by Gangxueyin
“And then there’s the question of the vehicle used in the Yin Aijun case to dump the body parts. The first thing we can eliminate is a car. If the killer had used a car, there would have been no need to spread out the pieces. He could have disposed of them all on Tiger King Mountain. A motorcycle would have been just as you’d said. It was the middle of the night and snowing heavily. Crossing the bridge on a motorcycle while holding a bag would have left a strong impression on the police monitoring the bridge. As for a bicycle, what you said makes sense. Too much hassle and distance to cover in one night.”
“So how, then?”
“You’ve forgotten the bus.”
“The bus? How would that have worked?” asked Kang Xiaobei in visible disbelief.
“It wouldn’t have been entirely by bus. Since there’s a school at the foot of the mountain, it could be reached by bus. Even if at that time there wasn’t a direct route, there would have been a stop somewhere in the vicinity. He could have walked the rest of the way, then come back to the stop. I think three hours would’ve been sufficient. So as I see it, on that day, in the evening, the killer took the bus to Tiger King Mountain to get rid of the head, then returned and spent the rest of the night dumping the other parts. I figure he finished the rest in one go on his bicycle. Of course, he might have originally planned to do it over several trips, but the snow changed his mind. So the trip would have been shortened by half. Entirely feasible. And after carefully analyzing the distance between the dumping spots and what was dumped, you’ll discover that he followed the principle of near to far, heavy to light, and hard to easy to carry. This shows the killer’s means of transport must have been fairly primitive.
“At the first site on North China Road, the killer dumped a travel bag packed with pieces of flesh, the heaviest things and what would have been the most difficult to hold on to while riding a bicycle. Next, at Guangcheng Road, only eight hundred yards away, he quickly unloaded the backpack, which was the second heaviest. After dropping off the two bags, bicycling became much easier, and he peddled a little over a mile before discarding the victim’s clothing and internal organs at Eastwater Road.”
Kang Xiaobei followed along and finally understood why Han Yin had been asking about the distances. But he still felt some doubt and asked, “Why not a motorcycle?”
“A motorcycle can’t be entirely ruled out. But if it was a motorcycle, it’d be relatively easy to identify plate numbers, color, make, model, and so forth. And another thing. The second corpse dismemberment’s final dumping point wasn’t Eastwater Road. It was at the riverside. I suspect the killer carelessly threw the victim’s genitals, pelvis, and finger into the water. That’s the reason we haven’t found them. All right. That’s enough for today.”
Kang Xiaobei had been listening attentively and didn’t want to be left hanging. “Tell me a bit more, please! What about the Wang Li dismemberment case?”
“In the Wang Li case, we can be certain a car was used to dispose of the body parts. The key point for analysis is the motivation of the killer to deliberately maintain a consistency with the earlier case. This needs to be studied further before we can reach a conclusion.” Han Yin yawned and deeply exhaled. “Let’s go back. I’m sleepy. There’ll be plenty of time later on to discuss the cases.”
4
DISMEMBERED CORPSE REPORT
It was past midnight when they returned to the guesthouse. Han Yin read over the case file until he fell asleep. His cell phone woke him in the morning. It was Ye Xi. She said she knew that he and Kang Xiaobei had been looking around the sites the night before and already had Kang Xiaobei bring people from forensics to gather evidence on Tiger King Mountain.
8:00 a.m., task force meeting room
As usual, Ye Xi ran the morning meeting. Because they would discuss forensics and introduce Han Yin, Deputy Chief Hu Zhiguo attended. After Han Yin’s introduction and the task force members’ report on various developments in the investigation, Ye Xi gave the floor to the forensic pathologist, Gu Feifei.
Gu Feifei was another beauty, about the same age as Ye Xi and with a distant, icy allure. She was tall with an ultrashort hairstyle, porcelain-white face, and frigid eyes revealing indifference and disdain for the vulgar world.
Gu Feifei clicked on her laptop, and the photograph of Wang Li appeared on the wall screen.
