When he rushed down the steps of the porch barefoot, the building behind him could no longer be called a house. It was burning with heat, like a huge firework blooming in the dark night.
He ran forward without looking back, his sweaty bangs stuck to his forehead, and he was still wearing old short-sleeved shorts used as pajamas, embarrassed like a puppy just struggling to climb up from a pond. He didn't know the direction or the destination, he just ran wildly until he hit a man who was about to get in the car, was bounced out, and fell to the concrete floor.
"Boy, don't you have eyes? Run so fast to find death!" the man cursed rudely.
"Forget it, it's just a child." said another man next to him. Compared with his burly companion, this linen-haired, sturdy-looking man has a much calmer tone. He even stepped forward to lift him up, and then saw his exposed thin arms, the old and new staggered bruises and bruises. Scars. "Injured? Do you need to be taken to the hospital?" The man asked casually out of humanitarianism.
He retracted his arm and tried to hide it behind his back, his dark eyes staring at each other with vigilance, "No." As if worried about being chased, he looked back a little bit arrogantly, then turned his head and said, "Can you give me something? a pair of shoes?"
The man moved his gaze to his dirty barefoot, some fresh scratches on it were bleeding: "I don't have any extra shoes, but I can give you some money and buy it myself."
He hesitated, took the banknote and found no pockets on his body, so he had to rub it in his palm. "Thank you." He whispered, as if ashamed of being favored but had to bow to reality, "I will pay you back."
The man smiled very slightly: "Okay, if we can still see it."
He nodded and ran away. The sturdy man who was hit before murmured unhappily: "Weird kid. Is it touching porcelain?"
"Don't worry about it, phalanx." The light-haired man said, "You didn't see the scars from sticks and belt lashes on his body, and some scars from cigarette butts. It looks like he is only fourteen or five years old, poor little thing."
The big black man called the "Phalanx" shrugged: "How do you say,'Poor people must be hateful.' When I was twelve years old, I stabbed a screwdriver into my perverted father's belly, cowardly. Who deserves to be trampled."
They got into the car and drove only a few hundred meters, and they saw the burning house on the side of the road. It was almost burnt to ruins. A pair of middle-aged men and women who seemed to be the owners of the house were standing in front of the courtyard and shouting. Yelling, cursing excitedly.
"... I told you not to adopt him! He's just an unfamiliar white-eyed wolf!" The host snarled at his disheveled wife.
The woman pushed her husband unwillingly: "It's an ass to say this now! Why don't you lock him up?"
In the off-road vehicle that had decelerated, the flaxen-haired man gave his companion a playful look: "It seems that the little guy I just funded is courageous, isn't it."
The whistle of the fire truck came from far away, and the phalanx looked at the arguing couple in the fire, and snorted, "Well, I admit that my impression of him has changed, but he is still a thin arm and thin legs. Poor dying worm, I was as old as his two when I was fifteen."
"You still didn't realize that for a man, muscles are very important, but not the most important." His companion said, "I like the child's eyes, how should I put it... like a wild wolf pup."
"Come on, Captain, you said the same when you brought in Kuai Ke last year." The phalanx barked his teeth disapprovingly, "We are not an animal rescue center."
Leo walked out of a two-story apartment on the side of the road. According to the address given by the phalanx, he rushed back to Los Angeles overnight and found the house.
There lived a family of five and two dogs. The male owner was an accountant, and the hostess was a housewife. He was innocent and had no previous convictions. He moved in seven years ago. They only know that the house was just built when they moved in, and they don't know what happened before.
Leo visited several nearby households one after another, and finally learned from an old woman population that the house was destroyed by a fire about eleven or two years ago. The original couple sold the land and moved away. The merchant rebuilt the house and sold it to new customers.
"I still remember their surname... Laogan, yes. Mr. Laogan is a policeman. He is stricter, but he is not difficult to get along with. The couple had no children, so they adopted a girl from the orphanage, and the little girl died of illness. , They were sad for a while, and adopted a boy." The old woman recollected meddlingly, "That was a pretty Asian boy who was afraid of life and didn't like talking. Mr. Laugan said he was a little autistic."
Leo took out the composite photo from his pocket and showed her the seven or eight-year-old Asian boy: "Please identify carefully, is this the child?"
The old woman squinted her eyes for a long time: "It's a bit like it, but it's a bit older. She looks like she is 13 or 4, and her complexion is not so good."
Thirteen or fourteen years old... Leo pondered for a moment, and then asked, "What happened to the fire?"
"Who knows, Mr. Laugan said it was a circuit problem. But I clearly remember the two couples cursing in the yard that night, saying that the adopted boy burned their house. Since then, I have never seen it again. My child, Mr. Laugan said that he ran away from home. They looked for a while, but then nothing happened."
