A Devil's Mind

by Gangxueyin

  “I . . .” The girl hesitated.

  Han Yin held his breath, afraid she might feel pressured and hang up. “Go ahead and tell me. I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

  “Someone . . . wants to . . . kill me!” she said in an ice-cold voice.

  “Who wants to kill you? Why?” Han Yin’s heart beat wildly.

  “Because I know her secret. I saw her kill someone. She wants to shut me up.” Then she shrieked, and the line went dead.

  Han Yin was filled with regret. Just a few more seconds, and the girl might have said a name—possibly the key to these disturbing phone calls. At least he learned two things: one, the girl had been an eyewitness to a murder perpetrated by another girl; two, someone wanted to kill her to shut her up. Who was the girl who was always calling for help? Who wanted to kill her? Who had that person killed?

  The girl who called had been at Yin Aijun’s dorm and had stayed near where her corpse had been dumped on North China Road. In one of her previous calls, when Han Yin had asked who and where she was, she’d seemed confused or disoriented. If she’d witnessed a murder, why hadn’t she reported it to the police instead of bizarrely calling Han Yin for help in the middle of the night? And if someone wanted to kill her to shut her up, why hadn’t it happened by now?

  The eyes hiding in the corner and peering at Han Yin, the midnight calls, the mysterious spirit, the bloody characters on the window, and even the Wang Li case might all be the work of one person with a disassociated personality.

  Disassociated personality or multiple personality disorder is a psychological disorder caused by emotional trauma, especially psychological trauma suffered during the formative childhood years. More simply, a basic personality (the human personality before the split occurs) cannot bear some kinds of psychological trauma and therefore splits into one or more personalities to share the burden with the basic personality. It can be seen as the self providing relief at the subconscious level. The split personality or personalities and the basic personality are independent and autonomous and each exists as a complete self. The basic personality perhaps knows the other personality (or personalities, if there are more than one) exists, but when the nonbasic personality becomes the main personality, the basic personality often doesn’t know what this dominant personality does, and this can create memory loss for the basic personality.

  Han Yin never thought the investigation would take such a strange direction, but this came from a suggestion by Gu Feifei.

  Gu Feifei had PhDs in both forensic medicine and psychology. When she’d done advanced study abroad, she’d encountered just such a case. When they discovered the bloody characters on the window, she asked Ye Xi to give her the entire sequence of events. Certain behavioral characteristics are difficult to explain from either the normal or criminal perspective, so she altered her way of approaching the information. She then suggested that Han Yin try to look for suspects with these characteristics. In this case, Yu Meifen and the sweeper, Shen Xiulan, were possible matches.

  The routine morning meeting

  After the meeting was dismissed, Ye Xi held back the main officers to discuss the key points of the next step. She’d barely started when her cell phone started vibrating on the table. She glanced at the screen and signaled for everyone to relax. She took the call and walked out of the meeting room.

  A little later, Han Yin received a text message. After reading it, he excused himself to go to the bathroom. Ye Xi was waiting for him at the staircase. She was acting cautiously, and Han Yin’s guard went up.

  When he got to the stairway, he asked, “What’s up? Did something happen?”

  Ye Xi looked up and down the hallway. Then, keeping her voice low, she said, “That police car we were tracking down a while ago finally produced some results. They found clues in a little repair shop out in the suburbs. The head mechanic said that a while back, a police car went there to get its tires changed and specifically asked for old worn ones. He hadn’t paid much attention to the driver and only vaguely recalled the last two numbers of the plate—four and six.”

  “A police car with plates ending in four and six. Now where have I seen that?” said Han Yin, rubbing his forehead.

  Ye Xi quietly said, “The cold case group!”

  “That’s right!” said Han Yin in surprise. He’d accidentally raised his voice, then checked himself. “Right, it was a cold case group vehicle. Was it Fu Changlin, or maybe all three of them? What were they doing there?”

  Ye Xi shook her head. “Who knows? Anyway, it has to be something pretty shameful. Otherwise why would they have changed the tires like that? And in secret.”

  “True. So what should we do now?” asked Han Yin.

  Ye Xi hesitated. “Maybe confront them? What do you think?”

