by Zijin Chen
Chapter 24
One hour later, Lieutenant Lin stood by a computer. Investigator Song pointed at the screen. “This is where it gets interesting. At 10:19 p.m., Zhu Huiru walks past carrying the fried rice toward the river. At 10:20 p.m., a male walks quickly past, also in the direction of the river. At 10:42 p.m., the same male walks back towards the residential district, carrying Ms. Zhu on his back.”
Lin squinted at the screen and did some calculations in his head. “It’s just over a quarter of a mile from this intersection to the crime scene. I think it would take her about three minutes to walk there, judging by her pace. So subtracting three minutes each way, she would have stayed there seventeen minutes. That’s a long time. If they had an argument and then Xu assaulted her and groped her, it would take less than seventeen minutes.”
“She said she stayed by the side of the road for a while when she hurt her leg. Maybe she spent a lot of time checking her injury,” Li suggested.
“If that were the case, someone walking by would have noticed her sooner. But nobody mentioned it, did they?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean that she wasn’t telling the truth. It was late; there wouldn’t have been a lot of people on that road.”
“Have you spoken to the friend who was with her that night?” Lin asked.
“She told us it was a friend,” Song said. “We didn’t ask more about him.”
“That young man was hurrying somewhere. We need to talk to him as soon as possible. The killer stabbed the victim three times, pulled the body into the copse of trees, and destroyed nearly all of the evidence. I didn’t think a young woman could do it by herself, but a young man could have.”
“But there is no blood on him,” Li said. “Dr. Gu said that if the victim was stabbed three times, including once to the heart, a lot of blood would have gushed out.”
“The light isn’t good in this video,” Lin said, leaning forward. “Are you sure he doesn’t have blood on his clothes?”
“It doesn’t matter. If he was covered in blood and walking on a busy road like this, somebody would have seen him,” Li said.
Lin nodded. Even late at night that much blood would be noticeable. He squinted at the image of Huiru. He couldn’t tell if there was blood on her clothes because she was being carried by Guo Yu.
What if that was why the young man was carrying her? So that nobody would see it?
But it seemed highly unlikely that a young woman like that would stab her victim three times. Suddenly someone behind him said, “They can’t be the killers.”
Lin spun around and looked at Dr. Gu, who had just entered the room. “Why not?” Lin asked.
“Xu Tianding was killed at 10:50 p.m., remember? That’s when he called his friend Zhang Bing. Zhang Bing swears that he heard Xu’s voice on the phone, so we have no reason to believe the phone call was faked. But you can see those two on the surveillance at 10:42 p.m., and they didn’t come back this way afterwards. It’s possible that they used a different route, but I looked at a map. They couldn’t have made it back to the park by 10:50 p.m. This surveillance video gives them an alibi.”
Lin was stumped. Mr. Xu was attacked while he was on the phone, and the call was made at 10:50 p.m. But Ms. Zhu and that young man left before 10:42 p.m. It was a cast-iron alibi.
“We still don’t know who that man is,” Gu said. “But based on what we know of Zhu Huiru, I don’t think she is capable of committing the murder. The killer destroyed all the possible evidence, including the victim’s fingernails. Do you remember how his nails all had mud in them? The killer cut the victims nails, removed any dirt from the nail bed, and put the victim’s fingers into mud. If Xu scratched the killer, there would have been DNA evidence under Xu’s fingernails. But we couldn’t get any evidence from them because the killer cleaned it all up. The thing that really confuses me is the stripes of blood. They were made so meticulously, they were so evenly spaced—that must have taken a lot of time. I don’t know if it’s significant or not.”
“What do you think?” Lin said, his eyebrows furrowed.
“I don’t know,” Gu said. “In some cases the killer leaves something behind as a sort of message. In the case handled by the Hangzhou Bureau, that serial murder, the victim always has a Liqun cigarette in his mouth. I looked at plenty of case records to see if any of them had cuts like the one we found on the victim, but nothing turned up.”
Lin nodded, still dissatisfied with the lack of evidence. “I think we’ll have to pay a visit to Zhu Huiru again. She stayed at the scene of the crime for seventeen minutes. I want to ask her how long she was on the side of the road. One more thing. Do you know what the dimensions of the murder weapon would be?”
Gu pulled out a document for Lin to examine. “Based on the size of the wound, it looks like an ordinary paring knife. Nothing professional.”
“A paring knife?” Lin looked at the document thoughtfully.
Chapter 25
The investigation of the serial murder was in full swing at the Hangzhou Bureau.
Dr. Chen took a stack of files to Zhao’s office. “We have the results from the mechanics researchers at Zhejiang University,” he said. “The person who left the footprints in the grass weighed between 130 and 170 pounds. The victim weighed over 190 pounds. Thus, we can conclude that the footprints were made by the killer. The researchers also said that the marks indicate that the victim was dragged without a struggle. Afterwards, the killer put the shoes back on the victim. I’m impressed by how realistic it looked.”
Zhao took the report and scanned it briefly. The results were exactly as Professor Yan had predicted. Despite having a limited number of clues, Yan was able to determine what had happened just from the lack of the killer’s footprints. He hadn’t changed a bit.
