Ten minutes later, there was bad news from Srina: The location of the phone could not be tracked, possibly because the phone was completely damaged or the battery was pulled out.
The bad news made Rob's face solemn, but Leo unexpectedly did not show a frustrated or painful look, which made him feel that his partner was like a bowstring stretched to the extreme and a piece of it was heated. Rocks that reach the limit temperature will remain at this critical MAX state until the last trace of pulling force is applied or a bucket of ice water is poured down. This makes him very worried. When the last moment comes, he will not It fell apart suddenly due to excessive load.
There was no one in the rented apartment, Leo and Rob went straight down the elevator on the 17th floor and went straight to Portland State University against the clock.
The teacher who was teaching in the language training class today happened to be Wayne. When Leo asked with his head and face, he made him a little nervous: "Bi Qing? Yes, yes, he came to class today. Although he was a little late, he asked me yesterday. After a vacation, I thought he wouldn’t be here today... Now? I don’t know... Everyone, does anyone know where your classmate Li Biqing went?" He turned around and asked the chatter in class. A dozen students.
After a while, a Chinese boy raised his hand lazily: "I saw him answer the phone before and then went out with a bag."
"When?" Leo asked.
"Probably... more than an hour ago, I don't remember."
"Did you hear what he said on the phone?"
"Hey, how do I know? Do I look like the kind of person who inquires about other people's privacy all day?" the boy yelled dissatisfiedly.
"Aren't you, gossip man?" His deskmate took the opportunity to attack.
There was a mess of laughter in the classroom again.
Leo ran away without even leaving a polite remark to Wayne. The big white man shook his finger awkwardly behind him: "... No thanks."
"What should I do now?" Rob asked after Leo.
Leo forced his painful brain to calm down and sort out the chaotic thoughts, "Assuming that it is Lei Zhe who called Bi Qing, what will he say? Especially after the identity of his suspected murderer has been exposed. Bi Qing is not a person who does nothing light or heavy. He must have a very powerful excuse to lead him out instead of calling the police immediately."
"Uh,'I'm actually innocent, the murderer is someone else' or something?" Rob thought hard and said, "No, the evidence of the case is solid, and Bi Qing himself knows it very well. He will not believe this argument. . So what would it be... Could it be that a sincere confession before pretending to commit suicide touched him and made him go to see him for the last time regardless of danger?"
"Shit, what are you guessing!" Leo uttered a rare swearword.
"It's very possible, isn't it? Don't tell me you can't tell, that Latin American kid is interesting to Bi Qing."
"Nonsense, that's why he regarded him as a target!"
"No, no, I'm not just referring to that kind of perverted desire, but some kind of hidden... sentiment? Perhaps in his opinion, Bi Qing is the most distinctive one among his chosen goals... " Rob expressed his opinion in a way that did not irritate Leo as much as possible.
But he still inevitably irritated the black-haired partner, who stared at him viciously like a vicious prisoner, almost gritted his teeth: "How different? Make the corpse more elaborate! Damn it, If you continue to speak so unscrupulously, I will beat you up, I swear!"
"It's my fault!" Rob immediately raised his hand in a surrender. "Let's get back to the topic, where will he lead Bi Qing?"
Leo gritted his teeth and fell silent, and their actions fell into a difficult stalemate.
Hi Leo, guess where did I go? A Chinese boy in house clothes was barefoot, sitting cross-legged on the sofa, holding a thick notebook, and biting the end of his right pencil playfully in his mouth. Oh, don’t show such an embarrassed look, okay, reduce the difficulty, I will give you a hint...
Leo closed his eyes and let the illusory figure laugh in his head, as real as he saw him. What kind of hint would you give me, where, Bi Qing
He suddenly opened his eyes, turned back and ran towards the classroom, rushed to Li Biqing's seat, and checked his desks and chairs up and down. The class that Wayne had managed to organize became a mess again.
found it! His fingers stopped on a handwriting in the drawer, where a line of English was written in a black pen: "Big black walnut tree."
Leo rushed out of the classroom again like a gust of wind. Wayne, who was completely ignored, looked at his back silently, with a wry expression: "... Don't thank you again."
Black walnut trees were originally abundant on the west coast, but due to extensive logging over the past few decades, the number has dropped sharply to the point where protection is needed. There are some in state universities, the largest of which is on the east side of the campus, near the forest park.
Two men in dark suits rushed through the campus, quite eye-catching along the way, constantly attracting "Hey, I have seen these two guys, right next to the security zone at the murder scene, they are the FBI!" "Is there something bad going to happen to our school?" whispers like this.
