Profiler (Fang Mu Eastern Crimes Series Book 1)

by Lei Mi

  Tai Wei sat down next to Fang Mu's bed and looked at him for several seconds. "You fasting?"

  Fang Mu made no response. His eyes didn't even move.

  Tai Wei chuckled and picked up Fang Mu's dinner tray. He gave it a good sniff.

  "Mmm, smells delicious. Stewed chicken and potatoes with rice. What's this one?"

  "Sweet and sour crispy-fried fish balls," said Du Yu, looking at Fang Mu as he answered. "It's an appetizer."

  "Wow, what a considerate friend you have!" said Tai Wei. "You'd better eat this quick."

  Fang Mu briefly dropped his gaze from the ceiling. "Thank you," he said quietly, and then rolled over to face the inside of the bed.

  Du Yu looked at Tai Wei and shrugged helplessly. Tai Wei just smiled and waved his hand to show he didn't mind.

  The three of them sat there in silence. After a little while, Du Yu picked up his backpack and water bottle and motioned to Tai Wei that he was going out. Then left, quietly shutting the door behind him.

  Now it was just the two of them. Tai Wei looked at Fang Mu, who was still lying there motionless with his face to the wall. Sighing, Tai Wei pulled out a cigarette and gloomily smoked it.

  By the time the cigarette had burned all the way down, Fang Mu still hadn't acknowledged his visitor in the least. At last, Tai Wei started to talk.

  "Partner, I completely understand how you're feeling right now. I might be a cop, but if I had an opponent like this, I'd be just as scared as you. But scared or not, hiding out in your room all day is no kind of solution. If he wants you dead, then no matter how much you try to escape, sooner or later he's going to find you. That's why we need to strike first!"

  Seeing that Fang Mu still hadn't moved, Tai Wei continued. "Today I looked over all of Ma Kai's known acquaintances and didn't find anyone suspicious; therefore, I don't think the problem came from that end. I've also already spoken with the Changhong City PSB and asked for their assistance in investigating if any of the family members or accomplices of the criminals you put away are trying to get revenge." He paused for a moment before continuing. "I know I didn't ask your permission. You're not going to be mad at me, are you?"

  Suddenly Fang Mu sat up, startling Tai Wei.

  "Is it possible for you to shut your mouth for even a second and not chatter on like an old woman?" Fang Mu yelled.

  Doing his best to keep his cool, Tai Wei began: "I understand how you're feeling right now –"

  "You don't understand shit!" said Fang Mu roughly. "I'm not afraid at all. Even if he were hiding under the bed right now with a knife in his hand I still wouldn't be afraid. This isn't the first time I've faced someone who wanted kill me, and it won't be the last!" Suddenly his voice choked with sobs. "Why did you need to kill all those people? If you want me dead then do it! Kill me right now! Why end so many lives for no reason?"

  He jumped up and knocked all the books off his shelf, then fell dejectedly back onto the bed.

  "Son of a bitch..." he said beneath his breath. As he closed his eyes, a tear dropped down his face and onto his pillow.

  Tai Wei looked at the books scattered across the floor, and then at the frail young man lying on the bed before him. Now that he knew the real reason Fang Mu was feeling so down, he couldn't help but feel a measure of respect for the stubborn bastard.

  Love and duty. No emotions were more precious than those.

  Tai Wei stood up, studying the dejected student on the bed. Bending over, he slowly picked up all the books, blew the dust from their covers, and then placed them neatly back on the bookshelf. When he finished, he sat beside the bed. He fixed his eyes on Fang Mu.

  "Kid, get up and eat!"

  His tone was firm and absolute. All traces of his previously comforting manner were gone.

  Noticing this, Fang Mu opened his eyes and looked at him.

  Tai Wei didn't avoid his gaze at all. In his eyes, Fang Mu read the trust and encouragement.

  As if he was giving a pistol to a diehard partner, Tai Wei placed a spoon in Fang Mu's hand.

