Chapter 124

"There are four employee bus routes altogether. They must have been planned by a professional organization, taking into account efficiency, cost, and the times of day when the employees change shifts, very reasonably, all the stops on the way located in comparatively densely-peopled areas. You know our country's 'neighborhood culture'—it would be hard to hide in places like these. But there are three ring routes here, and one that goes one way." Fei Du paused slightly. "The ring routes can pick up and drop off people at any stop along the way. Only the one-way route has a terminus."

Luo Wenzhou fixe his gaze on him. "So?"

"This one-way route runs east to west. It drops off night-shift workers in the morning, going from the Beehive to the science park. It leaves at ten and arrives at the science park at twelve. In the afternoon, it sets out at two from the science park and arrives at the Beehive at four. There's a two-hour interval in between. An employee bus needs a parking lot and a rest stop…"

"I understand what you mean," Luo Wenzhou interrupted him, "but this is empty speculation."

"I have a basis. Two bases," Fei Du said. "First, the back half of this one-way route follows the same direction as the extension to the number 10 subway line planned last year. Their functions will basically overlap. One of the bus stops is less than two-hundred meters from a 10 subway stop. If I were managing this, I'd either get rid of the whole route, or cut off the back half and turn in into a feeder shuttle for employees coming in by subway. A superfluous bus route uses up a lot of management resources and cost."

"Perhaps the Beehive is especially comfortable with its wealth and doesn't care about that bit of money. Perhaps the managers are lazy in doing their jobs and don't react in a timely manner. That's all possible." Luo Wenzhou was accustomed to being a team captain; as soon as it came to business, especially when time was very tight, his manner would be intense. Having said this much in one breath, he remembered that this was Fei Du, not one of his grunts. He hastily softened his voice slightly. "If you could be sure that Lu Guosheng needed to use public transport to get from where he was hiding to the Beehive, then I would agree with your judgement that this route is more suspect than the ring-routes, but the problem is, how can you be sure? Why couldn't it be a delivery truck, or a minibus specially set aside for these people?"

Fei Du became silent. He was a person with "excellent packaging": if you didn't give him a good shake and compel him, it was very hard to tell what was inside. But in this instant, Luo Wenzhou suddenly felt that a heavy shadow seemed to flicker over his eyes.

Luo Wenzhou said, "You…"

"Because I heard something." Saying so, Fei Du looked up at the stairwell's ceiling. The suspended ceiling was of superior make, in the shape of a coiled dragon about to eat someone. After all these years, it was still in perfect condition, its evil menacing. "In this place.

"That day that I found the details of the Picture Album Project in the basement. I was just wondering what it was when I heard Fei Chengyu coming in, talking on the phone." Fei Du's voice was very calm, almost without undulation.

He didn't say that he couldn't enter the basement without Fei Chengyu's permission—even though he'd had a little desk there to observe the punishments. He'd had a colorful marble in his pocket that a schoolmate had given him. He'd dropped it, and it had rolled down the stairs, knocking on the door of the basement. He couldn't let Fei Chengyu see it, so he'd hurriedly chased after and found that the basement door hadn't been closed.

A boy around ten years old has budding self-awareness and exuberant curiosity, and a natural spark of rebellion.

So without getting Fei Chengyu's permission, he'd gone inside and seen something he shouldn't have seen. He'd been about to run out in a panic when he'd heard Fei Chengyu's voice.

"If I recall correctly, what he said then was, 'Set up some houses for them at the terminus. I didn't give you money to build doghouses, but do we really need to treat a stack of blunt old iron like holy weapons? If they won't live there, tell them to beat it. There are policemen waiting to distinguish themselves by catching them. If someone slips up and reveals his whereabouts again, then the people living with him will be buried with the dead.'"

When Fei Du was relating Fei Chengyu's words, his tone and his body language were both subtly different from normal. Luo Wenzhou almost had the impression that he was involuntarily imitating that man. He faintly felt that something was off—the Picture Album Project had taken place twelve or thirteen years ago; what grade had Fei Du been in then?

How deep of an impression did there have to be, how many times had it had to be recalled, for him to be able to remember these words from his youth so accurately? But wasting even a second would be fatal now. There was no time to make him recall past events.

Luo Wenzhou could only hurriedly say, "The terminus. You're sure you heard right, remembered right?"

"Yes." Fei Du's gaze looking back at him was confident and tranquil. "I've thought over many times what 'the terminus' could mean. When I heard the driver just now, I realized that an employee bus has a terminus."

Luo Wenzhou was silent for two seconds. Then he came to a rapid decision. "Come on!"

Meanwhile, the enemies' lines of sight were still trained on Nancheng.

The manager of the Fengqi Center was all at sea. He trotted along after the person investigating the security camera footage. "What is going on here?"

