102 Traitor Among Us

 

Lin Dafa sobered up immediately when we brought up his daughter. When he was in jail, a ruffian was killed simply because he joked about having sex with his daughter. For Lin Dafa, his daughter was his whole world. “My daughter.” Lin Dafa closed his eyes and his eyelids twitched. “My daughter’s life was ruined so I went to ruin his life, unfortunately he died too soon. I was my family’s butcher when I was young. A livestock could live much longer with the same wound to their neck.” Lin Dafa shook his head and said. “One time, I was told by my mother to slaughter a chicken because we had a guest. To my surprise, the chicken managed to run out from the yard after the head was chopped off. When I caught up to it, it had almost gotten to the village gate. Tell me, how can animal life be so sturdy but human life so fragile?” He opened his eyes, “I really didn’t intend to kill that bastard, I only cut off his penis and balls so that he wouldn’t be able to hurt anymore girls. But later I found out, AIDS could still be transmitted through blood. No wonder they say knowledge is power, if I knew that back then, I would have bled him dry.”

Lin Dafa told us the incident from 4 years ago, like this was the last time he had the chance to tell the story from his perspective.

“That’s not what I asked!” Captain Zhao interrupted, “You’ve kidnapped a young girl, have you not considered she’s someone daughter as well? Your own daughter is worth killing for but not other people’s daughter? Tell me where is Liu Fei’er now! Who is there among your group?!” Captain Zhao demanded.

Lin Dafa shrugged and said, “I only care about my own daughter, how is other people’s daughter my business? I’m not her father. But honestly, if her father decides to come kill me, I’ll have nothing to say about it but do you know where her father is now? Where has he been up to?” Hearing that, the 4 of us all stared at Lin Dafa, he seemed to have a meaning hidden behind his words. Captain Zhao stood up and pointed at Lin Dafa. “Lin Dafa! What is it that you people are up to?” At the same time, Captain Zhao gave a signal to someone beyond the one-sided glass, telling them to look up Liu Yinyan.

Lin Dafa chuckled. “I have no idea what they’re up to, perhaps they just want to play. After I became a fugitive, I only realized how interesting this world is and how many interesting souls there are. I was so ignorant. But now I understand pure adrenaline alone can be someone’s religion and life source!”

“Don’t you want to see your daughter before you die?” Captain Zhao suggested with a threat.

“My daughter?” Lin Dafa scoffed and hissed through his teeth, “Do you think I’ve not seen her? Let me ask you, how can I know my daughter is really with the police? I’ve been through this before, you want to trick the info out from me? In your dreams!” Lin Dafa growled, “The show is only starting, so just sit back and relax! The girl you’re looking for is called Liu Fei’er, isn’t it? Well, I’ve heard you’ve found her. No wait, you’ve found her finger. That’s better than nothing, right?”

“Motherfucker!” Gu Chen couldn’t stand this anymore, he crossed the distance to stand before Lin Dafa. Without warning, Gu Chen gave the man a gut punch. “Tell me, where is Liu Fei’er, who are your partners, what is your goal?” The punch landed squarely on Lin Dafa’s stomach, I saw his face grimace from pain but he was still laughing, “You’re not getting anything from me. If you dare then, kill me. I was supposed to die 3 years ago, I’ve already stolen 3 more years and did so many things I thought I’d never get the chance to do. I have no regrets.” Another punch on the stomach. Lin Dafa dry-heaved. “Good, hit me. Kill me! Let me die!”

With this kind of criminal who had no demands and weakness, no one could get anything out of him. Gu Chen wanted to launch another punch but Captain Zhao stopped him. “Gu Chen, don’t waste your energy.” Gu Chen looked at Lin Dafa and pulled back. “Leave him be.” Captain Zhao said and walked out. As we filed out from the interrogation room, Lin Dafa shouted at us, “Hey, why are you leaving? I’m not done talking yet! You’ll never find anything! Do you have even a small piece of clue? I’m your biggest lead. Where are you going? Come back here!”

I looked through the glass and saw Lin Dafa struggle against the cuffs. His face was red and his body was hunching over. He howled to get our response. It was like a banshee shrieking.

Xiao Liu called and Captain Zhao put it on speaker.

“This is bad! This is bad!” Xiao Liu said anxiously, “I just went to the toilet and Liu Yinyan disappeared! Not only Liu Yinyan, even his butler did as well. I asked the other maids and servants, they all said the two have gone to the police station. But that can’t be!” Xiao Liu concluded, “This morning, Liu Yinyan just chased us out of his house so how could he have gone to the police station? But all of them gave me the same answer. They said Liu Yinyan have gotten a call from the police and left immediately!”

