Currently, Xiao Liu said he had clues regarding the second point, and he was certain the killer was a group. It meant that he was close to the truth. It was why he was so confident that he’d capture the killer before me. If not, he’d be face-slapped by his own words.
I noticed Xiao Liu’s hesitance. I knew Xiao Liu wanted to capture the killer, and he wanted to stop the murder, but even more than that, he wanted to arrest the killer first. So if he shared with me his clue, I might catch the killer before he did. Sometimes friends were like that. They were there for the good times but not necessarily the bad times. If that were the case, then I wouldn’t press. The station was silent again. I looked at the night outside and said, “Let’s go to sleep. It’ll be a new day tomorrow. As long as the killer can be stopped, then it’s good enough.”
Even though that was what I said, I tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. I eventually sat up, and lit a cigarette to ponder the case. I sat on the rails and looked at the crescent moon in the sky. The cigarette formed smoke rings. The world was quiet. It was 2 am.
This was the 3rd story. Based on the killer’s mo, we would have the 4th story latest by tomorrow night. I sincerely hoped that Xiao Liu was right and I was wrong, at least that way, no more innocent people would die. But my head spun around the one thing Xiao Liu didn’t tell me, what was the connection between the victims?
I smoked the cigarette quietly when the door beside me opened. Gu Chen walked out from the backdoor. He wore a tank top and shorts. It was spring, and the weather was cold, but Gu Chen didn’t seem affected as he walked towards me. I tossed him a cigarette, and he caught it expertly in the air. “Jesus.” I gasped, “You need to teach me that sometimes.”
Gu Chen chuckled. He lit the cigarette and said, “I thought this always looks quite cool on tv, so I’ve been silently practicing. Don’t tell anyone.”
I chuckled. “As long as you promise you won’t use that to catch bullet or daggers.”
Gu Chen smoked and used the fence to do some presses. “Haha. To tell you the truth, I had the dream of being a movie actor. I was always into kung fu movies seeing the people flying all over the sky. It’s quite a dream.”
I looked at him and shook my head. “But you have to give up because you’re not handsome enough? My childhood dream was to be a president but well…”
Gu Chen laughed. “If you must know, someone has indeed offered me an acting contract, but I rejected it. Compared to play-acting, I prefer to uphold justice in real life. Even though I might not enjoy the admiration of celebrities, real heroes wouldn’t need all that.”
I was suddenly reminded of a question Captain Zhao asked me, and I directed it at Gu Chen, “Why do you want to be a cop?”
Gu Chen took a drag of the cigarette and then said, “When I was small, I wanted to be a wuxia hero, I wanted to be admired and become a hero of Jiang Hu. But as I grew up, I realized those were just tales.” Gu Chen scratched his head and smiled. “My parents were just normal farmers. One time, my mother was sick. She needed to come to the big city for her treatment. My father held 10000 RMB tightly in his hands. He probably thought that was the best way to protect the money from being stolen from thieves.”
I nodded. This was the first time I heard Gu Chen talk about his childhood.
Gu Chen smiled and said, “At the time, 10000 RMB was a lot of money. It was my parent’s life savings. What he did might stop the thieves, but he did attract the attention of burglars. Once they got down from the train, they were surrounded by hooligans. With knives, they forced my parents into a corner and demanded the money.”
“What did your parents do?” I asked.
Gu Chen said, “The money was for my mother’s treatment. Without the money, she would die. My father knelt down and begged them. He told them the truth, but it was pointless. Why would the hooligans care about what the money was for? Since my father was unwilling to surrender, the hooligans beat up my father.
“My father was beaten until he was barely conscious, but he was still hugging the leg of the hooligan tightly. As long as he was still alive, he would not surrender the money. The hooligan had never seen some who loved money that much. He used the knife to cut into my father’s arm, but my father refused to let go.
“The hooligan was about to go for the kill when a police officer appeared. Like a hero in movies, he scared off the hooligans. He got back the money and sent both of my parents to the hospital. My parents always told me about the story. Perhaps for that officer, this was something normal. He probably forgot about the 2 honest farmers from the countryside that night itself.”
Gu Chen extinguished the cigarette. He looked at me and said seriously, “It was why I worked so hard to get into the police academy to become a police officer. I wanted to be the officer in my parent’s story because you might never know. Your single action might change a whole family’s life.
“Even though this job is dangerous and often we are scolded and insulted by others.” Gu Chen said in a powerful voice. “We are the citizens’ protector.” He continued, “There are good people and bad people, kind people and evil people like there is day and night. People like us have one foot in the dark and the other foot in the light. We use our own bodies to stop the corruption of darkness. I cannot guarantee that others wouldn’t face the darkness in their lives, but I want them to know that there are always people like us who are trying their best to push the darkness to the corner the normal civilians would never see.”
Gu Chen’s words pulled at my heartstrings. I was proud to have him as a friend. But as he said, in this business, we were exposed to many dark sides of humanity. It was unclear if we’d come out untainted by darkness. But at least I was certain that Gu Chen would always be in the light.
Then Gu Chen patted my shoulders and asked, “What about you?”
I was silent. I still didn’t know how to answer. Honestly, I couldn’t be a good officer because I valued freedom too much, and I couldn’t be as firm in my conviction as Captain Zhao wanted me to be. Sometimes, I too, would ask myself why I wanted to be a police officer. But until now, I couldn’t answer this question.
“To be honest, my dream is to be an actor.” I laughed.
Gu Chen was not surprised by my answer. He said, “Actors might not have it easier than police officers. But at least you’ll be good at acting since you’re good at analyzing a character’s emotions, background, and motives. In fact, I heard that an actor had purposely trapped himself in a room to live his life as his movie character. Also, I heard there were many actors who needed time to extricate themselves from their characters. For days, they would think they were the characters.”
When Gu Chen said that, my eyes lit up. There was something that I had been ignoring, something that was before us all along.
“Gu Chen,” I looked at him and asked him seriously, “You mean there are really people who can’t extricate themselves from the roles that they’re given?”
Gu Chen looked at me in confusion, “Yes, isn’t that what I said?”
“The perfect actor will see themselves as someone else. They’ll be so into the character that they themselves wouldn’t realize they’re acting.” I said, “So Xiao Liu’s direction is wrong. There might be multiple killers, but he is definitely singular!”
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