Death Notice

by Zhou HaoHui

  “I understand,” Pei said, reluctantly. “Yuan was an outstanding student at the academy. To tell you the truth, I admired him in many regards, but his weakness was women.”

  Mu looked again at the files spread across Pei’s desk. Among them was a large photograph of Yuan. The man indeed was very handsome.

  “His relationships didn’t last long,” Pei said. “About half a year before the explosion, he started seeing a girl majoring in administration at the academy. She was gorgeous, and Yuan definitely had feelings for her. Back then I was convinced that Yuan was actually going to settle down with her.” Pei shook his head and sighed to himself. “But they broke up just a few months later.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe it was just the way Yuan was. Regardless of the reason, he was the one who broke it off. The girl came to the dorm looking for him later that day. Her eyes were red. Yuan made me tell her I didn’t know where he was. I had my misgivings, of course, but I never expected the girl to take things as hard as she did. What I didn’t know at the time was that she’d had an abortion for his sake. Then she committed suicide by jumping into a river.” Pei looked down, his head heavy with shame.

  “Some men are such scum,” Mu snapped. She glared at Pei. “What about Yuan? Did he feel any remorse after this? Anything at all?”

  Pei shook his head. “He found a new girl almost immediately, through a pen-pal exchange organized by the local paper. After writing each other for a while, they decided to start dating. They arranged a time and place for their first date. April eighteenth.”

  Mu nodded to herself.

  “So that would make Yuan’s pen pal one of the last people to have seen him before the explosion, wouldn’t it?”

  Pei answered with a weak shrug. “I know what you’re thinking, but the answer’s going to disappoint you. After the explosion, the original 4/18 Task Force came to our dorm building and collected every piece of correspondence between Yuan and his pen pal. They traced the address on the letters back to their sender, who turned out to be a girl at another college here in Chengdu. The girl had never even heard of Yuan, much less arranged to meet with him. Her classmates all corroborated her statement—she had spent the entire day on campus.”

  “Could the actual sender have given Yuan a false name and address?”

  “That’s exactly it. If you check those files a little more closely, you’ll see that the letters featured the same perfect handwriting as those death notices.”

  “Yuan lived on campus,” Mu said, excitedly connecting the dots. “It would be almost impossible to pull off a murder in such a crowded place. So the killer tricked Yuan into going to the outskirts, where a single bomb could destroy every last shred of evidence.”

  Pei nodded.

  “This is one meticulous son of a bitch,” Mu said. She frowned, and looked up at Pei. “As sickening as the killer’s methods were, I can understand why this person targeted Yuan. Womanizing, impregnating a girl and then abandoning her, finally driving her to suicide. You can’t tell me that you actually condone that kind of behavior, Captain?”

  Pei looked away. “Of course not. But he didn’t deserve to die, strapped to a bomb in an abandoned warehouse. Yuan was my friend. As despicable as his behavior was, at his core I believe he was a good person.”

  “I see. Captain Pei, I’m very grateful for your help. My psychological profile of the suspect is much more fleshed out now.” She offered Pei a conciliatory smile. “What’s your next step?”

  “I’m going to pay a visit to our lone survivor, Huang Shaoping.” Pei plucked a piece of paper out from the stack of photocopies. “Zheng left us his contact information.”

  “Excellent. I’d like to talk to him as well. Why don’t we both go see him tomorrow? Besides, Han wants both of us to stay out of his hair.”

  Only one of us, actually, Pei silently corrected her.

  OCTOBER 22, 7:12 A.M.

  On a normal day the skyline would already be bathed in morning light, but today the glum autumn drizzle had cast a dim, gray haze over the city.

  Pain stirred Huang Shaoping from his slumber. The old burns had healed, but whenever rain came, every inch of his skin felt like it was on fire. Sucking air through his clenched teeth, he let the agony drag him back eighteen years.

