Death Notice

by Zhou HaoHui

  “What is that awful smell?” he exclaimed.

  Han entered the room first and slid the keycard into the wall slot. The lights switched on, scattering the darkness and revealing a well-kept hotel suite. A suitcase lay open on the king-sized bed. Pei sniffed, and quickly realized that this was the source of the odor.

  The team cautiously gathered around the noxious suitcase, and peered inside together.

  The suitcase held about a dozen neatly arranged glass jars. Each jar, roughly the size of two fists stacked on top of each other, was filled to the brim with a briny liquid. Now Pei recognized the smell. Formaldehyde, an embalming agent. A grotesquely shaped object floated inside each jar.

  “Excuse me,” the hotel employee said, covering his mouth with one hand and pushing past Mu and Zeng with the other. The man rushed out into the hall.

  Shivering, Mu stepped closer to her male colleagues. “What…What is this?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  No one answered. Han donned a pair of white cotton gloves, plucked one of the jars from the case, and examined it against the light.

  When Zeng recognized the object soaking inside the formaldehyde, he let out a rather undignified shriek. “It’s a scalp! Fuck—it’s a human scalp!”

  Indeed, several strands of hair still clung to the object. The scalp drifted gently through the liquid as the bottle shook, like a nightmarish jellyfish startled by movement.

  Mu had seen enough for one day. She dashed out of the room, gasping for fresh air.

  Pei’s gaze lingered on the piece of scalp. He then switched his focus to the label stuck to the bottle’s surface. On closer look, it was covered with a good deal of handwriting. Han noticed the writing on the jar at the same time. His eyes widened as he turned the jar and read the strip of paper:

  DEATH NOTICE

  THE ACCUSED: Lin Gang

  CRIME: Rape at Baijia Temple Village

  DATE OF PUNISHMENT: March 18

  EXECUTIONER: Eumenides

  The same perfect handwriting. A heavy red checkmark had been drawn through the characters for Lin Gang. Several team members were familiar with judicial notices, and they knew full well what red marks signified.

  “The rape at Baijia Temple?” Pei asked in astonishment.

  “It’s one of the province’s most brutal unsolved cases,” Zeng told Pei. “It happened last year. I’m actually the one who sent the assistance dispatch out to the public security network. The culprit had one distinguishing feature: a five-centimeter-long scar from a knife wound on the left side of his forehead.”

  As if in response to Zeng’s words, the chunk of scalp inside the bottle began to uncurl, revealing a long and distinct scar.

  Pei grunted a noise that could have been a laugh or a sigh. “He did more than crack the case for you. He even footed the bill for the court and held his own trial.”

  Han felt his heart sink. As the captain stared at the red checkmark, it seemed to morph into a mouth leering at him. Veins bulged along his wrist. Han placed the bottle back inside the suitcase and raised another. Floating inside was a ragged piece of skin with a steel-gray tattoo of a bat.

  Another notice was attached to this jar, with a checkmark just like the others:

  DEATH NOTICE

  THE ACCUSED: Zhao Erdong

  CRIMES: East Elm robbery and murder

  DATE OF PUNISHMENT: May 11

  EXECUTIONER: Eumenides

  East Elm. The name of that upper-class neighborhood sent long-forgotten images surging through Han’s mind. Rows of tall, pristine apartment buildings. A trail of red across a hardwood floor, leading to a dead man slumped against a bloodstained wall. Han had led his own officers through a marathon of sleepless nights in search of the owner of a bat-shaped tattoo. Now that it was right in front of his eyes, he wasn’t sure quite what to feel. Should he be pleased? Sorrowful? Angry?

  Silence spread through the room as Han, Zeng, and Pei removed the formaldehyde-filled bottles from the case one at a time and set them down onto the bed. Mu returned to the room, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. Additional human body parts of various shapes and sizes occupied the containers, one per bottle—a finger, an ear, a nose, and more. Located on each “sample” was a distinguishing feature of a subject of a police search. A red checkmark adorned the death notice attached to each bottle—that is, except for the final one.

  Half a tongue floated inside the jar. Several lines of script had been written upon the piece of paper stuck to the glass.

  DEATH NOTICE

  THE ACCUSED: Peng Guangfu

  CRIME: Mount Twin Deer Park police slaying

  DATE OF PUNISHMENT: October 25

  EXECUTIONER: Eumenides

  “There’s no checkmark,” Pei noted. The others nodded. This was the only unfulfilled death notice.

  Han looked dumbstruck. Yin and Zeng exchanged wide-eyed looks.

  Pei noticed his fellow teammates’ odd behavior, and he shot Zeng a questioning look. Suddenly Mu touched Pei’s arm. He looked at her, but she shook her head.

  Not now, her lips said soundlessly.

  Han slowly set the last jar back inside the case. After a concerted effort to keep his emotions under control, he picked up his mobile phone and called Yin.

  “Tell the officers standing by that they’re dismissed. He isn’t coming back.”

