Chapter 2

Lin Zhijian immediately thought of their shared, ugly past.

“If Kong Meilian sent us the liquor, maybe she wanted to kill all three of us to keep us quiet. So no one would find out she used to be a trafficker too.”

We did not think that motive was particularly likely.

They had stopped ten years earlier. If she had wanted to silence them, the best time would have been then, not a decade later.

Whatever the truth was…

Once we found Kong Meilian, things ought to become clearer. We might find a motive through her as well.

But she was from out of town, with no fixed address locally. Finding her would take time.

My colleague Zhao Jun and I went back to the hospital to see Zhang Delin.

He was a victim, after all. If we could get anything more out of him, perhaps it would give us a lead.

By then, it was too late.

Zhang Delin's condition was deteriorating. He was on a ventilator and had long since lost the ability to speak.

Perhaps he had suffered the worst of the three.

He had not drunk enough to die quickly.

Instead…

He was dying slowly.

But he was a human trafficker. However terrible his death might be, it was hard to feel much sympathy.

The doctor said he still wanted to live. His will to survive was strong.

But his prognosis was grim.

His mouth was ulcerated. No sound came from his throat. He was so weak that he could barely get up, and could do nothing but lie in bed.

Pulmonary fibrosis had begun to develop.

Without the ventilator, he might die in a way that felt rather like…

Being buried alive.

The doctor could already predict what would happen next.

In what remained of his life, he would lose control of his bladder and bowels. His skin would turn dark and burn with heat. His breathing would grow feeble.

And throughout it all…

His mind would remain perfectly clear.

He would be aware of his body collapsing, little by little.

Though he could no longer speak, he could still cry.

Perhaps in regret.

Perhaps in pain.

As the pulmonary fibrosis worsened, he would gradually be unable to get enough oxygen. However deeply he tried to breathe, he would still feel as though he were suffocating.

Helpless as a fish stranded on the bank.

At last, he would die of respiratory failure.

It was practically a form of torture.

There was nothing the doctors could do beyond administering dialysis as appropriate.

And it was no use.

Not even a miracle could stop Zhang Delin's life from ebbing away.

As we left the hospital, Zhao Jun said, “Maybe Kong Meilian isn't the killer.”

We had not even found her yet.

I asked why he thought that.

“Because this way of dying… Whichever way you look at it, it feels like revenge.”

“We haven't found any evidence of a feud between Kong Meilian and those men.”

“It would take a very deep hatred to make someone do something this vicious,” Zhao Jun explained. “And human traffickers…”

“They don't deserve so much as a blade of grass on their graves.”

I have to admit…

Zhao Jun's instincts were remarkably accurate.

Our investigation soon brought up even stranger things. It even led back to the children the gang had sold years before.

And sure enough…

We never did find Kong Meilian alive.

She was dead.

When our search for her whereabouts got nowhere, we contacted the police where her household registration was held.

Only then did we learn that she had already died.

Our colleagues there told us she had hanged herself a month earlier.

This was very strange.

Lin Zhijian recalled Chen Jianzhong saying that he had brought the liquor over as soon as he received it. That also fitted the forensic examiner's estimate of the time of death.

In other words, Chen Jianzhong had received the liquor sent by Kong Meilian on the very day she died. That same day, he had taken a bottle to Lin Zhijian and asked him to pass another on to Zhang Delin.

After delivering it, Chen had drunk his entire bottle, lain down in bed, and died.

Zhang Delin had taken only two small sips, but had also been admitted to hospital that day.

This told us one thing.

Although the liquor Chen received had supposedly come from Kong Meilian, he had never actually met her.

She was already dead.

We suspected that an intermediary had delivered it. That intermediary was crucial—quite possibly the killer.

But the crime had taken place in a village with no surveillance cameras. We had no way of finding out who had delivered the bottles to Chen Jianzhong.

The investigation stalled.

Our only lead was Lin Zhijian.

The only trafficker who had not yet been harmed.

But he was so frightened that he could give us nothing useful. Zhao Jun and I kept going over the case and came up with a few possibilities.

Suppose this really was revenge. The person taking it might be one of the children who had been abducted and sold all those years ago.

It was unlikely, however, that one of those children had grown up and come back for revenge.

The children the gang had taken by force had been very young, usually no older than five. A child that age was unlikely to remember what the traffickers looked like.

That left another possibility.

A relative of one of the missing children.

So many families had fallen apart after losing a child. Parents could spend their whole lives searching.

If they discovered who had abducted their child and found those people still alive and well, how could they not want revenge?

We turned our investigation in that direction and sat down for another thorough talk with Lin Zhijian.

He had spent the last two days hiding at our criminal investigation unit, frightened and constantly on edge.

He really was terrified.

None of us liked him. But we knew someone out there wanted him dead. Even on humanitarian grounds alone, we could hardly throw him out.

As for the children they had trafficked, it was still uncertain whether a case could be opened, given how long ago it had happened and a number of other factors.

Besides, keeping him there also helped us continue our investigation.

But the man was hopeless.

We had already asked him to list every family and every child he had harmed.

He could not do it.

Perhaps too much time had passed. More likely—

They had never cared.

They had not cared which families they hurt, or who the children were. So they could not remember.

To them, those children were nothing more than one piece of merchandise after another.

Once it was over, it was over. They gave it no further thought.

Eventually, we had to spell it out.

“Listen to me. Keep hemming and hawing and you're finished. It isn't just Zhang Delin and Chen Jianzhong. Kong Meilian, the woman you worked for, has been dead for some time too. Don't you understand? You're the only one left. We can't protect you for the rest of your life. Think hard. Was there anything suspicious?”

Perhaps the news of Kong Meilian's death was what finally shook him.

He suddenly fell silent.

After a long while, he spoke slowly.

“Kong Meilian… She… something happened to her too… Then that means… someone traced it back from her to us… I… I remember. Something happened a year ago… Something very strange…”

Zhao Jun and I hurriedly sat down to listen and take notes.

It had happened a year earlier.

Kong Meilian had suddenly come to the village and invited all three men out for a meal.

At first, they had thought it was just a reunion of “old friends.”

But during the meal, Kong had begun asking about someone.

A man from their village named Wang Guohao.

His life had been a wretched one.

His parents had died one after the other when he was young. His siblings had scattered and lost touch. He had been left alone, drifting from place to place.

About thirty years earlier, he had come to this village.

Through hard work, he had gradually established himself and built an adobe house.

At last, he had a roof to shelter him from the wind and rain.