Shi Ting said calmly, “Shall we go?”

Seeing that his expression had not changed, Yan Qing thought perhaps he had only just arrived and genuinely hadn’t heard anything. Her mood eased, and she said, “Sure.”

Fan Wenzhi’s parents did not live in City S. Fan Wenzhi had long hoped to bring them to the big city, but the old couple were accustomed to the slower pace of a smaller town and flatly refused to come.

Lin Yuqin, on the other hand, was a native of City S. Her parents lived in an ordinary residential compound on Changsheng Street.

The compound had been something of a landmark twenty years ago, but as high-rises had sprouted up all around it, it had gradually faded into the background. Lately, rumors of a relocation plan had been spreading through the neighborhood.

Shi Ting knocked on the Lin family’s door. It was Fan Mingming who opened it.

Fan Mingming clearly remembered Shi Ting. The moment she saw him, she quickly lowered her head, a faint blush rising on her cheeks.

Yan Qing noticed the entire exchange and quietly found it amusing.

With his looks, Shi Ting could easily be a celebrity. It was no surprise — not just girls in the first flush of youthful feeling, but even adults with a bit more sense couldn’t withstand such a face.

“Is that Officer Shi?” An aged voice came from inside.

Lin Yuqin’s mother was in her sixties. She already suffered from a heart condition and high blood pressure, and the sudden shock of Lin Yuqin’s death had been too much for her — she had collapsed and been admitted to the hospital. The one who had spoken was Lin Yuqin’s father.

“Sir.” After changing into house slippers, Shi Ting stepped forward and shook hands with Lin’s father, who had come to greet him.

Lin’s father said, “I was just about to head out when I remembered our appointment — got confused for a moment. Memory isn’t what it used to be. My wife actually knows more about Yuqin’s affairs than I do, but she’s still in the hospital and isn’t in a state to receive visitors.”

Yan Qing couldn’t help but glance at Shi Ting sideways.

Shi Ting had said Lin Yuqin’s mother was ill and that it would be prudent to bring a doctor along — but in fact, Lin’s mother wasn’t even home. She was in the hospital.

Had Shi Ting known this in advance, or had he simply not known?

“Please, sit down. Mingming, bring our guests some water.”

At that moment, Fan Mingming was hovering shyly behind the bedroom door, only half her face peeking out. At the sound of her grandfather’s voice, she quickly went to fetch the water.

“Don’t mind her. Mingming is an introverted child — she’s always been quiet and doesn’t enjoy socializing.” Noticing Yan Qing watching Fan Mingming, Lin’s father hastened to explain. “When she was born, her mother was up for a promotion and her father was studying for a professional certification. Both of them were run off their feet, so she was raised entirely by her grandmother and me, until she started high school and her parents finally took her back.”

“How has she been emotionally these past few days?” Shi Ting asked. “I heard you declined the team’s offer to arrange a psychological counselor.”

“Mingming was the one who didn’t want it.” Lin’s father sighed. “Mingming was never close to her parents. When she was small, she might have seen them two or three times a year. As she grew up, she was at boarding school, and her parents were too busy to visit much. Even now that they live together, the girl’s academic load is heavy — it’s school and studying, school and studying, every single day. And I say this without shame — in all her years growing up, her parents never once took her to an amusement park.”

Yan Qing lowered her eyes, lost in thought.

Shi Ting glanced at her and naturally steered the conversation in a different direction. “Did Lin Yuqin have anyone she harbored a particularly deep grudge against?”

Lin’s father shook his head. “Among family and friends, Yuqin’s reputation was quite good. She was generous and willing to help — there’s no way she would have made enemies there. As for work, I wouldn’t know. She was in upper management; rubbing people the wrong way is unavoidable.”

“Would it be all right if I had a look around?”

“Of course.” Lin’s father readily agreed.

Shi Ting got up to examine the apartment, while Yan Qing stayed behind to continue talking with Lin’s father.

“Your water.” A soft voice sounded, and a cup of water appeared in front of Yan Qing.

“Thank you.” Yan Qing smiled and offered her thanks. As Fan Mingming withdrew her hand, Yan Qing noticed a bandage on her right index finger.

“Did you hurt yourself?” Yan Qing asked.

Fan Mingming glanced at her own hand and nodded. “I wasn’t careful when I was helping Grandpa cut vegetables yesterday.”

“This child.” Lin’s father sighed fondly. “Quiet as she is, she’s always been considerate. Always helping her grandmother and me with this and that.”

“Don’t keep a bandage on too long — it can actually hinder healing. Take it off roughly every six hours to let the wound breathe and stay clean. If the cut is deep, you should have it treated at a hospital.”

Fan Mingming nodded and said softly, “Thank you.”

Before long, Shi Ting reappeared from inside.

“Sir, thank you for your cooperation.” Shi Ting handed over a card. “This is our unit’s phone number. If you think of any useful leads, please contact us right away.”

“I will.” Lin’s father reached out and took the card. As he stared at the row of numbers, his eyes filled with tears. “Officer, please — find the killer as soon as possible. My daughter died a wrongful death.”

