Procedure and the End
The iron door of the interrogation room slammed shut behind Wang Yong, shutting out the air filled with the smell of smoke, disease, and cold confessions. The relatively fresh air in the corridor rushed into his lungs, but it brought no relief; instead, it felt like a heavy lead weight pressing on his chest.
Feng Jianguo, or rather the "Patient," had already been escorted to the temporary detention room by two other colleagues. He left calmly, even nodding slightly to Wang Yong and Li Zhen as he was being led away, as if saying goodbye, or perhaps as a tacit confirmation. The interrogation record, which he had just signed and affixed with his red fingerprint, was now tightly clutched in Wang Yong's hand; the thin few pages weighed a ton.
Every word above is stained with blood and madness.
Wang Yong leaned against the cold wall, feeling all the strength drain from his body. He had worked as a criminal investigator for over twenty years and believed he had witnessed enough of the dark side of human nature, but someone like Feng Jianguo was a first.
It wasn't pure evil, nor was it the fanaticism of revenge; rather, it was a strange calm mixed with despair, illness, and self-actualization—a wanton judgment of the fates of others based on the countdown to one's own death. This calm madness is more chilling than any impulsive crime.
Almost by muscle memory, he pulled two cigarettes from the crumpled cigarette box, put one in his own mouth, and handed the other to his apprentice Li Zhen, who was standing next to him with a pale face and a somewhat vacant look in his eyes.
Li Zhen mechanically took the cigarette, his fingertips icy cold and even trembling slightly. He tried to put the cigarette in his mouth, succeeding only after two attempts. Wang Yong flicked the lighter, the orange flame leaping, lighting Li Zhen's cigarette first before lighting his own.
The two leaned against the wall, neither speaking, only greedily and deeply inhaling their cigarettes. Nicotine flooded their lungs, bringing a brief numbness and comfort, but it could not dispel the thick, impenetrable gloom in their hearts. Smoke swirled under the overhead light in the corridor, shrouding their tired and heavy faces in a hazy mist.
The faint sounds of other colleagues talking and phones ringing came from the end of the corridor—the usual hustle and bustle of the police station—but now they sounded exceptionally distant and unreal. Their corner seemed to be isolated by the shadow of death brought by Feng Jianguo.
Finally, Li Zhen took one last deep drag, threw the cigarette butt on the ground, and crushed it out with his toe, as if crushing some kind of irritating emotion. He looked up at his master beside him, who was surrounded by smoke and had a furrowed brow, his voice hoarse and confused, as if he had just experienced a great shock:
"Master... what will happen to this case in the end?"
Wang Yong didn't answer immediately. He slowly exhaled a thick smoke ring, watching it rise, deform, and finally dissipate into the air, like Feng Jianguo's life nearing its end. He took another drag before speaking in a tone that was a mixture of extreme weariness and world-weary indifference:
"What to do?" He scoffed, his laughter devoid of any warmth. "Just let it go."
"Just let it go?!" Li Zhen's voice suddenly rose, as if pricked by a needle, filled with disbelief, anger, and incomprehension. "How could this be?! He killed someone! He injured someone! The evidence is irrefutable, and he confessed to it all himself! It's all in black and white, signed and sealed! How can it just be let go?!"
His young chest heaved violently, a fierce conflict raging between his belief in the rule of law and the heinous crime he had just witnessed. If such crimes could be swept under the rug, what was the point of these police officers risking their lives to investigate and gather evidence?
Wang Yong turned his head and looked at his apprentice's bloodshot eyes, which were filled with excitement, with a hint of pity in his eyes. He knew what Li Zhen was thinking; when he was young, he had also firmly believed that the iron fist of the law could crush all evil.
"Otherwise what?" Wang Yong's voice remained calm, yet it was like a cold awl, slowly shattering Li Zhen's unrealistic fantasies. "He only has one month left to live. The doctor's diagnosis, which he just said himself, is stage three stomach cancer. And he's drunk so much alcohol; it's fucking hard to say whether he'll even have a month left."
He paused, letting this harsh reality settle in his mind.
"The judicial process is not child's play. Arrest, interrogation, crime scene identification, evidence preservation, prosecutor's review, prosecution, court scheduling... Even if everything goes smoothly without any setbacks, it can take months to complete this entire process. Do you think he can wait until the trial date?"
Li Zhen opened his mouth, wanting to refute, but found himself speechless. Time was the biggest obstacle; for someone whose life was measured in days, the legal process seemed so lengthy and extravagant.
