195 Excitement

 

I expected Ol’ Wang’s lack of enthusiasm. From the story, I realized Ol’ Wang suffered from depression. However, if he sought medical attention, he could still be cured. We were inside a single, unshared ward. At First People Hospital, a room like this wasn’t cheap. Ol’ Wang had paid a lot for it. Ol’ Wang preferred quiet and didn’t like noises. He didn’t like to interact with others so naturally, he ignored us.

Xiao Liu moved to stand before Ol’ Wang to block his sight. However, Ol’ Wang didn’t react to him in any way. It was like Xiao Liu was transparent. Seeing the lack of reaction, Xiao Liu raised his hand and waved it before Ol’ Wang’s face. Ol’ Wang still didn’t respond.

I looked at Xiao Liu and then said, “There’s no need to waste time on these. Just ask him what we came to ask.”

Xiao Liu looked at me and then at Ol’ Wang. He took out a stack of documents. “Ol’ Wang, full name Wang Shouyin, 43 years old, was divorced from his wife, Liu Lihua 5 years ago and has no children. Currently, he works at a manufacturing factory at Dong Xing City, and finds the job boring.” Since Ol’ Wang didn’t say anything, Xiao Liu continued, “You’ve lost all hope in love and life so you attempted suicide but the drying rack was unable to support your weight and you failed. The sound of you falling awakened the downstairs neighbor and they sent you to the hospital.” Xiao Liu stared at Ol’ Wang, “You heard a loud thud, didn’t you?”

Finally, Ol’ Wang sat upright. However, he still didn’t look at Xiao Liu as he answered, “Yes.”

Xiao Liu pulled over a chair and sat down beside Ol’ Wang. “Do you want to know what caused that sound?”

“No.” Ol’ Wang answered softly.

Xiao Liu was stumped, he didn’t know what to say. Xiao Liu looked at me and then suddenly demanded angrily, “Wang Shouyin, you better cooperate with me. You might not understand your current condition. If you refuse to cooperate with me, you might die.” I wondered if Xiao Liu was doing this because I was there or this was how he did his job normally, in any case, I didn’t think it was a good tactic. Having different interrogative methods for different people was a skill required of a detective. Xiao Liu’s interrogation was definitely going nowhere. To threaten a suicidal victim with death was ludicrous but I knew Xiao Liu was not that dumb. So the only explanation was his words were meant for me. He probably wanted me to carry over the questioning for him. Xiao Liu still ‘trusted’ me to handle this.

I didn’t expose Xiao Liu and told him, “Let me try.” Xiao Liu nodded and handed the document to me. I accepted them but didn’t look at them. I sat down opposite Ol’ Wang and told him, “If life is that boring, why not find something exciting to do?”

“Hmm?” Ol’ Wang looked at me with interest. I had studied psychology before. Ol’ Wang had lost his interest in life so the cure was deceptively simple, which was to help him regain that interest. Ol’ Wang still helped others even though he knew they were just using him because he hoped that he could have more of a connection with the world around him. I asked Ol’ Wang, “Do you want to be a detective? This might be the last chance at the excitement in your life.”

Ol’ Wang looked at me and answered emotionlessly, “Okay.”

I asked, “Did you feel like someone is following you recently? Think about it, why would someone purposely follow someone as boring as yourself?”

Ol’ Wang thought about it. “Yes.”

“What does that person look like?” I asked.

Finally, Ol’ Wang said with some excitement, “Oh, it has to be that person. I’ve always been seeing him lately!”

“Who is it?” Both Xiao Liu and I widened our eyes. Ol’ Wang frowned as if in thought, “I often see this man in black smiling at me. He has a lot of stubble and I will run into him whenever I get off from work. He was just standing there. He would stand at the same spot. He has been standing there for at least a month already.”

I looked at Xiao Liu, the latter had started to record something in his notebook. I prompted Ol’ Wang to continue, “Can you give us more details about this man? Like his weight, height, physical property, and so on? You’re being such a good detective.”

Ol’ Wang nodded and answered. “He always shows up in full black attire, even his shoes. He’s around 1.7 meters tall and very thin. Whenever I got off work, he would be there waiting for me. Others didn’t seem to notice him but I would. He was like a mirror to me.” Then Ol’ Wang added with some agitation, “He was like me, he was unmotivated, lazy, and tired. He just stood there.” Due to his depression, Ol’ Wang didn’t care about anything but he cared about this man, but this was probably something the killer wanted him to care about. Holding up a mirror to Ol’ Wang, the killer made his condition worse.

I continued to ask, “He was just standing there? Doing nothing?”

Ol’ Wang nodded.

While the killer stalked Ol’ Wang, he understood Ol’ Wang’s depressive tendencies. Therefore, he appeared before Ol’ Wang in that depressing appearance every day, draining excitement from Ol’ Wang’s life. The killer wanted to kill Ol’ Wang but through Ol’ Wang’s own hands.

From Ol’ Wang’s description, we got some basic info about the killer. The killer liked to dress in black, he was around 1.7 meters tall and thin. These were the only concrete details we had so far of the killer. Especially, the killer’s gender.

I told Ol’ Wang, “That person is our target. He’s following you and you also want to find him. The two of you will face each other until one of you falls.”

Suddenly, Ol’ Wang revealed a ghastly grin. “That does sound interesting.”

“Then tell me, where did he go after you left? Would he follow you?” I asked.

Ol’ Wang shook his head. I didn’t press any further because I was afraid that I might turn this patient of depression into a schizophrenic patient.

We walked out and I told Xiao Liu, “We better find him a psychiatrist or he’ll continue to harm himself or worse, others.”

Xiao Liu couldn’t care less about that. He groused, “Is the killer male or female? How can they suddenly be a young woman and then a man with stubbles? How many killers are there and how old are they? Or is there just one killer?”

“Is there this possibility that…” Gu Chen told me and not Xiao Liu, “The killers are a group. There’s one person writing the story and the others realizing it. These people have the same uniform, a black attire. They are all around the same height. That would explain the different genders.” After Gu Chen said that, we were silent. If he was correct, then this was scary. This was a terrorist group, aimed to murder with stories.

“No!” I repeated, “There aren’t multiple killers, there is only one.”

“If there is only one, how can they suddenly be male and then female?” Xiao Liu asked.

I didn’t answer but said, “Let’s go to the morgue and see how the autopsy is coming along.”

When we came to the morgue, there was a group of people gathered there. Waves of cries hit me, they almost shattered my eardrums. There was a young couple, the woman was kneeling on the ground, the man leaning against the wall. An officer walked over and whispered to us, “These are the boy’s family. The boy is only 6, his name is Gao Ze… He fell from the 6th floor and snapped his neck. There was blood everywhere, it was not pretty.”

The boy had the same age as the noisy brat in the story. If I was not mistaken the boy was the boy Ol’ Wang hoped to die. However, I didn’t ask Ol’ Wang whether that was the truth. After all, he couldn’t be responsible for what the killer wrote. However, the ghastly expression on Ol’ Wang’s face earlier showed me that the imagined scenarios painted by the killer for Ol’ Wang were true.

Then it hit me. The killer must have studied psychology before, or they must know human nature very well or else they couldn’t have placed themselves in different people’s perspectives so perfectly. We pushed open the door to the morgue. Guan Zhenglin and Zhang Qinrui were inside sewing up the body. The autopsy was ending.

“How’s the situation?” I asked.

But at that moment, someone outside screamed. “Leader Wu, Leader Liu, this is bad. Someone is dead!”