Chapter 73: Suicide Is Never Easy

2022-05-20

“Yeah, something’s off.” Xiao Liu said, “I’ve found a detailed autopsy report, along with the original case files from back then. Take a look.”

As he spoke, Xiao Liu handed us the autopsy report. I spread the pages out on the table so everyone could see. According to the report, Zhou Guo’s mother died from acute gastric perforation. She also suffered from duodenal perforation, stomach bleeding, and other complications.

When the forensic team dissected the body, they found a small amount of rice and a lot of soybeans in her stomach. Their initial conclusion was that the use of a large quantity of scalding hot soybeans caused the stomach perforation. Gastric acid went on to corrode parts of her organs. It was a painful, drawn-out death.

The health organization rates pain in five levels. This would be level four: severe pain. Honestly, I couldn’t even imagine how Zhou Guo’s mother endured something like that. Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt. Death took about an hour to claim her, and every moment was agony.

The case file also included some photos. From the pictures, Zhou Guo’s mother’s expression was twisted in pain, her facial features scrunched together. She looked like she’d suffered terribly. Her body was curled up, and, combined with her partial paralysis, there was something unspeakably eerie about her appearance.

That first photo was taken before the autopsy. The ones after it showed the dissection itself. I could only see that her stomach was a total mess—I had no clue what a healthy stomach was even supposed to look like.

Gu Chen and I turned to look at Guan Zengbin. Guan just shrugged and said, “The autopsy report is accurate. You can clearly see clusters of tiny holes in the stomach. Gastric acid leaked out from there, corroding everything it touched.”

He continued, “Looks like suicide—unless someone forced her to eat it. The mouth, esophagus, and stomach can only handle about 50 to 60 degrees Celsius. The beans would have been piping hot inside, and the rice might have wrapped around them going in, but once it reached her stomach…”

Gu Chen raised an eyebrow at me. “You said something was off just now. What exactly is bothering you?”

I tugged at my hair and said, “We’ve both been to Zhou Guo’s house. There’s no stove in the back room. Zhou Guo’s mother was paralyzed and couldn’t move—she was stuck in bed and could only use one hand. So, how on earth did she cook the soybeans and rice herself?”

Both Gu Chen and Guan Zengbin caught on right away, their eyes lighting up. They knew where I was going.

Guan Zengbin said, “So you mean, just like in the other cases, someone provided her with the means or method to kill herself?”

I nodded seriously. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

Gu Chen looked skeptical. “But would Zhou Guo really encourage his own mother to take her life?”

Before he even finished, realization hit him. “You mean, it wasn’t Zhou Guo, but someone else?”

“Exactly. If Zhou Guo’s mother was the first to die, then maybe Zhou Guo wasn’t the one who started it all—maybe it was someone else.” I looked down at the case file. “According to this, neighbors found Zhou Guo’s mother just before five in the afternoon, while Zhou Guo was in class. But there was someone else…”

I tapped the table lightly with my finger. If it was that person, I definitely needed to see someone else.

An hour later, I was sitting across from him. It was Zhang Dequan, who had only recently been taken in. He wasn’t easy to meet, but Team Leader Shao helped pull some strings. I only had one hour to talk to him before he had to face more questioning.

“About Zhang Xue’s mother—can we talk? It’s important. It concerns your daughter’s future…” I said gently.

Zhang Dequan stared at me for a full five minutes, lips twitching, clearly weighing his options. At last he spoke. “Can you give me a smoke?”

I nodded and handed him a lit cigarette. When a suspect asks for a smoke at a time like this, it usually means they’re ready to talk. Smoking helps calm their nerves and, in this case, meant he was letting his guard down.

He took a hard drag from the cigarette.

“Go ahead and ask. After what I’ve done, I know I’m going to spend this life behind bars.” Zhang Dequan looked at me with cloudy eyes, but there was an undercurrent of relief. “I’ve made a mess of things, I really have. I just don’t know who’ll look after my daughter while I’m in here. No matter what I did, she’s still my little girl.”

He’d already made his choice, so what good would regret do now?

I lit a cigarette too. “Then let’s talk about your wife.”

