Skinner's Box (Fang Mu (Eastern Crimes)) (18 page)

At first Fang Mu had thought it must have something to do with the fact that he knew a little bit about how psychodrama worked; however, when they first arrived at the hand-to-hand combat training hall and took their shirts off, Fang Mu had taken one look at Lu Xu's massive rack of muscles next to his own much less impressive build and knew that his purpose in all of this was to merely serve as a weaker target that Lu Xu could hammer away on until he could regain some of his former self-confidence.

Sweat, punching bags, bandages, and boxing gloves all seemed to be things with which Lu Xu was most intimately familiar. He had taken his neck bandage off, and after trying a few tentative movements, had unleashed his hands and feet and dived straight into the training. He had put special effort into the boxing practice, and had hit hard, as if extremely satisfied with his body and even more excited to be rediscovering it.

Fang Mu had begun puffing like a walrus halfway through their rounds with the punching bags, but Lu Xu had seemed on a high, as if unable to get enough of it. So when the motorcycle cop had proposed that they go at it one-on-one in the ring, Fang Mu had hemmed and hawed a while before finally agreeing to try it. When he soon found himself lying face up on the mat for the fifth time in a row, he had thought to himself, and not without indignation,
Damn. If we keep going like this he might be completely cured, but then I'll be the one suffering from PTSD.

Yang Jincheng was very happy with Lu Xu's mental state after the training was over. And Bian Ping, who had watched the entire process so far with his own eyes and chuckled good-naturedly at Fang Mu's obvious discomfort, had finally come over to Fang Mu and whispered, "Go ahead and put it down for worker's comp." Lu Xu, too, seemed to feel rather embarrassed; he kept smiling kindly and apologetically. Fang Mu had worked his sore jaw while flexing his stiff knuckles.

"Next let's go to the shooting range and see what you two have got," Yang Jincheng decided.

At the mention of shooting, Lu Xu's expression changed slightly. Yang Jincheng quickly added, "But we'll stop here for today. Both of you go home and get some rest."

After they walked Lu Xu out, Bian Ping turned to address Yang Jincheng. "Why no shooting practice today?"

Yang Jincheng nodded. "Well, I'm sure you saw it, too; he still does not want to face his having lost his service pistol. This means he is psychologically still in a state of hyperarousal. We'll take it slow; the only way to treat him is in step-by-step increments, Captain Bian. I recommend organizing more hand-to-hand combat training for him, in fact. Officer Lu's lack of feeling in his body is beginning to alleviate; we should strengthen and consolidate this. However," he said as he eyed Fang Mu and chuckled, "next time let's get someone else to train with him; I don't think our colleague here would last much longer."

Fang Mu could not help but laugh, too, and then immediately winced at the pain the movement caused in his chin.

Another play.

In the upstairs room above the little roadside diner, the six of them were standing in a circle. In the middle, lying on the concrete floor, was an enormous teddy bear. The bear's head had been torn off, and above its neck was a face covered in fresh blood. It was a man; his hands and feet were tied, and his mouth and hands were taped shut with duct tape. He lay there curled halfway into a ball, groaning and sobbing.

The six of them stared down at him coldly, as if he were nothing more than an inanimate offering left at an altar. The man's groans grew weaker; he seemed to be suffocating. Mr. H knelt down and tore the tape off of his mouth.

The man drew in a gasping breath of air and immediately broke into a fit of violent coughing. Breath coming in rags, he began to holler. "I'm sorry…! Please, let me go…! I thought it was just an experiment…! I didn't mean anything by it…!" Whether out of fear or guilt, the man was whimpering now. "It was an accident… I never wanted to hurt that girl…"

Miss Q swayed. Mr. T, standing next to her, reached a hand to steady her.

Mr. Z looked at his watch, and then walked over to retrieve something from the corner of the room. He returned to shove it into Miss Q's hands.

It was a hammer.

"Do it, Q. Completely destroy it," Mr. Z said softly. "Put an end to your nightmares once and for all."

Miss Q took the hammer, her face wooden. She stared at it in her hands for a long while, as if it were something the likes of which she had never seen before.

"Destroy it, Q. After this you'll be cured; you'll be rid of that thing forever." Mr. Z hung his hand over Mr. T's shoulder. "It'll be just like it happened for T."

Miss Q turned her head to look up at Mr. T. He returned her gaze and gave a slight nod. This seemed to encourage her. Grasping the hammer by the handle, she moved closer to the man on the floor and crouched over his body. Suddenly she reached down and tore the tape off his eyes.

The man's face contorted in spasms, but his eyes remained closed for a second or two before he forced them open a crack. When he saw the heavy black head of the hammer over his head, tears began to pour from the corners of his eyes.