  Those five seconds stood out more clearly in his mind than any other moment in his life. She tore a wire from the bomb. A ball of flame instantly engulfed her and the man next to her. Before he could react, a wave of searing heat rushed over him and plunged him into total terror and desperation seconds before he lost consciousness.

  And yet he had lived. Considering his broken bones and the third-degree burns covering 75 percent of his body, his survival was a miracle.

  That one moment, however, had shifted the entire course of his life. He had clawed his way back from hell only to emerge as a pitiful wreck. To the rest of the world, he was a freak.

  The explosion shattered his life. People were as afraid of seeing him as he was of seeing them. He remained solitary, like a lone desert tree. No one else could understand just how agonizing the past eighteen years had truly been.

  Huang curled up on his bed. Rainwater dripped in from a crack in the wall. A spider scuttled across the ceiling. His ears twitched. He held his breath, waiting.

  His chronic pain had sharpened his senses. He heard footsteps approaching. Seconds later, a knock on the door.

  “Who’s there?” Huang rasped, forcing the question out through his teeth.

  “Police.”

  It was always the police. Who else would visit this dump? Huang struggled to get up from his bed, and he hobbled over to the door on his crutches. When he opened the door, a man and woman in plainclothes stood in front of him. They had nearly identical stunned expressions on their faces.

  Huang was well acquainted with this look. It was impressive enough that neither officer had turned tail after seeing him. Even so, he adopted a suspicious tone. “You’re both cops. What happened to Sergeant Zheng?”

  “I’m Pei Tao, from the Longzhou Police Department,” said the man at the door, displaying his badge. “This is Mu Jianyun, lecturer at the provincial police academy.” The woman at his side forced a weak smile.

  “Pei Tao…Pei Tao…” Huang mumbled to himself as he read the officer’s ID. He then turned his murky gaze toward these unexpected visitors.

  The burn scars on Huang’s face pulled his skin taut and blended into the whites of his eyes. As the man fixated on him, Pei felt a chill creep over his flesh. Fortunately, Huang quickly turned and retreated into his home.

  “Come in,” he said in a low voice.

  A musty smell greeted Pei and Mu as they stepped into the room. Pei had seen plenty of living spaces in his time as a police officer in Longzhou, but this apartment was wretched. Mu coughed gently into her arm.

  “Shut the door behind you. It gets drafty in here otherwise.”

  Pei noticed that Huang wasn’t wearing a jacket. The man hobbled over to the bed and wrapped himself in the filthy blanket crumpled on top of the mattress.

  Mu gently closed the wooden door. Darkness swallowed the room. Both she and Pei suddenly found it harder to breathe.

  “We’re here to ask about a case from eighteen years ago,” Pei said. “About the explosion.” He had no desire to mince words, nor to remain long.

  Huang rolled his eyes and let out a bitter laugh. “That’s the only thing I’m good for. What about Sergeant Zheng? Why didn’t he come this time?”

  “He’s dead,” Pei answered quietly. “Zheng was killed two nights ago. We believe his death was related to the warehouse explosion. We’ve been tasked to identify the man who did it. The man who burned you. And we are going to catch him. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Wha—what happened? Zheng was here just a few days ago!”

 
“He asked you to identify some photos, didn’t he? Did you recognize anyone?”

  “Those pictures…” Huang spoke slowly, as though straining to recall something. After a moment, he shook his head. “No, that person wasn’t in any of them.”

  “Are you positive?” Pei asked earnestly. “Sergeant Zheng was murdered in a deliberate attempt to delete those pictures.”

  Huang nodded. “I’m certain. The people in those photos were just kids. Most of them hadn’t even been born when all that happened.”

  Grunting in acknowledgment, Pei decided to try a different approach.

  “Let’s leave the photos alone for now. I want you to tell me in detail what you really saw on the day of the explosion.”

  Huang frowned. “I’ve done that more times than I can count.”

  “I know, I’ve read the notes. I want to hear it in person.” Pei’s tone left no room for refusal.

