Raining money sounded like a dream but that happened in real life that day at Dong Xing City. This was not some kind of miracle, it was because a toy plane was flying around carrying an open bag which was filled with cash. As a big city, the citizens of Dong Xing City were familiar with US Dollars, but they were not familiar with US Dollars raining down from the sky, especially when they were all 100 USD notes. They had never loved Ben Franklin as much as they did that day. 100 USD was about 600 RMB and most people wouldn’t be able to earn 600 RMB in a day. Therefore, it was literally worth more fighting for the raining money than to go to work.
10,000,000 RMB equaled to around 1,500,000 USD so there were 15000 dollars notes fluttering through the air. You could literally reach into the air or bend down to earn cash. However, the bag on the toy plane was not big enough to fit 15000 notes, therefore, I had reasons to believe there were several similar planes flying around Dong Xing City. In other words, the whole city’s traffic was on shutdown and our team had to walk to continue our investigation. No wonder the kidnappers asked for the money only when Liu Yinyan came to meet them at the factory, they never wanted the money, they only needed to use it to slow the police down.
“They must still be within 1000 metres!” I shouted. “The maximum control range for this kind of toy plane is 1000 metres, Xiao Liu and I have experimented on it ourselves. They’ll go out of control when they move beyond 1000 metres!” Just as I said that, the toy airplane teetered dangerously in the air, it looked like it was about to do a crash landing. This meant that the kidnappers had already escaped more than 1000 metres away. The bag that crash-landed still had a lot of money in it. The people were like zombies seeing brains, they all jumped at it.
We had to wade through the crazed crowd, pushing away people to move forward. However, the allure of the money was too high. Fights started to break out for the money. The situation was getting more and more chaotic. At that moment, I had to admit this was the worst operation we had ever had. We were completely played by the kidnappers. Each move that we made, every clue that we had was basically calculated, predicted and even given to us by the kidnappers. At the end of the case, we got nothing but a big present—a dead Liu Yinyan.
What kind of man was Wu Zui under that mask? He was ruthless, cunning, well-versed in psychology, he had studied anti-surveillance, he was familiar with investigative protocol. He had a group of capable underlings working for him. He didn’t need money, he literally showered them on others. I was suddenly reminded of the term Captain Zhao always repeated—born criminal.
I stood in the middle of the street, jostled about by the crowd. Looking at the skyscrapers, I ruminated over what Wu Zui told me, ‘You’re very talented but if you do not utilize it, you’ll end up a common man.’
“Wu Zui, one day, I will personally capture you.”
…
2 hours later, all the police forces were gathered in one room. This operation was a complete failure. The kidnappers escaped before most even saw a glimpse of them. Everyone was feeling down. An operation of this scale was not common even at Dong Xing City. Inside the conference room, the station head had been scolding people for an hour already. Captain Zhao had almost the same standing as he did so he couldn’t berate Captain Zhao directly but the intention was clear. Liu Yinyan’s case was valued heavily by the city centre, and it ended with Liu Yinyan’s death and Liu Fei’er’s rescue.
The few of us stood outside the room, not knowing what to say. Gu Chen sighed and asked me, “How is your arm?”
I answered, “The doctor said I have pulled a muscle and I shouldn’t use my right arm too often for the foreseeable future. I’ll have to use my left hand for everything now.” I shrugged and wanted to make a joke but I realized I wasn’t in the mood.
“How did the case end up like this? Do you know how big the influence Liu Yinyan’s death will bring?!” The station head was still scolding, “Did he have time to set up a will? What about his company? Who is going to lead Rong Ding Corporation now? What about the company stock? Do you know how many people will lose their jobs because of this? How many of them will turn to crime to survive? How could you people fail to even look after one single person…” Economy was the lifeline of a city. Above the station head, there was possibly someone else breathing down on him.
There were around 8 kidnappers but we caught not one of them, except a dead Chen Lin and an abandoned Lin Dafa. But those two were presents given to us by the kidnappers. However, in this case, I still had a few questions that bothered me. I had tried to ask Wu Zui about them but he didn’t answer me. For one, why were they so careful to not expose their tracks at the beginning but then act so flagrantly near the end? There was only a 3 days gap in between. What changed in those 3 days? For another, how did Wu Zui know so many of Liu Fei’er’s secrets, secrets that her father didn’t even know. Where did Wu Zui get these facts? And how could he be sure Liu Fei’er wouldn’t lie?
One day later, Liu Fei’er inherited all of Liu Yinyan’s estate. Turns out before Liu Yinyan left for the factory, he already made his will. He knew he wouldn't return. In that way, he was a good father. Unfortunately, the time had passed for Liu Fei’er to have her finger reattached. Also we finally got to meet Liu Fei’er’s mother. She was statuesque, gorgeous. She invited us to lunch because we saved her daughter. We didn’t say much during lunch. She kept serving us food. Liu Fei’er and her mother were quite adept at using chopsticks, but one was left-handed and the other right-handed. In contrast, as a pure Chinese, I could only use a spoon with my left hand.
“I’m sorry about your father.” I apologized to Liu Fei’er.
“Thank you, Wu Meng.” Liu Fei’er nodded and lifted her glass of wine. “I was there when everything went down. It wasn’t your fault.” Then tears dripped into her glass. “My dad was already 70, he has already lived a good life. In any case, thank you for saving me. Without you, I wouldn’t be here now.” I clinked our glass. At that moment, something strange grabbed at me but I couldn’t tell what it was.
The lunch was quite depressing, but during the limited conversations, we did find out that the Russian mother did hire a team of PI, but for some reason, her email didn’t reach Jessie’s PI but instead was intercepted by others. The person who was behind this had to be a tech expert. And they had to know when Liu Fei’er’s mother fired off that email to intercept it in time. Something was fishy. But at the dining table, I didn’t bring any of these up. I silently finished the meal.
When we returned to the station, the punishment was meted out. Captain Zhao took on all the blame and was demoted a rank. However, since Captain Zhao belonged to a special unit, technically a demotion was meaningless. And for us, this failure meant that we wouldn’t be participating in any big cases any time soon. Other than Xiao Liu who looked quite downtrodden, the 3 of us were fine with it. Gu Chen was on the reserved team, Guan Zhenglin was still a student and I wasn’t even on the government payroll. So Xiao Liu got the short end of the stick. “This is already good enough.” Xiao Liu consoled himself. “At least I wasn’t demoted back to a patrol guard. Anyway, I’m going to buy myself a lottery ticket. Perhaps my luck will turn.” Seeing Xiao Liu walking away with dragging steps, we had complicated emotions.
“So the case ends like that?” Gu Chen picked up a handful of pebbles and tossed them against the ground. “This is our first failed case and I still find it hard to accept. Fuck, when I run into them again, I’ll headshot all of them.” I watched as the pebbles bounced against the floor. My right hand reached subconsciously for the pebbles but then the jolt of pain reminded me of my injury. The pain also loosened something in my mind, I looked at my right hand dumbly.
“What are you looking at?” Guan Zhenglin noticed this and said, “Your arm will take at least a month to heal. Your arm has literally no muscle and you hung onto that girl for so long, you should be thankful that your arm isn’t broken.”
Shaking my head, I stood up. “I’ve been feeling that something’s not right with this case and it finally came to me when I wanted to use my right hand earlier.”
“What is it?” Both of them asked.
“If both the parents are right-handed, could they give birth to a left-handed child?” I asked Guan Zhenglin, “I don’t know genetics so I’ll have to ask you that.”
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