by Zijin Chen
Huiru and Guo Yu put on the gloves and started folding.
“Generally in a homicide case, the police need three things to get to the truth: witness statements, physical evidence, and a confession given by the suspect,” Luo explained. “The so-called perfect crime is characterized by no witnesses, no physical evidence, and no confessions from any of the suspects. Now in terms of tonight’s mishap, as long as I don’t tell the police anything, there are no other witnesses. I have already destroyed almost all of the physical evidence—the last step is folding the money. Now we need to make sure the police don’t extract a confession from you.”
He paused to let that sink in. “The police might arrive at your door wanting to ask some questions. Experienced officers will use all kinds of techniques to glean information from you. Afterwards they will see if there are discrepancies in your respective statements. Any time there is collusion in a crime, the police can very quickly discover when people have fabricated a cover story, because the suspects’ statements will differ.”
Guo Yu and Huiru were once again filled with apprehension.
Luo smiled. “Let’s work backward for a minute. Why can the police detect a cover story when there’s collusion? Usually because of inconsistencies between one person’s story and another’s. You have to describe everything exactly as it happened before the accident, and then you have to tell the story I taught you.”
Luo paused, then tried to sound more reassuring. “As long as you don’t add any flourishes, you should be fine. Anything imaginative is extraneous and will lead to more problems down the line. If you don’t know the answer to something, say so. Even if something the police say is different than what you know is true, don’t help them in any way. When they ask you one question, you give them one answer. The more you speak, the bigger the risk.”
Luo took a breath and continued. “Police will also tell you that your partner has already confessed to the crime. The weak willed often crack at this point. One of the main reasons why I decided to help you was because you both tried to take the blame for the other. That’s very rare. Remember that. You both want to protect each other, which means that no matter what the police say, you can’t confess. You need to believe that the other person won’t break under pressure. As soon as one person talks, all three of us will be arrested.”
Luo looked hard at each of them, and they nodded. Luo knew that the riskiest part of all this was the police interviews. Once they passed, they could all go back to their normal lives.
“When will the police come looking for us?” Guo Yu asked.
Luo smiled kindly. “They may or may not come to speak to you as part of a routine check of the neighborhood. In that case, they would not treat you as a suspect.”
“If . . . if other people know that I delivered the fried rice, then the police would suspect me, wouldn’t they?” Huiru asked, feeling uneasy again.
“Yes, at first, but they will give up that line of questioning if they are worth their salt.”
“Why?” Huiru asked curiously.
“If they do it right, they will see that you both have an alibi, that you would not have had enough time to commit the crime. That should eliminate you as suspects.” Luo broke into a small smile.
Guo Yu and Huiru looked at each other in confusion. They were clearly at the scene of the crime—the surveillance cameras would prove that. How could they possibly have an alibi?
PART 4
A GENIUS DESIGNS A PERFECT ALIBI
Chapter 18
At nine in the morning the next day, onlookers crowded the path in the park along the river.
As Lieutenant Lin Qi of the West Hangzhou District Bureau and his team crossed under the caution tape, he shouted at a subordinate, “You call this preserving a crime scene? What is going on here?”
There were footprints all over the grass and cigarette butts carelessly tossed on the ground. To make matters worse, the lower branches of the surrounding trees were broken.
Investigator Song was at his wits’ end. “It looked like this when we arrived, I swear. Crowds of people swarmed the area. We haven’t got a single useful footprint.”
“Did these idiots move the body?” Lin asked.
“No. Two witnesses spotted the body and immediately ran to the station to report it. The crime scene has been clear ever since. It seems that people came to pick up the cash.”
“What cash?” Lin furrowed his brow.
Song shrugged. “A street sweeper arrived at the park at 4:40 a.m. She found a hundred-yuan note folded into a heart. Eventually more and more little hearts, as well as some coins and other bills, were discovered. Soon it drew a crowd, which is why everything has been overturned. Much later, two people brushed away some leaves underneath the trees and discovered a dead body. That’s when they called the police.”
Lin shook his head in disbelief. He had been on his way to the station when he received the call. He could barely wrap his head around this case.
“It might be connected to the case, all this money strewn about. Then again, the money was folded into hearts. Maybe someone was trying to win the hand of a pretty girl. Or maybe the victim cheated on his partner, and she killed him and left all the money and letters.” Song was thinking like a television script writer.
Luo would have never imagined someone would dream up a story like this—he had just wanted the money folded into hearts so that the bills would be smaller and harder to find, leading to more people destroying the evidence. If he had scattered unfolded cash, the street cleaner might have taken it all at once without touching the crime scene, thus wasting twenty-five thousand yuan. Instead, he had scattered money in the grass, in the tree branches, and under rocks. He even threw in loose coins so that people would continue to search for several hours. Nothing would excite the early risers and exercise fanatics more than discovering money lying on the ground. And they would attract enough attention to draw more and more people.
