Jian Jing had disappeared.
According to the police investigation, the culprit had drugged her when she went to the bathroom, stuffed her into an oversized suitcase, and left casually through the back door.
The victim was a popular writer, and the police investigation was also very swift. After receiving the report, they immediately sealed off the scene and checked the identities of the staff one by one.
Something strange happened.
Each staff member had their own work pass to enter the auditorium and get into the hall. The organizers wouldn't have messed up something so basic. But after asking around the circle, surprisingly, no staff member was missing.
It should be known that although outsiders cannot distinguish which employee is responsible for what, the staff are different. Whether it's makeup artists, lighting technicians, photographers, they must be clear in their minds about how many people are in their own teams.
Everyone insisted that no one had disappeared today.
Even the temporary workers were only two people, a boy who had just graduated, and a girl who was substituting for a friend. Their identities and backgrounds were clear.
So the problem must have been with the guests.
The security guard said that all the guests entered with invitation letters and could only enter the hall after that. They could guarantee that. So who had left halfway?
According to the surveillance of the parking lot, a total of three cars had left.
The first was the deputy general manager of the publishing house. His mother had fallen down and he had rushed to the hospital. The second was the celebrity who hurried to the bar to party after the performance. The third was the assistant who had a stomachache and left work early to rest at home.
In addition, there was a taxi passing by.
According to the driver's recollection, the passenger was a man in a suit, wearing a mask, and carrying a large suitcase. He got off near the park.
The police tracked him down via street surveillance. He got off the car and entered the park.
After that, the man disappeared.
To be precise, it was the suitcase that disappeared.
At the exits, none of them showed anyone pushing a large suitcase out.
The police searched the entire park and finally dredged up the suitcase from the pond. It was filled with stones. Fortunately, after inspection, no bloodstains were found inside the suitcase.
Jian Jing should still be alive.
What happened next?
Nothing else happened.
The kidnapper had neither contacted the family to ask for ransom, nor left other clues, making it very difficult for the police to investigate.
Ji Feng was determined that this was the culprit of the serial killings years ago, and proposed reopening the case to carefully investigate Xue Jun's male relatives and suspicious figures around her.
But he failed.
The reason was also very realistic. There was no evidence at present indicating that the person who kidnapped Jian Jing was the culprit at that time.
The culprit left a rose behind, which did not match his previous modus operandi years ago. Even in Liu Bao Feng's case, although he left a copy of "The Devil Doctor", it had nothing to do with roses.
Others believed that this looked more like a kidnapping case or deliberate retaliation.
"She has helped us solve several cases. Perhaps this aroused resentment in some people," the onlookers’ reasons were equally sufficient, “The serial killer from those years has long ceased his crimes. This is also not his M.O.”
The most obvious sign in the four cases from 2009 to 2014 was the holidays.
But the day of the awards ceremony was just an ordinary Saturday.
With just this point, Ji Feng's argument didn't stand, even if he was forced to say directly: "Teacher Jian said that he would come looking for her."
"Is there any evidence?" the leader asked.
He: "......The intuition of the person involved is very accurate."
The leader: "So there is none."
At this, they rejected his proposal and decided: "We still have to start from the cases Jian Jing participated in. Apart from the culprit's relatives, I think some of the victims' families are also suspicious."
His colleagues reacted swiftly: "The Fang family? They may indeed harbor resentment and deliberately retaliate."
"Let's allocate the work," the leader spoke and arranged for everyone to investigate separately, while warning Ji Feng at the same time, "If you continue to mix personal feelings into this, according to the rules, I can only have you recused."
Ji Feng: "Teacher Jian and I are neither relatives nor friends. Why should I recuse myself?"
"Aren't you two friends?" The leader bit out the last two words meaningfully.
Ji Feng: "What friends? We're acquaintances, just acquaintances, work contacts.”
At this, the leader stopped.
*
"What friends? We're acquaintances, just acquaintances, work contacts."
In the dim room, Jian Jing heard the familiar voice. She was slumped on the wire bed, her head aching badly. After a daze for half a day, she finally distinguished who was speaking.
"Cough." She coughed loudly a few times, reaching for the mineral water by her pillow, only to find the bottle was already empty.
Sitting behind the door in the shadows, the man turned off the recording on his phone: "How do you feel?"
She said: "Bored."
"Bored?" He picked up a hair clip on the side. Under the pearl dark buckle was an embedded pinhole camera, only all the wiring had been completely severed and was useless. "I don't think so."
The main light source in the room was directed at the wall. Next to the wall was an aluminum alloy glass cage, enclosed on three sides, leaving the wall side with an open door. Inside was a 3 square meter small compartment equipped with a toilet and washing facilities.