“The victim, Wang Li. Time of death was no more than forty-eight hours from the time of discovery, probably on the morning of January second. Lips swollen, with damage to the gums indicating her mouth was forcibly sealed shut. Petechial hemorrhaging to the face and eyes. Visceral blood stasis. There were traces of urine on her clothes. Cause of death was suffocation. There were no choke marks on the victim’s neck. The face showed no serious swelling. No damage to the nasal region. There were binding marks on the wrists and ankles. The victim’s mucus was found on the garbage bag used to cover her head. Our conclusion is that the killer must have used the black garbage bag to cover the victim’s head to suffocate her.
“The corpse was cut into a total of eight hundred and seventy-two pieces, all roughly the same size. The cuts were curved, indicating the use of a special carving knife. The four limbs had been segmented in cuts from top to bottom. The bottom part was not sufficiently even, and at the cut point, there were tiny bone fragments, indicating hacking and the use of a thick blade. Testing revealed it was a professional meat cleaver. We arranged all the pieces into the original body form and did not find any missing skeletal parts or internal organs. Nor did we discover any evidentiary hairs, fibers, saliva, semen, and so on from the killer.”
Gu Feifei’s voice and demeanor were cold. As she spoke, pictures of the victim’s head, pieces of flesh, internal organs, limbs, and clothing were projected on the screen. Han Yin noticed the victim’s thick facial makeup and that the fingernails and toenails were painted a vivid red.
When the pictures of the 1996 case involving Yin Aijun appeared on the screen, Gu Feifei continued, “In the 1996 dismemberment case, the pieces were not equal in size, and the tool used was most likely an ordinary chef’s knife. The pieces of flesh, the head, and other parts were boiled, not cooked. As for the skeletal sectioning, the cross striations were rough, and many indentations ran straight and parallel. Test comparisons determined that these marks had been made by a handsaw. In the Wang Li case, the dismemberment technique and tools were relatively professional. But in the Yin Aijun case, the technique was crude, and the tools were household items, as if the killer were using whatever was handy.”
“So you’re saying the two murders weren’t committed by the same killer?” Ye Xi asked when she saw Gu Feifei closing her laptop.
“I’m only responsible for the forensic results. As to whether this was the same criminal, that’s your job.” Gu Feifei’s pugnacity always created an awkward atmosphere, and she didn’t give much respect to Ye Xi. “If you really want my opinion, I’d say that if the two cases had happened now, it was the same killer. But these murders are sixteen years apart. It will take a comprehensive judgment to determine if the killer was the same person or not.”
“Let me say a few words,” Deputy Chief Hu said. “I feel Gu Feifei is correct, though all kinds of possibilities are out there. The greatest probability is that the murders were committed by the same person and are related cases. We’ll keep digging into the connection between the two victims.”
As Deputy Chief Hu issued a torrent of instructions, Ye Xi frowned, absorbed in her thoughts and not seeming to take in what he was saying. Her expression didn’t escape Han Yin. Ye Xi clearly had her reservations but didn’t have sufficient evidence to support her argument.
Deputy Chief Hu, Fu Changlin, and some of the older officers in the group had been members of the Yin Aijun case task force and had not been able to shake the bad memories from years past. Fu Changlin had even requested an early resignation from the position of head of criminal investigations and a transfer to the cold case group. He hoped to settle the c
ase finally before he retired.
Ye Xi saw the recent murder and dismemberment as a copycat crime. When the 1996 case shook the city, everybody was familiar with the details of the crime. If someone now used identical dismemberment techniques and knew the same places to dump the body parts, a copycat crime was entirely feasible. If it was the same killer, he clearly had a deviant mentality. But how could a deviant have endured more than a decade before committing the second crime? Ye Xi thought they needed to concentrate on the newer Wang Li case. She had been unable to sway Fu Changlin and Hu Zhiguo, and at her insistence, Han Yin was brought in as an objective outside opinion. Naturally, she hadn’t revealed any of this to Han Yin because she didn’t want him dragged into their internal disputes. She also hoped that he wouldn’t have any ideological baggage. Ye Xi’s superiors finally approved her request because of their “big-picture” considerations. Although the Yin Aijun case had a huge impact on the city and the police force, that case was now old news, and the negative effects had more or less subsided. But the Wang Li case was fresh, and if the direction taken to solve this case turned out wrong and the investigation dragged on for years, J City’s police would be shamed once again and couldn’t face the public.
