The Untouched Crime

by Zijin Chen

  He had listened to that lecture six or seven years ago when he and twenty other officers were invited to go to the police academy at the Zhejiang Bureau to attend training courses organized by the provincial government. Like the other officers, Lin looked down on teachers at the police academy who were full of hot air. The officers were excited to take advanced courses in crime-scene investigation but had no interest in psychology. Professor Yan’s course was an exception.

  Most of the examples Yan used were actual cases that he had worked on. He was a full-time cop, not an academic. He only designed this course after the Zhejiang Bureau begged him to teach the next generation of promising officers. He was high ranking too: assistant director of the Zhejiang Criminal Investigation Division. By the age of forty, Yan had already become a criminal investigation expert. His example cases opened the young officers’ eyes. They learned that meticulous logical reasoning would not only greatly decrease the amount of work they would have to do, but could also help them decide which direction an investigation would take.

  Yan himself had admitted that logical reasoning still needed to be supported by concrete evidence. Still, the officers thought he was a genius. Lieutenant Lin immediately recognized him, even after all those years.

  “Professor Yan! What are you doing here?” Lin’s quickly stood to shake Yan’s hand.

  Yan smiled. “I’m here to help with Zhao’s case. But you should know that I’m not in the force anymore.”

  Lin had heard about Yan quitting the force five years ago to teach at Zhejiang University. He had been surprised, but he didn’t know what had happened and wasn’t in a position to ask about it.

  “Zhao and I are old friends, and it seems like this case is unusually challenging, so I—”

  “So you’re helping to crack it!” Lin said.

  Yan hesitated. “No, I’m not an officer anymore, so technically I shouldn’t be helping with cases as all, especially classified ones. I’m just really curious . . .”

  “I understand,” Lin said quickly. “You want me to keep it between us. Is that right?”

  “Well . . . yes.” Yan paused and smiled. “You could put it that way.”

  “The only thing is . . .” Lin hesitated. “I’m not sure if Captain Zhao authorized . . .”

  “I’ve already read the files for all six murders,” Yan said.

  Lin relaxed when he heard this, relieved he would not have to worry about breaching confidentiality. Still, it was going against bureau policy to let a nonofficer get involved. Everything would need to be kept very quiet.

  “How can I help?” Lin asked.

  “I want to reinvestigate the murder of Xu Tianding.”

  “Well,” Lin said, “we only found out that our serial killer was connected when the prints found on a beer can matched the prints in Zhao’s other cases. I don’t think it will give us a breakthrough.”

  “On the contrary,” Yan said. “If there’s any case that will give us a breakthrough, it’s this one.”

  “But that crime scene was totally wrecked! At least the previous crime scenes were well preserved.”

  “Well preserved, yes, but did the police find anything of value, anything to get us closer to the killer? No,” Yan replied. “The killer cleaned up the past five crime scenes himself. In the sixth case, he scattered money on the ground to get a group of strangers to destroy evidence for him. Why?”

  Yan pressed on before Lin could guess. “He wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble if he could have cleaned it up himself. That means that something did not go according to plan.”

  “So what?” Lin seemed unconvinced.

  “If he was rushed, he probably didn’t cover his tracks perfectly. We have to find where he made his mistake.”

  “That makes sense.” Lin nodded.

  “I wanted to ask you about the victim, Xu Tianding.”

  “Everything I know is already written in the case file,” Lin said.

  “Yes, and a lot of it mentions your interviews with Zhu Fulai, Zhu Huiru, and Guo Yu. You even had people following them. I wanted to ask why. Is it because Ms. Zhu was the last person to see Xu Tianding?”

  Before Lin could explain, Yan started pacing the room. “Because you found alibis for Ms. Zhu and Mr. Guo very early on. They should have been eliminated as suspects. I know that anything subjective can’t go in the report. Still, sometimes a hunch can lead us to more clues.”

