Ren Yi had originally thought that being a firefighter was hard enough. They didn’t get many days off in a year, and they had to be on duty for twenty-four hours at a time. But after spending some time with Gong Yingxian, he realized that police officers had it pretty rough too. Most of the time, firefighters stayed at the station, and actually being dispatched was relatively uncommon. But police officers, especially criminal investigators, practically never got off work on time.
It was already almost nine o’clock, yet Gong Yingxian still had to hurry back to the precinct to work.
Ren Yi teased him, “Look at you. You’re a perfectly good rich second-generation kid, yet you make less money than me while doing no less work. I think about you sometimes, and I find it especially amusing.”
“You think about me sometimes?” Gong Yingxian looked at Ren Yi.
Ren Yi never expected Gong Yingxian to latch onto the key point of that sentence in such a strange and unique way. Remembering how embarrassed he had been in the bathroom, he felt that he absolutely couldn’t back down now. He blinked at him and said jokingly, “Yeah. I think about you all the time.”
“What do you think about me?” Gong Yingxian asked seriously.
“…Just random stuff.” Ren Yi walked to the car door and tilted his head toward Gong Yingxian. “Do you think about me sometimes too?”
Gong Yingxian nodded. “I do.”
Ren Yi’s breathing immediately became a little rapid. “Then what do you think about me?”
“I think you’re… a strange person.”
“How am I strange?”
Gong Yingxian hesitated. “Strange because you’re different from everyone else.”
“You mean I’m special, right?” Ren Yi smiled at Gong Yingxian.
For some reason, the image of Ren Yi’s naked back surfaced in Gong Yingxian’s mind—that back which, in his perception, was “good-looking.” Yes, Ren Yi really was very special.
He gave a soft “Mm.”
Ren Yi was overjoyed inside. Even this kind of cryptic conversation felt sweet to him. He knew that, in Gong Yingxian’s heart, he was becoming different from before, again and again, little by little becoming special. That alone was an indescribable source of satisfaction for him.
When they reached the car, Ren Yi said, “You drive today.”
He was actually very tired. After all, he had spent the entire afternoon under intense physical exertion and had only eaten a boxed meal. But he didn’t want Gong Yingxian to notice. He just wanted to find out the truth behind the Wanyuan Community arson case as quickly as possible.
Gong Yingxian still noticed. “What’s wrong? Are you tired?”
“No. It’s the injury on my neck. Raising my arm hurts a little.”
Gong Yingxian frowned. “I don’t know what condition you were in this afternoon. If you’re very tired, don’t go.”
Ren Yi smiled. “I’m really fine. Let’s go.”
On the way, Gong Yingxian began talking to Ren Yi about the case. “You definitely wouldn’t imagine how unexpected the developments in this case have been.”
“How?” Ren Yi’s curiosity was immediately piqued.
“We suspected Peng Fei, but we didn’t have any evidence. So I had my colleagues in the forensics department examine all the trash I picked up at the scene.”
“That’s not a small undertaking.”
“Actually, there wasn’t as much as you’d imagine. Most of it had been too badly damaged by the fire to have any forensic value. Do you remember the electric toothbrush head and coffee grounds I told you about?”
“I remember.”
“First, you used fire-investigation methods to narrow down the suspects to the five households on the west side. Second, those two things played a major role.” A trace of smugness appeared on Gong Yingxian’s face. “We extracted DNA from the toothbrush, and we also identified the type and brand of the coffee grounds. Of those five households, two had coffee machines.”
“Who did the toothbrush and coffee belong to?”
“Without consent, we couldn’t conduct a DNA comparison. So one of my colleagues spent two days staking out the community, collecting the household trash from all the residents on the west side of that floor. We found the owner of the toothbrush. It was from 2208, the apartment next to 2209.”
Ren Yi suddenly understood. “You mean the trash outside 2209 that didn’t belong to their household might have come from the other five households?”
“At present, we can only prove two of them. We also found that Peng Fei’s family had a coffee machine. We checked his online shopping records and found that he had indeed bought the same coffee.”
Ren Yi said excitedly, “He can’t deny it this time, right?”