  "Partner," he said, "we've got to keep going. I don't know how many more victims he's planning on killing, but we need to do everything we can to stop him before more people die. Don't think any more about the ones who have already gone. When you're dead, you're dead; you feeling guilty is not going to bring anyone back. This is your fate, Fang Mu. Great power demands great responsibility, and it's useless to try and hide from it. Catching the killer is the best consolation you can give to his victims. But before all that," he said as he placed the food in front of Fang Mu, "at the very least, you need to not starve to death!"

  Fang Mu looked at the food before him. It was still steaming a little. He looked at Tai Wei. The man's expression was deadly serious.

  For several seconds the two of them stared at each other in silence. At last Fang Mu took the plate of food and began to eat ravenously.

  Damn, that's delicious, Fang Mu thought.

  When he finished eating, Fang Mu leapt out of bed and stretched. The tightness in his chest relaxed with each breath and his whole body felt much more alert.

  He then summarized some of his recent thoughts for Tai Wei. Even though he had been lying in bed, tormented by anger and guilt for the past day and night, he had still been closely analyzing the details of the case. His mind had not been idle. As he saw it, the reason the killer was targeting him had to have something to do with one of the cases he had helped solve. Even though Tai Wei had not asked his permission before contacting the Changhong City PSB, Fang Mu agreed that at present it was their only feasible lead.

  "And as for the numbers," he added, "I believe they have some special significance."

  "Oh?" said Tai Wei, his tone curious. "What are you thinking?"

  "I don't know if you've noticed, but from the five distinct crimes that have occurred so far, there have already been six victims. However, the numbers left at the crime scenes have only been one through five," Fang Mu said. "I found this strange when I first noticed it, because if the numbers corresponded to the victims, this would demonstrate that the killer was showing off and trying to provoke us. But what does it mean if the numbers actually correspond to the crimes themselves? It means that the killer doesn't care about the number of victims killed, but rather the number of crimes committed—or in other words, the number of people he has copied. With this line of thought, this number is most likely fixed, meaning that the killer probably already knows exactly how many people he is planning on copying.

  "Because," Fang Mu paused, "if this is a test, then like all tests, it must have an end, at which point it will be determined whether or not I've passed." He looked calmly at Tai Wei and smiled.

  Seeing the smile on the kid's lips, Tai Wei felt chilled to the bone. Since he was young, Tai Wei had experienced his share of tests, but none had ever made him feel as thoroughly terrified as this one.

  To imagine taking a test where every answer had to be written with a pen dipped in blood was both terrifying and daunting. If answered correctly, then the test was over and everything was okay. But if anything was answered incorrectly, then one person was going to disappear from the world. And it probably wouldn't just stop at him or her.

  And more terrifying yet, before they had even realized it was a test, each of the first five questions had been crossed out with a bloody X. They would never have the chance to get those questions correct.

  "In that case," said Tai Wei, "what's the total number going to be?"

  "Seven, nine, eleven," Fang Mu said, deep in thought. "It has to be an odd number. It's unlikely to be eleven, because that would make the crimes go on for too long. He's probably anxious to face-off with me, and I doubt he's patient enough to wait until then. Seven." He nodded thoughtfully. "Seven seems to be the most likely."

  "Why seven?"

  "I'm a psychological profiler, so I think he wants to have a bit of a psychological competition with me. And in psychology, seven is considered an unusually attractive number."
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  "Attractive?"

  "That's right. For example, when it comes to remembering strings of numbers, people are generally able to remember one or two less or one or two more than seven. From five to nine, in other words. After nine, most people's memories become hazy. So when people try to remember fairly long chains of numbers, such as pi, for instance, they often break them up into groups. In addition, there are many notable parts of human history that happen to involve seven, such as the seven days in a week, seven notes in the diatonic scale, seven colors in the visible spectrum, seven deadly sins, the seventh..." Suddenly Fang Mu stopped talking and the color drained from his face.

  "The seventh what?"

  "Oh, nothing." Very quickly Fang Mu's expression returned to normal.

  Tai Wei lowered his head, as if he were considering something. After some time, he looked up. "Fang Mu."

  "Yeah?"

  "What were you just about to say?"

  Fang Mu stared at him for several seconds. Then he smiled. "I don't know. If I really am part of this test, then I must be the last part. And if I'm not part of it, then my time's going to come immediately after it's over. In short, I can't escape."