As Miss Q looked down at the man, her breathing became labored and her eyes, too, began to brim with tears.

The man's focus shifted from the hammer to Miss Q's face. For a few seconds he stopped struggling, and recognition slowly dawned in his eyes.

"Is it you?" A trail of tears streaked down each of his cheeks. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean to... Please... Let me go..."

Miss Q began sobbing noisily. She locked her hatred-filled eyes on the face in front of her and slowly raised the hammer.

The man wriggled violently as he stared in horror at the hammer above his face, but did not say a word.

Suddenly Miss Q shut her eyes. Her hand dropped limply to her side, and the hammer clanged onto the concrete, leaving an indentation where it landed. "I can't do it..."

Mr. Z frowned, but it was apparent that he had expected this might happen. He turned and glanced at Mr. T.

Taking a step forward, Mr. T picked up the hammer and slammed it down hard on the man's head.

Thunk.

After midnight. A jubilant group of people burst into a little barbecue restaurant. Five men, one woman. They are tremendously excited, and as they pack into a little private dining room, they fill it with shouts and laughter. The woman seems the most festive of them all; her peals of laughter are ear-piercing.

It is the last group of customers for the night. Behind the bar, the proprietor yawns while calculating the day's take, all the while wondering what these folks are so happy about.

The eastern sky has begun to glow with a faint gray light before they finally drive off in a white van.

Miss Q lay sleeping in the backseat. Her head was propped against a plush stuffed animal, and now and then indistinct murmuring escaped her lips. No one said a word. The van flew past the lonely early morning streetlights, like a deformed camel galloping from oasis to oasis of yellow light. The faces of the men in the van alternated between light and shadow as they drove on, making them look like extremely gifted face-changing artists.

Miss Q, lying in darkness, fell deeper and deeper into a peaceful slumber.

The van pulled up in front of Miss Q's apartment building. Sleep still in her eyes, she got out, slid the door shut behind her, and ascended the front steps on unsteady legs. She was still holding the stuffed animal, as if reluctant to let it go.

Mr. T rolled down the passenger-side window and called out to her. "Get some sleep."

Fumbling with her keys, Miss Q suddenly stood up straight and turned around very slowly. The voice-activated lights overhead shown down on a mop of black hair around a face as white as paper. She stiffly raised the stuffed animal over her head, as if flaunting a trophy.

She laughed in triumph, in victory.

The sound of her laughter pierced the inky night air, shriller than a raven's cry.

Early the next morning.

The Fushima Mall had just opened for business, and the throng of shoppers that had lined up early was flooding through the doors in a steady stream. From 7:30 to 8:30 was the Morning Market Shopping Hour and there were plenty of bargains to be found. A woman in her 30s, her son in tow, made her way through the crowded first floor and headed straight up to the second floor grocery section.

As she neared the produce section, she suddenly realized that her son was no longer walking with her. She stopped, looking back the way she had come, and saw the eight-year-old standing in the toy department, staring with mouth agape at a wall piled high with giant stuffed animals.

Burning with irritation, she made a mental note of the special she had just seen on eggs and then stalked back to tug at her son's hand. But as she reached him, she slipped on a patch of wet floor and fell. She glanced around as she got to her feet, extremely embarrassed, and only then did she notice that both she and the boy were standing in a puddle of dark red, viscous liquid.

Stunned, her eyes followed the trail of red upward and realized that it was coming from one of the giant teddy bears that sat on a shelf against the wall. The man-sized doll's legs were stained with the half-dried sticky mess, and as her gaze continued slowly upward, so was the fur on its stomach…and shoulders…

The child seemed not to hear his mother's sudden frantic screaming. He just stood there in the red puddle, staring blankly at the enormous yellow bear.

Staring back at him, protruding from the doll's neck, was a head whose skull had been so severely caved-in that its eye sockets were skewed down to where its nose should be.

CHAPTER
16
Ritual

A
cold front had moved in, bringing with it a steady drizzle of rain mixed with sleet and plummeting temperatures. Fang Mu trotted along the clammy street, taking care not to slip on the fallen leaves made wet by the rain. By the time he reached the front doors to the Fushima Mall, they had already been cordoned off with police tape. A crowd of onlookers pressed close, leaning this way and that to catch a glimpse of what they could. Fang Mu displayed his badge by hanging it from his breast pocket and forced his way through.

The crime scene was on the second floor, in the front of the toy department located in the northwest corner of the shopping center. Despite their shelves being stacked high with goods, the aisles were completely devoid of shoppers. As Fang Mu threaded his way through the maze of shops and boutiques, a feeling of déjà vu took hold of him. He stopped and looked around, trying hard to think of what had suddenly seemed so familiar to him, but then continued toward the crime scene.

