Case Files 013

Hearing that, my heart sank. I couldn't imagine that I would never see or talk to Guan Zhenglin again. Even though I liked to mock her and joked with her, I couldn't accept this result. The images of our times together flashed through my mind and my tears fell. The boy who was the most cowardly, the most impossible suspect was the mastermind behind all these. If I had chosen to follow Zhou Guo, Guan Zhenglin would not have died. "Guan Zhenglin, how did she die…" After taking a few deep breaths, I asked with shaking breaths.

"Huh? What are you talking about?" Gu Chen's voice said, "Who told you Guan Zhenglin is dead? She's just asleep. She looks fine to me but Zhou Guo has lost his heartbeat and vitals. But his body is still warm so he died not too long ago. I already called the hospital, you better hurry here." I immediately wiped away my tears. That damn Gu Chen, this is all his fault!

"Wait… Did I hear crying?" Gu Chen chided. "I knew it, you must be…"

"You bastard!" I scolded. "Protect the scene, wait for the analysts and investigators to come." The most beautiful term in English was not love, but false alarm. I felt it deeply at that moment. My heart finally returned to its place. I even felt a bit of joy even though there was still a victim, Zhou Guo. Lu Xun said happiness and sadness couldn't coexist in man, maybe he was right. Such was humanity. After all, I didn't really know Zhou Guo. If I wasn't assigned to this case, I wouldn't even have found out about this young man. When I arrived at Zhou Guo's home, Guan Zhenglin was sitting at the front door steps. She still looked quite out of it. She shook her head as if to clear her mind. Looks like Zhou Guo knocked her out. I patted her shoulder and asked, "Are you alright?"

Guan Zhenglin lifted her eyes to look at me. Instead of answering me, she said, "When I followed Zhou Guo to this place, I saw him open the door with a key. A small puzzle piece was dangling from the keychain. I recognized it as the final piece from Wang Yiman's puzzle. He probably didn't expect us to really go through her puzzle…"

"And then what happened?" I helped her massage her temples. Guan Zhenglin sighed. "He walked into the room but left the door open. That confused me so I went to the door to take a closer look. Suddenly I was hit by this strange smell. Then my head started to spin and my limbs turned rubbery."

"You better stay here and rest. I'll go in to look." I stood up and said. Guan Zhenglin pulled herself up. "Wait, I'm coming with you."

Theoretically speaking, Zhou Gou didn't have to kill himself. With his genius, he had to know about our country's juvenile law. Furthermore, his victims technically all committed suicide. All he did was to persuade them to that action. If he showed penance, his punishment wouldn't be serious. So why did Zhou Guo choose death, was there something that we were still missing?

Guan Zhenglin and I walked into the house. Gu Chen was inspecting the space. When he saw us, he said, "I looked around the house and found this box." Gu Chen picked up a round tin box from the ground. It was a tin box for imported cookies. He pulled back the lid and we looked in. It contained a brush, a watch, an empty chip bag and an old photograph. With the puzzle piece on his keychain, everything was here. The watch was Gao Rui's; the brush was Lee Zhinan's; the chip bag was Ma Liliang's; while the puzzle piece was Wang Yiman's. This was evidence that Zhou Guo was related to the 4 victims. I held the round tin box and looked around the room. This was a simple house, the floor was paved cement floor and there were holes everywhere. The place was old. The paint was peeling on the wall and the remaining paint had heavy water stains. It meant that the roof was leaking. Everything within sight suggested that Zhou Guo came from a poor family. I was suddenly reminded of the missing 20,000,000 RMB. Taking in the empty four walls, something dawned on me. According to Zhang Xue, Zhou Guo's mother was extremely ill. She would need a lot of money to heal. That would explain why Zhou Guo had found those 5 people. Zhou Guo needed the money to save his own mother's life, then it meant that the plan had started a long time ago. Zhou Guo's house lined up the victims' addresses perfectly. However, I still had no idea why Zhou Guo selected these 5 people. Was it random or premeditated?

