Chapter 1

A tenth-grade girl in our county killed herself after being bullied by her classmates.

Her suicide did not, in itself, establish a criminal offense, so no one was held legally responsible. Before long, the case faded from memory.

Then, a year later, one of her former bullies was found dead in a cornfield. The scene was almost unbearable to look at.

Besides the injuries from a beating, her body had been split lengthwise in two. Forensic examination showed that a particular type of saw had been used.

We quickly identified a suspect: the dead girl’s only surviving relative, her father.

But we had underestimated the power of love.

Even after we arrested him, we could not stop the revenge from continuing.

The case began early one morning.

We received a report that a woman’s body had been found in a cornfield belonging to a village in our jurisdiction.

We went straight to the scene, dispersed the onlookers, cordoned off the area, and began our examination.

The local officers were already there and had identified the victim.

She was an eleventh-grade student. I’ll call her Trần Bình Bình.

She attended a high school in a nearby town and lived at home, usually cycling back after classes.

Our preliminary assessment was that she had been attacked on her way home from evening study the previous night, dragged into the cornfield, and brutally murdered.

The killer’s methods were exceptionally vicious.

Her body had almost been divided in two, sawed lengthwise with unnatural neatness from the crown of her head to her groin. Blood and internal organs were scattered around the scene.

We found a brand-new power saw nearby. It showed almost no signs of prior use. The killer appeared to have bought it specifically as a weapon.

In other words, the murder was premeditated.

The killer had also made little effort to frustrate the investigation. We recovered numerous shoeprints, fingerprints on the saw, and cigarette butts believed to be his.

After examining the body, the forensic pathologist gave us a preliminary finding.

The cause of death was strangulation, as indicated by the mark around her neck.

The killer had killed her first, then gone to the trouble of sawing her body in two.

Beyond vengeance and an outlet for rage, the act served almost no purpose.

The injuries to her face and body likewise spoke of an almost indescribable hatred.

The pathologist also established that she had not been sexually assaulted.

We could therefore be almost certain this was a revenge killing.

The killer’s purpose was clear: to torture his victim and make her suffer until she died.

We immediately began investigating.

Two questions were most urgent.

First, Bình Bình’s parents were alive, but neither had appeared. Why had they done nothing when their daughter failed to come home all night?

Second, where had the killer’s intense hatred of her come from?

If we could answer that, we might identify him.

To gather leads quickly, my colleague Triệu Tuấn and I split up.

He took a team to continue processing the scene, interview villagers, and collect whatever surveillance footage they could find.

I took another team to Bình Bình’s home.

According to the household registration records, both her parents were alive.

But at the registered address, we found only an elderly woman living in a dilapidated house.

She was Bình Bình’s grandmother.

When she learned her granddaughter had been murdered, she wept as though her world had collapsed.

It took us a long time to calm her enough to speak.

Only then did we learn that Bình Bình’s parents had been out of contact for years.

They had said they were leaving to earn money for the family. Nearly ten years had passed without a visit. In effect, they had abandoned both their daughter and their elderly mother.

Bình Bình had grown up on the proceeds of her grandmother’s hard work in the fields, supplemented by local assistance.

Without her parents’ affection or company, however, she had become rebellious as she grew older. She had long since stopped confiding in her grandmother or communicating with her in any meaningful way.

The old woman knew nothing about her school life.

Bình Bình also frequently claimed she was staying at school for extra classes and spent the night away.

That explained why her grandmother hadn’t searched for her when she failed to return.

We had hoped her family could tell us whom she had quarreled with.

Instead, we had reached a dead end.

There was nothing here.

Only a frail old woman who had lost the one relative still by her side.

What we never expected was that this seemingly unremarkable grandmother would play a crucial role in the chaos that followed.

We changed course at once and went to Bình Bình’s school to speak to her principal and homeroom teacher.

The principal, Quách Chí Phong, was a man in his fifties.

Her teacher, Trịnh Hải Vân, was a fairly young woman.

In the office, both were terrified by our brief account of the murder.

Principal Quách went white.

Ms. Trịnh was so frightened she began crying.

But we needed to move quickly. I had no time to comfort them and went straight to the point.

“Do either of you know whether Bình Bình had any serious enemies at school? Someone with a deep grudge against her?”

The principal’s expression changed again, turning ashen.

He slowly looked toward Ms. Trịnh, who was sniffling with her head bowed, before answering.

“Our school… had an incident last year. An accident. A student jumped from a building and died.”

My attention sharpened.

“Was Bình Bình involved?”

He nodded.

“Ms. Trịnh would know more. There have always been rumors that the girl killed herself because Bình Bình and some other students bullied her too much. They were all in Ms. Trịnh’s class.”

The teacher abruptly lifted her head and gave him a feeble look.

I had no time to puzzle over the glances passing between them.

“Ms. Trịnh, this is urgent. Please tell us what happened.”

Slowly, she began.

Ignoring those silent signals between them may have been my greatest mistake in the case.

Because bullying was not the only thing they were hiding.

