Skinner's Box (Fang Mu (Eastern Crimes)) (5 page)

"You ever thought about changing careers?"

"Never!" This time Fang Mu's reply was decisive, resolute.

"Never!" Tai Wei repeated.

Fang Mu knew Tai Wei clearly remembered that this was exactly how he had answered back when Tai Wei had asked whether Fang Mu was planning on becoming a cop or not. It was the same answer, yet the outcome had been completely the opposite. It was hard to know whether the fault had lain with Tai Wei or with the sharp-eyed, pale-faced man in front of him.

Tai Wei attempted to soften his tone. "In the future, if you get a chance, I suggest you get a different job."

Fang Mu said nothing for quite a while. Suddenly, he lifted his head and asked, "When did you start thinking I'm not suited to be a cop?"

Tai Wei stared at him for a few seconds. "Back in that basement."

"Oh?" Fang Mu raised his eyebrows and looked at Tai Wei, a faint smirk on his lips. "Are you going to report me?"

Tai Wei's countenance broke into a smile. "No. I would never. But by the same token, I will never believe that you are a good cop."

"Just what
is
a good cop?" Fang Mu asked.

Tai Wei looked stumped. After mulling it over for a long time, he said, "I don't know. But you're definitely not one. You're a person who is unable to keep from getting emotionally involved in a case; you always invest too much of yourself. If a case comes along that can't be solved with the law, or whenever you don't want to use legal means to solve it, then you always revert to your own methods." He paused. "I know that only yesterday, you almost took a bullet for Luo Jiahai."

The whole time he was talking, Fang Mu had his head down. After a while he tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette. "I don't see anything wrong with the way I do things."

Tai Wei shook his head. "You're going to get yourself killed."

Abruptly, Fang Mu broke into a laugh. "Well, I'm still alive, aren't I?" Without waiting for Tai Wei to answer, he raised his cup. "No more talking. Let's drink!"

By tacit understanding and through mutual evasion, the meeting between old friends ended with both of them drunk off their heads. By the time they staggered back to the precinct, the news had come back from Jiangbin City. The bodies of Shen Xiang and Sang Nannan had been discovered at the location indicated by Luo Jiahai, and the cause of death for both had preliminarily been identified as hemorrhagic shock. The difference between them was that Shen Xiang's fatal wound had been in her carpal artery, while Sang Nannan had been stabbed more than 20 times. More specific circumstances of their deaths would not be determined until a forensic investigator had conducted further tests. A minor jurisdictional dispute occurred between the precinct and the Jiangbin City criminal police; each side considered its own territory to be where the principal offense took place. An agreement was reached: Tai Wei and his people would return to Jiangbin City in advance, and only after the primary evidence was gathered would it be decided who would have jurisdiction over the Luo Jiahai case.

As they were parting ways, Fang Mu pointed at the drunken-eyed Tai Wei's ring finger on his left hand. The latter waved drowsily, but it was unclear whether he had understood what Fang Mu had meant.

As Tai Wei's Jeep disappeared around the corner, Fang Mu stood silently watching as the cloud of dust it had kicked up drifted lazily through the air. Turning, he saw the police insignia on the door to the precinct shining brightly in the midday sun. He shaded his brow with his hand and stared mutely at the insignia, thinking it seemed slightly larger than before. And in his mind, the insignia continued to grow until it seemed to overwhelm the sky.

Am I really not cut out to be a cop?

CHAPTER
3
Compassion

Y
ang Jincheng lifted his head wearily from the desk and stretched his arms, but a twinge of pain in the base of his neck caused him to give up halfway through. He hunched over again and stared blankly at the monitor for a while. Finally he picked up the cup of already cold tea and downed it in one gulp.

While scrutinizing the empty tea cup that dangled heavily in his hand, he contemplated its considerable value and as such, its uniqueness in the Institute, and could not help but smile.

He stood and paced around the office a few times. When his feet brought him near the door, on a whim he pulled it open and walked out.

Once outside his office, all exhaustion drained from Yang Jincheng's face and he regained the appearance of the forever energetic Director Yang, tolerant yet astute, witty yet dignified.

He walked slowly down the exquisitely decorated corridor. He kept his pace slow not because of age, but rather to give an impression of being unhurried, calm and collected. Occasionally someone passing by would stop to bow and then scurry off. Yang Jincheng looked through the floor to ceiling windows on either side of him as he walked past. It was already nearly 8:30 in the evening, but there were many offices whose lights still shone on research personnel busy at their tasks. Yang Jincheng felt great satisfaction at seeing such bustling activity; he felt like a drill sergeant reviewing his troops, strolling in front of their ranks as they stood tall and orderly and enjoying a sense of detached superiority that he alone could feel.