Lin stared at Song. He remembered that the young rookie had just joined the force and had only been involved in a handful of cases. It was understandable that he would have some absurd theories about the case. Lin sighed and led the forensic scientist, Gu, to the copse of trees where they started taking pictures. After double-checking that everything had been photographed, the two proceeded into the trees.
Two police officers were guarding the body, which was already starting to decompose in the summer heat. Lin was used to the smell, but shuddered at what he saw. “How much would you have to hate someone to do that?”
The victim’s shirt was cut apart and cast aside. There was a large gash near the victim’s heart, and blood had coagulated around the area. There were two other stab wounds in the abdomen, deep enough that Lin could just make out the victim’s intestines. But the killer had gone further: the victim’s abdomen, chest, and arms were covered in long cuts, meticulously inflicted with the tip of a knife blade. The distance between each cut was almost equal. It looked like the victim was wearing a striped shirt.
Gu looked up in awe. “Looks like you got yourself a big case today, Lieutenant Lin.”
Lin frowned. If he had just found a dead body in a park, he would call it a run-of-the-mill homicide. But these long incisions clearly took a long time to make, which meant this was the kind of murder that put people into a panic. His team would soon be under a huge amount of pressure to solve this case.
Gu reached for his forensic kit. “The victim died yesterday, although we won’t know the exact time until we do a complete autopsy. The temperature is too high for us to make a guess by sight alone. The victim’s phone and wallet were not stolen, so you will be able to identify him. Looks like a revenge killing.”
He clicked his tongue as he examined the victim’s arm. “Why does he have so much dirt under his fingernails? Odd. Based on everything I’ve seen so far, I think the thin cuts were made soon after the victim died. Otherwise the blood would have coagulated and they wouldn’t look like stripes
.”
Lin nodded.
“The cause of death is this stab wound, close to the victim’s heart,” Gu continued. “It looks like the weapon was a dagger. When we get back in the lab, I can analyze a cross section of how the weapon entered the body. These two stab wounds on the abdomen were not fatal. I found a mark on the back of the head that suggests the victim was hit by a blunt object. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to recreate of the crime scene—we will have to wait and see. But I’m not holding my breath.”
Lin frowned impatiently. “Well, do the best that you can.” He noticed the beer cans on the ground. “Old Gu, could you please take a look at those for me?”
Gu took off his used gloves and exchanged them for a fresh pair. He picked up a can and moved to a shady area to check the surface with a magnifying glass. He raised his eyebrows slightly.
“What is it?” Lin asked.
“This case is much more complicated than I expected,” Gu said, looking up. “I thought the killer just wanted revenge and took the time to cut those long, thin lines because he was extremely angry. If that were the case, I’m sure you could interview the victim’s friends and enemies to narrow down a suspect. But this can has been wiped clean. There isn’t a single fingerprint on it.”
Lin shook his head. “Criminals watch detective dramas all the time these days. Most of them have learned not to leave fingerprints, just like thieves know to put a towel on a door handle before they force a door—” He stopped midsentence. “This isn’t just a homicide; this is premeditated murder. Why else would the killer wipe off fingerprints? And then there’s the money! If the killer left it there deliberately to make sure that people would gather and destroy evidence . . .” Lin drew a sharp breath.
“Have you ever seen a move like that?” Gu asked seriously.
Lin shook his head slowly. “No, never. I have never come across a killer that thinks like this.”
Gu nodded. “Let’s just hope that we are overestimating our killer, then. It’s highly unlikely that he’s some kind of genius.”
Lin tried to console himself as he nodded at Gu. In the decade that he had worked for the police, he had learned that most killers were not well educated. Some of them learned a thing or two while watching television, but they never managed to fool the police.
Gu and his team started to pick up all the beer cans and put them in evidence bags. He was about to finish, when one of his men called out, “Dr. Gu? I found another one over here.”
Gu walked over and saw a can laying in the shrubs. He could tell just by looking that it was different. “This one has prints!” he shouted.
Chapter 19
It was dusk. Lin was sitting in his office when two investigators came in, each carrying toolkits.
“Lieutenant Lin, we spoke to nearly everyone in the area about the victim. His name is Xu Tianding and he was born in a rural area. The government selected his family’s house, among many others, to be demolished for development. We have learned from his friends and local residents that he was a well-known small-time gangster. He went by the nickname Little Gangster and has been in and out of the police station ever since junior high. He used to extort money from students at school and spent most of his time causing trouble—it seems that he got into fights almost every day. He started to make friends with other gangsters, most notably Zhang Bin. Zhang Bin and Xu Tianding have been friends since childhood. According to Zhang, he, Xu, and four other friends were out eating street food at around ten o’clock last night. Xu finished and went off for a walk. We spoke to someone at a small supermarket close to the crime scene and found out that the victim purchased two six-packs of beer, which we found at the crime scene. He nearly finished one can, but the other eleven were unopened.”
Lin thought for a moment. “What was he doing buying all that beer for himself? Did he plan on sharing it with someone?”
The investigator shook his head. “It’s not clear. When we asked his friends, they said he didn’t mention it. The cashier at the supermarket didn’t know anything either.”