  “All right,” said Han Yin, nodding. “It’s time to call them out on this.”

  They returned to the meeting room and sat beside each other.

  Ye Xi’s face was devoid of expression when she announced that the meeting was over and, except for Fu Changlin, Du Jun, and Yao Gang, the rest could leave. The three men sat down in front of her.

  She leafed through her folder, found a photograph, and placed it down on the table.

  “These are the tread marks discovered by Professor Han Yin the evening he arrived here, after he’d gone with Kang Xiaobei to investigate the corpse-dumping site on Tiger King Mountain.”

  Fu Changlin glanced at the photo and said, “We know. So what?”

  Ye Xi fixed her eyes on him. “According to a reliable source, the tire tracks match a vehicle from your cold case group.”

  “What?” exclaimed Fu Changlin. “How could it be from our group? What was it doing there?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you,” said Ye Xi.

  “I . . .” Fu Changlin held back his anger. “Young Ye, how reliable is your information? I’ve never been to Tiger King Mountain.”

  “No, not you, Chief Fu,” Han Yin said. “That night, you drove the car, didn’t you?” Han Yin pointed to Du Jun, who was sitting to the left of Fu Changlin.

  Du Jun was clearly uncomfortable. When Ye Xi had shown the photograph, Fu Changlin and Yao Gang were a little surprised, but Du Jun was definitely afraid.

  “What were you doing, driving the group vehicle there?” asked Fu Changlin, furious. He rose and smacked Du Jun on the back of the head.

  “I . . .” Du Jun looked at the floor, unable to go on.

  “So why did you go there?” demanded Ye Xi.

  “I didn’t have anything to do and went there to look around the site.” Du Jun said.

  “Why do you look so guilty? And why secretly change the tires? You didn’t go alone. At least four others were with you. Who were they?”

  “I brought a few out-of-town friends I knew from the Internet to go and have a look,” Du Jun said.

  “Who’re you bullshitting? You dropped work for the sake of some friends?” Fu Changlin again took a step toward him.

  This kind of thing would leave Fu Changlin totally disgraced and shamed. That he worked his entire career in the Public Security Bureau was something that everyone would respect, and now, so close to his retirement, this huge blunder had occurred. It made him look like a fool, especially in front of Ye Xi. So it was no surprise that his emotions were getting the better of him. If it hadn’t been for Yao Gang pulling on his sleeve, Du Jun would probably have ended up on the ground.

  “I . . . I made a few bucks from it.” The panic-stricken Du Jun glanced at Fu Changlin. “They said riding there in a police car would be more of a kick, so I secretly took the group car.”

  Everybody there was thunderstruck. Such behavior was in serious violation of professional ethics and truly contemptible. It not only gravely damaged the image of the police force but was also a terrible desecration of the victim.

  “Just tell me the damn truth!” Fu Changlin clearly wasn’t buying it.

  “It’s true! It’s true!” Du Jun stood up, a
nxiously defending himself. “If you don’t believe me, you can check my chat records!”

  “Just sit down.” Ye Xi pointed to his seat. “Tell us what really happened!”

  Du Jun sat back down and lowered his head to organize his thoughts. Then with a breaking voice, he said, “Yin Aijun’s case had been all over the Internet forums. There was widespread concern over it. A lot of people posted comments with their own analyses and conclusions. At first, I just glanced over this stuff. Then I realized some of these viewpoints were especially amateur and far off base, and I couldn’t keep from revealing my identity and getting into the thick of it. Later on, I set up a text message group to discuss the case, and it attracted a lot of fanatics who were crazy about solving crimes. They were always asking me to show them crime scene photos or reveal details about the case. I like the feeling of being honored and respected. Later on, I lost a lot of money in the stock market and was trying to figure out how to make a little back. I got the inspiration from an English novel, where characters made the trail of Jack the Ripper’s killings into a tourist attraction. And it was good business, too, always busy. So I started bringing these fanatics to sightsee around the corpse sites to make some money.”

  “How many times did you do this?” Fu Changlin asked.

  “Two, three times, I’d guess.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Three times. Four people each time. I didn’t want any trouble, so I only selected out-of-towners. I also ran background checks and had them sign confidentiality agreements.”

