Evidence
“They made contact with Guo Xiaoguang.” As he listened to the voice coming from the receiver, the man’s fingers touched his forehead. In a moment, as if making a significant decision, he lowered his hand.
“Destroy the evidence, make it clean.”
Guo Xiaoguang brought the tables and chairs from outside the shop inside. Peeking around, he saw that there were not many people left on the street. Only then did he bring in the signboard and casually close the rolling shutter.
Inside, there was only one dim, greasy light bulb illuminating the room. An elderly woman sat on the bed, leaning on a crutch.
This bedroom, transformed from a storage room, was narrow and cramped. Next to it was the kitchen, with not much space for seating. Song Yuhang had cleared out a cardboard box, took off her coat, and placed it as a cushion for Lin Yan to sit on. She herself stood.
In order to make this transcript formal and reliable for presentation in court, Song Yuhang took out a recording pen and first identified herself.
“Hello, I am Song Yuhang, the Captain of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Jiangcheng Public Security Bureau. This person next to me is Lin Yan, the Chief Forensic Doctor of the Technical Investigation Section of the Municipal Bureau. She was also a classmate of the deceased in the ‘Fenyang Wharf Dismemberment Case’ back then. I assure you that our conversation will be recorded in its entirety, open and transparent. We will handle this evidence properly and will not use it for any other purpose except as evidence in court.”
When the elderly woman heard her say that Lin Yan was a classmate of the deceased, her lips trembled, and tears suddenly rolled down from her eyes, which were already blind except for the whites.
“Fourteen years… Fourteen years… I finally waited for this day…”
“Mom, Mom, please don’t get too worked up.” Guo Xiaoguang sat on the bed, using the back of his hand to wipe away his foster mother’s tears.
Song Yuhang crouched down and held her hand. “You’ve been through so much. Take your time and tell us everything you know. We will clear Zhu Yong’s name.”
The elderly woman’s hand trembled as she wiped away her tears. “Brother Yong… Brother Yong was wronged… He couldn’t have possibly committed murder…”
Song Yuhang and Lin Yan exchanged a glance. “What do you mean?”
When asked about this, a slightly embarrassed expression appeared on the elderly woman’s face. But in order to uncover the truth, she mustered the courage to speak up, even at the expense of her dignity.
“At that time… all of you police officers said that Brother Yong killed as an act of revenge because… because the father of the victim had killed his wife. So, he retaliated by chopping his daughter…”
The elderly woman shook her head, her voice hoarse. “That’s not true, not true… Brother Yong… Brother Yong had wanted his wife dead a long time ago, but he never had the courage… He was such a weak person… He would even hesitate before slaughtering a pig… How could he possibly commit murder?”
Guo Xiaoguang’s eyes welled up with a hint of red. “At that time, the police, the media, the lawyers… no one was willing to listen to us. My dad was branded as a murderer. He already had high blood pressure, and he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage shortly after being sent to the detention center. He died.”
Lin Yan’s gaze carried a pensive look as she spoke to him. “What about you and your birth mother…”
Guo Xiaoguang’s throat tightened, and he closed his eyes. The pain was still unbearable even when recalling it now.
“She doesn’t deserve to be a mother.”
In Guo Xiaoguang’s fragmented narrative, a love story emerged from that era, twisted and lamentable under societal oppression.
Zhu Yong and Guo Yuezhen grew up together in the same village, making a lifelong commitment to each other and venturing to the big city to find work. However, they ended up marrying people they didn’t love.
Guo Yuezhen was married off by her family to a wealthy local gentleman in the village, who was older than her and a widower.
By the time Zhu Yong rushed back home, the situation had already been settled.
He attempted to elope with Guo Yuezhen but was slapped back by his father. “What’s the use of being infatuated with Yuezhen? You’ll still be poor! Let me tell you, don’t go anywhere this time. Stay at home obediently. Your mother has found several girls for you to marry, all from well-off families. The dowries alone would be enough to keep you well-fed!”
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And so, the two young lovers fell apart.
