After returning to the precinct with the police, the blond-haired man was immediately taken away under escort. Once the formalities were completed, an overnight interrogation was set to begin. The police already held substantial evidence, more than enough to establish that he was the perpetrator of the July 31 robbery-homicide. Whether he confessed or not was now largely irrelevant.
Ken, meanwhile, was summoned by Captain Zhao into an empty conference room. The door had barely closed when Captain Zhao could no longer hold back his scolding.
"What were you thinking? Didn't I tell you—over and over—not to act recklessly? The suspect could have been carrying a controlled weapon. He was extremely dangerous! So why did you still step in? Just because you can fight, you think you can catch a blade with your bare hands?"
Ken could only sigh inwardly. He had no desire to intervene, no wish to draw attention. But when that man had lost his mind and charged at him with a knife, what choice had he had? Especially with Zhu Ke'er and her friend standing nearby—how could he simply dodge and retreat?
Still, he knew Captain Zhao meant well and was genuinely concerned for his safety. After all, as the saying went, no matter how skilled you were, a kitchen knife could still end you. There was no shortage of news stories about professional fighters being killed or maimed by street thugs wielding knives.
"He was hiding in a narrow alley. I was waiting outside, planning to hold position until your people arrived. Then he suddenly snapped and rushed out with a knife. I had no choice—I had to act."
After hearing Ken's explanation, Captain Zhao thought for a moment, then pointed to a chair for him to sit. He offered Ken a cigarette; Ken declined, so Captain Zhao lit one for himself and sat down.
Watching Captain Zhao smoke, Ken felt a flicker of unease. What was this about?
"Mr. Ken," Captain Zhao said, "when you last registered your personal information, you mentioned that your previous company had gone under and that you were temporarily unemployed. How are things now? Any prospects for a new job?"
Ken found the sudden interest in his personal affairs puzzling. He weighed his words before replying, "I'm planning to take a short break for now—整理一下 things, and rethink my career path."
"You've trained in martial arts since you were young, haven't you?" Captain Zhao asked again.
"Uh… I wouldn't exactly say that," Ken replied. "I've just always had a bit of interest in kung fu and that sort of thing. I've practiced on and off on my own, spent time at the gym building strength. I've never really trained systematically with anyone."
In truth, Ken had never had much interest in martial arts or combat sports in the past, let alone trained seriously. At most, he had watched a few action films. But he knew Captain Zhao was suspicious of his physical abilities, and he needed a plausible explanation.
Captain Zhao then drifted from topic to topic, chatting idly about Marvel superheroes and wuxia novels. The more he talked, the more confused Ken became. Finally, he asked bluntly, "Captain Zhao, shouldn't you be quite busy right now? The suspect was just arrested. Don't you need to personally conduct the interrogation?"
Captain Zhao stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. "That won't start so soon. There's still time. You know, this guy actually had a fair bit of counter-surveillance awareness. After the incident, we pulled the footage around the ATM. Inside the ATM booth, outside it, nearby public security cameras, shopfront cameras—none of them captured him. He chose a spot with no coverage at all and deliberately avoided other camera angles along the way. Even his escape route was planned to bypass surveillance. In only a few frames did we catch what might have been a corner of his body, but nothing that could confirm his direction or identity…"
"But didn't you identify him the very next day?" Ken asked, puzzled. He could not bring himself to believe the suspect was particularly clever.
At first, Ken had assumed it was a crime of personal vendetta. Only later did he learn it was a robbery. In this day and age, what kind of "smart" criminal still committed armed robbery on the street, even murder? How many people carried large sums of cash anymore? He had heard that the victim, who later died despite emergency treatment, had withdrawn only a thousand yuan from the ATM—to prepare a red envelope for a wedding banquet the next day. Combined with the suspect's background of having just completed a prison sentence, it smacked of criminal thinking frozen in a bygone era. Whatever "counter-surveillance" skills he possessed were laughably inadequate in the face of modern investigative methods.
Captain Zhao nodded. "That's because we got clear footage of him from other cameras, confirmed his identity, and located his residence in the city. We found plenty of evidence there. He likely caught wind of the investigation and realized how serious this had become. He fled before we could reach his place—that's why you ran into him on the street."
