Profiler (Fang Mu Eastern Crimes Series Book 1) (21 page)

The victim was a sophomore physics student named Xin Tingting. She was 20-year-old and from the city of
Zhouxi
in
Sichuan
province. When the crime was committed, she had already been missing for 36 hours. However, because she had numerous online friends and had left the city unannounced to meet them on previous occasions, none of her roommates had been concerned and no one had notified any of her teachers.

The victim's body was left in Room 404 of the
Multidisciplinary
Building
. It was found by a cleaning lady, who in the dim morning light believed that the victim was wearing red clothing. But when she turned on the light, she discovered that in fact the corpse had had all of its skin peeled off.

According to the interviewer's notes, the cleaning lady had seen two people when she entered the room. So without lifting his head, Fang Mu asked Tai Wei, "Who was the other person?"

Tai Wei stopped chewing at once. Based on the look on his face, he seemed to be remembering something awful.

"It wasn't a person," he said, forcing himself to swallow the food in his mouth. "It was a plastic mannequin."

Fang Mu frowned. "A plastic mannequin?" he repeated, and was about to ask more when he saw that Tai Wei had already begun to retch. Fang Mu quickly pointed at the trash can beside his desk.

Feeling rather embarrassed, Tai Wei gulped down several mouthfuls of water and cleared his throat. Then pretending as if nothing had happened, he said, "Damn, I ate way too fast."

When Fang Mu didn't respond, but rather just gave him a long look with a hint of derision in his eyes, Tai Wei got a little annoyed.

"All you students are real wusses, you know that?" Tai Wei snapped. "From what I've heard, none of you are willing to even step foot in that classroom anymore. Small wonder, given that it's Room Four-Zero-Four on the fourth floor. With that many fours, it's bound to be unlucky."
(Translator
’
s note: In Chinese, the number four is pronounced almost the same as the word for death.)

Fang Mu smiled and asked again, "So a plastic mannequin, huh? What kind, and where are the crime scene photographs?" But then, with no warning whatsoever, he suddenly leapt to his feet and cried, "Wait! What did you just say?"

Caught completely off guard, Tai Wei swallowed the water in his mouth too fast, and started coughing violently. Fang Mu immediately began hitting him hard on the back, all the while continuing to loudly ask, "What did you just say?"

"What did I say when?" said Tai Wei, panting for breath. "Are you trying to scare me to death or something?"

"Think," said Fang Mu anxiously. "What did you say just now—it was something about the number four."

"Oh, um, I was saying… The fourth floor, Room Four-Zero-Four. What about it?"

Fang Mu didn't respond, just stared at the corner of the room, lost in thought.

Tai Wei watched him, completely baffled. After a while, he realized the kid was mumbling something under his breath: "One, two, three, four…"

Just as he was about to ask him what was going on, Fang Mu turned around and began to speak. "Tai Wei," he said slowly, a strange light flashing through his eyes, "you need to combine the cases. It's the numbers."

"What numbers?" asked Tai Wei, even more confused.

"I can guarantee that all of these murders were committed by the same person, because at every crime scene the killer left behind a number," said Fang Mu, sitting down on the bed. "It's just that this number doesn't refer to the individual victim per se, but rather to where the crime falls in the overall sequence. At this point, murders one through four have already happened."

"I don't understand."

"In the seven-one double murder, the male student whose hands were cut off—what do you remember about him?"

"That case I don't know much about, but I think he was the goalie for the school soccer team."

"What number jersey do goalies usually wear?"

He paused. "I don't know, but the French goalie Barthez wears number sixteen." On the day that Fang Mu had nearly been killed by Ma Kai, Tai Wei had happened to notice this piece of information while walking past the TV in the on-duty room.

Getting back on topic, Fang Mu said, "Number one, they generally wear number one. And I know for certain that Qu Weiqiang did, too, because I went to his jersey retirement ceremony."

"One. Now I understand. The hospital murder took place in Observation Room Two. That was two. But what about three?" Scratching his head, Tai Wei puzzled over this question.

But Fang Mu had long since thought of the answer.

"The packing box that the little girl's corpse was delivered in," he said slowly. "Do you still remember what it looked like?"

"That Adidas box?" said Tai Wei, not seeing where this was going. "What was special about it?"

"The three leaves," said Fang Mu, smiling bitterly. "I should have noticed it much sooner."

But Fang Mu wasn't the only one upset; Tai Wei now felt the same way. At that moment he clearly recalled the trademark logo that had been printed on the side of the Adidas box—the three-leaved trefoil. He had looked at that box hundreds of times. Why had this thought never occurred to him before?

"Room Four-Zero-Four on the fourth floor, and the corpse was even found sitting in the fourth row," muttered Tai Wei. "Obviously, this was
four
."

In an instant, it seemed as if the two people sitting in Room 303 were enveloped by a heavy sense of fear, one that came with the smell of blood. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Fang Mu looked at the ground. Tai Wei looked at him. All the while the fear slithered back and forth between them like a long serpent, smiling wickedly, baring its poisonous fangs, and shooting out its forked tongue as it arrogantly enjoyed their terror and helplessness. 

After a long time, Tai Wei forced himself to say: "How many more will there be?"

Fang Mu took a deep breath, and then shook his head. "I don't know."