Even though Ye Xi had won this round, it had caused a deep rift between her and Hu Zhiguo and Fu Changlin, whose hostility even extended to Han Yin. Han Yin knew that the next stage would be a struggle.
After the meeting, Han Yin asked Ye Xi to drive him to Wang Li’s workplace.
Wang Li, divorced for many years and living on her own, vanished while barhopping with her coworkers in the early hours of January 1. She was an accountant at a small trading company that consisted of eight people. Everyone was present for Han Yin’s questioning.
Han Yin asked about the night in question, but several employees showed their annoyance and complained that they had been asked these same questions many times before.
The manager reprimanded his staff and said, “That day, the company had finished a big deal. I was really happy, and we’d wrapped everything up by New Year’s Eve. So that evening, I invited everybody to get together, including Wang Li. We went to a new hot-pot restaurant. After eating, I invited them to a karaoke bar. At about one o’clock, Wang Li said her stomach was acting up and wanted to go home. I said I could take her, but she said no, because she didn’t want to spoil everyone’s fun. Forty minutes later, I gave her a call to see if she’d made it home, but her cell was off. I tried her landline, and no one answered. Nobody heard from her by the next morning, so I called the police.”
Han Yin gazed at the group. “As far as you can tell, did Wang Li have a boyfriend or a lover?”
Several employees immediately perked up but grew wary again after glancing at each other. Some said they didn’t know; others said it wasn’t clear. Only the boss was certain. He said she didn’t.
Han Yin smiled and expressed his thanks to the staff and told them they could go, holding only the boss back. He still needed to understand a few things. He smiled and said, “You were her lover, weren’t you?”
The boss nervously stared in the direction of his employees and whispered, “Comrade, I have a wife and child. You can’t just say things like that!”
Han Yin snorted. “That’s why you were so positive when you answered my question.”
The boss tried to deny it, but Han Yin raised his hand. “Relax. We’re not interested in the affair. I just want to ask you some personal questions about Wang Li.”
“Fine, then. Go ahead.”
“The day she disappeared, Wang Li was wearing a red cashmere overcoat. How long had she worn it?”
“That was the first time. She wanted to wear something special for New Year’s.”
“Before she disappeared, did she mention anyone stalking or harassing her?”
“No. Her life was pretty normal. I always picked her up for work and took her home after.”
“Did she ever wear heavy makeup?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did she paint her fingernails and toenails?”
“Definitely not her toenails. Her fingernails, sometimes.”
“The day she disappeared, what color were they painted?”
“Pink. I took her to the salon to have them done the evening before.”
When investigating a dumped-corpse case, five locations are generally considered: where the victim was last seen, the place of initial contact, the place of initial assault, the place of the murder, and where the corpse was discovered. In theory, the more that’s known about these places, the higher the probability of solving the case. Han Yin had already done a survey of the dumping sites, so next he wanted to study the last place Wang Li had been seen—the Manhattan Bar.
Once in the car, Ye Xi said, “Wow, you’re good! I can’t believe how quickly you picked up on Wang Li’s relationship with her boss.”
“Just used a little trick, that’s all,” Han Yin said.
“Why does it seem like you made that special trip just to ask about Wang Li’s makeup?”
“Because I did. In our morning meeting, I saw the photos of the face and hands and felt there was something off with Wang Li’s heavy makeup and nails. It seemed out of character for her. And now we can confirm that before dismembering the body, the killer put the makeup on her. Also, perhaps the red overcoat was his reason for picking Wang Li—an arbitrary choice.”
“When Yin Aijun was abducted in the earlier case, she was also wearing red. You think the killer has a thing for female office workers in red clothing?”
