Chapter 41

"The missing girl is Qu Tong, eleven years old. She was originally on the bus. Attempting to help the teacher distract the thug's attention, she threw an alarm device out the window, then in the commotion climbed out the window and ran away. We don't know where she's run off to."

"Have some police dogs transferred over from West Ridge County." When he'd heard, Luo Wenzhou's reaction was fairly composed. "It's all right. A small child can't run far. Find some well-spoken people and have them reassure the parents. To tell you the truth, if she hadn't run, when the kidnapper had come around and realized that she'd been the one to throw the alarm device, the outcome doesn't bear thinking about. Seems to me the child is pretty sharp."

Fei Du turned his head and whistled towards his far-off disreputable companions. In this society of idlers, he could rally a hundred at a single call. The rich kids had first raced motorbikes in the rain; then, when the water on them hadn't fully dried, they'd participated in a hostage rescue operation. Though they'd only been props and hadn't even gotten to see whether the kidnapper had been fat or thin, it still counted as enough stimulus to last them for the rest of the year. Hearing Fei Du's call, they rushed up in a crowd. "Master Fei, what else is there?"

"From the City Bureau." In a few words, Fei Du gave a high-level summary of the entire glorious life of the handsome man in front of him. Then he said, "An eleven-year-old little girl went missing from that bus. I'll send a photograph to my friends group in a while. If you don't have anything going on tonight, help search."

"All right, no problem!" Zhang Donglai could for once stand up straight in front of Luo Wenzhou. He grinned cheekily and nodded to him. "Hello, Captain Luo. If you need anything, Captain Luo, give a shout, we're all family!"

Luo Wenzhou coldly looked this person over. He'd heard that after getting into trouble, Young Master Zhang had been shut up in a little dark room at home for a couple of months. Here and now, he had perhaps just been "released upon completion of his sentence." He was wearing a vest that left his arms bare and pants with a big hole on each side. He had a new haircut, shaved into the form of a rooster's crest, with a line of multicolored long hairs sticking up every which way from the top of his head. On the back of his head some character had been carved.

Curiously, Luo Wenzhou said, "What's that on your head?"

Zhang Donglai at once stood at attention and reported, "The character 'endure.'"

In spite of himself Luo Wenzhou felt some deep veneration—it turned out that Young Master Zhang's august countenance was the result of endurance.

"Captain Luo, set your mind at ease, I'm familiar with this place," said Zhang Donglai. "We bourgeoisie are the great pollutant over here. Aside from the extravagant and corrupt, there aren't any other scourges at all. For fifty kilometers around, the most aggressive wild animal is a little squirrel. There's definitely no danger!"

This was actually true. In this era, West Ridge was elite and remote to start with, and the rainstorm would have emptied it even more thoroughly. How far could a panicked little girl run?

Upon first hearing the news, no one got very agitated. All the work was carried out methodically.—The deranged Han Chengzheng was carried away in a body bag; an ambulance took away the seriously injured Teacher Hu and the still-breathing kidnapper Han Jiang. The crowd of frightened students left in groups, accompanied by parents, to collectively undergo physical examination and psychological counseling. The transferred police dogs were soon in position.

Several small search and rescue teams split up to operate. Zhang Donglai scared up a pile of brightly colored convertibles from somewhere, which, collectively broadcasting the theme song to Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf (12), quickly arrived on the nearby large and small roads to search.

The professionals and the counterfeit goods each went their own way, neither bothering the other, complimenting each other very well…even though the sound of "Don't Look at Me, I'm Only a Sheep" playing everywhere in waves was a little nauseating.

Fei Du put his hand on the car door and nodded to Luo Wenzhou. "Come on, let's go have a look at the place the child ran from."

Luo Wenzhou inconsiderately hitched a ride, and meanwhile pointed at his shirtfront. He spoke in very "feudal lord" tones: "Dress properly.—What kind of mass hell-raising were you getting up to out here?"

Fei Du lazily gathered up his shirtfront; without looking to see whether the buttons were aligned, he carelessly did up a few—the result wasn't any better than having it open, because his drenched shirt still hadn't dried all the way. "Racing."

