193 The Child

 

The story ended there abruptly.

The story was very slow and every day. If we didn’t know this was a killer story, we would assume this was a diary by Ol’ Wang. From the diary, it appeared like the protagonist had lost all passion in life.

He had no passion for work and life. Others treated him as free labor and the children saw him as a dummy. Ol’ Wang knew all these but he didn’t expose them and didn’t feel angry at them.

From the story, we knew Ol’ Wang had an ex-wife but no child. Ol’ Wang divorced 5 years ago due to some unspecified reason. Ol’ Wang’s life was boring. He was like a living dead. The noisy and rowdy world outside had nothing to do with Ol’ Wang.

However, faced with this world, Ol’ Wang had many imaginations. He imagined accidents happening to his colleagues; he imagined having a sex escapade with the widow next door; he imagined the brat would die so he could have peace and quiet. Ol’ Wang hoped for many things but he never put them into action. Finally, after helping others for one last time, Ol’ Wang took a piece of rope and hanged himself. This was Ol’ Wang’s story, a sad yet common story in the big city. Ol Wang’s heart perhaps had died when he had the divorce. So who else would die in the story?

As mentioned earlier, someone had marked the story with a red pen. I noticed that all the characters in the story had been marked. The person was probably thinking who among them would die. After a moment’s silence, Captain Zhao coughed slightly. “I believe everyone is done reading the story. The killer places themselves into the character of Ol’ Wang. Through Ol’ Wang, they described the things a suicidal victim would have encountered and thought about before their death.” We all turned to Captain Zhao. He scanned at all of us and said, “Even though the story is not long, we can clearly isolate a few characters. The first is naturally the protagonist, Ol’ Wang. From the story, I think we can say that he has died from suicide.”

Since no one countered him, Captain Zhao continued, “Then, the character after that is Sister Lee. I doubt she will die, she’s just mentioned in passing. Then three unnamed characters in Ol’ Wang’s imagination.”

At that moment, Captain Lee cut in. “That’s right, our focus should be these 3 imagined scenarios. Ol’ Wang wanted these people to die. The first is the unnamed colleague; the second is the widow. Even though Ol’ Wang didn’t want her dead, she’s important too; the last is the brat, the person Ol’ Wang clearly wanted dead.”

Captain Zhao glanced at Captain Lee. To our surprise, he didn’t say anything. Captain Zhao agreed with Captain Lee.

Captain Zhao nodded. “That does seem to be the case. However, we cannot eliminate the other characters, an auntie who asked Ol’ Wang to help fix her pipe, the old man too lazy to move his own stuff, and the kid who stole 50 RMB from Ol’ Wang.” Captain Zhao turned to me. “What do you think?”

I sighed and pulled on my hair. “If I have to guess, someone must have jumped or pushed down from the building. The final sentence suggested that.” Looking at the roomful of people, I said, “At the end of the story, the killer asked, what is that sound. That is a hint and normally the killer will only supply hints when there is a death. If my guess is not wrong, the fallen victim is a child.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Captain Lee raised his brow and asked with derision.

I looked into his eyes and said, “Instinct and guesswork. If that is the mo this time, a child is easier to toss down the building than an adult.”

Captain Lee shrugged. “We rely on actual evidence and not guesswork. The most important thing now is to find the neighborhood mentioned in the story.”

“But there’s no geographical marker mentioned in the story.” Gu Chen said.

I nodded and said worriedly, “We have a hard time capturing this killer because they never mention a location in the stories. Dong Xing City is so big, to find a neighborhood without any information is too difficult.” After some thought, I told Captain Zhao. “In that case, I believe there will be a story about a child falling from a building tomorrow. Sister Mary, do you mind paying attention to such news. I believe this is the only chance we might have to find the killer. If we miss this opportunity, the killer might slip away.”

Mary nodded and tapped her laptop. “No problem but I still have the same thing to say. Dong Xing City is not small. The number of child accidents from falling is larger than you think.”

We were silent before I added, “Now that I think about it, falling might not necessarily lead to death. We need to widen our scope to inspect injured children.”

Captain Zhao twirled his teacup and said, “News agency!”

“What?” We all turned to him.

Captain Zhao slammed the table and said, “These reporters are faster than anyone else. If something like this happened, the reporters would know. When we wait until the newspaper article is released, it’ll be too late. I’ll have the chief call the heads of the main few newspapers agencies. If they have such news, we’ll be notified at first notice.”

Then there was ensuing silence. It was hard to tell what each of them was thinking.

I closed my eyes and an image appeared in my mind. In the dark night, when everyone was in slumber, Ol’ Wang prepared the rope, the chair and started to prepare for his hanging. When he kicked the chair away, there was another loud thud. The sound didn’t come from the chair falling over but someone falling down the building.

It was a child, a child who liked to stay out late to play but he had never stayed out so late before. His family was looking everywhere for him but they couldn’t find him. They called his name everywhere. They phoned the child’s friends. But no one knew where he was.

The child was on the roof, watching the people below, watching his parents. He cried and wanted to speak but he couldn’t because his limbs were tied and he was gagged. He couldn’t call his parents even though they were just there below me.

Then I opened my eyes. “The building must be quite low.”

“Why would you say that? Stop trying to derail the investigation.” Captain Lee glared at me.

I explained, “Tall apartment buildings will have elevators. Only old buildings in the old city would have residential apartments lower than 6 floors. The old man had Ol’ Wang carry the stuff for him, if there is an elevator, he wouldn’t have done that.” I continued, “If this is an apartment lower than 6 floors, then it’s normal for the tenants to know each other, after all, there wouldn’t be that many of them. It was how the child knew Ol’ Wang was a dummy. So this building has to have less than 6 floors.”

Everyone nodded. Captain Zhao was still on the phone. When he heard my analysis, he gave me a big thumbs up.

Sister Mary pulled up the city map. “A building without elevator and lower than 6 floors… But if the height of the roof is tall enough to kill a person, then it has to be taller than 3 floors. We can narrow down the location by a lot.”

Captain Zhao finished his call. “Yes, I’ll notify the newspaper editors about this. The killer will make their move after writing their stories. This time we have to stop this killer.”

I nodded and closed my eyes to resume thinking.

The building was not that high but the parents didn’t look up. The killer enjoyed this feeling, the feeling of being there but not seen. 6 stories were not tall, only 20 meters tall. 20 meters could be crossed in less than 10 seconds with walking, even faster with falling. In less than 1 second, the child fell before everyone.

At that moment, the child hadn’t died. He looked at his parents and wanted to say something but he couldn’t say anything. The parents stared at their child. The killer grinned as they disappeared into the darkness.

These 20 meters became the longest journey in the world, crossing the distance between life and death.