After marriage, Guo Yuezhen followed her husband to the city, while Zhu Yong married another woman. Both couples went to the city to find work.
Relying on his skills from working in the slaughterhouse, Zhu Yong opened a meat shop in the market and toiled day and night to make a living.
His wife, who is also Guo Xiaoguang’s birth mother, was a selfish and mean woman. She married him solely because she saw that he was honest, weak, and hardworking. Apart from sending some money to his family, Zhu Yong gave her all the money he earned through blood and sweat. She took that money and gambled with a few girlfriends she knew from hair salons, staying out all night and not returning home. It was only when Zhu Yong went to her workplace to find her and witnessed her being intimate with another man that, in a fit of anger, he demanded a divorce, only to discover that she was pregnant at that moment.
The woman cried and pleaded with him. Zhu Yong was already a weak and indecisive man, and besides, the woman wasn’t entirely at fault apart from seeking attention from other men. She even sent money home regularly, which was considered the greatest virtue of filial piety in the countryside.
Zhu Yong planned to wait until the child was born to determine if it was his before deciding on a divorce.
When the child was born and the baby boy weakly held onto his finger, Zhu Yong couldn’t bear to leave as he looked at the woman lying frail on the bed.
At that moment, he firmly believed that everything would be fine, that their days would improve, and the woman would get back on the right track. They would be a happy family of three.
But the good times didn’t last long. The nature of a person is hard to change. Once the woman regained her health, she started indulging in a life of debauchery. She only returned home when she ran out of money. After experiencing the extravagance of the city, she became even more disdainful of Zhu Yong, who she saw as an honest, weak, and penniless man.
The money she spent on a casual bottle of wine with those wealthy men would be enough to sustain their family for a month.
In Guo Xiaoguang’s childhood, his father often carried him on his back and took him to sell meat.
When Zhu Yong was overwhelmed with work, Xiaoguang would crawl on the ground alone, not knowing if he would find anything to eat. He would pick up leftover bones and raw pork and stuff them into his mouth.
“Eh, children shouldn’t eat raw food. Why did you give this to him?!”
By chance, Guo Yuezhen came to the market to buy vegetables and accidentally knocked the raw meat out of his hands. She even patted his back and scooped the meat out of his mouth.
Fate brought the two young people together once again.
Their love had not diminished much.
Zhu Yong had a genuine sense of responsibility towards his family, and he deeply suppressed his love for Guo Yuezhen in his heart.
Little did he know that the more something is suppressed, the more astonishing its explosive power becomes.
They couldn’t resist the temptation and betrayed their respective families, tearing each other apart in a vicious cycle, sinking permanently into the pleasure of immorality.
In Guo Xiaoguang’s childhood, his mother would scold and beat him without mercy. She didn’t return to the family because of his birth; instead, she considered him a burden, hindering her from indulging in a debauched lifestyle with other men. In her eyes, women who had given birth were worthless.
It’s unclear which time it was, or perhaps it happened many times, but whenever Guo Xiaoguang called her “mom” outside, the woman would slap him, causing his nose to bleed.
“Don’t call me mom. I don’t have a son like you. You’re just as useless as your father!”
Gradually, he stopped calling her mom.
Sometimes when Zhu Yong went to sell meat, he would leave Guo Xiaoguang alone at home. The woman would bring various men back and make him stand guard at the door, watching over them.
The little child stood barefoot, dressed in tattered clothes, squatting at the doorstep of a rundown wooden house, his eyes wide open, observing the passersby.
As time went by, kind-hearted neighbors who noticed him would grin, revealing their yellowed teeth, and say, “Oh, the shop is open again.”
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Guo Xiaoguang couldn’t understand their words, and as he grew older, he hoped he would never understand.
Sometimes, when the woman had earned a lot of money and was in a good mood, she would give him a few coins to buy bubble gum.
But more often, she would unleash upon him all the anger and torment she had endured from other men.
As a three or four-year-old child, unsteady on his feet, stumbling while walking, Guo Xiaoguang had to pour foot-washing water for her, splash the water used to wash her body outside, hold a broom taller than himself to sweep the floor, wipe the table with a cloth, roll up his sleeves to wash her socks, underwear, and undershirts.
