Chapter 5

As soon as the phone started, several messages appeared.

“I’m heading out now.”

“Almost there. Have you finished work?”

“I’m here. This place is amazing. So romantic!”

Reading them, I began to form a picture.

Zhang Bin had gone to Huang Yong’s treehouse of his own accord.

For a date.

Perhaps he had received an invitation he could not resist.

A sexual temptation, for instance.

After all, he had boasted to the group that day that there would definitely be “hot pictures.”

I suddenly remembered the words Huang Yong had deliberately emphasized.

Voluntarily.

Willingly.

An even bolder possibility occurred to me.

Perhaps Xu Wenjia had not been the one being manipulated in their relationship.

Perhaps it was Zhang Bin, who thought himself so clever.

Zhao Jun handed the phone to Xu Wenjia.

“How do you explain these messages?”

She merely gave a faint smile.

“He asked me out that evening. He said he’d found a very interesting place and wanted me to see it. But I never agreed. Besides, my phone was broken. I had no idea where he went.”

“So you don’t know why he went to that treehouse?”

“That’s right. I don’t.”

She kept smiling.

She seemed utterly untroubled by Zhang Bin’s death.

Not only was she not sad, she hardly even looked surprised.

I opened the file in my hand.

Xu Wenjia was not registered as a resident of Chen Linlin’s village.

This was the information we had missed.

We had never looked closely into her background, so it had never occurred to us.

Now, I was beginning to wonder.

“Do you know Chen Linlin? And Huang Yong and Chen Yongkang?”

Xu Wenjia paused, then nodded slightly.

“All of them. We’ve been friends since we were children.

“When we were little, we loved playing in those woods. We used to say how wonderful it would be to have a house of our own up in a tree…”

I sat stunned for a long time.

So did Zhao Jun.

What an elaborate trap.

Suddenly, I understood why Chen Yongkang had infiltrated Zhang Bin’s QQ group.

He had not wanted to become another Zhang Bin.

And Xu Wenjia had not really been manipulated by Zhang Bin either.

But could we prove that she had led him to the treehouse?

Could we prove she knew it was dangerous?

No.

My suspicions could only remain suspicions.

Everything Xu Wenjia said could also have been true.

Zhang Bin might have wanted to get closer to her and voluntarily looked for somewhere suitable for a date, eventually finding Huang Yong’s treehouse.

Why would he have gone so far to find it?

Who knew?

On the physical evidence and witness statements we had, his death was most likely an accident.

An accident during a nighttime adventure he had undertaken willingly.

Who, then, was responsible?

Huang Yong.

Yes.

For indirectly causing Zhang Bin’s death, he would face a charge of endangering public safety.

But he had already surrendered for killing Li Zhihui. What difference would one more charge make?

The interview with Xu Wenjia went smoothly. She answered everything we asked, though most of her answers were:

“I don’t know.”

A very clever answer.

What she told us was enough to establish a preliminary account.

Wanting to persuade her to go out with him, Zhang Bin had voluntarily searched for a romantic meeting place. He had accidentally entered the treehouse Huang Yong had prepared for his own suicide and died there.

After discussing it, Zhao Jun and I decided to end the interview.

Then we reviewed the whole affair and developed our boldest hypothesis.

Perhaps their plan to kill Zhang Bin and Li Zhihui had been in preparation for more than a month and a half.

Perhaps it had begun right after Chen Linlin’s death.

And every detail had been worked out with extraordinary care.

Zhang Bin was so cautious that it was hard to find an opportunity to kill him the way Li Zhihui had been killed.

They must have started preparing well in advance.

Xu Wenjia, for example, could pretend to be someone he could easily conquer through PUA.

Chen Yongkang could hide inside the group and continually monitor Zhang Bin’s responses to her.

Huang Yong’s murder of Li Zhihui would not be the beginning. It would be the necessary next step once those first two stages were complete.

Li Zhihui’s death would unsettle Zhang Bin.

However calm and composed he appeared, going to the police with information showed that inwardly, he had begun to panic.

Huang Yong’s sudden surrender was another crucial point.

It was not that he was “tired.”

It was to lull Zhang Bin into a false sense of security.

While Li Zhihui’s killer remained at large, Zhang Bin would never go out lightly.

So the day after Huang Yong surrendered, he began making plans.

Who had told him Huang Yong was in custody?

It might have been Chen Yongkang. Or perhaps Chen Yongkang had used an alternate account to influence him?

We could not verify that. We had no grounds to pursue it.

Seen in that light, destroying the evidence at Li Zhihui’s murder scene and then suddenly surrendering were not contradictory at all.

Huang Yong needed to wait for the right moment, not let us arrest him immediately.