"Excuse me, do you know which orphanage they adopted the child from?"
The old woman shook her head and didn't know.
Leo had to thank her, and after getting in the car, he used the satellite map to call up all the nearby orphanages, there were three in total, and he decided to check the nearest one.
The phalanx said that it was here that they met the fifteen-year-old boy. If the Asian boy adopted by the Logan family was a young boy, then why did he set fire to the house of his adoptive parents and how he was taken in the welfare home before. inner? Leo thought silently as he drove.
Strict police adoptive father, hidden cause of the fire, adopted son who disappeared inexplicably after the fire... In the seemingly trivial and complex amount of information, there are hidden key words and sentences, like the most important pieces of puzzles, filter them and find It is one of the duties of an agent of the Bureau of Investigation to find out the connection and finally piece together the truth of the facts.
No, go to his job, just an excuse! His tireless running around has nothing to do with work at all, and is completely selfish—he just isn't content to get closer and want to go further. He is so eager to visit his past and understand his heart. He wants to know how those false and cunning masks cover each other's real face layer by layer, forcibly twisting a soft and simple child into full hands. A bloody, murderous serial killer.
Then? He asked himself more than once, what if he knew it? What do you want? For this reason, he was confused, conflicted, angry, and painful, but now he is no longer suffering. Yes, he could not intervene in the past, but he hopes to participate in the future life-it took him nearly two months to figure this out. The rape incident in the visitation room of the detention center was not the decisive factor, but it was An explosion in which all kinds of emotions have accumulated to a critical point.
To this day, he still loves and hates to kill: the part that is "Leo" is irresistibly attracted and sinks into eros; while the part that is the "agent" has never neglected his duties and is always deep. Be alert.
Maybe the phalanx is right, I'm just a fucking lunatic. Leo laughed mockingly, and a handsome face that was slightly gloomy appeared in the rearview mirror-gloomy, but he didn't hesitate. Once he made up his mind, he would never look back.
The second time he met the man with the flaxen hair, he was in a dark bar, using a half-knocked beer bottle neck to poke a drunkard in the eye. The latter took advantage of his drunkenness and pressed him on the sofa in the dark box.
The two gangsters nearby immediately rushed at him fiercely. He flexibly got out of the opponent's armpit, ran towards the back door of the bar, and rammed into the arms of the phalanx again at the door of the men's bathroom.
This time, the big black man didn't open his mouth to scold him, and with two punches, he stunned the chase on the wet floor.
The phalanx carried his neck and walked back to his box like a kitten.
The captain and Kuai Ke were playing dice on the sofa, and Aurora played a cup of depth bomb and forced the snowy field down. Seeing that the phalanx brought in a handsome young man dressed as a waiter, everyone suddenly showed an unexpected look.
However, the captain recognized him instantly and smiled and said, "Are you here to pay the money?"
With all eyes in sight, he rubbed his toes awkwardly, took out a handful of change bills from his pocket, and placed it on the coffee table. "I only have these, and the rest will be paid back to you after the salary is paid."
Aurora hanging on his shoulders, earrings, nose rings and lip rings gleaming under the fluorescent lights, making him a little dizzy, "Oh, the little guy is pretty, come and drink a few drinks with my brother, and I will pay you the rest of the money. ."
"Sorry, I don't accompany the wine."
"Will you accompany you to sleep?"
He changed his face in a roar of laughter and threw his fist into the opponent's face. The opponent grabbed his wrist casually, as if the catcher easily held a slow-flying baseball. But this was just a shock. His bent knee immediately slammed into the opponent's crotch. Aurora blocked the offensive with his other hand, and said with a smile: "Cunning—" Before the words were finished, his face was splashed with a glass of wine. NS.
It turned out that while he was attacking with his right hand, his left hand had secretly held the wine glass on the coffee table, with one heart and three uses, and the real and the false, which made Aurora lose face because of underestimating the enemy.
The crowd hissed in disdain.
Aurora wiped off the drink on his face with his sleeve, looking at his usual expression, but his eyes were cold. The captain got up and walked over and said: "Take care of yourself, don't irritate others." Aurora turned away angrily, and the captain asked him again: "Little arsonist, what do you plan to do next, whether to surrender to the police station or report the case? You were abused by your adoptive father?"
He pursed his lips, and replied in a mature and indifferent tone far beyond his actual age: "Is it useful? My adoptive father is a policeman. As for surrendering, I didn't feel that I was wrong. Why did I surrender? They put sleeping pills in their drinks, and I have exercised restraint."