“Based on what we know,” Lin said, “our motive here is almost certainly revenge. So who would have wanted him dead?”
“Oh, lots of people,” the investigator said, scoffing. “All of his neighbors hated his guts, said he was a complete jerk. Apparently he went to the restaurants and shops owned by migrant workers and bought things on credit but never paid. They didn’t want any trouble, so they kept quiet. He behaved inappropriately on multiple occasions. Some female workers complained that he would harass them when they walked by. In fact, he was very close to getting in a fight about a girl sometime last night.”
“Just last night?”
“That’s right.” The investigator explained how Xu and his friends catcalled at the girl and attacked her boyfriend.
Lin pursed his lips. “It sounds like we might have several pages of possible suspects just from our initial investigation.”
“I’m not sure you could list them all—maybe just the people he and his gang friends offended recently. But who knows how many people he hurt when nobody else was looking?”
“That’s true.” Lin thought hard. “Tomorrow, keep talking to local residents to see if we can identify any primary suspects. Make sure to find that girl and her boyfriend—I want you to interrogate them as thoroughly as you can. Are there any surveillance cameras around the crime scene?”
“There aren’t any on the road next to the river, but there is one on the intersection nearby.”
“OK, make sure you check that. I’m going to speak to Dr. Gu.”
Lin went to the forensics lab, where Gu was having noodles. A pair of bloody latex gloves lay in the trash can next to him. Lin swallowed back disgust. “So, what do we have so far, Old Gu?”
Dr. Gu stood. “Xu Tianding had a lot in his stomach at the time of his death. Do you want to take a look?” he teased.
Lin emitted a dry cough. He had known Gu for years but still could barely tolerate his humor. “No thanks, Dr. Gu, I just had lunch. You clearly have a stronger stomach than I. Just tell me the results, please.” He looked from the noodles to the gloves and turned his back. He had seen many dead bodies in his tenure, but had yet to eat food next to one. He didn’t plan on trying it any time soon.
Gu laughed at Lin’s squeamishness. “This young man really could eat,” he said, turning to Xu. “He might look skinny, but he apparently had a big appetite. I found remnants of grilled meat in his stomach, plenty of beer, and some fried rice still in his esophagus. There are a number of possibilities here. Either he drank too much beer and he needed to vomit, or he was struck with a rock and it caused autonomic neuropathy. Alternatively the food might be in his esophagus because he was attacked right as he was eating and didn’t have time to swallow completely. Either way, the food in his stomach was almost completely undigested, which tells us that the time of attack was very close to the time that he ate that fried rice.”
“But where would he get fried rice?” Lin asked.
“As soon as I discovered the rice, I asked someone to check back at the crime scene. Sure enough, they found a takeout box in the grass, half-filled with fried rice. As far as we know, the attack was far from the trees, in the open area of grass, close to where the takeout was found. We found a lot of blood in that area, but it was almost entirely mixed into the earth thanks to all the people stomping around. Still, it was clear that the murderer killed his victim in the grass and then dragged him eighty feet into the copse of trees. The killer also loosened the dirt near the trees.”
“Why would he do that?” Lin asked.
“I think the killer purposefully scattered money to attract lots of foot traffic. That way they would remove all traces of his footprints. But he knew that fewer people would walk into the copse of trees, so he destroyed that part himself.”
“Have you pinpointed the time of death?”
“We can tell from the time that he was last seen and from the autops
y that the time of death was between ten and eleven o’clock last night. But when we looked at Xu’s phone and his call records, it shows that Xu called his friend Zhang Bing at 10:50 p.m. I asked Song to speak to Zhang Bing about it. Zhang claims that Xu asked if he wanted to have lunch the next day, but then Zhang heard sounds of a struggle and then the call ended. When Zhang tried to call back, nobody picked up. Eventually the phone was turned off. Zhang had no reason to suspect that Xu was being attacked. He didn’t think anything of it. So based on the phone call, the time of death was at 10:50 p.m.”
Lin nodded. It was extremely helpful information. “Do you think that the killer knew Xu?”
“Knew him? Why do you think that?”
“Xu bought those two six-packs of beer at a supermarket close to the crime scene. He had already been drinking and couldn’t have finished that off himself. If he took two six-packs of beer to the park, he was probably planning on drinking it with someone else. But his friends claim not to know anything about it.”
“That’s a good point,” Gu said. “There’s another thing that’s been bothering me. Why would he go right by the river, where he would surely get bitten by mosquitoes?”
“That’s true,” Lin said. “It doesn’t make sense. And I don’t understand why he only ordered fried rice if he wanted to share with someone. Tomorrow I’ll send someone to find out where and when he ordered that rice. Something might turn up.”
“While you’re at it, ask if anyone saw a person with a lot of blood on their clothes that night.”
“You think the killer had blood all over their body?”
“Absolutely,” Gu said. “The stab wound closest to the heart especially would have produced a gush of blood. The killer would definitely have blood all over their hands and their clothes.”