Case Files 013

Chapter 103: Excitement Can Be a Religion

From the start until now, we had not seen Liu Yinyan's wife and had no idea whether she had really hired a team of PIs or not. Similarly, we had no idea what the real Jessie looked like. Therefore, it was entirely possible for the kidnappers to make use of this and pretend to be Jessie to get close to Liu Yinyan. The image of the gentlemanly fake Jessie appeared in my mind, now his identity was called into question. And who were his two assistants? But the man looked too young to be a fugitive.

"Now we can basically confirm that Lin Dafa was purposely sent here by the kidnappers but why?" Captain Zhao leaned against the wall and looked at the ceiling as if in thought. "Based on our available clues, Lin Dafa is still our best lead. He's our best chance to get any information about the kidnappers." Gu Chen scratched his head. "But Lin Dafa doesn't seem like he will be talking anytime soon. How are we going to get him to cooperate with us?" Captain Zhao straightened and looked at the interrogation room. "As long as he's not mute, there are ways to make him talk." Captain Zhao seemed to have come to a decision. "Mary, I need you to continue to check the surveillance. The few of us will continue our interrogation of Lin Dafa, Guan Zhenglin, you'll take Mary's place to take down everything." Everyone nodded.

But before we moved, Mary suddenly said, "A phone call is coming in."

"An unknown number?" Captain Zhao asked.

"No." Mary shook her head, and turned the phone screen to face us, "It's Liu Yinyan." Captain Zhao frowned as he walked towards the table. "Answer it." We surrounded Mary and listened to this call by Liu Yinyan. The shrill voice came again, this was the same adulterated voice used by the kidnapper before. I remembered that Mary had successfully reconstructed the kidnapper's voice, he sounded like a male between 20 and 25. But it was not Jessie, we had all heard Jessie's voice before. So who was this young man then?

"Good afternoon, officers." The voice said lazily, he sounded friendly like this was a chat between old friends, but we all knew that the owner behind this voice had kidnapped one of the most powerful individuals in Dong Xing City and shouldn't be underestimated. Captain Zhao was silent for a moment before saying, "Good afternoon, have you had lunch?"

The man probably didn't expect Captain Zhao to be so calm and he sounded surprised. "Based on the voice, is this Zhao Shilin? I've heard of you, the leader of the heavy crime unit and you have solved many big cases and captured many criminals. I wonder if you'll be capable enough to catch me."

Captain Zhao reminded Liu Yinyan repeatedly that he should never take the kidnapper's bait and should always try to keep the kidnapper talking, however his advice fell on deaf ears. Captain Zhao though handled this in the textbook manner. "I was just lucky. By the way, what do you plan to have for lunch? We're going to order take-out, do you want us to order some for you?"

"Ha ha!" The man laughed. "Officer Zhao, you sure are interesting but I don't want to trouble you. Plus home cooking is always better than take-out. I will let you in on a secret, I'm quite a good cook, you should come and let me cook for you."

Captain Zhao laughed and said, "Yes, we should make a date. In fact, I too know how to cook. Where do you get your ingredients? The traditional market or the supermarket? Are you vegetarian? Do you have any allergies?"

"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm calling?"

"What are your favorite dishes?" Captain Zhao ignored the man and continued his own conversation, "Maybe seafood? Or soup? How about a steamboat? That way, all of us can sit down and enjoy the meal together. All this talk of food is making me hungry. So what are you guys having for lunch?"

The man was clearly running thin on patience. "If you must know, we're having seafood!" With that, the call ended. Looks like the man was still quite cautious, the call lasted less than 3 minutes. Mary said, "Liu Yinyan's phone is untraceable anymore, I believe they have destroyed the SIM card. The kidnappers are extremely cautious and they have an expert with anti-tracking ability."

"Then what should we do now? Return to interrogate Lin Dafa?" Gu Chen asked.

Captain Zhao shook his head. He tapped his finger against the table. "We wait. The kidnapper didn't get the chance to speak his piece so he would definitely call back. As long as we continue to engage them in conversation, we'll eventually trip them up. Even if there's a small clue, it might be the thing that can help us crack this case wide open." I was mightily impressed with Captain Zhao's intuition because soon an unknown number came in and it was the kidnapper.

