Skinner's Box (Fang Mu (Eastern Crimes)) (11 page)

One of the colleagues of the deceased even joked, "If someone hated Professor Jiang, it could only have been due to the fact that he was able to complete successful research projects year after year, and so he always got the funding he needed."

How could such a seemingly perfect individual incur someone's wrath?

Even though all of the results of the interviews seemed to run absolutely contrary to the initial police hypothesis, Fang Mu still firmly believed that the killing had been the result of a vendetta. First of all, most cases of homicide were committed with as much haste as possible; the longer it took to kill the victim, the more likely it was that the perpetrator would be discovered. But in this case, the deceased had been kidnapped and then subjected to prolonged torture; such an enormous and unnecessary risk had no doubt been taken by the perpetrator in order to vent some sort of acute frustration. And, that frustration very probably had something to do with vengeance. Secondly, the murderer had chosen electric shock as a means to torture the victim to death. This was not exactly an easy and convenient way of going about it. If the perpetrator had wanted to inflict pain on the victim, a knife would have sufficed; why waste time and effort on electrocution? Fang Mu had considered the possibility that the purpose of the torture had been to extract information. However, an investigation into the victim's background pretty much ruled out any possibility that he had been privy to any important secrets or intelligence. Moreover, it was conceivable that while being electrocuted repeatedly, the victim's acute screams, violent spasms, and contorted facial muscles, as well as the smell of burning skin and flesh in the air, would have given great satisfaction to the murderer. Obviously, this would have had something to do with a particular demand from the murderer.

But what had the police stumped was this: Why had the perpetrator chosen a place like the labyrinth to dispose of the body?

Most killers after committing a homicide would go to great lengths to cover up the facts of the crime, including getting rid of the corpse so that it would be difficult to find. But the perpetrator in this case had done the exact opposite by placing the body right in the middle of an amusement park. If one were to interpret this as an act of public exhibitionism, or of throwing a gauntlet down for the police, then one had to conclude that such behavior was unnecessary, even foolish. To begin with, the perpetrator could easily have discarded the body in a much more public location such as a city plaza or in front of a government agency. A place like that would be much more conducive to causing mayhem. Secondly, when disposing of a corpse, most murderers would want to get it done as quickly and covertly as possible. But this convoluted labyrinth was not exactly the type of place in which a murderer could dump a body and get away quickly.

Unless the murderer had wanted to use the labyrinth to express some sort of emotion, and had known how to navigate its passageways quite well.

One by one the police investigated the amusement park employees and eliminated them from the suspect pool. When he heard the results, Fang Mu drove back over to the amusement park, not at all surprised that they had come up empty-handed.

The labyrinth had been reopened, and business was surprisingly good. Apparently the discovery of a dead body in the underground maze had given the place a certain mysterious allure. Glancing at the long lines at the ticket windows, Fang Mu smirked and headed toward the information desk.

A deputy director of the amusement park carried over a huge pile of papers and plopped them down on the counter in front of Fang Mu. Wiping sweat from his brow, he said, "Here you go, Officer Fang; take your time reading through this stuff. I'll be over there if you need me." He pointed at the throng of tourists scrambling head over heal to beat each other to the labyrinth. He grinned. "Duty calls."

The pile of documents included design blueprints, construction plans, tourist help request records, and some photos. Fang Mu lit a cigarette and sat down on a couch in a small room the deputy director showed him to before leaving. Fang Mu patiently leafed through it all, one page at a time. He had a nagging suspicion that the labyrinth was somehow a key to understanding the case, or that it at least had something to do with the killer's motive. He had therefore requested access to all the park's materials on the labyrinth in the hopes that he might discover something.

The blueprints told him that the labyrinth's tunnels ran a total length of nearly 1,500 feet and most of them were underground. There were two entrances, one on the east side and one on the west, but no matter which entrance a person used, there was only one correct route to get to the other exit. The room in which the body had been found was located in the central section of the labyrinth and could be considered a midway rest stop. Visitors that were able to make it that far still had a choice to make; only by selecting the correct route would they be able to find their way out. This was the deepest area of the maze.

Due to the intricacy of the maze's passageways, it was quite easy to lose one's sense of direction. Adding to that, the dim lighting and oppressive atmosphere made it so that very few tourists actually made it all the way through the labyrinth; most of them tended to give up long before they ever got to the midway rest stop. Assistance boxes and surveillance monitors had been installed in each of the tunnels so that lost visitors who wished to leave the labyrinth could, at the press of a button, summon a park employee to lead them to an exit.

A photo caught Fang Mu's eye. In it a smiling youth was holding a small box and holding his fingers up to the camera in a V-shape. At the bottom of the photo was some writing: Tan Ji, June 25, 2004, first visitor to make it out of the labyrinth without assistance.

"Tan Ji?" Fang Mu frowned. He had seen the name before. Rifling back through the documents, he found the list ranking the people who had made it through the labyrinth the fastest, and sure enough the name Tan Ji was on it; he had placed first. It only took him 57 minutes to get through the labyrinth, while the person in second place had taken a full two hours and 47 minutes to complete the same task.