  Lin was shocked by Yan’s keen perception. Even Captain Zhao didn’t give a second thought to Ms. Zhu simply because he believed she wasn’t tough enough to kill a man.

  Lin explained that he spent more time on Ms. Zhu, her brother, and her friend because when he first interviewed her, she briefly had a strange expression on her face. And later when asking about the knife, Ms. Zhu and her brother had different answers. It seemed like they hadn’t gotten their stories straight before Lin turned up.

  He sighed. “But those were all guesses on my part. The evidence is solid—it shows that my suspicions were misplaced. First of all, the three of them have alibis.”

  Yan nodded.

  “Then we examined the knife in their restaurant. It was new, so it couldn’t have been the murder weapon,” Lin continued. “I had one of my men bring their photos to all the nearby shops to check if any of them had bought a chef’s knife recently, but got nothing. And the set of prints match our serial killer, but Zhu Huiru and her brother weren’t even living in Hangzhou three years ago.”

  “Right. Go on,” Yan said.

  “They’re not what you’d call rich. They couldn’t possibly have thrown away ten to thirty thousand yuan to ruin a crime scene. And their statements line up so well—even if they were pros, we would have found some inconsistencies by now. To top it all off, yesterday afternoon a friend of Xu’s named Zhang Bing got a threatening letter, and we know it was written by the killer. Ms. Zhu, her brother, and her friend all have alibis.”

  “Really?” Yan said. He had not heard about that.

  “I thought about it for a long time,” Lin said. “But it was a waste of the team’s time and resources—if I hadn’t spent so much time investigating them, we might have found some valuable clues by now. Five days have passed since the murder; we may have already missed our opportunity. I have to admit I feel responsible in a way.”

  Yan listened sympathetically as he took notes.

  After he left, he thought harder about what Lin had said. Lin had kept investigating those three young people even when the evidence showed they should be eliminated as suspects. They must have been acting very unnaturally. But Yan wasn’t there to see Ms. Zhu’s expression, so he had no way of telling if Lin was unduly affected by a preconceived idea.

  He knew that some officers were enamored with the pseudoscience of criminal psychology. They would scrutinize every action and word and even check if the person was looking to the left or the right whenever they answered questions. According to some officers, subconscious actions and microexpressions would show if the person was telling the truth.

  Yan didn’t believe any of it. He would much rather focus on the content of a person’s answer to see if there were any holes in their logic. The pros operated on a completely different level—once they had their story straight, they convinced themselves that it was the truth.

  On the other side of the spectrum were people who were naturally timid in front of the police. Even if the case had nothing to do with them, their nervousness could be interpreted as guilt. Yan couldn’t determine anything for sure until he met them himself.

  Chapter 42

  It was Saturday and Luo needed dinner. As per usual, he stood on the side of the road until he confirmed that he wasn’t being followed, then walked nonchalantly into Chongqing Noodles.

  “Hi, I’d like a bowl of pian’er chuan today.” Luo looked at the menu and then over at Huiru. She seemed calm.

  Huiru waited until the noodles were ready and then whispered, “I don’t think any cops have come by
since two days ago,” as she placed the bowl on his table.

  Luo smiled. “That’s because you’ve been eliminated as suspects. Completely eliminated.”

  “So now, we really—we really don’t have to worry?” She tried to suppress her delight.

  “You can relax. It’s finally over.”

  Huiru nodded happily and went back to work.

  Luo was certain that the police would stop investigating Huiru and Guo Yu.

  First, the timing of the threatening letter would leave them with solid alibis. More importantly, Yan had told Luo that Zhao was taking over the murder of Xu Tianding, and recently the special task force discovered that the prints from the serial murder case matched the latest killing. It was impossible for Huiru and Guo Yu to be responsible for all six murders.

  He was finished helping those two young people. Now it was time to see how the Hangzhou Bureau would handle the case.

  He smiled and picked up some noodles with his chopsticks. A real burden had been lifted off his shoulders. Helping them cover up the case had been extremely difficult—it was easier when he worked alone.