As soon as he spoke, the fretful man in front of him turned and grabbed the manager's collar. "Go investigate all the food and beverage businesses under your headquarters' banner!"

The manager was just over a meter seventy, not remotely tall and robust. He was almost lifted off his feet and involuntarily dragged along. "No… Everything under headquarters' banner… Dage, that has to be requested from headquarters' big boss, how could I have the seniority to investigate?"

The person clenched his teeth, tossed him aside, and picked up his phone. "Listen to me, things aren't going well with Wei Zhanhong. I'm afraid he's under someone's control. There's nothing here at the Fengqi Center. Someone's playing tricks on us.—Starting now, no matter what you have to do, whether it's a blanket search or going over to the school to investigate, I need to know where he was that day, and what happened!"

Things were not merely not going well with Wei Zhanhong; his dignity had simply been disgraced. Xiao Haiyang, not daring to leave, had feigned having constipation and stayed in the bathroom.

But Lang Qiao, after she'd gone far off, was still contemplating Xiao Haiyang's words.—She understood what Xiao Haiyang had meant; her words in Interrogation Room 203 had been overheard and leaked out. It was very normal for someone to be listening in on an interrogation, especially when the people being questioned were critical figures in some case. The person in charge or some other colleague could come into the observation room any time to monitor the progress.

Lang Qiao's steps paused. She grabbed the railing and went up to the third floor observation room.

The observation room was in an innermost room. There was a camera on a window outside that would capture anyone passing through. It was the weekend; compared to the turbulent second floor, this place was peaceful. Lang Qiao subconsciously looked all around, then darted into the observation room and went through the record of the camera on the outside window.

Who would it be?

It was the dead of winter and a Sunday. No one without business would come into work. The officers on duty and the Criminal Investigation Team were all so busy they were falling over; they had no attention to spare… Lang Qiao quickly went through the whole recording and frowned in surprise—no one there.

All afternoon, the third floor had been still. No one had gone by!

Lang Qiao whispered, "What the hell…"

At this time, Fei Du's people arrived at the science park ahead of him.

The driver Sun Jiaxing was tied up and left in the basement. Fei Du found a couple of people to keep an eye on him, then went over, bringing along the very resourceful fat man called Lao Lu. On the way, Lao Lu received a phone call. A moment later, he said to Fei Du, "President Fei, the guys have gone through all the places to park a car and fill up on gas within a five-kilometer radius of the neighborhood. About two kilometers from the science park's west gate, there's an unfinished ecological park that stopped construction halfway through. There's a ready-made parking lot next to it, and a very small privately operated gas station."

"Privately operated gas station?" Luo Wenzhou said.

"Yeah. There are some urban villages around. The villagers ordinarily use some trucks to haul goods. They don't normally go far. A privately operated gas station is cheaper than those other ones," Lao Lu said. He smiled rather overcautiously towards Luo Wenzhou. The overly polite smile didn't manage to look sincere; he seemed to be forcing down his vigilance towards a strange police officer for Fei Du's sake. He was still dressed up like a parvenu, but when he wasn't pretending to be an idiot, his shrewd, reserved, even somewhat violent inner quality was revealed. It gave the gold chains and fur-lined jacket he was wearing more weight. "I had them leave a drone to take aerial photographs to keep an eye on it."

"Luo Wenzhou. I'm from the City Bureau's Criminal Investigation Team." Luo Wenzhou had noticed his faint guardedness and voluntarily opened a conversation. "What should I call you?"

The fat man who'd been so voluble in front of the driver Sun Jiaxing nodded civilly and answered, cherishing words like gold, "Pleasure to meet you. I'm Lu Jia.(9)"

Luo Wenzhou observed his expression and body language and didn't say anything else. He went to his phone and stealthily linked up to the intranet, looking up the name "Lu Jia." He suddenly paused—in the 327 case, for the last victim, the one killed most brutally, the name recorded for the person who'd come to identify the body was "Lu Jia." His relationship to the victim was "brother."

Just then, something moved on the aerial image near the gas station and the unfinished ecological park.

It wasn't time for the employee bus to approach. The parking lot was empty, and the gas station was deserted. While construction on the "ecological park" had been abandoned halfway through, the little houses that looked like employee dormitories that had been built against the mountain seemed to be in use year-round. There were clothes hanging at some of the gates, and in a yard some men were playing mahjong in a rather leisurely manner.

A burly man came out of the backyard, holding a box of food. As he passed by, the people playing mahjong in the yard tensed, turning silent as cicadas in winter.

The man carrying the box of food didn't so much as look at them. He went straight towards the east face. The drone hurriedly changed its angle to follow, zooming in. A little door opened. It was black inside. There was a basement!

The camera lens wasn't quite clear enough, but it caught the man's profile; you could faintly see a fearsome scar on his face, running through half of it. One of his eyes was blind.

