Chapter Two: The Woman Missing from the Recording

Que. Lin had never heard the name, yet knew instinctively that it meant Lacuna. A hand covered his mouth and pulled him into an abandoned guard booth. The red umbrella folded. Xu Zhi’s face finally appeared. She was around thirty, with a faint scar through her left eyebrow and eyes that looked as though they had never trusted sleep. She motioned for silence, then removed a moldy street register from behind a loose brick. “Official records are reprinted every few years. This one was never replaced.” Wuyin Street lay in southwest Qinghuai, six hundred and forty meters long, with 107 households. Number 17 was Tao’s Noodle Shop. Farther down, number 21 listed Lin Jianguo, Su Lan, Lin Mo, and Lin Xiaoman. Lin stopped breathing.