Inside the cage was an 80 cm small bed. The sheets were snow white, the bed frame draped with a layer of gauze, loosely trailing down, looking both like a prison and a princess's toy house.
This was where Jian Jing had been imprisoned for two days.
She was still wearing the custom rose formal dress, but barefoot. The high heels had been thrown into the corner, the soles already peeled off.
"Pinhole cameras, wiretaps, tracking chips." He slowly listed the things she had brought, laughing, "You really went through a lot of trouble for me."
Jian Jing said: "You're no slouch yourself."
"I don't think that's a compliment." His tone was smiling, "What's wrong, angry?"
His tone was as if coaxing a unreasonable little girl.
Jian Jing's throat itched badly: "Water."
He came over, opened the sliding panel at the bottom, and rolled in a bottle of mineral water.
She twisted the cap several times but couldn't get it open, so she had to use her teeth to bite it open. She hurriedly sipped small mouthfuls to moisten her throat.
"Trying to find me with these things, you're too naive," he said. "It's been so many years, why can't you learn?"
And again, like a helpless homeroom teacher to a student.
Jian Jing retorted: "Have I failed?"
He smiled, propped up his legs, looked down at her condescendingly, but his tone was still affable: "If I tell you 'yes', will you give up?"
She didn't speak.
"Of course not." He said, "You still harbor hope, believing that even without these, the police can still trace it back to me."
She was silent for a while, averting her gaze, and said lightly: "He was right, we're just acquaintances after all."
He chuckled softly, as if mockingly: "Let's talk about your second mistake. A honey trap is indeed very effective. I didn't expect you would become what you are today——although I had hoped for it, but I was also clearly aware that perfect souls are few and far between. Most people are just stubborn stones. No matter how you carve them, they can never become beautiful jade——you gave me a big surprise. Just this one point, you gambled right."
"I really can't let you go." He admired the girl in the glass house, praising her beauty and courage.
It had to be said, her resistance made things more interesting. After all, wasn't this the reason he chose this child back then?
"But if you think this is enough to deal with me, you overestimate yourself," he smiled and said word for word like a knife, "You always make the same mistakes."
The same mistakes?
Jian Jing suddenly sat up straight, squinting at him, seeming to want to make out something.
But it was useless. Her contact lenses had been removed by him. On her severely nearsighted retina, only a blurred shadow was projected.
"You don't remember, do you? It doesn't matter," he said as he slowly pressed the button in his hand, "I can slowly help you recall."
In the glass room, anesthetic gas was spraying out from the hidden plastic pipes, filling up the entire room.
Her consciousness was sinking down gradually, yet not to the deepest level, suspiciously floating in the middle, surrounded by darkness. Looking ahead, only a faint circle of white light could be seen.
He turned off the other lights and paced to the front of the glass room.
"Come on," he said, "let me help you find those things you've forgotten."
--
Jian Jing's consciousness awoke in 2014.
She saw a bustling restaurant, with high-end decor. Outside were rows of luxury cars, with Porsches and Maseratis everywhere, and BMWs and Benzes as common as flies, clearly a very high-end private restaurant.
However, parked incongruously in front of this restaurant was a taxi.
A family of three got out of the taxi.
The middle-aged couple were neatly dressed but not expensively, just very ordinary commoners, with normal jobs and businesses.
They had not yet entered, but were daunted by the coming and going luxury cars, clearly hesitant.
To be honest, to eat a meal at a restaurant like this would cost a few thousand yuan for three people, and even during holidays when treating guests, a table of dishes would be around the same price. It wasn't that average families couldn't afford to pay this amount, just that they wouldn't bear to spend so much on an ordinary meal when it wasn't a holiday or celebration.
But their young daughter didn't think like this.
She very clearly told the server, "Box 202, under Jian."
The server smiled and led the way, "Of course, please come this way."
But as he turned his head, dissatisfaction flashed through his eyes: the young girl loved vanity, insisting on eating at a high-end restaurant without considering her parents' financial situation. Any righteous person would feel disgusted.
Unexpectedly, after the parents sat down and looked at the menu, they took the initiative to "complain" to the server, "The dishes here are too expensive. Ah, our daughter insisted on bringing us here to eat, said something about Michelin, that we must try it."
The server smiled politely, "Your daughter cares about you."
"She's earned a bit of money and wants to spend it all," the father continued to "complain". "She refuses to save it. We can't control her, so we can only take advantage of our daughter's generosity early."
Now the server understood. It wasn't that the daughter loved vanity and forced her parents to spend money, but the opposite - she had earned money herself and wanted to treat her parents to a nice meal.
He clucked to himself in admiration, and mentioned it to his coworkers when ordering dishes.
The new manager asked, "This must be a very happy family, right?"
"Yes," the server said. "As expected, having a daughter is great - so filial."
The manager smiled.