“My wife…” Zhang Dequan murmured.

About twenty years ago, Zhang Dequan lived out at sea. He watched that endless horizon every day, never sure where he truly belonged. He’d spent years adrift at sea, never knowing his roots or even where he came from. All he knew was, if not for becoming a sailor, he’d be dead by now.

He slept and ate on the ship, helping out the crew with whatever odd jobs they needed.

Five years passed for Zhang Dequan on that boat. He’d grown from a fifteen-year-old into a young man of twenty. He started as a child laborer and ended up a seasoned sailor.

Then, one day, as the ship docked, a young woman showed up near the harbor. She sold seafood, and the moment Zhang Dequan saw her, he was smitten.

A sea breeze blew right into both their hearts. Young men are always full of longing, young women always dream of love. Zhang Dequan’s salary wasn’t especially high or low. That day, he spent everything he had on seafood. The crew teased him—“Why buy what’s already onboard?” But Zhang Dequan just laughed back—you don’t understand love.

The sailors made fun of him for wasting money, but Zhang Dequan just thought they didn’t know what love was.

After the ship docked a third time, Zhang Dequan decided to stay. Staring out at the endless sea, he finally felt a sense of home. They married quickly. Zhang Dequan knew his skills were limited—without sailing, he had nothing.

He chose to work odd jobs while teaching himself new things. Fortunately, five years of sailor’s savings let him hold on. He even got into a technical college and finished his studies, then started prepping for the civil service exam. But that dragged on for five years—because his wife fell seriously ill.

His wife depended on dialysis just to stay alive. At that time, Zhang Xue was only two.

His wife knew she was weighing down the family, so she tried to kill herself for the first time.

After Zhang Dequan left for work, his wife took a fruit knife and sliced her wrist. She didn’t cut deep enough to hit an artery—she just lay there, watching the blood flow until she slowly fell asleep. Zhang Dequan came home to it all and was stunned.

Luckily, his wife survived, though she kept a permanent scar on her wrist as a reminder.

She sobbed for hours—not because she lived, but because she had failed to die.

The second suicide attempt, she tried to use propane gas. Back then, they used bottled gas for cooking. She struggled to twist open the valve and sealed the windows and doors, then waited. Nothing happened. Turns out the tank was running low—the concentration in the air never even reached dangerous levels.

That time, Zhang Dequan never found out.

She even tried messing with the fuse box, but blew a fuse instead. She tried to hang herself, but was too weak to toss the rope over the beam. She thought about jumping off the roof, but they lived in a one-story house. If she survived and was sent to the hospital, the extra costs would only burden her husband even more.

She’d never realized that trying to kill yourself could be so hard. If someone couldn’t even control the fate of their own life, what good were they? It felt like fate itself was mocking her—born with a terrible illness, trapped in endless treatment, and yet even death seemed out of reach.

At last, she found her chance.

By then, she had to live in the hospital. Day after day, lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. She was the only patient in her room that day. She took out a syringe and slipped it into her vein. After watching the nurses do it a thousand times, even a fool could figure it out.

But there wasn’t any medicine in the syringe—only air. Air, the very thing we depend on, can also be fatal under the right conditions. Slowly, she pushed air into her vein—one syringe, then another. She gritted her teeth against the pain and died a slow, agonizing death.

The doctors said her blood vessels were blocked by an air embolism. When the foamy blood reached her heart, it severely clogged up her circulation, preventing oxygen from reaching her organs. She suffocated, dying in agony.

It took just a few minutes, but it was the longest, most painful few minutes you could imagine.

By the time the doctors found her, she was already gone.

The hospital paid compensation, but no amount of money could bring Zhang Dequan’s wife back. He knew exactly why she’d died: poverty; he simply couldn’t afford the medical bills, and he still had their daughter to raise.

His grief mixed with rage, and he vowed to change his life, to climb a rung higher on the social ladder.

But just when things started turning around, on the night Zhang Xue turned twelve, that anger vanished. He couldn’t figure out what kept him going all those years. He remembered his wife—how he wanted to cry, to rage—but in the end, he didn’t.

Looking at his daughter, he finally realized his own life was over.