"Moreover," Wang Yong continued, his tone coldly almost cruel, "Given his current physical condition—late-stage stomach cancer, compounded by damage from excessive drinking—the detention center will absolutely not accept him. Nobody dares to take that responsibility. Most likely, they'll just grant him medical parole and let him die in the hospital."
"But... he confessed! He's the murderer!" Li Zhen emphasized the statement, unwilling to accept the situation.
"What's the use of admitting it?" Wang Yong retorted. "Until there's a court trial and a judgment, until there's a judgment stamped with the court's red seal, he will always be a 'criminal suspect' in the law, not a 'criminal.' His confession is only part of the chain of evidence, not the final basis for conviction."
He looked at Li Zhen and spoke slowly and deliberately, as if giving him his final lesson:
"How can a dead person be convicted?"
"Dead... conviction..." Li Zhen murmured, repeating the two words over and over, a deep sense of powerlessness washing over him. He understood his master's meaning. Legal procedures are designed for the living; their authority and punishment cannot be imposed on a cold corpse. Feng Jianguo had taken advantage of his impending death to complete what he called his "last major task," and then he would calmly, or rather, the legal process would force him to, escape human judgment.
"Then... is it possible that he's lying?" Li Zhen asked, almost with his last glimmer of hope, a question that even he himself found absurd. "His cancer, his confessions... could they be fabricated?"
Wang Yong glanced at Li Zhen, his expression complex, containing understanding, but also a hint that "you should grow up." He didn't answer directly, but instead asked in a calm tone:
Do you think... it looks like it?
Do they look alike?
The scene in the interrogation room flashed through Li Zhen's mind— Feng Jianguo's sickly pale face, the resigned calm when mentioning cancer and alcohol, the clear logic and detailed description of the murder, even with a strange "rigor" and "caution." That deep-seated calmness, that indifference to his own fate and the life and death of others, could not be acted out.
He shook his head dejectedly, his last glimmer of hope shattered. It didn't seem like it at all. What Feng Jianguo said was most likely the cold, hard truth.
Wang Yong threw the long-burnt cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it out with the sole of his shoe, as if he wanted to crush all his frustration and helplessness into the concrete.
"Let's go," he took a deep breath, straightened his back which had been slightly hunched from the long interrogation, and his tone became pragmatic again, even tinged with urgency, "Don't just stand there, get to work!"
As he spoke, he began to jog briskly toward the brightly lit office area.
"We'd better pray," his voice came through as he ran, clearly reaching Li Zhen's ears, "That counselor Li Jing, and Zhang Qian, they're tough enough to pull through!"
Li Zhen paused for a moment, then understood his master's meaning. In Feng Jianguo's confession, Sun Tingting was already dead—a murder case. If Li Jing died from excessive blood loss or other complications due to tongue removal, and if Zhang Qian succumbed to her injuries... then it would be three murder cases! Three murder cases with cruel methods and extremely negative social impact! And the main culprit, because of his death, might not be able to be convicted and the case closed...
"Otherwise, there have been three—no, possibly three—headless murders," Wang Yong's voice carried a barely perceptible hint of anxiety as he ran to the corner of the corridor. "Our bureau's performance evaluation this year... is likely to be at the bottom!"
Being ranked at the bottom in performance evaluations. This concern, which sounds absurd and even somewhat inhumane, seems so real and urgent at this moment. Faced with enormous crimes that cannot be completely punished by law, grassroots police officers sometimes have to confront these more concrete and realistic pressures first.
Li Zhen stood there, watching his master's somewhat hurried Back View disappear around the corner, the words "bottom of the rankings" still echoing in his ears. He felt an unprecedented sense of absurdity and turmoil. On one side were horrific crimes and murderers about to go unpunished, and on the other side were the cold numbers and indicators of police assessments and case-solving rates.
He shivered violently, as if the draft in the corridor had instantly pierced through his police uniform. He dared not think any further, shaking his head violently as if to shake off those chaotic thoughts. Then, with his still somewhat weak legs, he jogged after his master in the direction he had disappeared.
There is still a lot of work to be done—verifying Feng Jianguo's confession, locating Li Jing and Presiding Judge He, organizing a rescue (if there is still time), investigating the scene, securing evidence... Regardless of the final judicial outcome, at this moment, they must complete all of this according to procedure.
However, that deep sense of powerlessness and the dark cloud of doubt about procedure and justice hanging over their hearts will probably not dissipate for a long time.