Surviving a scare like that could lower Zhang Bin’s guard and make him believe he had escaped disaster.

He never imagined that retribution awaited him in the flames.

But Zhao Jun and I knew this was only speculation.

What had really happened?

The account established by the evidence and witness statements was this:

Seeking a secret place for pleasure, Zhang Bin had willingly gone to the little treehouse. He had then been accidentally killed by the flammable material Huang Yong had intended for his own suicide.

One final question remained.

Why had Huang Yong wanted to kill himself?

Without an explanation, the dangerous way he had built the house made little sense. Calling Zhang Bin’s death an accident would be difficult too.

So we went back to Huang Yong.

Instead of letting him offer an explanation, we laid out our suspicions one by one.

He did not hurry to defend himself.

He listened quietly, then said:

“You’re mad. Heh.”

He laughed again.

Then he explained.

“Stop guessing. When I said I wanted to kill myself, I meant it. I couldn’t stand what the illness was doing to me.”

“Illness?”

Zhao Jun and I were both startled.

“Yes. Check the records at XX Hospital. They found it four months ago…”

He pointed at his head, smiling even more happily.

“There’s a tumor in here. Malignant. The doctor said I had a year at most. Maybe six months. Is that a good enough reason? Ha ha ha…”

By the end, he was laughing aloud.

Laughing until tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.

So that was it.

No wonder he had been the one to carry out the killing.

No. Perhaps this illness had set the whole chain of events in motion.

No wonder he had sounded so wistful, even a little sad, when leaving the treehouse.

He added:

“It’s a shame about that little house. It wasn’t meant to be used that way…”

For a moment, Zhao Jun and I did not know how to continue.

There was no need.

Huang Yong’s account was complete.

There was nothing left to add.

It all fitted together.

We could say that this was roughly what had happened.

Our suspicions had no evidence to support them. They could only remain a theory.

Afterward, we deliberately prolonged the investigation.

On all the evidence we could gather, the matter was ultimately classified as two separate cases.

Huang Yong had murdered Li Zhihui.

Zhang Bin’s death had been a bizarre accident.

He had gone there willingly.

Huang Yong, who had built the treehouse, bore responsibility for the grave consequences.

He was therefore to be punished for multiple offenses, with the sentences combined.

Unfortunately, he did not live to see the verdict.

His illness progressed too quickly.

In its early stages, a brain tumor caused pain that could be temporarily managed with more painkillers.

But once it reached the final stage, a patient could suddenly lose consciousness.

In the end, Huang Yong died.

The whole case finally came to a close.

With the cases formally classified, we did not trouble Xu Wenjia or Chen Yongkang again.

They each had a life to live.

One worked diligently. The other studied hard.

They were simply ordinary people.

About two weeks after Huang Yong died, I happened to pass through the village on another matter.

For reasons I could not explain, I took a little time to visit the woods where Zhang Bin had died.

I did not expect to see familiar faces.

Chen Yongkang and Xu Wenjia.

I spotted them from a distance, beneath that great tree.

It really was remarkably sturdy.

Despite the fire among its branches, it still stood firm, thick with leaves.

Xu Wenjia was on the ground. Chen Yongkang had climbed up into the branches.

He held a measuring tape and seemed to be checking positions.

Below him, she called directions.

Surprised, I went over.

Chen Yongkang noticed me first and immediately jumped down.

Only then did Xu Wenjia turn and recognize me.

I stopped in front of them, looked up and understood.

They wanted to build another treehouse?

“Why… why do you still want to put it back?”

The question slipped out.

They exchanged a look. Neither dared answer.

“Don’t worry. I was just passing through. I don’t mean anything by it,” I quickly explained.

Chen Yongkang sighed.

Xu Wenjia turned toward the tree and spoke slowly.

“We used to play here together when we were little.

“Our secret hideout.”

Chen Yongkang took up the story.

“Back then, our dream was to build… a little house in this tree.

“A house for the four of us.”

At last, I understood the sadness in Huang Yong’s voice when we took him away from this place.

“With friends to play here… it would be wonderful.”

The treehouse had not begun as a murder weapon.

It really had been a childhood wish.

“Then… Huang Yong, and you… your feelings for Chen Linlin…”

Chen Yongkang shook his head and answered at once.

“Of course it wasn’t what you think. We were… family.

“And we blame ourselves terribly. We… didn’t protect her.”

So that was it.

Scattered memories came back to me.

I remembered that none of them had grown up in an intact family.

So they had stayed together and made a family of their own.

I could not help looking up at the part of the tree the fire had scorched.

As though, even now, a small wooden house still stood there.

Four tiny children climbed up together, laughing as they scrambled inside.

Outside, the wind rustled, cicadas sang, and the day was bright.

Inside…

there was only laughter.