"Wasn't this a young couple, too?"
"They were a couple, but they were both in their thirties. We never met them when we bought the house; we bought it through an agent. Later, I heard from the neighbors that they'd originally been a family of three, with a son. Then their son went missing, and they sold the house and moved away. That whole thing..."
"Ma'am, do you know anything else?"
"Well, I only heard this from the neighbors. They said the child hadn't gone missing—he'd been killed by that couple."
"Really?"
"Those people were just talking nonsense."
"Not all of it was nonsense, was it? There must've been something wrong with that couple."
"Ma'am, could you tell us about what happened?"
"Oh, I don't know much. I just heard that the couple were very busy with work, and their relationship was terrible. They were always arguing."
"But they didn't abuse their child. How could they have killed their own son? They just didn't pay much attention to him, so he got lost. All that talk about murder was just gossip going around the neighborhood. It's awful. Those parents lost their child; who knows how much pain they were in? And people still talked about them behind their backs. Don't learn to be like that."
"Okay, Mom, I know. I haven't been going around spreading rumors."
August 15, 2013. Investigated the first homeowners, Qin Weiguo and Li Yu. Confirmed that their son, Qin Jie, went missing on March 7, 2002, and had not been found. Qin Weiguo and Li Yu moved out on September 11, 2002, and divorced on October 9, 2002.
August 16, 2013. Interviewed the client's next-door neighbor, Xu Fen. Audio file: 07720130816.wav.
"That child's been missing all these years. He must've been kidnapped and sold, right?"
"That's