The Neighbors
I've been on the force long enough to lose my illusions about humanity. These days, I treat every case with the wariness of a man walking through a minefield.
Still, nothing could have prepared me for what I found in that apartment building. A body in the water tank—rotting for days, possibly weeks.
It was June, the building's water supply had been cut off, and residents were told to use the water tank on the roof. That's when they found her.
I won the lottery—well, sort of. I was the one dispatched to handle the call. I still remember the dispatcher's voice: "Cong, there's afloat-in at Riverside. Can you take it?"
The address was barely ten minutes away. A high-end residential complex, a building with sixteen floors and an elevator that opened directly into the unit—the kind of place I'd never afford.
"Who found the body?" I asked.
"Building management. They were fixing a leak, went up to the roof, and found the tank locked from the outside."
"Locked?"
"Affirmative. With a heavy-duty padlock—like the kind you'd see on a construction site. Management is panicking, says this is a major safety hazard."
I arrived to find a crime scene that would give anyone nightmares.
The building superintendent, a gaunt middle-aged woman, was shaking so badly she could barely hold her phone. Her eyes bulged with terror. It took Officer Young and me five minutes just to get her to stop screaming.
The body in the water tank was a woman, floating face-down in the murky water, already bloated and discolored—she'd been dead long enough that decomposition had set in.
The stench was indescribable.
I ordered the body removed and transported for autopsy.
The coroner's preliminary report confirmed the victim was female, approximately 19 years old, with no visible external injuries. The cause of death was inconclusive due to decomposition, but initial findings suggested she'd been alive when she entered the water tank—small scratches and abrasions on her fingers and the inner surface of the tank suggested she'd tried to claw her way out.
Someone had locked her in and left her to drown.
The building's security footage showed that on the night of June 3rd, at approximately 11 PM, a young woman matching the victim's description had entered the building through the garage. She appeared to be visiting someone on the 7th floor.
The 7th floor unit was registered to a single elderly woman—Grandma Yu, age 68, who rented out rooms to young women.
---
We identified the victim quickly: a 19-year-old named Hannah Xue, a local college student who'd been renting a room in Grandma Yu's apartment. Hannah was a quiet girl from a small town, studious and hardworking, who worked part-time to support herself.
According to Grandma Yu, Hannah had lived in the apartment for about six months and rarely caused any trouble. She was diligent about paying her rent on time and kept mostly to herself.
So who would want to kill a quiet,Hardworking college student?
I interviewed everyone on the 7th floor and in the building. The other tenants described Hannah as "nice but shy," "always studying," and "never any trouble." No one had seen her argue with anyone or mention any problems.
But when I spoke with the neighbors on the floor above, a different picture emerged.
The couple in the unit directly above Grandma Yu's apartment—a man named Cheng and his wife—had a history of complaints about noise from below. They'd filed multiple reports about "loud footsteps," "slamming doors," and "water running late at night."
More troubling, several residents mentioned seeing a man in the building who didn't belong—someone who came and went at odd hours, always visiting the 6th floor. The 6th floor tenant was a single man named Wu Yan, an engineer who worked long hours and kept to himself.
I pulled Wu Yan's file. Clean record, steady employment, no connections to Hannah Xue that we could find.
But something about his demeanor during the interview set my teeth on edge.
He was too calm. Too cooperative. Too quick with answers to questions I hadn't fully asked.
I couldn't shake the feeling that he was hiding something.
---
Over the next few days, I dug deeper into the relationships on the 7th floor. Grandma Yu was a shrewd old woman who'd been running her rental operation for years. She charged below-market rates to college girls, provided minimal furnishings, and collected rent in cash—no questions asked.
When I asked her about Hannah's personal life, Grandma Yu's face crumpled with genuine concern.
"She was a good girl," the old woman said, wiping her eyes. "Never gave me any trouble. Always paid on time. Always polite."
"Did she have any enemies? Anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?"
Grandma Yu shook her head slowly. "No... I don't think so. She kept to herself. Studied all the time."
"How about visitors? Did anyone ever come to see her?"
"Sometimes a young man would come by. A classmate, I think. Tall, good-looking. But I only saw him a few times."
I made a note of this and moved on.
The more I investigated, the more the case felt like a puzzle with key pieces missing. Hannah Xue had been a quiet student with no apparent enemies, yet someone had gone to great lengths to lock her in a water tank and leave her to die.
The padlock on the tank was the key. It wasn't a cheap hardware store lock—it was a heavy-duty, weather-resistant model that required bolt cutters to remove. Someone had planned this carefully.
And they'd chosen a Saturday night, when the building's common areas were empty and the security cameras on the roof had been disabled—something only someone familiar with the building's layout could have known.
I went back to the security footage and found what I was looking for: at 10:47 PM on the night of June 3rd, a figure in a dark hoodie was seen exiting the stairwell on the 16th floor—the roof access floor. The figure's face was obscured, but the build was consistent with a tall, slim male.
Wu Yan was tall and slim.
I brought him in for a second interview, and this time, I pushed harder.
He continued to deny everything. He had an alibi for the night in question—he'd been at work, and his timecard confirmed it.
I was stuck.
---
It was Officer Young who broke the case open.
"Captain," she said one morning, holding a file. "I've been looking into Wu Yan's background, and I found something. He used to be a maintenance worker at this very building—five years ago, before he became an engineer."
My heart rate spiked. "He knew the building's layout. The roof access, the camera blind spots—"
"And the water tank," Young finished. "He would have known exactly how to lock someone inside it."
We brought Wu Yan in a third time. This time, we had forensic evidence linking him to the padlock—a purchase record from a local hardware store, paid in cash, but the timestamp on the store's security camera matched his physical description.
Faced with the evidence, Wu Yan's composed exterior finally cracked.
He confessed to stalking Hannah Xue for months, ever since she'd moved into the building. He'd become obsessed with her—watching her from the stairwell, timing her schedule, learning her routines. When she'd rejected his advances, he'd snapped.
On the night of June 3rd, he'd followed her up to the roof, forced her into the water tank at knifepoint, and locked the padlock behind him. He'd disabled the roof security camera weeks in advance and chosen a Saturday night when the building would be quiet.
As he told his story, his face remained flat—a mask of calm that didn't waver even as he described Hannah's screams and the sound of her fingernails scratching against the inside of the tank.
I wanted to punch him.
But the law would deal with him now. Hannah Xue would get justice—even if it came too late to save her.
As the officers led Wu Yan away, Grandma Yu sat in the hallway outside the interview room, weeping softly.
"She was so young," the old woman said. "Nineteen years old. She had her whole life ahead of her."
I couldn't argue with that.