Chapter 5

15

“To design a case, I first needed a victim.

“That victim was me.

“Zhou Gang was the man I meant to frame.

“August 25, 2018, was my birthday.

“And the first anniversary of Dad's death.

“I chose that day.

“I arranged to meet Zhou on Dayu Mountain.

“I told him I had evidence proving he'd caused Dad's death.

“He was to bring money as compensation, or I'd report him.

“I didn't ask for much—roughly what he'd owed Dad for the herbs.

“The meeting place was where Dad had died.

“The time was six in the evening, the estimated time of Dad's death.

“His guilty conscience brought him there with the money.

“I'd already positioned another phone nearby to record the meeting, with a time stamp on the footage.

“It caught him arriving. That would be the first video I sent you.

“I staged the scene to make it look as though I'd already been attacked.

“When Zhou arrived, he called me and discovered me apparently helpless.

“I cried for help. He came over to check and tried to free me.

“I seized the chance to beg him not to kill me, promising to destroy the evidence against him in Dad's case.

“He realized I was trying to get something out of him. He mocked me for worrying about evidence when I could barely keep myself alive.

“He told me to take my evidence to the King of Hell.

“Then he left angrily.

“That would be the second recording.

“He hadn't killed me. But the footage could look as though he had.

“He wanted me dead and believed I wouldn't survive much longer, so he hurried down the mountain.

“To distance himself from my death, I expected him to use his fastest route and repeat his old trick: produce an alibi showing he hadn't had time to commit the crime.

“If he could leave within thirty minutes, as he had a year before, that alibi would begin at six thirty at the earliest.

“After he'd gone, I ended the first staged scene.

“At six forty, I made the third recording.

“I put my clothes on a straw dummy and disguised myself as Zhou.

“The footage made it appear that a man in black was killing me.

“It was dark by then. The undergrowth was gloomy.

“I deliberately made the recording indistinct, expecting you to follow the impression already formed and see Zhou as the killer.

“Afterward, I uploaded the videos to three email accounts, destroyed and buried the recording phone and memory card, and burned the dummy.

“Then I sat down to write this letter.

“I wanted you to know the whole story.

“Using four anonymous accounts, I scheduled the three videos and this letter to reach the provincial bureau at different times.

“The last part of the plan was my own death. I intended it to appear to be another person's crime.

“I expected to die around seven that evening.

“Gatherers came to the mountain regularly at this time of year. I thought they would find me no earlier than the morning of August 26.

“From the report, to the investigation, to identifying Zhou through the messages on my phone and bringing him in, I expected no more than twenty-four hours.

“When you questioned him, he'd deny going to the scene and produce his carefully prepared alibi.

“Around then, you'd receive the first video.

“His lie would be exposed immediately.

“He'd also have to explain how he'd appeared on Dayu Mountain and in town, forty kilometers away, just thirty minutes apart.

“If he explained, he'd dismantle his own alibi in Dad's case.

“So I guessed he wouldn't.

“He might even disown the alibi he'd prepared this time.

“The first video would only prove he'd been there at six.

“My estimated time of death would be around seven.

“That left an hour-long gap in the evidence. He'd gamble that you couldn't convict him on that alone.

“That's why I prepared the second recording.

“It would lead you to misunderstand what happened.

“In reality, I'd deliberately drawn those words out of him.

“What you'd see was a man killing me to silence me.

“With a motive, an opportunity, and that footage, he would be very likely to become your killer.

“He'd try everything to escape suspicion.

“So I prepared a third video for him.

“It was time-stamped six forty, and the apparent killer's face never appeared.

“With only the first two videos, Zhou might well have been convicted of murder. He could even have received death or life imprisonment.

“But that wasn't my aim.

“I wanted to leave him one way out.

“A way that forced him to destroy the alibi he'd used in Dad's case.

“The third video was a deliberate opening.

“He'd have to take that last chance.

“To prove he wasn't the man in black at six forty, he'd have to use his alibi again.

“But that brought back the same question.

“How had he appeared on the mountain and in the town below it just thirty minutes apart?

“Once he explained, his old alibi would fall apart.

“In other words, because he'd used similar alibis in both cases, he would have to answer for either my death or Dad's.

“He'd have to choose.

“That was the only escape I'd left him.

“A year ago, the police told me that even if Zhou was involved in Dad's death, the scene and autopsy findings would support, at most, a charge of causing death unintentionally.

“There was no evidence proving he'd pushed Dad down the slope.

“I used that distinction to build what looked like an intentional murder case against him.

“Murder on one side. An unintentional killing on the other.

“Weighing the consequences, he'd choose the latter.

“Then Dad's case would be heard again.

“And the stain of theft would finally be washed away.

“It didn't matter if the law ultimately punished Zhou less severely.

“It didn't matter that I might have had a chance to send him to his death.

“Nothing mattered more than clearing Dad's name, letting him rest without that stain.

“That ordinary farmer, his face lined, his steps uneven, unable to read a single word—

“He was the brightest light in my heart.

“I'm finished writing. I'll leave it there.

“Oh, yes. Today is the first anniversary of Dad's death.

“It's my birthday too.

“Whoever reads this, could you wish me a happy birthday?

“—Ma Xiaohu's final letter.

“6:55 p.m., August 25, 2018.”

16

I remember the silence after we read it.

Every one of us was lost in thought.

My own eyes were damp.

It had all begun with Ma Guobing's death a year earlier.

Desperate to reopen his father's case, Xiaohu had built this entire scheme at the cost of his own life.

I found it hard to imagine what had passed through his mind in those last moments.

Perhaps it was what he'd written.

His father had been a light to him.

A light that drove back suffering and gave him strength to live toward the sun.

His father had lost both his life and his good name.

Then Xiaohu had become gravely ill and lost hope of clearing it in time.

In that despair, he'd ended his own life, staking everything on the light he carried within him.

In his eyes, it was death—and somehow what he believed it meant to live toward the light.

As a police officer, I could not agree with what he'd done.

But I was deeply moved by his determination to clear his father's name.

Looking back over the case, one doubt has never left me.

Did Guobing truly slip during his argument with Zhou and fall to his death?

Why had Zhou brought money and traveled all that way to meet Xiaohu?

And when I suggested he retain a lawyer, why did he refuse on the spot and immediately begin describing Guobing's “accidental” fall?

What really happened that year may never be known.

Whatever the truth, the case finally restored Guobing's good name.

That was the outcome Xiaohu had given everything to achieve.

Perhaps the light in his heart had at last broken through the mist and shone as brightly as before.

Later, I went to the graves of Xiaohu and his father.

I burned Zhou's written apology as an offering.

I also printed Xiaohu's letter.

At the end, I added two words.

Happy birthday.

Then I burned that letter before his grave too.

The End.

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