5. 辩护人选

The photograph on the dressing table was yellowed at the edges, its corners softened by years of handling. Lin Zhengnan picked it up with the care of a man handling evidence, but his mind was already dissecting the image: Zhao Hongtu, younger, thinner, his arm draped around a woman with sharp cheekbones and a smile that did not reach her eyes. The woman was not Fang Wanyi. She wore a railway uniform, a green cap tilted at a jaunty angle, and she held a bouquet of wilting roses.

Qian peered over his shoulder. "Recognize her?"

"No. But she's someone important. The way Zhao is holding her—that's not a casual work photograph. That's a keepsake."

Lin turned the photograph over. On the back, in faded blue ink, was a date: June 1978. And a single word: "Lishui."

Lishui was a small town three hours south of Binjiang, known for its railway junction and its now-defunct locomotive repair factory. If Zhao had a history there, a history that predated his marriage, then Fang Wanyi's disappearance might be connected to that past—a ghost she had finally decided to confront.

They searched the rest of the suburban house. In a locked drawer in the study, Lin found a stack of letters, all addressed to Fang Wanyi, all postmarked from Lishui. The letters were from a woman named Su Min, and they detailed a relationship that had soured—accusations of betrayal, threats of exposure, pleas for money. The final letter, dated 1985, was short and chilling: "If you don't help me, I will tell everyone about the documents. I have copies. I will not be silenced."

Lin pocketed the letters. "We need to find Fang Wanyi. She didn't take the knife to kill her husband. She took it because she's going to confront someone else."

"The woman in the photograph?"

"Or the woman who wrote these letters. Either way, we're running out of time."

They drove back to the city, Lin calling Zhao Xiaodi's number repeatedly, but each attempt went to voicemail. He left messages, urgent and clipped. He called the school—she had not attended classes that day. He called the hospital—Liu Weidong was stable, but no one had visited him.

At the bureau, Lin pulled up the railway personnel records from 1978 to 1985. The search was slow, the files mostly paper, but he finally found what he needed: a roster of female employees at the Lishui Locomotive Repair Factory. And there, in the administrative section, was Su Min—clerical assistant, transferred to Binjiang in 1981, left the railway system in 1986, no forwarding address.

"Qian, I need a current address for Su Min. Check the residence registry, the telephone directory, anything."

Qian nodded and disappeared into the archives. Lin sat at his desk, the letters spread before him, his mind racing. Su Min had been blackmailing Fang Wanyi. She had threatened to reveal documents—what documents? And why had Fang Wanyi gone to confront her now, at the height of the investigation?

The answer came to him in a flash: the documents were the original Yongxin Logistics incorporation papers. Su Min had been the one who helped Zhao set up the shell company, and she had kept copies as insurance. When Fang Wanyi began her clandestine documentation project, she had tried to retrieve those copies—but Su Min had refused, demanded more money, and then disappeared from the railway system entirely.

Now, with the investigation closing in, Fang Wanyi had decided to eliminate the loose end. Not by killing her husband, but by destroying the woman who held the evidence that could implicate him—and, by extension, Fang Wanyi herself.

Lin found Fang Wanyi's mother's address in the suburbs and called the local police station. He requested an immediate welfare check and a trace on any vehicles registered to the family. He also sent a description of Su Min to the city's police network, asking for any known locations or associates.

The minutes crawled. Lin paced his office, the photograph of Zhao and Su Min burning a hole in his pocket. At nine in the morning, his phone rang—the local police from the suburbs.

"We found Mrs. Fang's car," the officer said. "Abandoned near the old railway station in Lishui. No sign of her. But we found blood on the driver's seat. Not a lot, but enough."

Lin felt his stomach drop. "Is she injured?"

"We don't know. The car was unlocked, and her purse was on the passenger seat. Wallet, ID, everything intact. She didn't take anything. It looks like she got out in a hurry—or someone forced her out."

Lin thanked the officer and hung up. He turned to Qian, who had just returned with a slip of paper. "Su Min's address. She lives in Lishui, on Old Factory Road. She never left."

They took the highway south, Lin driving with a reckless speed that made Qian grip the door handle. The landscape shifted from urban sprawl to agricultural fields, then to the rusting skeletons of abandoned factories. Lishui was a town that time had forgotten—once a thriving industrial hub, now a collection of shuttered workshops and empty lots.

Old Factory Road was a dirt track lined with ramshackle houses. Number 17 was a two-story structure with peeling paint and a yard overgrown with weeds. Lin knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He tried the handle—unlocked.