“Fuck” Captain Zhao who was normally so calm, cursed, “It’s not carelessness that led Lin Dafa to us, I suspect the kidnappers had purposely sent him to us, but why? And why is it that the moment our monitoring of the phone line in the Liu household got cut off, the call from the kidnappers came in?”

Lin Dafa was still creating a ruckus inside the interrogation room but honestly, he didn’t need to do that. We had gained a lot of valuable info from his words. Lin Dafa was careless when he said, ‘do you know where her father is now?’ That meant that before Lin Dafa was apprehended, he already knew what the kidnappers were going to do next. However Lin Dafa was caught when he went out to purchase a morning smoke, so how did the kidnappers know that Gu Chen was laying an ambush at the tobacco shop?

A thought popped up in my mind, one that chilled me to the core.

“Mary, go and check the bungalow’s surrounding surveillance, see if you can track Liu Yinyan’s movement.” Captain Zhao ordered. “Xiao Liu, bring a group of people around the area and see if anyone has seen Liu Yinyan.”

“Understood.” The two answered. Just as the call with Xiao Liu ended, another call came in. Captain Zhao picked up. “This is Zhao Shilin, who are you, what is your business?”

“Captain Zhao!” The man on the other end said, “I’m Captain Wang from Luo Bei City’s police station. Based on your request, we’ve located Lin Rong’s home. We visited her multiple times but she was never there. So we interviewed her neighbours and finally got her latest news from her best friend. Turns out Lin Rong is no longer in Luo Bei City.” Captain Zhao frowned. “She’s not in Luo Bei City? Then do you know where she is now?”

The man appeared to not hear the severity in Captain Zhao’s tone because he continued in a chuckle, “It’s interesting that you asked. Based on what her best friend told us, Lin Rong said she was going to Dong Xing City about a month ago. So Lin Rong is probably there for a month already, isn’t that something? The person you’re looking for is in your own city. By the way, I heard…” Before the man finished, Captain Zhao hung up. After a moment’s silence, he said, “Lin Dafa has probably seen his daughter before and I believe she is with the kidnappers. Lin Rong should be safe with them as long as Lin Dafa continues to work for them. But he understood that once he did something that was averse to the team, Lin Rong would be in grave danger.”

“Then what should we do now?” Gu Chen asked urgently. “Liu Fei’er is still nowhere to be seen and now even Liu Yinyan has gone missing!” No one had the answer. Suddenly I piped up, “There is a traitor among us!”

“A traitor?” Everyone turned to me.

I turned to Guan Zhenglin. “Do you still have the business card Jessie gave you?” Jessie gave me a name card and I gave it to Guan Zhenglin. She snapped her finger. “I do, I haven’t done my laundry yet so it should be in my coat pocket!” Then she produced the name card. Jessie’s PI Agency, based in Nara, Japan. It was followed by a string of numbers. “Verify the authenticity of this business! Get Sister Mary to help you!” I told Guan Zhenglin. She nodded and moved to oblige. I continued to explain, “Have you noticed that whenever we come up with a new lead, the lead would be curtailed? It happened with the security patrol, Chen Lin and now this timely phone call. The kidnappers are too clever and too brave. Lin Dafa was clearly sent to us by the kidnappers. But to do that, they have to have known Gu Chen was stalking the tobacco shop!” I pulled on my hair and tried to remember, “If we eliminate the possibility of traitors within the force, then the only other party who could know about our movement is Jessie’s group.

“The car that Lin Dafa drove, the one where we found the specialty tobacco was parked at the underground parking lot.” I thought back to the event, “We arrived about the same time as Jessie’s team, wasn’t that a bit too much of a coincidence? And then he practically led us to Lin Dafa’s car! Of course, the car was spotless because he didn’t expect us to find anything from it. However, he missed something.

“He was not expecting Doggie Wang Er. If not for Doggie Wang Er, we wouldn’t have found the tobacco and wouldn’t have traced that to Lin Dafa. When that happened, he knew he had to cut off Lin Dafa. But before that, he decided to use the man to lead us on a wild goose chase! This was his design all along!”

“Found it.” Guan Zhenglin shouted from a distance, “There is indeed a Jessie’s PI Agency at Nara but none of its agents has any record of entering China recently!”