Gong Yingxian sneered. “When we presented them with this evidence, both people confessed. But they both claimed that they only wanted to retaliate by throwing trash outside 2209’s door, and that they had nothing to do with the arson. We haven’t questioned the other households yet.”
Ren Yi sucked in a breath.
The deeper he thought about the truth of this case, the more frightened he became.
“So what are you planning to do?”
Gong Yingxian asked, “Do you remember which household, besides 2209, among the six households on the west side had someone die?”
“The second-to-last one, I think.” Ren Yi thought for a moment. “The last one is Peng Fei’s, 2212. I think an elderly person died in 2211.”
“Correct. We plan to start with that household. You’ll meet the head of household for 2211 in a moment.” Gong Yingxian continued, “Also, after investigating Peng Fei for this period of time, my suspicions of him have grown stronger and stronger. I’ve decided to give him a polygraph test.”
“Are polygraph tests really effective?” Ren Yi frowned. “They can only be used as an auxiliary tool. They can’t even be admitted as evidence in court.”
“I know. The polygraph is only one method. I found a criminal psychology expert and want him to help us reassess Peng Fei as a person.”
“Didn’t you say the evidence was insufficient, and that he showed no reaction at all when he saw Zhou Chuan?”
“Not just Zhou Chuan. He showed no reaction to Chen Pei either. That makes me even more suspicious. More importantly, aside from him, we can’t find a more suitable suspect for the car arson. Have you heard that line from Sherlock Holmes?”
“‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
“Because we can’t find a new suspect, I’m going to reassess him as a suspect and reexamine all the evidence I have, as well as him.” Gong Yingxian narrowed his eyes. “If he committed the crime, no matter how well he hides it, he will eventually reveal something.”
“Then… what about Chen Pei?” When he mentioned that person, Ren Yi secretly glanced at Gong Yingxian’s expression.
“I want to solve the Wanyuan Community case first. He isn’t going anywhere anyway.”
As they talked, the two had already arrived at the precinct.
Cai Qiang was interrogating Zhou Chuan. Ren Yi stood outside the monitoring room and watched Zhou Chuan. Despite spending only a month in the hospital, the bastard had actually gained some weight. Thinking that this bastard had been able to eat and sleep well while the victims’ families might not even have been able to stomach food, Ren Yi felt an indescribable anger.
“He still refuses to say anything?” Ren Yi asked.
“He loosened up a little in the hospital after he learned that we had caught Chen Pei. I don’t know whether Cai Qiang will get anything out of him today.”
“He recognized Chen Pei?”
Gong Yingxian shook his head. “It’s possible they knew each other online, but their reactions to each other’s appearances suggested that they were strangers.”
Ren Yi listened as Cai Qiang slammed his hand on the table, alternating threats and inducements against Zhou Chuan.
“Let’s go. I’ll take you to meet the head of household for 2211.”
The two arrived outside another interrogation room. Gong Yingxian gestured with his eyes for Ren Yi to look through the glass window in the door.
Ren Yi leaned closer and looked inside.
The head of household for 2211 was a woman in her fifties. She had her head lowered, and even from the slight hunch of her shoulders, it was clear that she was anxious.
Gong Yingxian said quietly, “She hasn’t been detained. We only asked her to come in and cooperate with the investigation. She’s probably been waiting for at least three or four hours. If she were merely an ordinary victim’s family member or an unrelated person, she would have gotten angry after waiting around for so long. But look at her. All she has is anxiety.”
“Guilt?”
“Probably.”
Gong Yingxian pushed the door open and entered.
The woman inside abruptly raised her head and stared at the two of them without blinking.
“Ms. Bai.” Gong Yingxian flipped through the documents. “Hello. Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
Ms. Bai shifted her heavy body backward, pressing her back against the chair and trying to distance herself as much as possible from Gong Yingxian, who was already seated across the table.
Ren Yi sat down beside him as well.
Gong Yingxian said mechanically, “Ms. Bai, my surname is Gong. Thank you for cooperating with our investigation. There are a few questions I hope you can answer truthfully.”
