Chapter 8: Making a Scene! |
"Something bad..."
Xu De's pupils contracted sharply. Without a moment's hesitation—before anyone else in the scene had time to react—he shot out his hand.
Wang Qiang hadn't yet come back to his senses when a firm hand gripped his shoulder and spun him around. Turned, his body lurched forward, and with his center of gravity thrown off, he stumbled onto the police vehicle without anyone having to force him.
Li Xiang glanced back, saw that Wang Qiang was already inside the car, and felt a wave of relief. He immediately barked out orders.
"Call 120 first—Lao Zhang, get in the car and go! Qiang-zi, Lao Li, stay here with me!"
Lao Zhang didn't hesitate. He didn't even close the car door.
He just floored it.
Vroom!
The bulky minibus roared to life and surged forward into the distance.
Xu De stood at the rear of the car, watching through the window as Li Xiang remained behind in the crowd, still holding his pistol in a two-handed grip. Nearby, several other officers were crouched on the ground—by the look of it, working to stem Li Er-Niu's bleeding.
As the vehicle jolted and swayed, the figures grew smaller and smaller, shrinking to specks, then vanishing entirely.
"Tch."
Xu De withdrew his gaze and looked down at the figure beside him.
Wang Qiang's expression was still savage, the bloodshot crimson in his eyes yet to fade—but there was a blankness to it now, a vacancy, as though he'd been frozen in place and turned to stone. He stood motionless for a long while.
The hands that had gripped Wang Mei so tightly were soaked in blood.
He'd killed a man...
He'd killed a man!
A life for a life, a debt repaid in full—this was iron law, unchanging since time immemorial. He... he would have to pay with his life.
But... ten years. He'd searched for ten years. He'd only just found Wang Mei. How had it come to... to this...
Wang Qiang's eyes were empty. He stared down at his hands in a daze, his breathing growing more and more erratic. No one could tell what was going through his mind.
Xu De watched him.
Then, in a trance, a faint blue Luminous Panel shimmered into view before his eyes, accompanied by a soft chime.
[Ding—a criminal case of Trafficking has been detected in the vicinity!]
[Criminal Case Reward: A 100% chance to extract one skill from the client, along with a number of Gratitude Coins.]
[Note: The quality of the reward improves in accordance with the client's level of satisfaction.]
[Accept case?]
This was...
A case had been triggered!?
In a daze, Xu De's brows lifted slightly. Something stirred in his chest. He accepted the case.
[Congratulations on accepting the current case: Trafficking Case!]
The next moment, Xu De raised his head.
"Mr. Wang," he said, looking at Wang Qiang—who stood beside him, hollow-eyed, as rigid as a stone carving—and extended one hand, his voice unhurried and calm:
"It appears you've run into a spot of trouble. So then..."
"Might you be in need of... some rather rare assistance?"
Rare... rare assistance?
For a moment, something flickered in the vacant depths of Wang Qiang's glazed eyes.
---
The following day.
October 3rd.
Seven in the morning.
Lüsen City Police Bureau.
The officers arriving for the morning shift hadn't even made it through the doors yet when the sound hit them—a wailing, shrieking cacophony of grief and fury.
"Aiyo, my poor darling boy—he was only thirty years old, and you people beat him to death!"
"There's no justice in this world—how are people supposed to live like this!"
"Give me back my son's life, give me back my son!"
When the officers finally entered the main hall, they found the place packed.
A circle of policemen had gathered around two figures in the center of the room.
They were two scrawny old people—none other than Li Youcai and Zhang Cui.
Zhang Cui was seated on the floor, wailing her lungs out and hammering at her own legs.
Standing to one side of her was the detective squadron's unit chief, Wu Kang, whose expression was thoroughly pained, as though he had a very bad toothache.
"Please get up first—let's talk this out calmly. The bureau still has to function normally..."
As he spoke, Wu Kang reached down to help Zhang Cui to her feet.
But before he could, Li Youcai—standing beside her—took one look at him and bristled, shoving him away with all the bluster of a man entirely in the right.
"Not a single one of you is any good!"
"Where are you hiding the man who killed my son?! Hand him over!"
Zhang Cui, as if on cue, threw herself back onto the floor and resumed her howling.
"Wu wu..."
"Is there no justice left anywhere in this world!"
"My life is misery—the police let someone kill my son, and then they hide the killer away afterward..."
The voices rose, raw and shrill enough to split the air.
And they drew an ever-growing crowd of passersby who stopped to rubberneck.
