Leonard Cooper wanted to pursue Fiona Bennett back then, so he took her request very seriously and conducted the test with great care. Since water is an easy substance to test, even nine years later, when Gabriel Adams asked about it, he could still answer with certainty that there was nothing else in the water—it was safe. Gabriel Adams tried to steer the conversation toward Susan Wright, and unexpectedly, he uncovered something new. Before Fiona Bennett asked for the test, Susan Wright had also asked someone else to do a test. The items tested were some hair and fingernails; she didn’t say whose they were, but later everyone guessed they must have been her own. At the time, she also asked a senior who had access to lab equipment for help, and the results came back normal, but Susan Wright was dissatisfied with this outcome. Coincidentally, there was a classmate in the training program who was interning in the lab, so the senior naturally had that classmate help with part of the testing. As a result, Susan Wright said he shouldn’t have let someone else do it. Such an accusation was quite unreasonable at the time and made everyone unhappy. As for which classmate was the intern, Leonard Cooper couldn’t remember. When they met, Gabriel Adams asked Fiona Bennett, and Fiona Bennett vaguely recalled—it was either Quincy Hayes or Matthew Mitchell.

Gabriel Adams had always refrained from contacting any of Fiona Bennett’s classmates. He wanted to do enough homework from the outside and avoid alerting anyone. Susan Wright’s death was a sore spot for all the students in the training program, and under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t want to talk about it, so Gabriel Adams planned to leave this “battlefield” for last. That didn’t stop him from learning about these classmates in other ways: Marcus Hamilton is a key figure in internal medicine, from Shanghai, average family background, outgoing personality, considered handsome, and very popular with the nurses; Christopher Brooks works in neurosurgery, also from Shanghai, both parents are intellectuals, cheerful, and compared to Marcus Hamilton, has achieved more academically. Two years ago, he married Lily Carter; among their classmates, only this couple and Frank Bishop are married, the rest are still single. Lily Carter is from Harbin, straightforward and energetic in both speech and action, but since hematology patients especially need peace and quiet, she often starts a sentence loudly and then remembers to lower her voice for the second half, which her colleagues always tease her about. Winnie Hayes is from Wuxi, deputy director of pediatrics, has a sharp personality but is especially patient with children. Quincy Hayes is in surgery, from Xuzhou, the most introverted and withdrawn among the classmates, afraid of social interaction. Queenie Adams comes from a family of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in Shanghai, but she didn’t go into TCM—instead, she stayed in neurosurgery. She’s very quiet and scholarly, and she and Quincy Hayes are the two classmates, male and female, who love reading the most. Selena Adams comes from a well-off family, with a factory in Wenzhou, generous and likes to treat others; she was a bit proud as a student, but after becoming a doctor, that’s almost disappeared, making her very popular—she works in infectious diseases. Crystal Nelson gives the impression of being frail and timid, speaks softly as if she owes people money, but patients especially like her, feeling that this Shanghai doctor is particularly gentle—she’s also in infectious diseases. All these people, regardless of personality—outgoing or reserved—have excellent reputations, with hardly any patient complaints, and even those aren’t their fault. Professionally, they are model “angels in white”; to call any of them a murderer would seem utterly absurd.

But Gabriel Adams knew that people have many sides. A villain might excel in some aspect of morality, but that hidden side doesn’t change their true nature. Moreover, out of a sense of guilt, it’s perfectly normal for a killer to try to make up for it in other ways after committing murder. Striving to be a good doctor, to save lives—wouldn’t that be the best way to allow oneself to live with a clear conscience?

Oh, and there’s also Matthew Mitchell. After being screened out, he’s still doing something related to medicine. He became a pharmaceutical representative, selling drugs to hospitals. As his classmates began to gain influence at Hesheng Hospital, his business got better and better.

Every week, when Gabriel Adams met with Fiona Bennett, he would lay out all the information he’d gathered in front of her. The threads of clues wove into a black hole, and as Fiona Bennett sat across from him listening, she felt herself being drawn into it, growing colder and colder. Fortunately, after each discussion, they would always sit quietly for a while, and Fiona Bennett would feel a bit warmer again.

At first, Fiona Bennett tried to think things through and participate in Gabriel Adams’s reasoning, but as the information piled up, she became more and more lost. She thought, it seems this maze can only be navigated by Gabriel Adams; she would just get trapped inside.

