78. San Quentin Prison, The Plan

The two of them were up before dawn at the hotel. It was five in the morning, the sky still dim and gray, as Holden drove the Bronco through the hushed residential streets. Dean rested in the passenger seat and checked the progress of his skills in the system.

Close Combat: Level 1, 143/200 to 144/200
Marksmanship: Level 1, 89/200 to 90/200
Shadows of the Past: Level 1, 24/200 to 25/200
Balanced Meditation Method: Level 1, 75/200 to 76/200

Yesterday, Holden had pulled strings over the phone, while Dean had found an indoor shooting range in Santa Monica and practiced until his arms ached. At night he worked on close combat and mental tempering, and at last managed to raise each skill by a point.

The progress was painfully slow, but before the true murderer came into view, any increase in strength was worth having.

...

“How much do you know about San Quentin?” Dean asked, looking out at the Olympic Road sign flashing past the window. The car was heading toward San Francisco Bay, downriver from the Sacramento River in northern California.

“The prison stands on an isolated peninsula and holds all manner of vicious, hardened felons. It’s the oldest, most heavily guarded, and largest prison in California, and the only one that can still execute male inmates.”

Holden turned the wheel and the car took the I-10E highway.

“A few years ago I went there with an old partner to interview Charles Manson, ‘the most dangerous serial killer in America,’ and document the twisted path that led him to lead a criminal cult and murder dozens.”

“Sentenced to death?” Dean asked.

“No. Life imprisonment. The law has become increasingly cautious about the death penalty, and the methods have grown gentler and more humane—from beheading, hanging, firing squad, electric chair, and gas, to lethal injection. Even if a prisoner is condemned, they have to wait in line for death.” Holden’s mouth curved in a sardonic smile. “Most death-row inmates never make it to execution day. They grow old and die in prison instead.”

Dean found it eye-opening. “Why should the law be so merciful to hardened criminals?”

Holden explained, “After more than a decade on the job, I’ve come to see something clearly—quite a lot of people in this country love moral blackmail and double standards. They lack empathy for victims’ families, yet shower murderers with saintly compassion.”

“With the efforts of a whole army of enthusiastic prison volunteers, inmates at San Quentin can take part in rehabilitation activities like tennis, basketball, and theater. Before long they may even be able to attend San Quentin Prison University. They live better than homeless drifters.”

“So they send hard cases off to enjoy themselves?” Dean summarized curtly. “That’s a waste of taxpayer money.”

“Who says otherwise?” Holden sighed. “I used to think people committed crimes because they were driven to it by bad circumstances. But after talking with these hardened offenders, I’ve slowly come to understand that some of them do still have humanity left.”

“But others are born devils. Stay with them too long, and you’ll be affected yourself.”

...

The six-hour journey involved several transfers.

Along the way, Holden kept giving Dean the details of San Quentin’s various rules and regulations, while also taking the opportunity to complain about certain American laws.

Around noon, they passed through San Francisco Bay and over the Golden Gate Bridge, finally arriving at San Quentin, the so-called prison paradise, spread across 432 acres.

Surrounded on all sides by green water and thick, shaded trees, it sat in a setting of unrivaled natural beauty.

At first glance Dean thought he had arrived at a scenic island retreat, a convalescent home, or a resort.

But the defenses were tight, with guards every few steps and patrols everywhere; the high walls bristled with wire and electrified fencing.

After parking, the two entered the prison and checked in. There, fully armed guards subjected them to a search so thorough it felt like a full-body massage, not sparing even their hair or mouths.

Dean found the process rather unsettling, while Holden remained perfectly composed.

Once they had been confirmed to carry no sharp, pointed, or dangerous objects, a guard led them through several iron doors and between a crowd of tattooed inmates who watched with predatory eyes.

They entered a small, quiet, brightly lit cubicle.

“What’s the deal with checking hair and mouths?” Dean asked as he dropped into a chair and glanced around casually. The place resembled a small canteen.

“Don’t underestimate prisoners’ ingenuity. Hairpins in the head, braces in the mouth—they can all be turned into tools for murder, suicide, or escape.”

Holden answered offhandedly, then his gaze sharpened.

