Monster - Chapter 9
Chapter 9: The Lin Sandie of the Past
At 2:30 in the afternoon, Xing Meilu stood before a whiteboard covered with photos from the serial murder scenes and pictures of the victims. Various pieces of information were tacked up alongside them. On one of the branches of the investigation, a photo of “Lou,” the suspect in Cheng Lina’s murder, was placed next to a picture of Cheng Lina herself.
Amid a sea of formal headshots and gruesome crime scene photos, Lou’s picture—a candid shot taken by Cheng Lina—stood out. In it, she was looking down with a faint, bright smile, her expression happy and brilliant, as if mocking Xing Meilu and her team for their incompetence.
To this day, they had failed to find any useful information on the suspect named Lou.
However, their recent, exhaustive search had not been entirely fruitless.
Xing Meilu had finally found a common thread among the many victims of the serial killer.
They all had some connection, however distant, to members of the Upper House Federal Parliament. All except for Cheng Lina.
That scam artist had simply had the bad luck of crossing Lou’s path.
In Shen Fan’s gossipy words, if she had been a decent person, maybe she wouldn’t have had to die.
Of course, that was beside the point. Since they had no useful information on Lou or the serial killer suspect, and they couldn’t be sure if Lou was even connected to the serial killings, Xing Meilu decided to start with the other victims. Considering they were all linked to the Upper House, she made Yan Ting—who had been striving to enter the Upper House for years—a primary person of interest.
Not only did Yan Ting have countless ties to the Upper House, but she also had a complicated relationship with Lin Sandie, who looked identical to Lou. Moreover, Xing Meilu was certain that, regardless of whether Yan Ting had sent people to kill those connected to Lin Sandie, Yan Ting had been controlling Lin Sandie behind the scenes all along.
“Bam!” Two hands suddenly landed on Xing Meilu’s shoulders from behind. Only Saya would use such a flippant greeting.
Xing Meilu turned around calmly and, as expected, was met with Saya’s smiling face.
“Did you skip lunch again, Xiao A’Lu?” Saya draped her entire arm over Xing Meilu’s shoulder, close enough that she could look down and see the whorl of hair on top of her head.
“I ate. Sister Ling gave me a small bread roll.” Xing Meilu caught the scent of Saya’s shampoo and suddenly felt a pang of hunger.
“I’ve been busy until now, too. Want to go grab a bite together?”
“…” Xing Meilu glanced down at her watch.
“Something up?”
“I have to go to Lin Sandie’s company to see her later. Let’s eat first. I’ll head over right after we finish.” Xing Meilu pulled Saya’s arm away and walked back to her desk, putting on a denim jacket as she spoke.
“I’m free this afternoon. Mind if I go with you?” Saya preemptively snatched the car keys from Xing Meilu’s desk.
“No! You’re coming back here after we eat!” Xing Meilu replied in an unquestionable tone. When she tried to take back her keys, Saya immediately raised her hand high, looking down at her with a smile.
“It could be dangerous.” Xing Meilu, slightly annoyed, grabbed Saya’s hand and retrieved the keys. She didn’t know if Yan Ting would snap. Her own approach to Lin Sandie was already a form of baiting a fish; she didn’t want Saya to become one of Yan Ting’s targets.
“Alright, alright~” Saya linked her arm through Xing Meilu’s, not pressing the issue.
“You’ll be cold if you go out dressed like that. Go put on a jacket,” Xing Meilu said, noticing Saya was only wearing a thin, long-sleeved t-shirt.
Saya shrugged, indicating she didn’t mind.
Speechless, Xing Meilu took off her own slightly oversized denim jacket and tossed it to Saya before pulling a black jacket out of a small cabinet under her desk.
“It smells like Xiao A’Lu,” Saya said, sniffing the jacket Xing Meilu had given her.
“Cut it out!”
After having lunch with Saya, Xing Meilu drove alone to the building where Lin Sandie worked. The receptionist at the front desk saw her and immediately stood up. Xing Meilu had been visiting the building frequently of late, and the staff already knew she was a police officer.
“Officer Xing, are you heading to the Dudian Red Wine Company on the 37th floor again?”
“I’ll just wait in the lobby.” Xing Meilu glanced at her watch. It was 4:40 PM. Lin Sandie got off work at 5:10, so she only had to wait another half hour.
With that, Xing Meilu walked over to a sofa in the building’s first-floor lobby and sat down.
