The Last Killer

A black Chevrolet Suburban full-size off-road vehicle was parked beside the wide asphalt road.

Li Biqing got out of the car with a sporty messenger bag, staring blankly at the dense forest and green grass slope in front of him, "... Which park is this?"

Leo slammed the car door and walked to him, "Portland State University, the entire campus is an open park, and the language training class I linked to you is located on the campus. It's only half an hour's drive from our rented apartment. , the bus passes through the campus, it is very convenient to go to school.”

The staff sent by the language school to welcome the new students had already been waiting at the school gate. He was a brown-haired white man in his 40s, with a physique like an athlete, and he was quite burly.After talking with Leo for a few words, he enthusiastically grabbed Li Biqing's hand and shook it up and down, and kept asking for warmth in slippery and out-of-tune Chinese, expressing the extreme degree of welcome that human language can reflect.

Li Biqing tried to withdraw his hand after a few polite words, and turned to look at Leo hesitantly.

Leo patted him on the shoulder encouragingly, "Mr. Wayne is responsible for leading you in, and I will pick you up in the afternoon. Take the bus to school from tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay." Li Biqing whispered, grabbed Leo's sleeve when he turned around, and quickly let go, with a look of hesitation and hesitation, just like an uneasy child who was just thrown into a boarding school by his parents. little boy.

His inadvertent expression of dependence made Leo feel an inexplicable joy in his heart, and he softened his voice: "Go, relax, just be yourself."

Li Biqing showed him a clear smile, like the moonlight breaking through the clouds in a bright night.

Wayne, who was standing aside, watched this scene with some surprise. After the Chevrolet SUV drove away, he smiled understandingly at Li Biqing: "You have a very good boyfriend."

Li Biqing explained awkwardly: "No, he is my girlfriend's younger brother."

Wayne was even more embarrassed, apologizing repeatedly along the way.

After the day's class ended, Li Biqing declined Wayne's offer to take him to the gate, and wandered around the campus alone.He didn't want to call Leo so early, and the campus of Portland State University was adjacent to Forest Park, which was intoxicatingly beautiful.

He straddled his bag obliquely, and walked slowly on the soft lawn dotted with fallen leaves. The sun penetrated the green treetops of oak and red birch, splashing spots of light on his body, and the summer breeze brought the faint fragrance of flowers... It is the fragrance of roses, Li Bi Qing took a deep breath and concluded.Although roses, roses, and roses belong to the same family, there are many varieties, and the smells are also slightly different.The petals of countless Rosaceae plants are mixed with the fragrant scent transpired in the sun, and spread far into the wind, which is this kind of fragrance.

The nickname "City of Roses" really lives up to its name, he thought as he walked.

"Hi!" A clear greeting suddenly sounded from behind.Li Biqing didn't look back, people came and went in the campus, no matter who the voice was calling, it couldn't be him anyway.

A figure walked a few steps closer, stepped in from behind him, and blocked the front.Now Li Biqing could no longer turn a blind eye, and stopped to look at the roadblocker.

This is a young boy in his early 20s, dressed casually and looks like a college student.He has beautiful curly short dark hair, slightly dark complexion, with obvious Hispanic origin, slender eyebrows and eyes, thin lips, thin cheeks and slightly high cheekbones, only the bridge of the nose is straight and straight, Impeccable.His facial features were not outstanding, but when the corners of his thin lips lifted up into a smile, there was a wild and unrestrained charm rushing towards his face.

"Hi, I'm Lei Zhe." He introduced himself briskly, "Lei Zhe? Tang En."

Faced with this stranger who took the initiative to strike up a conversation, Li Biqing responded somewhat reluctantly: "Hi."

The other party then said a few words, speaking very fast, Li Biqing couldn't hear clearly, so he spread his hands to express the language barrier.

Lei Zhe was a little surprised, then shrugged regretfully, "New here? A student from IELP?"

Li Biqing understood this sentence. IELP is an intensive English course attached to the state university, which is similar in nature to the language training class he attended, so he nodded.

Realizing that it was difficult for the two sides to communicate, Lei Zhe hid the disappointment in his eyes and nodded to him kindly.

