Who Will Kill Me Tonight? - Chapter 4

At the police station, Cheng Jun was in the interrogation room, watching Yuan Li harshly question the student handcuffed to the interrogation chair, “Were you on bus 702 that night or not? Speak up!”

Cheng Jun opened the case file, reading through the information at hand. Feng Zijian, twenty-four, senior in the finance department at Liangjiang University. He had failed multiple courses and came from a poor family.

Feng Zijian, hunched on the interrogation chair, was sweating profusely. His lips trembled as he stammered out, “I… I only wanted to rob some money. Who knew she would spray me with pepper spray… I… What? Bus 702? I don’t know…”

Cheng Juan frowned and held back the excited Yuan Li. “Explain yourself clearly.”

Unable to withstand the oppressive atmosphere of the interrogation room, Feng Zijian broke down and started crying. His eyes were bloodshot, still raw from the pepper spray. It’s over. It’s all over!

“I stabbed her! Just once—I didn’t mean to, I swear! I only wanted some cash. She startled me, and I panicked—”

Yuan Li’s excited expression quickly turned pale. “What did you say?”

Cheng Jun’s expression turned cold. “Yuan Li, where is she?”

“I—I don’t know.” Yuan Li was frightened by Cheng Jun’s serious demeanor and realized he had done something stupid. “She was on Beibin Road. She should have gone back to her dorm by now…”

Cheng Jun almost laughed at Yuan Li’s foolishness. “You’re telling me a girl who’s been stabbed just walked herself back to her dorm to sleep it off? Move! We need to find her now!”

Because of the 702 incident, there were quite many officers on duty that night. But Cheng Jun still decided to step in personally. That girl was now not only suspicious, but she was very likely a key eyewitness to the incident that day, the one who had actually seen the killer’s face.

If that were true, she would be in danger. And now, she had been stabbed and was alone on a dark and silent path.

Cheng Jun tried to recall the image of the girl who had spoken to him just yesterday. Strangely enough, her face was already a blur in his mind. He couldn’t recall the details of her features, only that a faint blue mole seemed to rest at the tip of her nose. For a police officer it was unbelievable to forget the face of a person he had met face-to-face just the day before. It was as if someone had deliberately erased her from his memory overnight.

Liangjiang City was a vast metropolis, home to more than twenty million permanent residents. It boasted of the Liangjiang River, which was once a vital waterway; the renowned Liangjiang Bridge; ancient pavilions and maze-like alleyways built in times long past seamlessly coexisting with towering skyscrapers, high-speed rail lines, and various technology parks heralding the future.

And like every city of its size and magnetism, crime was stitched into its fabric. Criminals from across the country flocked here, constantly testing the nerves of its police force.

Cheng Jun sped through the backstreets in the police car, taking every shortcut he knew. Traffic officers glanced at the flashing lights as the vehicle tore past, but none dared to stop it. This time, he had left behind the reckless trainee, sending him to fetch an ambulance instead, and took along an experienced policeman with decades of fieldwork behind him—Shao Qilu.

They soon reached the location Yuan Li had described. The tree-lined path loomed before them, shrouded in darkness. It looked less like a street and more like a corridor into hell. The dim streetlights overhead flickered faintly, their glow so weak it might as well not have existed at all.

Shao Qilu glanced at the dashboard clock. 11:50. The rain outside had finally stopped. “At this hour, if she was stabbed, she would already be in shock from blood loss or worse, dead.”

Cheng Jun killed the engine. Shao Qilu climbed out first with a flashlight, its beam cutting into the darkness.

Doubts pressed heavily at Cheng Jun’s mind as he followed behind. “According to Yuan Li, Liang Jing only told him to chase after the suspect. She didn’t cry for help, nor did she call out. That’s why he didn’t realize she had been hurt. A normal person, if truly injured, would have first thought to grab Yuan Li and have him take her to the hospital.”

Shao Qilu paused. “You’re right. Do you suspect Feng Zijian is not in his right mind? That he didn’t stab her at all?”

They quickly arrived at a corner; Shao Qilu shone the flashlight on the ground—no blood, no body, confirming Cheng Jun’s point, but the earlier rain could have washed the traces away. Cheng Jun’s tension didn’t ease.

He said to Shao Qilu, “Go check Liang Jing’s dorm at the university. Have Yuan Li call nearby hospitals to see if anyone came in tonight with a stab wound to the abdomen. I’ll keep searching here.”

“Understood.”

Shao Qilu handed his flashlight over before leaving. Cheng Jun squatted there for a while, then slowly stood up. He shone the light forward. Not far away was the back wall of the Liangjiang University sports field, with a left turn at the fork in the road. With such a location, how could Liang Jing have noticed someone hiding?

Earlier when she saw Yuan Li, she wasn’t surprised. Her first words were to tell him to chase the killer from bus 702. This proved that she had likely noticed Yuan Li following her during the day. Although Yuan Li was still a trainee officer, those who could get into the Liangjiang City Police Headquarters were outstanding talents of the police academy. His tracking and investigation skills could not possibly be so poor as to be discovered by an ordinary college student. This dental student seemed to possess an extremely keen sense of alertness.

The last puzzling point Cheng Jun couldn’t understand was why Liang Jing walked alone on such a dangerous path so late at night. Which single woman would suddenly go to such a place?

The mysteries around her piled higher. At the scene of the bus 702 case, she had been pulled from the river, said to have jumped in a suicide attempt. But it had been daylight by then, with crowds of witnesses gathered. If she had leapt from the bank into the river, someone should have seen it. Yet when questioned, not a single person had witnessed such a thing.

Furthermore, there was absolutely no reason for her to have seen the fall into the river that happened at 8 PM or even to have seen the killer’s face.

No normal deduction could lead to a reasonable explanation. Cheng Jun even entertained the wild idea that the person who disappeared that night, the one wearing the yellow padded jacket, was Liang Jing.

But it was just a thought. The forensic results were out. The fingerprints on the watch had been found, but no matching person was found in the database. If they could find Liang Jing and compare her fingerprints, they would know. Or, if they could get something she had used and send it for testing, they could also determine if she was that person.

However, even if that person were found, they should be a corpse, and a mutilated one at that, not Liang Jing.

Cheng Jun exhaled, a white mist forming in the cold air. It was a freezing night, not a good time for a police investigation. After a downpour, any traces would be gone.

As Cheng Jun was walking back to his car, he suddenly heard a faint sound, like a machine’s electrical circuit burning out.

He shone his light toward the sound, and an iron gate of a construction site stood ahead. Its iron doors were pushed ajar, as though someone had forced a way through. Cheng Jun shone the flashlight through the gap. In the corner to the left, the weeds were noticeably flattened. Rainwater had pooled there, glinting dully under the beam.

Cheng Jun’s eyes flashed, and he walked in through the gap.