Read Chapter 7: — THE TABLETS

Old Zhao did not slow down.

His next case involved a fatal robbery outside a bank. Cameras caught fragments: a vehicle, a hooded figure, a route interrupted by blind spots. Near one point on the suspected path, investigators recovered several pale tablets.

The police laboratory could not identify them quickly.

Zhao called Li.

“You’re becoming a bad habit,” Li said when he arrived at Criminal Investigation.

“So are unsolved cases.”

Chenxi was already there, leaning against a desk with her arms folded.

“Remember,” she told Li, “you are not a detective.”

“I have been repeatedly informed.”

Li examined the tablets without touching them directly. Their shape and coating stirred a memory so old that at first he mistook it for intuition.

“I think this may be levothyroxine.”

The criminal-investigation chief frowned.

“In normal language?”

“A thyroid-hormone replacement medication. Often used long term in hypothyroidism.”

“You can know that by looking?”

“I said I think. Not I know.”

The distinction annoyed everyone except Chenxi.

A regulatory laboratory later confirmed the drug.

The lead did not magically identify the killer, but it narrowed the search. Investigators cross-referenced long-term prescriptions, local pharmacies, known offenders and people whose medical histories fitted the clue. The suspect pool contracted.

Everyone celebrated the breakthrough.

Li did not.

Chenxi noticed.

“Why does that medication bother you?”

He remained silent for a long time.

Then he told her about a classmate from secondary school.

The boy had been brilliant, competitive and chronically ill. Treatment for thyroid disease had left him dependent on hormone replacement. He had also been bullied.

One day, overwhelmed and humiliated, he jumped from a school building.

Li had been nearby.

The boy’s medication had spilled from his bag and been crushed underfoot. The smell, the powder, the sound of impact—memory had fused them into a single image.

“I haven’t thought about it properly in years,” Li said.

“That isn’t the same as forgetting.”

“No.”

Chenxi did not offer him a quotation. She did not tell him everything happened for a reason. She sat beside him until the silence became bearable.

The case moved forward.

Old Zhao, meanwhile, collapsed at his desk before it was finished.

Li caught him before his head struck the floor.

The police physician arrived after Zhao had begun to recover.

When the doctor thanked Li, he looked down at the stubborn detective and said, “The best doctor you’ll ever have is yourself.”

Zhao laughed weakly.

“Then I’m doomed. I’m a terrible doctor.”

“You’re an even worse patient.”

The sentence became a joke at the station.

For Chenxi, it was not a joke at all.