CLOSING THE NET
"Honey, I'm almost at the store. Gotta go."
Marcus Shaw pocketed his phone and kept walking.
It was a weekday, and this hour meant the street was nearly empty. Few pedestrians, even fewer cars.
Just as he reached the opposite side of the street from the phone store, Marcus Shaw glanced inside. Beyond the clerks in their red uniforms, only one female customer was testing a phone.
He crossed diagonally and reached for the glass door of the shop.
The moment he pulled it open, a figure in black burst from the narrow alley beside the store—a person with a knife, lunging straight at him.
Marcus Shaw grabbed the door handle with his right arm for leverage and delivered a side kick with his left foot. The knife clattered free, hitting the pavement with a metallic ring.
The attacker let out a wild cry and lunged again, but several plainclothes officers surged from their positions, overwhelming the figure in seconds. Handcuffs snapped shut.
Marcus Shaw stepped forward and pulled off the attacker's hat and mask. Beneath them was the grilled noodle lady, her eyes blazing with hatred.
---
Ever since his conversation with Dr. Maren Frost had revealed his WeChat had been compromised, Marcus Shaw had sent his phone to the tech team for inspection. The diagnosis was clear: he'd been infected with a QR code-embedded virus. His WeChat password had been cracked, allowing someone to log in simultaneously via computer, impersonating him in conversations with his contacts. Meanwhile, he received no notifications on his end.
"So I can't see what they've been saying to my contacts?"
The technician had explained, "That's what makes this virus so vicious. Any messages generated on your end are automatically synced to the attacker. But messages generated on their end? You see nothing."
"I changed my password twice. Both times with complex combinations."
The technician smiled. "Useless. Unless you get a new phone, every new password will be transmitted right back to their computer."
But Marcus Shaw had chosen not to go public with this discovery. Instead, he privately briefed his key contacts, telling them that no matter what strange messages they received, they should neither believe nor ignore them—carry on as if nothing was wrong, respond casually, say nothing of consequence.
As for Marcus Shaw himself, he committed fully to the act. He continued using WeChat as normal, posting about his determination to solve the case in the fiercest language, while also complaining about running out of leads—a portrait of a detective going in circles.
He peppered in mundane details, occasionally volunteering his whereabouts, giving the eavesdropper every chance to verify his sincerity.
Even after unmasking Vera Magnus's identity, Marcus Shaw deliberately messaged a colleague about missing the grilled noodle lady's cooking—leading her to believe she remained undiscovered, that the "Vera Magnus" on the police wanted list was someone else entirely.
He'd kept this card hidden, certain it would prove crucial at the right moment.
That moment had finally arrived. With the citywide warrant issued, Vera Magnus knew the police weren't stupid—connecting the grilled noodle lady to her real identity was only a matter of time.
Her window was closing fast.
And she still had one more person she wanted dead. Given the chance, she would certainly risk everything for one final attempt.
So the night before, Marcus Shaw had stayed at the precinct, deliberately messaging Nora on WeChat about his phone lagging, mentioning he'd stop by the phone store at ten the next morning to upgrade the system.
Nora had asked, "The one on Chongqing Road?" He'd confirmed. She'd added, "Pick me up a charging cable while you're there—mine's loose, doesn't always connect."
Vera Magnus took the bait and made her desperate move—only to find that the ambush had already been laid. He'd been hoping she'd show.
---
In the alley near the phone store, police recovered the car Vera Magnus had rented.
Marcus Shaw had already traced the rental records and picked up the vehicle on traffic cameras. But it had quickly entered a surveillance blind spot, and from there, it vanished.
Only after her arrest did they discover she'd swapped the plates and repainted the car—an old trick that erased her from every camera she passed.
With the new plate number and altered appearance, Marcus Shaw ran the video search again and found that Vera Magnus had been hiding in the open-air parking lot of a shopping mall near the precinct—eating, sleeping, and relieving herself in the car, tracking Marcus Shaw's movements through her laptop.
The more dangerous the place, the safer. She understood the logic of hiding in plain sight.
---
The following day, Marcus Shaw organized the evidence and requested a preliminary interrogation of Vera Magnus before Captain Harris's formal proceedings.
The interrogation room was stuffy. The door couldn't be left open. A small exhaust fan in the wall turned lazily, its drone grating enough to set anyone on edge.
Marcus Shaw unplugged it. Silence flooded the room.
Vera Magnus was drenched in sweat. Her black T-shirt clung to her body, white salt stains spreading across the chest and back. She sat motionless in the metal chair, pressed against it like rising dough, expressionless—until Marcus Shaw entered, when she lifted her chin slightly and fixed him with eyes that gouged.
"Want to wipe your face first?"
She said nothing, rubbing her cheek against her shoulder, but her gaze never left Marcus Shaw for an instant.