In fact, Gabriel Adams was also confused. To this day, he hadn’t found even a narrow path through the gaps between these fragments of information. Fiona Bennett felt there was a deep, unfathomable black hole, while he felt there were countless holes, like a beehive. He decided to learn more about Susan Wright, to get closer to the deceased. At the end of October, he first visited the Wen family’s neighbors. Several old neighbors recalled Susan Wright and all said the youngest daughter of the Wen family was such a pity—she was sensible from a young age, especially filial, respectful to her older sister, very well-behaved, often took care of stray cats and dogs in the alley, and was kind-hearted. It was rare for the old neighborhood to have such a girl. This evaluation surprised Gabriel Adams a bit; he had thought that since Susan Wright had deceived Fiona Bennett and pretended to be the daughter of a wealthy family, there must be something unsavory about her real self. Now, he felt he couldn’t see through this girl. So he decided to visit Susan Wright’s father, Adrian Wright.

He told Fiona Bennett about this decision. Fiona Bennett was a bit worried, saying, “Isn’t it too soon? The old man probably won’t allow his daughter’s ashes to be moved right now. Can he handle the shock of learning his daughter was murdered?” Gabriel Adams said, “Actually, I’ve already been. This morning, in fact.”

To be precise, it was early that morning, and the whole meeting left Gabriel Adams feeling a bit strange.

Adrian Wright was an old taxi driver, working the day shift—he started at 6:30 a.m. and switched shifts at 11:30 p.m., coming home twice in between to feed his wife. That morning, after picking up his car at the entrance to the neighborhood, he saw a chubby young man hailing him about twenty meters away. The car stopped in front of Gabriel Adams, who got into the passenger seat and said, “Just drive anywhere, take it slow, don’t get on the expressway.” After decades as a driver, Adrian Wright had seen all kinds of people, so such a request didn’t surprise him. He just grunted and slowly drove along Siping Road. There was still an hour before rush hour, so the road was clear, and even driving slowly, the speed was forty kilometers per hour. In no time, they reached the Dalian Road intersection. He heard the passenger beside him say, “Your daughter’s old school is not far from here, right?”

Gabriel Adams dropped this line, ready for a sudden brake. But there wasn’t one. The veteran driver’s wrinkled profile suddenly deepened at the corners of his eyes, and his chest heaved. He shifted into neutral, let the car coast for a while, and stopped at a red light. Only then did he turn to look at this unexpected passenger.

“I have a good friend who knew your daughter, Susan Wright. She told me that Susan Wright’s illness was very strange.” Gabriel Adams paused, as if remembering something, and said, “Oh, I’m a police officer.”

The light turned green. He started off in second gear, driving a bit faster than before.

“Still want me to just drive anywhere?”

Gabriel Adams was taken aback and said, “If you have time, could we talk?”

“I have to make a living.”

“Oh, then just drive anywhere.”

“What was strange about it?” he asked.

“It’s been so long already,” he said.

“Are the police investigating?” he asked.

“It’s just me,” Gabriel Adams said. “If there really are suspicious points, enough to open a case, I’ll convince the bureau…”

“Forget it,” Adrian Wright said.

He drove steadily in third gear.

“If your daughter really was murdered, as her father…”

A sudden brake forced Gabriel Adams to swallow the rest of his words.

“I had two daughters.”

The Santana just stopped in the middle of the road, nowhere near any shops or houses.

“I had two daughters. Both are dead. The dead can’t come back.” Adrian Wright turned to stare at the young man in front of him.

“Now it’s just me, this old man, and her mother, the two of us. What are you investigating, and for whom? For me? I don’t need it, forget it. For Susan Wright? Heh. If you must investigate, do it yourself, don’t come to me. I still have to make a living. This isn’t business. Get out here, I don’t want your money.”

“So I had to get out, right in the middle of the road,” Gabriel Adams told Fiona Bennett.

Fiona Bennett found the father’s attitude a bit odd, and so did Gabriel Adams. He even felt that when Adrian Wright heard him say that Susan Wright might have died unnaturally, he didn’t seem all that surprised. On that face, wrinkled like a northwestern farmer’s, deep within those furrows, there was something Gabriel Adams couldn’t see through.

Maybe there’s something to dig up with Adrian Wright? Gabriel Adams thought. But before going again, he’d have to be prepared and have something solid in hand.

The last Thursday of October. When Fiona Bennett arrived at the café, Gabriel Adams was waiting for her at the door. There was a note on the café door: “Owner has business, closed for the day.”

The sun shone from afar, the autumn air was crisp and clear. Gabriel Adams said, “The weather’s so nice—how about a walk nearby?”

Fiona Bennett opened her palm, looking at the sunlight filling her hand, her mind wandering. The day she and Susan Wright rode their bikes down Asia’s First Bay into the river breeze, it was just such a beautiful day.

She shook her head, pushing these thoughts away, and said, “This place is too close to my home. If Frank Bishop comes back early and runs into us… or if we bump into someone we know, that wouldn’t be good.”