Chapter 48

Chapter 48

“Yes, yes, it was all our fault,” Lu Dong said soothingly. “Xiaobei, listen to me. This has nothing to do with you. It all happened because of mistakes made by our generation. You’re a victim, and so is Zixuan. We’re the ones who should be apologizing to you. Don’t try to solve this by hurting yourself. This shouldn’t be yours to fix. You didn’t do anything wrong, and no one is going to blame you. Listen to me, come down from there first. Then whatever you want to ask, whatever you’re thinking, you can tell me, all right?”

Putting aside his prejudices, even Pei Yuming had to admit that Lu Dong had an extraordinary gift for persuasion. Even he could clearly feel it: when certain words came out of Lu Dong’s mouth, they carried a power that made people believe them.

Sure enough, under Lu Dong’s coaxing, Pei Xiaobei’s agitation slowly eased, and her stance visibly softened.

Pei Yuming took the chance to edge closer to his daughter. While Pei Xiaobei wasn’t paying attention, he suddenly reached out to grab her arm.

But Pei Xiaobei’s body reacted faster than her mind. The moment she saw a hand reaching for her, she instinctively dodged backward. She had already been using every bit of focus she had just to keep her balance, and this sent her tipping completely outward.

Fortunately, at the critical moment, Pei Yuming caught her wrist. Father and daughter were now on opposite sides of the window. Pei Yuming used every ounce of strength in his body to pull her back, but unfortunately, thin as Pei Xiaobei was, she still weighed nearly ninety pounds. He could only watch helplessly as his daughter’s wrist began to slip through his grip.

“Dad,” Pei Xiaobei cried, her whole body hanging in the air more than a dozen floors up, cold sweat breaking out all over her. “I don’t want to die. Save me…”

Pei Yuming’s face went red from the strain. He put everything he had into it, but only managed to pull his daughter up a little.

The problem was that the bottom-hinged window was too narrow. It could only fit one person, leaving the four people behind them able to do nothing but panic.

Bai Xue was terrified. She pressed herself against the glass, sobbing one moment as she told her daughter not to be afraid, then crying out the next for Pei Yuming to hurry and pull her up.

Lu Dong and his son each grabbed Pei Yuming by the clothes from either side, cheering him on while trying to help.

Only Su Jin stood at the very back. Through the glass, she looked at Pei Xiaobei’s agonized expression, her ears filled with chaotic shouts. At a loss, she took two steps back, then seemed to suddenly remember something and turned to grab the phone on the table.

But just as the emergency call connected and before she could say a word, screams erupted inside the private room. She looked up, and Pei Xiaobei was already gone from outside the window.

Cao Lei felt that at this moment, he could only explain Pei Yuming’s behavior with the words “superb acting.” He even thought that professional actors who had graduated from acting schools might not necessarily be able to outperform him.

Clearly, one second earlier, Cao Lei had successfully calmed him down. But in the next second, Pei Yuming began screaming hysterically. The despair and pain on his face showed no trace of being fake.

Cao Lei almost found it baffling. With skills like that, why bother suffering through life as a doctor? Wouldn’t acting in movies be better? Maybe the next summer box office champion would be him.

Grumbling inwardly was one thing, but the interrogation still had to continue. Cao Lei caught Pei Yuming’s hand as he slammed it toward the partition and shouted to stop him. “Lao Pei! Calm down! Look around. You’re in the interrogation room. I’m Cao Lei. Didn’t you say that as long as you came back here, everything would be all right?”

Cao Lei didn’t know what kind of story Pei Yuming would tell him this time, but judging from his reaction, it was bound to be even more tragic than before. He remembered Pei Yuming had mentioned earlier that as long as he could return to the subway again, everything that had happened could be reset to zero.
By that logic, Pei Yuming should be able to hear him out.

Sure enough, after listening to Cao Lei, Pei Yuming gradually stopped what he was doing. Sobbing, he lifted his tear-streaked face and said in utter collapse, “Officer Cao, my daughter is dead…”

Cao Lei was no stranger to that familiar opening. He ran his tongue over his back teeth and tried to make his expression look patient. “What happened this time? How did your daughter die?”

“I killed her! It was me!” Pei Yuming cried.

“So you admit you poisoned her to death?”

“Huh?” Pei Yuming froze. Once he realized what Cao Lei meant, he shook his head. “No. She was going to jump. I grabbed her, but my hand lost its strength… She fell from the fifteenth floor. It was all my fault. I killed her!”

Cao Lei took a deep breath and gently patted Pei Yuming on the back, soothing him. “It’s all right. It’s all right…”

Although Pei Yuming was crying miserably enough to move even a seasoned detective as hard-willed as Cao Lei, the interrogation had to continue. Cao Lei could only harden his heart and interrupt him.

“Lao Pei, pull yourself together. Tell me what happened this time.”

Pei Yuming trusted Cao Lei completely. Even though he was in terrible pain, he still forced himself to rally and carefully told Cao Lei the whole story.

“Do you think Lu Zixuan is your son?” Cao Lei asked, his expression complicated.

Pei Yuming rubbed his eyes. After a long silence, he nodded.

“Su Jin has always been a very steady person. She wouldn’t joke about something like this, even in an emergency like that. Besides, she still didn’t change her story afterward. If Xiaobei hadn’t threatened to die, she absolutely wouldn’t have denied it. So I think what she said should be true.”

“So the two of you were together once?”

Pei Yuming lowered his head. “Yeah.”

“When? And why did you split up afterward?”

Pei Yuming glanced up at Cao Lei, then lowered his head again and said quietly, “Why are you asking that? It has nothing to do with the case.”

Cao Lei shook his head in advance at Officer Gu, who was about to slap the table, then patiently explained to Pei Yuming, “This has a great deal to do with the case. I told you from the start that this is a locked-room murder case. The killer can only be one of the eight of you. Although you, as the sole survivor, are the most suspicious, we can’t rule out the others. A killer doesn’t kill for no reason. They must have a motive. So whatever happened between all of you, whether in the past or now, is crucial.”

Pei Yuming moved his lips and asked, “So you suspect Su Jin?”

Cao Lei looked steadily at him. “No. I suspect every one of you. At least based on what you’ve told me so far, every single one of you had a motive to kill.”

“Including me?”

“Yes.”

Pei Yuming immediately grew anxious. “It really wasn’t me! I didn’t kill anyone!”

Cao Lei waved a hand. “All right, we’re not at the point of discussing that yet. First, tell me about you and Su Jin.”

Seeing that Cao Lei did not believe him, Pei Yuming looked somewhat dejected, but he still forced himself to continue.

“Su Jin was a year below me in school. We went to the same high school and university. Later, when I went to the hospital for my internship, I happened to study under her father. That was when we got to know each other. Later, through her father’s matchmaking, we dated briefly, but then we felt we weren’t quite right for each other, so we broke up.”

“Just because you weren’t quite right for each other?” Cao Lei keenly sensed that Pei Yuming was holding something back in his account.