed to be in the center of the mess.

  Luo couldn’t believe his eyes. He asked the driver to let him out and stepped into the crowd, listening to what people around him were saying.

  “The guy who owns the noo
dle restaurant says that he killed Little Gangster.”

  “Yeah, I heard that the police brought his sister and some other guy into the station to investigate a case. Nobody expected that cook to run out and take Little Gangster’s friend hostage—he rushed at him with a knife and then dragged him into the restaurant.”

  “So wait, is he lame or not?”

  “He’s got a lame leg, but he acted so unexpectedly that the other guy was afraid to fight back.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He says he’s the one who killed Little Gangster and his sister has nothing to do with it. He wants the police to let her go and arrest him.”

  “Did he do it?”

  “Dunno. If he did, then why did the police arrest his sister? But if he didn’t kill anyone, that tactic is useless. The police are going to find the person who’s really responsible, aren’t they?”

  Luo’s heart sank. Zhu Fulai, what are you trying to do? Your sister and Guo Yu were just summoned to the station. They knew not to confess. You’ve turned everything into such a mess!

  Luo pushed through the crowd until he finally reached the police tape. The officers weren’t letting anyone past.

  Fulai held a knife to Zhang Bing’s throat. He stood behind the cash register at the very back of the restaurant. Two officers were trying to reason with him.

  The crowd outside made way for police cars.

  Captain Zhao and Professor Yan stepped out of the first car, and Zhu Huiru and Guo Yu came out of the second. Neither of them wore handcuffs, immediately proving that they were still free. More police stepped out of the last two cars, including one carrying a long, thin black box. Luo recognized it as the case of a sniper rifle.

  “What are you doing, Fulai?” Huiru shouted to her brother. She wanted to run towards him, but Captain Zhao held her back.

  Yan had a few words with Zhao, and Zhao said something to his subordinates. Finally Yan walked towards the entrance of the noodle restaurant. He asked the police officer on site to step away so he could have a chat with Zhu Fulai.

  Zhao stood near the car, looking calm. He watched the sniper place a mat and a shooting rest on the hood of the police car.

  Seeing the sniper in action, many onlookers took photos with their phones.

  Zhao got a few of the police officers to move the police tape so the sniper would have more room. He turned to speak to Huiru. “Xu Tianding wasn’t killed by your brother; there was no evidence that the killer had a lame leg. Now that you see him in such a desperate position, don’t you think it’s time to confess?”

  “I . . .” Huiru swallowed and resolutely shook her head. “You have made some mistake.”

  “Is that so?” Zhao glanced at the sniper, his face showing no trace of compassion. “In a situation like this, if the police accidentally shoot your brother, I’m afraid that—”

  Suddenly he was interrupted by a loud voice. “I killed Little Gangster! My sister has nothing to do with this! A life for a life is fair, isn’t it?”

  Luo’s heart tightened. Even though Fulai was slow-witted, he should have understood that the police might free his sister but ultimately would still get to the bottom of the investigation. His tactic of taking a hostage served no purpose whatsoever.

  If he wasn’t going to kill the hostage, what was he doing?

  He was going to commit suicide!

  Fulai reckoned that if he claimed to have killed Little Gangster and then killed himself, the police would only have his word to go on. He could protect his sister and get the police to release her.

  If he had just waited, his sister would have been perfectly safe.

  Luo’s heart filled with regret.

  Fulai’s love for his sister was the same as Luo’s love for his wife and daughter: unconditional.

  “Stop!” Two voices shouted in unison. Both Yan and Luo were trying to intervene.

  “I killed him!” Luo added.

  Everyone looked at Luo. Fulai was holding his knife at his own throat, but he moved it back to Zhang Bing’s throat.

  A smile crept across Zhao’s face. Luo had finally confessed.

  Yan looked at Luo, who was battling conflicting emotions.

  Luo walked towards the restaurant. An officer tried to stop him. “Let him through,” Zhao ordered.

  Luo nodded at Zhao and walked straight to the entrance to the noodle restaurant. He took one look at Yan and then entered the restaurant.

  Luo’s eyes shifted from Zhu Fulai, now trembling uncontrollably, to Zhang Bing, who had lost all color in his face and already had a few cuts on his neck from the knife. He swiveled to look outside, where Zhu Huiru was crying. “Did you really think your little sister killed Xu Tianding? Did you think you could get her out of trouble by taking her place in prison?” Luo said, loud enough so everyone could hear. “I killed him, got it? Your hostage tactic really screwed it all up!”

  Yan, Zhao, Guo Yu, Huiru, Fulai, and even Zhang Bing stared at him in surprise.

