In a short while after that, Officer Liao arrived. I had already explained the situation briefly to him on the phone. He asked me, “Song Yang, are you sure about this information? This is a very serious matter. Are you sure Bai Yidao is really helping the murderer?”
“I can guarantee you that he’s in the hotel right now,” I replied. “You’ll see it soon when we go in.”
We went to the front desk and asked which room Bai Yidao was in. Officer Liao divided the police officers he brought with him into teams. They would go up through the staircase while the four of us would follow Officer Liao in the elevator.
We reached the floor where Bai Yidao was supposed to be. Officer Liao had the police officers surround the room on both sides of the hallway. He then asked a hotel staff to knock on the door and announce, “Room service!”
“I don’t need anything!” replied Bai Yidao stiffly from inside.
The staff glanced at Officer Liao, and he whispered a few words into his ear. The staff then continued, “Sir, the identity information you left at the front desk is wrong. The manager asked me to check it out. Please open the door.”
“Okay, give me a minute.”
After a while, the door opened, and Bai Yidao was greeted with a dozen guns pointed at him.
Bai Yidao was stunned by the battle outside the door. Out of his self-defense instinct, he subconsciously extended his hand to the holster of his own gun. Officer Liao screamed, “Bai Yidao! Don’t move! Put your hands on your head!”
“What’s going on here, sir?” Bai Yidao asked as he raised his hands. When he saw the four of us, his expressions changed. “Oh, I get it now! The so-called consultant must’ve decided to make me the scapegoat!”
“Stop talking nonsense,” I sneered. “You know what you did.”
“What exactly did I do?” he asked. “I was just tired from work, so I decided to take a break in a hotel room. Is that illegal?”
Officer Liao raised his hand and asked the police officers to handcuff him. One of the officers who used to be good friends with Bai Yidao took out the handcuffs and said to Bai Yidao helplessly, “Sorry big brother.”
“What are you doing? I want to call my father! Let me go!”
Although Bai Yidao resisted loudly and violently, he was eventually handcuffed.
We rushed into the room and searched through it. We couldn’t find any sign of the Wealth Beckoning Cat at all. I uncovered the blanket on the bed and saw footprints on the mattress. I then looked up and saw a ventilation duct.
I stood on the bed and removed the cover of the ventilation duct, and reached my hand into it. I didn’t need to reach all that far at all before I found something in there. I pulled it out—it was a bag, and when I opened it there was cat figurine inside!
Everyone gasped as I took the cat figurine out of the bag. Despite its size, it had a heft to it. It probably weighed a few pounds at least. It seemed to be made of ceramic, and the surface was painted gold. The carving details were very vivid. All of the cat’s features were rendered realistically, and the two eyes were made of emerald gems but they had a mysterious nature to them that made them seem like they were following you no matter which angle you looked at them.
“What is this?” Officer Liao asked Bai Yidao.
“Some figurine a buddy of mine sent to me,” he answered. “Don’t worry, it’s definitely not an antique.”
“Why did you hide it in the ventilation duct?”
“I was afraid that it might get stolen. Is that wrong?”
Officer Liao looked at him coldly and ordered, “Take away his gun and badge!”
Bai Yidao tried to free his hands and struggled in the handcuffs until his shoulders twisted. He shouted, “You’re all abusing your authority! Tell me, Officer Liao, which law did I break? Let me call my father!”
“Are you telling me you don’t know what this really is?” I asked.
He stared at me fixedly. Like a ball that had lost all its air inside, the deflated Bai Yidao conceded and let his colleagues take away his badge and gun.
Later, when Bai Yidao had calmed down, Officer Liao gave him a glass of water and asked him to explain how he got to know Yu Jun.
“I don’t really know him,” he said. “We just had a deal, that’s all.”
It turned out that when the first case occurred three months ago, Bai Yidao was sent to question Yu Jun who then asked Bai Yidao to do him a favor. Yu Jun said that the police had taken most of the possessions in the deceased’s house, which included something that the deceased had borrowed from him, and that something was this cat figurine. Yu Jun claimed that the figurine was very important to him, yet he had no proof of ownership for the object, so he feared that it would be documented as unclaimed evidence by the court since the deceased left no surviving heirs.
Bai Yidao had seen this cat figurine when he was investigating the crime scene. Every little detail described by Yu Jun perfectly matched the characteristics of the cat figurine he had seen, so Bai Yidao was convinced that the object was indeed Yu Jun’s. He therefore agreed to help Yu Jun.
So Yu Jun prepared a substitute figurine and gave it to Bai Yidao to replace the one in the evidence room. Bai Yidao did as he was told without thinking much of it at all.
That was until he heard from me that the cat figurine was used as an instrument of murder. Bai Yidao was so scared that he would land in hot water if the truth was found out that he contacted Yu Jun again. At the same time, we had just visited Yu Jun, so he was aware that he would be suspected for the murders.
Therefore, Yu Jun threatened Bai Yidao that he would expose his prior misconduct if he didn’t help him get rid of the evidence. Bai Yidao was afraid that he would lose his job and go to jail, so he had no choice but to co-operate with Yu Jun once again. They had a rendezvous at the old residential building where Yu Jun would hand over the Wealth Beckoning Cat to Bai Yidao, who would then hide it in a hotel room. But to his surprise, Officer Liao had brought a team of officers to catch him here.
I observed Bai Yidao closely as he narrated his account of events. He seemed to be telling the truth. It seemed that he was unknowingly tricked by Yu Jun to steal the evidence from the police and was not involved in the murders at all.
But I still felt there was one thing that he was still hiding something from us.
“Why did you help Yu Jun to steal evidence?” I asked.
“No reason,” Bai Yidao answered nonchalantly. “He’s a good friend. I did it out of loyalty, perhaps.”
“Don’t you know the punishments for stealing and destroying evidence, you fool? Aren’t you a police officer?”
“Is it really a punishable crime? Did you just make that up?”
Officer Liao shook his head and sighed with great regret. “How can you be so naïve, Yidao?! It’s a heavy crime that could land you in jail for three to seven years! You’re ruining your own future here! Now tell us the whole truth!”
Bai Yidao was shaken by Officer Liao’s words. He bit his lip and finally confessed, “Yu Jun is Weiwei’s uncle. Since we’re going to get married in the future, how could I refuse to help her family?”
Everyone was shocked. I observed him and realized that he was telling the truth.
Slap! The whole room was stunned once again when Huang Xiaotao smacked Bai Yidao across his face.
“If it wasn’t for you, a family of three wouldn’t have died!” thundered Huang Xiaotao. “Not only did you tamper with the evidence, you also failed to report it when you realized that it was used for murder. You even continued to help the murderer! Don’t you have any conscience at all?”
Tears welled up in Bai Yidao’s eyes. “I had no idea that I committed such a serious crime! I was only in the police academy for half a year before my father got me into the police force through his connections. I lost my mind when I heard that this thing was used to kill people. And he threatened to drag me down with him if I didn’t help him! What choice did I have?”
Bai Yidao then buried his face into his hands in shame and guilt. He whimpered and cried—the anger that was there before was gone without a trace.
I couldn’t help but sympathize with him. He had been used by Yu Jun from beginning to end, leading him step by step into his own ruin.