Late at night. The serious crimes division.
The office lights had been turned off. The only light came from the warm white desk lamp on Zhou Jin’s table.
She had been resting with her head down on her arms, but before long she emerged from beneath her thin blanket, the shadows under her eyes slightly deepened, her expression carrying a faint weariness.
The time was three in the morning.
She rubbed her disheveled hair. Sleep was out of the question now. She bit her lip in frustration.
She thought to herself: Jiang Hansheng must have gotten away with a great deal on account of his looks. Otherwise, how had she let herself be so thoroughly beguiled — letting him slip past her so easily?
Zhou Jin had gone in with an unwavering resolve to get to the bottom of everything, only to be smoothly sidetracked by a few vague words from a man who was half-drunk. She had tried time and again to steer the conversation back on course, but Jiang Hansheng hadn’t answered — he had simply looked at her with quiet seriousness, a smile gathering at the corner of his lips, giving nothing away about what was going on behind those eyes.
I remember Zhou Jin.
Zhou Jin rubbed the tips of her ears, which had gone strangely warm, then picked up her phone and sent Jiang Hansheng a message.
“Does your head hurt?”
“Last time I made some honey water and left it in the fridge. Remember to drink a glass when you wake up.”
Zhou Jin was still deliberating over the wording, thinking over what else she ought to remind him of, when Bai Yang called before she could send it.
She quickly pressed to answer. “What’s happened?”
Bai Yang said: “Come save the world.”
His voice sounded a little hoarse — he was clearly exhausted. Zhou Jin grabbed a can of cola and brought it over to him.
When she arrived at the technical division, Bai Yang saw her hold out the cola and, in a rare deviation, shook his head at his beloved beverage. “I’ve got a fever. I’m drinking hot water.”
Zhou Jin: “Why didn’t you swap shifts with someone?”
“It’s nothing serious — one tablet and it’ll pass.” Bai Yang coughed a few times. “Come take a look at the surveillance footage.”
“You got something on camera?”
Zhou Jin was mildly taken aback. She hadn’t expected the first breakthrough to come from surveillance footage.
She hadn’t held out much hope for that particular line of inquiry at the start.
This wasn’t the killer’s first time. Before murdering Chen Xiaoyu, he had already killed three women in succession in Ningyuan and Jingang — and had calmly managed the crime scenes each time. The killer’s methods were, by any measure, extremely refined. How could he have been this careless?
Bai Yang frowned. “It was caught on camera, but…”
He didn’t elaborate, and simply pulled up the footage directly.
“According to the statements of Chen Xiaoyu’s friends, the last time they saw her was at an underground concert inside a bar called ONE. I pulled the surveillance footage from the surrounding area and confirmed that on the night of Chen Xiaoyu’s murder, she returned home with a man.”
The computer screen cast its cold white glow across Zhou Jin’s face. She stared fixedly at the footage.
Chen Xiaoyu came into frame. Although her back was to the camera, she was immediately recognizable — her vivid red dress drew the eye like a flame.
The man with his arm around her was dressed entirely in black, nearly dissolving into the darkness. He was very tall; beside him, Chen Xiaoyu looked slight and delicate, like a small bird sheltered against him.
In a few of the frames, Chen Xiaoyu had her arms around his shoulders, and the two shared a brief kiss.
To any passerby, they would have appeared to be nothing more than two people deeply in love — nothing to arouse the slightest suspicion.
Zhou Jin’s mind immediately went back to something Jiang Hansheng had said.
In the Huaiguang serial murder case, none of the victims had shown any restraint injuries. In the early stages, they had at least willingly brought the killer home themselves.
Qi Yan was dead. The man on the screen now was merely someone who had followed in his footsteps — yet this was no crude imitation. In terms of criminal method, he was a match for Qi Yan.
But after reviewing all the available footage, Zhou Jin frowned and noticed something off almost immediately.
She asked: “There’s no shot of his face?”
Bai Yang launched into his litany of grievances: “That’s exactly the problem. He seems to have deliberately avoided the cameras. Then he got Chen Xiaoyu into a car, and we never got a single clear shot of his face. And the license plate — it was fake.”
Zhou Jin asked: “What about the surveillance cameras near Chen Xiaoyu’s home?”
Bai Yang answered: “The Lishui residential complex is an older development — not many functioning cameras to speak of. I swept through everything available. Nothing of note.”
Zhou Jin bit her lip, thought for a moment, then said to Bai Yang: “Pull that last clip back up again — double speed, one more time.”
Bai Yang brought the footage up again. Zhou Jin dragged a chair over and sat down, watching it through again and again.
During the intervals, Bai Yang went to get himself a cup of hot water, took his fever medication, then settled back in front of the screen.
After roughly four passes, Zhou Jin suddenly told Bai Yang to pause, and pointed to a black car in the corner of the frame. “That car.”
With their backs to the camera, Chen Xiaoyu and the man were walking toward it. They passed alongside it and then disappeared from view.
“Keep playing.”
The footage continued. About ten minutes or so later, the black car slowly started up.
Bai Yang blinked. “Someone was sitting in it?”
Zhou Jin said: “We might be able to retrieve the dashcam footage. Can you get the license plate number?”
Bai Yang said: “That’s easy enough.”
He pulled up a different angle of the footage, and after some enhancement, the license plate came into sharp focus — Hai D · 2A523.
Zhou Jin gave Bai Yang a pat on the shoulder. “You can knock off for tonight. Send the plate number to Zhao Ping and have him run it.”