At the sight of it all, the detective chief Wu Kang's face turned positively green.
This particular time of morning was precisely when residents came to the bureau to handle paperwork. If he let these two carry on like this—making a scene, rolling around on the ground—and the people in line overheard them...
The propaganda department would want his head on a platter.
"Please get up, get up—let's talk about this properly," Wu Kang said again, bending down to pull Zhang Cui upright once more.
But she was absolutely determined to cause a scene, and nothing in the world was going to pry her off that floor.
And indeed, that was precisely what this was.
They were here to cause trouble. Full stop.
Li Er-Niu was dead—he'd bled out before the ambulance had even arrived.
Of course, though the man was gone, the two of them were, if truth be told, not so much heartbroken as they were... well, not completely devastated.
Because they had a grandson.
And a grandson meant the family line lived on.
As for why they'd still come to make a scene at the police bureau...
"I don't care about anything else—you bring that killer out to me," Li Youcai said, standing with his arms crossed, impatient and imperious.
Hearing that, Zhang Cui stopped wailing.
"That's right—and they'd better pay compensation too! My son can't just die for nothing—you're going to pay!"
She hauled herself off the floor in a rolling scramble, planted her hands on her hips, and turned to screech at the people gathered around her:
"And where's that white-eyed wolf Wang Mei?!"
"Our family kept her for a full ten years! She can't have forgotten every bit of kindness we showed her!"
"My son is gone now—who's going to look after us in our old age? Food, drink, all of it? Bring Wang Mei back to us!"
At those words, the few officers who knew the full story of the case clenched their teeth so hard their jaws ached. A fire burned in their chests—
—and there wasn't a thing they could do about it.
Just then, from somewhere in the surrounding crowd, someone finally couldn't stand it anymore and spoke up:
"If those are your grievances, you need to find a lawyer. What's the point of making a scene at the police bureau?"
A lawyer?
Li Youcai and Zhang Cui both froze for a beat—then their eyes lit up.
A lawyer—yes, a lawyer!
Their son was dead. They absolutely needed to find a lawyer. Then they'd sue Wang Qiang until he was ruined, and squeeze a pile of money out of him. After that, they'd bring Wang Mei back to wait on them in their old age.
"A lawyer—exactly!" Li Youcai and Zhang Cui exchanged a look and came to an immediate decision.
"Hmph! If you won't uphold justice here, we'll go find a lawyer ourselves!"
Zhang Cui shot a withering glare at the crowd, snorted coldly, and then bolted for the exit with Li Youcai in tow, the two of them scrambling over each other in their haste.
In the blink of an eye, they were gone.
---
Wu Kang let out a long breath. Then his toothache feeling returned. He looked around at the officers nearby.
"Where's Li Xiang?"
One of the officers snapped to attention and answered at once.
"Team Leader Li went to the detention room for an interrogation!"
Wu Kang's face darkened.
"That Li Xiang—dumping this mess in my lap while he gets to sit somewhere quiet and peaceful."
With that, he dispersed the onlookers and made his way toward the detention block.
---
The bureau maintained a detention room.
As a general rule, suspects in a case—prior to formal sentencing—were held temporarily in the bureau's detention room. Once the investigation concluded, they'd be transferred to a remand facility to await trial, and after sentencing, moved on to prison.
So the usual locations for interrogating suspects, beyond the interrogation room itself, included this detention room.
Wang Qiang was being held there.
He'd killed a man.
What had begun as a missing persons search had instantly transformed in nature and was now being treated as a high-priority homicide case.
Li Xiang was overseeing his interrogation.
---
Inside the detention room.
"How are you holding up? Sleep okay last night?"
"Well enough..."
The conditions in the detention room were fairly spartan. Aside from the absence of a bed, and the addition of a table and chairs, it looked more or less like a prison cell.
Li Xiang sat on one side of the table, smoking, the look in his eyes carrying the weariness of a man who had been ground down by his work.
On the other side, Wang Qiang sat with his wrists locked in handcuffs, head bowed, his expression unreadable. Even the rise and fall of his chest was barely perceptible.
"Food—the bureau doesn't have the greatest conditions, might not be to your taste."
"It's fine..."
The exchange had the cadence of small talk rather than an interrogation.
After a beat, silence fell over the room.
It lasted a long while. Then, finally, a voice broke through.
"Officer Li... Wang Mei, is she..."
