Profiler (Fang Mu Eastern Crimes Series Book 1)

by Lei Mi

  When Fang Mu opened the door, he again saw Du Yu and Zhang Yao hurriedly roll off one another.

  Jeez, he thought, it's the middle of the day.

  Acting as if he hadn't seen anything, Fang Mu sat on his bed, took a bottle of meat sauce out of his bag and handed it to Du Yu. "Here," he said. "My mom made this especially for you."

  But before Du Yu had a chance to take it, Zhang Yao grabbed it out of Fang Mu's hands.

  "I'll hold onto this," she said, and then glanced to Fang Mu. "Your mom's meat sauce is so delicious."

  Helplessly, Du Yu just looked at Fang Mu and smiled.

  Fang Mu laughed. "You should have said something. I would have told my mom to make some more."

  "Then the next time you go home you better not forget," she said.

  "Deal." Fang Mu smiled.

  Zhang Yao laughed. "You know, you're actually quite handsome when you smile. When I have time I'm going to find you a girlfriend."

  Fang Mu just laughed and waved away the idea.

  When Fang Mu went to the bathroom to wash his face, he ran into Liu Jianjun, who was hand washing a pair of pants in a big basin, with a rolled-up basketball magazine in his mouth.

  "You're back?" he said, words garbled behind the magazine.

  "Yep," said Fang Mu, splashing cold water on his face.

  "Has the case been solved?"

  "What case?"

  "Qu Weiqiang and his girlfriend. The double homicide."

  "How would I know?"

  "Man, I don't know when they're going to crack that thing. Goddamn tragedy." With that, Liu Jianjun stumbled out, taking all of his things with him.

  Back in his room, Fang Mu really wanted to give Tai Wei a call, but after hesitating for a long time, he abandoned the idea.

  In fact, the case was far from solved. While Fang Mu was sitting around at home, dying of boredom, the officers of the Jiangbin City State Enterprise and Nonprofit Institution Investigative Division had been working day and night with little success.

  Over a month had passed since the murders, and in that time police had already traveled several times to both Linjiang City in Jilin province, the registered permanent residence of victim Qu Weiqiang, and Hegang City in Heilongjiang province, the registered permanent residence of victim Wang Qian. There they had investigated nearly a thousand people, and still the crime was no closer to being solved than on the day it was committed. Above all, the police were puzzled by a single question: what was the motive?

  It was clear from the crime scene that nothing had been stolen. The several hundred renminbi lying in one of the drawers hadn't been touched, nor had the victims' cell phones, jewelry or other valuable objects. As a result, the possibility that this was a case of burglary ending in murder could essentially be eliminated.

  Based on the brutality of the killings, revenge initially seemed a probable motive, but after repeated investigations, police could find no evidence that the victims had any enemies to speak of. Qu Weiqiang's parents were both laborers, while Wang Qian's father was a doctor and her mother a teacher. The possibility that some enmity from the parents' generation had led to the deaths of their children appeared unlikely.

  If this was simply a forced entry, rape and murder case, then there were even more questions to answer. First, why dismember Wang Qian? If the reason was to conceal the body, why piece her back together and leave her lying on the floor? And what about the syringe in her left breast? Where did it come from and what did it mean?

  Second, why bring Qu Weiqiang's body to the soccer field, cut off his hands, and then leave him there? The field was over a mile away from the scene of the crime and transporting him could not have been easy, so why go to all that trouble? If this was meant as a kind of challenge to the police, why not take the far lighter Wang Qian instead?

  Although many questions remained unanswered, the police did feel certain about one thing: this was an exceedingly calm and intelligent killer. After breaking through the screen window, he had first killed the dead-drunk Qu Weiqiang (toxicology reports later showed the victim's blood-alcohol level to be extremely high) by striking him with a blunt object. Then he raped Wang Qian, strangled her to death, hacked her apart and pieced her back together, cleaned the apartment, carried Qu Weiqiang's corpse to the soccer field, and cut off his hands. From the state of the crime scene it was clear that the killer had been methodical in everything—even the bathroom where he dismembered Wang Qian had been scrubbed so clean that the police could not find the smallest clue.

