Skinner's Box (Fang Mu (Eastern Crimes)) (32 page)

"Ah..." Luo Jiahai's face brightened with sudden comprehension. "And that way T had an alibi, too, I assume."

"Exactly." Mr. Z laughed. "T is one smart S.O.B., that's for sure. He was the one who came up with the idea to act drunk and cause a big uproar in the internet café so that the employees there would all remember him."

"And the body? What did you do with it?"

"We dumped it in a labyrinth."

"A labyrinth?"

"That's right. It was a place Tan Ji often visited. He even drew us a detailed map. I know it doesn't make sense, but that guy was like a fish in water in there. It seems there are only two sorts of people who can find their way out of a labyrinth: people with extremely strong senses of direction, and people who have absolutely none." Mr. Z shook his head, chuckling at the irony.

"But why did he want to put the body in a labyrinth?"

"Who knows?" Mr. Z shrugged. "You know how it is. Whenever we kill one, it's the protagonist who gets to choose where to take his curtain call. My guess is, " he said, laughing a bit, "T hated that guy so much he wanted to make it so that even his
ghost
couldn't find its way out."

Luo Jiahai fell silent, head down, deep in thought. Mr. Z looked at him awhile, and then stood and patted him on the shoulder.

"L, I'm telling you all this because I want you to believe that we are definitely going to help you avenge Shen Xiang, and we'll do it both safely and thoroughly."

"Uh-huh."

"When it's
your
turn to be the protagonist, we'll listen to your instructions. You'll get to decide what happens, and how." Mr. Z paused. "Within reason, of course; we want to keep everyone safe."

"Okay." Luo Jiahai pressed his hand firmly in Mr. Z's. "Thank you; thank everyone."

"All right then. I'll be going now." Mr. Z glanced at his watch. "You should get some rest."

As he got up to leave, Luo Jiahai noticed Mr. Z putting something in his pocket. Upon closer inspection he realized it was the butt of the cigarette Mr. Z had just smoked. As he was closing the door behind him, it occurred to Luo Jiahai that Mr. Z had not taken his gloves off from the time he had entered the room to the time he'd left.

No sooner had he arrived at work than Fang Mu was summoned to Bian Ping's office. As he walked in, he saw an ominous look clouding his boss's face. Bian Ping asked him what he had been up to lately.

A bit taken aback, Fang Mu replied, "Investigating. What else would I be doing?"

"Well, then can you explain why someone has filed a report against you for abusing your police equipment usage privileges?" Bian Pin pointed at a piece of paper on his desk. "It's gone straight to the Bureau, and just now I got a call from them asking about you."

It dawned on Fang Mu that it must have to do with the incident at Angel Hall. Without explaining, he pulled up the video footage on his cell phone and showed it to Bian Ping. After the captain had watched it a second time, his expression softened. He ordered him to burn the video onto a CD so that he could take it to the Bureau chief.

Then he seemed to remember something, and asked Fang Mu, "Wait. Why were you there?"

Fang Mu gave him a brief explanation.

Bian Ping mulled it over, then said: "Just focus on your job for now. As for the demolition and relocation, it sounds like there are too many beneficiaries involved. Best not to do anything rash."

He was interrupted by the telephone ringing. As he answered it he pointed at the cigarette pack on the tea table for Fang Mu. A moment later, Bian Ping's face lit up. Fang Mu watched him expectantly, but when Bian Ping hung up, he just sat down in his chair looking stunned.

Finally Bian Ping opened his mouth. "Well I'll be damned. Remember that hair they found inside the teddy bear? It belongs to Luo Jiahai."

CHAPTER
27
Mr. H's Story

"I'
m pretty sure everyone knows what line of work I'm in. I'm a truck driver. I didn't get much by way of schooling; compared to you all, I'm a simpleton. I used to think it was just those sourpuss, lip-smacking, intellectual types that got sick in the head, but now I know mental illness can get anyone.