After patrolling past several offices, patting the shoulders of a number of people, and receiving a number of compliments, Yang Jincheng gradually made his way back to his own office. He sat down in the largest, most comfortable chair in the entire Research Institute, and bit by bit the exhaustion that had disappeared without a trace returned to him. He sat in a hunched posture for a long time until he finally placed an arm weak and tingling from lack of circulation on the desk in front of him.

His fingers touched the computer mouse and the monitor lit up automatically with a crackling sound. Its white light gradually illuminated his face. He stared without focus as the screen became brighter and brighter until suddenly, as if he had just thought of something, he sat up straight, clicked on the "My Computer" icon and went into the hard drive. After a succession of easy clicks along a path he had taken hundreds of times, he had opened a folder that was buried deep down in his files. Unnecessarily, Yang Jincheng's glance swept the empty room and then he quickly entered a password. He then leaned his face up close to the monitor and gazed at it steadily. A faint smile slowly emerged on his face. The smile spread from the corners of his mouth to both cheeks and across his visage until it seemed that every hair in his eyebrows was bouncing with joy.

He scrolled through the documents one by one, and each time he finished reading one, a strange expression came across his features, as if he could not wait to read something with which he had long become familiar. It was as if he was playing hide and seek with himself, all the while asking himself,
This one is really exciting, right?
All the while he tried his utmost to forget those images and bits of text that had long ago been inscribed in his memory, so that when he opened the next document, within his thoughts he could exclaim in self-deception,
Wow! This one is even more exciting!

Yang Jincheng never tired of playing this game. It seemed to be his calling, his soul; it was as if the second half of his life was counting on it.

At 10:30 p.m., Yang Jincheng's silver Honda pulled slowly into the Wisdom Park District. This was a high-end residential neighborhood of the city, and as its name implied, many of the owners living there were high-ranking intellectuals. Yang Jincheng parked his car and walked briskly toward his apartment. Before reaching the foot of the building, he saw a tiny figure sitting on the steps out front. Yang Jincheng muttered to himself, wondering whose child this was and why he was out so late, and the sound-activated light above the entrance to the apartment building lit up.

Yang Jincheng froze. Was it his own son, Yang Zhan?

He hurried over and gave Yang Zhan's shoulder a gentle shake. "Hey, how come you're sitting here asleep?"

Yang Zhan lifted his head sleepily and looked at Yang Jincheng for a long time, as if he had not quite registered that this was his dad. Yang Jincheng grabbed him by both arms and picked him up. Fishing out his keys, he asked, "Where's your key? Did you lose it again?"

Yang Zhan grunted an affirmative and reached up to rub his eyes with his knuckles. With his schoolbag hanging from his elbow, he could not lift his arm, so he had to tilt his head sideways. Yang Jincheng hefted the schoolbag and casually draped its straps over his son's shoulders. Bewildered, Yang Zhan's father's movements caused him to stumble. He quickly stood up straight and obediently followed his father in to the elevators.

Inside the eighteenth floor apartment, Yang Jincheng had kicked off his shoes, tossed his suit jacket onto the sofa, and was just beginning to unwind when the telephone rang.

Cursing under his breath, he stood and picked up the receiver. "Hello... Yes, I am Yang Zhan's father... Oh, hello, Mr. He... What? How much did your son's schoolbag cost?... Uh-huh, okay, I'll get to the bottom of it... Ah, my apologies. One day soon I'll come over and knock on your door and offer an apology. Goodbye."

Yang Jincheng hung up, turned, and shouted, "Yang Zhan!"

Yang Zhan stood and very slowly came to the room’s doorway. He still looked the way he had when they had just entered the apartment; he had neither taken off his schoolbag nor his shoes. But he did not appear to have the slightest intention of trying to escape, either.

Yang Jincheng lifted his son and carried him as delicately as if he were a downy chick over to the middle of the living room. In moments he had removed his son's schoolbag and was looking it over carefully in his hands.

It was an extremely ordinary backpack. On the top was printed "Ultraman" in gaudily colorful letters. The cheap fabric from which it was made had begun to wear and ink stains of all different sizes were scattered all over it.

"Is this your schoolbag?" Yang Jincheng shook the backpack with his hands, causing the books and pencil case inside to clatter out.

Head down, Yang Zhan said nothing.

"Tell me! Is it or isn't it?" Yang Jincheng gave his son a shove in the hollow of his shoulder.

"No," Yang Zhan said in a quiet voice.

"Why would you force someone to trade schoolbags with you? Huh? Do you know how much your schoolbag is worth? And what about this one?" Yang Jincheng threw the bag onto the floor furiously. "What is wrong with you?"

Yang Zhan looked up suddenly. His face was calm, and he even cracked a smile. "Would you even recognize my schoolbag?"