After a week of intense investigation, the results of the fingerprint and voice analysis comparing Lin Sandie to the suspect in Cheng Lina’s murder were in.
The conclusion was: there was a 100% probability that Lin Sandie was not the suspect.
Her voice, gait, and fingerprints all proved she wasn’t the person they were looking for.
What was strange was that Xing Meilu’s team had already ruled out the possibility of Lin Sandie having a twin sister. So why did this suspect named Lou look exactly like her?
During the investigation, Xing Meilu had discovered something even more bizarre:
The ridges of Lin Sandie’s fingerprints were a perfect mirror image of the suspect’s.
At first, Xing Meilu thought the prints had been contaminated, but after several tests, she confirmed that Lin Sandie’s fingerprint patterns were indeed the exact reverse of the suspect’s. Could two people in the world really exist who looked identical, but whose fingerprint patterns were perfect mirror images, overlapping completely if one was flipped?
This question prompted Xing Meilu to call a biologist, who told her that such patterns were impossible, even for identical twins.
This only deepened the mystery surrounding the case.
Lin Sandie’s life was not complicated. Her mother died of illness when she was five. Her father, Lin Zhenshuo, married a woman named Wang Xia when she was seven. A year later, Wang Xia gave birth to Lin Youceng. Their family wasn’t particularly wealthy, but they still supported Lin Sandie through university. It was during college that Lin Sandie met Yan Ting and was suspected of falling under her control. After that came graduation and work.
There was nothing suspicious about her background. Yet, ever since the honey-trap murder case, Lin Sandie had suddenly become shrouded in secrets.
The reason this once-model citizen now felt so secretive and profound was partly due to Yan Ting, and partly due to the suspect named Lou.
Xing Meilu recalled her and Shen Fan’s visit to their second interviewee.
Lei Xinsui had been Yan Ting’s friend and assistant, but the two had a falling out four years ago. Lei Xinsui quit her job and opened her own wine shop.
When Xing Meilu first found her name, she assumed Lei Xinsui had also met with a fatal accident. She was surprised to find her alive and well, which allowed her to gain a more comprehensive understanding of Lin Sandie and Yan Ting’s past.
Unlike Chen Meili’s artistic aura, Lei Xinsui had short, wine-red hair and wore smoky makeup. Her eyes held a worldly, almost gangster-like air about her. She received Xing Meilu and Shen Fan in her small shop. As soon as she sat down, she lit a cigarette for herself and asked if they wanted one. Unfazed by their refusal, she started smoking on her own.
“Lin Sandie is a good girl,” Lei Xinsui said, exhaling a puff of smoke from across the tea table. While smoking, she deftly placed a glass kettle full of clear water on a small electric stove, apparently preparing to serve the two officers tea.
“Do you know how she and Yan Ting met?” Xing Meilu asked.
“Oh, I know that all too well,” Lei Xinsui said, holding the cigarette between her fingers. She licked her lips, which were dry from holding the cigarette, before continuing. “Lin Sandie actually met me first. Back then, Dudian wasn’t as famous as it is now, but we were starting to expand and thought we’d recruit from the universities. You know how it is—graduates ask for lower salaries. We could keep the useful ones, and the ones we couldn’t keep were easy to dismiss like disposable goods. A few students from the student union were our contacts, and Lin Sandie was one of them.”
Xing Meilu, who had already heard this part from Chen Meili, nodded attentively.
At this point, Lei Xinsui seemed to drift into thought. She took a deep drag from her cigarette and paused for a long moment before speaking again. “Yan Ting is a person with grand ambitions. She’s rich, but she doesn’t just want to be rich. She’s very ambitious. It’s only natural for people to want to climb higher… But that’s not something you can achieve just by working hard. She was probably under a lot of pressure… I’m not trying to say anything good about her. She’s really not a great person. Thinks she can do whatever she wants just because she has some stinking money. She plays around a lot.”
Xing Meilu frowned.
“Lin Sandie came from a poor family, but she was quite cheerful. I don’t know if she was putting on an act or what, but there was always a hint of melancholy in her eyes. Anyway, after a while, I got to know her situation. Yan Ting loved to tease her. In that respect, Yan Ting is genuinely charming. Lin Sandie actually thought the woman wanted a real relationship with her.” Seeing her cigarette was nearly burnt out, Lei Xinsui stubbed it out in an ashtray and immediately lit another, a mocking smile on her lips. “The world isn’t full of ‘the CEO fell in love with me’ dramas.”