Vice Captain Zheng Lin stood lost in thought, hugging his shoulders as he faced the wall of giant stuffed animals. As Fang Mu drew near, he looked up. At first glance one of the stuffed animals seemed out of proportion to the rest. Upon closer inspection, he saw the little human head sticking out from its neck.

"Welcome to toy hell," Zheng Lin said, grimacing as he shook Fang Mu's hand. "Captain Bian told us not to touch anything until you arrived."

Fang Mu nodded. "Where is he?"

Zheng Lin pointed toward the front of the building. "Outside talking to the guy who called it in. Apparently, the one who discovered the body was an eight-year-old kid."

"Damn," Fang Mu swore. “A kid?”

"Yep." Zheng Lin gave a wry smile. "This toy store's not exactly a child-friendly place anymore, I suppose."

The wall display was at the front of the toy department. The stuffed animals were arranged in rows and the largest ones occupied the top shelf. The body of the victim had been stuffed in among them at a position fifth from the left. From all appearances, it wore a suit made from what was once a giant teddy bear.

Compared to the charmingly innocent stuffed animals to its left and right, this creature with the body of a bear and the head of a human looked extremely out of place. His head was hanging forward, and its collapsed forehead was halfway visible behind a mat of bloody hair. Fang Mu stepped carefully around the puddle of congealed blood on the floor to stand directly below the corpse so that he could get a better look at its face.

It was the face of an adult male, perhaps 40 years in age. Its dull eyes were open and the face was badly swollen.

Fang Mu backed up a pace or two and stared at the corpse where it had been hung from the wall to keep from falling off the top shelf. The head of the deceased was leaning forward but slightly to the right, almost appearing apologetic.

Gradually, Fang Mu focused on the victim until one by one the objects around it disappeared from his vision. He continued until it seemed that the only things remaining in the entire shopping center were himself and the hanging corpse in front of him. Soon the corpse no longer looked like a dead animal; to Fang Mu, it now represented a collection of emotions. Fanaticism. Anticipation. Rescue. Redemption.

"This..." Fang Mu mumbled to himself. "…It looks like a ritual of some sort."

"A ritual?" Bian Ping asked when he heard Fang Mu’s thoughts on the crime. He sat in a chair in the surveillance room later, a pensive frown accentuating the lines in his forehead. A security guard looked on. 

"Find anything here?" Fang Mu pointed at the monitor displaying a still from one of the surveillance videos.

Bian Ping nodded with a snort. "Take a look."

He told the security guard to rewind the video back to a certain point. When it started playing again, Fang Mu realized that it was from a camera situated on the first floor of the shopping center. At first the only things visible were the shelves and a roll-up door. Suddenly a line of light shone from under the door, and a minute later it rolled slowly open to reveal a very strange object.

It looked like a giant coffin inching slowly forward. Closer inspection showed it to be a large black sheet of cloth, the corners of which appeared to be propped up by poles of some sort from underneath. The sheet looked big enough for five or six people to hide beneath.

The security guard switched to another camera view and this one showed them entering the household appliances department. In the next frame, they were in front of the toy department upstairs. The lighting was very dim, and they seemed to be well-acquainted with the position of the store's surveillance cameras; as they walked, they did their best to stick to a route that kept them behind as many display racks as possible. At one point it seemed to Fang Mu that they had disappeared altogether, but moments later the dim light of a flashlight flicked on right next to the wall of stuffed animals.

The fabric of the sheet was thick and only a little light escaped through it. Fang Mu was unable to make out any details of the people standing under it. Gauging the height of the shelf with his eyes, he leaned closer to the screen.

If they wanted to hang the body there on the wall, they would have to extend up at least a meter or so from beneath the sheet.

As Fang Mu held his breath in anticipation of discovery, he saw a movement beneath the sheet; a moment later, the sheet was extended straight upwards so that it was a full one and a half meters taller. Fang Mu's jaw dropped open. It turned out that the sheet had a second layer to it that had been folded underneath. As he watched dumbfounded, one of the figures from inside the cloaked sheet climbed up what Fang Mu could only guess was a stepladder and, swaying a little, shoved something up onto the top shelf. It was the deceased.

After several attempts, the sheet-clad person on the stepladder was finally able to secure the body by hanging it from a hook of some sort that he attached to the wall. The sheet slowly came back down as the figure descended, and then the light from the flashlight flicked off.

A few minutes later, the sheeted figures again appeared at the front door to the shopping center; the door rolled closed behind them, and they disappeared into the night.

"Have you ever seen 'The Coldest Day'?" Bian Ping leaned back in his chair. He looked like he did not know whether to laugh or cry.

