Chapter 2

Could he have committed this murder before we arrested him?

After processing the scene, we returned to the unit and questioned Tôn Đào again.

Unexpectedly, he confessed at once.

“Yes, I killed Dương Lệ too. She bullied my daughter, didn’t she? People like her are no loss!”

In truth, something had already felt wrong during his first interview.

It wasn’t the speed of his confession.

It was the way he confessed.

His admissions were vague.

In Bình Bình’s case, most of his statement had concerned her bullying of his daughter.

He had been almost unable to describe the crime itself.

So this time I tried asking:

“Mr. Tôn, please take us through exactly what happened. How did you get Dương Lệ to the scene? What weapon caused her fatal injury? Where is it now?”

His answer was just as I had expected.

“I tied her up and took her there. After I killed her, I threw the knife in the river, obviously. You won’t find it… But I don’t regret it. Dương Lệ deserved to die too!”

Clearly, he was trying to take responsibility for everything.

Yet he might not be the real killer at all.

He was protecting someone.

We could no longer devote so much of our manpower to him.

But the biggest problem remained.

We had investigated their entire social circle without finding anyone else with a motive to avenge Văn.

Đào had few close friends.

No one seemed likely to risk their life committing murder for his daughter.

Văn herself had been introverted and lonely, with hardly any friends.

That side of the inquiry yielded nothing either.

Only later did we understand that “we found nothing” was not the same as “there was nothing to find.”

With Lệ dead and the situation growing more serious, we decided to locate the last person likely to become a victim.

More precisely…

The last of the bullies who had helped drive Văn to her death.

Her name was Trương Khiết Lệ.

Her family ran a successful business and was comfortably off.

From her homeroom teacher, Ms. Trịnh, we learned that Khiết Lệ was going through a rebellious phase.

She regularly mixed with friends outside school, skipped classes, and got into fights.

A typical spoiled rich girl.

We were preparing to contact her family and arrange a visit when the situation changed.

An officer at a local station informed us that Khiết Lệ and her parents had come in to make a report.

Apparently, it concerned Dương Lệ’s death.

I immediately asked that they be brought to the criminal investigation unit.

Tuấn and I received them together.

At first, Khiết Lệ’s parents explained what had happened.

It turned out she had nearly died alongside Dương Lệ the previous day.

It had begun a day earlier.

Both girls had received a message.

The sender was a friend from outside school.

She said she had found somewhere fun and invited them to skip class and go with her.

Dương Lệ had agreed.

Khiết Lệ, feeling unwell that day, had declined.

When she heard today that Lệ had been murdered, she panicked.

She knew that, had she gone too, there might have been another body.

Terrified, she told her parents.

They brought her to the police.

While they spoke, Khiết Lệ kept her head down and barely said a word.

Her parents’ purpose was clear.

They wanted us to catch the killer and protect their daughter.

But something was missing from their account.

Khiết Lệ hadn’t identified the person who sent the message.

Nor had she mentioned helping the other girls bully Văn.

She could not possibly know nothing.

The only explanation was that she did not dare discuss those things in front of her parents.

Finally, I had to ask:

“If possible, could we speak to Khiết Lệ alone for a few minutes?”

Her parents exchanged puzzled looks.

Tuấn explained, “Teenagers can be rebellious. There are always things they don’t want their parents to know.”

Only then did they agree to wait outside.

That private conversation gave us our first lead to the real killer.

“Khiết Lệ, I’ll begin by telling you what we already know.”

I described how Bình Bình and Dương Lệ had died.

The signs of torture motivated by revenge.

Naturally, I also mentioned Văn and her father.

I emphasized one point in particular.

“Although Tôn Đào is under arrest, we suspect he isn’t the real killer.”

Tuấn followed up.

“You said you and Dương Lệ both received a message from a friend outside school. That person could be Đào’s accomplice. Can you give us any information about her?”

“Yes! Of course!”

Khiết Lệ hurriedly took out her phone, opened her contacts, and found a number.

“It’s her. Her name is… Thanh Thanh. Actually… I don’t know her real name. We met playing games at an arcade…”

A girl?

That was genuinely unexpected.

“Thanh Thanh” might well be an alias.

It wasn’t unusual not to know the real name of someone met outside school.

Tuấn took the phone aside to try calling.

I continued questioning Khiết Lệ.

“Since we’ve mentioned Văn, tell us exactly what you did to her.”

Her expression immediately grew uncomfortable.

That was precisely why we had asked her parents to leave.

With them present, she certainly wouldn’t have talked.

Even now, she hesitated.

“No answer. I sent a message too, but I doubt she’ll reply. I’ve passed the number to the technical team to establish who it belongs to.”

Tuấn returned to the table, sat down, and tried to persuade her.

“If Văn was driven to suicide, we already have some idea how serious it was. There’s no point hiding it. We only want leads to the killer. We’ll keep what you tell us about the bullying confidential.”

I nodded in support.

With no alternative, she slowly began.

She, Bình Bình, and Dương Lệ had indeed bullied Văn for a long time.

It had started over something trivial.

One day, it was Bình Bình’s turn to clean the classroom.

She wanted to go out, so she ordered Văn to do it for her.

Văn refused.