"So yeah, anyways, it happened two years ago. Back then I'd only been married for about three years. My wife's the same as me, uneducated, but she's also real gentle and kindhearted. We weren't very well off, but we were happy, and didn't want for much. We were planning on having a kid, so I was working my butt off to save up some money so I could make life more comfortable for my family.

"It was one day in June, in the morning, when I got a strange phone call out of the blue. As soon as I picked up the receiver there was this hysterical voice saying something like, 'Where are you? Come to Furong Residential District, right away!'

"It struck me as weird, so I asked him, 'Who are you?'

"He said, 'I'm Chen Bing's husband. Chen Bing, she...she jumped off the roof and killed herself! ' And then he hung up.

"It scared me to death. I tried calling back the number on the caller ID. It was a cell phone, but it just rang out. I thought about it and decided to drive my company's truck over to Furong Residential District and have a look. The whole way there I racked my brain trying to think of where I knew the name Chen Bing from, and finally I remembered she was someone I went to middle school with. But I hadn't seen her since, and there wasn't any other connection between us. How in the hell would her husband have my cell phone number? And why would he call me at a time like this in the first place?

"When I got to Furong Residential District, I saw there were a couple police cars parked out the front, and there was this big crowd of people hanging around one of the buildings just inside the gate. I ran over and before I even got there I saw the crowd part and some EMTs come running out with a stretcher, and on it lay someone completely covered in white cloth. I could tell by the long black hair dangling down the side of the stretcher that it was a woman. I was scared to death, wondering, is that really Chen Bing? Did she really kill herself?

"I was standing there staring like an idiot when this guy suddenly ran out from the crowd of people and grabbed me by the arm, and started dragging me over behind one of the buildings. I was too stunned to react at first, but then I broke free of his grip and faced him. He shouted my name at me, raised his fist, and before I knew it he pounded me one right in the face. It hurt; I nearly lost my balance. I rubbed my sore jaw and yelled at him, 'Who the hell are you? Why the hell did you hit me?'

"He screamed at me, 'I'm Chen Bing's husband! You
bastard,
it's all your fault she's dead! ' Then he threw something at me, turned around, and ran off. By then there were a bunch of people staring at me, so all I wanted to do was to get out of there as quick as I could. I ignored my busted lip and picked up the thing he threw at me – it was a package of some sort – then got back in the truck and drove off.

"I didn't go back to work that day, and I turned off my phone. I drove for a bit and then parked on the side of some street. I sat there in the truck and opened the package. Inside there were a few diary books and a pile of letters. From the dates on them, they'd been written starting over a decade ago and went all the way up to just recently. I sat there leafing through the letters and diaries a while before I realized they'd all been written to
me.
In her diaries she wrote that she'd been secretly in love with me ever since middle school, but she never got up the guts to tell me. After graduation everybody spread to the four winds, and she got married, but she wasn't able to forget her feelings for me. After tossing and turning in bed for many nights she finally decided to ask someone to find out my cell phone number and where I worked. In the meantime she kept on writing me letters, but she never sent any of them. Later her husband found the letters and her diaries and completely lost his shit. He beat her. After that he started glaring at her all the time like she was a traitor, and any time she did anything to piss him off he'd beat her again to vent his frustration. After a few more times of this Chen Bing lost all hope for saving her marriage. The night before she jumped to her death, her husband hit her because of some nit-picky little thing. Chen Bing locked herself in the bedroom and wrote me one last final letter. Then she got onto the windowsill and sat with her legs hanging over the edge, and she stayed like that for the rest of the night. Then, at first light, she jumped."

Mr. H suddenly buries his face in his blue-veined hands, his entire body trembling.

"
My life was never the same again after that day. I tried as hard as I could to remember Chen Bing's face, but it just wouldn't come to me. I'd lost all my photos and yearbooks from middle school a long time ago, so I got in touch with a classmate from back then and he helped me find a picture of her in his middle school graduation photos. Back then in year three of middle school she was skinny and introverted; I didn't remember her at all. But from that day on I kept seeing that face from the photo of her in my mind, and in my dreams. I never saw her corpse, but the whole scene of her jumping from the building to her death kept playing through my mind as if I'd seen it happen with my own eyes. I saw her sitting on the windowsill, sobbing as she held onto the window frame, mouthing my name quietly, and then letting go, falling down and down and down…"

Mr. H abruptly stops talking, jumps to his feet, grabs the tray on the table in front of him with both his hands, and smashes his head with it. Teapot and teacups clatter to the floor all around him, and his upper body is drenched in steaming hot liquid.