  “You’re the biggest piece of shit ever. Simply a disgrace!” Fu Changlin shook his head in disgust.

  Du Jun fell to his knees and grabbed the hem of Fu Changlin’s jacket. “Chief Fu, I beg you, punish me any way you want, just don’t kick me off the force. It’s my life. I love being a policeman!”

  Ye Xi slammed her fist on the table. “How are you even qualified to be a policeman? Just you wait! Stripping you of your badge and uniform will only be the beginning!”

  Du Jun had escorted three groups of “sightseers.” That meant there were now twelve more potential suspects, all of whom were outsiders. This really concerned Ye Xi. But Han Yin told her not to worry. If the killer had been able to dispose of the body parts so easily without leaving traces, he must have been extremely familiar with the layout of J City, so either he was local or had lived there many years.

  The instant messaging group that Du Jun had set up needed to be thoroughly checked. At Han Yin’s recommendation, the task force restricted access to Du Jun’s computers at home and work and assigned technicians to immediately extract all the information on the instant messaging group, along with the chat records. If they found any IP addresses from J City, perhaps one of them belonged to the killer.

  Several hours later, the results were in. Out of the hundred members in Du Jun’s group, there were only fifteen local IP addresses, and only one had anything to do with the Yin Aijun case. Searching the registered user of this IP address, they learned that it belonged to the sanitation worker who found the dismembered body parts sixteen years apart—Shen Xiulan.

  Han Yin and Ye Xi were excited. A group of them rushed to Shen Xiulan’s home.

  Early on, Han Yin had paid a visit to Shen Xiulan’s residence, and at that time, Ding Damin described his wife’s behavior after she received such a shock. “She doesn’t sleep well and has horrible dreams. She’s often worried and gets flustered easily. She’s afraid of just about everything now, barely eats, and her temper has gotten a lot worse. Sometimes it turns her into a different person.”

  This was a typical symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it wasn’t Shen Xiulan’s. The symptoms described by Ding Damin were actually those of their daughter, Ding Xin, who in 2008 was taking the entrance exam for the university and was now in her fourth year of Chinese studies.

  Right at this very moment, the police were finding out that eight-year-old Ding Xin had been the first person to actually witness the carnage and realize that it came from a human body. This would have been a horrifying experience and would have inflicted PTSD. But PTSD symptoms in children are not as clear as they are in adults and can easily go unnoticed. Because of the lack of timely and effective psychological guidance, this symptom can continue into adulthood and cause chronic mental illnesses such as anxiety, borderline personality, and disassociated personality disorders.

  As Gu Feifei had deduced, Ding Xin was suffering from a disassociated personality—she had multiple personalities. After putting Ding Xin under hypnosis, Gu Feifei discovered that the girl had three personalities apart from her main one—Yin Aijun, the killer, and the informer. Ding Xin’s main personality knew of the others but didn’t know much about what they did.

  On January 18, 1996, when her mother brought home the gray travel bag, the eight-year-old Ding Xin was in the sitting room, playing with her beloved dog, Lil’ Yellow. Her mother told her there was a piece of meat in the bag for Lil’ Yellow. Ding Xin unzipped the bag and saw a mass of bloody meat. She reached in and felt a finger.

  Afterward, the meat and that finger appeared in Ding Xin’s dreams every night, the impetus for her nightmares. She became addicted to finding out every detail of the crime and learned that the meat inside the bag had been Yin Aijun’s. Thus, when it became impossible for her to bear the images recurring in her mind, she needed a “living Yin Aijun” to turn her discovery into a kind of illusion. This split probably occurred when she was seventeen. Every time Ding Xin changed into “Yin Aijun,” she would imitate the way Yin Aijun had dressed and done her makeup and would appear in the places that the real Yin Aijun had frequented. In 2008, after she’d been admitted to Old Capital University’s Chinese Studies Department, the “ghost” of Yin Aijun naturally appeared in her old dormitory. In addition, Ding Xin’s mother recalled that around August of 2010, Ding Xin went missing for two days, and after she returned, they found a bus ticket from Q City to J City in her pocket. But Ding Xin had no recollection of where she’d gone or what she’d done.