“Rest assured.” Shi Ting offered comfort. “We will do everything we can.”

After Lin’s father and Fan Mingming had seen them to the door, Shi Ting suddenly took out his phone and said to Fan Mingming, “Could I add you as a contact?”

Fan Mingming was startled. After a moment, she shook her head. “I… I don’t have a phone.”

“That’s right.” Lin’s father also said, “Mingming doesn’t have a phone. Her grandmother and I have been wanting to buy her one, but her mother wouldn’t allow it. She said a third-year student should keep her focus on school and that phones would only be a distraction.”

“I see.” Shi Ting put his phone away. “Thank you both for your cooperation. Sorry to have imposed.”

Once they had left the residential compound, Yan Qing suddenly asked, “Why did you ask Fan Mingming for her contact details? She’s a minor — we don’t have the right to make direct contact with her without going through her guardian, do we?”

Seeing Yan Qing blink at him expectantly, Shi Ting said, “Take a guess.”

Yan Qing thought for a moment. “You were testing her?”

Shi Ting’s expression confirmed she was right. He gestured toward a group of students approaching in the distance. “See them? They’re wearing the uniforms of the No. 1 High School — from their looks, probably first-year students. Every one of them has a phone.”

“Right — it’s rare for students these days to not have one.”

Even though schools prohibited phones in classrooms, students always found ways to conceal them from teachers. Those who were machines for sleeping through class transformed into the most energetic creatures the moment school let out.

Phones were how students communicated with one another — an indispensable part of their lives.

“Parents also give their children phones so they can reach them at any time.” Shi Ting said, “Among the items I collected at the Lin household, I found no phone belonging to Fan Mingming. She said Lin Yuqin worried a phone would interfere with her studies and refused to buy her one. But I just noticed a notebook on Fan Mingming’s desk, full of handwritten notes — home remedies, things like that. Recipes for treating high blood pressure, gout, that sort of thing. Fan Mingming has no computer. Yet these are the kinds of notes you could only find by searching online. So where did she look them up?”

“From a phone?”

“More than just the remedies — there were plenty of other entries, all seemingly jotted down on a whim. With no computer, there’s only one explanation: she has a phone. She goes on it daily and browses the internet.”

“Perhaps she used her grandparents’ phones?”

“I checked. Her grandfather uses a basic elder-model phone — it doesn’t have that functionality. Her grandmother has cataracts, which makes using a smartphone quite unlikely.” Shi Ting said, “Just now I deliberately tested her. When I suggested adding her as a contact, she hesitated. If she truly had no phone, she could have refused me immediately and without thought. That moment of hesitation is itself revealing — she was weighing her options in that instant: whether or not to add me as a contact. Even though she caught herself quickly, that brief flicker of an expression couldn’t deceive anyone.”

Yan Qing looked at him with amusement. “Chief Shi, that was a classic use of your good looks as a lure.”

“In that case — does that tactic work on you?” Shi Ting suddenly held out his phone in front of Yan Qing. “That contact information we didn’t manage to exchange last time — would now be a good moment?”

At his words, heat suddenly rose in Yan Qing’s cheeks. But faced with his outstretched phone, she found she had no reason to refuse.

Yan Qing told herself — they were colleagues after all. Exchanging contact information was only a matter of time. There was no need to make it awkward.

After entering her number, Shi Ting also opened his WeChat QR code. “Add me on WeChat too.”

Seeing Yan Qing hesitating, Shi Ting said in a low voice, “Don’t you all have a colleagues group? Once you add me, you can pull me in. That way I can communicate with everyone more easily.”

Yan Qing would later think that this had been Chief Shi Ting’s greatest scheme. She had added his WeChat and pulled him into the colleagues group — but he had never once said a single word there. Not once, ever…

So much for “easier communication.” Ha.

“So now we need to find Fan Mingming’s phone?” Yan Qing was still unaware she had walked into a trap. She blinked her wide eyes, face full of innocent sincerity.

“Come with me to Fan Mingming’s school.”

Yan Qing didn’t stop to think about why he seemed to take her along everywhere. She simply felt it was part of her duty.

Halfway to the school, Shi Ting received a call from Old Fan, whose excitement was palpable even over the line.

“Chief Shi, you’re truly something else. My team spent all night and all morning at the garbage site, and we actually found a cup. We compared it with the cups at Fan Wenzhi’s home — same manufacturer, high-end goods. It’s already been sent for analysis. Hopefully we can extract some useful information from it.”

Yan Qing snuck a glance at Shi Ting. He was turned slightly sideways, speaking in a low voice with Old Fan — low, with a magnetism that bordered on seductive. The line of his profile was close to perfect.

He was this young and had already cracked numerous major cases. He clearly had something exceptional about him. That missing cup — which the trace evidence team had failed to find after repeatedly going over the crime scene — he had managed to reconstruct the entire scenario from scratch.

“We’re getting close to solving this,” Yan Qing said once he hung up. “There should be DNA from the killer on the cup.”

But finding DNA was only the first step. It still had to be cross-referenced with the DNA database. If the killer had a prior record, however, the match result would come back very quickly.

—