  Seeing the calm look on Fang Mu's face, Tai Wei didn't know what to say. The kid was discussing his own murder in the same manner as one might discuss football or the weather or some other totally inconsequential topic. It was absurd.

  Tapping the gun on his waist, Tai Wei said slowly, "I won't let anything happen to you."

  Fang Mu smiled indifferently. "I hope that's the case. But like you said, this is my fate. If I really am meant to die, then there's no avoiding it."

  He walked to the window and looked out. Through the frost that was already covering the glass he could vaguely make out the streetlights below, as well as the students who passed beneath them, talking and laughing loudly.

  "Death," said Fang Mu quietly. "Actually, heaven has already been looking after me."

  Then with one by the bed and the other at the window, the two men in Room 313 lapsed into silence. Fang Mu looked outside and Tai Wei looked at Fang Mu.

  The light through the window gave him a slightly golden silhouette. After a while, Tai Wei got up and stood beside him.

  "Assuming you're right," said Tai Wei slowly, "then there's still two more." He looked out at the darkening campus. Even now it was still buzzing with life.

  After a long time, Fang Mu spoke. His voice was soft and sounded as if he were speaking only to himself.

  "There's still two more."

  The days grew colder and colder. Soon girls had no choice but to abandon their more fashionable, revealing clothing for heavier attire. And as the summer colors quietly vanished from campus, the whole place became much lonelier and more desolate.

  Great swaths of leaves were now daily blown from the trees by the fierce autumn wind and floated gently to the ground. When stepped on, they crackled softly, as if not yet resigned to their fate. The day before a light snow had blanketed the ground, but now the ground was covered in mud and slowly rotting leaves. It seemed as if overnight the once bustling campus had been filled with the air of death.

  But what the students found truly unsettling wasn't this bleak scenery; it was the presence of all the stern-eyed policemen constantly hurrying about.

  The special investigation team had already been stationed at the campus for over a week. They could be seen in academic buildings, dining halls, dorms, and library, either in uniform or plainclothes. Many students, used to their previously unencumbered lives, felt increasingly uncomfortable, and a sense of antipathy slowly spread among the student body. Nearly every day some kind of dispute between a student and a police officer was reported to campus security. For the pair of provosts individually in charge of student affairs and campus management, every day was a headache. They each prayed for no one else to die and that the police would catch the killer as soon as possible.

  Unlike his peers who were either indifferent to or annoyed by these recent developments, Fang Mu was much more concerned with the progress of the investigation. As Tai Wei had requested, no word of Fang Mu's connection to the case was being aired for the time being and all investigations into his background were conducted in secret. This allowed Fang Mu to continue searching undisturbed for clues to the sixth crime. Of course, unless he was forced to be elsewhere, Tai Wei was by the kid's side nearly every day—just in case.

  Today was another busy afternoon. Fang Mu was in the reference room poring over the thick book before him while Tai Wei was sleeping soundly at the next table over, flecks of saliva hanging from the corners of his mouth.

  The reference room was crowded. It was almost finals, and with everyone busy writing their term papers, students were constantly arriving to checkout books. When they saw Tai Wei passed out on the table, more than a few eyebrows were raised, and Librarian Sun kept worriedly glancing over at the brand new edition of 200 Years of Western Crime (1800-1993) propped under the policeman's head.

  Fang Mu rubbed his temples in exhaustion and then flipped to the next page. While reading one of the paragraphs, his breath suddenly caught in his throat.

  He quickly read it again two more times, his face reddening with excitement. He jumped out of his seat, ran over to Tai Wei, and shook him awake.

  "Hey," he said, "you need to look at this."

  Tai Wei leapt to his feet in surprise, saliva hanging from his mouth, one hand going to his sidearm.

  "What's going on?" he cried.

  At the sound of his voice, everyone in the reference room looked up in surprise. One student who had been climbing a stepladder to reach a book on the top shelf was so startled he fell to the floor.

  Ignoring all the displeased looks around him, Fang Mu merely smiled apologetically at Librarian Sun, who appeared stupefied, and impatiently placed the open book in front of Tai Wei.