"Racing convertibles?" said Luo Wenzhou.

"Motorcycles. Two of them overturned, too. Before you guys closed off the road, there was an ambulance that took away someone who'd fallen and fractured a bone." Fei Du gently put the car in motion. Using a rare cheerful tone without disparagement in it, he teased, "Of course, it really may be a little stimulating for the middle-aged and elderly."

Luo Wenzhou looked down at the mud-splattered boots on his feet and, to his sorrow, suddenly realized that he perhaps really was quickly approaching middle age—because he couldn't comprehend how these youngsters could be so vacant.

"What happened to your hand?" Fei Du carelessly darted a look at the three stripes on him. "Who was so fiery?"

Luo Wenzhou was focusing on listening to each search and rescue team's progress report. He inattentively answered, "Your little brother."

Fei Du was bewildered.

"Got it, pay attention to the difficult to reach places. A child would be under some psychological stress after an experience like that, perhaps she'll have hidden herself somewhere." Having spoken, Luo Wenzhou put down the walkie-talkie and turned to Fei Du. "Do these look like a primate's claw-marks to you? No common sense.—That trash mixed-breed cat Tao Ran gave you, did you forget? You little whelps. Whatever you do, it's two and a half days of novelty, and then we have to follow picking up after you."

At first Fei Du paused. Then he seemed to remember something, and his initially half-closed peach blossom eyes suddenly opened wide.

The night was hurtling past the car windows on both sides. For a long while he didn't answer, until they saw bright lights up ahead, already drawing near to the scene where the girl had initially run from. Then Fei Du finally spoke, in a tone that was hard to read. "After so many years, you still have it?"

"Oh, what else would I do? Give it to you? If you want it, hurry up and take it away, just don't come bringing it back to me." Remembering Luo Yiguo, Luo Wenzhou's hand hurt, and he involuntarily scratched it again. "Stop the car a little farther away. The child may have left footprints, don't disturb them."

Fei Du accordingly stopped the car at some distance. "Do you…uh, need to get vaccinated?"

Hearing this ordinary inquiry, Luo Wenzhou was very shaken—more shaken than if Luo Yiguo had run over to him for a cuddle. He was even a little tongue-tied. "N-no…no need, the last one hasn't expired yet."

Out of the twelve months of the year, Captain Luo was in an "unconquerable condition" for eleven and a half of them. The doctor who gave him the vaccine had proposed to get him a "yearly card," moving from retail to wholesale.

When Luo Wenzhou's shock had passed, he couldn't resist taking a cheap hit. "You being so filial all of a sudden makes me a little panicked."

Fei Du reined in the unusual expression on his face and once again put on his obnoxious drawl. With a smile that wasn't quite a smile, he said, "Caring for lonely elders is everyone's responsibility. Tsk, keeping company with a cat in the endless night seems very desolate."

Perhaps because Fei Du was so improperly dressed, and perhaps because Luo Wenzhou's good opinion of himself had gone to his head, he felt that Fei Du's glance, floating over as he talked nonsense, had a touch of seduction to it. Accompanying the hummed "in the endless night," it truly did inspire reverie. Thereupon his mouth accidentally went a little over the line.

"What," said Luo Wenzhou, casually taking a liberty, "you're offering oral consolation?"

Fei Du: "…"

Luo Wenzhou: "…"

As soon as this joke that had gone too far was spoken, the two of them became silent at the same time. Inside the small and narrow sports car, the atmosphere was so unusual as to defy description.

Luo Wenzhou would have loved nothing better than to somehow put those words, which had somehow slipped out, back into his mouth. He was dumbstruck for a moment, then gave a dry cough and not very brilliantly backtracked. "At the end of the year, don't forget to bring dad a box of snacks."

Fei Du forced out a laugh. "Should I also burn three incense sticks?"

After this, the two of them simultaneously climbed out, in tacit agreement, planning to forget the preceding awkwardness inside the innocent sports car.

