Chapter 5: The Dead Undercover (3)
I sat motionless, swirling my tea. The crowd around us thickened, noise and voices washed over me, and with a kind of instinct I felt someone watching me with malice.
I turned—and caught a face, half-smiling, dissolving into the night market crowd. I froze, unable to tell whether it was a hallucination or a real person.
—A Burmese man from Little Golden Port.
Zhou Mi said something. I didn't hear it.
A hand waved in front of my face several times. I snapped back, startled. He frowned: "Why do you have that look again? You were fine a moment ago."
I opened my mouth and asked with effort: "What did you just say?"
Zhou Mi looked at me, seeming to come to a decision—"I said, do you know about the Case 127 massacre?"
No idea, dear—I thought silently.
Captain Zhou didn't continue. I waited, then prompted him: "Should I know?"
The air at the table went completely silent.
I understood—this was something I shouldn't know, but also couldn't afford not to know. As a person of interest under suspicion, caught up in an awkward "massacre," it had to involve Myanmar.
The tea had gone cold. I took a sip and asked softly:
"127... wouldn't happen to be December 7th, would it?"
Today was December 10th. I'd been resuscitated for a day after cutting my own throat, strapped to a bed for four days. If it was December 7th, that would be... the day after the provincial team arrived to interrogate me.
Too much of a coincidence, wasn't it.
Zhou Mi's scrutinizing gaze stayed fixed on me. I finished the cold tea, set the cup down, and met his eyes without flinching: "Captain Zhou, what's the point of guessing? Find a safe place and let's lay our cards on the table."
The fox was already out of the hole—I had no reason to keep pretending.
Those words seemed to be exactly what he was waiting for. Zhou Mi grabbed his jacket and car keys first, jerking his head: "Let's go."
This was probably Captain Zhou's first time absconding with a patient. I said a safe place, and he took me straight to his own apartment.
Once inside, the good officer seemed to realize the impropriety, but couldn't bring himself to kick me out. He grew even more taciturn, sitting ramrod-straight, practically keeping me at arm's length.
Honestly, what a joke.
I shook my head. No one offered me a seat, so I made myself comfortable on the sofa.
He brewed a cup of tea and placed it in front of me.
I'd just drunk a bellyful of soup; I couldn't fit another drop. I got straight to the point: "Captain Zhou, let's start with the Case 127 massacre."
Zhou Mi sat on the other side in a single-person chair, nodded, but still didn't seem ready to speak.
I sighed, understanding that getting an old detective to pour his heart out from the get-go wasn't realistic. I swallowed my throat's fatigue and threw him another opening.
"Since it's a massacre, you should at least tell me how many died, and who they were."
Otherwise how would I know what this had to do with me.
Right.
Yet I'd still underestimated Zhou Mi's wariness. He didn't follow the path I'd laid; instead, he lobbed a different question:
"Do you know Wu Xiaochuan?"
I paused, recalling that playboy of a man—I'd first seen him at the Black Room, where Gusman had nearly tortured me to death. Just thinking about it made my jaw ache again, and I couldn't resist tonguing my replaced dental implant.
"Captain Zhou, you've personally conducted and sat in on multiple interviews about my experiences in Myanmar, so you should be well aware that I know Wu Xiaochuan. He's the Charlie Group's general secretary, and also Sylvie's—Winter Lee's—lover. Or rather, he appeared to be her lover."
I took a couple of breaths, then lifted the bone china teacup and took a small sip of water.
Zhou Mi's expression was unreadable. He waited for me to continue.
I thought for a moment and added:
"During the power struggle between Winter Lee and Ahab, Wu Xiaochuan conspicuously backed Winter Lee, staying by her side for about a month—this was around late August. Until about ten days before I escaped Little Golden Port, I never saw him again."
Zhou Mi asked: "So Wu Xiaochuan left Little Golden Port, and Winter Lee soon got into trouble?"
I shook my head, denying that: "Strictly speaking, it was about half a month after he left."
Zhou Mi pondered this, then dropped that thread and asked instead:
"How did Winter Lee die?"
The question hit me like a physical blow. I couldn't help but frown.
Zhou Mi pressed immediately—
"You clearly resent that question. Why?"
I inhaled, turned my face slightly, trying to push away the rose-red skirt hem flickering in my peripheral vision, fighting down my turbulent mind.