“They weren’t in a relationship?” Shen Fan asked. After learning so much, he felt that if it were just a sugar-daddy arrangement, Yan Ting wouldn’t have gone to such lengths.
“Not for Yan Ting, at least not at first. But that girl, Lin Sandie, took it very seriously. She rarely accepted the gifts and money Yan Ting gave her. For a while, Yan Ting was furious, thinking Lin Sandie was being pretentious.”
Xing Meilu and Shen Fan listened quietly as Lei Xinsui recounted the history between Lin Sandie and Yan Ting.
“They were together for a few months, and Yan Ting probably got tired of it. She suddenly told me that if Lin Sandie called, I should just say she wasn’t in. That’s when I realized that after all that time, Yan Ting had never even given Lin Sandie her personal number. That silly girl was still pouring her heart out, treating Yan Ting like her first love.”
“But…” Lei Xinsui took another drag. “I think Yan Ting might have developed real feelings for Lin Sandie around that time, because she started ending all her other messy relationships. Still, she refused to reach out to Lin Sandie herself. And Lin Sandie? She called me almost every day, saying she wanted to find Yan Ting. I’d tease her and ask what for, but she’d never say. She’s a rather introverted girl. I just told her Yan Ting was busy with business trips. Gradually, Lin Sandie stopped calling.”
“Honestly, it’s not a big deal for a woman to fall for another woman. Back then, I wanted to set them up. I thought Lin Sandie could help Yan Ting settle down. She’s a good girl, not like those others who were always asking Yan Ting for this and that. It was a coincidence, really. One day, Yan Ting and I went to a distributor to check the sales of a new wine, and we saw Lin Sandie handing out flyers. She had lost a lot of weight and gotten much tanner. It was already evening, but the heat was still scorching, like fire falling from the sky. She was outside a mall, handing flyers to people coming in and out,” Lei Xinsui said, sighing with a touch of sadness. “The thing is, Yan Ting had given her a lot of money and even told me that if Lin Sandie ever asked for money, I should give her whatever she wanted. But that girl never asked for a cent. She rarely spent the money Yan Ting gave her unless she was in dire straits. She spent all her free time tutoring and working odd jobs. That’s what really pissed Yan Ting off.”
“Yan Ting saw it as a transactional relationship. If Lin Sandie never took the money, it wouldn’t feel like one,” Shen Fan said, showing some understanding of the twisted logic of adults. In their eyes, it was a transaction, and being given something for free in a transaction can be deeply unsettling.
“Back then, I also thought the silly girl was a rare breed. If you’re going to sell your youth and body, why not take the money? An asshole’s money is still money. Heh, our way of thinking was just different from Lin Sandie’s at the time.” Lei Xinsui rested her chin on her elbow, lost in thought. “I actually really liked that innocent little girl.”
“Maybe Lin Sandie didn’t want Yan Ting to see her as just another person latching onto her. She wanted a proper relationship,” Shen Fan added.
“Yan Ting just wanted to play around at first. When Lin Sandie acted like that, it must have made Yan Ting feel endlessly guilty.” Lei Xinsui extinguished her second cigarette and began to pour tea.
“So you saw her handing out flyers. What happened next?” Shen Fan asked, engrossed in the story.
“Yan Ting saw her too and told me to drive the car over…” Lei Xinsui trailed off, once again lost in thought. The scene from that day replayed in her mind, an image she would never forget.
Lin Sandie, who had been smiling and bowing as she diligently handed out flyers, heard someone call her name. She turned, and the moment she saw Yan Ting, her face lit up with a smile as brilliant as the sun. All her melancholy vanished. The smile revealed her little white canine teeth and dimples, striking a chord even in Lei Xinsui’s heart back then. Like a carefree puppy, she ran to Yan Ting’s expensive car, leaning against the window and greeting them with a grin, “President Yan! Sister Xinsui!”
There was no trace of the loneliness she must have felt after being ignored for so long. Instead, she was just happy to see Yan Ting.
“It’s so hot out. Why don’t you hand out flyers inside?” Yan Ting asked.
“It’s faster out here. The supervisor said if I finish early, I can leave early,” Lin Sandie said with a sweet smile, her eyes fixed on Yan Ting. A strand of her hair was stuck to her cheek from the heat.