  Pei knew Han was right. Eumenides had wanted the police to come, and he had led them here like rats in a maze. The room wouldn’t contain a single worthwhile lead except for whatever the killer had deliberately chosen to leave out on display.

  The follow-up investigation would only verify Pei and Han’s conclusion. Not a single fingerprint or strand of hair to be found—only the suitcase and its gruesome contents.

  There were thirteen jars. Each bore an individual death notice. Twelve of the sentences described on the notices had red checkmarks, with only the sentence for Peng Guangfu unmarked.

  Hiding in plain sight among the macabre display of jars were two items: an external hard drive and what appeared to be a signal receiver.

  “Looks like I’ve got work to do,” Zeng said, eyeing the hardware.

  * * *

  Clustered in the conference room, the task force viewed a video on the projector screen. A short, stocky man kneeled in front of a dreary stone wall. He faced the camera. His arms and legs were bound, and his features were distorted with terror. The team members could faintly discern a scar on the left side of his forehead.

  Pei could not place the location. The texture of the wall was too rough to have been inside an apartment or a warehouse. It might have been a cellar. The lighting was too dim and the angle too limited for him to make a confident guess.

  After several seconds, they heard the voice of a man outside the frame.

  “What is your name?”

  “Lin…Gang,” the stout man stuttered.

  “How were you involved in the rape that occurred on the third of August last year in Baijia Temple Village?”

  Lin Gang lowered his head. “I…I’m the one who did it.”

  The other man spoke in a low rasp. For Lin, the effect must have been terrifying; however, Pei recognized the man’s motivation behind doing so. He had disguised his voice for his intended audience—for the police officers who would eventually view this recording.

  “The woman you raped. What did she look like?”

  “She was…thin. Her hair was short, cropped to—”

  “No. Tell me something that only you saw. Something that the public doesn’t know.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “If you don’t tell me, I can cut you and let you bleed out slowly. It’ll take half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. It’s your choice.” />
  “There was—there was a mole. On her breast. About as wide as the end of a chopstick.”

  “Good.”

  A shadow flickered past the lens, and the other man walked behind Lin Gang and untied the ropes binding him.

  Lin rubbed his bleeding wrists. His head turned; there was a vacant look in his eyes, and he grew pale.

  A hand entered the frame. Glinting between two fingers was a plain razor blade.

  “I’ll give you one more chance.” The man’s words were even more piercing than the blade. “Stand up and face me.”

  Lin shook his head in desperation, and he began to sob and tremble. “No…”

  “Stand up.”

  He shivered. Rather than rise, he curled into a quivering ball.

  There was a disdainful snort, and the blade flashed before the camera. Terrified, Lin raised his arms as if to protect himself, but before he had completed this motion, he crumpled to the floor stiff as a board. Dark blood pooled from his neck. A dark figure crouched next to Lin. He worked the blade with quick, surgical strokes.

  Pei held his breath in anticipation as the killer’s head came into the frame, but he quickly let it out. Of course. The man was wearing a ski mask.

  “Eumenides,” Xiong growled. “It’s him.”

  Han held a finger up to his lips and glared at Xiong.

  They heard a soft squishing noise, like the sound of noodles being stirred in a bowl. The man rose, and he held something thin and flat in front of the camera. The team members gasped as they recognized the object they had seen inside the first jar. A human scalp.

  “So? Was it true?” Zeng asked.

  Han furrowed his brow. “Was what true?”

  “The mole. Was it really there?”

  The captain pursed his lips, as if thinking to himself. Finally, he nodded. “Yes. Only a handful of people would have known that detail.”

  “Could Eumenides have gotten into the archives and found the file for that case?” Pei asked. “He could have found someone who fit Lin Gang’s description and fed him that line. All of this might have been a show for us.”

  “It’s unlikely,” Han said, shaking his head. “Very unlikely. We would have heard if there had been a break-in.”

  The man who had just executed Lin was evidently just as well-informed of the details behind the other unsolved cases mentioned on the other jars. There were twelve videos after this one, and each documented a similar “trial” performed by the masked man. Each began with a brief interrogation, with questions touching upon very specific details relating to the case. The background of each video was the same—the same stone wall, the same unrevealing angle.

  “They can’t all be telling the truth,” Zeng whispered in disbelief. “He has to be feeding them lines, just like Pei said.”

  Pei knew true terror when he saw it. It was the kind of terror that would make truth pour out of whomever it seized.

  Once each victim had confirmed their identity, the man untied the rope binding them. He said the same line near the end of each recording: I’ll give you one more chance. Yet none of the victims in his little performances seized the opportunity to challenge their captor. They didn’t seem to have the slightest desire to do so. Once their hands and feet had been freed, each and every one of them curled into a ball and awaited the man’s fatal blow like a petrified rat.

  These hardened rapists, thieves, and murderers had stood face-to-face with this strange man, yet somehow couldn’t even beg for their lives.

  The final video may well have been what Eumenides had most wanted the police to see. It had been filmed in the same dim, dilapidated environment as the others. A man in his thirties or forties knelt upon the ground. The camera lens was pointed toward his face, making his features clearly visible.

