Silent Bones (Part 5)
Gloria looked ready to bury her face in her chest. "He tried to get my pants off. Justin beat him up and locked him in the cage, and then you people showed up." She lifted her head just enough to aim teary eyes at us. "I'm telling the truth. You tell me who died—I don't know anything about that. I just wanted money. I wouldn't have the guts to kill anyone even if you gave me ten lifetimes of courage!"
We pressed her from every angle, but Gloria produced nothing of substance—only a flood of tears.
Leaving the interrogation room, Old He asked for my read.
I scratched my head. "She's uneducated. Passive. Easy to push around. We still need to catch Sean."
Yang shook his head. "She's smart."
Just then, the partial fingerprint lifted from the cement came back with a match: Justin Zhou.
And the man who'd accompanied Derrick Tian to the housing authority to transfer ownership? Also Justin Zhou.
Yang grabbed the files and went back into the interrogation room.
Justin was still playing the tough guy. Denying everything.
Yang dropped the crime scene photos of the cement barrel in front of him. "Let's skip the preamble. You're out of time. DNA matching is in progress—we'll have the victim's identity confirmed shortly. I'm offering you one chance to come clean. If you keep stonewalling, based on Gloria's testimony alone, you're looking at murder, disposal of a body, fraud, and aggravated assault. None of those are walkable."
Justin blinked. "Gloria?"
Yang told him that while he'd been playing mute, Gloria had confessed to everything.
Justin sneered. "Don't try that on me. Sanmei wouldn't sell me out. And even if it's my mother in that barrel—so what? I didn't even know she was dead. You found her for me. I should be thanking you."
Yang said, "Clumsy enough to leave a fingerprint in wet cement, but careful enough to get away with murder for three years."
Justin's expression shifted.
Yang set two photographs on the table. The first was the fingerprint match. "The dead can't speak, but heaven speaks for her. You didn't know your mother was dead? Then explain how your fingerprint ended up in the cement that buried her." The second was the small cross-hatch pouch. "You should recognize this. There are only two in the whole world. It didn't protect her—but it led us to you."
At the sight of the pouch, Justin's breathing quickened visibly.
Yang slammed the photos down. "Your mother poured everything into you. She sewed you a talisman and called you her blessing. And this is how you repay her? Are you even human?"
"I didn't kill my mother!"
Yang ignored the outburst, pressing harder. "You really think Gloria would protect you? She was protecting Sean. She sent him a coded message right in front of us—'milk'—and you think she's loyal to you? On what basis? Infatuation?"
"I didn't kill my mother!" Justin's voice cracked with hysteria, nothing like the defeated man the neighbors had described. "Even if my fingerprint's there, I didn't kill her! Sanmei would never betray me. Don't try to pin this on me!"
Yang sighed and pulled out the housing authority surveillance still. When he spoke again, his voice carried something close to pity. "Convictions rest on evidence. The person who impersonated Maya was you. The person who staged the debt collection was you. The person who pressured Derrick into selling his home was you. The person who beat people and caged them was you. The person we caught red-handed at the scene was you. Gloria is a weak woman. Sean, at best, is an accomplice. Have you ever stopped to wonder why every witness and every piece of physical evidence points to one person?"
He set a pair of police gloves on the table.
"Most importantly—why is there only your fingerprint in the cement? And no trace of anyone else?"
"Someone else..." Justin murmured, his gaze drifting toward the gloves.
Then his whole body jolted. "Gloria made Sean wear gloves!"
Justin had taken the bait.
When trust collapses completely, all that remains is self-preservation.
From Justin's mouth, the staggering, grotesque truth of the case finally surfaced.
---
Three years ago, Maya had owed Gloria two thousand yuan in gambling debts. But when Sean showed up at their door, the IOU had mysteriously ballooned to twenty thousand.
Maya refused to pay. Sean and a gang of thugs beat both Maya and Justin black and blue. While the couple recovered, Sean and Gloria moved into the Zhou apartment and held the entire family hostage through violence and intimidation.
Maya eventually caved, agreeing to withdraw cash to "repay" the debt. But by then, Gloria's appetite had grown. She didn't just want twenty thousand—she wanted Maya's properties, her car, her savings.
Her weapon, though, wasn't her fists.
At the time, Grandma Zhou and Maya were locked in a bitter feud over whether to have children. Justin, as the live-in son-in-law, had no standing in the household. He couldn't even speak up for his own mother.
The Zhou family had been fracturing for years. Gloria saw the cracks and drove a wedge into every one of them.
She called "family meetings."
At these sessions, she encouraged the three Zhous to accuse, berate, and physically attack one another. She established strict rules: phones confiscated; nobody leaves the apartment; meals, water, bathroom privileges, and sleep were permitted only at designated times and in designated places. Infractions were punished. Compliance was rewarded.
And the number-one reward for good behavior was the opportunity to inflict suffering on your own family.
For food, for water, for the right to sleep in a bed instead of on the floor, the three Zhous turned on one another. Grandma Zhou, old and frail, fell ill quickly. Justin begged Gloria to let him take his mother to a doctor. But Maya, in exchange for a single slice of bread, proposed locking Grandma Zhou in the bathroom without food or water.
"That's what she said," Justin recalled, his eyes red, laughing without humor. "She said, 'We can't let her infect us.' She wasn't human. Even if my mother had done something wrong—she was still my mother! She wanted to save herself, so she'd let my mother die?"
Grandma Zhou perished in squalor. Justin was on the verge of collapse. He tried to steal his phone back to call for help, but Sean caught him. He thought he was going to die. Then Gloria stepped in.
"I'd done something wrong," Justin said. "I deserved to be punished. For a day and a night, I couldn't sleep, eat, or use the bathroom. I had to stand and face the wall. Sanmei pitied me. She told me not to do anything reckless. She said my mother's death was on Maya's hands as much as mine— if we were exposed, neither of us could escape. But she promised she wouldn't let anything happen to me. She had a way to make it all disappear."
Desperate, Justin followed Gloria's instructions. He and Sean placed his mother's body inside an iron barrel and filled it with cement.
He hadn't known that his mother was still clutching her talisman. And in his grief, reaching for her one last time, he'd pressed his hand into the wet cement—leaving behind the evidence that would undo them all.
After the disposal, Gloria sold Maya's home. To avoid detection, she and Sean forced the couple out of the city overnight.
By then, Maya understood that she'd outlived her usefulness. Terrified of becoming the next victim, she tried to escape on the road. But Justin caught her.
"If you'd lived what I've lived, you'd have done the same," Justin said through clenched teeth. "I wasn't going to let that woman get away!"
Grandma Zhou's death had unhinged him. Maya's attempted escape severed his last emotional tie. He dragged her back and handed her to Sean, who beat her to death. Justin wept in shock and despair.
Gloria was there to comfort him. She gave him hope.
"She wasn't like Maya. She understood me, she sympathized with me, she validated me. She said we were the real family—Maya was the outsider. Outsiders deserve to die. She'd protect me. She'd never let anything happen to me."
Under Gloria's guidance once more, Justin dumped Maya's naked body in the mountains.
Once a life derails, it can never get back on track.
Justin fell for Gloria—completely, irrevocably.
To demonstrate his manhood, to win her favor, to prove himself as capable as Sean, Justin transformed from victim to perpetrator with terrifying speed.
He decided he could control everything.
Just as Gloria controlled them—Justin would become a god who controlled others.
And a god needs disciples. Justin needed Derrick Tian.