Zhou Mi fixed me with a stare, his voice going cold: "Elyse, did you kill Winter Lee?"
5.
What?
I blinked, then frowned deeply. I didn't know why, but the accusatory tone in Zhou Mi's question made me extremely uncomfortable. I looked him dead in the eye and said clearly: "Captain Zhou, I have never killed anyone, let alone Sylvie. You—"
Don't say that about me.
Zhou Mi's expression didn't shift a muscle. I looked at him coldly and said:
"Sylvie died at Mongo's hands—he raped and murdered her. But Mongo was just a blade. I believe the one who truly killed Sylvie was Black Moses. Before she died, Sylvie pointed to Ahab as the one who harmed her, but since she'd already fallen into Black Moses's calculations, her judgment about the true enemy may have been wrong."
The rose-red butterfly flickered past. I snapped my eyes shut, the drill-bit headache piercing again.
The air went still for a moment. I didn't know what Zhou Mi was thinking—his breathing was slow and deep, unchanged.
He didn't believe me.
Then his voice dropped several degrees, and he asked:
"Elyse, what are you afraid of?"
What am I afraid of? What a question.
I'm afraid of dying. Afraid Black Moses's blade will find my neck at who knows what hour. Afraid the people from Myanmar won't let me go. Afraid I'll wake up tomorrow and discover it was all a dream, that I never actually escaped from hell.
What am I afraid of?
I'm afraid of many things—afraid my path was for nothing, afraid my suffering was pointless. But that wasn't what Zhou Mi was asking. He was asking: if I didn't kill Sylvie, why am I afraid of her.
Why do I... see her.
From Myanmar all the way back to China, I'd had many moments of despair. But I'd never felt as powerless as I did now.
Did I want to see Sylvie? Did I?
I opened my eyes and almost angrily demanded of the beautiful woman standing behind Zhou Mi: "Why me? Why are you following me!"
Sylvie said sorrowfully: "Didn't I tell you not to look back?"
I stood up abruptly, trembling with rage, and stalked toward the door.
"Did I want to look back? Sylvie, did I fucking want to look back! I never even fucking got out, I... I..."
A hand pressed down on me—someone had grabbed my shoulder in haste, right on my wound. I gasped in pain and collapsed back onto the sofa.
Zhou Mi had stepped back in alarm. I clutched my gunshot wound, panting.
"...If I don't look back, will they let me go?"
A few tears spilled over, too heavy to bear. I swiped them away.
"Sylvie, you tell him—I didn't kill you."
I didn't kill anyone.
I still wanted to be a white bird.
...
The tall, broad-shouldered Captain Zhou crouched down, one hand pressing firmly against my throat. He said in a low voice: "Your wound is bleeding again. Don't get worked up."
I didn't want to tremble in front of someone who suspected me. Too humiliating. So I tried to curl into myself, trying to stop the waves of spasms.
Another hand landed on my back, patted tentatively, then patted again, gently: "It's okay, it's okay."
He said: "Don't be angry. It wasn't you."
I smiled and shook my head.
My throat was still being pressed; I could only manage a low rasp: "Captain Zhou, do you take me for a child?"
Suspicion wasn't something a single sentence could dissolve.
I couldn't prove it, and I couldn't disprove it. Only the killer knew how wronged I was.
Feeling I'd regained control, I pushed Zhou Mi's hand away.
He rose to grab his car keys and said: "I'll drive you back to the hospital."
I covered the wound on my own neck, checking it. The bleeding had stopped—it wasn't that bad.
I raised my eyes to Zhou Mi. I didn't move, and instead said quietly: "Captain Zhou, sit down."
Zhou Mi lowered his gaze to my neck, paused for a few seconds, and sat back down.
I took a laborious breath, and in a voice slower than usual, each word measured, I began: "If we don't clear things up today, I'm afraid... there might come a day when I don't have the chance to say them at all."
Zhou Mi was sitting on the edge of the sofa, leaning slightly forward, ready to catch me if I fell.
I withdrew my gaze and looked at the white-plum-painted bone china teacup in front of me.
"Sylvie had one last message before she died. She asked me to pass it on to you."
I repeated, softly, the skin-crawling content—"'There's a ghost from Black Moses inside our house.'"
Zhou Mi visibly started. His eyes went wide.