The girl who had jumped the previous year was named Tôn Văn.

She had been quiet, well-behaved, and introverted.

She had also grown up in a single-parent family.

Her only relative was her father, Tôn Đào, a carpenter at a nearby factory.

According to Ms. Trịnh, Văn and Bình Bình had once been close friends.

Later, something had caused a falling-out.

After that, Bình Bình and a group of other students began bullying Văn.

Ms. Trịnh claimed she did not know the details.

In the end, Văn had jumped from the school’s sixth floor, ending her young life.

In cases like this, the school always chose whatever resolution best protected itself.

It did not publicize the bullying.

It did not clear the victim’s name.

It even labeled the dead girl someone who had been overwhelmed by academic pressure and lacked emotional maturity.

But her father, Tôn Đào, certainly would not have accepted that explanation.

Perhaps, after almost a year of digging, he had finally learned the truth about his daughter’s death.

And begun planning his revenge.

I immediately called Triệu Tuấn and told him to divert some personnel from the scene to look for Đào.

Avenging his daughter gave him a motive.

As a carpenter, he would know where to buy a power saw and how to use it.

He fit our picture of the killer perfectly.

Meanwhile, Tuấn had a discovery of his own.

“We found a suspicious man on traffic cameras along the highway at the village entrance. He’d been hanging around for days, as though he was scouting the area. Some villagers recognized him. His name is indeed Tôn Đào. I haven’t contacted him or his workplace yet, to avoid tipping him off. Let’s split up. I’ll go to his house; you go to his workplace.”

“All right. I’m leaving now.”

Everything lined up.

The grounds for suspecting Đào were overwhelming.

After hanging up, I asked Ms. Trịnh to find his workplace information in the school’s records and set off immediately.

On the way, I prepared myself for all manner of difficult arrests.

I never expected him to surrender so easily.

He was still working at the factory as usual, as though nothing had happened.

When we arrived, he cooperated completely and came with us in silence.

All that remained was to compare him with the evidence recovered at the scene.

I thought we had solved the brutal murder.

The case was almost over.

I could not have known…

Arresting Tôn Đào was only the beginning.

It was evening when we brought him back to the criminal investigation unit.

We questioned him that night.

He confessed to killing Bình Bình without hesitation.

He even spoke with the blunt righteousness of someone convinced he was justified.

“Yes. They drove my daughter to her death, so I killed her and split her body in two. That’s perfectly reasonable.”

According to Đào, he had lived in agony after his beloved daughter’s death. At times, he had lost all reason to go on.

Later, among her belongings, he found a diary.

It recorded everything she had endured at school.

Only then did he learn how much torment she had suffered.

Three girls had bullied Văn regularly.

Bình Bình was the ringleader.

The others were her classmates, Dương Lệ and Trương Khiết Lệ.

Đào had approached Bình Bình.

All he wanted was justice for his daughter—or at least an apology.

Her response was cold.

“What’s it got to do with me? Who can she blame for being so weak? Blame your own daughter for being too good. She couldn’t handle a few little things…”

From that moment, hatred took root in him.

He could not understand.

Why had his daughter’s goodness become a reason for others to hurt her?

At this point, he looked at us coldly and asked:

“Is it only bad people who get to live long, comfortable lives? If I don’t become one of them, doesn’t that mean my daughter died for nothing?”

Of course, I could not answer.

I could only ask him to continue his statement.

He did, quite clearly.

The power saw had been prepared long in advance.

From the outset, he had bought it to kill.

The footage Tuấn had collected also proved that he had spent days wandering around the village, surveying the area.

It had all been planned.

After suppressing his rage for so long, he had finally taken revenge.

“I only wanted them to understand that bullying has a price,” Đào said coldly. “Even if you bully someone who doesn’t know how to fight back, someone else will eventually fight back for her.”

He appeared entirely resigned to confessing and accepting his punishment.

Then, at midnight, something strange happened.

Just as we were about to end the interview, news came that caught all of us off guard.

There had been another murder.

And it had only just happened.

The victim was Dương Lệ.

She had attended the same school and class as Bình Bình, so the officers handling the report informed us at once.

Yes.

Lệ was not merely Bình Bình’s close friend.

She had also helped bully Văn.

Her death was even more horrific than Bình Bình’s.

We had to connect the two cases.

They were too close together.

And that raised the greatest problem.

Hadn’t Tôn Đào already been arrested?

Was someone else avenging Văn too?

Dương Lệ was found in an abandoned building near the school.

Her body was in a horrifying state.

There were numerous injuries, clearly indicating prolonged torture before her death.

From interviews with her family, teachers, and classmates, we learned she had not attended school that day.

Although the body had been discovered at night, she might actually have died during the day.

The person who found her was a homeless man who often slept in the abandoned building.

He was so terrified that he could offer nothing useful.

The only thing we could establish was that the killer knew the place well.

There were no surveillance cameras.

All traces relating to the killer had also been removed.

After a preliminary examination, the pathologist placed her death between one and three in the afternoon.

The problem was…

That had been before Tôn Đào’s arrest.