Chapter 19

Chapter 19

I froze.

Th-this meant what I thought it meant, right?

She had already done that with this “him” so quickly?

Who was he?!

I hurriedly flipped ahead.

There were no more diary entries after that. Tucked between the blank pages was an old photograph.

In the photo, Bai Yanmei was wearing a black one-piece swimsuit, standing barefoot on a rock with her hands on her hips and her chin raised.

Her eyes were bright and sparkling, and she was smiling so happily.

She was as beautiful as a freshly picked honey peach, carrying both youthful innocence and the sweet fragrance of something just about to ripen.

I stared, entranced. My heart went from skipping a beat to pounding like a drum.

The girl in the photo was smiling, and I found myself smiling along with her.

In a daze, I lifted the photo and lightly kissed her.

I snapped back to my senses almost immediately and slapped myself hard across the face.

Han Yuanshan, who the hell do you think you are? How dare you defile her!

I ran out to the balcony and smoked a cigarette to calm down before turning back.

This time, I looked at the photo with a cool head.

Around Bai Yanmei’s neck hung a black pendant.

I looked at the pendant in the jewelry box. It had to be the same one.

In the lower right corner of the photo was a faint orange-red imprint: 15-8-93.

It was the date stamp unique to point-and-shoot cameras from the nineties, meaning this photo had been taken on August 15, 1993.

One month before Bai Yanmei was murdered.

Who had taken the photo for her?

Was it a man or a woman?

Or rather, in the nineties, the person who could get a young girl like her to put on a swimsuit and pose for a photo had to be someone with an unusually close relationship with her.

I examined the photo over and over, trying to find any clue at all.

Unfortunately, too much time had passed. Some parts of the photo had inevitably faded and yellowed.

I refused to give up. I found a book, slipped the photo inside, wrapped the book several times in plastic wrap, and only then took it out with me.

I went around the city to several copy and print shops. After comparing them, I chose the one with the best scanner and asked the owner to scan the photo into a digital file for me.

Then I found a tech expert online and paid him to restore the photo.

Money was no object!

After two days of restless waiting, the expert finally contacted me.

He said he had consulted several colleagues, and after all of them worked overtime and pulled all-nighters, this was the best they could do.

I thanked him again and again and paid the fee with both hands.

Nervously, I opened my email and clicked on the attachment.

The photo was indeed more than ten times clearer. The expert had handled some of the details extremely well too; I could even make out the strands of Bai Yanmei’s hair flying in the wind.

I leaned closer to the screen and studied it carefully.

The river, the rocks, the person, the jewelry in the photo… Nothing seemed unusual.

Exhausted, I covered my face and took a few minutes to recover before forcing myself to keep looking.

Whoa! I actually spotted something!

Not far from the reef Bai Yanmei was standing on, there was a tiny bluish-green object, no bigger than a speck of dust.

What was it?

Clothes? Shoes? Neither seemed right.

It was square, with clear edges and corners… a cigarette pack?

My spirits lifted, and I quickly searched online.

“What cigarettes were popular in Cang City in 1993?”

A ton of results came up, and from the mass of information, I quickly found one brand of cigarettes.

Shuanghua Cigarettes, with jade-green packaging and silvery-white patterns, sold for four yuan. It counted as a mid-to-high-end cigarette.

So the person taking the photo was most likely a man, and a smoker.

Excited, I stood up and hopped twice on the spot.

But soon, my excitement faded again.

So what if I could tell it was a pack of Shuanghua Cigarettes? It might have been left there by some other tourist, and women could smoke too.

I found a sheet of paper and began organizing all the information I had gathered and uncovered over the past few days.

At present, there were five suspects connected to Bai Yanmei’s death.

Suspect number one: her uncle by marriage, Qi Wentao.

Bai Yanmei had written clearly in her diary that Qi Wentao had touched her inappropriately and peeped on her while she was bathing.

She had told her aunt about it, only to be scolded in return.

Could it be that Bai Yanmei had reached the end of her patience and wanted to report Qi Wentao, so Qi Wentao killed her?

Suspect number two: Ma Wei.

Love turned to hatred. After failing to win her, he killed her instead.

Although Ma Wei had given me a reasonable explanation during our conversation, he had a prior record of sneaking into the Qi Family’s home to steal. He had also appeared at the scene on the day of the crime, and with his family background added into the mix, his suspicion was very high!

Suspect number three: Bai Yanmei’s mysterious lover.

In all the materials I had looked up before, she was described in the same way: Bai Yanmei was sensitive and withdrawn, somewhat cold by nature, and her daily life revolved only around school and home. She had no boyfriend.

This man had not even been uncovered after her death, which showed just how strong his counter-investigation ability was!

Suspect number four: the organ-trafficking gang.

That exposé post had said that from 1992 to 1993, such a criminal gang existed in Cang City.

Bai Yanmei’s internal organs had disappeared. It was possible that her heart, kidneys, and other organs had been sold on the black market.

But if their goal was resale, wouldn’t it have been easier to abduct her to some remote place before making their move? Why take the risk of going to the Qi Family’s home?

So I considered this possibility unlikely.

Suspect number five: anyone outside the above categories.

Any killer at all.

…