Luo Wenzhou suddenly remembered something. He turned to Fei Du. "On the subject, I remember you quite liked that cat. Why were you unwilling to keep it no matter what afterwards?"

Fei Du put his hand on the car door. His movements paused. The distant lights fell on his exposed forehead and brows; the arcs seemed to have been carved that way, the outlines finely planned.

"A pet?" After his pause, Fei Du said, as if nothing had happened, "I don't like having pets. They're so much trouble. I didn't feel comfortable saying so in front of Tao Ran. Also…"

He looked up, the tip of one eyebrow moving lightly. "What if I have a hobby of sadistically killing small animals? I couldn't control myself, and I was afraid I wouldn't have a way to account for myself to Tao Ran, so I had to keep a safe distance. Captain Luo, do you think that's a reasonable explanation?"

Luo Wenzhou stared, intuitively sensing that these words of Fei Du's weren't a disgusting joke, but before he could read the meaning between the lines, the voice of a member of a search and rescue team came over his earbud. "Captain Luo, we've found the place where the girl threw the alarm device, as well as some footprints."

When Teacher Hu had been attacked, the rain had already slackened. The ruts where the bus had parked hadn't entirely been washed away by the water.—The driver had been at the front of the bus then, and the kidnapper had been pushed out of the bus's door by Teacher Hu. If the girl wanted to run, she had to jump out of the back of the bus and run in some direction where she could avoid the bus's headlights. Following this assumption, the searchers had quickly found some footprints left by a young girl.

The police dogs went off, following the track.

Everyone felt that their luck was good. In the place where the hijacker had chosen to stop, the road had fallen out of repair. There was a lot of bare earth. Qu Tong had left a good deal of marks; following the traces, the girl could definitely be found soon.

But by the latter half of the night, there had still been no news of Qu Tong.

Qu Tong's parents stared at the comings and goings of the police and the spontaneously searching drivers. The father's eyes were like sound-activated lamps—the least breeze or rustle of grass, and they'd light up; but when the searcher once again left, they'd go out time after time.

"Captain Luo, come here and have a look at this!"

Luo Wenzhou passed through the crowd. A few search dogs had stopped in the same place, crouching with their tongues hanging out. He casually petted one dog on the head and half-crouched. There were still faint traces of blood on a sharp stone, and a leather sandal strap was caught on it.

"Let the parents look at it, confirm this strap comes from Qu Tong's sandal," said a nearby search and rescue worker. "Behind this are a child's footprints. There are some long gouges here; is the assumption that the little girl ran here, then tripped on a stone and fell? There's also a grown-up's footprints, and the ruts of a car. My guess is it's a size forty-one or forty-two, most likely a male."

Luo Wenzhou was silent for a moment. "You mean, someone just happened to drive by here and take the child away."

"It's very likely. The dogs can't smell anything more."

By the light in his colleague's hand, Luo Wenzhou's gaze roamed over the area.

Complex footprints, and the place where the girl had fallen, wildly overturning ground that was muddy after the rain. At a glance it was very hard to determine what had happened here.

"Captain Luo, I think this must be good news. After all, it had just rained, and this is the mountains. The earth is loose, there could be hidden dangers.—Since someone went by and saved the girl, then at any rate she won't have to spend the night out in the wilderness."

Luo Wenzhou's expression was still very grim. He didn't make a sound. After a good while, he slowly nodded. "Fine, take care to preserve the scene. Notify the technicians to come see whether they can use the traces to determine whether the child went with this person willingly. Also…prepare to issue a missing person announcement, and closely monitor whether anyone around here has called the police after picking up a child."

"Right!"

"Go contact the museum the students visited today." With a heavy heart, Luo Wenzhou put a cigarette in his mouth and carefully thought over whether he'd omitted anything, then added, "Investigate the museum's visitors, and the cameras at the nearby highway exits."

The search and rescue worker next to him was perplexed. "Hm?"

"See what cars passed by," Luo Wenzhou said quietly. "Pay special attention to ones with single male drivers. I have a sudden feeling this thing isn't very sanguine."