"Yep." Fang Mu smirked. In the television series,
The Coldest Day
, the character played by Chen Daoming had successfully robbed a bank and evaded the view from its surveillance cameras by hiding under a large cloth sheet the entire time. It was a crude method, but Fang Mu had to admit to its effectiveness.

The question was: Why had they done this terrible thing?

The victim's name was Shen Baoqiang; he was male, 41-year-old, and divorced. He had worked as a manager at a fruit wholesale company. The time of death was estimated to have been roughly eight hours before he was left at the crime scene, and the cause of death was a direct result of blunt force trauma to the front of the skull. Further forensic examination revealed that there were lacerations in several places on the victim's scalp, as well as multiple soft tissue contusions around his body, but that none of these had been fatal. The actual cause of death had been an incranial hematoma produced by a severe skull fracture near the right temple. The murder weapon was likely a blunt object such as a hammer. Based on recordings made by the shopping center's surveillance system, the place where the body was discovered was undoubtedly a post-mortem crime scene. Moreover, there were marks and residue on the victim's wrists and ankles that suggested tape had been used, and the predominant theory was that he had been kidnapped, bound, and gagged prior to his death.

On-site investigations indicated that the perpetrators had entered by way of a first floor window on the west side of the mall. The expansion bolts that had fixed the iron bars of the security grating in place had been removed and tossed aside, and a section of glass to the side of the window latch had been cut out, leaving a hole just large enough for a hand to fit through and open the latch. The padlock on the outside of the roll-up door had marks on it, but it did not appear to have been opened by brute force; rather, they seemed to have been left by a lock-picking instrument of some sort. The on-site investigations had led the police to conclude that this had been a well-planned, premeditated entry, and that the perpetrators had been adequately equipped and determined enough to get in and get out quickly and without a hitch.

The police looked into the victim's social relations, and following recommendations from the PSB's Criminal Psychology Research Institute, they focused their efforts on finding evidence for any possible vendetta against the victim as well as whether or not he had belonged to any underground groups or secret societies. His home and place of work were searched thoroughly, but nothing suspicious turned up, nor were any strange tattoos or other markings found anywhere on the victim's body. This fact, combined with statements from his family, friends, and coworkers, let the police to rule out the possibility that he had belonged to any secret organizations. As for the ongoing investigations into whether or not the man had fallen victim to a revenge killing, no definitive conclusion had been reached for the time being due to the complex nature of the many business relationships he had formed while trading in the commercial sector.

The initial investigative results caught Fang Mu a bit by surprise. This case obviously involved a group of perpetrators, and the manner in which the body had been dumped had clear ritualistic significance. That in itself had led Fang Mu to believe the murder might have been committed as a form of punishment by members of some sort of gang, but this theory was inconsistent with the police investigation's recent findings. Following Fang Mu's advice, the police launched yet another series of interviews with informants from the various gangs known to be active in the city, but nothing was learned that seemed to have anything to do with the case at hand. As a result, the police returned the focus of their investigation to the shopping center.

This was an area that held quite a bit of interest for Fang Mu and his colleagues at the Criminal Psychology Research Institute. Without a doubt, the culprits had carried out a long and careful observation of the place before dumping the body there, and had planned out their course of action in great detail. Their willingness to take such pains and such a huge risk had clearly risen out of some need of theirs. But what exactly had that need been?

Traditional trains of thought would conclude that by leaving the victim's body in such a public location, the perpetrators had meant to humiliate, to show off, or to lay down an open challenge. Based on what was known of the case so far, however, there had been no obvious motive to humiliate the victim. And if they had done this as a result of a subconscious impulse to either show off or to lay down a gauntlet of some kind, the police would have to consider an even more sobering possibility: that the perpetrators would kill again.

Smoke curled lazily in the City Bureau's multi-purpose conference room. The prediction of another murder case weighed heavily on the minds of everyone present, and for some of those present, smoking heavily seemed the only way they could divert themselves from their anxiety. As Vice Captain Zheng Lin opened a second pack of cigarettes, he motioned for one of the investigators to give a report of what was known about the case so far.

The video footage captured by the surveillance cameras made it clear that the perpetrators were very familiar with the shopping center's layout. Research into the mall's staff had ruled out the possibility that this had been an inside job. Due to the fact that the broken window that had served their point of entry was located at an angle to the nearby residential area, as well as the fact that it had been broken late at night, there had been no eyewitnesses to the break-in. By the markings left on the padlock, the police believed that at least one of the perps had some sort of background or expertise in lock-picking, and so they had begun looking into the lock industry around town.

After the investigator was finished delivering her report, Zheng Lin sat in silence for a long minute or two, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and smoke shrouding his knitted brows. Finally he waved a hand. "Keep interviewing the victim's family and coworkers and so on. Find whatever you can. That's it for now, folks."