The captain smiled and couldn't help rubbing his hair: "Good guy, you are born a fighter. A calm, firm, and unmoved heart is more rare than any strength and skill, because the latter Can practice, but the former is a talent. How about, are you interested in coming to my team? I can give you the strength and skills you lack, as long as five years, no, three years, I can make you an invincible handle Sharp sword."
He tilted his head and thought for a while-this action faintly revealed a little childish shadow, but quickly disappeared in the dark eyes-cautiously asked: "These powers and techniques can help me track down the evil hiding in the dark. Kill anyone I hate?"
Everyone laughed again. "Of course, we are professionals." Kuai Ke interrupted.
"Murder expert." The snowy field added coldly.
"Extraordinary action, with stunts, heaven and earth, omnipotence..." Aurora triumphed from R&B.
"—We are'Arctic Fox'." The captain said.
When visiting the second orphanage, Leo successfully found someone who knew the inside story. He was an administrator in his early fifties with clear thinking and articulation. "This kid, Roy Lin, whose Chinese name is Lin Qingzhu, was sent to our hospital in 1997 when he was nine years old. I was very impressed with him." He took the composite photos and compared them with the old files. Finish, say for sure.
"Nine years old? Has he been adopted?" Leo asked.
"When he first arrived, he was not in a good state of mind. I heard that all his family members were killed before. He has been treated in the psychiatric department of the Children's Hospital for more than a year. After a little stable, he was sent to us. He is a beautiful and smart child. , But because of mental problems, many adoptive families are discouraged. You see, here is a specific record: a family adopted him when he was ten years old, but he was sent back in less than three months because he always went crazy in the middle of the night Scream, smash all the things in the room on the windowsill... In the following years, he moved to several adoptive families, but they didn’t stay long. The last time was in 2002, at the age of fourteen, when he was adopted by the Laugans. This I stayed back the longest, nearly a year. Later, I heard that Logan’s house was on fire. The child ran away from home and was nowhere to be found. We tried to find it but found nothing in the end."
Leo touched the yellowed archive paper, his fingertips twitched nervously. What was recorded on it was just a few simple words. A feeling of depression, gloom, and even pain and despair came from the lines of the words—being given again and again. Looking forward to being hurt and abandoned again and again, how cruel it is for a young child! Those adoptive families who claim to be charitable, can no one give him more patience and love than normal children? There is also that strange fire. If, as the Lawgens said that night, he set the fire, then what exactly did he experience in this family that he was so angry that he wanted to burn the whole world to fire
"Do you conduct regular home visits?"
"Yes, we all follow the rules."
"Including the year he was at Laugan's house?" the black-haired agent asked with a stern face.
The other party hesitated for a while and said: "Mr. Laugan is a city policeman. He shouldn't know the law and break the law. We didn't go so often, and it's rare for the child to stay in the same family for that long..."
Leo pointedly asked: "That is to say, if the Laogens really abused adopted children, you will not find out in time, or even open your eyes and close your eyes, secretly thanking you for throwing away a hot potato? "
The other party was taken aback and replied: "No, no such thing. If there is such a thing, we must pick up the child. No matter what, the child is innocent!"
"I hope so." Leo said coldly, "I will continue to investigate whether the child was abused and how the girl adopted by the Logan family died. I hope you can continue to cooperate by then. "
"Of course, we will do our best to cooperate with the investigation!" The other party hurriedly promised.
The black-haired agent was not just talking about it. He drove to the community where Laugan's family was located again, and asked the insiders door to door. He got a lot of piecemeal clues from the neighbors of the year. Together, he drove to Laugan's husband and wife abuse. The probability of adopting a son or daughter is more than 80%. Later, he rushed to the Los Angeles City Police Department to investigate Steve Lawgan, but the other party had retired three years ago and went abroad with his wife.
It was not possible to obtain a confession from the person involved in the short term, so Leo had to turn his attention to what the manager of the orphanage said about the murder of Luo Yi Lin's family before he was sent in.
The police department’s archives room was exposed to water due to a pipe burst. Some of the old archives, which were only in paper version, were completely destroyed, including criminal case files from 20 years ago. Leo had to visit the policemen who were on duty one by one—some of them were transferred from the city, some of them retired. It took him a lot of setbacks to find a police officer in charge.
The retired policeman had gray hair, inconvenient legs and legs, and was sitting in a wheelchair. But recalling the vicious case that has not been solved so far, he still has a look of sadness and grief. "The murderer had premeditated and was extremely cruel." He gritted his teeth, as if the past twenty years was approaching again, with a nauseating bloody smell. "First, approach the victim's family in a planned way to gain the trust of the other party. In private, he threatened the other party by sending threats and killing pets, but he pretended to support and protect him, until he suddenly broke out that day, he first hit the male owner Lin’s head with a baseball bat, causing him to die. Then he killed and mutilated the hostess Li, and committed corpse rape, and finally raped their son under eight years old. If it weren’t for the theft of a car in a nearby street, the car body alarm went off unexpectedly, making the murderer frightened and hurried away. Go, that child can't be spared either."