Ken listened attentively, saying nothing. He knew that Captain Zhao's unusually candid disclosure of investigative details meant something was coming.
Sure enough, Captain Zhao changed tack. "At the time, we concluded that for him to avoid so many cameras so precisely, he must have scouted the area in advance. So we reviewed surveillance footage from the days leading up to the incident—around the ATM and the surrounding intersections."
Ken's heart skipped a beat.
Captain Zhao looked at him. "Mr. Ken, your encounter with the case that night wasn't a coincidence, was it? Lately, you've been volunteering as a sort of nighttime 'patrol,' haven't you?"
Ken finally understood why Captain Zhao had been chatting about superheroes and martial-arts fiction earlier. His nightly wanderings—his so-called patrols—had been captured on camera, and during the investigation, the police had noticed him.
Spending night after night without sleep, roaming the streets until dawn for several consecutive days—there was nothing normal about that.
Captain Zhao apparently believed that after stopping a violent crime outside his own building, Ken had developed ideas of becoming a "volunteer vigilante," deliberately patrolling the streets at night in search of opportunities to "do good."
Ken screamed inwardly in protest. Discovering the wounded victim that night had been pure coincidence—an entirely unwanted coincidence at that.
But he could not explain it that way. Captain Zhao's interpretation was, in fact, the most convenient one. Otherwise, it would have been nearly impossible to justify why he had been roaming the streets night after night. So Ken could only mutter vague replies.
Captain Zhao went on lecturing him for another ten minutes, repeatedly stressing that he should call the police in any emergency rather than playing the hero. Only then did he allow Ken to leave the precinct.
Catching the suspect that day entitled Ken to a twenty-thousand-yuan reward from the police, though it would take some time before the money was actually disbursed—a welcome windfall nonetheless.
There had also been reporters seeking interviews, all of which Ken firmly declined. He asked Captain Zhao not to disclose his name or identity to the media, and, if possible, to limit the spread of videos online showing him subduing the suspect.
Captain Zhao, for his part, seemed genuinely impressed. He felt that Ken was the type who truly wanted to "fight crime," not someone chasing fame.
…
Standing at the entrance of the precinct, Ken felt a lingering chill of fear.
If he had not met Captain Zhao earlier by stopping that attack downstairs—if he had not been the one to discover the crime scene and thus benefited from the police's initial assumptions—then when they reviewed surveillance footage from the previous days and saw a "bald, burly man" roaming the streets all night, every night, they would surely have treated him as a suspect.
And if they investigated further and discovered that he not only wandered the streets all night but also spent entire days training at the gym, their suspicions would only deepen.
Then, if they searched his apartment and found certain documents on his computer—or worse, the carefully wrapped rabbit carcasses he had discarded in public trash bins—the questions would multiply.
Ken had no idea how things might have unfolded. He was certain no crime could ever be pinned on him, but the exposure of his bodily mutations would have been inevitable.
"It seems I wasn't careful enough after all," Ken murmured to himself.
Fortunately, the tenant in the apartment he had purchased had given him a firm answer: they had found a new place and were preparing to move. By around the sixth, the apartment would be vacant. He planned to move there himself. The area was well-equipped with daily amenities, but the population density was significantly lower, and there were far fewer surveillance cameras.
After returning home, Ken replied to the WeChat message Zhu Ke'er had sent earlier, briefly explaining what had happened that day.
Zhu Ke'er, in turn, explained that Yang Rui had misunderstood something he said as an insult and had gone to confront him. She also asked Ken to confirm whether the bald man in the now-viral "Reclusive Warrior Monk, Real Kung Fu" video online was indeed him.
It was already past midnight by the time Zhu Ke'er finally fell silent. They exchanged goodnights, and before signing off, she reminded Ken that their planned hike was scheduled for Sunday morning at seven.
Before he realized it, they had been chatting for nearly two hours.
What had once been an awkward, slightly unfamiliar "friendship" between them had, through this incident, somehow grown far more natural and at ease.