Evidence, Part Two

The forensics report came back on a Thursday. Wu Xian read it at his desk and sat for a long time afterward without moving.

Human remains in the ash. Incomplete, but identifiable. Female. Adolescent — estimated age fourteen to sixteen. DNA had been extracted. The database match came back six hours later.

The girl was Fang Wang. Fang Chuchua's daughter.

Wu Xian had known about the text on Hui Nan's phone — she had shown it to him during her statement. A woman identifying herself as Fang Wang's mother had sent it. The message said her daughter had been missing for a week and asked Hui Nan — specifically Hui Nan — to look into it. At the time Wu Xian had set it aside as peripheral; the case had too many moving parts. He had filed a missing persons report.

Now he understood what had happened on the mountain.

Chen Daipeng had followed Hui Nan and Zhu Hua up to White Stone Mountain. He had been watching Hui Nan for days — she had sensed it. When the clearing confrontation happened and the figure appeared, Chen had panicked. He had identified the girl as a threat — possibly as evidence that could connect him to the original crime — and had done what he had always done when faced with something that incriminated him: he had made it disappear.

He had not understood, until too late, who she was.

Fang Wang was Chen Daipeng's biological daughter. The child conceived during the rape fifteen years ago. Fang Chuchua had kept the pregnancy, given birth in the other province under a different name, raised the child alone, and included her in the plan — or had tried to. The text to Hui Nan was not from a concerned mother; it was the notification Fang Chuchua had set up in advance, to be sent automatically after a set number of days if Fang Wang didn't check in.

The girl had come to the mountain knowing the risk. She had appeared in the clearing knowing what she was doing, and she had achieved what she came to do: she had shown Chen Daipeng her face, Fang Chuchua's face, the face of what he had created, and it had worked on him. Wang Qin had fallen. The moment had been what the mother intended.

What the mother had not intended — or had not been able to prevent — was what Chen Daipeng did next.

Wu Xian went to the detention facility with the DNA report and the forensics summary. He had an officer bring Chen Daipeng from his cell to the interview room. He slid the documents across the table without explanation and let Chen read them.

It took about ninety seconds for Chen to understand what he was reading. Wu Xian watched his face move through several stages.

"You burned your own daughter," Wu Xian said.

Chen Daipeng put both hands flat on the table and began to hit his own face with them — hard, methodical slaps, one after another, his rings cutting his cheek. It took two officers to restrain him. He was still hitting himself when they pulled him out of the room.

The lawyer Huo Bin withdrew from the case that afternoon. His office cited "irreconcilable professional differences with the client." Wu Xian received the call, said "understood," and hung up. Then he typed up the arrest warrant addendum — murder in the first degree, victim Fang Wang — and submitted it.

Huo Bin would find another client. That was fine. This case was closed.