  “Fine.” With a reluctant look, Huang licked his lips and began to speak. “Eighteen years ago, I’d just arrived from the countryside. I collected scrap to get by. More often than not, I spent my nights in an old access tunnel facing the warehouse. On the afternoon of April eighteenth, I didn’t feel like going out. I curled up in the tunnel and went to sleep. I awoke a little later to see a few people come into the warehouse one at a time. At first I didn’t think much of it, but when I noticed a woman show up, I decided to have a look.”

  Pei raised an eyebrow. “Why was that?”

  Huang responded with mirthless laughter. “It was an abandoned warehouse. I saw a woman walk in after a man was already inside. What was I supposed to think?” He laughed. “To think that my libido almost got me killed.”

  Pei’s gaze sharpened until it could have cut diamonds. Huang ceased his laughter, almost without realizing it.

  “You should choose your words carefully,” Mu warned Huang. “One of those two was Captain Pei’s lover. The other was his closest friend.”

  A look of fear flickered over Huang’s face. He looked up at Pei uneasily.

  “You couldn’t know,” Pei said, his tone softening. “Let’s not dwell on that. You said that you saw three people enter the warehouse?”

  “That’s right. Three people. Two men and one woman. The first man left the warehouse before the woman arrived.”

  “Can you tell me specifically when each person entered and left the warehouse?”

  “I didn’t have a watch.” Huang shrugged. “All I can tell you is the second man arrived a little over half an hour after the first. The first man left a little while later. The woman arrived afterward.”

  Pei and Mu glanced at one another. Both of them were thinking the same thing—the first man had waited for Yuan, ambushed him, planted the bomb, and then left before Meng’s arrival.

  “The case files state that you saw what the first man looked like,” Pei said. “Why didn’t you provide the police with a description?”

  “I only saw him from a distance. I’m not too clear about his exact appearance.”

  Mu cocked her head slightly to one side. “Didn’t you say that if you saw him again, you’d be able to recognize him?”

  Huang’s lips drew back into a grin, revealing two rows of gleaming teeth. “The police have done a lot for me since the accident, you know. They covered my surgery. They put me in this wonderful apartment free of charge. I just wanted to be a good sport.”

  “But you said—”

  “I only said that I might be able to. And besides, that was then. It’s been almost two decades since.”

  Mu shook her head, her brow heavy with disappointment.

  This line of questioning is a dead end, Pei thought. We need to try another angle.

  “What did you see after you followed the woman into the warehouse?” he asked.

  “The building was big. Lots of dusty containers and heavy-duty machinery for moving things around. I hid behind a broken machine near the entrance to keep out of sight. I saw a man sitting on the floor. His arm was raised at an angle that looked uncomfortable. The woman was crouched at his side, fiddling with something next to him. He kept yelling at her to leave him. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. I couldn’t look away. The woman was screaming into some kind of radio, saying, ‘Red wire. Blue wire.’ That’s all I could make out. ‘Red wire. Blue wire.’ There was a man’s voice—”

  “That’s enough!” Pei snapped. His eyes were red. “I…I’m already familiar with this part.”

  “What do you want to know, then?” Huang asked uneasily.

  Pei took a deep breath. “Tell me what happened at the end.”

  “The man on the radio said, ‘Red wire.’ ” Huang’s cheeks twitched. “There was an explosion.”

  “What did she look like?” Pei asked, in a whisper. “The look on her face, the way she moved. You had your eyes on her the whole time, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right. I was watching her. It’s strange, come to think of it. She looked nervous right up until the end. Then right at that last moment, a strange calm came over her. I even think she was smiling. In those last seconds, she was so beautiful…”

  Pei’s fingernails dug into the flesh of his palms. Once his anxious breathing finally steadied, he stood up.

  “This room is suffocating.”

  Mu rushed over and opened the door. A gust of fresh air swept into the room, and Pei’s lungs rejoiced. Right as he was about to step outside, Huang called out.

  “Just one more minute, Officer.”

  Pei looked over. “What is it?”