“You finish up, then. We can’t park here. We’ll wait for you over there,” Yan Ting said, reaching out to brush the stray hair from Lin Sandie’s face.
That small, insignificant gesture replayed in Lei Xinsui’s mind like a film, frame by frame.
She even remembered that they didn’t have to wait long before Lin Sandie came running over, out of breath, saying she was afraid they might leave without her.
Yan Ting had stood her up and ignored her for so long that it had made her severely insecure.
When Yan Ting asked how she finished so quickly, she said she’d asked her supervisor for leave. When he refused, she quit.
Lin Sandie’s devotion to Yan Ting was crystal clear to Lei Xinsui, the bystander.
“You and Yan Ting don’t seem to be in contact anymore?” Xing Meilu’s question pulled Lei Xinsui back from her memories.
“We cut ties long ago,” Lei Xinsui said, lighting another cigarette.
“Why?”
“Like I said, Yan Ting is a person with grand ambitions. There was no way she could be with Lin Sandie. I know she truly loved her, but she still got married to an official from a government department.”
“That silly girl waited bitterly at first, but after a year, she couldn’t take it anymore and tried to break up with Yan Ting.”
“I don’t know what got into Yan Ting, but she went crazy and beat Lin Sandie so badly she ended up in the hospital.”
“I just don’t understand how Yan Ting became like that. She used to play around, but it was always consensual. She’d never lost her temper over anyone. When I first heard the news, I thought I must have misheard.”
“I couldn’t stand her treating Lin Sandie that way. We had a huge fight. I even threatened to end our friendship and quit, but she was adamant and refused to let Lin Sandie go. And Lin Sandie was even more infuriating. I told her to come with me, to leave Yan Ting, but she refused. I was so angry back then. I told them they were a toxic mess, a real bastard-and-doormat situation, and they could do whatever they wanted… and that’s how things ended up like this.”
“I… I should have been more insistent back then. I shouldn’t have said those things to Lin Sandie. She was lying in a hospital bed with bandages over her eyes. She was terrified, trembling constantly. She definitely never imagined Yan Ting would do that to her. She was scared to death by Yan Ting…”
After saying all this in one breath, Lei Xinsui visibly relaxed. She took a long drag from her cigarette and asked, “How is Lin Sandie now?”
Xing Meilu and Shen Fan exchanged a look. “She’s still working at Yan Ting’s company. She took out a loan to buy her own place. She seems to be doing okay.”
“…That’s good. Yan Ting hasn’t hit her again, has she? It’s strange, though. I know Yan Ting. Even if she wanted to, I don’t think she could win a fight against Lin Sandie, who’s taller than her.”
“We don’t know,” Xing Meilu said, shaking her head.
As they were discussing Lin Sandie and Yan Ting, a young woman in a green baseball jacket suddenly pushed the door open. She was tall and slender, with a refined and refreshing air, completely different from Lei Xinsui.
“We have guests?” the young woman asked as she took off her backpack.
“They’re from the Inspectorate, here to ask some questions.” Seeing the woman, Lei Xinsui quickly extinguished her half-smoked cigarette and stood up to take the backpack from her.
“What about?” The woman froze when she heard “Inspectorate,” her eyes widening.
Seeing that they had learned enough about Lin Sandie, Xing Meilu and Shen Fan had no desire to stay longer. They stood up, smiled, and shook hands with Lei Xinsui.
“This is my girlfriend, Xue Jia,” Lei Xinsui introduced her, a little shyly. Xing Meilu was surprised to see this side of her and nodded with a smile at Xue Jia.
“Thank you for your cooperation. We wish you both the best.” For some reason, Xing Meilu felt that this woman, Xue Jia, had a disposition somewhat similar to Lin Sandie’s.
It wasn’t quitting time yet, so the first-floor lobby was quiet. The rustling of a plastic bag broke Xing Meilu’s train of thought. She looked up to see a woman in a gray cleaner’s uniform not far away, fitting a large black plastic bag onto a garbage trolley.
The female cleaner had a head of curly black short hair, looked to be in her forties, and wore a mask. Her body was much slimmer than that of most middle-aged women. After securing the bag, she pushed the trolley toward the elevators.
“Are you new? The service elevator for trash is over there,” the receptionist said with a hint of disgust.
The cleaner immediately nodded and, following the receptionist’s directions, headed toward a different elevator.
Author's Notes
A little preview: Lou Lou and Lin Sandie will meet in the next chapter.
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