Demon

“Captain. We just received an anonymous tip.”

Li Weiguo had been sitting with his eyes closed — not sleeping, working through An Zhi’s case in the dark behind his eyelids. He opened them.

The bloodshot was severe. He looked like something that had been injured and had not yet decided whether to rest or attack.

“What did they say.”

“They know who killed An Zhi.” Little Wang kept his voice low. “The caller said to pull the Bus 101 surveillance footage from last night, after seven p.m., from the stop outside the station. There’s a girl in the back section — white-framed glasses, backpack. That’s the one.”

Li Weiguo’s expression shifted into something focused and still. “Pull all of it.”

There were several Bus 101 vehicles running that route. Little Wang retrieved footage from each. Li Weiguo gathered officers and they distributed the files and started working through them simultaneously.

He took the first one himself and scrubbed forward to seven p.m. The bus was sparsely occupied. No girl matching the description. He moved to four times speed and kept going.

“Got her.” Little Wang’s voice, from across the room. “Seven fifteen.”

Li Weiguo crossed to Little Wang’s screen.

Frozen at 7:15:04. A girl boarding the bus — white-framed glasses, small backpack, chestnut hair. He took the mouse and let it play.

She walked directly to the first row of the back section and sat by the window. Placed the backpack on the adjacent seat. Sat quietly. The bus pulled away from the stop and she didn’t move.

Several minutes passed. The bus stopped again.

A figure boarded.

“That’s Wen Yiqian,” Little Wang said.

Li Weiguo had already recognized him. He ran the timing in his head — yes, Wen Yiqian had left the station around that hour. The overlap was possible without being meaningful.

On screen, Wen Yiqian moved toward the back of the bus.

As he passed the girl, she reached over and moved the backpack off the adjacent seat.

Li Weiguo watched that moment twice.

Wen Yiqian kept walking. He found a seat further back and sat down by the window, and within a few minutes appeared to be asleep. At some point he jerked awake — a nightmare, from the look of it — and then settled again. He got off at his stop without approaching the girl. He glanced back once, briefly, as he stepped off.

After he was gone, the girl leaned her head out the window.

Just for a moment. Then she pulled back, and her posture returned to neutral as though nothing had happened.

“Is she watching him leave?” Little Wang said slowly. “Or is she — does she know him?”

Li Weiguo didn’t answer. He kept watching.

The girl rode the rest of the route without incident, interacting with no one. At 9:25 she got off.

“Which stop.”

Little Wang checked. “Dengyun Station.”

A silence settled over the room. Everyone who knew the case understood what that meant. Dengyun Station was less than three stops from An Zhi’s building.

“I want every camera in that area that might have caught her.” Li Weiguo’s voice was quiet and even, which was worse than if he had raised it. “All of it.”

The work took hours.

Specialists mapped every camera in the district — locations, angles, coverage gaps. Half the station was assigned to the footage review. They pulled feeds from dozens of cameras and began the work of stitching a path together.

What emerged was this:

The girl exited the bus and immediately moved into a camera blind spot. When she reappeared on a neighboring street, she was a boy — short hair, clean-cut, the kind of face that would not be remembered. The comparison required multiple cross-references to confirm it was the same person. The build matched, if you were looking for it. Nothing else did.

She — he — moved to another blind spot. Emerged as a girl with rainbow-streaked hair, heavy makeup, a nose ring, visible tattoos. A completely different type. A completely different read.

Two more changes after that. Each transition happening in the gaps between cameras, each new appearance moving incrementally closer to An Zhi’s address. The anti-surveillance awareness was not improvised — every blind spot was used deliberately, every camera avoided with what looked like prior knowledge of the layout.

Li Weiguo watched the assembled footage play through and felt the word form in his mind without choosing it.

Demon.

That was what it looked like. Something changing shape in the dark between frames, drawing steadily closer to someone who didn’t know it was coming.

The figure appeared on the last available camera near An Zhi’s building.

Then disappeared.

There was no further footage. The next place this person would appear was inside.

Li Weiguo became aware that his nails had broken the skin of his palms. He hadn’t noticed it happening. He unclenched his hands slowly and made himself breathe.

He had worked this job long enough to know what personal feeling did to an investigation. It narrowed the vision. It produced errors. The more critical the moment, the more a captain needed to be the least emotional person in the room.

He knew all of this.

An Zhi had always been like a younger sister to him.

“Captain.” Little Wang’s voice was careful. “Are you all right?”

Li Weiguo shook his head.

“What’s our next move.”

“A wanted notice. City-wide.” Li Weiguo’s eyes were cold. “Everyone in this city needs to understand how dangerous this person is.”

“It could cause panic—”

“Better than doing nothing.”

(End of Chapter)