  Luo heard a familiar voice behind him. “I’d like a bowl of pian’er chuan, please.” Luo turned and his eyes met with Yan’s.

  Yan’s eyes narrowed slightly before he smiled broadly. “Luo Wen! What a coincidence, running into you again in a little place like this!”

  “I live just down the road and come here all the time. What are you doing here?”

  Yan took a seat facing him. “I was visiting another professor in my department this afternoon who lives near here. I was feeling hungry, so I stepped in. You said you come here often?”

  “Yeah.” Luo smiled shyly. “You know that I’m too lazy to cook for myself. I almost always eat out.”

  “And you typically come to this restaurant?”

  Luo hesitated for a fraction of a second but didn’t hide anything. “Yeah.”

  Yan leaned forward. “Do you know the owner well?”

  Luo hesitated again. “He makes delicious noodles, so I see him a lot.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I heard that the young woman, Zhu Huiru, was the last person to see the victim, that thug. She was on the suspects list, wasn’t she?”

  Luo felt deeply surprised. Yan knew Huiru’s name. He must have spoken to the police about her. Perhaps his visit to the restaurant wasn’t a coincidence.

  Luo knew exactly how police officers worked. But Yan was different. He was unpredictable.

  His mind was racing but he didn’t pause. “Is that so? I heard that the killing was pretty brutal. You’d never think a lady could pull off something like that.”

  “Oh really? I don’t know all the details.” Yan let out a weak laugh. “But I’m really glad I ran into you. There’s something I want to ask you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Zhao Tiemin wants me to help him with his case. He nagged me until I had no choice but to say yes. But I only understand logic, not methodology. You might know, though!”

  “Well? Go on.”

  “All the victims in the serial murder were strangled from behind, using rope.”

  “So? Maybe the killer is so good at attacking from behind that the victims aren’t able to fight back.”

  “Yes,” Yan said, shaking his head. “Though it’s odd that there is no trauma to the body besides the ligature marks. We didn’t find any evidence of skin or clothing under the fingernails, but the victims were all ex-convicts, so they knew how to fight. It just doesn’t add up.”

  “You’re right that it wouldn’t be easy to strangle someone to death from behind,” Luo said. “Usually victims struggle violently.”

  “So my question is,” Yan continued, “how does he do it?”

  Luo pretended to think for a moment. “He might knock them unconscious and then strangle them.”

  “Maybe, but autopsies show that there was no trauma to any of the victim’s skulls.”

  Luo was on edge. He didn’t understand why Yan wouldn’t stop asking questions. Was he working for the investigation?

  As an experienced forensic scientist, Luo could think of a number of answers to Yan’s question. If he didn’t offer them up, would Yan become suspicious?

  He thought harder. The method of killing was not the crux of the case, so it wouldn’t hurt to tell Yan. And it would surely backfire if Luo tried to hide anything; Yan was just too smart.

  “I remember a few similar cases,” Luo said. “One of the county-level cities near Ningbo had a string of serial murders, and there was never any evidence of struggle.” Luo paused. “In this case, though, the murder weapon was a knife. The killer used an electric baton to incapacitate his victim before stabbing them to death. And in the case of strangulation, if the victim woke up, he still wouldn’t have the energy to resist his attacker.”

  “Wow,” Yan said. “Would we be able to see any evidence of that on the body?”

  “The electric current will excite the central nervous system and cause a person to faint. The current leaves the body, so you cannot detect it in an autopsy. However, you could look at the skin of the victim for shock marks. They look very similar to bruises, so they are easy to miss.”

  Yan nodded. “But I still don’t understand why the killer would use strangulation. If he shocked the victim like you said, why wouldn’t he just stab them afterwards?”

  Luo didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t give Yan a straight answer; he might uncover too many details. Luo smiled. “I don’t know about that. Every killer has their favorite weapon. Some use knives, others rope, and others poison. Some even use a gun if they can find one. Maybe the killer was squeamish and wanted to avoid blood by using a rope.”