She said she had something very important to do, then left school immediately.

Over that little incident, Bình Bình began nursing a grudge.

From then on, she enlisted Khiết Lệ and Dương Lệ to make Văn’s life difficult.

Văn reported them to Ms. Trịnh.

But because things had not yet become too serious, the teacher paid no attention.

That only emboldened the three little demons.

They told Văn they would stop bullying her if she let them take a few photographs.

She believed them.

Perhaps it wasn’t that she was too naïve.

Perhaps months of bullying had made her so desperate to escape that hell that she was willing to gamble.

Sadly, she lost.

The photographs they wanted were not ordinary ones.

They were intimate, compromising pictures.

Once they had them, the girls did not keep their promise.

Instead, they used the photographs to threaten Văn and continue tormenting her.

They slapped her.

Beat her face black and blue.

Cornered her in the toilets and forced her head into a sink.

After school, they stopped her in deserted alleys and punched and kicked her without mercy.

Once the photographs existed, Văn no longer dared report them to a teacher.

They had threatened to circulate the pictures throughout the school if she said a word.

Finally, unable to bear the humiliation and despair, she jumped to her death.

When Khiết Lệ finished, Tuấn slammed a hand on the table.

“Young lady, you’re talking to the police. We can find all of this out. Stop hiding things and tell the truth!”

I felt exactly as he did.

She was certainly withholding something.

She had skipped from the bullying to the suicide in a single sentence.

There was always a final straw.

Something worse must have happened to Văn.

And Khiết Lệ was deliberately leaving it out.

Tuấn’s shout made her turn pale.

At last, she told us the worst thing they had done.

“We… we sold her photos… Then… someone outside school wanted to… meet her… So we… we…”

I froze.

Tuấn’s hand tightened into a fist on the table.

Disgusting.

“But… we were only discussing it with her! We didn’t force her! We even said we’d share the money if she agreed! We really didn’t force her! She was the one who did something stupid and killed herself! It wasn’t our fault!”

“Shut up!”

Tuấn pounded the table again, roaring with anger.

Khiết Lệ shrank back, trembling.

We had nothing left to say to her.

If we continued, only bitter words would come out.

After finishing her statement, Tuấn and I stayed to analyze the case.

The phone number was an extremely important lead.

But the technical team’s response was bitterly disappointing.

It belonged to an unregistered SIM.

In other words, our lead to “Thanh Thanh” was almost another dead end.

At the time, real-name registration for SIM cards was not yet fully enforced.

Many prepaid cards on the market required no identification.

This was one of them.

Who, then, was the girl called Thanh Thanh?

Khiết Lệ had no photograph of her.

But from her description, we knew Thanh Thanh was about their age.

Lively, outgoing, and well acquainted with having a good time.

In simpler terms, a streetwise teenage girl who spent her time hanging around outside school.

Why had she sent the message luring Dương Lệ and Khiết Lệ out?

We had no idea.

After discussing it, Tuấn and I split up.

He took a team to question Khiết Lệ’s friends outside school about Thanh Thanh.

I returned to speak to Ms. Trịnh.

There was a contradiction in Khiết Lệ’s account.

It did not entirely match the teacher’s.

Ms. Trịnh had said Bình Bình and Văn were close friends.

But nothing in Khiết Lệ’s firsthand account suggested friendship.

A single refusal to cover a cleaning duty had supposedly led Bình Bình to begin a sustained campaign of bullying that drove a girl to her death.

It didn’t add up.

Given Khiết Lệ’s present state, there seemed almost no chance she was lying.

Did that mean…

Ms. Trịnh was the one lying?

That was why I returned to the school.

Perhaps, as their homeroom teacher, she had seen things Khiết Lệ knew nothing about.

If she knew Văn better than we thought, she might also have seen the person now avenging her.

It was fortunate I went back.

Because Ms. Trịnh did know things we did not.

I found her alone in the office, head bent over her lesson plans.

Although the successive murders of two students had forced the school to suspend classes for everyone, she was diligently preparing her lessons.

Rather than professional dedication, perhaps it showed how little the murders affected her.

The dead girls had been her students, after all.

I sat across from her desk and went straight to the point.

“Ms. Trịnh, I’d like to ask a few more questions about Tôn Văn.”

She frowned slightly.

“Officer, I told you everything I should last time. What else do you want to know?”

“Then I’d like to hear what you shouldn’t tell me.”

I had no intention of circling around it.

“You said Bình Bình was Văn’s closest friend, correct? What about anyone besides Bình Bình?”

By then, I had begun to suspect that Thanh Thanh might have been Văn’s friend.

Perhaps Đào really had killed Dương Lệ.

But Thanh Thanh was his accomplice, or at least the person who had lured her out.

“What do you mean, anyone besides Bình Bình?” Ms. Trịnh asked calmly. “I don’t understand.”

“Khiết Lệ came to the unit and told us everything. We’ve uncovered a great deal too… You should tell us the truth.”

At that half-truth, deliberately offered as bait, her expression changed.

She drew a deep breath.

“I only found out later. And I wasn’t certain it was true, so I didn’t want to spread rumors…”

Only then did she tell me everything she knew.

But I had been wrong about one thing.

She wasn’t concealing the truth to protect someone else.