An Asian man in a pale blue prison uniform was brought in by a guard, handcuffed and seated opposite them.

After a close look, the two confirmed him to be David Lee, the man from the file. But in only two months of incarceration, he had changed beyond recognition. He looked so gaunt that a puff of wind might topple him; the once full forehead had caved in, his complexion had turned a sickly white, his cheekbones stood out, and his expression was listless. He avoided people’s eyes, no longer the confident, sunlit figure from the photographs, but timid and cowed instead.

A child killer, at the very bottom of prison society, and an attractive Asian man to boot.

Heaven knew what he had endured these past two months.

Seeing the two men across from him smiling gently, David instinctively shrank his shoulders and shifted in his seat. Fear flickered in his eyes, as though some painful memory had resurfaced.

“Relax, man. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re investigating a local child murder case, and it’s strikingly similar to yours,” Holden said bluntly. “Can we talk?”

“I’d like a coffee and a hot dog,” David said hesitantly.

“Wait here.”

Holden went out, found the guard, and after paying twenty dollars brought back steaming food for David: not only a hot dog, but also precious instant noodles and cream-filled bread.

Dean was untroubled by this. In a sense, prisoners were also a source of revenue for prisons.

David grabbed the hot dog and devoured it ravenously, crumbs spilling from his mouth, making rude little slurping noises. He ate with such frenzy it was as if he were competing with someone.

After quickly finishing the hot dog, he sipped hot coffee, exhaled, and some color returned to his face. Then he began to eat the instant noodles at a more leisurely pace.

“David, do you remember Kelly Scott?” Dean asked at the right moment, while Holden switched on the recorder.

“That girl I never knew, never met, and never touched in my whole life?” David’s hand shook, and a half-length of noodles slipped from his mouth onto the table. He picked it up at once and ate it. “I swear to God, if I had to hurt a child, I’d rather kill myself.”

“And I’ve had no criminal record since I was a kid. I’ve never even hurt a small animal, let alone a person! I shouldn’t have to endure this inhuman torment!”

Dean nodded quietly. It was only natural that David wouldn’t know Kelly; Abby didn’t know Buck Fran either.

“David, though the evidence is conclusive and the court found you guilty, I believe you’re innocent. I need your help to catch the real killer!”

For the first time in more than two months, David heard words like that. He was so moved that tears nearly welled in his eyes.

“What are you asking?” Dean placed a photo of Abby Clark on the table.

David took the photo, studied it for a moment, and shook his head.

“Sorry. I don’t recognize her. Was she a student at Santa Monica University?”

Dean shook his head.

“Two and a half months ago, on July 22, surveillance footage showed you in Santa Monica Beach. She was there too. You don’t remember seeing her?”

“July 22? The day Kelly was killed?” David sighed. “You may not believe this, but starting around July 19, I came down with a fever and my mind turned to mush. I asked for leave from school and stayed home to recover. On July 22 it was at its worst. I was alone at home, nearly delirious, with no clear memory of anything. How could I have run to a park to kill a child, then gone to the beach to breathe the sea air?”

Hiss—

Holden looked at Dean in surprise. This was exactly the same question he had once asked Abby. Including the district attorney, no one had understood it.

Now he was asking David the same thing, and David’s answer was exactly the same as Abby’s.

Premonition?

Dean’s lips curved slightly; excitement glittered in his eyes.

“Good. David, may I see your wrist?”

Confusion flashed across David’s face, but he still rolled up his sleeves and held out both bare forearms.

Nothing.

Dean’s pupils tightened. He asked again, “Before you went to prison, in the past few months, did you suffer any injury that left a scar somewhere on your body?”

The man knitted his brows in thought for a moment, then reached back to touch the nape of his neck.

“How did you know? In May, I got hurt back there.”

“Let me see!”

Dean stood, walked around the table, and looked over the man’s shoulder—

A crescent-shaped scar, about half a finger in length. It had healed, but the mark was still clear, like a vicious centipede crawling beneath the skin.

Dean touched it, then took the camera from Holden and snapped several photos of the scar. The resemblance to Abby’s was unmistakable.

“Do you remember whether, on July 22, aside from the fever, that scar felt strange in any way?”