Ms. Bai took a deep breath. “What do you want to ask? I’ve already told the police everything I know many times.”
Gong Yingxian nodded. “But before, you spoke from the standpoint of a victim’s family member. Things are different now.”
Ms. Bai stared at Gong Yingxian. “W-What do you mean?”
“We have reason and evidence to suspect that you and the other four neighboring households on the west side of the twenty-second floor all threw trash outside 2209’s door before the fire started.”
Ms. Bai pretended to remain calm. “He likes piling trash outside his door anyway. I was just angry and threw some there. So what?”
“Did you throw trash there before?”
Ms. Bai hesitated, unsure how to answer.
“The female owner of 2209 said you never did anything like that before. You only argued with each other and put up big-character posters. So how did it happen that, coincidentally, all five households threw trash outside 2209’s door on the very day of the fire?”
“…I saw someone else throwing it, so I threw some too.”
“Who did you see throwing it?”
“I forgot.” Ms. Bai turned her head away. “Throwing trash doesn’t mean we set the fire, does it?”
“No. But the trash you threw helped fuel the fire, so you bear a certain degree of responsibility. As for what kind of responsibility, that depends on whether you knew about the arson.”
“I didn’t know!” Ms. Bai said agitatedly. “I had no idea there would be a fire. If I had known, how could I have let my mother be suffocated to death by the smoke?”
Gong Yingxian said coldly, “It is precisely because your mother also inhaled smoke during the fire and died after being taken to the hospital that I can’t understand why you would protect the person who killed your mother.”
Ms. Bai’s body trembled, and her gaze began darting away.
“You know who did it, don’t you? In fact, you may all know. This was a premeditated act of retaliation. Perhaps the consequences of that retaliation went beyond what you expected. You became afraid—afraid of being implicated—so you don’t dare tell us the truth. Am I right?”
Ren Yi’s heart jolted.
Actually, he had already guessed what Gong Yingxian meant in the car. But hearing Gong Yingxian actually say it out loud still shocked him.
Could this be a case of collective arson?
He had never encountered anything like this in his entire career. No wonder Gong Yingxian had said that the direction of the case would be completely beyond his expectations.
Ms. Bai shook her head vigorously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I threw the trash. We neighbors had already angrily agreed that if he threw trash, we would throw trash outside his door too. We were angry. That whole family has no shame, so we—we threw a few bags of trash. So what? We didn’t start the fire.”
“You know who caused your own mother’s death, yet you’re too afraid of taking responsibility to tell us. Your mother is watching you from the afterlife.”
Fine beads of sweat appeared on Ms. Bai’s forehead.
“Ms. Bai, I understand your concerns. You’re afraid that if you tell us, you’ll be treated as an accomplice, that you won’t be able to answer to the law or your family. You may even have been threatened by someone else. Am I right?”
Ms. Bai said nothing.
“I sympathize with you.” Gong Yingxian leaned forward. “Of the six households on the west side, apart from the male owner of 2209, you’re the only one who lost a family member. It’s unfair, isn’t it? That man disgusted you for years. Why did your mother have to die with him? Why did nothing happen to the other families? Have you slept well this past month? Haven’t you been living in fear every day, afraid that we would find a clue? And look at you now. We did find one, and it led straight to you.”
Ms. Bai’s voice became shrill. “Stop! I don’t know!”
“You can choose not to know, because I can question the others. There are so many households. As long as even one person turns on the rest of you…”
Ms. Bai lowered her head toward the table, her entire body extremely rigid.
“I told you that I sympathize with you. I also sympathize with your mother. That’s why I came to you first. I wanted to give you a chance to atone by rendering meritorious service. You don’t want that chance. But can you guarantee that the others won’t take it? You’re older, and you have no criminal record. If you take the initiative to provide information and render meritorious service, you’ll certainly receive a lighter punishment. But if you continue taking the blame for others and protecting the person who caused your mother’s death, then you’re being both unfilial and foolish. You’ve already made one huge mistake. Do you really want to make a second?”
Ms. Bai trembled, and tears rolled down from her reddened eyes.