  Yan laughed. “How could a criminal be afraid of blood but have the gall to kill six people?”

  Luo didn’t answer.

  When they finished eating, Yan and Luo walked outside together before parting ways, both deep in concentration.

  Chapter 43

  After saying good-bye to Yan, Luo started home. Just as he was passing the park, he saw Guo Yu walking impossibly slowly towards him.

  Luo turned and acted as if he didn’t know him, but Guo Yu shouted, “Sir!”

  Luo hushed him quickly, looking in both directions. “Come this way but keep a distance.” Luo approached the outdoor gym and started rotating his oblique muscles, indicating that Guo Yu should use the pull-up bar next to him.

  Guo Yu did a few pathetic pull-ups, his least favorite exercise.

  “Is something wrong?” Luo asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just . . .” he paused and bit his lip. “I was just at the noodle shop, and Huiru said that the police haven’t been to see her and everything is fine. I . . . don’t know how to thank you.”

  “It’s nothing,” Luo said, smiling. “You don’t need to thank me. I hope you can forget about all this and forget about me. I just want you to lead your lives as if this never happened.”

  “I know.” Guo Yu concentrated and managed another pull-up with difficulty. “You’ve saved our lives, but we still don’t even know your name. That’s just not right.”

  “But I told you before,” Luo said, laughing. “You and I don’t know each other. We’re strangers. That’s better for you and it’s better for me. If you want to do something for me, just remember that rule.”

  Guo Yu’s vision blurred. He stopped doing pull-ups and bowed his head. “I will,” he said. “What about in a few years when this has blown over? Could we be friends then?”

  “Why do you want to be my friend?” Luo looked at him closely.

  “Because . . . because you did so much for me,” Guo Yu stammered.

  “It was nothing.” Luo turned to the river. Then, in a voice so quiet that only he could hear, he whispered, “This helped me too.”

  “But . . . could we be friends if we wanted?” Guo Yu said.

  Luo waited before answering. “I have a lot of things I need to take care of,” he finally
said. His voice was dispassionate.

  “Oh,” Guo Yu said, looking deeply disappointed.

  Luo smiled again. “So how are things with you and Huiru?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh come on, you don’t have to be so shy,” Luo teased.

  “We’re, uh, the same as before,” Guo Yu said, blushing.

  “What?” Luo was surprised. “After everything, you two aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend yet?”

  “It’s . . .” Guo Yu’s face was now bright red. “It’s just that I can’t make her happy.”

  “Why do you say that?” Luo asked gently.

  “I don’t have a great job, and . . . my family is poor.” Guo Yu found it difficult to talk about such matters, but he wanted to tell the truth.

  “You don’t have to be so fixated on money. I can tell that Huiru really likes you.”

  Guo Yu let out a sigh. “Maybe I can save up more in the next few years.”

  “And then you’ll ask her out?”

  “Maybe.” Guo Yu looked down.

  Luo shook his head sadly. “You don’t have to be rich before you allow yourself to be happy. You haven’t even tried to make her happy yet; how are you sure that you can’t? Do you think that all she wants is money? Men think it’s more important to focus on their careers. They often don’t make time for their family. But ignoring your loved ones is the most selfish thing you can do.”

  By the time Guo Yu lifted his head, Luo was already walking away with his head bowed.

  Chapter 44

  Captain Zhao wore a determined expression as he walked into Professor Yan’s office, though he had at least been considerate enough to change out of his uniform before barging in on his friend. His eyes flicked across the students sitting there and then focused on Yan. “I want a word with you.”

  Yan stood and took Zhao to an empty meeting room next door. “What is it?” he asked after closing the door.

  “You talked to Lieutenant Lin about the case behind my back.” Zhao glared at him.

  Yan smiled and sat down. “Are you regretting involving me now?”