Silent Reading by Priest - Book 1

Chapter 12: Julien XI

Luo Wenzhou looked fixedly into her eyes. "Surname Feng, full name 'Feng Nian,' or 'Feng Niange?'"

"I don't know... That's what it sounded like, but he had a bit of an accent, I don't know what the characters were, or even if the last character was a form of address or part of the name," said Zhang Ting numbly. "It was already late that day, and he suddenly jumped out, smiling so fawningly and saying weird things. He seemed a little crazy, and I didn't have anyone with me; I was a little scared, so I kept saying, 'I don't know him.' I wanted to go around him..."

"When did this happen?" asked Luo Wenzhou.

"A while ago," said Zhang Ting. "A while ago there was a kind of mentally unstable flasher running around near our company. A lot of people had seen him. Our boss even didn't dare to have us work overtime, but I happened to have something to finish that day, so I stayed a while. By the time I got downstairs there weren't many people around, so I was a little scared to start with... Otherwise I wouldn't have called my brother to come pick me up."

Fei Du remembered the delivery man he'd met at the coffee shop and suddenly couldn't quite understand something. Thereupon he couldn't resist putting in a word. "And then? Did he pester you?"

Zhang Ting nodded. "I saw my brother had come, so I went around him to cross the street to go meet them, but he suddenly started following me for some reason. I was panicking a little, so I ran a few steps and loudly said, 'Who are you, I don't know you,' and they heard. My brother may have thought he was harassing me, so he came over and hit him."

"He Zhongyi-the man in the photograph, did he fight back?" asked Luo Wenzhou.

"No," said Zhang Ting, her gaze falling as if she couldn't quite bear to go on. "He only covered his head and dodged. I saw then that he actually looked pretty young. I thought I'd been too sensitive and quickly stopped my brother."

Fei Du looked up slightly. "You went to meet...them? Who else was there?"

Zhang Ting said, "My boyfriend was driving. My brother was a little drunk."

"I see," said Fei Du, then made a perfectly right and realistic display of disappointment. "How come all the good girls have boyfriends already? Who's moving so fast?"

Luo Wenzhou frowned at him making such a weird diversion at such a time but didn't tell him to be quiet.

Zhang Ting blushed a little at his suggestive words. "It's Rongshun's Zhao Haochang, don't you know him, too?"

"The Rongshun Law Firm's Attorney Zhao?" Fei Du, seemingly inadvertently, looked past her at Luo Wenzhou. "No wonder the lawyer came so promptly."

Luo Wenzhou asked, "And after that? Did you see He Zhongyi again?"

Zhang Ting shook her head. Looking at Luo Wenzhou, she stammered out, "Captain Luo, my brother couldn't have killed someone."

Luo Wenzhou's expression relaxed. He said to Zhang Ting, "If your brother hasn't done anything wrong, we won't unjustly accuse him. Even if we were so unreasonable that we wanted to pick someone at random to unjustly accuse, we still couldn't pick our old director-general's relative, right? Rest assured: since your brother couldn't have killed anyone, nothing will happen to him here."

Zhang Ting heard him, but it was no use-the useless Zhang Donglai really wasn't easy to handle. So while she'd said he "couldn't have," inside she wasn't so sure.

"Go in and give them a statement," said Luo Wenzhou. "I'll have Lang Qiao come. You just tell her the truth. It'll be all right."

Before he had finished speaking, Fei Du had already moved slightly in front of Zhang Ting and beckoned to her like he was coaxing a child. He quietly said, "Don't be afraid. I'll come with you."