Chapter 2

"I looked for my daughter this morning. I didn't find her."

It was plausible.

A drowned body didn't necessarily float immediately. Perhaps Huiqiong had surfaced only after he left.

But her pregnancy was a fact.

Without evidence, we couldn't place Zhong Jianbin under criminal detention. That required a person caught committing an offense or a major suspect.

The former meant someone in the act of committing a crime. The latter meant someone against whom there was evidence of a strong likelihood of serious criminal involvement.

And questioning under a summons could last no more than twenty-four hours.

During those twenty-four hours, all I could do was keep pressing the examiner for the paternity results.

Once we established that Zhong Jianbin was the father, then even if Huiqiong had killed herself and we couldn't arrest him for murder, he still wouldn't escape the law.

She clearly had an intellectual disability and couldn't fully understand what was happening. Proof that he had had sexual intercourse with her would establish an act against the woman's will, punishable as rape.

But when the result arrived, the case was shrouded in uncertainty again.

The DNA comparison excluded Zhong Jianbin as the embryo's biological father.

We had no proof that he had had intercourse with Huiqiong. And we faced a more serious question.

Whose child was she carrying?

I asked him again.

His face remained unnaturally cold.

"Don't know."

Since the case began, he hadn't shown any of the emotions I expected from a father.

Combined with the villagers' accounts of him taking her for abortions, that kept him high on our list of suspects.

We investigated his relatives and friends, and obtained a warrant to search his home.

I suspected he hadn't been the only person abusing her.

Perhaps others were involved. People close to him.

How else could we explain the pregnancy?

If something so depraved had been happening, his home was the likeliest place.

Once again, events confounded us.

We searched every room. Not only did we find no trace of a place where she had been assaulted, we found something else.

A suicide note.

She couldn't read or write. Yet she owned a phone watch.

That surprised us.

The family was desperately poor.

They still lived in an earth-brick house with a tiled roof, built decades earlier. There could hardly be many like it left in the village.

The furnishings were bare. They didn't even have a refrigerator.

The phone watch looked so out of place that we initially thought it couldn't belong to them.

But its box sat neatly on a table in Huiqiong's room. Beside it was a charging dock; all she had to do was set the watch on it.

We charged it, switched it on, and examined its contents.

There was a voice message.

Her "suicide note."

"Dad, I'm scared. I don't want to live anymore."

Although she was sixteen, the trembling voice and intonation sounded like those of a six-year-old girl.

Just then, the forensic examiner called.

The blood tests were back. No drugs had been detected.

In other words, she had killed herself.

And she had been determined to die. After entering the water, she hadn't even tried to struggle.

The evidence indicated suicide. Homicide could be ruled out.

We even developed a theory.

Zhong Jianbin had sold her to other men for their gratification. She had become pregnant, despaired of life, and killed herself.

That was the "fear" in her final message.

But we couldn't find proof in the time available.

However many suspicions and unanswered questions we had, they weren't evidence.

We had no grounds to keep him.

During our final interview, I asked, "What exactly happened to your daughter?"

He still wouldn't tell me anything.

"I don't know."

I knew he was lying.

I brought the watch into the room and played her final message.

The moment he heard her voice, his eyes widened.

His astonishment showed he'd never heard it before.

I handed him the watch and challenged him outright.

"Zhong Jianbin, did you force or coax Yang Huiqiong into doing those filthy things for money?"

He took it and gripped it tightly.

Then he looked up.

The coldness was gone from his eyes.

Had her voice awakened the last scrap of conscience he had?

He asked, word by word, "Officer, if there's... rape... how many years does the law give for that?"

I thought he was ready to confess.

"Under Article 236 of the Criminal Law, rape committed through violence, threats, or other means carries three to ten years' imprisonment."

Then I worried that frightening him would stop him from talking, so I added, "But meritorious cooperation can reduce the sentence. If you identify accomplices now, for instance, you may receive a lighter sentence—even a suspended one. You might not actually go to prison."

I was answering his question. In truth, there was something I didn't explain: that sentencing range wouldn't apply to his situation.

His likely offense was organizing prostitution, punishable by five to ten years in prison and a fine.

He quietly repeated, "Might not actually go to prison..."

I waited for him to confess.

He said nothing.

After a long wait, I lost patience.

"Zhong Jianbin, don't you have anything to say?"

By then, the cold expression had returned. His eyes held only indifference.

Back where we'd started.