"Technically, as a victim's family member, I should recuse myself. But I couldn't resist the chance to talk to you first." He gestured toward the camera behind him. "It's all recording. I'll keep my personal feelings in check and question you objectively. Confess what you've done if you want to. But nothing will be pinned on you that you didn't do. This looks intimidating, but don't be nervous—this is informal. Captain Harris will conduct the formal interrogation later."
Vera Magnus's mouth twitched into something like a smile.
Marcus Shaw glanced at Zack at the computer. "Ready, then?"
She straightened in her chair, though her expression remained largely unreadable.
After the standard biographical questions, Marcus Shaw began. "Let's go through this one thing at a time. My brother's accident—that was a trap you set, wasn't it? You posed as a cleaner, got yourself hired at my wife's workplace, all to get close to her and extract information about my family. You learned that my brother loved the outdoors, then you obtained her phone number and used a virtual dialing app to send a fake promotional text about the Forest Park. You knew my wife loved a bargain and that my brother had just finished his college entrance exams and needed to decompress—the three of us would very likely take the bait. The day before, you found an opportunity to confirm our approximate departure time with my wife, then climbed the mountain ahead of us and waited on the route we were certain to pass, watching for my conspicuous yellow car."
Vera Magnus's glare didn't waver, but her head tilted back until her chin pointed at him.
Marcus Shaw continued, "I always believed that was a natural landslide. I never imagined someone was behind it."
Her eyes flared—then hardened into something feral. Her face transformed into an expression Marcus Shaw had never seen on her before. This was not the grilled noodle lady.
"How do you know it wasn't a landslide? Don't police need evidence?" Her voice was flat and cold, like a long cleaver sliding slowly through flesh.
"Don't play tough. Of course I have evidence. I went back up the mountain several times and examined the landslide site. Even after more than a year, I found traces of explosives."
Her eye twitched.
Marcus Shaw pressed on. "After confirming your identity, I visited your former construction sites. Your old coworkers all said you learned fast—blasting procedures, measuring, drilling, loading, wiring. You watched twice and knew how to do it."
"That proves nothing. Even if I knew how, it doesn't mean I did it."
"I can prove it." Marcus Shaw produced a forensic report. "I found explosive residue in a small container in your work shed. Lab analysis confirmed it matches the traces I collected on the mountain. You might argue that blasting materials are common on construction sites, that anyone could obtain them. But here's the catch—the ammonite explosive you used is moisture-absorbent, prone to caking, not waterproof, and unstable in high temperatures. It's been officially banned and phased out. It's actually very hard to get your hands on now. That so-called 'natural disaster' the insurance company declared was entirely your creation."
Marcus Shaw spoke hurriedly, his eyes reddening.
The room fell silent.
After a pause, Vera Magnus suddenly laughed. "They said it was a natural disaster because they didn't want to pay you, and they didn't want the trouble. Even if someone noticed something off, they'd cover it up and clean up my mess." She glanced at Marcus Shaw, amusement dancing in her eyes.
Marcus Shaw clenched his jaw. "I have to admit, you were meticulous and clever. When it happened, I told the insurance company I'd heard an explosion. They said I was mistaken—that what I'd heard was the rumble of a landslide. Last week I climbed the mountain twice more. Unless you approach it with the assumption that this was murder, the man-made traces are almost impossible to detect."
Vera Magnus smiled sweetly. "Too bad it didn't kill you."
Marcus Shaw said nothing. He glanced at Zack, who was typing steadily.
She continued, "But I soon realized that killing your brother was far worse for you than killing you outright. So you see—it was heaven's arrangement. Let me torment you slowly with your brother's death. A letter every week—did you get them all? How did they make you feel? You couldn't forget that accident, could you? Couldn't sleep at night? The harder you tried to forget, the harder I made it to forget. I would rip that wound open again and again—let it fester, let it rot, let it spread!"
Marcus Shaw's cheeks bulged, his face flushed crimson.
Their eyes locked. Then Marcus Shaw smiled. "For someone who reads as much as you do, you certainly have a way with words. I'll admit—you succeeded. For a long time, I was not okay. But look at me now. I've let it go."
Vera Magnus leaned forward, her gaze boring into his. Through clenched teeth she hissed, "Whether you've let it go—only you know."
---
Then came Vince Conrad and Gordon Pike.
Marcus Shaw tucked the forensic report back into his folder. "You know they gave false testimony to frame Shane Mercer. And if they hadn't recruited him, he'd have stayed in vocational school, minding his own business."
Vera Magnus leaned back in her chair, murmuring, "A pity I still missed one."
"Fine. Let's talk about the one you missed—Vince Conrad. He was out of town. You couldn't get to him, so you killed the mother he lived with instead."
Vera Magnus's jaw tightened. "I wanted him to taste what it's like—to lose the only family he had."
"Family? You considered the Shan brothers your family?"
Her gaze softened. She turned her face away and said nothing.