Li Xiang paused. He looked up at the gaunt, hollowed-out figure across from him, something heavy settling in his chest. He took a drag of his cigarette and answered:
"She's been taken care of. Right now she's staying with your wife at a location arranged by the police—Li Youcai's family can't find her. As for Wang Mei's son—since we had some preparation time, the custody lawsuit was filed last night. The procuratorate and the court are both treating this case with considerable attention. The custody ruling should come down within two weeks at the latest. Don't worry about the lawyer, either."
Li Xiang paused.
"A female attorney with significant connections has taken the case pro bono."
He stopped there, his gaze settling on Wang Qiang, his expression complicated.
"As for you, though..."
Wang Qiang's situation was thorny.
On the surface, a case could be made for lawful defense—but the problem was the details. Because he had made the first move. Wang Qiang had been the one to shove Li Er-Niu, and only after that had the two men come to blows.
That detail alone made it quite possible he'd be charged with intentional homicide or intentional bodily harm...
"Me?"
Wang Qiang gave a wan, hollow laugh. He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling, his eyes drifting and distant, sinking into memory.
"I've gotten more than I ever deserved. It was worth it..."
"You don't know this, Officer Li—but Xiao-Mei was taken from me. Ten years ago. I'd taken her to the corner shop. I turned my back for a moment—just long enough to buy a light bulb—and she was grabbed and shoved into a car."
"The car ran. I ran after it... I ask you, how does a car move so fast?"
Wang Qiang muttered, the words falling soft and scattered from his lips.
Li Xiang said nothing.
"I couldn't catch up. The car was too fast. No matter how hard I ran, I couldn't close the distance."
"And then—you people caught a trafficker, found out he'd grabbed her and driven over a thousand kilometers to Lüsen City in just two days."
"A thousand kilometers, Officer Li. I've been chasing for ten years and barely caught up. That little car covered that distance in two days. Isn't that something..."
A note of bitter self-mockery crept into Wang Qiang's eyes. His rims reddened again.
Then he went back to murmuring.
"But I found her... just finding her is enough. The child's mother cried herself hoarse before, but at least we found her..."
"From here on, at least mother and daughter will have each other."
Li Xiang couldn't hold back any longer. He cut in suddenly.
"And what about you? Don't you want to be reunited with them?"
"This case of yours has some uncertainty to it—with a good lawyer there's a chance you could get a lighter sentence!"
"The police can petition the court through the bar association to apply for criminal legal aid."
Wang Qiang was silent for a moment.
Then, after a long pause, he looked up, hesitated, and spoke a name that Li Xiang hadn't expected at all.
"Officer Li... could you...
"Could you ask Attorney Xu to take the case?"
Attorney Xu?
Li Xiang blinked.
Attorney Xu? Xu De!?
Li Xiang's brow furrowed. Once word of this case got out, more than a few attorneys would be circling it, practically willing to pay for the privilege of taking it. Not that seniority guaranteed results—but at the very least, on the surface, an experienced attorney looked a great deal more reliable than a young one.
In a matter of life and death like this...
"You're sure?" Li Xiang asked, uncertain.
"I'm sure." Wang Qiang nodded.
Li Xiang's lips moved once or twice, just as he was about to say something—
—when a figure appeared at the detention room door.
He glanced over instinctively. It was Wu Kang, standing in the doorway, jerking his head to signal that Li Xiang should step outside.
Li Xiang swallowed whatever he'd been about to say, could only sigh, and said:
"All right. But a request like that—naming a specific attorney—it's up to that person's individual willingness. I'll have the bar association reach out to him."
With that, Li Xiang got to his feet, brought the interrogation to a quick close, and opened the detention room door.
Wu Kang was standing right there on the other side.
He didn't reprimand anything. He glanced once at Wang Qiang, then shifted his gaze to Li Xiang.
"How's the case looking?"
"Ah... nothing good to report. The case structure is straightforward."
Li Xiang let out a sigh.
Neither of them spoke after that.
The simpler a case, the harder it was to overturn.
"Right, I'm handing this one off to someone else going forward."
After a long moment, Wu Kang shook his head and changed the subject.
"There was a call this morning."
"An extortion case. Large sum of money. The caller—man by the name of Zhang Hu—claims he's been extorted for a full three million by his wife's lover."
Ex... extortion!?
Li Xiang's face broke into a look of pure bewilderment.
It was nearly New Year's, and some extortion case had just crawled out of whatever hole it'd been hiding in?!
Three million, no less!!
Wu Kang continued:
"The evidence is solid. Go handle this one first."
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