Ten minutes later, Leo and Rob traversed the entire campus panting and found the tall black walnut tree. Not surprisingly, there was no one under the tree. This is a transit point, they must have spoken here, Leo knew very well in his heart, he just hoped that Bi Qing could continue to leave some clues out of caution. He wandered around the tree, searching carefully.
"Hey, I found it!" Rob's sole stepped on a hard object in the grass and picked it up to see that it was a brand new mobile phone that had fallen apart. The back cover and battery fell near the fuselage. He squatted on the ground, looked up at the dense branches and leaves, and speculated: "He should have stuck his mobile phone between the branches and then dropped... It may be that Lei Zhe started to use tough methods to control his external communications. On his side Attract the other person’s attention while hiding the phone secretly on it."
"It's reasonable." Leo said, assembling the phone and trying to turn it on. Fortunately, the BlackBerry is quite resistant to falls. He scanned the phone quickly and found a recording that was marked 1 hour and 25 minutes ago. This recording is only a short 90 seconds, Leo presses the play button without thinking.
"...Listen, I don't want to hurt you, I just want to have a good talk with you."
"You can speak."
"Here? No, I don't want to be disturbed by anyone. Let's go to a quiet and beautiful place."
"Lei Zhe, I don't want to go anywhere with you, and after receiving your call, I wanted to call the police. If you hadn't threatened to call the police, you would throw the unconscious girl off the top floor of the teaching building!"
"That's just a joke, don't worry, I won't do this, of course, I will never hurt you, I swear. I just have a mess in my mind, and countless thoughts are stirred like steel knives, making me miserable... Apart from looking for you, I can't think of anyone else to ask for help without letting myself go crazy!"
"You can call the police."
"No! No... Yes, yes, I will surrender, after we finish talking-Bi Qing, please, give me a chance to talk, don't close the last door, please!"
There was a moment of silence.
"where to?"
"Just go there. You didn't say you wanted to see someone with you, but you never made it. I will accompany you today. Let's go."
The recording stopped abruptly.
Rob took a sigh of relief and asked anxiously, "Where is it? Damn, the most crucial sentence didn't come out!"
"I already know. He has asked me to accompany him several times, but unfortunately he always meets when I am busy..." Leo put his mobile phone in his pocket and rushed to the parking lot non-stop, "It's the International Rose Inspection. garden!"
Because it is not a weekend, there are few tourists at the International Rose Inspection Garden in the southwestern district of Portland. The flower fields are full of mountains and are bathed in the clear light of the blue sky, and the rich aroma of countless flowers evaporates, making people a little drunk.
Rose, rose, rose, no matter what family or genus it is, at this moment Leo is just a stumbling vegetation and an eye-catching shelter. He and Rob are trekking among hills, valleys, and woods, and reinforcements are coming. On the way.
When they passed by a hidden mountain col, they smelled a faint smell in the air, engulfed by the ubiquitous fragrance of flowers, spreading in all directions... "Smell of blood!" Rob's portrait was only pinched by the neck. Owl cried sharply. Leo trembled all over, and used his arm to break through the thorny rose flower wall and forcibly squeeze in, unaware of the blood marks drawn on his face and neck.
In the depths of a large cluster of dense multi-flowered roses, there is a naked, flesh-and-blooded human body lying face down. The whole body is pierced by a dozen freshly broken rose stems, and a pool of blood spreads out from under him like ripples. , The fertile soil under the flowering branches greedily sucked blood, staining the ground into a dark and ominous dark brown.
Leo staggered and fell into the bushes ahead. Luckily Rob grabbed his arm, but he pushed it away in the next second. At this moment, he can't see the road at all, he has forgotten his partner, and he has no time to worry about the crime scene protection regulations-let everything go to hell! He wants to know right away, is it Bi Qing
He desperately rushed to the side of the corpse, and suddenly turned him over—
Not his boy!
Thank goodness, that's not his boy...
"It's Lei Zhe! He actually died?!" Rob rushed in two or three steps and said, "This kind of death... An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is a'killing' method! The corpse still has residual warmth. After a few hours, the'finish' may not have gone far, we must promptly notify the special service team to search for it!"
"Bi Qing should still be around here... find him soon!" Leo suddenly raised his red eyes to look at Rob. For a moment, the latter thought it was a pair of trapped beasts who were still desperately resisting. Eye!