  Huang grinned through cracked lips. “The wind’s chilly. I need to put on my long johns. Can you help me? As you can see, my hands aren’t quite as nimble as they used to be. The pants are in the trunk next to the bed.”

  Pei opened the trunk, and an eye-watering odor hit him. Mildew, vinegar, and sweat all at once. Holding his breath, he fished the man’s wool underwear out from inside his trunk. Mu turned away and left the room as Huang removed his pants.

  Huang suddenly grasped Pei’s shoulder.

  “Both of you aren’t here to interrogate me,” he hissed into the officer’s ear.

  Pei gave the man a perplexed look. “Of course we are. We’re both members of the task force.”

  Huang lowered his voice as he struggled to pull up his wool pants. “The woman didn’t look at me for a single second when you were questioning me. She was observing you, studying your every look and movement. I’ve been around a lot of cops since the warehouse explosion. I know how they work. That woman didn’t come here for me. She’s watching you.”

  Pei felt his chest tighten, but his face remained static. He helped Huang into his clothing. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked softly.

  Huang forced a snicker.

  “Most people can’t even bear to look at me without flinching, let alone help me put on a pair of pants.”

  Pei studied the man’s gruesome features again, full of pity. “Thank you for your time,” he said, and walked out of the apartment, closing the door behind him.

  Sleet fell outside. The droplets were as thin as hairs, and ice-cold against Pei’s face. Mu had been standing outside for some time already. Her wary gaze flitted down the street from one rusted apartment door to another, as though any of them might burst open at a moment’s notice. She looked at Pei as he stepped out of Huang’s apartment.

  “If you could have swapped places with Meng, would you have trusted your own judgment during those final few seconds? Or would you have wanted hers instead?”

  Pei was quiet for a moment. “I’d trust my own judgment.”

  “Then why did Meng listen to you? Where did that blind faith come from? Come to think of it, how do you even know she did listen, and it was the red wire that she pulled?”

  Her flurry of questions stunned Pei. F
orcing an awkward smile, he sighed softly. “Now I know why Sergeant Zheng said that death would have been kinder to the man.”

  Mu smiled. “I disagree, actually. Did you see the calendar on the wall?”

  “I did,” Pei said after a short pause. “It was nailed right next to the door.”

  “It’s one of those daily calendars. The kind with pages you tear off after each day. I took a look at the page up there now—it’s today’s date.”

  “You’re saying he still has something to live for. A bit of a stretch, isn’t it?”

  Mu shook her head. “His life isn’t nearly as deprived of hope as you might think.”

  OCTOBER 22, 7:55 A.M.

  CAPTAIN HAN HAO’S OFFICE

  After knocking twice on the open door, Zeng strolled into Captain Han’s office and handed him a note. His handwriting was barely legible, and the captain wondered if this was a side effect of the young officer’s reliance on computers.

  “ ‘Location: Dongming Gardens, Building Twelve, Room 404. Name: Sun Chunfeng,’ ” Han read softly, and looked up at Zeng. “What’s this supposed to be?”

  “That’s the guy we’re looking for, and where we’ll find him.”

  Grinning, Zeng tossed several photographs onto the table. The pictures showed a young man with bleached hair. They had been taken inside an internet café.

  “You recovered the deleted photos?”

  Zeng scratched his ear and gave a lazy nod. “They were taken on the morning of October eighteenth, between 10:25 and 10:30 a.m.”

  Han picked up the photographs and studied them one at a time. “How did you get the information written on the note?”

  “Like I said yesterday, Sergeant Zheng found the internet cafés based on the information I gave him. I checked the time the photographs were taken against the records from my IP tracer, and found they were taken at the Qianghui Internet Café over by Normal University. I went to the café and checked their records. This particular kid was using the computer all morning. I grabbed the hard drive’s operating data from that window of time. Now I know the kid’s instant messaging number, two of his e-mail addresses, and the log-in information for four different online accounts,” Zeng said with a chuckle. He opened his mouth for a massive yawn. In spite of his fatigue, he looked rather pleased with himself.