At this moment, the cell phone in Li Biqing's pocket rang.He took it out to connect, and Leo's voice came from the other end of the phone: "Is get out of class over? I'm at the school gate."

"Well, I'm wandering around the campus, I'll come out now, wait for a while." He hung up the phone and happily said goodbye to the stranger who only knew his name.The change in expression from plain to smiling in a very short period of time, like a cluster of stunning water lilies suddenly blooming on the quiet lake, made Lei Zhe a little unexpected, and he hesitated again when he was about to leave.

Li Biqing had no time to talk to him, and walked quickly towards the school gate.

Ten minutes later, he saw the huge and sturdy Chevrolet Suburban.

The temperature is very high today, and it has not dropped until the evening. Leo took off his suit jacket and draped it over his arms, tore off his tie, and only wore a white shirt with exquisite workmanship. slender.He was leaning quietly on the car body wearing sunglasses, his ankles were crossed casually, without any words or actions, he was already eye-catching.

There were a few slight clicking sounds nearby, like the light sound of pressing the shutter. Three or four girls gathered around the bench, laughing and whispering with their mobile phones.

"They probably think that you look like a certain star, but they are too embarrassed to come to confirm. If you stand a little longer, some girls will come to strike up a conversation." Li Biqing said to Leo.

Leo said sternly: "Shooting without the consent of the person involved is suspected of infringing on the privacy of others."

Li Biqing secretly paid his respects to Leo's future partner while his head was full of black lines: This man is as incomprehensible as a U.S. Constitution, and those who can really love him are probably a fanatic of legal studies By.

At the moment when he opened the car door, Li Biqing looked back inadvertently, and caught a glimpse of a somewhat familiar figure under the shade of a tree not far away.It seemed that he had seen it somewhere before, but he had no memory of it when he thought about it carefully. Just when he decided to put this feeling aside, a name suddenly jumped into his mind: Lei Zhe?Dunn.

The Hispanic student who accosted him in the woods.

He probably also finished class and was going home, so he happened to walk to the school gate, he thought so, and quickly forgot about that chance meeting.

The next day, Li Biqing woke up early, took the free bus to the State University, and familiarized himself with the route.On the third morning, when he was sitting on the bus admiring the scenery outside the window, a young man who had just got on the bus, his eyes lit up after scanning the compartment, walked up to his seat and said, "Hi, do you still remember me?"

Li Biqing looked up at him and smiled politely: "Lei Zhe? Tang En."

The Hispanic boy curled up his thin lips and smiled, his black eyes curled up under his thin and thick eyebrows, "I know your English is not very good," he said slowly, and took out a handheld translator from his backpack , and handed the miniature microphone to Li Biqing: "But with this thing, you should be able to communicate."

This guy is really... hospitable, Li Biqing couldn't help laughing and said: "Why do you have to communicate with me?" A mellow and pleasant male voice came out of the translator, without any signs of artificial synthesis. high-end goods.

"I think you are pleasing to the eye." Lei Zhe replied, quite satisfied with the translation effect, "I have always wanted to find a language partner to learn each other's language."

"Well, maybe you'll be my first friend in America, if we hit it off."

"How do you know if you don't try?"

When the bus arrived, Lei Zhe stuffed the translator into Li Biqing's hands: "Keep this, I think it will be useful to you." After speaking, he turned around and left, jumped out of the car door and walked away.

Li Biqing got out of the car with the translator, and the figure of the other party had already disappeared in the shade of the trees.Confident, neat, willing to express himself, and a little maverick, he made a preliminary judgment on the character of this Hispanic boy. He is quite an interesting person, and maybe he can really get along with him.

The subsequent interactions became logical, and Li Biqing could always run into Lei Zhe in the huge campus, sometimes he was alone, and sometimes he was surrounded by a group of friends.As long as they meet, Lei Zhe will always come to talk to him, and the length of time is inversely proportional to the number of people around.In less than a week, the two young people began to get acquainted. Sometimes they would put aside the handheld translator and communicate with body language, until the two people who were talking about chicken and duck finally had to laugh and give up. .