The dorm room fell once more into silence. After some time had passed and Tai Wei felt a little better, he asked: "Couldn't this all just be a coincidence?"

"I don't think so," said Fang Mu, his expression grave. "Not only have the crimes been numbered one through four, they've all taken place around Jiangbin City University, and when the victims weren't students, they were the family of faculty members. This is too much to be simply coincidental."

Suddenly he stood up, grabbed the thick folders of case data, and dropped them down on the desk with a bang.

"I recommend that you combine these cases into one," Fang Mu said, eyes now blazing as he stared at Tai Wei. "As for me, I will continue to analyze the murders committed thus far. I hope…" he paused to lick his dry lips, "that we can stop him at four!"

Xin Tingting's cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation, the murder weapon most likely a length of rope. Because trace amounts of the sedative Alprazolam were found in the victim's bloodstream, she was believed to have been drugged prior to being killed. Afterwards, the victim's skin was entirely peeled off, and then draped like clothing over the plastic mannequin that had been placed next to her. As demonstrated by photographs of the scene, even though the victim was nearly 5'7", her skin was still a little small for the male mannequin to wear. Except for its torso, arms and thighs, all of which had been forcibly covered, the rest of the mannequin's plastic body was revealed. Although the killer's method of skinning the victim made clear that he was no expert, the neat and meticulous stitching he had done to make this set of "clothes" for the mannequin showed that he was a careful, patient individual.

A CD stereo with a disc still playing inside was also found at the scene. From the stereo display, it seemed that the disc had been playing since 1:45 that morning—which must have been roughly the time that the killer placed the corpse and mannequin in the classroom.

The song that the corpse happened to be listening to was an old one: "Revolution 9" by The Beatles, from their popular self-titled CD.

The police and Fang Mu found this discovery extremely perplexing. Killing a person, skinning her—these things obviously carried deep significance. But making a corpse listen to music, what was that supposed to mean?

Although more than a few people felt the rationale for combining the investigations was a little farfetched, it was ultimately given the director's approval and a special team was formed, with Tai Wei and Zhao Yonggui in charge. All the abandoned leads from the three previous murder cases were once more taken up and thoroughly investigated. Initially, two of these were given precedence above the rest.

The first was the source of the heroin used in the hospital murder. A drug like that was not the sort of murder weapon a person just happened across. Therefore, police believed that if they investigated heroin buyers across the city, they might be able to identify the killer himself and at the very least may learn some of his characteristics.

The second important lead was the car. Previously, Fang Mu had suggested to Tai Wei that the killer was probably a car owner, and on this point the police happened to be thinking the same thing. Their reasoning was that the first, third, and fourth murders all took place in a different location than where the bodies were found, and therefore would have required the killer to transport his victims. Were he to have moved them on foot, not only would he be wasting time and energy, he might also be discovered. Because Jiangbin City University's three gates—at its north, east and west entrances respectively—closed every night at roughly 11 p.m., any cars that tried to get in afterwards would be discovered by campus security. As a result, the police began to consider the possibility that the car came from somewhere inside campus.

One week later, the officers investigating the two leads reported back to the special team. The group responsible had spoken to informants among the city's addicts, but had not found any buyers who fit the description of the killer. They did, however, learn one important piece of information. While one of the addicts was returning home from buying heroin late one night in mid-September, he was attacked in the street and his wallet and the heroin he had just purchased were both stolen. Although the man had been injured, he had not reported the crime to the police for fear of being arrested himself. Police later interviewed the addict in question, but he had nearly lost his mind to the ravages of drugs and could remember nothing about the person who had mugged him. In the end, police had no choice but to send him to a prison labor camp.

The group responsible for locating the killer's car set to investigating the source of all the cars frequently parked on campus. They found nothing. However, while later searching the school boundaries for entry points, one sharp-eyed policeman located a hole in the iron fence on the north side of campus. One of the bars had been sawed off and then replaced so that the fence still appeared continuous while still allowing someone to easily remove it whenever they wanted. The hole itself was big enough for an adult to climb through. Once inside, it was a one-minute walk to the
Multidisciplinary
Building
(scene of the fourth crime), and a five-minute walk to the track and field stadium (scene of the first crime). Tire tracks had been left on the street beside the fence, but too much time had already passed to identify them. All the same, police decided that, until proven otherwise, this was where the killer had entered the campus.

From these findings, along with the analysis of the Department of Public Security's criminal psychology research division, it was determined that the killer was relatively well-off, strong-bodied, and intelligent, and quite familiar with the campus of Jiangbin City University as well as the surrounding area.

This conclusion was essentially identical to the one Fang Mu had reached earlier.

It was a bright afternoon in late fall, while Fang Mu and Tai Wei were sitting on one of the benches beside the basketball court. Tai Wei had just told Fang Mu their latest find: the factory that produced the plastic mannequin from the fourth murder had been found. However, over a hundred stores in the city sold this model, so it would be very difficult to determine who purchased it. Although Tai Wei said "We're still working on it," Fang Mu could tell that he wasn't very optimistic.

The sun was unusually pleasant, and Tai Wei leaned back and stretched. It felt as if the sunlight was slowly entering the spaces between his bones, warming him to the core. The sensation was delightful. Lighting a cigarette, he slumped back against the bench, thinking how nice the day would be if only he didn't have to worry about the grisly case before them.