“Take it from the top.
Slowly. I need to get this down.”
The senior investigator
slid a cup of water across to An Nhien. She sat straight-backed on the hard
chair, both hands pressed flat on the table to stop them shaking. Her voice was
a wrecked rasp, but every word came out clean.
“That night, around ten
o’clock, I entered the hospital with Mr. Lam Khai Minh through the rear
delivery entrance, and we went down into the basement of Lab Seven. Before
that, someone had texted his phone claiming that evidence about his parents’
accident was hidden down there. When we arrived, his card had been revoked, and
then an unknown number sent a door code to my phone. We were searching the
storage room when the steel door slammed shut from outside and gas started
pouring in. He found his way to the emergency cabinet and got it open. One vial
of serum inside. Just one. He ordered me to take it. I refused. In the end, I injected
that dose into him.”
“And then?”
“And then, nothing. The
doctors say the gap in my memory is a side effect of the gas. I’m telling you
exactly what I remember. Where I don’t remember, I’m telling you that too. I’m
not inventing anything.”
The investigator nodded and
kept writing.
Across the table sat
Mr. Minh Quan, present as the victim’s next of kin, his eyes swollen red,
a handkerchief rising to dab at them now and then. Beside him sat a man in a
gray suit, a leather briefcase squared neatly on his knees, who had done
nothing so far but listen. Now he spoke, his voice courteous, and slick as oil
underneath.
“My name is Dam. I’m the
attorney retained by Mrs. Mai Ngoc’s family. With the officer’s
permission, a few questions for the witness. Purely for clarity.”
He turned a page in his
file.
“Miss Tran An Nhien. You
were employed in the Lam residence, drawing a salary paid by Lam Khai Minh
himself. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“Your younger brother is a
long-term patient at Vinh An. Whose money pays for his treatment? You do know,
don’t you?”
An Nhien faltered for half
a second.
“Mr. Khai Minh covers
it.”
“Over thirty million đồng a
month. For a family in your position, that money is the difference between your
brother living and dying.”
“If you have something to
say, say it plainly.”
“I only want everyone in
this room to understand that you are here testifying for the man who pays your
family’s bills.”
“I am here testifying
because I was there.”
“There. But how much of it
can you actually recall?”
The lawyer drew out another
sheet and lifted it slightly.
“Your medical file states
you were comatose for days, with memory loss caused by toxic exposure. You
yourself have just admitted you cannot remember the end of what happened to
you. A witness who can’t recall her own story… how much weight should the rest
of it carry?”
“I lost one piece of my
memory. That does not make everything else a lie.”
“Then let’s talk about
something else.”
His gaze settled on her
throat, slow and deliberate, making sure every eye in the room followed it.
“That necklace you’re
wearing, Miss Nhien. Engraved with two letters, isn’t it? An M and an N. Minh
and Nhien, am I close? Hired help doesn’t usually wear jewelry with her own
initial sitting next to the young master’s. Officer, as for the testimony of a
girl romantically involved with the suspect… I’ll let everyone weigh for
themselves what that’s worth.”
Heat flooded An Nhien’s
face. Her hand rose and closed around the necklace, her fingers trembling. Not
with shame. With fury.
“My father died breaking
down a door to pull us out of that basement. My family hasn’t even finished
burying him. And you think I carried my father’s death into this room to trade
it for a romance?”
The room went quiet for a
moment. The investigator cleared his throat and turned back to his file.
“Miss Nhien. One last
question, from me. Your testimony covers the night the two of you were trapped
in the basement. The night before that. Where were you?”
“The night before, I was at
home. Why?”
“The preliminary forensic
report puts Mrs. Mai Ngoc’s death on that night. The night before. Not the
night you’ve described.”
An Nhien sat frozen in her
chair.
She had torn the IV out of
her own hand. She had walked out of the hospital leaning on walls. She had
ridden the whole way here holding on to a single belief: that her testimony
would swing a door open for Khai Minh. And now it turned out the door stood in
a different night entirely. A night she had not been beside him. A night when
no one had been beside him at all, except a houseful of staff who answered to
someone else.
Dam closed his briefcase,
his voice as courteous as ever.
“You see how it is. Even if
every word you’ve said is true, it falls entirely outside the night she was
killed. You can’t save anyone here, Miss Nhien.”
The session ended. An Nhien
walked out into the corridor. The floor seemed to tilt a little under every
step.
And at that very moment,
from the far end of the corridor, two officers came leading a tall, gaunt man
the other way. He walked slowly, no cane, one hand tracing the wall. At the
sound of her footsteps, he stopped dead.
“An Nhien?”
She stood rooted. Khai Minh
turned toward her, his face hollowed out by the days in custody, his eyes
sunken deep.
“It’s me.”
Two hoarse, broken words,
and his jaw went tight.
“Your voice…”
“I’m fine.”
He didn’t ask anything
more. The man who had once heard an envelope brushing against the lining of her
pocket didn’t need to be told where a voice like that came from. His hand
lifted toward her, the way it had that night, in front of the basement door.
Then, slowly, it sank back down.
“I’m sorry. I came and gave
my statement, but… it wasn’t enough to save you.”
“You’re alive. That’s
enough.”
The officers urged him on.
He got out one more sentence, his voice dropping low.
“What happened to your
father… that debt is mine. I’ll be repaying it for the rest of my life.”
Then they led him away
through a door, and he was gone. An Nhien stood in the middle of the corridor,
her father’s jacket in her arms, and for a long, long time she could not make
her feet move.
Two days later, in a room
at the investigation unit, the senior investigator laid a document on the table
in front of Khai Minh.
“Mr. Lam Khai Minh.
We’re releasing you from custody. You are not to leave the city, and you will
present yourself whenever you are summoned.”
“You’ve found the killer,
then?”
“No. So let me tell
you exactly where you stand. The meeting text came from your number, but your
phone holds no record of ever sending it, and our technicians suspect a
spoofing device. The body lay in cold storage, which means the time of death is
an estimate, not a certainty. And to this hour, no one has explained how a
blind man, alone, lures a woman out, kills her, and carries her body into a
cold-storage unit without a second pair of hands.”
“So you know someone staged
it.”
“We know the evidence isn’t
enough to hold you. That is all we know.”
Khai Minh rose and felt
across the tray of returned belongings. His fingers found the leather-strapped
watch, and he fastened it onto his wrist, onto the exact ring of skin where the
handcuff had bitten for days.
He had taken a few steps
toward the door when the investigator’s voice came after him, level and cold.
“Mr. Lam. We’re
releasing you. That is not the same as saying you’re innocent.”