"When I saw that scene, I vowed to bring the murderer to justice! However, we failed to catch him... This is the incompetence of our police!" The old man was so excited that the loose muscles of his cheeks were shaking. "From the modus operandi, I suspect that the murderer is not the first time he committed a crime. He is bold, old-fashioned, and lawful. He must have done similar things—he is a serial murderer! I put my suspicion in the report, but there is no Attracting attention from above... At that time, the mayor was re-elected. They didn't want to make things complicated, and didn't want the city to be panicked by the rumors of'out of a serial killer'... This case has been hanging there forever, and there is no bitter owner to ask about the progress. Finally, I was swept into the archives of old years... But I have never forgotten the case, I have never forgotten the survivors. After so many years, the child's eyes were always pierced in my heart like thorns. As long as I think of it, I will I feel guilty and regretted more than once for not insisting on my position..."
The confession of the old policeman did not reach the ears of the black-haired detective.
At this moment, Leo's brain was suddenly taken over by the details of the case. He suddenly discovered that there was a familiar familiarity with these details. He must have seen them somewhere! Where? Where…
He stood up suddenly, rushed out of the house, and ran towards the street at full speed. Bookstore, bookstore! Where is there a bookstore near here? He grabbed the passing pedestrians and asked frantically until someone pointed to the corner at the end of the street. He rushed into the bookstore out of breath, found the hardcover reprint of "The Whispers Before Bed" written by Roy Lee in the bestseller area, hurriedly dropped a banknote and ran out of the bookstore.
Under the corner tree, he eagerly tore open the plastic packaging film and turned to one of the pages: "... She was crying, screaming, soaked in the venom of pain and fear, and pain and fear never existed. end.
Her profile was deformed by the squeeze between her palm and the table, only a pair of horrified and blank eyes were hidden in the cracks of the messy hair, and the focus was lost because of the constant shaking.
Fragments of light and shadow jumped frantically in front of him, and the dark lawn spread out from the window, extending to the monster-like bushes in the distance, and finally melted into the deeper darkness together.
The mother's head was staring at her on the lawn, covered with long black hair like spider webs, with round, straight eyes, like a newly unearthed mushroom.
She stared at her. She stared at all the smirks, evil desires and violence, all the pleadings, crying and pain. Just staring.
Don't look at me like that! Don't look... She begged her, scolded her, called her, but didn't respond.
The mother's scarlet lips were wide and twisted.
She heard her wailing. No matter how many years have passed, she can always hear her wailing, echoing in this courtyard and over this house all day and night..."
Leo finally understood everything.
In this suspenseful story, the victim family has an innocent and cute little daughter; in the real case, the victim family has an equally innocent and cute little son.
This child survived all the cruelty and viciousness that a human could do. No one can do justice, no one is responsible for evil deeds, and no one or anything can comfort the dead soul. This child lives alone, being accepted and abandoned again and again by false feelings, until he is completely desperate, until he earns a path of despair from despair, until he refuses to move forward on this bloody and twisted path. Back.
Eventually he became a serial killer, codenamed "Finish".
He is split like himself, one part is a radical and stubborn avenger who kills people without blinking; the other part lives harmlessly with others in the text.
He hid the nightmare of life in his book, secretly expecting someone to discover it, capture and destroy it in his subconscious mind. But he was disappointed.
His pain can be seen all over the world, but no one pays attention to it, no one takes it seriously. His side in the light is famous, but the soul in the dark is lonelier than anyone.
This is the past-are you satisfied, Leo? He asked himself in a daze, and the book fell from his fingers.
Killing was awakened from the nightmare, and jumped up like a beast that had only been attacked.
Sweat soaked his back, and he was panting undecided... Why did he dream of those past deliberately forgotten? He is familiar with the tricks of psychology, whether it is hypnosis or suggestion, as long as he can keep dark memories in the deepest part of his mind.
But now, it resembles a hideous, ugly, unchanging monster, crawling in his brain, he can hear those vicious tearing and chewing, trying to destroy what he has accumulated so hard to make himself look like a normal Human things.
He pressed his forehead tightly with the palm of his hand, as if this way he could knock the monster back into the seal.
After a long time, he let out a long breath.
Bend down and took out three metal keys from under the pillow. He stole them from the nurse on duty's drawer before turning off the lights. They could be used to open the door of his cell, an iron door in the ward aisle, and pull The door of the cell where Farr Stoker is.
At 4:30 in the morning, when people were the most sleepy, he decided to act now.