  Buttoning the holster on his gun, Tai Wei awkwardly looked down. He immediately frowned. When he had finished reading, he took out a pack of cigarettes and placed one in his mouth. Seeing this, Fang Mu quickly pulled him out into the hall.

  The two of them smoked in silence in the stairwell. When their cigarettes were half gone, Tai Wei looked at Fang Mu and asked probingly: "The Yorkshire Ripper? You think that's who the killer's going to copy next?"

  "I think it's a definite possibility." Fang Mu tossed his cigarette to the floor and slowly crushed it with his foot. "You just read it yourself. That five-pound note matches him perfectly."

  Tai Wei nodded and thought back on what he had just read.

  Dubbed the "Yorkshire Ripper", a British man named Peter Sutcliffe had killed thirteen women between 1975 and 1980. His method of choice was to beat his victims over the head with a ball-peen hammer and then stab them in the chest with a screwdriver. After killing them, he liked to place a five-pound note in one of their hands.

  "In that case, do you think the next victim will be a woman?" asked Tai Wei.

  "If he's really going to copy the Yorkshire Ripper, then yes, there's no doubt about it." Saying this, Fang Mu watched a group of girls cheerfully emerge from a yoga class at the other end of the corridor.

  "Well, shit," said Tai Wei, forcefully throwing his cigarette to the floor. "I'll go call everyone together and figure out some way to stop this. How many female students do you have here?"

  "About four thousand."

  "Christ!"

  That afternoon, the more observant students noticed that some curious new people had arrived on campus and some equally curious things were taking place. Security personnel were increased in all the women's dorms and a room on the sixth floor of each was cleared out and converted into an on-duty lounge. In the women's bathhouse, the sixth shower stall was locked, as was the number six locker in the women's changing room in the gymnasium. In the academic buildings, keen-eyed, well-dressed women with a bulge at their hips could also be seen strolling near number six classrooms, women's bathrooms, and along sixth floor hallways.
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br />   All the tools belonging to the maintenance department – especially hammers and screwdrivers – were individually registered and workers were required to sign them out whenever they needed to use them. On campus, vehicles were frequently stopped and examined. Students became more concerned about their civil rights than ever before, and on several occasions their resistance turned physical. After this state of unrest persisted for another week, the police and school administrators finally held an emergency meeting. The ultimate result was that police checks would be limited to men over 30-year-old, and unless it was absolutely necessary, students would no longer be interrogated. With that, the atmosphere on campus settled down a little.

  While strolling past the gymnasium one Wednesday afternoon, Fang Mu happened to glance over his shoulder. Sure enough, Tai Wei was following him a short ways back. Fang Mu couldn't help but sigh.

  The sight of a policeman shadowing a student all day, every day, had already made a lot of people suspicious. Fang Mu suggested that Tai Wei take care of some of the other campus security work, saying that he didn't need to follow him all the time. "I'm going to be the final one," he had said. "So he's not going to do anything to me now." Although Tai Wei had seemed to agree, Fang Mu still constantly noticed the policeman over his shoulder.

  Around noon that day, Fang Mu had received an unexpected call from Xing Zhisen of the Changhong City PSB. Old Xing was the same as always. After barely a word of greeting, he immediately asked Fang Mu how the investigation was going. He then told him flatly that they had already looked into all the old cases Fang Mu had helped solve and they had turned up nothing. Although Old Xing ended the call by telling Fang Mu to take care of himself and that if he needed anything, not to hesitate calling, Fang Mu still felt a little disheartened. After anxiously circling his room for a few minutes, he decided that he might as well go out.

  At that moment, several members of the student union were hanging a posting on the bulletin board outside the gymnasium when Fang Mu got there. Liu Jianjun was among them. The poster was huge, and on it a basketball player was leaping towards the hoop, ball in hand. Fang Mu recognized him as Su Jun, star of the provincial basketball team. Because the bulletin board's aluminum frame was a little uneven, the poster would not lie flat. With a hammer in hand, one of the students had climbed up a ladder and was pounding the frame back in place.