Another of Yan’s predictions had been confirmed: the victim was killed before being dragged to the concrete. There were no footprints of Sun’s bare feet. It all checked out.
“Did we learn anything else about the killer’s body type?” Zhao asked.
“No,” Chen sighed. “The footprints were too messy—plus they were made while the killer was dragging a heavyset man. On top of that, the consistency of the dirt changes daily depending on the water content, and the drag marks change accordingly. Since the researchers did their experiments days later, they couldn’t get precise answers. All we have is a height between five foot six inches and five foot nine inches and a weight between 130 and 170 pounds. I’m sorry, the results are just too imprecise to work with.”
Zhao pressed his forehead in dismay. The results only confirmed that the killer was not extremely short, tall, or overweight. That meant that almost anyone in the city could be the killer.
“Oh, there is one other piece of information,” Chen said.
“What’s that?” Zhao asked.
“Based on previous evidence, we believed that the killer was left-handed. But the footprint evidence tells us that the killer’s right leg has more power than his left.”
“So? What does that mean?” Zhao said, intent on Chen’s next words.
“The killer might not be left-handed after all. He might have deliberately used more force with his left arm to fool us.”
“I can’t imagine someone going through all that effort,” Zhao said, somewhat unconvinced.
“It’s certainly unusual. If anything, left-handed people often leave evidence to make it look as if they were right-handed, leaving with police with a larger search pool. I’ve never heard of the opposite being the case.”
“Would you call your theory reliable?”
Chen shook his head. “No, it’s just a guess. It is possible that the person has a stronger right leg but is still left-handed.”
Zhao exhaled loudly. After all that research, everything was possible. But they couldn’t make any progress if they couldn’t exclude some possibilities.
“When the victim went to relieve himself at the edge of the grass, he was killed where he stood.
And while the body was dragged, only one person made footprints. We now know that those footprints belonged to the killer. That’s all still true, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then the word on the concrete couldn’t have been scratched by Sun Hongyun. The killer must have done it and then put the rock in Sun’s hand.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Chen said, nodding.
“So that brings us to a new question: Why would the killer write the word ‘local’ using Sun’s hand?”
“I have no idea,” Chen said. “It’s just like the Liqun cigarettes. It doesn’t make sense.”
Zhao closed his eyes and let out a long breath while he tried to gather his thoughts. “I can think of two possibilities. Either the killer isn’t local, so he left those words to put us on the wrong track, or the killer is actually a local and he’s an egomaniac. He’s confident that the police will never catch him, so he’s starting to leave us clues. But I’m just grasping at straws here.”
“So what should we do next?” Chen asked.
Zhao rubbed his eyes. “What else can we do? We’ve got to catch that pervert and see if he has any connection to the murderer.”
After dismissing Chen, Zhao sat and thought. The killer was leaving false clues left and right, tampering with evidence in a way they had never seen before.
What if everything they had found thus far had been deliberately left by the killer to put them on the wrong track?
He pursed his lips and took another look at all the files related to the pervert, then the notes from his visit to Ms. Liu, the latest woman to be assaulted. He knew there was something off, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
He put her report aside and looked at the sketches of the other women who reported assaults, letting them all float through his head. He compared all the notes side by side. Suddenly he sat upright.
There was something wrong!
In all the past cases, after the pervert finished his assault, he would brandish the knife, threaten them, and then swagger off. But in the most recent case, which occurred on the same night as the murder, Ms. Liu said that the pervert looked nervous and ran away.
What had made him so nervous?
Chapter 26
In the evening, Luo Wen took his cross-body bag and walked to the noodle shop. When Huiru saw him through the window, she pretended not to know him and focused on her work. Then she flashed him a look.
Luo walked in and pretended to look at the menu. Huiru moved closer. “The police came and asked questions today.” Her voice was low.
Luo smiled and nodded. “I’ll have the noodles with beef, please. Do you deliver? I have some things to do, and it would be great if you could bring the food to my apartment.”
Huiru nodded. “Sure. Just tell me your address and I’ll bring it over.”
Ten minutes after he arrived at his house, the doorbell rang. Luo opened the door where Huiru stood with his noodles.
“Please, come in,” Luo said.
The small dog with the golden fur ran over and barked twice. Then he ran back to the sofa to hide. Huiru smiled. “Wow, he’s all better! Look at him running around!”
Luo couldn’t help but laugh as he watched the dog. “Yes, he healed very quickly. He started running and jumping just a few days after I brought him home.” But his smile soon faded. The other dog had had a lot of injuries too. He remembered how happy his daughter had been when her dog had healed. She gave the dog a bath with the help of her mother and then let the dog sit in her lap. When Luo saw this he took the dog away, worried that his daughter would get sick. But she knew how to get her way. She started crying immediately, and Luo gave up and let her play.
It was bittersweet to think about the past. His eyes moistened. He wished he could go back in time and relive those happy moments.
Luo exhaled and forced himself to come back to the present. He poured a glass of water for Huiru. “What happened today? Don’t rush, just take your time.”
