5 A Railroad Worker's Freedom

 

There was solitude and then there was loneliness, one was voluntary and one was not. When you could tell whether the tracks had malfunctioned from sound alone; when you had worn the pages of a porn mag until it was fraying, you had officially crossed from the former into the latter.

Now let us view a day from a railroad worker’s perspective. At 5 am, he woke up from the simple wooden bed, he perused the porn mag while he had his breakfast. Why? Because the pages were stained with oil, saliva and of course semen. He then left the humble abode to inspect the tracks, he needed to check this stretch of road, that reasonably no one would ever visit, daily. Because even if there was a small problem with the rail, a whole train of people could die. It would take 2 hours to cover the entire track within his responsibility, which went from the crime scene to the tunnel and back. He had to make these rounds twice a day, once in the morning, another at night.

5 years after he started this job, he uncovered his wife cheating on him and they divorced. 15 years later, his son was 17 and fell by the wayside to join a gang. If he stayed at his post for 3 more days, he would have worked the job for a full 20 years. But as fate would have it, this hardworking railroad worker died underneath the train tracks that he inspected every day.

When his son was 17, his son raised his fist at him for the first time. He looked at his son which was at least a full head taller than he was and the father was silent for a long time. This was his first time being a father and he had no father when he was a child, so he had no idea how to be a good father. He did not smoke but his son did, he did not drink but his son did. He wrote in his work diary, ‘from that day onwards, I feel like I’ve failed my son.’

As we mentioned earlier, there was loneliness and solitude. In the first 15 years when he started the job, he was lonely but in the later 5 years, he was solitary. He had a family home but he chose to spend the rest of his life inside this wooden hut. He would purchase a week’s worth of food even though most of the vegetables would wilt on the second day.

When you did not know how to face a person, the best solution was to avoid them completely. That was Luo Yongjun’s choice of method. For the 5 long years, other than to place his salary on the table at his family home on the 1st of every month, he never returned home. In other words, Luo Yongjun had not seen his son since he was 40. If not for the fact that the money would disappear every month, he could easily imagine that he never had a son. If you could spend 5 years in solitude without any interaction with anyone, congratulations, you were either a genius or a madman.

In any case, every individual faced with loneliness needed some kind of method to unwind. Some turned to movies, others to music and naturally Luo Yongjun had his own channel as well. 3 years ago, for a lack of things to do, Luo Yongjun tried to jerk off while he stood beside the tracks. He did it sometimes in the day and other times, at night. Whenever a trail howled past him, a unique sensation flowed through Luo Yongjun, he had never felt freer and more courageous in his life. He found courage through exhibitionism. Riding on this high, he would gather the courage to curse at the wife who cheated on him and to confront the son who had disappointed him. He became the most courageous individual in the world. He unloaded at the trains, as if challenging the passengers inside them to look at him.

However, the high would leave him before he could ever do anything that he set out to do and he returned to the same old Luo Yongjun. He tapped on the train tracks and used his ears to ensure the train passengers’ safety. In the long 5 years, Luo Yongjun had considered suicide before. He knew how powerful a train was. He knew that by lying down on the tracks, everything would be over before he knew it. He would think about it for 3 minutes and then give up. He was afraid of life but he was even more afraid of death.

Sin was sometimes only a thought away. The rain soaked her clothes and they enhanced the woman’s voluptuous curves. Drawing from an unknown store of courage, Luo Yongjun decided to follow and take advantage of this hapless woman. He had worked at this place for almost 20 years, he knew every nook and cranny. He hid inside the underground passage that he knew the woman would have to pass. When she did, he opened the lid and dragged the woman down into the darkness. The lighting blinded Lee Chunzhuang and that was the moment Zhang Xutong disappeared from his sight. Luo Yongjun was then clambering over his prey’s delicious, supple body. Zhang Xutong struggled but naturally it was to no avail. The thunder swallowed out her screams. Lee Chunzhuang never heard his wife’s calls for help.

Initially, Lee Yongjun never intended to kill Zhang Xutong but lust got the better of him. He vented his 20 years of helplessness and cowardice onto Zhang Xutong. Asphyxiation was Zhang Xutong’s real cause of death. The coroner believed that the killer cut off Zhang Xutong’s air supply by forcing wet clothes over the woman’s face. After killing Zhang Xutong, Luo Yongjun hanged her on the iron fence aboveground.

