Chapter 13

The wall clock in the living room had been taken down. Just as Nie Zhiyan had expected, the hole behind it led straight into Wang Bin’s father’s room. They had eyewitness and physical evidence, a motive, and the means. Every clue seemed to point to Wang Bin.

“He isn’t the killer.” Wan Tong swept aside the old curtain and declared, with absolute certainty, “Or rather, Wang Bin had an accomplice.”

Everyone in the room turned to look at her.

“I did it.” The living room door creaked open. A man wearing glasses, carrying a boy of about eight in his arms, set the child down and told the woman beside him, “Take Maomao inside.”

He limped over to a stool and sat down without a trace of panic.

“Officer, I’ll confess. I killed Lin Shengfu.”

Ma Zhao reflexively pulled out his pen and began taking notes.

Wang Bin began by explaining how Lin Shengfu had withheld his wages. “I trusted Chairman Lin, so we made a verbal agreement. If we settled out of court, they’d pay me right away. That hundred thousand yuan was for my son’s surgery. But Lin didn’t pay me. He used the situation to fire me, then hired people to beat me. That’s how I ruined my leg. I hated him for it. I’d wanted him dead for a long time.”

“Go on. Tell us how you did it,” Ma Zhao said.

“It was Maomao’s birthday. Two friends came over to drink and chat. Around nine, I made an excuse to leave. I killed Lin Shengfu and buried the body, then went home and changed the clock so I’d have an alibi. After my friends left, I got scared the truth would come out, so I dug up the body, drove it to Liuyang Village in West District, Binnan City, and burned it.”

“What was the license plate on the car with the cloned plates?” Wan Tong had checked the vehicle already. “Jiang BHE329?”

“Jiang BHE329.”

“The night of the second, that car stopped for gas at the Xiaojiabian service station. You weren’t driving. Explain that.” The girl pressed on.

“I—I had trouble walking, so I paid someone to drive for me.” Wang Bin’s nails dug into his palm as he unconsciously picked at the flesh over his knee. His face was taut with nerves. He rarely lied, and now, with everyone watching, each lie he told felt like a struggle to breathe.

Wan Tong saw the truth in his eyes. He was trying to take the blame for the killer. She slapped two printed photographs onto the table, her voice rising with emotion. “Wang Bin, you have elderly parents, a young child, and a wife who recently lost a baby. Who would make you take the fall for them?”

“I…” The mention of his family struck his weakest point. His eyes reddened at once.

The child in the room had been frightened into tears. Wang Bin’s wife held him, resting her chin gently on his head as she patted his back. Tears slipped silently down her face.

The old man had only just learned what was going on. His face flushed with rage. He snatched up a bench from behind Nie Zhilan and charged forward, but the two sisters stopped him.

“Sir, please calm down. We won’t let anyone take the blame for something they didn’t do. We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Nie Zhilan said, taking the bench from his hands.

“You little bastard! If you dare leave the three of us to go to prison, I’ll kill myself right here! You—you… Have you even thought about Maomao? His father’s a murderer, doing time in prison. How’s that boy supposed to hold his head up?” The old man grew more agitated with every word. He braced himself against the wall, hunched over and coughing as he struggled for breath.

“Dad.” Wang Bin bit down hard on his lip and said nothing.

Outside, the neighbors crowded behind the cordon, talking over one another. A boy in a black shirt had somehow slipped past the tape. Before the civilian police could stop him, he ran into the living room and dropped to his knees in front of Wang Bin.

“Ah, ah, ah.” He clung to Wang Bin’s hand, pointed at Nie Zhilan, bowed repeatedly, then mimed slitting someone’s throat.

As he gestured wildly, Wan Tong studied him closely. Behind his ear were two moles, positioned and spaced exactly as they were in the photograph.

Wang Bin shook his head and tried to pull him up. The boy bent forward and knocked his head against the floor three times. Tears and snot streamed down his face. He cried, “Ah, ah,” snatched the pen from Ma Zhao, and began writing furiously.

“I killed him. Uncle Wang had nothing to do with it. That woman wanted to investigate the case, so I decided to teach her a lesson.”

The first day Nie Zhilan had come to Leilong County, she had eaten at the Late-Night Noodle House. Wang Bin and Yang Fan had been sitting at the table behind her. They had heard every detail of the conversation between the woman and the couple. Yang Fan had planned to attack Nie Zhilan that very night, but he saw the gun at her waist. Other officers arrived soon afterward, so he abandoned the idea. He had followed her for days. Tonight, he happened to see her come downstairs alone in plain clothes, with no gun at her waist. He decided to go through with it—but the woman he encountered had been Nie Zhiyan.

“I killed him, drove the body up the mountain, then hurried back down. I ran into Uncle Wang and told him what happened.”

The soil on Ximeng Mountain was thin. Wang Bin realized that things had gone too far, and he didn’t want Yang Fan’s future ruined, so he decided to cover for him. After seeing his friends off, the two of them took the body to West District to burn it. They hoped the area was so large and sparsely populated that no one would report anything. If the police did investigate, Wang Bin had hidden Lin Shengfu’s clothes at home so he could take the blame. He had Yang Fan identify him to clear the boy of suspicion. He had even deliberately changed the clock to manufacture an alibi. Every detail pointed back to Wang Bin.