"If you want to master a foreign language as soon as possible, you have to speak more, don't be shy, I swear I will never laugh at your grammar and pronunciation. You can also teach me Chinese, maybe in a few months, we will have no obstacles We communicated with each other." Lei Zhe encouraged him, ready to give full play to the role of languagepartner.

After a few days of intensive training, Lei Zhe had to admit that Li Biqing was the smartest, hardest-working, and most savvy student he had ever met—his oral English skills improved by leaps and bounds, and his memory was amazing. He had heard a word two or three times. It can be memorized and used repeatedly, and this speed of progress is enough to make most language school students feel ashamed to hit the wall.

During this period of time, Li Biqing visited almost the entire campus of the State University, and sometimes set foot in the adjacent Portland Forest Park-it is not a park, but a wild forest with an area of ​​[-] hectares. Strolling around the periphery and trying to get through it is impossible in the short term.

Once Wayne saw him walking to the forest park, and kindly pointed in a certain direction: "Walk there for more than half an hour, and there is a small open space full of maple trees. You'd better not approach it."

"Why?" Li Biqing asked puzzled.

Wayne explained with a serious expression: "Five months ago, a murdered body was found there. The victim was a student of the State University. This incident was aroused at the time, and the police investigated it for a long time. Solve the case. There was a panic on campus for a while, and now everyone seems to have forgotten it. Although the scene has been cleaned up, I suggest you not to approach it casually."

Li Biqing nodded with a sincere attitude: "I see, thank you."

Wayne smiled with satisfaction, "You are welcome and always will be. I have never seen a cuter foreign student than you."

Li Biqing lowered his head slightly in embarrassment, and his ears turned red.

"A shy Chinese boy, so cute! I have to go, or I won't be able to resist biting you." Wayne laughed and walked away happily.

...Is this flirting?It should be, but these Yankees seem to be able to say anything, no matter how straightforward, Li Biqing feels that he should follow the Romans and adapt to their way of speaking.

"This is molestation! You can sue him for sexual harassment." A figure turned out from behind the tall oak tree and said with a sullen face.

"Forget it, he was just joking." Li Biqing waved his hands indifferently, and asked his new friend: "It's not time for you to leave school yet, is it?"

Lei Zhe said: "Today's club activities have been temporarily cancelled. Let's go, I'll walk around with you."

The two wandered aimlessly in the woodland side by side, chatting with each other.When approaching a remote building shaded by bushes, Li Biqing suddenly stopped and sniffed the air a few times, "...do you smell it?"

"what?"

"It's a strange smell, I can't describe it..." He took out the handheld translator from his bag, and continued in Chinese: "A strange fishy smell, suppressed by the fragrance of roses, it smells disgusting..."

Lei Zhe sniffed left and right, frowned and said, "It seems to have such a strange smell..."

Curiously, he pulled Li Biqing and walked towards the place where the smell came from.The two waded through the long grass under their feet, pushed aside the hanging branches and leaves, walked around an ocher-colored fence covered with American brocade, and saw a creepy scene——

A naked corpse, lying face down in a large pool of blood, the scarred and waxy body was covered with bits and pieces, looking closely, it was clearly blood-stained flower petals.The dark purple blood had dried on the body, but it could not cover the wounds all over the body. They were torn open by the murder weapon in a brutal and tragic way-a piece of newly broken tree branch, or dirty dry wood, scattered all over the body. Inserted between the skin and flesh, at first glance it seems to be a parasite growing from the human body.

Li Biqing turned his head abruptly, supported the tree trunk behind him with one hand, and tightly covered his mouth with the other.

Lei Zhe grabbed his arm helplessly, let out a "ho ho" breath from his throat, and then yelled sharply after a while: "Mobile phone! Give me the mobile phone, call 911!" He fumbled all over his body in a hurry, But he couldn't find where he put the phone for a while, so he searched Li Biqing's pocket in a hurry, shook out the phone and pressed the number.

After calling the police incoherently, the two ran away from the scene hand in hand.

More than ten minutes later, harsh sirens rang through the quiet campus of Portland State University, adding a bit of coldness to the gradually gloomy sky.Lead clouds hang down in the sky one after another, accompanied by a muffled thunder, the summer afternoon shower finally pours down.