Near Yangfan Middle School, Jiang Yue and Officer Han, dressed in civilian clothes, picked a secluded corner in a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. They ordered a plate of peanuts, three or four small dishes, and one bottle of beer each, then settled in for a leisurely drink.
"Officer Han, this meal's on me." Jiang Yue didn't feel bad about treating him at a little place like this. He was just a student; he wasn't at the age where he had to make a show of things.
"Little Jiang, calling me Officer Han all the time feels too formal. Either call me Big Brother Han, or use my name, Han Yiming. You can call me Old Han, too. I'm probably twice your age, so calling me Old Han won't hurt."
"Sure, Old Han it is. Sounds friendlier." Jiang Yue raised his glass. "Cheers."
"This Da Bing Cuisine Restaurant was already here when I went to Yangfan Middle School. Nearly twenty years later, and it's still going strong." After only one beer, Han Yiming was already reminiscing about his youth.
"Feeling nostalgic? Come on, cheers. Don't spend all night mulling over your youth. We've got business to take care of after we finish."
"More business?"
"Let's take a walk by the river. When you're investigating a case, you have to listen to all sides, right?"
Han Yiming raised his glass, looking amused and exasperated. "Looks like this drink wasn't free after all."
"Even free drinks wouldn't taste as good, would they?" Jiang Yue smiled, picked up a peanut, and crunched it with relish.
"Old Han, that's all the drinking is about. Actually, this isn't entirely selfish on my part. Let me put it this way: even though you have what you call ironclad evidence, I still trust my instincts."
"Oh? And what are your instincts?" Han Yiming put down his chopsticks and studied Jiang Yue seriously. He had come to have a great deal of faith in the young man.
"When you handcuffed Teacher Sun and took him away from the classroom, I judged from his immediate reaction that he absolutely hadn't done it."
"Absolutely?" Han Yiming frowned, pinching the rim of his glass between two fingers and turning it gently.
"Absolutely."
"What evidence do you have?"
"None!" Jiang Yue shook his head. "That's why we need to look."
"The woman who came home late in the middle of the night in your residential compound today could be explained as a mysterious death, presumably caused by a ghost. But it's hard to explain the death of the ghost's original owner—the girl with the surname Su—as a mysterious event, isn't it?" Han Yiming lowered his voice, clearly afraid of startling people at the next table.
"Before the Year Eater appeared, could you have imagined that something like that existed?" Jiang Yue countered.
At the mention of the Year Eater, Han Yiming had no answer.
Having more than twenty years of someone's life stolen in an instant—he hadn't even seen anything like that on television, let alone witnessed it in person.
"When we were tracking the Year Eater, I said something, and I still stand by it. If we stick to conventional thinking, these cases won't make any progress. We'll just keep getting led around by the nose. I believe there'll be more and more strange things happening, and more and more victims."
When he finished, Jiang Yue raised his glass to Old Han and downed it.
Han Yiming fell into thought.
While handling Sun Bin's case, as well as the late-night snack shop case where Old Zhao broke into the morgue, and another similar rape and murder case that morning, they had indeed stuck to conventional thinking.
As for the second bizarre death at New Moon Bay, where not even the security cameras had captured anything, it clearly seemed supernatural, so they had handed it over to Director Luo and the Special Department.
After finishing the beer, Han Yiming seemed to regain his youthful vigor and ate three bowls of rice.
The two of them polished off all four stir-fried dishes, eating with gusto.
When they settled the bill, two bottles of beer, a plate of peanuts, a plate of pickled radish, four stir-fried dishes, and rice came to just over a hundred yuan. That was considered expensive for this restaurant.
"Haha, Little Jiang, that meal hit the spot. It took me back twenty years. Come on, let's walk it off by the river."
Star City had a good natural environment, and people fishing by the river were a common sight, day and night.
"Sun Bin said he watched people fishing by the river for nearly an hour. He even chatted with one of them for a while."
"Did he mention what the person looked like?"
"He said the man was short, balding, and old. He wore reading glasses, and one of the arms was broken and wrapped with tape."
"That's pretty distinctive." Jiang Yue frowned. "You had so-called ironclad evidence, but didn't even bother to follow up on a simple lead like this?"
Of course, he was just venting.
If he put himself in their shoes, a murder case with surveillance footage at the scene and all kinds of physical evidence to compare really did look airtight.
They had every reason to dismiss those details the suspect had mentioned as fabrications.
Besides, even if every detail Sun Bin gave was true, the slightest discrepancy in the timeline would make it unreliable.