Nie Zhilan picked up a pen and was about to write something when the boy handed her the words he had already written.

“You can speak. I can hear you.” She noticed a brand-new hearing aid behind his ear.

Nie Zhilan’s expression darkened. “Yang Fan, why did you kill Lin Shengfu?”

The boy sat down cross-legged on the floor and wrote carefully. “Boss Lin broke his promise. He deserved to die. He fired Uncle Wang. He deserved to die. The hundred thousand yuan was for my surgery. I didn’t need to rely on a hearing aid before. He deserved to die.”

“No, that’s not right, son. Lin Shengfu was in the hospital with heart disease around that time. He left everything else to other people to handle. He worked his way up from Wanyuan Township, and he donated a lot of money to build schools. You know that, don’t you? Just like your Uncle Wang, he supported countless children left behind by their parents over the past decade. He was a good man.”

The boy’s expression shifted. His gaze grew colder. “He also hired people to beat Uncle Wang. Auntie Wang got sick, and the baby died.”

“Yang Fan, Boss Lin had a daughter about your age. She’s taking the college entrance exam tomorrow. What you did will condemn her to endless grief.” Wan Tong thought of Lin Yueyue. She felt sorry for the boy, but she was even angrier with him. There were plenty of ways to settle a conflict. Why choose murder?

Wang Bin took a tissue and wiped Yang Fan’s face, cleaning away his tears and snot. Then he helped the boy up and sat him at the table to write. He explained everything to Wan Tong one sentence at a time.

“Officer, Yang Fan never knew his parents. His grandmother raised him. My wife taught him to read and write, and when he was old enough, we sent him to school. He was shy by nature, and the other kids bullied him. All he could do was hide. But he was smart and well-behaved, always near the top of his class. He got into the county’s best high school at fifteen. Then, at the beginning of this year, he got seriously ill and never fully recovered. I taught him to hide his condition. He’d act crazy now and then, and people stopped picking on him.”

“I know Yang Fan committed a crime. But he’s young, and his grandmother is sixty. Could you take that into account and go easy on him?” The limping man took a couple of steps toward the officers and clasped his hands together, looking at them earnestly as he pleaded for the boy.

Nie Zhilan answered at once. “That isn’t up to us. The law is the law. But Yang Fan turned himself in, and that should be taken into consideration.”

“Yang Fan just turned eighteen. How did he get a driver’s license?” Ma Zhao, who was taking notes, needed to clarify every detail. Once Wang Bin had regained his balance, he continued questioning him.

“He’s been learning to drive from me since he was little. A couple of months ago, the township started offering support to people with disabilities. He got his license after a little over a month.”

“The day after the murder, you sent Zheng Hailian a voice message on WeChat, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Boss Lin traveled a lot. I hoped his family wouldn’t report him missing right away. The longer it took, the harder the body would be to find.” Wang Bin answered openly, holding nothing back.

Nie Zhilan lowered her head and covered her face. After a moment’s thought, she looked up and nodded to the civilian police beside her. They could take the men in.

“All right. Come with us to the station. We still need to fill in some details, and we’ll continue questioning you tomorrow.” Zhu Fang took out his handcuffs and stepped forward, cuffing Yang Fan’s hands, then Wang Bin’s.

The boy stared at Zhu Fang in shock and disbelief. “Ah, ah, ah,” he cried, the sounds from his throat clearly protesting.

Nie Zhilan knew what he objected to. She added, “Wang Bin helped you carry out the murder. The Procuratorate will file charges against him too. The court will decide what happens next.”

Zhu Fang, Ma Zhao, and another officer escorted the two men to the car. Wan Tong and Nie Zhilan followed. Before leaving, Nie Zhiyan turned back and went into the small room. She pulled a piece of fruit candy from her pocket and slipped it into the fist of the little boy who was standing there. Then she smiled, patted his head, and said gently, “Maomao, your dad helped a lot of people who were in trouble. He’ll always be someone you can look up to.”

The night was deep and dark. Nie Zhilan returned to the Wanyuan Township Police Station to finish up the paperwork. An officer from Leilong County would accompany them back to Binnan to assist with the investigation.

Wan Tong, Nie Zhiyan, Nie Zhilan, and another officer rode together. By the time they were halfway there, Nie Zhiyan had fallen asleep. Wan Tong narrowed her eyes at the college entrance exam information on her phone, as if a thought had just struck her. She bent forward and tapped the shoulder of Nie Zhilan, who was sitting in the passenger seat.

“Captain Nie, Captain Nie.”

“What?”

“Little Wan, sit back. There’s a sharp turn coming up,” the officer at the wheel warned.

But before he could finish, the car turned. Wan Tong lost her balance and the momentum sent her pitching to the right, straight into the lap of the woman sitting there.

Before she could even figure out what had happened, a furious roar rang through the night.

“Wan Xiaotong!”