"I'm so sorry, Officer Zhao. I lost signal earlier." The man apologized.

Captain Zhao scoffed. "Lost signal or you're afraid that we might have tracked you?"

"Well, aren't you the joker?" The man chuckled, "The reason I'm calling is because I hope that you'll track me down. How else is this game going to continue?" This time Captain Zhao didn't talk in circles probably because he was worried that it might anger the kidnappers. "Game? I don't remember saying I'm down for a game."

"Oh, Officer Zhao, do you really think you have a choice? If you don't want to play, then I can't guarantee the safety of Liu Yinyan and Liu Fei'er."

Captain Zhao was silent and then said, "Fine, I'll play this game with you but you have to promise that you won't harm Liu Fei'er and Liu Yinyan. Plus I have to warn you, certain paths are irreversible. If you release the hostages now, you might still be able to walk away from this and escape."

The man laughed, "Escape? I have quite a number of people with me who have been escaping all their lives. Sometimes, life can be quite boring. Killing, raping, robbing, stealing, we've done so many exciting things in life and now we can't stop, can you understand that feeling?"

"Oh?" Captain Zhao encouraged the man to keep on talking, "I don't. Mind telling me more about it?"

The man answered, "Sometimes, crime itself can be addictive. How many people commit crimes because of gold, power and women? Many repeat offenders do it for the sake of the crime itself, not for anything else."

"To commit crime for the sake of committing crime?" Captain Zhao chuckled, "Your perspective is quite new-fangled, have you considered becoming a criminal psychologist?"

The man scoffed, "When you kill a person and dismember his body; when you walk down the street and mug a woman before the crowd; when you burn down a perfectly beautiful house with a big fire, oh, if only you can feel that sensation. Humans are born with the instinct to attack and destroy." The man said coldly, "But the current society does everything within its power to suppress those natural urges. Is that not a violation of human rights? Those who are only living their true selves are sent into jail and killed! The survival of the fittest, that is the rule of evolution but human beings have to go against it. If you really look at it, we're the ones who are helping the overall goodness of humanity by being more in touch with our baser human nature."

The man's voice was laced with feverish excitement. I believed if I was there in person, I would see a face dominated by fanaticism. Those without faith were pitiable, but those with fanatic faith were dangerous.

Criminology categorized criminals into different types, those who killed for money, power or sex were criminals of passion, they were not scary because we knew clearly what they wanted. But this man on the phone, if he was given enough power, he'd become the second Hitler, these were the most dangerous kind of criminals because they didn't want the common things like money, power and six but something that we normal humans couldn't understand. Captain Zhao called these people born criminals.

In our lives, we might have the chance to encounter people around us who were talked into joining MLM Marketing Group. After being brainwashed by the program, they would fall into the dream of wealth. No matter how hard you tried to explain to them the truth, they refused to believe you. We felt pity for these people because they were submerged inside their own little world. But what about criminals who were brainwashed by some kind of twisted ideology? We would only find them frightening. Because they were going against the whole principle of humanity and we often referred to them as terrorists.

"What is it that you want?" Captain Zhao heard the danger in the man's way of thinking and he asked seriously.

The man laughed, "Finally, the million-dollar question! What do I want? I've already told you the answer, I want to play a game. From this moment onwards, I will chop off their finger every 1 hour until you find this place. Of course, if you fail to find them, they might die, who knows. And now the game starts!" The call was over.

The few of us went silent. From the conversation, it was clear that this man was unhinged, if we didn't capture him, he would do something crazier and wilder.

Sometimes, desire is a bad thing but it can also be a good thing, because a man without desire is extremely dangerous.

"So the kidnappers did all these just to play a game with us?" Gu Chen said incredulously, "So that they can get some kind of twisted joy out of it?"

I was reminded of what Lin Dafa told us in the interrogation room,

Pure adrenaline alone can be someone's religion and life source.'