In mid-April 2003, Duan broke his leg when he jumped off a pyramid scheme den. After someone called the police, police and doctors arrived and took him to the hospital. All the people at the pyramid scheme den were afraid of taking responsibility and scattered in all directions.
Before the National Day, after recovering his leg, Duan Jiang went to the police station to inquire about the progress of the case. He wanted the people who had deceived him to compensate him for his medical expenses and lost wages, but he couldn't name the leader of the pyramid scheme, nor did he know where they had gone.
Without finding the leader of the den, Duan Jiang was treated in time and the police station did not take it as a big case at all, and the matter was left unresolved.
"Guess who the boss of Duan Jiang's pyramid scheme is?" Although Wu Sheng is from Guangdong, unlike his master Liang Ge, he speaks Mandarin to me every time.
Wu Sheng told me that he followed Liang Ge to look up the records of that time, and in Duan Jiang's account, the big boss of that den happened to be a couple in their early thirties.
Duan Jiang became the prime suspect of course.
I took Duan Jiang's materials and retrieved the medical records from the archives room. Wu Sheng was going to take the archived film negatives to develop, which were the clearest pictures they could find.
I thought that with photos and identity information, it would be very easy to find someone, but after two or three days, there was no news.
On Friday morning, I went to see the two bodies that died suddenly with Yan Ge. In the afternoon, after sorting out the files, I slumped in my chair, flipping through the Intranet technical forum and texting Lili. I promised again and again that I would take a day off for the weekend and we would go to Tianhe City. While we were having a big meal, Yan came in from outside.
"Go to the police station, they found the person."
I had expected to see Duan Jiang in the detention room, but he was sitting in the reception room on the first floor of the police station, with mineral water and an ashtray in front of him.
Duan Jiang, a young man in his twenties, looked tall, thin and fair-skinned, wearing a grey jacket, with a northern accent. Liang and Wu Sheng, who were chatting with him, stopped when they saw us and asked me to take the blood sample and fingerprints.
Duan Jiang stretched out his palm, which was warm and dry, and I didn't feel the slightest tremor except for the moment the blood needle was inserted.
When Wu Sheng saw us off, he handed me a plastic bag containing Duan Jiang's only shoe.
Wu told me that Duan Jiang's roommate had reported that he only had this pair of sneakers and if no bloodstains were found on them, he would have to be put back first.
The murder has been going on for several days. Even if there were bloodstains on the clothes, they must have been washed long ago. Now only this pair of shoes, which looks like they haven't been washed for a long time, still has hope.
The person in charge of this job is me.
When we were in the forensic physical evidence class at university, we did the experiment. I remember very clearly that the old professor took several tubes of blood, some from dogs and pigs, and some from humans. A group of four people, with a total of three samples, only three test strips were provided. The teacher told us that the test strips were expensive and needed to be used sparingly.
The experiment is simple. Wipe off the bloodstain, soak it in half a milliliter of water for a few minutes, insert the test strip into it, one line is negative, two lines are positive, positive means it's human blood. I once thought there was no need to teach it at all, and anyone could learn it just by looking at the instructions on the test strip.
It was only when I faced the sneakers that I realized how naive I had been.
It turns out that the hardest part of judging whether there is blood or not is not the final step of inserting the test strip, but how to spot it. Bloodstains are not as bright red and conspicuous as they are in the laboratory. When they are covered with dust and then naturally dried and oxidized, high-concentration bloodstains turn dark red, while low-concentration ones are just a little yellow.
The deep blue sneakers covered with dust have spots of varying shades on the upper and sole, and it is obviously impossible to tell with the naked eye whether the stains are bloodstains or not.
I followed Yan Ge's instructions and rubbed the stains bit by bit with the folded filter paper, then watched him drop the pungent reagent on it, hoping for a blue positive reaction. We used more than half a bottle of benzidine and found no change in color at any spot.
Duan Jiang's suspicion has been temporarily ruled out. Wu Sheng told me that when they returned the shoes, they also gave each other a pack of cigarettes.
Duan Jiang was glad, not because of the cigarettes, but because he knew of the couple's death.
"He deserved it! They should have died long ago!"
Duan Jiang recognized the couple, though he did not know their names.
In 2003, Duan Jiang's fellow townsman Lao Zhang told him that Guangdong offers good pay, easy work and plenty of opportunities. With a secondary vocational school education, he thought the worst would be a job in a factory, but instead, Old Zhang took him from Guangzhou Railway Station to a pyramid scheme den after transferring for several hours.
The three-bedroom, one-living-room house accommodates more than a dozen people, and Old Zhang is the manager of the den. Duan Jiang's ID card was seized and he had to attend classes over and over again.
After listening to success lessons for half a month and attending one passionate success sharing session after another, Duan Jiang was bewitched and felt that he was about to get rich.
As a result, he called all his relatives and friends and they all advised him, "You'd better go into the factory and find a job!"
Duan Jiang was about to run out of money and, at last, began to suspect Lao Zhang, who had brought him here, and the manager who was teaching. He wanted to quit, but he didn't want to leave empty-handed and get his money back.
But Old Zhang, who had promised to return the money when he quit, turned his face away and not only refused to return the money to him, but also took his ID card.
Without an ID card, he couldn't find a job when he went out and had to go back to his hometown to get a replacement. But now, Duan Jiang doesn't even have the fare to return to his hometown.
Duan Jiang felt that it was Old Zhang, who had tricked him here, who had tricked him. The two quarreled in the rented room and then got into a fight. Eventually, they were pulled apart by others. But then he found that wherever he went, there were two people following him, and he realized that it wasn't so easy to get away.
In mid-April, he finally found an opportunity to retrieve his ID card from under the old man's bed and take eight hundred yuan from his pocket.
Unfortunately, he was discovered just as he was about to go out. He rushed into the toilet, fell from the second-floor window and broke his left foot slightly.
When the police took him to the hospital and turned back to look for the pyramid scheme members, the room was empty and Old Zhang could no longer get through on the phone. He didn't earn any money and spent a lot on his medical expenses. He went to the police station several times without giving up, but there was no progress in the case.
He wandered around the original pyramid scheme den several times but didn't find a single person he knew. Fortunately, after his foot injury was almost healed, he finally found a job as a salesperson that provided food and accommodation.
Hearing about Duan Jiang's escape experience, I couldn't help feeling a bit sad.
In the years after 2000, the pyramid scheme was just on TV and not much known to the common people. It was also a time when pyramid schemes were rampant, and anyone could receive a call from a friend or relative and then disappear completely.
Although I was lured to a pyramid scheme den too, the difference was that I ended the nightmare in just one day and one night. Duan Jiang spent two months and paid a heavy price.
I know the address of the girl who tricked me into going there. Every year when I go back to my hometown for the New Year, I want to go there but have never been.
Duan Jiang also told us that he had never gone back to look for those pyramid scheme people, and he was glad: "I did not choose revenge."
Duan Jiang was familiar with the members of the pyramid scheme gang, which gave the major case team a glimmer of hope, along with the stack of ID cards found at the scene, a huge pyramid scheme gang gradually emerged before us –