  “State your name.”

  “Peng Guangfu.”

  “How were you involved with the armed robbery that occurred at the Sunset Hotel on the evening of October twenty-fifth last year?”

  “I hit the place. Me and Zhou Ming.”

  “Stealing twenty-four thousand yuan in cash altogether. What happened after you fled the Sunset Hotel?”

  “It was late. We ran into some cops.”

  “How many?”

  “Two.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “They chased us, so we ran into Mount Twin Deer Park. There are rocks and little caves all over the park. We hid inside one of the caves.”

  “Did the police find you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “Everyone started shooting.”

  “One officer was killed, and the other injured. Your partner, Zhou Ming, also died in the firefight. Is that correct?”

  Peng slowly nodded.

  The man asked, “Do you know the names of those two officers?”

  “I found out later. I saw them in the papers.”

  “Tell me their names.”

  “The cop who died was Zou Xu. The injured one was Han Hao.”

  Pei jumped at the mention of Han’s name. He turned and looked at the captain in incredulity. Han’s jaw was clenched tight. Beads of sweat had already formed on his forehead.

  Pei thought back to the captain’s reaction when they had discovered that jar in the hotel room. The others had exchanged glances. And then there was Mu’s silent warning. They knew. They had kept him in the dark this entire time.

  “Very good.” This seemed to indicate that the man off-screen had finished his questioning. Finally, he said it again. “I’ll give you one more chance.”

  Peng lifted his head and looked at the man with blank eyes.

  The anonymous hand entered the frame. Contrary to the team members’ expectations, his fingers did not hold a gleaming blade but rather a button-sized metal disk. The hand placed the disk inside Peng’s shirt pocket.

  “This is a location transmitter. I’m going to give the receiver to the police.”

  Peng’s eyes widened. Pei noted the irony here: the mention of law enforcement gave this criminal hope.

  “The game begins when I turn on the transmitter. It will lead you where you need to be. There is a catch, however. Your team must consist of four members—no more, no fewer. You must arrive here by midnight of October twenty-fourth. I’ll know if you aren’t playing by the rules,” he said, and he turned his masked face toward the camera. “So don’t try to be clever.” Now he turned back to Peng. “If they play by these rules and are also successful, you may leave here with your life intact.”

  Han picked up the receiver that the police had found inside the suitcase. They had already attempted to turn the device on, but it was clear from the video that it would work only after Eumenides turned on the transmitter.

  The video continued, addressing Peng. “There’s one more issue. I wouldn’t want you to let any secrets slip prematurely. We need to think of a way to prevent that.”

  Peng’s face filled with horror. The man’s hand appeared before the camera. An icy gleam flickered from the blade between his fingers.

  “No, no!” Peng pleaded in desperation. “I won’t say anything—I won’t say anything at all!”

  He had no choice in the matter. The faceless man’s other hand entered the frame and pinched the sides of Peng’s jaw, forcing his mouth wide open and turning his pleas into unintelligible moans.

  The blade darted into Peng’s mouth. Peng struggled desperately, but the killer’s grip was like a vise. There was an awful shriek. A stream of blood flowed from Peng’s mouth and down the man’s hand. Several seconds later, the man dropped Peng, who immediately curled up in inarticulate pain. Still standing out of frame, the anonymous man wagged a bloody slice of Peng’s tongue before the camera.

  “I’m giving you an opportunity. I only hope you can
make the most of it.”

  The recording concluded with this bloody scene. The team members exhaled a collective sigh of relief as the video ended.

  Han shook his head, as though waking from a dream. “Closing the Mount Twin Deer Park case isn’t the purpose of this team, but Peng Guangfu might be able to point us to Eumenides. We must ensure Peng’s safety. If it means we can prevent more murders, then I’ll play along. We’ll send four people into the lion’s den, just like he said.”

  Pei shook his head. The team had six members. There would be two redundant individuals, and he was sure he’d be the first one out.

  “How will Eumenides know if we’re playing by his rules? Will he be there watching us?” Zeng asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Han answered. “If yesterday taught us anything, it’s that Eumenides is an expert at defying our expectations. What do you think, Mu?”

  The psychologist laced her fingers together. “If there’s one thing we can expect of Eumenides, it’s that he doesn’t bluff. He might be at the location he gives you. Or he might be watching from a safe distance. Regardless, he’ll keep a close eye on you either way.”

  OCTOBER 24, 11:05 A.M.

  POLICE HEADQUARTERS, GUESTHOUSE CAFETERIA

  The cafeteria was in a small room adjacent to the lobby on the first floor of the guesthouse. Around ten people were seated at the tables spread throughout the room; judging from the stacks of paper that most of them were glancing at between bites, Pei guessed they were visiting law enforcement experts hired to hold lectures and workshops for the various branches of criminal police housed at headquarters. With nothing else to do, Pei had ordered mapo tofu, rice, and a bottle of beer for lunch.