Inside, the air was stale, heavy with dust. The furniture was covered in sheets, as if no one had lived there for years. But in the kitchen, a kettle was still warm, and a half-filled teacup sat on the counter. Someone had been there recently.

Lin called out: "Mrs. Su? It's the police. We're looking for Fang Wanyi."

A creak from upstairs. Lin motioned for Qian to stay, then climbed the narrow staircase. The upper floor was a single room, cluttered with boxes and old newspapers. In the corner, a woman sat on a low stool—her face familiar from the photograph, but aged, her eyes hollow with terror.

"Are you Su Min?" Lin asked.

She nodded, her gaze darting toward the window. "She was here. She came with a knife—she said she just wanted to talk, but I know what she wanted. She wanted the documents. And I gave them to her."

"What documents?"

"The incorporation papers for Yongxin Logistics. Zhao's signature, my signature, the original ledger. She's been asking me for years, but I refused because I needed the leverage. But today, she said she didn't care anymore. She said the law was going to fail, and she had to act now."

Lin knelt beside her. "Where is she now?"

Su Min pointed toward the window, toward the railway tracks that ran behind the house. "She said she was going to the junction. She said that's where it all started, and that's where it would end."

Lin raced down the stairs, Qian close behind. They ran through the overgrown yard, crossed a rusted fence, and emerged onto the railway embankment. The tracks stretched into the distance, gleaming under the midday sun. And there, about two hundred meters away, stood Fang Wanyi, her silhouette unmistakable against the gray gravel.

She was not holding the knife. She was holding a bundle of papers—the documents she had retrieved from Su Min. And she was facing the tracks, waiting for something.

"Mrs. Fang!" Lin shouted, his voice carrying across the open space. "Don't do anything rash. We can work this out. The evidence is enough. You don't need to do this."

She turned slowly. Her face was calm, almost serene, as if she had been expecting him all along. "Detective Lin. You found me. I'm not surprised—you're very thorough. But you're too late for what I came here to do."

"Too late for what?"

She held up the papers. "These are the originals. Zhao's signature, the invoices, the proof that he personally authorized every transfer. I collected the dinner-table evidence to bring him down in court. But I always knew that if the system failed, I would need a backup plan. Su Min was my backup plan. And now I have everything I need."

Lin stepped closer, his hands raised. "If you have everything, then come with me. Let's present this to the prosecutor. Let's do this legally."

Fang Wanyi laughed—a soft, broken sound. "Legally? Detective, you've been chasing this case for weeks. You've seen how the system works. Zhao has lawyers, connections, political allies. He can delay, obfuscate, and eventually walk free. But if I do this—if I make this public, if I stand on these tracks and tell the world what he's done—he can't escape. The scandal will finish him."

Lin understood. She wasn't planning to kill anyone with the knife. She was planning to kill Zhao's reputation—and possibly herself—by staging a public confession that the media would not ignore. A suicide on the railway tracks, with the evidence spread out like a martyr's testament, would be a story no one could bury.

"Don't do it for him," Lin said, his voice softening. "Do it for your daughter. Xiaodi is still young. She's been through enough. She doesn't need to lose her mother too."

Fang Wanyi's composure cracked. Her eyes glistened, and her hands trembled. "You don't understand, Detective. I've been dead for twenty-five years. I've been a ghost in that apartment, a puppet at that table. The only thing that kept me alive was the hope that one day, I could make him pay. But now, with the investigation—with you—I finally have the chance. And I'm terrified that if I walk away from this moment, I'll never find the courage again."

Lin took another step. He was close enough now to see the tears streaming down her cheeks, to see the raw desperation in her eyes. He saw the same woman who had cooked those perfect dinners, who had aligned her knife with clinical precision, who had lived an entire life in the shadow of a man who had never seen her as anything more than a prop.

"Mrs. Fang, I can't promise that the trial will be quick or clean. I can't promise that Zhao won't try to drag you through the mud. But I can promise you this: the evidence you've given me—the ledgers, the tapes, the photographs—is the strongest case I've ever built. And I will not let it fail. Not because the system is perfect. But because you and Xiaodi deserve to see justice done in the light, not in the dark."

She stared at him for a long moment. The papers trembled in her grip. Then, slowly, she lowered her arms.

"You promise me, Detective. You promise me that he will face a court. That the world will know."

"I promise."

She walked toward him, her steps unsteady, her face streaked with tears. He took the papers from her hands, then gently guided her away from the tracks. She did not resist. She seemed to collapse into his arms, her body finally releasing the tension that had held her upright for so many years.

