Unseen Eyes (Part 6)
Ryan
Felix's confession accounted for most of the case.
But the video he'd received caught my attention, and Old He's too.
With the tech department's help, we tracked down the "content seller"—Simon Song.
On his hard drive, we found over a hundred hidden-camera videos. Bathrooms, bedrooms, saunas, public restrooms, even hotel suites. Dozens of victims. Nearly a hundred thousand yuan in profits.
Confronted with ironclad evidence, Simon admitted to the secret filming—but pinned everything else on Warren.
"My grandpa got diagnosed with lung cancer last year," Simon blubbered. "My parents were scrambling to pay for treatment. My aunt was staying in my old apartment—a seventy-square-meter place my family owned. I went over, installed a camera in the bathroom socket, figured I'd make some extra cash."
But shortly after he set it up, his mother sold the apartment under pressure.
The buyer was Melissa.
Simon found out too late. By then, the renovations were already underway. He couldn't retrieve the camera. When he heard the new owner was a young woman, he decided to keep the stream going for "premium content."
He never expected Warren to discover the camera, track him down, and confront him—let alone make him an accomplice.
The last time, Warren had tasked him with two jobs.
One: agree to meet Melissa at a hotel so Warren could burst in and play the hero.
Two: send Melissa's nude footage to Felix, claiming she was a cam girl, to blow the couple apart.
Warren's calculus was transparent. Given Felix's temperament, any suspicion that Melissa had been unfaithful would drive a wedge between them. Then it would be Felix the controlling boyfriend on one side and Warren the devoted protector on the other. No matter how much Melissa loved Felix, she'd fall into Warren's arms eventually.
The plan was clever. But Warren miscalculated—and paid with his life.
Simon whined, "How was I supposed to know her boyfriend would see the video that exact night and catch them at the hotel? They were fighting, and I was sitting in the lobby, too scared to move. Warren called me later and said the hero thing was off. I said fine and went home. He made me do everything. I was just helping a friend out—"
"He told you to jump, and you jumped?" I jabbed a finger at him. "Would you eat garbage if he asked? You killed someone!"
Simon tried to slither out of responsibility. "I never meant to hurt her. How was I supposed to know she'd get killed? I admit I filmed her, but her death—I never saw that coming!"
I slammed the table. "Look me in the eye and tell me her death had nothing to do with you. If you hadn't done those disgusting things—if you hadn't profited from her body and her privacy—would any of this have happened? You didn't intend for her to die. Sure. Nobody could've predicted that. But you should never have broken the law in the first place!"
He opened his mouth to argue, but Old He grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the interview room before I could do something I'd regret.
The chief wasn't around. Old He was worried I'd assault another suspect.
---
In the end, Felix and Simon each received the punishment they deserved.
From his holding cell, Felix gripped the table edge so hard his knuckles went white. "Why? Why didn't she tell me? I was her boyfriend. Why didn't she come to me instead of running to Warren? I'm her boyfriend! I should have known everything!"
I asked him what he would have done if Melissa had told him she'd been secretly filmed for six months.
He rattled the table. "I would've protected her!"
"Bullshit!" A dull throb pounded behind my eyes. "If you really loved her, you'd have known how much pressure your possessiveness put her under. She felt safe enough to confide in Warren but not in you—and you think it's because she had feelings for him?
"For weeks, even her coworkers noticed she was falling apart. Where were you? What were you doing? You were suspecting her of cheating! Without a single conversation, you installed spyware on her phone—the same crime Simon committed!
"You say you loved her. You only loved yourself."
Felix wouldn't listen. He kept repeating the same questions. Why didn't she tell him? Why did she go to Warren?
Why? I couldn't answer that either.
Three years together should have been enough to build trust. But when crisis struck, Melissa chose to carry the burden alone. Maybe she was naive to the point of foolishness. Maybe she was too sensitive, too afraid.
And what she'd been thinking, no one would ever know.
---
After the case closed, I threw a dinner at the restaurant where I'd trained under Chief Sharp to thank him for his guidance.
Three rounds in, emboldened by alcohol, I asked him, "Felix asked me why Melissa didn't go to the police. I want to know too. Why didn't she report it? Why didn't she ask for help? She was so young—she shouldn't be dead."
Chief Sharp rolled his glass between his palms. "Everyone makes their own choices. The police aren't saviors—they're the state's instrument of force. They maintain the baseline of justice that we call 'law.' If you can't separate duty from unwarranted guilt, your years as a detective will have been wasted."
I laughed. "Then tell me—does a detective's duty include spotting inconsistencies and following them to the end?"
After the Zhong Zixu kidnapping case, I'd pulled the case file on Paul Yuan's supposed suicide. I didn't know what I suspected. A closed case couldn't be reopened without new evidence—and I had none.
I just needed to know whether I'd missed something crucial.
Searching had consumed me. Most nights, only alcohol could put me to sleep. Old He had talked to me several times, with zero effect.
Chief Sharp finally lifted his gaze from the condensation on his glass and met mine.
Then he smiled. "You'll figure it out."
I didn't see him again for a long time after that.
But I never forgot what he told me on the day I became his apprentice, when I was still a green recruit, full of questions. I'd asked him what the most important quality for a detective was. Courage? Integrity? Selflessness? Sacrifice?
He'd said, "The most important thing is to remember that being a detective is just a job. Some people treat it as a calling. Others treat it as a shift. What about you?"
At the time, I didn't understand.
Now, I wasn't sure I wanted to.
---
The case was closed. The perpetrators were in custody. The victims were in the ground.
On my way home, I passed by Blue Hills Apartments. The lights were on in several units, warm and steady behind the curtains. Somewhere inside, families were eating dinner, watching television, arguing about small things, forgiving each other without thinking about it.
In the unit where Melissa had lived, the windows were dark.
I thought about her sitting alone in that apartment, too afraid to shower, washing her hair at the sink, sleeping in her clothes, pushing away the man who claimed to love her because she couldn't trust him with her fear.
I thought about Warren, watching her through a lens, convincing himself that manipulation was romance, that violating her privacy was a form of devotion.
I thought about Felix, reading her messages, screening her calls, tracking her movements—calling it love, calling it protection, until the moment he crushed the life out of her with his bare hands.
And I thought about Simon, who'd installed a camera for pocket change and then handed over the images like currency, never once considering that the people on the other side of the lens were real.
Four men. Four ways of looking at a woman.
One watched her without her knowledge. One watched over her without her consent. One watched her movements without her freedom. One watched her from the other side of a peephole, like a maggot pressed against glass.
None of them saw her.
Melissa had been surrounded by eyes, every one of them staring, none of them seeing what she needed—to be heard, to be believed, to be safe.
She'd bought an apartment to feel secure. Instead, it had become her prison.
She'd kept her secret to protect a relationship that was already a cage.
And when she finally reached out for help, the hand that caught her was the one that had been stalking her all along.
The law caught the criminals. The case was closed. The paperwork was filed.
But the dead stay dead. And the ones who killed them believed, to the very end, that they were the real victims.
That was the part I couldn't accept. The part no amount of vodka could wash away.
A detective's job is to find the truth.
But the truth doesn't always set you free.
Sometimes it just shows you where the light went out.