Luo Wenzhou's back went ramrod straight.

"What's wrong?" said Lu Jia.

Luo Wenzhou said, "That person looks like a burglar who was put on the wanted list a few years ago. He's blind in one eye because the male owner of one of the houses he invaded fought back and injured him with a vegetable knife. There were eyewitnesses, physical evidence, and security camera footage, but he evaporated off the face of the earth. There was a big fuss about it. If I recall correctly, the head of the sub-bureau in the district where the work of the investigation was concentrated was relieved of duty. They gave him a nickname, called him One-Eye. He's delivering food. Who's being held in the basement?"

Lu Jia clenched his teeth gently, speaking deliberately: "Lu Guosheng."

Lu Guosheng had lost his mind and privately killed someone for a half-grown child—and it was one thing to kill someone; he'd also slipped up.

Now everyone was paying close attention to the police force's movements. As soon as the police investigation got too close, they could immediately kill Lu Guosheng in an appropriate manner and give the body to the police to close the case with.

Lu Jia's phone vibrated. He picked up and listened for a moment. "President Fei, Weiwei at the Longyun Center says she saw the manager take a few people charging into the security camera room."

"Tell Weiwei to leave at once." Fei Du stepped on the gas pedal. The car accelerated to 180 kilometers per hour. The little gas station was visible up ahead. "Send someone to pick her up."

Lu Jia said, "President Fei, do we act?"

Luo Wenzhou said, "No, wait."

"We can't wait," Lu Jia said heavily. "Officer Luo, are you planning to call for backup? Are you sure it's backup you'll be calling, and not someone who's going to report to the other side?"

Luo Wenzhou held down the fat man's shoulder. Without him appearing to move, Lu Jia's phone appeared in his hand.

Lu Jia said, "You…"

Luo Wenzhou held him back with one hand and quickly dialed a number on his phone. "Hey, Dad, it's me—"

In the Longyun Center, the calm-faced girl leaned against the wall in a corner, listening to the noisy steps nearby. She took a few deep breaths. After they'd gone past, she cautiously darted into the employee passage and quickly slipped out by the back door. The Longyun Center's manager trotted along, puffing as he said, "Young Master Wei really was here that day. He invited a bunch of kids, and they partied until afternoon. They used the Hidden Dragon in the Sky private room."

"I want to know who was in the room that day."

The manager personally went up and quickly searched through the security camera records for that day. He started fast-forwarding when Wei Wenchuan and his assembled friends arrived and continued until all the students had gone away together and the service workers delivering dishes had also left. Occasionally one of the half-grown children left to go to the bathroom; no one else went near the private room.

There was a breath caught in the manager's chest. He only knew that these people came from headquarters. He didn't know what they wanted. He asked hesitantly, "Did President Wei send you to investigate? Does he suspect the young master has picked up some bad friends? These…these all look like kids. Many of them are wearing school uniforms. I don't think there's anything here?"

The person investigating the security camera footage ignored him, frowning heavily.

Nothing?

If there was nothing there, why had the police asked about it? Why would they purposefully mislead them?

"Don't fast-forward. Once again from the top. You guys—search the footage from the other cameras."

At this time, Tao Ran had finally escaped from the crazed parents and was receiving a lecture in Director Lu's office. His phone suddenly rang. It was Luo Wenzhou, once more contacting him after vanishing for half the day.

Tao Ran let out a long breath. "Hey, Captain Luo… Yes, I'm with Director Lu."

As soon as he said "Captain Luo", Lu Youliang raised his head.

He saw Tao Ran's expression suddenly alter. His pitch even went up. "What? You're sure?"

The sub-bureau nearest to the west science park swiftly received orders. The criminal police officers on duty requested additional weapons and hurried towards the scene. At the same time, several police cars charged out of the City Bureau's back gate.

Meanwhile, the "investigator" wrangling over security camera footage in the Longyun Center received a mysterious phone call. He only heard two sentences, and his expression changed. He squeezed a few words out from between his teeth. "Impossible… It's—not—possible! How could they have found it? There's been nothing unusual at the…Beehive…"

At this point, he suddenly remembered the Beehive's driver who'd mysterious disappeared at this critical juncture. His pupils contracted.

Just then, his subordinate said, "Wait a minute, something's wrong. Ten minutes have been cut out between 12:05 and 12:15. It doesn't link up."

"Fuck!"

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Author's note:

(9) For the sake of clarity I'd like to pause here to say that there are two different last names written out as Lu at play here: 陆 (lù, fourth tone, means "land" or "continent"), which is Lu Youliang and Lu Jia's surname, and 卢 (lú, second tone, can mean "black" but is mostly a surname or used in phonetic spellings of loan words), which is Lu Guosheng and his late unlamented brother's surname.