They walked back to the car, Qian trailing behind. Fang Wanyi was silent, her gaze fixed on the ground. Lin helped her into the back seat and drove away from Lishui, the town shrinking in his rearview mirror.

As they crossed the city limits, Lin's phone rang. He glanced at the screen—it was Shen Huaiyuan.

"Lin, I need you to listen carefully. I've just received word from a source in the prosecutor's office. Zhao Hongtu has filed a motion to recuse you from the investigation. He claims you have a personal vendetta against him, and he's submitted a sworn affidavit from his daughter, Zhao Xiaodi, supporting that claim."

Lin almost swerved off the road. "What? That's impossible. Xiaodi gave me the evidence. She's on our side."

"She was on your side, Lin. But she's also a child who has been living under her father's roof for her entire life. And as of this morning, she's no longer talking to your investigators. She's been seen with Cheng Wei, Zhao's lawyer, and she's signed a statement saying that you coerced her into providing false evidence."

Lin's blood turned cold. He looked into the rearview mirror, where Fang Wanyi sat, still dazed, unaware of the new crisis.

"She's been bought," Lin said. "Or threatened. Or both."

"Either way, the motion is on the docket. The hearing is tomorrow morning. If the judge grants it, you're off the case, the evidence is tainted, and Zhao walks."

Lin gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. He had the originals. He had Fang Wanyi's testimony. He had the knife—not as a weapon, but as a symbol of everything that had driven this family to the edge.

But he had lost the daughter. And without her, the chain of custody for the evidence was broken.

"I need you to do something for me, Shen. I need you to talk to Xiaodi. Find out what Cheng Wei promised her. Find out if she can still be turned."

Shen was silent for a long moment. Then: "I'll try. But Lin, you need to be prepared. If she's already committed to the defense, there's nothing I can do. And if the judge grants the recusal—"

"Then I'll fight. I'll take this case to the provincial court. I'll go to the media. I'll do whatever it takes."

"That sounds like a threat."

"It's a promise."

Lin hung up and drove through the city, his mind churning. He had the original incorporation papers. He had Fang Wanyi. He had Liu Weidong's pending testimony. But he had lost the thread that connected it all—the girl who had been his silent recorder, the one who had handed him the tapes and the photographs.

Zhao Xiaodi had been playing a game far more complex than he had realized. And now, at the moment of truth, she had made her choice.

Lin parked in front of the bureau and helped Fang Wanyi out of the car. She looked at him with eyes that were still raw from tears but were slowly regaining their focus.

"Detective, what happens now?"

"We keep fighting," Lin said. "We take the evidence we have, and we build a case that can survive any motion, any affidavit, any lie. You've given me the truth. Now I have to make the truth matter."

She nodded, then walked into the building, her posture straightening with each step.

Lin watched her go, then pulled out his phone and dialed Zhao Xiaodi's number one last time. To his surprise, she answered.

"Xiaodi, I know about the affidavit. I know you've been talking to Cheng Wei. But I need you to understand something: your mother is safe. She's with me. She gave me the original documents. She came back from Lishui because she believes in the law—and she believes in you."

There was a pause, then a whisper: "She came back?"

"She's at the bureau right now. She's not going anywhere. And neither am I. But I need to know: whose side are you on?"

The silence stretched, agonizing and eternal.

Then, so softly he almost missed it: "I'm on my mother's side. I always was."

"Then help me. Help me make sure your father faces a real trial."

Another pause. Then: "Cheng Wei promised me that if I signed the affidavit, he'd ensure my mother was protected. He said she wouldn't be charged as an accomplice. He said the family would be spared the public shame. But if my mother is already with you—if she's already committed—then what do I owe Cheng Wei?"

"Nothing," Lin said. "You owe him nothing. You owe your mother everything."

A long, shuddering breath. "Where do I meet you?"

"The Tea Garden. One hour. Come alone. And bring whatever Cheng Wei gave you—any letters, any promises, any documentation."

"I'll be there."

The line went dead. Lin stood in the twilight, the city lights flickering to life around him. He had the mother. He had the daughter. He had the evidence.

But the hearing was tomorrow. And the motion to recuse him was still pending.

He pocketed his phone and walked into the bureau, where Qian was waiting with a stack of files and a grim expression.

"Lin, you need to see this. The prosecutor's office just released a list of potential witnesses for the recusal hearing. They're calling Liu Weidong. And they're calling Zhao Xiaodi."

Lin closed his eyes. The daughter was coming to the Tea Garden, yes—but she was also scheduled to testify against him. One conversation might not be enough to undo the damage Cheng Wei had done.

The battle was far from over. It had just begun to take its most dangerous shape.