The brown-haired and green-eyed federal agent seemed to have suddenly realized: At this moment, in his partner's heart, the desire to hunt for "kill" is far less than that of the lost boy. If you can't find Bi Qing, or worse, find his corpse, Leona's nerve that has been stretched to the critical point will be "crashed" and completely cut off! At that time, Rob was not sure what the situation would turn into. Now he can only search with Leo in a radial direction around Reggie's death place.
A few minutes later, behind a bush not far away, they finally saw a figure falling under the tree.
"Bi Qing! Bi Qing!" Leo rushed over, kneeling beside him, trembling fingers on his carotid artery: warm and beating! His boy was still alive, but fell into a coma. Leo raised his upper body cautiously, hugged him in his arms, and screamed at the police officers who were running from far and near: "Call an ambulance! Come on, an ambulance!"
At the Affiliated Hospital of Oregon Health Sciences University, a surgeon wearing glasses opened the door of the ward and walked out. Leo and Rob waiting in the corridor immediately greeted him: "Doctor, how is he?"
The middle-aged white doctor was obviously very concerned about the patient sent by the FBI. He turned to the report and replied: "His consciousness has been restored, but he has headaches, nausea, dizziness, photophobia and fatigue. It is suspected to be a concussion, this place—" He pointed to his occipital bone and motioned, "Having been hit by a blunt force."
"Is it serious? How should I treat it?"
"Fortunately, after the MRI scan, no other craniocerebral injuries, such as intracranial hematomas, were found. There should be no major problems. I gave him an injection of analgesics and stayed in the hospital for observation for two or three days. You can be discharged from the hospital. In the near future, pay attention to proper bed rest and avoid mental and physical labor."
"Can you go in and see him?" Leo asked.
The doctor nodded, and added another sentence when he entered the door: "By the way, he has clinical symptoms of recent forgetting. He can't recall the situation at the time of the injury and the course of the injury. If you want to question anything, it's best to wait for a while-I don't. I hope that my patient's condition will get worse after going around on your FBI's hands. Thank you."
Leo thanked him and walked into the ward. The Chinese boy was lying groggy on the hospital bed, showing a group of warm and soft chestnut hair from above the snow-white sheet. The analgesics worked, he temporarily shielded the headache and dizziness, and fell asleep exhausted. Leo moved a chair and sat down by the bed, then leaned in and tucked the quilt.
Then he looked at him quietly and intently, like a statue of a guardian who didn't move. After a long time, he got up and left the ward.
"Hey, my dear boy, do you feel better?" The glamorous female agent with long light blonde curly hair walked into the ward holding a large bouquet of lilies, and leaned over and printed a fragrant kiss on the patient's right cheek.
"It's okay, the doctor said that he can be discharged from the hospital tomorrow." Li Biqing smiled awkwardly, as if subconsciously wanting to touch the lucky right cheek, and felt embarrassed.
"It's so cute! If I change my taste for picking men, it's all your fault." Tia looked at the shameful appearance of the Chinese boy with interest, and seemed to have found some kind of fun in the molestation, "Leo Na Has the bastard visited you in the past few days?"
"I have been here once or twice." Li Biqing said, and immediately explained to the other party: "I know he is very busy at work."
"Don't forgive him so easily, dear, here's a piece of advice: you have to use a heavy hammer to deal with a drum that doesn't open up." Tina blinked at him, "I believe Sister's judgment, he is of that type. The man—something has been dull to the point where people and gods are angry."
"Uh..." Li Biqing thought for a long time inexplicably, and suddenly realized: "You, and Rob—he also said something strange, did you misunderstand something? In fact, Leo and I are just—"
"—I know, I know," Tia cut her mouth with a smile, "It's too early to say this before the situation is clear." Before the other party explained further, she straightened her palms neatly: "Don't worry, I will talk about this topic. Stop here."
She untied the women's Kun bag slung on her shoulders, fiddled with it, and took out a book and handed it to the patient on the bed: "This was found in Lei Zhe? Tang En's house. Part of his relic was taken into the Criminal Evidence Division. , Part of it was sent to relatives. The title page of this book reads the last words of "Gift Betring Lee". According to the normal procedure, it should be forwarded to you, but it was detained by Leo. If it weren't for me, I accidentally worked with him. I found on the table that it might have been in the shredder and garbage truck—have I told you that what the bastard is best at is stubbornness and ignorance of other people’s feelings?"
Li Biqing took the book, and behind the weird and cold "heart demon" on the cover, the dark golden metal texture was cut by a sharp blade, revealing half of a cold and stern face.