A bed sat at the corner and beside the bed was a round door. Looks like it was used to partition the room. Zhou Guo's body was lying in bed. He was still dressed in school uniform, his old school bag was laid beside him. Beside the bed was also a round table. There were 2 glasses of water on it. Both of them were half empty. Guan Zhenglin crawled onto the bed to inspect Zhou Guo. I looked at Guan Zhenglin and noticed the strange expression on her face. She looked both conflicted and sad. I believe that was because she knew that if Zhou Guo had wanted to kill her, he could have done that easily but he did not. So why didn't he? Was it because he only went after those who already had suicidal wishes?

Guan Zhenglin sniffed around Zhou Guo's lips and then used her fingers to pry his mouth open. We could see the membrane around Zhou Guo's inner lips were purplish red. It was symptoms of cyanide poisoning. Did that mean that one of the two glasses was tampered with cyanide? Gu Chen saw me looking at the 2 glasses and he slapped his thigh and said, "Maybe Zhou Guo has committed a fatal mistake? He accidentally ingested the glass which was meant to kill Zhenglin?"

It only took Guan Zhenglin several minutes to come up to Zhou Guo's house after she saw the jigsaw puzzle on his key. It was impossible for Zhou Guo to concoct the cocktail to sedate Guan Zhenglin in such a short amount of time. Then there was only one answer, Zhou Guo did it on purpose. He purposely let Guan Zhenglin see the puzzle piece!

"Yes, it should be cyanide poisoning." Guan Zhenglin said slowly, "Then that confirms Zhou Guo lied to us. He was the one who stole the cyanide so no one would have known if he took a small piece of it. Furthermore, Zhou Guo had always been seen as this coward at school, no one would have even fathomed him doing something as bold as this…" Some liked to hide themselves while others lived like an open book, Zhou Guo was clearly the former. Beyond the image of the studious bookworm, Zhou Guo had an unreadable heart. Zhang Xue once said that Zhou Guo's dream was to cure his mother, well, he would have the money now. Which beget the question… Where was Zhou Guo's mother?

I walked through the inner door. The other room was even smaller. It could only fit a bed and a dresser. A table sat on the bed and the table had an incomplete embroidery on it. I touched the embroidery and the stitching frayed immediately. Next to it was a well-folded bedspread. From the indentation on the bed, someone had slept on the side facing the wall for many years.

"Gu Chen." I shouted, "Did you see anyone else when you came in here?"

Gu Chen answered from outside, "No, there were only Zhou Guo and Guan Zhenglin, there was no one else."

I then heard the siren, it should be Xiao Liu arriving with our people. As expected, I heard the familiar voice ask, "What happened here?" I walked out from the inner room and saw Xiao Liu with the police unit. "Did you find anything?" Xiao Liu asked.

I frowned and told them. "There's something very strange. Where is Zhou Guo's mother? She has half-body paralysis, she couldn't have moved without outside help. Plus I saw an incomplete embroidery on the table. Based on the dust on it, it has been left there for some time already. So where has she been?" No one could answer me. At that moment, Xiao Liu suddenly piped up. "Wait, there's a lottery ticket here. My God, it's a winning ticket for last week's lottery!" Xiao Liu showed us the ticket and exclaimed, "That's right, I remember the winning number clearly! This is the ticket for the 2nd prize winner. Did Zhou Guo win the lottery?" I looked at the lottery ticket and another detail entered my mind.

"How much was the prize money for the first and second place lottery winner last week?" I asked.

Xiao Liu appeared to be well-versed in this because he answered readily, "The first prize was 80,000,000 RMB for only 1 winner; while the second prize has 2 winners, 20,000,000 RMB each."

"20,000,000 RMB?" I asked to confirm.

Xiao Liu groaned, "That's right. That much money even for second prize. Fuck, I've been buying tickets for 3 years already and I haven't even won a consolation prize." Rolling my eyes at Xiao Liu, I ordered, "Xiao Liu, I need you to look into Zhou Guo's mother's current location and Gu Chen, come with me."

"What's up?" Gu Chen asked.

I answered. "We're going to find Lee Xian." Lee Xian said that his gambling buddy had won 20,000,000 RMB from the lottery. If there was a way to launder illegal money, the lottery was definitely one of them. If this was the method used, Zhou Gou's mother would be in treatment by now. Once Zhou Guo died, we wouldn't be able to do anything about any of these anymore. Zhou Guo had to die because someone needed to be responsible.