Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Pei Yuming stared straight at Cao Lei. Without warning, tears suddenly spilled down his face, leaving Cao Lei stunned.

“Lao Pei? What’s wrong?” Cao Lei asked cautiously. “Did you remember something?”

Pei Yuming curled in on himself, covered his face, and shook his head. Sobbing, he said, “It was me. I killed my wife… I killed my wife…”

“What?!” Cao Lei was startled. “So you’re admitting you were the one who poisoned her?”

“…No. I killed her. With my own hands… with a knife. She bled so much. It all came out of her body…”

Cao Lei glanced at the surveillance camera, then continued, “A knife? Was it that kitchen knife?”

Pei Yuming shook his head through his tears. “No. It was another one.”

Cao Lei narrowed his eyes. “Not long ago, our crime scene technicians tested every blade in your home with benzidine, and none of them showed any latent blood reaction. Did you hide that knife somewhere?”

Pei Yuming wiped his face with his sleeve and asked between sobs, “Officer Cao, what time is it now?”

Since he had already asked about the time before, Cao Lei did not waste words on it. He said directly, “Nine fourteen p.m.”

“Nine fourteen…” Pei Yuming muttered to himself, a little neurotically. “…I’ve gone back three times in total. From just now to now, it’s been about two minutes, so I came back again at nine twelve. If every time I go back, it’s within a fixed time frame, then that means starting from nine o’clock, every four minutes, I’ll have a Flashback to the subway once… Yes, that has to be it! In two more minutes, I’ll go back again. Bai Xue will come back to life. She will! She definitely will!”

Cao Lei rubbed at his brows, which were nearly knotted together, and took a deep breath where Pei Yuming could not see. Keeping his voice as patient as possible, he asked, “Lao Pei, what are you talking about? What four minutes? Why are you saying your wife will come back to life? Didn’t you just say you killed her with a knife?”

“…Yes. I did. It was me. But as long as I go back to that subway, she’ll definitely be fine.” Pei Yuming looked at Cao Lei with shining eyes, his emotions growing more and more agitated. “I know who her lover is now. Officer Cao, you have to believe me. Everything I told you just now was true! I only just found out too, and that’s why I killed her… But I didn’t mean to. I lost control…”

Cao Lei licked his lips. Although he did not know why Pei Yuming insisted he had killed his wife with a knife, the fact remained that the victim, Bai Xue, had died of poisoning, and there were no obvious external injuries on her body. This knife that had appeared out of nowhere could be set aside for the moment. So, following Pei Yuming’s train of thought, he probed, “So you had another Flashback to that subway and found out who her lover was?”

“Mm.”

“Who was it?”

“Lu Dong.” Pei Yuming turned his face away, shame mixed with bitterness in his expression. “My best friend. Before this.”

After he said that, Cao Lei did not ask another question for a long while. He only studied Pei Yuming with a scrutinizing gaze. For a moment, the only sound in the interrogation room was the clerk typing on the keyboard.

Pei Yuming glanced up at Cao Lei. Seeing that his expression was calm, without the slightest surprise, he asked awkwardly, “…You already knew?”

Cao Lei patted his arm and told him the truth. “When I asked you, our people had just found hotel room records for your wife, Bai Xue, and Lu Dong.”

“Hotel room… ?” Pei Yuming was so agitated he almost stood up. “When?”

Cao Lei held him down. With that movement, the two of them were extremely close, close enough that he could clearly see Pei Yuming’s pupils dilate from the shock. So he asked, “You didn’t know?”

Pei Yuming’s face twisted with pain and furious grief. “I didn’t get the chance to ask. When exactly?”

Cao Lei thought for a moment, then gave him the answer. “Five years ago.”

“Five years ago?” Pei Yuming froze. “But… they… they were already together five years ago?!”

“That’s what the hotel room records show,” Officer Cao explained while watching him. “Of course, it’s also possible that five years ago is as far back as we can check. As for anything earlier than that, we don’t know.”

After listening to Cao Lei, Pei Yuming’s face suddenly flushed red. His vision went black, and under the surge of rage and shock, he nearly spat out a mouthful of blood.

He clutched his chest and took a long time to recover before he could barely drag in a breath. But his ears kept buzzing. For a good while, he could not hear any of the sounds around him. He only stared blankly at his own haggard reflection in the subway window, wishing he had died at tonight’s dinner table too.