The 80s Female Detective's Guide to Self-Preservation [Criminal Investigation] - Chapter 13

Chapter 13

According to Tan He’s account, Tan Liu’s inability to walk was also the doing of Jin Wu and Zhao Yuanming.

“They ruined my daughter’s life. Do they not deserve to die?”

“How did you manage to catch them?” Xia Qiuyuan asked the question that had been puzzling everyone. Even if a middle-aged man was accustomed to heavy labor, taking down two physically fit young men single-handedly seemed improbable.

Seeing Tan He’s silence, Zhuo Yuanqing tapped the table impatiently, his voice rising. “The officer asked you a question. Are you deaf? Answer her!”

Tan He hesitated, then whispered, “Because Jin Wu used to bring people to our door to smash things and harass us, my daughter became unstable and paranoid. I learned a few tricks for setting pheasant traps from a hunter.”

“With my daughter’s legs the way they are, she couldn’t leave the bed, so I didn’t have to worry about her stepping on them. I put a small window on the right side of the house. If someone wanted to buy incense, they just rang a bell, and I’d pass the incense out through the window…”

Tan He knew where the traps were, so he was safe. But for Jin Wu and Zhao Yuanming, the moment they planned to break in, their names were already on the Grim Reaper’s list.

Xia Qiuyuan stared at Tan He. “Your front door is narrow, and the threshold is high. Two grown men like Zhao and Jin would have had to enter one after the other. Who was caught first? And how did you handle the second one without making enough noise to alert the neighbors?”

She didn’t believe his story entirely. It felt like a mixture of half-truths. “Don’t play games with us, adding water to flour and flour to water to change the consistency of your story,” Xia Qiuyuan said coldly. “How exactly did they enter? Tell the truth!”

“…”

Tan He clamped his mouth shut again.

Zhuo Yuanqing caught on. “If you won’t talk, your daughter will. Do you think covering for her now will save her? This is a double homicide! No matter how deep the blood feud, you can’t just take lives.”

“Because they were beasts! They were unevolved animals!” Tan He’s eyes turned red. He leaned forward, his handcuffed hands trembling uncontrollably.

“That bastard Zhao Yuanming was already injured and couldn’t climb my wall. Jin Wu’s injuries were lighter, so Zhao made Jin climb over first to check things out. Since no one answered the door, they thought the house was empty and planned to steal my money.”

“When Jin Wu saw my daughter was paralyzed, that animal… he actually dared to… dared to do that…”

Tan He buried his head in his hands, tears streaming down his face. “I came back and saw Zhao Yuanming outside. I had a terrible feeling.”

“I opened the door and let Zhao Yuanming walk in first. I threw a slipknot around his neck from behind, pulling and dragging him toward the traps. I had buried two heavy-duty bear traps there. They snapped shut, piercing through his bone and flesh.”

As he spoke, Tan He’s voice trembled—not with fear, but with a hateful excitement. He had felt the weight of the man who had done so much evil finally helpless in his hands. The terror that had haunted him day and night transformed into a surge of courage the moment Zhao Yuanming began to suffocate.

He bound the unconscious Zhao, gagged him, and picked up a shovel. Inside the house, he witnessed a scene that ignited even more fury.

The shovel cracked Jin Wu’s skull. As the boy collapsed, Tan Liu seemed to detach from her own body. Her face was covered in tears, but her voice was terrifyingly calm. She sounded like a stranger inhabiting her skin. “Dad,” she had said. “Don’t kill him yet. Put them in the incense cellar.”

Killing them quickly would have been a mercy.

Tan He roared at the officers, “They deserved to die! If they hadn’t haunted us, if they hadn’t ruined my daughter, would I have done this? If Liang Chunhua and Jin Dacheng wouldn’t teach their children, I did it for them!”

“They thought they were so special because they had sons? I’ll kill them all! I’ll make that whole lot die!”

Xia Qiuyuan and the others understood Tan He’s breakdown, and Zhao and Jin were certainly despicably guilty, but the case remained shrouded in mystery. Tan He’s perspective was narrow; he only saw the immediate feud. To understand the deeper details—and the connection to the girl who jumped from the school—they had to talk to Tan Liu.

According to Tan He, after Jin Wu was knocked out, Tan Liu performed all the torturing. She watched them crawl at her feet, begging for their lives. She had made Tan He stay above ground; he could only hear the wails through the floorboards. She didn’t kill them on the first day. She bled them slowly, like pigs. That was why the cellar was a lake of blood.

The shift in Tan Liu’s personality described by her father was extreme. Even a victim of trauma usually shows signs of anxiety when retaliating.

Xia Qiuyuan stood by the interrogation door, looking through the small window at Tan Liu.

Too calm.

Compared to the girl who had been scratching and screaming on the bed, the woman now resting with her eyes closed felt like a different person. This was the person who could command her father to drug a neighbor’s water, slaughter a pig, and stuff a man’s intestines into its mouth.

Cold. Calculated. Heartless.

“What are you looking at?” Xia Sui appeared with a palm-leaf fan, the breeze tossing her hair. She followed Xia Qiuyuan’s gaze and locked eyes with Tan Liu. The intensity of the gaze made the scratches on Xia Sui’s arm throb.

“She’s strange,” Xia Qiuyuan said. As Tan Liu opened her eyes, Xia Qiuyuan confirmed her suspicion. She turned to Xia Sui. “Does the bureau have any partnerships with psychologists? We need a diagnosis. I suspect she has a mental disorder.”

“What? A psychologist?” Xia Sui was stunned. “We have forensic doctors, not shrinks. She’s a killer—why are we getting her a doctor? She doesn’t look ‘crazy’ to me.”

In Xia Sui’s mind, “crazy” meant disheveled people screaming in the streets. Every village had one. Tan Liu was different; her eyes weren’t empty. In fact, they made the hair on the back of Xia Sui’s neck stand up.

“Mental illness has many forms,” Xia Qiuyuan explained. “Based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, she shows signs of Dissociative Identity Disorder (personality split) caused by severe trauma.”

“Personality split?”

“Or one of several other disorders where a person loses their sense of self. Some self-harm; others turn their aggression outward toward their triggers. Whether she’s truly ill or just cold-blooded needs a professional’s conclusion.”

Xia Sui sighed. “I’ll ask Old Hou. I thought we’d take a break after Guangqi finished the notes, but it looks like we might be going home early if we can’t interview her yet.”

“If we can even find a doctor, Sister Sui.”

“Honestly, I want to go home anyway,” Xia Sui admitted. “When I first became a detective, I was full of fire. I thought every criminal deserved the harshest sentence. But the longer I stay, the more I question ‘justice.’ Sometimes the scales tilt, and that’s when I have to force myself to stay neutral.”

She patted Xia Qiuyuan’s shoulder. “Outside this uniform, I’d scream that those boys got what they deserved. But inside this uniform, I’m just a detective. My only job is to get the facts, the evidence, and the statements, and hand them over. It’s hard to hold onto that one belief. My mentor quit because he couldn’t take the internal struggle anymore.”

Xia Qiuyuan looked at the younger version of the woman she remembered from her past life’s photo albums. She smiled. “You might be doing this for another twenty or thirty years, Sister Sui. Especially with a ‘natural talent’ like me as your colleague. A genius won’t let emotions keep her stuck.”

Xia Sui: “…”

“Thirty years of this workload? Qiuyuan, please wish me something better than that.”

The momentary sentiment was washed away by the reality of overtime. Chasing suspects, interrogating, filing, canvassing… who could handle thirty years of being used like a donkey?

Xia Sui decided then and there: Maybe I should transfer to administration after all!