"What are you talking about!"
Meng Yifan's eyes went wide. "Your dad had Fang Man killed? Do you know what you're saying!"
I could no longer speak. I felt as though the sky had come crashing down.
Even more than Meng Yifan, I wanted this to be false.
But every one of the many clues I had gathered pointed to one person: my dad, Chen Guowen.
"He's telling the truth."
Song Xiaotian said expressionlessly, "The person who hired someone to kill Xiaoman was Chen Guowen."
Meng Yifan grew agitated. "On what grounds? On what grounds are you saying it was Uncle Chen? What evidence do you have?"
Song Xiaotian took out a sheet of paper and handed it to us. "Yesterday, when you gave me that list, I asked Chen Mo whether he was sure everyone under suspicion was on it. By then, I already knew it was Chen Guowen."
"But I didn't have solid evidence, so when I went to investigate, I didn't look into anyone on the list at all. I went straight to Chen Guowen's account. I found that on the day Wang Shujun died, he withdrew ten thousand from a bank ATM. Exactly ten thousand."
The paper clearly showed the record of that ten-thousand-yuan withdrawal. The account was my dad's, and the name was my dad's name.
Holding the paper, Meng Yifan was stunned too. Like me, he couldn't believe it. He simply couldn't believe it.
"How could it be him? He's such a good-natured man. How could it be him!"
"Why would he have Fang Man killed? Even if he did those things back then, even if he was the one who hired Lü Zhengxian, why would he have Fang Man killed?"
"And why did he do those things back then?"
"He's such a good-natured