  About five years before, Lil’ Yellow, Ding Xin’s dog and closest friend for years, was hit by a careless neighbor on a motorcycle. She saw it happen, and a rage and hatred she’d never before known grew inside her and made her want to murder the neighbor. Because she’d already experienced one split, this time it was relatively easy for another split, that of “the murderer,” to occur in her personality as a way to cope with her criminal impulse. In her murderer persona, she thought she’d killed the neighbor, and in her mind replicated the process of the killing from her only memory of the Yin Aijun murder case that existed in her basic persona. So in that way, she killed the neighbor, dismembered him, and packed the body parts into the dark travel bag, throwing it in front of a dumpster on North China Road. Thus, when Ding Xin changed into “the murderer,” she’d appear on North China Road where the body parts had been dumped.

  When Han Yin and Kang Xiaobei had visited and left a business card, “the murderer” persona had been very frightened. She had been sure the police were tailing her and that she would soon be punished for killing the neighbor. She wanted to go to the Public Security Bureau and turn herself in, but she lacked the courage. The murderer’s panic and internal struggle were terribly painful. So, once again, there was a split in personality, producing “the informer” to alleviate her anxiety. The “murderer” and “informer” were well acquainted with one other, with the former constantly cautioning the latter to keep quiet. This was the reason for the midnight telephone calls for help, which began after Han Yin’s visit to the house.

  At present, there were four different personalities or personas inside Ding Xin. When an external stimulus made her anxious, she’d change into whichever persona suited her psychological needs. This mental illness was painful to experience and needed the greatest amount of courage on Ding Xin’s part and the support and love of her family—an incredibly difficult road ahead for them.

  Han Yin felt grief an
d resentment. He was going to make the killer pay!

  PART 5

  PSYCHOLOGICAL CONFESSION

  28

  ESCALATING THE CRIME

  Twilight had descended. Darkness covered the earth. In a small residential neighborhood, one house was brightly lit.

  Three bedrooms, two bathrooms. Only one person, a man, was present. But the whole place was lit up, even the lights in the kitchen and both bathrooms, as if someone hoped this insignificant light could swallow the blackness of the night.

  The man sat in a room that looked like a study. A book lay open on the desk in front of him. He stared at the darkness outside, reciting in a low voice one of Gu Cheng’s classic poems. He’d been like this ever since the woman had left the house. That was eight hours ago. It seemed like he was awaiting the arrival of some moment in time—perhaps he feared the night, the darkness.

  As he read the poem aloud, the man’s voice grew lower until his shoulders shook. He opened the desk drawer and took out a long black brocaded box. He opened the box and pulled out a key. He gripped it. A wave of humiliated sobbing rose and flooded the room.

  It was not clear how long this went on. When the wall clock sounded ten times, he sprang up and flew into a rage. He almost went hoarse screaming, “Why? Why did you do this? Don’t you know how hard I tried? You know I want to be a good man, a good husband.” He pointed to the picture on the wall. He was enraged—cold and profound. Then his voice deepened. “It was you, all of you, who destroyed my dream. I’ll make you pay for this! I love you, and I must punish you!”

  The man changed into black pants and a black jacket. He pulled on a black hood and walked out the door. He continued to recite the poetry, his eerie crooning swirling down the corridor.

  Time was flying. Han Yin had been in J City for nearly two months.

  The task force was still methodically investigating, though no valuable clues had been uncovered. No one who worked through the original Yin Aijun case had come up with any important suspects for the Wang Li case. Although Ding Xin, with her multiple personalities, had caused some trouble for Han Yin, she had adequate supporting testimonies that she’d not been at or near the scene of the crime. And the surveillance cameras in the Bar Street area had not recorded any suspicious vehicles around the time of Wang Li’s disappearance. Ma Wentao and Xu Sanpi were off the hook for now in the Yin Aijun case, due to a lack of evidence. The task force did, however, find records that Yu Meifen had stayed in a hostel, but she’d moved out in early February. Kang Xiaobei had been in charge of watching Feng Wenhao, who essentially went from the hospital to home and back—nothing unusual. On the bright side, Kang Xiaobei and Xia Jingjing had quickly revved up their romance, had met each other’s families, and were moving toward a quick marriage.