“It’s not the same killer. Yin Aijun was not a deliberate target. Her wearing red was just a coincidence. And from the way he handled her, he didn’t attach any value to what she was wearing, hence using the clothes to wrap up her organs. But the Wang Li case is different. The killer neatly folded the overcoat and placed it on the rest of the clothes and other items, and that’s clearly representative of some kind of love.”
Ye Xi let out a sigh of relief. It sounded like they shared a similar theory.
New Territory, J City’s most bustling district, was a high-end business area revolving around New Territory Circle. To the east were the financial district and department stores, the west was the fine-dining sector, the north housed the cultural and antique areas, and the south was full of bars and entertainment. The Manhattan Bar was eye-catching and one of the biggest clubs on Bar Street.
When Han Yin and Ye Xi arrived, the bar hadn’t yet opened, though the shift manager was inside. Han Yin and Ye Xi explained the situation, and the manager invited them to look around. There was nothing special about the place, but Han Yin noticed a coat and bag check near the door. He had Ye Xi give Wang Li’s boss a call to ask whether she had checked anything that night. The boss said she had.
So if the red overcoat had enticed the killer, he probably hadn’t picked Wang Li out at the bar. So where had he seen her? The hot-pot place? The karaoke bar?
They separately visited the two establishments, but too much time had elapsed since the murder. None of the employees could remember the events of that night, so Han Yin and Ye Xi returned to the bar.
The door to the bar faced the main road. Normal behavioral analysis: It was late that night. Wang Li had a stomachache. She had to have taken a taxi home. Had Wang Li and the killer met in the taxi?
The task force had eliminated the notion that she’d been abducted from her home and had already considered the taxi driver. According to the bar manager, a line of taxis was usually waiting in front of the door, all with signed agreements with the bar. Unless there was a shortage of taxis, those that hadn’t signed with the bar weren’t allowed to wait for customers. The task force had also examined these agreements many times and did not find anything suspicious. But on New Year’s Eve, the taxis were incredibly busy. A lot of customers had to walk up and down the street to look for a ride, so there were many possibilities. The scope of the investigation was getting bigger.
5
CRIMINAL PROFILING
Han Yin returned to the guesthouse and started writing a report. The night before, he’d surveyed the sites where the body parts had been left. That morning, after studying the victims and the pattern of how they’d been chosen, he was even more certain that the 1996 Yin Aijun case and the 2012 Wang Li case were not the work of the same killer.
There were many reasons for this conclusion.
First, the Yin Aijun case. Han Yin distinguished four steps in the killer’s behavior in the overall case: rape, murder, dismemberment, and corpse disposal.
Why was rape the motive? The task force of that time could only consider this motive a theory. However, Han Yin could confirm it from an analysis of the behavioral evidence. And that was why the killer wanted to give such special treatment to all the victim’s genitals and pelvic region. Because of this perversion, the early task force analysis was that the killer may have kept these as souvenirs. But after the previous evening’s on-site survey, Han Yin strongly believed that the killer had thrown these remains and his tools into the turbulent Gu River. It was a perfect way to get rid of the evidence. At the same time, it reflected the characteristics of a mature mind, thorough thinking, and an excessively cautious personality.
Clearly, the killer wanted to silence the victim. And dismembering the corpse was to facilitate the secrecy of disposal. But why the need to chop it up into so many pieces? Why put pieces into boiling water? Why arrange the internal organs so neatly? Why fold the clothes? The task force deemed it perversion, but this was not the case.
The options for finely cutting up the corpse were very limited. The killer had a very cautious personality. After the murder, he wouldn’t have dared to rashly buy specialized tools for this. He just had to make do with what he had on hand, mainly common kitchen appliances and a handsaw. However, it would be nearly impossible to use a vegetable cleaver to chop up a corpse, least of all a rigid, even frozen, one. So he would have to choose the clumsy method of removing pieces of flesh and then cutting through the bones with a hacksaw. After the flesh had been frozen, it was easy to slice, and the limitations of the vegetable cleaver meant there must be a large number of pieces, meticulously done.
