The Dress Serial Murders, Part 11

Guan Zhiyan, just coming down from upstairs, stopped at the sight of Hu Yan's hesitant back. She didn't take off her gloves; she only asked, "Hu Yan, why don't you take a break?"

Hu Yan's expression trembled faintly. She shook her head. "It's nothing. I'll just stand here a while. Officer Guan—is it Qiu Ning? Has something happened to her?"

She clearly knew what was going on, yet couldn't help asking, still nursing some other hope, gripping her phone tight.

Guan Zhiyan took her for frightened and comforted her with a smile. "It's all right. Li Tan's been arrested; you don't need to worry about that. As for Qiu Ning—we don't know yet. Wait for the results."

"Deputy Captain Guan! We've got the whole courtyard sealed! Ready to question them one by one!" Another officer's voice came up from downstairs.

Guan Zhiyan nodded. "Good. Be careful—radio in if anything comes up."

"Yes, ma'am!" The man hurried out of the stairwell and off to work.

Hu Yan said, "Sorry to trouble you, Captain Guan."

With one flustered sentence she turned at the third-floor landing and vanished from Guan Zhiyan's sight—only her shadow on the ground visible for a moment, and then not even that.

Guan Zhiyan's eyes narrowed. Something about it still wasn't right.

She returned to the scene first and assigned a female officer to keep an eye on Hu Yan downstairs.

Once the officer had gone, she stood with hands on hips, surveying what was in front of her.

That Li Tan could kill under everyone's nose was startling enough—above all because a single sound in this whole building would carry to the neighbors.

Qiu Ning next door wasn't home, granted, but at least the floor below should have reacted somehow. If truly nothing had been heard, that was strange in a way that defied explaining.

Frowning slightly, she stood by and listened as most of those questioned answered: by their account Qiu Ning was no saint—she'd quarrel with the downstairs neighbors over the pettiest sums, and sometimes she'd bring home some inexplicable man. And sometimes that man seemed to have a different temperament each time.

"Those two aren't the same person at all. They look like two different men."

That was the gist of what these people said.

Just then, Lin Yitang's apprentice Lin Ye came out of the room, brow furrowed the moment he emerged. "Deputy Captain Guan, I've got a rough picture of the room now. I've collected all the sprayed blood in there—it shouldn't be from just one person. And judging from the footprints we lifted, at the time of the incident there were—"

"Three people in the room?"

"Right. Three. Two of the footprints are about the same size, and my mentor did see that same shadow in the reassembled remains. And after my comparison... it's one person," Lin Ye continued. "Judging by the traces and the spray pattern inside, it was about half a month ago. There was a struggle in the room then; we've searched everywhere and found no other weapon."

With that, he held out an evidence bag for Guan Zhiyan.

She took it and looked: inside was an opened condom—there should be a sample that could be tested.

"Take it back and run it."

Guan Zhiyan nodded. "Anything else at the scene?"

Lin Ye said, "The victim's laptop and USB drive. I'll need time back at the lab to crack them before we know what's inside."

"Good." She nodded.

She had no idea what the other room held; she told Lin Ye, "Good work," though these new clues all seemed, somehow, to be tangled up with Hu Yan.

Only she couldn't think what the connection could be.

Maybe she simply hadn't dug deep enough.

Think hard now: was it possible that only one of the two knew Hu Yan—and that the Li Tan they were hunting was not the man she'd been in contact with at all?

But according to the records, Li Tan was an only child—he had no other brother, older or younger...

Deep in thought, Guan Zhiyan quickly looked up as the two came out of the other room together. She laid out everything Lin Ye had found, and Lin Ye added a few points of his own. Lin Yitang frowned as she listened: "The two rooms are much the same, and there's an extra footprint in both. Not one of the footprints I lifted at the factory matches this one. This footprint may be the key to the case."

Zhou Xun frowned, and thought of Hu Yan again.

"Zhiyan—where's Hu Yan?"

"Don't worry, I have someone watching her." Guan Zhiyan said it directly. "What I'm wondering is—who's messaging Hu Yan, if not Li Tan?"

"But..." Zhou Xun suddenly thought of something. "We never showed them Li Tan's photo, did we?"

Wait—no, they hadn't.

Hu Yan and the others had identified "Li Tan" off nothing but a name. They had no way of knowing whether the man they meant was the same Li Tan. It could easily be two men with the same name.

Right. All that running around, and they'd never pinned that down.

*

Meanwhile, Hu Yan sat at home, staring anxiously at her phone.

The "Li Tan" on the other end kept messaging.

[Xiaoyan, you're not planning never to see me again, are you?]

[I know you've waited too long for this moment. That's why today was your chance, specially arranged.]

[Darling, you wouldn't want me to tell everything about us, would you?]

Suddenly the other side went silent.

Hu Yan thought this business would blow over quickly—but never imagined that "Li Tan" would simply send those filthy pictures, unmasked.

She knew that Li Tan did whatever he said.

She broke down at once, and the phone dropped from her hand to the floor.

The room was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop—let alone a heavy phone hitting the floor. The "thud" rang out with unnatural clarity, like a threat: Hu Yan had no choice but to join this game.

Those filthy pictures had not one spot of concealment on them.