“Now that you mention it, yes.” The man said, still shaken, “It got inflamed again at the time. It hurt like hell, as if something foreign were drilling through my bones. I was in so much pain I was barely conscious.”

It fit.

A scar left behind—the scar begins to hurt and burn—the mysterious force starts working—the crime is committed.

A clear chain of logic rapidly formed in Dean’s mind. He paced slowly inside the cubicle, murmuring to himself.

“The day the scar was most painful was the day the mysterious force reached its peak, and the framed person committed the crime.”

“David Lee, Abby Clark—both the same.”

Dean’s eyes burned.

“Two cases, the same process; coincidence cannot explain it. So these cases are filled with supernatural power, driving David and Abby to commit those bloody crimes! That is the murderer’s method!”

Holden bared his teeth and rubbed his temples.

David, meanwhile, looked utterly bewildered, as though he were listening to scripture from another world.

“What does this scar have to do with my case?”

Dean ignored him and sank deeper into his trance.

“Don’t mind him.” Holden shook his head with a smile, though he offered no explanation. “His way of thinking is a little different from ordinary people’s. He sometimes falls into fits of hysteria.”

David nodded. “Then who is Abby Clark? The girl in the photo?”

“Yes. She killed a boy in Las Vegas. There’s DNA evidence, footage, and eyewitnesses.”

“She’s just another me.” David’s mouth fell open, and he felt a sudden kinship in suffering. “I don’t know her, but I believe she’s innocent too. If she hasn’t been convicted yet, help her. Don’t let the law wrong a good person again. I know what that inhuman pain feels like!”

“David, you’ve helped me a great deal. The real killer is almost exposed.” Coming back to himself, Dean fixed his gaze on the man’s eyes. “But do you remember how you got the scar on the back of your neck?”

“Mid-May, I think... somewhere in Santa Monica. Someone bumped into me.” David gave Dean an odd look, as if he wanted to speak but held back. What on earth were these bizarre questions?

“You’re certain it was Santa Monica, not somewhere else?”

“Mm. For the six months before I was sent to prison, I never left the area around school.”

Dean raised an eyebrow.

“Do you remember what you were wearing in the surveillance footage on the day of the crime? Your shirt, pants, shoes—was it a completely unfamiliar outfit?”

“In the footage I was wearing a common shirt and casual trousers, dress shoes...” David said carefully. “Honestly, I do have an outfit like that.”

Dean pressed his lips together.

In Las Vegas, he had inferred from the source of Abby’s striped sportswear and the source of the scar on Abby’s wrist that the killer’s previous crime scene had been Santa Monica.

But now David had also acquired a scar in Santa Monica, and the clothes had nothing unusual about them. Dean could no longer use the old method to infer the scene of the earlier crime.

He could not continue tracing past cases.

...

Then how was he supposed to move the investigation forward?

Dean pondered. A moment later, his eyes lit up.

Past cases were hard to track, but what about the future? The killer had carelessly left a clue in the future as well—

On the night Abby committed the crime, she left a crescent-shaped scar on the wrist of the bar owner, Jack!

The scar had passed from David to Abby, and from Abby to Jack.

If nothing unexpected happened, the mysterious force had already been passed on to Jack, and one day in the future Jack would, like the two before him, fall into fever and unconsciousness, then helplessly commit a terrible blood-soaked crime.

As long as they watched him in secret, the murderer would reveal itself.

The system progress jumped to sixty percent.

“Holden!” Dean suddenly turned to his partner and said urgently, “The evidence is right in front of us. We have to watch the owner of Black Jack Bar now. Abby passed the scar to him!”

Holden looked troubled.

“A scar-induced hypnosis causing crime? That won’t persuade our colleagues. I need a plausible excuse.”

“Move quickly.” Dean turned and looked at the gaunt, pitiful man. In his mind rose the scene from yesterday, when he had visited the old site of his home. “David, did your parents die in some accident?”

“An accident?” David set down the instant noodle bowl, clenched his fists, and his eyes reddened. “It wasn’t an accident! While I was in the detention center, Kelly Scott’s father broke into my home in a rage, shot my relatives dead, and then killed himself.”

