Chapter 5

The child burst into frightened tears.

Sometimes it is hard to know whether something is coincidence or fate.

Because this was no random child.

He was Trịnh Kiến Hoa’s youngest son.

Trịnh Minh Hạo’s little brother.

Trịnh Kiến Hoa had brought his wife and child to say their final goodbyes to Trịnh Minh Hạo.

While they were completing the paperwork in the office, the five-year-old had wandered outside alone.

And into Dương Chí Nghị’s hands.

I must emphasize how unstable Dương Chí Nghị was at that moment.

Holding the child with one arm, he drew a fruit knife with the other hand and held it against him, shouting at the guard.

“Get away! Go! You can’t arrest me! I can’t be arrested...”

The guard was terrified.

He had thought he might have caught a pickpocket or petty thief. He had never expected the situation to escalate like this.

He hurriedly called for help over his radio. That was when the report reached us.

There were not many people at the funeral home that early in the morning. Hearing the commotion, they came out into the hall.

As the crowd grew, Dương Chí Nghị became more distressed.

Holding the child with one arm was difficult. The boy kept crying, and Dương Chí Nghị struggled, instinctively backing into a corner.

He sat with his back against the wall, restraining the child with one arm and holding the knife to his neck with the other.

The guards approached slowly and tried to calm him. Whatever the problem was, they said, he could talk to them. There was no need to get upset.

“Get the fuck away! Let me through! I have to go inside!”

“All right, of course you can,” a guard said. “But let the child go first. He can barely cry anymore...”

“Get away! Or I’ll stab him! I’ve already killed four people! I really will stab him!”

The guards went white.

They could not advance. They could hardly walk away, either.

Then Trịnh Kiến Hoa appeared.

He did not act wisely.

“Hey, hey... What’s going on? What’s happening...”

He pushed a guard aside and rushed toward Dương Chí Nghị.

It happened so suddenly that no one could stop him.

Dương Chí Nghị brandished the knife and shouted, “Stay back! I really will kill him!”

The blade grazed the child’s soft cheek, leaving a clear line of blood.

His crying stopped altogether. He trembled from head to foot, beginning to twitch slightly, as though he might faint at any moment.

Trịnh Kiến Hoa crumpled.

“All right, all right. I’m not coming any closer...”

Then he suddenly dropped to his knees, bringing his eyes level with Dương Chí Nghị’s.

He raised both hands in surrender and pleaded in the humblest voice he could manage.

“Is... is this all right? Take me instead. Take me instead. Whatever you want, I’ll cooperate... He’s only five. He doesn’t understand any of this...”

Dương Chí Nghị stared, apparently unable to believe the offer.

Watching the security footage, this was where I began to feel uncertain.

He did not seem to recognize Trịnh Kiến Hoa.

He certainly did not look like someone who had come specifically to kill him.

There was a jarring disconnect.

Why the sudden change?

Then Trịnh Kiến Hoa even took off his shirt, exposing his thin, wasted body.

Hands raised, eyes red, he said, “Look. I don’t have a weapon. I couldn’t beat you in a fight. I...”

Dương Chí Nghị asked a question.

“He’s your son?”

“Yes, yes... Please. Let me take his place. Please...”

Trịnh Kiến Hoa’s eyes were red. As he spoke, he bowed forward several times, striking his forehead against the floor.

Hard enough to break the skin.

Then he raised his hands again and went on begging.

Dương Chí Nghị erupted.

“Then you’ll be the one who dies!”

That sense of something being wrong grew stronger.

I began to suspect that our assessment was not entirely correct.

His own eyes reddening, Dương Chí Nghị continued shouting.

“I really will kill you! If you take his place, I’ll kill you!”

But his threats had no effect.

Trịnh Kiến Hoa seemed to hear them as agreement.

“All right, all right. Kill me, then... Let me take his place. I can come over. I... I’ll come just like this...”

Keeping both hands high, he slowly shuffled forward on his knees.

It was a painful, almost absurd sight.

Bare-chested, he had left his whole body exposed.

He was thin and aging. Even standing, he would have been no match for a strong young man like Dương Chí Nghị, much less on his knees.

He was prepared to die.

At that moment, Dương Chí Nghị began to sob.

His face contorted as though he were in unbearable pain.

He could not get the words out. Tears streamed down his face.

Trịnh Kiến Hoa froze.

He stopped moving, afraid to do anything rash.

But Dương Chí Nghị’s frenzy did not continue.

Trịnh Kiến Hoa could hear him repeating what sounded like a single broken question.

“Why... my dad... Why...”

Then he gently pushed the child away, beyond the reach of the blade.

Startled, Trịnh Kiến Hoa nevertheless lunged forward and caught the boy as he was about to fall.

“Tell Dương Huy he doesn’t deserve to be a father.”

With those words, Dương Chí Nghị raised the sharp fruit knife to his own throat.

A deep wound opened. Blood poured out. Nothing could save him.

And he died.

The curtain had finally fallen.

But I was left with an ache I could not shake.

Trịnh Kiến Hoa and his youngest son suffered no serious lasting harm.

The incident made one thing clear: that little boy had received his father’s love in full.

Trịnh Minh Hạo certainly had not.

Looking back over the families involved in the case, every one of them was broken.

His was no exception.

He had grown up apart from his parents, almost abandoned. Perhaps that had contributed to the monstrous thing he did at fifteen.

The other thugs Dương Chí Nghị killed had also come from unhappy homes.

But the most frightening upbringing was Dương Chí Nghị’s own.

At last, I understood why he had refused to turn himself in.

It was bound up with the very reason for his illness.

His own father had once sent him to an unregulated, closed psychiatric institution.

The sort of place notorious for electric-shock treatments, where existence was worse than death.

He must have believed that being caught meant being sent back there.

To him, death was preferable.

That was why he would rather die than surrender.

But had the final incident at the funeral home really happened as we imagined? Had hatred destroyed his reason and sent him completely out of control?

No.

During the later stages of the case, Old Xu went to considerable trouble to take another statement from Lương Nguyệt Nga. He was trying to establish that her mental state had been abnormal, in the hope of obtaining an exemption from punishment.

While trying to persuade her, he said something.

“If you won’t think of yourself, think of your daughter. She’s still at the funeral home. Don’t you want to get out as soon as possible and see her off?”

The words struck me like lightning.

I immediately checked the records.

What appeared on my computer screen confirmed my suspicion.

At last, I knew why Dương Chí Nghị had gone to the funeral home.

He had not gone mad.

Nor had hatred completely blinded him.

The dissonance I had felt finally made sense.

He had not known Trịnh Kiến Hoa, or his youngest son. Their presence had been a coincidence.

He had gone to the funeral home because Chu Oánh Oánh was still there.

I remembered what he had said at the scene.

“I want to go inside.”

Perhaps he had not meant the offices at all.

Perhaps he had meant the mortuary.

The light from the screen kept stinging my eyes.

So much that something seemed ready to spill over.

I thought...

Perhaps, after everything he had done, that boy had only wanted to die beside her.

THE END