Yang Jincheng was stunned. Scowling, he raised his hand and delivered a heavy blow to Yang Zhan's face with a loud smack.

The blow knocked Yang Zhan's little body sideways, and he fell to the floor with a thud. Still furious, Yang Jincheng charged over and picked him up with one hand, about to hit him again.

Blood was trickling out of Yang Zhan's nose and mouth. He struggled feebly in his father's hands, craned his neck around, and shouted in the direction of the living room wall. "Mommy! Mommy…!"

The mournful voice stopped Yang Jincheng's hand in mid-swing, and he couldn't help but glance at that wall. His wife stared at him and his son from within the black picture frame with a pair of warm, gentle eyes that seemed to be pleading.

Yang Jincheng loosened his grip. Yang Zhan fell to the floor, curled into a ball, and continued to weep softly while still burbling, "Mommy… Mommy…"

Yang Jincheng stood there, arms dangling at his sides, mouth gaping for breath. When he could breathe easily again, he pointed toward his son's bedroom. "Go to your room! You'll go without dinner tonight!"

Yang Zhan climbed laboriously to his feet, ran to his room, and slammed the door shut behind him.

The child sat quietly in the room without any lights on, filling the darkness with occasional sniffles. He had long since stopped crying and the tears had dried to his tautly stretched cheeks. After sitting a while, he carefully massaged his puffy face and could distinctly feel a few swollen lumps rising in the shape of fingers.

The child's face was calm; he neither appeared wronged nor resentful. He just slowly rubbed his face and listened closely for sounds from the living room.

Finally he heard the sofa creak, as if someone had stood up. Soon he heard his father's heavy footsteps. The sound continued over to his father's bedroom, after which it ceased completely at the sound of the door closing.

The child did not move; he simply sat there, listening alertly, until he was sure that his father had fallen asleep. He slid along the edge of the mattress until his butt touched the floor, and then crawled under the bed. A moment later he squirmed his way back out holding a small metal box.

Sitting on the floor with his back against the bed, the child opened the box. Inside were all sorts of edibles; most of them were leftovers of some kind. There were a few pieces of bread, a rice cake broken into small pieces, half of a sausage, an opened packet of crackers, and a few pudding containers. With the help of the moonlight shining through his window, the child picked through the box, selecting a few things and stuffing them into his mouth. He chewed neither quickly nor slowly, but steadily, his eyes never leaving a corner of the room.

After he had finished eating, the child returned the box to its place under the bed, dusted himself off, and prepared to sleep. As he was taking his clothes off, his hand brushed against something hard in one of the pockets of his jacket. The child took it out; it was a pair of keys that had been fastened together. He spread the two keys out on the palm of his hand, fiddled with them a while, and then suddenly stood and opened the window.

The cool midnight air felt extremely refreshing on the child's face. He took a deep breath, drew back, and hurled the keys into the night. He then stuck his head out the window, but down below it was pitch dark and he could see nothing. A moment later he heard a faint
ding
. Feeling a bit disappointed, the child stared aimlessly out into the dark. In a few apartments in the building across from him the lights were still on, and through the thin window curtains he could still see people walking back and forth.

A vague smile stretched across the child's face. He climbed onto the windowsill wearing nothing but his underwear and huddled against the chill, hands around his shoulders, and watched the lights of the other building in silence.

The jurisdictional dispute over the case was quickly resolved. The Jiangbin City police relinquished their jurisdiction, leaving the Changhong City police in charge of overseeing pre-trial arrangements and transferring it to the prosecution. When Fang Mu heard the news, he told Bian Ping he wanted to follow up on the case. Bian Ping agreed.

In Fang Mu's view, Luo Jiahai's motive made no sense. The case had three victims in total, of whom Shen Xiang's cause of death appeared very much to have been suicide, while the deaths of Sang Nannan and Qin Yumei had without a doubt been caused by Luo Jiahai. Sang Nannan had been stabbed more than 20 times, and Qin Yumei had met a cruel end, too. On the surface it looked like these two homicides had been done out of hatred. But what had been Luo Jiahai's fundamental motive to murder two different people in two different places? Furthermore, what was this smell Luo Jiahai kept emphasizing? If the basis of this smell was sex, then what was the story behind that?

Fang Mu had gained access to some of the pre-trial case materials from the precinct. They showed that ever since his arrest, Luo Jiahai had been open and frank about his crimes, but had continued refusing to confess a motive. This in turn was an indication that he was already clinging to a stubborn determination to die, for he would undoubtedly be given the death sentence. However, in accordance with Chinese criminal law, if any fault of the victim had led to a crime of passion, then he could be given a deferred death sentence, which would mean a judicial review after two years of forced labor. So, if Luo Jiahai's killings were indeed found to be excusable, then he was actually abandoning his last chance to be spared the death penalty.