"No. I don't know anything."

I was furious.

This couldn't simply be left.

Huiqiong's death was classified as suicide.

After signing documents including the notice of his daughter's autopsy and the preliminary report, he was released.

The forensic department would retain DNA samples from her and the embryo. That was permitted by the regulations.

I would keep investigating. I wouldn't let Zhong Jianbin and the criminals behind him walk free.

A few days later, the examiner finished preparing the body—replacing the organs and closing the incisions.

We sent written notice to the next of kin to collect her and arrange burial within ten days.

I took the notice to Zhong Jianbin myself.

He wasn't home.

A lifelong bachelor with no other relatives, he left me no one to ask but the villagers.

Their answer was that he'd fled.

They all said much the same thing.

"He ran off. The very night you let him out. Gone by morning."

"His foolish daughter is dead too. How could he show his face here?"

"Too much fuss this time. No more tricks left to play. All he could do was run..."

...

They seemed to have no sympathy for him. Most of what had happened in that house was merely a story for them to pass around.

But I wondered what exactly they meant by his "tricks."

The village was too small to have a permanent police station. I went to the village committee.

The chief's surname was Zhong too. An elderly man with a kindly face, one of the few educated people in the village.

Seeing him, I remembered he had been at the pond when Huiqiong's body was recovered.

He had even said a few words.

From our conversation, I learned that the abortions had occurred two years and one year earlier.

The first time she became pregnant, Jianbin had asked him for help.

He'd said several thugs had raped his daughter.

But he hadn't caught them. She hadn't known how to preserve evidence and couldn't identify their faces.

The chief hadn't believed him.

Even then, rumors had circulated. An old bachelor living with a girl with an intellectual disability—something must be going on.

His advice had been not to make a fuss. Otherwise, not only might Jianbin find it impossible to stay in the village, Huiqiong might never have any peace either.

An unassuming farmer, Jianbin could only give way and take her for an abortion.

He never asked the committee for help again.

Villagers had seen them on the second trip to town. The rumors spread more fiercely.

The chief stressed that people here were conservative. When shameful things happened, they usually advised keeping them quiet.

He still seemed to believe father and daughter shared an unspeakable secret.

What caught my attention, however, was Jianbin's request for help.

No.

If he had committed those monstrous acts himself, how would he have dared seek help from others?

A bad feeling came over me.

Perhaps he hadn't fled after all.

But the committee visit wasn't what finally shook my certainty.

Unable to deliver the collection notice, I returned to tell the forensic examiner. He stopped me, insisting we talk.

He knew I'd spent the past few days on Huiqiong's case.

He told me a story.

He had once examined another body in very similar circumstances.

A young woman with an intellectual disability, living in a desperately poor village.

She hadn't been pregnant.

Her uterus had been surgically removed.

Not because it was diseased.

It had been a deliberate decision.

She had become pregnant repeatedly. Each time, no one knew who the father was.

Rural people had to work, her family included. They couldn't always stay with her.

With her impaired understanding, she was easily lured somewhere secluded and assaulted.

She couldn't comprehend that she was being abused.

Her family decided to keep her indoors. But they couldn't contain her desire to play.

She often slipped out to amuse herself.

Evil had no pity for innocence.

Some people could hurt even the most innocent child. What would stop them from hurting a young woman with an intellectual disability?

After repeated pregnancies, her family followed a doctor's advice and had her uterus removed.

They couldn't stop the evil. They did it only to spare her some of the pain of repeated abortions.

I felt a terrible tightness in my chest.

I knew what the examiner wanted me to consider.

Zhong Jianbin might not be a monster.

He had never offered a word in his own defense. I had believed the villagers and decided he was a depraved father.

But what if his appeal to the committee had been truthful?

Then all that silence might mean he was planning something.

What happened next confirmed my suspicion.

A few days later, we received a missing-person report.

Three middle-aged men had disappeared from the town that administered Jianbin's village.

All had been missing for more than forty-eight hours. The local station referred the case to us for a formal investigation.

They were:

Wang Biao, thirty-eight.

Xie Zhongchao, thirty-five.

Zeng Jianjun, thirty-six.

All were married with children. Their households were unremarkable.

They knew each other and lived much the same way. No regular jobs; they picked up odd work wherever their skills could earn them something.

Wang Biao and Xie Zhongchao had disappeared together.

Their families said they had accepted a job and left on one motorbike.

No one had been able to reach them since.