In the blurriness of the rainy night, he saw someone approach. In his panic to escape, he did not have the time to remove the wooden board and chair. He hid inside the underground passage to observe and then he was given a show that he would never forget. He saw someone stand before the woman’s body and started to feast on her. Luo Yongjun vomited. Compared to this new arrival, what he did was nothing. Eventually the munching sound stopped, the man appeared to be full already. When Luo Yongjun poked his head out, he saw the man dig out the woman’s eyes and swallowed it down into his gullet. Luo Yongjun felt like his heart was about to stop. That day, he had killed someone for the first time and witnessed cannibalism for the first time. Not long after that, the man left.

Luo Yongjun realized that if he did not remove the chair and wooden board, the crime could be easily traced back to him. He cleared away the footprints and buried the residual ‘food’, chair and wooden board under the tree beside his wooden hut. He sat inside his hut for a long time. Things were mulling through his mind. There were many strong alcohols inside his hut even though he was not a drinker. He had this store because his colleague told him that it was best to have a little alcohol in him before he went out to patrol at night. He never understood the reason why. When he asked for the reason, the person said it was to gather courage to face ghosts lurking in the night. Luo Yongjun chuckled, he was more afraid than humans than ghosts. Thus the bottles of alcohol remained untouched at his hut… that was until yesterday when he took all the bottles out and downed them in go. The man probably drunk himself to his death because the last sentence in his work diary was, ‘I finally found the courage to die today.’

Luo Yongjun had 2 work diaries, one to record the details of his daily work report and the other to record his daily emotional journey. We found out about the man’s crime and confession in the second workbook. If a person had no one to talk to, they would have to talk to themselves. Luo Yongjun wrote down everything that he had to say inside the second book. If not for the murder, Luo Yongjun would never have surfaced on our radar, he was destined to be forgotten.

The officer closed the book and concluded, “That was how the crime happened. Zhang Xutong came here, was raped and then killed by Luo Yongjun. She was then eaten by Lee Chunzhuang. After Lee Chunzhuang left, Luo Yongjun reappeared to clean up all the traces. In the end, under the pressure of guilt, he committed suicide.”

“That does look like it.” Captain Zhao said, “At least according to that book.”

“He is not the killer.” I said with certainty.

Captain Zhao turned to glance at me. “Indeed there are many questionable points. Even though I cannot confirm whether Luo Yongjun is the killer or not, the evidence stacks up against him. So how did you come to your conclusion?” Director Zhao’s question was clearly aimed at me. I looked around and shrugged. “You wouldn’t believe me but it’s because I cannot see myself as Luo Yongjun. He’s not the killer in my imagination. How about this, I’ll tell you how I manage to determine why Luo Yongjun is not the killer after we have solved all the loopholes and questions?”

Mary rolled her eyes at me, “Your mind trick is clearly unreliable, that has been proven already. I don’t see how it’ll be any different this time.”

Captain Zhao though found this quite interesting. He said, “If our investigation does prove that Luo Yongjun is not the killer, I’ll do one thing for you, how about that?”

“You have a deal!”

“Loopholes?” Xiao Liu couldn’t see any loopholes. “Luo Yongjun has explained the whole process, including how he murdered the woman, where he buried the evidence and his story coincided with what Lee Chunzhuang said and saw. Where is the loophole?”

Captain Zhao explained, “There are plenty of them, if you can clarify all of them, I’ll close this case immediately. 1, why would Zhang Xutong come to this secluded spot so late at night while it was also raining heavily?; 2, why would Luo Yongjun hang the woman’s body on the fence?; 3, after burying all the evidence, why did Luo Yongjun return to the underground passage?; 4, the crime scene is so close to the spot where the electrical wire got cut off, was that just a coincidence?”

The 4 questions stumped Xiao Liu. He stammered for a long time before saying, “Erm, I’ll keep my mouth shut…”

I was impressed by Captain Zhao’s ability to see these incongruities. There was a reason he was the special crime unit leader. He had listed out all the main problems with this case. If they were not answered, the case couldn’t be closed.

Finally Luo Yongjun’s managers arrived, they perhaps did not know Luo Yongjun existed in their company roster. After being explained the case details, a large-bellied manager scratched his head to say, “This Luo Yongjun is so dumb, why did he string the body up on the fence, wouldn’t it be easier for him to dumb the body on the tracks and have the train do the rest?” Captain Zhao and I lifted our heads to look at the manager at the same time. He quivered under our gaze and explained quickly, “Of course, I was just rambling. I wouldn’t know what was going inside a crazy man’s mind…”

I went to shake his hand. “Sir, do you have any intention of joining the law enforcement?”