In deserted open country, a distressed little girl suddenly appears in the middle of the road and tells you that nearby a thug has hijacked their bus; what would an ordinary person's reaction be?

A regular person presumably wouldn't have the guts to valiantly do battle against a knife-wielding thug. Perhaps he wouldn't even dare to let the child get into the car without confirmation; after all, stories regularly circulate through society about criminals using children. So either he would indifferently pretend not to have seen her and leave, or, after carefully inquiring into the circumstances, he would call the police right away.

After the police had determined that the bus had been hijacked within West Ridge County, all calls to the police in the county had been put through to him. Why had several hours passed since the girl had run away without any news?

The missing girl cast a shadow over the whole rescue operation.

Three days passed in a flash, and the police came up empty-handed. From start to finish, there was no news about the mysterious person who had picked the girl up; and whether from the investigation at the museum or from the nearby businesses that had agreed to help keep an eye out, there was still no useful information.

In the early evening on the third day, Qu Tong's parents came to the City Bureau, bringing a flash drive.

"We don't know who left it, and we don't know when… It was in the milk box. With the child not found, we haven't had the attention to spare to get it these last few days," said Qu Tong's father with reddened eyes. "It built up for a few days, and this morning the milk delivery person knocked on the door to ask. We only remembered to open the milk box then…and this thing fell out."

Wearing gloves, Lang Qiao accepted the little flash drive. "What's on it?"

When she'd spoken, Qu Tong's mother suddenly fell apart, beginning to cry bitterly.

"On it…there's a sound recording."

Fifteen minutes later, Lu Youliang, frowning, finished listening to the recording. The recording was less than a minute long. At first there was the sound of a girl's frightened screams, then a violent struggle. After several dozen seconds, the screams and sounds of struggle gradually became weaker, until all was silent. Finally there was a ringing noise, as if a metal box full of small bells had been forcefully shaken; the trembling buzzing sound seemed to knock on one's heart, drawing out long—then the recording abruptly cut off.

The corner of Lu Youliang's eye twitched, and he slowly lit a cigarette.

"Director Lu." Luo Wenzhou spoke first. "We have too few clues on hand now, we shouldn't speculate wildly, but I spent half my life listening to Lao Yang go on about Lotus Mountain, and the impression is really too deeply carved. I had to find you to confirm. The case was over twenty years ago, and we only know about it from hearsay. You're the only one who had personal experience with it. Do you think that this recording resembles the phone calls the kidnapper made to the victims' families then? Could it be a copycat of that case?"

Lu Youliang slowly exhaled a smoke ring and didn't speak for an age.

When a long time had passed, he dismally spoke. "This business made a huge fuss at the time. You can still find newspapers from the time with long and tedious articles about it. We lacked awareness of secrecy then, details like 'the victim's family received a frightening phone call' got out, but…"

The assembled group had very rarely seen such a grave expression on the old director-general's face.

"I remember the first girl who went missing—the one in the Lotus Mountain case. There was a detail," said Lu Youliang, "a detail that the victim's father in the case supplied while cooperating with the investigation. He said that he'd heard the sound of a pencil box over the phone. Metal pencil boxes were popular at one time. The missing girl's parent said, the little girl collected a kind of small round bell and put them in the metal pencil box. Sometimes she took it out and shook it to listen. The adults in the house didn't like the noise and chastised her… The sound that came over the phone was definitely the sound of a pencil box. That's why he was certain that the voice was definitely his daughter's."

Lang Qiao, taking down the minutes of the meeting to one side, gave a little shudder.

This detail was too small, and because they couldn't get recorded evidence at the time, there was only the victim's father's testimony. He was anxious and frightened, his psychological state was unsteady; there was a strong possibility that he had heard wrong. It was truly hard to determine the authenticity. Therefore it had only been used as a reference.

It hadn't been referred to in Yang Zhengfeng's notes; even Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran hadn't known about it.

The police of course wouldn't have made such a dubious small detail known to the public, so…

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Author's note:

(12) Circa mid-2000s Chinese kids TV show, exactly what it says on the tin and of sickly sweet cuteness levels.

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