Huiru told Luo about her conversation with the police, trying her best to remember every detail.
Luo listened attentively and smiled broadly when she finished. “Well done! That’s what you should have said. And were you wearing these jeans this morning?”
“Yes, I was. Just like you asked.”
“That’s good. How is your knee doing?” Luo said.
“I already have a scab.”
“OK. Could you let me take a look, if it’s not too much trouble?”
“Of course.” She started to roll them up but the jeans were too tight to roll all the way to the knee. “Um, should I go to the bathroom and change into something?” Huiru asked.
“Oh no, no, you don’t have to do that,” Luo said quickly. “You’re a young lady, and I don’t want you to change clothes in my house. Just push up the jeans a little higher.”
She smiled warmly. She really felt like she trusted this man like a nice uncle. He sincerely wanted to help.
She kept rolling her jeans, and Luo looked at her knee as best as he could. “It’s been really warm for the past few days. The wound is healing faster than I expected. Does it itch?” Luo asked.
“It itches a lot, but I know I shouldn’t scratch it. It’s pretty awful.”
“OK, tomorrow you can wear a short skirt to air it out. But wear a sheer overlay skirt to hide your scab a bit. That way they will just barely be able to see the injury and know you were not making up a story. When your scab starts to fall off, you can just wear a normal skirt. And continue to put antibiotic ointment on it.”
“I can do that.”
“That reminds me, how is your ankle?”
“It was sore yesterday, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“That’s bad,” Luo sighed. “I didn’t hurt you enough to make it realistic. Ideally your ankle would have swollen. But it’s hard for me to hurt your ankle properly because I can’t register your pain. It reminds me of a story by Zhuangzi: I am not a fish, so I do not know the happiness a fish feels. In the next few days, try your best to walk as if you were still hurt. Take it really slow. Do you understand?”
Huiru nodded quickly.
“Have you seen Guo Yu today?” Luo asked.
“He came in not long after you left the restaurant. I told him that I was coming to see you to talk about the police interview. He said he would come back with some snacks so we could chat.”
“OK. Tell him that in the next few days the police will probably speak to both of you and ask you to explain what happened. Just follow the plan. And remember, no matter how urgent, do not call or text each other,” Luo said.
Chapter 27
The next morning, Lieutenant Lin and Investigator Song walked into the noodle restaurant.
Fulai greeted them. “I’m very sorry, but we don’t serve breakfast. Could you come back at lunch?”
Lin smiled. “We’re actually here to speak to Zhu Huiru.”
Fulai looked anxious for a moment. “Is this . . . is this about Little Gangster again? His death has nothing to do with us. When she delivered his order, he was so out of line that she hurt herself trying to get away from him. She hurt her ankle quite badly.”
“Is that so?” Lin asked gently. He looked Fulai up and down. One of his legs was shorter than the other because he had had polio as a child. That certainly explained why Huiru delivered the rice instead of Fulai.
Huiru came out from the kitchen. When she saw the police she stopped in her tracks. “Do you still have questions for me, officers?”
Lin smiled. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but since you are the last person to have seen the victim, we wanted you to confirm some details.” He could tell that she was tense and added, “We apologize for the inconvenience, but cooperating with the police is the duty of every citizen. I hope you understand.”
“Of course,” Huiru said. There was nothing else to say.
“Would it be possible to talk somewhere private?” Lin asked, his tone serious.
&nbs
p; “Where would we go?” Huiru asked carefully.
“Perhaps you could take us to the river and tell us exactly what happened again? It would be extremely helpful for our investigation.”
“OK.” Huiru lowered her head and started towards the door.
“Look at that!” Lin said, watching her gait closely. “Your leg is better now?”
Huiru hadn’t realized how quickly she was walking and blushed.
As soon as this police officer stepped into their restaurant, she had a feeling that he was different from the two who came yesterday. He seemed all knowing and completely in control, and his uniform indicated a higher rank. It looked like today would be a lot more challenging.
The more she thought about it, the more nervous she got. But Luo taught her to act naturally no matter what situation she found herself in, and she managed to keep that in the forefront of her mind.
“My ankle doesn’t hurt much anymore. I can pretty much walk now.”
“Then it healed quickly,” Lin said. “Just three days ago you sprained it so badly that you couldn’t walk. Wow.”
Huiru smiled weakly.
“How about your knee?” Lin asked. He saw that she was wearing a skirt with a sheer overlay that showed a small scab on her knee.
Huiru followed Luo’s instructions and answered truthfully. “It formed a scar already. I think it will be better in the next few days. It doesn’t hurt; it just itches.”
She thought that Lin would keep asking questions but he didn’t. “Fine, let’s go to the river. I’ll do my best to keep this short—I don’t want to keep you from your work too long.”
As they walked, Lin asked Huiru where she was from and when she had arrived in Hangzhou, chatting with her about the noodle restaurant and how their business was doing. He didn’t ask anything related to the case.
When they arrived at the river, Lin stopped in his tracks and looked Huiru up and down. Huiru felt scared and looked down, but then thought that would be unnatural, so she looked at Investigator Song instead.