Chapter 29: A Death Without a Body
The white cane lay abandoned across the sloping steps
leading down to the pier.
The coat hung crookedly from the edge, one side trailing
downward.
Apart from those two things, nothing remained on the bank.
Minh Quan’s men swept their flashlights across the river.
The beams moved back and forth over the black ripples,
finding nothing but drifting branches and floating rubbish.
Some men waded into the water, sweeping their arms and legs
through the shallows.
The water was deep, painfully cold, and swollen by the flood
season. Its current was strong.
A person falling into that part of the river could be
carried away in an instant.
Minh Quan stood on the bank, his face hard.
“Find that bastard. Alive or dead, drag his body out for
me.”
For the next several days, his men spread along both banks
and searched each section of the river downstream.
They questioned fishermen and even offered a reward to
anyone who recovered the body.
But the water continued to rise, dark and turbulent.
Three days passed.
Not a single trace.
Not a single clue.
The river remained silent, as though it had swallowed the
man whole and refused to give anything back.
Minh Quan began to grow anxious.
Then he slowly reassured himself.
What did it matter if there was no body?
A weak blind man who had spent several days being injected
with drugs could not possibly survive after falling into such a violent
current.
Perhaps it was better that the body had not been found.
It might drift somewhere far away, decay beyond recognition,
and leave no one with anything to investigate.
Minh Quan called one of his men, his voice once again
carrying its usual composure.
“Release a public statement. Say that psychiatric patient
Lam Khai Minh escaped from the treatment facility during the night and has gone
missing.”
He continued.
“State that he could not control his behavior and that the
family is doing everything possible to find him. Write it carefully.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Make sure you emphasize his illness. Let the public pity
him, but don’t let anyone become suspicious.”
After ending the call, Minh Quan lit a cigarette and looked
out at the river rolling beneath the fading evening light.
The corner of his mouth curved upward.
It was over.
The thorn in his side that had tormented him for so many
years had finally been removed.
From now on, no one could fight him for control of Vinh An
Hospital or the Lam family fortune.
But somewhere in a hidden corner of the city, one woman did
not believe what he had announced.
That night, after escaping from the men chasing her, Hoa
circled back to the river.
She was too late.
She heard Minh Quan shouting from the bank and his men
running in confusion, sweeping their lights across the water.
Hidden in the darkness, Hoa felt her heart tighten.
She understood what had happened.
The blind young man she had risked her life to rescue had
still slipped from her grasp and fallen into the freezing river.
Hoa stood beside the river for a long time, tears running
down her face.
She had arrived too late to save Mai Ngoc.
Now she had arrived too late to save Mai Ngoc’s nephew.
It seemed to be her fate always to fall one step behind,
able only to watch people sink without ever managing to pull anyone back.
But her mind quickly cleared.
She had now become the one being hunted.
Minh Quan knew that someone had forged the transfer order
and taken his prey from him.
His men had already begun searching everywhere for the
person who had dared to do it.
Every additional day Hoa remained in Dong Cang was another
day spent with a knife at her throat.
Hoa wiped away her tears and tightened her grip around the
bag containing the photographs she had hidden for so long.
She made a promise to herself.
As long as she remained alive, the truth about Mai Ngoc
would remain alive too.
Then she turned away and quietly left the city that same
night, taking her secret with her as she disappeared.
The entire city of Dong Cang closed the story of Lam Khai
Minh as though closing a sorrowful page.
The guilty remained at ease.
The innocent fled.
The river continued flowing downstream day and night, indifferent,
as though it had never carried a human life away.
But fortunately, Khai Minh was not dead.
Several dozen kilometers downstream from Dong Cang, where
the river widened before reaching the sea, a poor fishing village stood beside
the mudflats.
Early that morning, mist still covered the water when an old
fisherman rowed out to pull in the nets he had cast the night before.
One net felt unusually heavy.
The old man strained to lift it, believing he had caught a
large haul of fish.
But when the net finally broke through the surface, there
were no fish inside.
Caught in the net was the body of a man, both hands still
gripping a piece of driftwood.
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