The deputy director pushed open the door and placed a bottle of mineral water in front of Fang Mu.

"Still reading?" He leaned over to have a look at the photo in Fang Mu's hands. "Oh!
That
little guy."

"It says he's the fastest person to have gotten through the labyrinth."

"Correct." The deputy director sat heavily on the sofa. "To this day no one has beaten his time. That kid's pretty interesting, too; he comes here a lot. You could call him a regular patron of ours."

"Oh?" Fang Mu stared for a moment before hastily opening the photo album he had just closed. He took a closer look at the photograph of Tan Ji. "You say he comes here a lot. Did he do so before he set the record? Or do you just mean ever since?"

"Ever since." The deputy director chuckled. "I suppose he wants to break his own record, right?"

Fang
Mu continued staring at the photo for a long time before finally asking, "Is that a prize he's holding in his hand there?"

"Sure is."

"What is it?"

"A compass."

When Tan Ji had collected his prize, the park had recorded his ID number, so he was not hard to track down. The very next day Fang Mu met with him in a room adjoining an advertising company's reception lounge.

He was a young 23-year-old with multi-colored hair. He wandered into the conference room with a mouthful of chewing gum, picked a chair up, turned it around, and straddled it as he sat down. He crossed his arms over the top of the back and rested his chin on them, expression nonchalant. "What's up?"

His unperturbed attitude caught Fang Mu off-guard. He decided to get right to the point. "My name is Fang Mu, and I work for the Public Security Bureau. I wanted to ask you a few questions. Here's my badge."

Without even glancing at the police badge Fang Mu was holding out for him, Tan Ji scratched his head and said, "Is this about the murder in the Carnival Grounds’ labyrinth?"

Fang Mu looked at him steadily and said, "It is."

Tan Ji snorted and shook his head, then suddenly laughed. "I guess asking a question like that didn't do me any favors, right?"

Fang Mu tapped his cigarette ash but remained silent.

"I thought you'd say something like, 'How did you know?'" Tan Ji chuckled. Upon seeing that he had not gotten any response whatsoever from Fang Mu, the smile on Tan Ji's face abruptly disappeared and was replaced by a lethargic look. "If you've got questions, go ahead and ask."

Fang Mu stubbed his cigarette out in the ash tray. "Do you go to the Carnival Grounds'
labyrinth o
ften?"

"Yeah. I set the record for the fastest person to make it through the maze."

"Have you been there since you set that record?"

"Yeah."

"If you've already made it through that fast, why keep going?"

"Constant self-improvement." Tan Ji yawned. "I want to see if I can do it even faster."

"Well?"

"Huh?" Tan Ji looked a bit startled. "No, I still haven't beaten my record."

"How far off are you?"

"Not far."

Fang Mu stared at him for several seconds. "Where were you after 9:00 p.m.. on September 27?"

Head down, Tan Ji stared at the table for a while before answering. "I—I think I was at an internet café playing games. Yeah; I was playing a game in the Lucky Internet Café, down below where I live."

"What game?"

"CS."

"Can't you play online at home?"

"Yeah, I can."

"Well then why go to an internet café?"

"It's more fun playing CS at the café. Besides, their internet's faster."

"What time did you leave the internet café?"

"Probably around three in the morning. I don't remember."

"Did you go there alone?"

"Yeah."

"Was anyone there who can confirm that what you say is true?"

Tan Ji lifted his head and rolled his eyes. "No." When he noticed Fang Mu still staring at him, he sighed impatiently. "Who'd have thought you all would pick me to investigate? I guess there's no way I could've done anything or been anywhere unless I can find a witness to prove it, right?"

Fang Mu laughed and stood up. "Okay, that's all for today. But if I have any further questions, I'll come look you up again."

"Whatever." Tan Ji got up, stuck his hands in his pockets and marched out of the room, jaws still working on his chewing gum.

Fang Mu felt sure that Tan Ji had prepared himself for a visit from the police. During the interview, the nonchalant attitude, the deliberate avoidance of Fang Mu's gaze while answering questions, and the constant chewing of gum had all been part of an intentional performance by the young man to resist Fang Mu's efforts to guess at his thoughts from his facial expressions.

But the results of the Municipal Bureau's investigation left Fang Mu greatly disappointed. Tan Ji had indeed been playing games at the internet café that evening, and an employee at the café had remembered him quite clearly. After ordering some computer time at the counter, Tan Ji had asked the employee to bring him a bottle of water. The employee had brought over a bottle of Wahaha Mineral Water, but Tan Ji had then said that he wanted a bottle of Nongfu Mountain Mineral Water instead. The employee had returned with a bottle of Nongfu Mountain Mineral Water as requested, and then Tan Ji had complained that it was not cold enough. And at three in the morning when Tan Ji was back at the counter to settle up, he again argued with the employee over an item on the bill.

In other words, it was impossible for Tan Ji to have been at the scene of the crime when it was being committed.