The others rush forward to restrain Mr. H. The blood has drained from his face and his jaws are clenched tightly. He seems about to pass out from shock. Mr. Z signals for everyone to help Mr. H over to the corner of the room, where they get him to stretch out on the rug there,
pry
open his mouth, and force him to swallow a couple of sedatives. The semi-conscious Mr. H twitches violently a while longer, mumbling something incomprehensible from time to time, and then his muscles gradually relax as he falls into a deep sleep.

His words hung in the air.

After everyone returned to the table and had taken a seat, Mr. Z prepared a new pot of tea, hesitated a moment, then said, "I guess I'll go ahead and continue telling Mr. H's story for him."

No one objected, so Mr. Z cleared his throat and continued. "Chen Bing's suicide kept playing over and over in Mr. H's mind, and each time was more painful than the last. He agreed with what her husband had said, that her death was all H's fault. This intense feeling of guilt had already begun to hamper his ability to function normally at work and in his everyday life. He hated himself from the bottom of his heart, and came to believe that the only way to atone for Chen Bing's death would be to destroy himself. And so Mr. H went to the hospital and demanded to be allowed to donate his organs. The doctor, seeing that Mr. H was in an unstable state and suspecting that he suffered from a mental disorder, refused. After several more such failed attempts, Mr. H's disgust with himself grew deeper and deeper until late one night he got up, went into his bathroom, and cut himself with a razor. A little while later his wife found him. The wounds were not serious enough to go to the hospital. She asked him what was wrong, but he, unable to explain, lost his temper, and began screaming and howling at her. Afraid and not understanding what had made her husband act this way, H's wife left to go stay at her mother's place for a while."

"So, that girl Chen Bing," Miss Q asked, "did she really kill herself because of H?"

"No." Mr. Z laughed a bit and flipped through the folder in his hands. "This thing was no different from what each one of us has encountered; it was all just an experiment that had been planned a very long time in advance. According to what information I've been able to gather, there was indeed a woman named Chen Bing, and she and Chen Bing had indeed attended middle school together. But five years ago she fell into a profound depression, so bad that she tried several times to commit suicide. I believe the mastermind behind Skinner's Box had looked into Chen Bing's medical history and known that sooner or later she would succeed in killing herself. So he targeted Mr. H to be his guinea pig and waited for her to do it."

"Then how do you explain those letters and diaries?" Mr. T asked.

Mr. Z laughed again. "They were forged, of course. And as far as I know, there was never even a shred of truth to Chen Bing's so-called secret love for Mr. H."

"So if they were all forged, then why did Chen Bing's
hubby
go along with it?" Miss Q asked.

"That part was
bogus
, too." Mr. Z chuckled as he retrieved a photograph from his folder. "He was what you might call an unwitting participant in our friend's Skinner's Box. The guy was just playing a part. The mastermind judged that Mr. H would not bother verifying whether or not the letters and diaries were real, so he felt he had nothing to fear."

The atmosphere grew heavy as everyone stared at the photograph.

"Mr. H's condition is worsening," Mr. Z lamented. "Q and T both saw it for themselves: Mr. H is beginning to self-harm."

"But why would he do that?"

Mr. Z's eyes turned to Luo Jiahai. "During our operation to break L out of jail, Mr. H helped Mr. J engineer a massive automobile accident, as you all know. Well, when he witnessed the carnage caused by the accident, it inadvertently exacerbated his feelings of guilt. That of course is one of the most common signs of PTSD. So," Mr. Z said, addressing Luo Jiahai. "First we'll help Mr. H. Is that all right with you?"

Luo Jiahai shot a glance at Mr. H where he was still sleeping soundly in the corner, and shook his head. "It's fine."