"Heartsick" is a suspense thriller that Leo once read on the sofa in his apartment. He wanted to watch its Chinese version, but he couldn't buy it here. He remembered that he had mentioned it to Lei Zhe once. At that time, the Hispanic boy smiled disapprovingly and said casually: "I have a friend in Taiwan, and I asked him if he could send a copy back."
Unexpectedly, Lei Zhe even remembered this trifle.
What was even more unexpected was that it was not until after his death that this long-overdue book was sent to him with a certain meaning of being overdue.
Li Biqing rubbed the smooth cover with his palms with a complex expression. After a while, his voice was low and heartfelt to the female agent: "Thank you, Tia."
As if feeling the indescribable emotion of the other party, Tia said goodbye very thoughtfully and printed a kiss on his left cheek before leaving.
Li Biqing sat on the hospital bed, quietly flipping through the book, gently sliding his fingers between the pages, as if touching the tremor on the tip of his heart... He was stunned until he turned to the last page. What was sandwiched in it like a bookmark was drawn out—it was a twig of withered crimson rose, and on the crisp petals that had been drained of water, there was still a delicate and rich aftertaste of life.
In the blank space at the bottom of the page, there is a pencil hand-drawn sketch. The lines are simple but lifelike: two closed doors, tightly wrapped around countless thorny vines, as if they were sealed by a dense net and cannot be opened. In the middle of the gate, a naked man was tied up on the thorny canes, and the bloodstains bloomed on his body with mournful red roses.
There was a slight and familiar sound of footsteps in his ears. Li Biqing stroked the text below the sketch, and asked without raising his head: "Do you recognize these two lines? What are they writing?"
"That's Latin." The black-haired Federal agent stood by the hospital bed and replied in a low voice: "'There is a demon in my heart. Please turn it into a thorny rose vine and restrain it forever.'"
Li Biqing looked up at him, tears bursting into his eyes, "This is the book he gave me! It was his plea to me! God, if I could be earlier... sooner..." He choked. It seems that the speech has been silent.
Leo stared at him condescendingly, with gentle and cold eyes: "I want to tell you a real case. The FBI once hunted down a serial murderer. His favorite is to make the victim's ribs into wind chimes and hang them on the eaves. Down, a full twenty-seven string of wind chimes. When we were about to catch him along the clues, he suddenly disappeared. Soon after, a letter was sent to us saying that they had met the goddess during the hunt and they were married. For the girl he loved so much, he was willing to wash his hands in the golden basin and put down the butcher knife. Guess what?"
"He disappeared forever on your wanted warrant?" Li Biqing asked with a thick nasal voice.
"No, a year and a half later, he came back out of the rivers and lakes, and as soon as he found a new target, he was caught by us. When I searched his hut on the edge of the desert, I saw the eaves and corridors that were shocking. Wind chimes—the number of wind chimes increased to twenty-eight strings at that time, you know, whose rib is the last string?”
Li Biqing showed an unbelievable look: "... God, is his wife? The woman he loves so much?"
Leo did not deny, and then said in a deep voice: "The most terrifying thing about serial murderers is not how many people they kill, but their purpose is to kill themselves. They are psychopaths and ignore the suffering of others. Feel, do not blame yourself for their crimes, have no response to the punishment they face, and have no guilt in their psychological makeup, only endless desires.
Occasionally, in very special circumstances, they seem to feel that they have been saved and purified, and they have thoughts of doing good, but that is only an illusion-morality and law. When the two chains that control the inner animal nature are cut by their hands, The roaring beast, no matter how many thorny thorns, can't be restrained, even in the name of so-called'love'! "
"Don't feel guilty, Bi Qing, this is not something you can do. Only God can save his soul." Leo put his hand on the shoulder of the Chinese boy, "Remember, they are serial murderers. From the time the hands were stained with the blood of the first victim, there was no retreat."
"Yes..." Li Biqing lowered his eyelids and murmured: "From the time his hands were covered with the blood of the first victim, there was no retreat." He raised his head to look at Leo, and the corners of his lips floated extremely. A faint smile: "I don't need this book anymore. Do whatever you want."
"I will burn it as a funerary for the devil, okay?" Leo asked.
Li Biqing nodded and crushed the withered rose in his palm.
(End of Qiangwei's punishment)
Preview of the next Part:
In the new city, a series of homicides without clues, Leo was in a desperate situation and almost died, and he officially appeared as a killer.
Stay tuned~
Three rolls of the cage look like dark blue