Chapter 70: No Witness Left Behind

2022-05-20

Finding Li Xian wasn’t easy. By the third time he hung up on me, Mary had already pinpointed his location.

We pushed open the door and stepped inside. The first floor was just a narrow hallway, only a few square meters, with stairs on the left.

Before we could even head upstairs, a head peeked out from around the corner. The guy frowned and asked, “What are you two doing here?”

“We’re friends of Li Xian,” I answered.

He didn’t question us any further and led us upstairs. The second floor was a lot more spacious, and we immediately spotted Li Xian, looking serious as he played mahjong.

Li Xian gripped a mahjong tile, brow furrowed as he stared at his hand, completely ignoring Gu Chen’s calls.

Without another word, Gu Chen strode over and grabbed Li Xian by the wrist. The mahjong tile slipped from Li Xian’s fingers and fell to the floor.

“Who are you people?” Now realizing we were there, the crowd turned to look at us, voices full of surprise.

No one reacted at first. They just stared blankly at Gu Chen until he announced his identity a second time—then chaos broke out. Some snatched up their cash, others bolted for the door. Soon, only Li Xian, pinned by Gu Chen, was left behind.

In the blink of an eye, everyone else had scattered. Only Li Xian remained.

“Why am I the only one you’re grabbing?” he protested, obviously not happy about being singled out.

But I wasn’t actually here to arrest him. There was someone else I was after.

He’d won twenty million in the lottery. If someone wanted to buy a lottery ticket for that exact sum, they must have a reason. After taxes, twenty million won’t even be twenty million anymore. If Zhou Guo bought a ticket for that amount, his overseas money would come out clean.

“Take him back,” I told Gu Chen.

Gu Chen asked, “What about the guy who sold him the lottery ticket?”

I grinned, “He’s got too much baggage to just walk away now.”

Barely had we arrived when Li Xian gave up the man’s name. Not half an hour later, the guy showed up. Under questioning, he admitted someone had bought his lottery ticket, but he’d never actually seen the buyer.

Liu Huarong lost his father at age three, his mother at twelve. At seventeen, his aunt kicked him out. By twenty, he managed to scrape together a half-decent job. The next twenty years, life never got better—there were days he didn’t even know where his next meal was coming from.

Eventually, he realized he couldn’t go on like this. So with a deep breath and some determination, he kicked the smoking habit he’d had since age twelve.

Sometimes, Liu Huarong would look back on his forty-odd years and think he’d been dealt a rotten hand. Why could others strike it rich overnight while he was forever struggling? That sense of unfairness gnawed at him, so sometimes, instead of buying food, he spent money on a few lottery tickets.

And one of those tickets changed his life. Overnight, this deadbeat became a rich man. He hugged his TV for ages, hardly believing it. He’d won the second prize—twenty million. What would that even mean for someone like him?

He headed off to claim his prize. But before he could, a kid wearing a hat handed him a phone. The kid looked skinny and didn’t stick around after giving him the phone. Liu Huarong had no idea what was happening, but he answered anyway.

A low, deep man’s voice came through the speaker. He told Liu Huarong that if he’d really won the second prize, he’d be willing to pay twenty million for the ticket. Liu Huarong had heard rumors—laundering money with lottery winnings, telling everyone the ticket was bought for a relative. He never thought something like that would happen to him. Liu was hesitant—it could be a scam. But then again, he figured he’d only get sixteen million if he cashed the ticket himself. This stranger offered a full twenty million. The plan was to have the money wired to his account, then hand the ticket to that same kid.

After thinking it over, Liu Huarong agreed. Four million was still a massive sum to him. Once he gave the other man his bank info, the money came through—every cent of twenty million. No reason to doubt them, so he handed the ticket to the kid.

What happened afterward, Liu didn’t know.

He described the kid as an elementary schooler, clearly just a messenger. The true mastermind never showed up. Liu Huarong thought it was all behind him—he never expected us to come calling, not today.

I called Mary and asked her to check Zhou Guo’s accounts for problems. But that twenty million had bounced from overseas, then rang around every big Chinese bank; tracking its origin would be a nightmare. Even if we concluded it was the money Li Zhinan cheated out of someone, without any real proof, our hands were tied.

Could a teenager really execute such a flawless plan? What could’ve happened in his childhood to shape someone like that?

Liu Huarong told us everything he knew. We couldn’t seize his money, so we told him to return wherever he came from. Li Xian, though, couldn’t leave. As legal guardian for underage Li Taida, he still had a mountain of paperwork ahead—not our problem anymore.

It wasn’t long before Guan Zengbin found us. She’d already finished Zhou Guo’s autopsy.

Turns out, there were two cups of water on the table—one spiked with anesthetics, the other with potassium cyanide. Forensics found only Zhou Guo’s fingerprints and lip marks. He drank both: one to knock himself out, one to end his own life.

Guan Zengbin explained Zhou Guo died from cyanide poisoning. The time of death was precise—about two hours ago, which meant Zhou Guo chose suicide around when Guan was drugged. Five suicides, one elaborate scam, five kids, one point six million split among them, five young dreamers with their own ambitions.

A sudden realization hit me—if that’s how it went, then Zhou Guo’s mother must have died ages ago.

Just then, my phone rang. It was Xiao Liu. He cut right to the chase: “Wu, turns out Zhou Guo’s mom died back in his second year of middle school. Not many people knew, not even his teachers.”

“Check on Zhou Guo’s father,” I sighed to Xiao Liu.

So it was true. What Zhang Xue told me resurfaced in my mind—the night when those five kids stood atop the school roof. Dreams. Dreams always need money. If Zhou Guo hadn’t needed it to save his mother, then he must’ve split the sum with the other four.

All the riddles, at last, came unraveled.