"Little Jiang, you and your teacher seem to have a good relationship."
"Six years," Jiang Yue sighed. "You can know some people for ten or twenty years and still not understand them, while with others, three or five days might be all it takes to see right through them. Old Sun is the kind of person you might not understand at a glance, but after a few more, you can see him for who he is. He couldn't have committed a crime like that."
"Heh. Some criminals seem honest and harmless in daily life. They hide it well until a crime comes to light."
"That just proves you don't understand Old Sun—or how much he loves his daughter. A father who loves his daughter so much, and is so deeply loved by her, would never rape and murder someone else's daughter."
Jiang Yue wasn't usually one to argue.
But this time he was especially stubborn. Just as Xia Xia had risked her life to stand up for her father, Jiang Yue wanted to clear Old Sun's name.
"Hey, Little Jiang, does that person look like the one Sun Bin described?"
Jiang Yue quickly walked in the direction Han Yiming pointed.
The man's height, age, and thinning hair all matched.
The reading glasses were especially distinctive: one arm was broken and wrapped in tape. There probably wasn't anyone else with the same feature.
Han Yiming stepped forward and casually offered him a cigarette. "Uncle, could we ask you something?"
Jiang Yue stood to the side, recording with his phone.
The old man was clearly a talkative sort. Otherwise, he wouldn't have chatted with Old Sun.
"What do you want to know? Ask away, if I know the answer." The old man was easygoing.
"Yesterday morning, around 10:15, did you have someone here watching you fish? A man with black-rimmed glasses, who looked refined and scholarly?"
The old man scratched his head, which had only a few strands of hair left, and thought for a while before answering. "There was a man like that yesterday. He squatted nearby and watched for a good while. We even chatted for a bit. I think he was a teacher?"
Jiang Yue's eyes lit up. "Uncle, are you sure it was yesterday morning?"
"Definitely yesterday morning. I'll have to think about the exact time..."
"Oh, right! I left home around nine-thirty yesterday morning, and it only took me fifteen minutes to get here. I hadn't been fishing long—about as long as it takes to smoke two cigarettes—when he ambled over. All told, he was probably here for about an hour. Every now and then, he'd make small talk with me. I even remember him asking to buy my fish before he left. Heh, I'd barely caught any, so I didn't sell them."
Han Yiming took out his phone and pulled up a photo. "Uncle, take a look. Is this the man?"
"Oh? That's him! He spoke slowly and gently, and seemed like an honest, decent man. He... he didn't get into trouble, did he?"
The photo on the phone showed the man with a shaved head and handcuffs on.
"Uncle, take another look. Is this the same person? Do the times you mentioned line up?"
"It only happened yesterday. I shouldn't have remembered it wrong."
"It's the same man, though he didn't have this haircut yesterday. The time was roughly the same, too. Not long after he left, I went home for lunch."
"So you're saying he was definitely here watching people fish yesterday morning around 10:15?"
"Right. He must've arrived before ten, and I reckon it was past eleven when he left." The old man seemed like an honest person. Although he sensed the matter might cause trouble, he still told the truth.
Jiang Yue raised a thumb. "Uncle, you're the coolest guy on this riverside street."
"What does that mean?" The old man was baffled.
Han Yiming said, "Uncle, would you be willing to leave us your contact information? This may involve an innocent person and several lives. If we ask you to go to the police station and give a statement, will you tell them what really happened?"
"This is that serious?" The old man was shocked.
"Yes. The man in that photo was arrested as a murderer. The crime was supposedly committed around 10:15 yesterday morning. His six-year-old daughter was called a murderer's daughter by the other children, and today she nearly jumped off a building and killed herself."
Jiang Yue could tell the old man had a strong sense of justice, so he seized the opportunity to stir it further.
"Then that can't be right! If the crime happened at 10:15, there's definitely a problem. He was here watching people fish at that time yesterday morning. No doubt about it!"
"I'd say the same thing at the police station," the old man added earnestly.
"Oh, right. Speaking of his daughter, I just remembered something else. While we were chatting, he mentioned her and even showed me a photo. She looked like a sweet little girl. What was her name again?"
"Think harder!" Jiang Yue urged, excited.
"That's right, he said Xia Xia. Xia as in summer. His daughter was born in the summer, and her birthday's coming up in a couple of months."
"Way to go, Uncle!" Jiang Yue raised his thumb again.
The old man didn't quite understand what Jiang Yue meant, but he could tell it was praise. His weathered face lit up with a delighted smile.
"I've lived more than sixty years. I have to be able to face my conscience." The old man patted his chest, full of pride.
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