At the slightest dissatisfaction, the woman would dunk his head into a basin of water and beat him with a washboard, causing him to cry out in pain.
Looking back now, it remains a nightmarish period. Guo Xiaoguang struggled to catch his breath as he clutched the fabric on his knees tightly. Guo Yuezhen felt her son’s hand and gripped it tightly, their hands, one weathered and wrinkled, the other young, tightly intertwined.
During those darkest days, only Guo Yuezhen, his father’s mistress, out of a sense of love, treated him well. She would smile at him, scrape money from her already meager living expenses to buy him candy, and wipe the dirt off his body while speaking to him in a gentle and tender voice.
Children, in fact, don’t understand much. They instinctively rely on those who treat them kindly.
One day, Guo Yuezhen passed by their house after buying groceries and saw him playing with mud at the doorstep in the cold winter month. She asked him, “Why don’t you go inside?”
He replied in a low voice, “Mom doesn’t let me inside.”
Guo Xiaoguang’s eyes filled with pity. “Are you hungry, child?”
He nodded, “Yes, hungry.”
Guo Yuezhen reached into her basket and pulled out the freshly bought steamed buns. They were still warm, and she handed one to him.
Unfortunately, the woman, who had just returned from drinking, saw them and a violent fight ensued. Fortunately, Zhu Yong came back in time.
It was the first time Guo Xiaoguang witnessed his father lose his temper like that, and it was the first time in many years that he had laid hands on the woman. He pushed her to the ground.
“Let’s get a divorce!”
The woman burst into tears, refusing to divorce at this moment. Although Zhu Yong was poor, he treated her exceptionally well and never uttered a single word of complaint.
Not only did the woman refuse to divorce, but she also threatened to tell her parents in her hometown that if they divorced, they would ask for the dowry back and spread the news to the neighbors, making everyone think that Zhu Yong had abandoned her, branding him as a heartless man!
She even threatened to take her son and jump into the river together, refusing to let the Zhu family continue their lineage even if it meant drowning.
That night, Guo Xiaoguang peered through a small hole in the wooden wall of the inner room. His father sat on the bed, facing away from his mother, smoking a cigarette.
The woman fell fast asleep.
The man got up and retrieved a butcher knife from the kitchen.
His silhouette, raising the knife high, cast a shadow on the mosquito net.
Guo Xiaoguang was so frightened that he collapsed on the ground.
But ultimately, that knife never came down.
In Zhu Yong, Guo Xiaoguang witnessed the weakest and yet most kind-hearted side of a man.
He obeyed his parents’ command and married a woman he didn’t love, enduring years of being cuckolded. He couldn’t even protect his own child from violence. But when pushed to the edge, he set aside the butcher knife.
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How could such an honest, weak, and incapable person commit such a heinous act of murder and dismemberment?
Guo Xiaoguang refused to believe it, no matter what.
If Zhu Yong had such courage, it wouldn’t have been Chen Chu Nan who died years ago, but his unfit mother.
As Guo Xiaoguang spoke, his eyes welled up, and two tears rolled down. He quickly wiped them away with the back of his hand and sniffled.
“Even with her like that, my dad didn’t divorce her… How could he possibly go and kill someone for revenge? Even if it’s inappropriate, we felt relieved when she died…”
As for her death, it was indeed a genuine accident. Chen Chu Nan’s father went to buy meat, coincidentally when that woman came back to ask Zhu Yong for money. Zhu Yong told her to wait for a moment and went to the restroom, pleading with her to watch the shop.
Impatient, the woman agreed. A quarrel broke out between her and Chen Chu Nan’s father over two cents, escalating into a physical confrontation. Chen Chu Nan’s father pushed her away.
She grabbed a butcher knife and made the first move, but missed. The knife was snatched away.
She lunged again, shouting, “Stab me if you dare! Come on, stab me here!”
Then, whether it was due to her pulling him or because Chen Chu Nan’s father was already unstable on his feet, a clean knife went in, coming out red.