[No need to worry. Walk with me, and these stay for my eyes alone.]

Hu Yan could only force herself to calm down first.

She picked the phone back up. Thankfully it was sturdy—an old phone, not as fast or as pretty as the new models, scratched all over, but built to survive drops. It had taken no real damage.

She replied at once:

[Are you really Li Tan?]

Perhaps that had flushed the snake from the grass: no reply came from the other side, and the screen seemed to fall silent again.

After a few minutes, the message came:

[Darling, if I'm not Li Tan, who else would I be?]

Hu Yan decided she had to take the initiative. She placed a video call—if this "Li Tan" were fake, surely he wouldn't answer. Though people did say these days that AI could fake anything; maybe even a video call meant nothing.

The call was rejected.

She tried again. Rejected just as fast.

Another message from "Li Tan": [Why the sudden video call? Trying to find out whether I'm real?]

Hu Yan: [I want to see whether you're with Qiu Ning.]

"Li Tan" sent a laughing sticker.

[Impossible. I haven't seen her in some time—there's been nothing between us for ages. Right now, all I want is to see you.]

Hu Yan was about to send another message when she realized Guan Zhiyan was already at her door, speaking with the female officer.

She guessed the business over there had been sorted out.

She deleted the entire message history, put on the face of someone who knew nothing, and looked up toward the door.

Knock, knock, knock—

A perfectly rhythmic knock sounded at the door.

Putting on an air of being busy, Hu Yan hurried over and opened it, the puzzlement and fatigue on her face not yet dissipated.

She managed a smile. "Anything I can do for you, Officer Guan?"

Guan Zhiyan clearly caught the flickering of her eyes, the involuntary twitch of her facial muscles. She asked, "I'd like to show you a photo—can you tell me whether this man is the Li Tan you remember?"

After a startled "ah," Hu Yan came back to herself and nodded. Guan Zhiyan caught her eyes again—the nervousness in them fooled no one.

Guan Zhiyan took out her phone and opened the photo. "Take a look..."

Flustered, Hu Yan took the phone, her whole hand seeming to shake. She looked at the picture. At first she almost nodded—then she spotted what was wrong, leaned close to the screen, and shook her head quickly.

"Officer Guan, honestly—the face is a bit like his, but some details are different. For one thing, the Li Tan I knew had a large dark mole on his face, very distinct. I've touched that mole with my own hand. It's real."

"Was it there from the beginning?" Guan Zhiyan pressed on.

She didn't pause—seemingly unwilling to give Hu Yan time to think.

Hu Yan shook her head. "I didn't notice the first time."

"I met Li Tan at a nightclub—it was a team dinner. He picked me out of the crowd at a glance and said Qiu Ning often talked about me. After that... we went out often, and it became a relationship." Guan Zhiyan leaned against the doorframe. "And are you still chatting with this 'Li Tan' now?"

There it was—the real question.

Truthfully, Guan Zhiyan had come precisely to find out whether such a connection existed, or whether the two had already been in contact.

Her eyes dropped to the phone clutched tight in Hu Yan's hand. When she'd first seen it, the screen protector had cracked only a little, and a good-sized patch of it was still intact. Now that intact patch had been peeled fully back—though it still clung to the glass.

As if the shattered Hu Yan were taking shelter on her phone. But what good was shelter like that? What principle would a man like that ever observe?

"N... no."

"Really?" Guan Zhiyan didn't push. "Hu Yan, I know what you're afraid of. But if you don't say it, this man will keep you in this state forever—and sooner or later he'll only escalate."

She sighed, worrying, in truth, about what came after.

Call this man the real Li Tan or not—his kind would only be more trouble. What Guan Zhiyan feared was exactly this: the coercion, the things left behind in unguarded moments—the material that would make unknowing outsiders spit on the victim.

Hu Yan looked at her phone; notifications kept popping on the screen.

Her tone was firm: "We're not chatting anymore."

Guan Zhiyan was about to question her further when Xiao Wang came over saying they needed to return to the station, cutting the conversation short.

Seeing that Hu Yan wasn't going to say more, she said, "All right—come to the station with us and give your statement. Maybe you'll remember something on the way."

Hu Yan looked at the situation and nodded.

The station first. Perhaps everything would be all right once she was at the station.

*

Everyone except the officers left to process the scene was soon back at the station—the evidence that needed testing would be tested, and those brought in would be questioned first.

In the car, Hu Yan stared at her phone the whole way.

Guan Zhiyan sat in the front passenger seat.

She glanced at Zhou Xun and, for no reason she could name, found him more and more annoying to look at.

So she deliberately found something else to latch onto, reached out, and yanked at the little trinket Zhou Xun kept in the car.

"Why do you even keep this thing in here?" Guan Zhiyan rubbed her chin.

Zhou Xun raised an eyebrow at her. "I like picking up things people throw away."

Like a dog?

That was, honestly, exactly what she was thinking.

"But why would you pick up my things, of all things?"

"It makes a nice decoration."

She thought the thing was so old it was nearly an antique.

It was the kind of bobblehead cat she'd loved most in high school—the little cat that waved its paw, the kind meant as encouragement, to add a little fun to the day.