“He was avenging his daughter, but he got the wrong man from beginning to end!” David let out a heartbreaking sob. “I’m innocent! My poor parents should never have had to suffer that fate!”

Dean’s breath caught.

The victim’s family had gunned down the killer’s family, when the killer was innocent.

What a tragedy this was.

“My condolences, David. You are not the only one who has suffered,” Holden said, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “Kelly’s family did not escape tragedy either. They seemed cursed—dying one after another. First Kelly, then her grandmother, then her mother, and finally her father, who lost his mind. They’re all gone.”

“They’re all dead? So I’m the only one left from both families?” David shuddered. The grief and anger on his face faded, leaving only deep despair and confusion—

As though an invisible hand had been wantonly toying with both families, driving their fates toward an abyss.

All three fell silent, heavy with emotion.

The entire cubicle sank into an unbearable stillness, the air thick enough to suffocate.

“Sorry to bring up painful memories. Let’s end it here for today.” After a moment, Holden switched off the recorder and put it away. He glanced at Dean, who nodded. The scar on the killer’s body and the unusual condition during the crime had both been verified; this visit had run its course.

“When we catch the mastermind, or when the case makes progress, we’ll come see you again. We’ll do everything we can to get you out.”

“Life in here isn’t fit for humans. All the criminals can bully, beat, and humiliate someone like me—a so-called child killer—however they want. But what’s done is done.” David wiped his tears away and swallowed bread in big bites. “I... I’m not expecting you two to get me out. If I could just be moved somewhere better, away from those perverted criminals, I’d be grateful beyond words. And please, wait a little longer... until I finish this food, or it won’t be mine anymore.”

Dean nodded in silence, then watched as David was led back behind the iron bars.

The two of them left the prison and returned to the car.

“Holden, do you think it’s possible that... Kelly Scott, even the two families, all those deaths were driven by the real killer behind the scenes?”

“The murderer isn’t a god,” Holden said faintly. “By rights, it shouldn’t be able to control two entire families. Don’t make it into something more supernatural than it is.”

Not a god?

But could it be not a person either, only some supernatural monster?

Dean nodded.

When opposing an existence whose species could not even be determined, caution could never be excessive.

“No possibility can be ignored. In Santa Monica, the victims and the families of the killers died one after another. That is no coincidence. To prevent a tragedy from happening again—”

In his mind he flashed again to those grief-stricken parents at the Las Vegas Police Department.

“We have to send people to monitor and protect the parents of Buck Fran, the victim in Las Vegas, as well as Abby’s parents, day and night, to keep them from taking their own lives or committing some terrible act in a fit of desperation!”

“Mm. Abby’s locked up in the detention center, so for now we don’t need to worry about her.”

“Then add Jack, the bar owner who was marked with the scar,” Dean rattled on like a machine gun. “The police department must split into three teams and discreetly monitor and protect these three targets!”

All the high-risk people he could think of were now under surveillance. If the real killer dared make a move, how could it escape their grasp?

The progress jumped to seventy percent!

Holden helplessly rubbed his forehead and drove out of the prison parking lot.

“When did you become chief of the Las Vegas Police Department? You give orders and the officers are supposed to obediently run off and carry them out? Come on. Your conclusions all involve supernatural factors and can’t be explained scientifically. The guys at the department can’t possibly buy into that theory and take action!”

Dean checked the rapidly rising investigation progress in the system, the dawn of victory already close at hand.

“Have you forgotten? We just obtained the files, recordings, and photographs from Kelly Scott’s and David Lee’s cases. Hand them to Carl and have them compare them with Abby’s case. As long as their heads aren’t full of water, they’ll believe us for sure.”

Wild light flashed in Dean’s eyes.

“Then we’ll lie in ambush in advance along every route the killer may take!”

“Wait for it to jump into the trap itself!”

Bang!

Dean slammed a fist against the car window.

“Cut off every route of escape! Make it confess and face punishment!”

“You really are insane!” Holden stared at Dean for two seconds, then suddenly broke into a grin. The smile released a long-lost savagery and madness. “But I want to see what kind of creature this killer really is. You haven’t let me down this time either. I’m with you all the way!”

End of chapter.