  “Why did I kill him, you ask? Because he was cruel to dogs. You got a threatening letter, right, Zhang Bing? You tortured that dog too. You almost killed him, dragging him back and forth like that. Luckily I adopted him and took care of him, but from that moment I decided that I would not have mercy on you two.”

  Yan watched Luo’s performance in awe. Was he . . . ?

  “You are very lucky, Zhang Bing. I was ready to kill you, but I didn’t have the chance because the police caught me. Before I killed Xu, I killed five other people. I am the serial killer that the police have been searching for! The evidence all points to me. In fact, the evidence is in my car right now: two jump ropes, an electric baton, the paring knife, and special gloves that I made with fingerprints molded on them. It’s taped to the inside of the right front wheel. I used a printer in my office to make the ‘Come and get me’ signs. The printer is in a meeting room.”

  The officers looked at each other. They hadn’t checked the wheels. Once they had that evidence, it would be so easy to prove he was the one who did it! Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru were just kids—they couldn’t have been the killer. Luo was responsible for everything.

  Luo paused and flashed a chilling smile at Fulai. “I’ve admitted to everything; do you still want to take the blame for the murder? Hurry up and let go of that hostage!”

  Fulai felt dizzy. Was it possible that Huiru never killed Xu Tianding?

  Suddenly the knife fell out of his hand. Zhang Bing jumped at the opportunity and pushed Fulai down as he ran out of the restaurant.

  The police began to swarm the restaurant, until Luo picked up the knife and held it against his own neck. He positioned himself in a corner.

  “Luo! Don’t be such a coward!” Yan shouted with all his might.

  Luo gave him a strange smile as the color left his face. He settled his gaze on Yan. “I really did kill him,” Luo said. “This has to do with me, not anyone else, and the evidence in my car proves that. Take care of my dog, will you? He’s going to run out of food.” He took a breath. “I used to have a dog that looked a lot like that one, only . . . he went missing . . .”

  With that, Luo slit his throat. Bright red blood sprayed everywhere.

  The police officers ran towards him as they shouted for an ambulance. Someone tried to stop the bleeding.

  Yan covered his face and sank to his knees, paying no attention to the officers that hurried around him.

  “He’s dead. Captain Zhao, he’s dead.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “I guess the case is over?”

  “He committed suicide to avoid punishment.”

  “We should get the evidence from the inside of his car wheel.”

  When the noise subsided, Yan felt someone patting his shoulder. He looked up and saw Zhao.

  Zhao tried to speak, but there was nothing to say. He helped Yan to his feet.

  Fulai was taken away by the police. Taking someone hostage and threatening to kill them was a criminal offense, after
all.

  Huiru shouted but couldn’t get closer because of all the police cars. “Fulai! Fulai!” Guo Yu followed her.

  Zhao looked at Yan. “So they—”

  “I killed him! Please, let my brother go! Please!” Huiru cried, running over to Zhao and kneeling at his feet.

  “Don’t listen to her! I killed him!” Guo Yu said, swiftly stepping in front of Huiru.

  Yan rushed forward and slapped both of them in the face. “What, have you never seen that much blood before?” he shouted. “You’re inventing stories. We all know that Luo killed him. Now go home. Huiru, your brother took someone hostage and there’s nothing you can do. Go!”

  He straightened up and tried to pull Zhao away from Huiru and Guo Yu.

  “Do you want to repeat the mistake you made five years ago?” Zhao said to Yan.

  Zhao stayed next to Huiru and Guo Yu.

  Yan was shocked, but he relented and made his way through the crowd.

  Zhao stared at Huiru and Guo Yu, pursing his lips. He pulled out a cigarette and turned his body as he lit it. “Hurry up and clean up the scene. I want you to take Fulai to the station for now, and don’t let any of these bystanders get too close to the restaurant. Now, Luo’s evidence—”

  Huiru called after Captain Zhao. “No, really, I killed Xu Tianding! Luo helped me hide the evidence! I did it!”

  “No! It was both of us!” Guo Yu said.

  Zhao stopped. All the other officers were watching them now. He clenched his teeth and called to Investigator Yang. “Yang, take these two suspects to the station.”

  Yang put handcuffs on Huiru and Guo Yu—they were formally arrested.

  Huiru and Guo Yu both looked terribly afraid.

  After all of Luo’s efforts, it still ended in tragedy.

  But for the first time, as they walked towards the police car, her hand brushed against his.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2015 Zijin Chen

  Zijin Chen is a bestselling author of suspense fiction. His critically acclaimed books include The High IQ Crime and The Forbidden Place.