Chapter 1

A deeply tragic case once unfolded in a village under our jurisdiction.

It concerned an unusual family: a lifelong bachelor and the abandoned child he had raised. She was a girl whose biological parents had cast her out because of a neurological illness.

At sixteen, she drowned.

The initial scene examination could not rule out homicide. The first suspect was her "father," the unmarried man who had taken her in and brought her up.

But the deeper we investigated, the more we uncovered.

And what lay behind this case was truly sordid.

The victim was Yang Huiqiong. She was sixteen when she died. No one knew who her biological parents were.

Apparently, she had contracted encephalitis as a newborn and been left beneath a village bridge to die.

A few layers of clothing had been loosely wrapped around her. There was also a slip of paper bearing her name.

Fortunately, a villager named Zhong Jianbin, then thirty-five, had happened past and found her.

He took her in.

Zhong Jianbin was a farmer through and through.

His parents had died of illness early on. Poverty had kept him from finding a wife.

After he adopted Huiqiong, no woman would look his way.

He had done everything he could to get her to a doctor in town. In the end, he had managed only to save her life.

The illness had never been fully cured.

The aftereffects of encephalitis prevented her brain from developing normally.

Put simply, she had an intellectual disability.

Most children began learning to speak at about one.

She hadn't managed simple words until she was five.

At sixteen, her intellectual development was still that of a five- or six-year-old.

Villagers found her body in a pond.

We acted immediately after the report came in.

First, we recovered her.

There were no obvious external injuries, but the body still had to go to the forensic examiner for an autopsy and a final cause of death.

We secured and examined the pond and the surrounding area, collecting evidence.

Persistent drizzle had left the banks soft and muddy.

At one spot, we found numerous shoeprints.

Some matched the shoes Yang Huiqiong was wearing.

She might have walked there herself, or someone might have forced her there.

Beside her prints was a size-41 impression, apparently from a man's shoe.

Meanwhile, colleagues went to Zhong Jianbin's home.

While informing him of what had happened, they found a pair of muddy size-41 military-style shoes.

They immediately took him into custody.

Comparative examination confirmed that his shoes had made the prints beside the pond.

It was difficult not to regard him as a suspect.

Even if he was her "father."

My colleagues brought him straight to the criminal investigation unit.

He insisted he hadn't killed his daughter.

Beyond that, he wouldn't say a word.

He wouldn't explain why his prints were beside the pond.

I knew that to make him talk, I first had to find a motive for killing her.

And that motive...

Might be disgusting.

I left colleagues to continue examining the scene and began speaking to the villagers gathered around the pond.

Yes.

Perhaps it was exactly as we'd suspected.

According to them, Zhong Jianbin wasn't a good father.

He was an animal.

Yang Huiqiong was only sixteen, yet she'd had at least two abortions.

Who had fathered the children?

The villagers merely smiled. They didn't care to elaborate.

Most likely...

Zhong Jianbin himself.

He had been a bachelor for more than half his life. Never married.

And Huiqiong had grown older, her body beginning to mature.

It had long ceased to be a secret in the village.

Some even believed he had adopted the brain-damaged girl with one purpose from the start.

"Raise her to be his wife."

But it was his family business. The villagers felt they had no right to intervene.

They knew little of the law and didn't want to invite trouble.

So no one had reported it.

The motive for killing her seemed about to emerge.

I immediately called the forensic examiner.

As soon as he answered, I asked the crucial question.

"Any evidence of abuse or sexual assault? Anything to suggest she was killed and then dumped in the pond?"

His answer astonished me further.

"No obvious injuries. But she was pregnant."

There was our motive, wasn't it?

Instead, he told me to come back at once.

He had more detailed preliminary findings to discuss in person.

I wanted to confront Zhong Jianbin with what I'd learned anyway.

So I returned.

I hadn't expected the case to turn again.

Back at the unit, I went to see the examiner.

He wanted to explain several points.

First, there was already an embryo in Yang Huiqiong's uterus, rather than merely a fertilized egg.

Its size suggested conception roughly two weeks to a month earlier.

He had sent DNA from the embryo and a hair follicle from Zhong Jianbin for a paternity test.

The results would arrive with the detailed autopsy report.

Second, a considerable amount of froth had formed a cone around the body's mouth and nose.

This formed when irritation of the airways caused mucus to be secreted, then mixed with air and water during strenuous breathing.

It could leave traces around the mouth and nose even after drying.

It was important evidence that a victim had been alive while drowning.

For now, that ruled out her having died before being thrown into the pond.

She had drowned.

It didn't entirely rule out homicide.

Someone could have pushed her in.

Third, the time of death.

Various signs indicated that she had drowned more than eight hours earlier.

The villagers had found her at ten in the morning and called us.

That placed her likely death in the early hours that day.

Fourth, and most importantly, there were no signs of her hands clawing or grasping at anything. No mud beneath her fingernails.

In the terror and panic of drowning, people usually struggled violently, flailing and perhaps clutching water plants or getting mud beneath their nails.

Huiqiong showed none of that.

She had died very "quietly."

Whether medication or something else had caused that stillness hadn't yet been tested.

We would have to wait for the detailed report.

But he hadn't called me back without reason.

Everything he was telling me pointed toward one possibility.

Yang Huiqiong might have killed herself.

In other words...

Even if she was pregnant.

Even if she'd been harmed.

If, unable to bear it, she had ultimately taken her own life, we couldn't hold Zhong Jianbin criminally responsible for her death.

Back in the interview room, I spoke briefly to him.

It was the first time I'd met him.

At a glance, he looked like an honest, unassuming farmer. Past fifty, but still powerfully built, with dark skin, thick eyebrows, and large eyes.

Only the brightness had gone out of those eyes.

Strangely, even when I repeated the villagers' rumors about their "father-daughter" relationship, he didn't react. It was as if he'd long grown accustomed to their looks.

He didn't panic when I told him an embryo had been found either.

Thinking about it, she'd already had two abortions.

Throughout the interview, he repeated only one thing.

"I didn't kill my daughter."

Stubborn. Cold.

It went on for a long time.

Then the scene investigators returned with an update.

After rigorous repeated comparison, they had established that the shoeprints were made at different times.

It had drizzled again that morning. Huiqiong's prints from the previous night were blurred.

Zhong Jianbin's were much clearer. He had evidently left them that morning, after the rain.

That raised another question.

If he wasn't the killer, and he had been to the pond that morning, why hadn't he called the police?

I went back and put it to him.

He gave me a cold look and said only—