  Analyzing the crime through the lens of criminal psychology, the killer's murder methods had been extremely rigorous—and this rigor seemed to please him greatly. This meant he was highly likely to kill again.

  To the police, this was a terrifying prediction.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Deadly Hospital

  Catching a cold during the hottest days of summer is notoriously unpleasant.

  So early one morning, Tang Yu’e walked into the Jiangbin City University Hospital, wiping her nose every few steps. She felt good enough about the place; it was near her home, well-maintained, and, most importantly, cheap.

  The problem was that the doctors' attitudes were not quite as caring as the plaque on the wall of the outpatient services entry hall promised. After speaking with a Dr. Cao, who asked her a few hurried questions and then wrote out several prescriptions, Tang Yu’e was sent to the nurses' station and told to ask for an IV.

  The young nurse who intubated her was brusquely mechanical in her methods. It hurt a lot. Minutes later, Tang Yu’e was holding up her own IV bag and wandering the halls with a look of irritation, searching for the observation room. She hadn't gone ten steps before her arm was sore. Just as she was struggling to continue, a white-coated male doctor wearing a surgical mask appeared. With one hand he retrieved the IV bag from her outstretched arm, while with the other he helped her along, saying, "This way, ma'am." His voice was warm and friendly and lovely to hear.

  The doctor led Tang Yu’e to Observation Room 2. No one else was inside. After helping hang her IV bag on the hook beside the chair, he placed a soft cushion beneath her.

  "Thank you, young man," she said.

  The doctor waved his hand to say she needn't be so polite. His eyes twinkled behind his glasses—he was obviously smiling. After helping Tang Yu’e get comfortable, he opened the door and left.

  When the doctor returned he was carrying a cup of water. He placed it in Tang Yu’e's hand. It was ice-cold.

  "You should drink this water, ma'am. It's so hot out today and there's no air conditioning in here. This will help you cool off."

  "Thank you so much, young man. What's your name? I'd like to tell the hospital director how good you've been to me." Having never received this kind of treatment there before, Tang Yu’e felt a little overwhelmed.

  But the doctor just waved his hand again, his eyes as lively as before, and then he turned and left.

  Tang Yu’e was already planning on telling her husband how nice this man had been when she got home. She sipped the water. Ah, she could feel its chill run all the way down to her stomach. Truly pleasant—though it did have a faintly medicinal taste. But perhaps all hospital water tasted like that. Regardless, she didn't think about the matter any further. To be well over 40 and have a young man treat her like that—how delightful.

  Fifteen minutes later, when the doctor quietly pushed open the observation room door, Tang Yu’e was already leaning back in the chair, fast asleep. The doctor took the empty paper cup from her hand and placed it in the pocket of his white coat. Then, from another pocket, he produced a syringe and injected its contents into the IV tube. Finally, he placed a thin book in Tang Yu’e's bag, and then departed just as he had come, swiftly and soundlessly.

  After nine, the number of sick people coming to the Jiangbin City University Hospital gradually increased. One after another, various IV bag-toting patients sat in Observation Room 2, but no one took any notice
of the middle-aged woman napping in the chair. At last, a young woman who was there accompanying her boyfriend while he got an IV pointed at Tang Yu’e.

  "Hey, look at that woman over there. She hasn't moved an inch this whole time."

  "She's probably just sleeping," her boyfriend said, holding his stomach.

  Pushing the glasses up off the bridge of her nose, the girl stared at the motionless woman.

  "No way…" she said, her face growing pale. "I don't think she's even breathing!"

  Plucking up her courage, the girl took a few steps forward, cautiously leaned into the woman's ear and shouted, "Miss!"

  No response.

  After hesitating for a moment, the girl reached out and pushed her.

  It was like pushing a block of wood.

  Before the girl could react, Tang Yu’e fell rigidly off the side of the chair and onto the floor.

  When Tai Wei walked out of Observation Room 2, a frown on his face, the director of the outpatient clinic was screaming his head off at the nurse who had given Tang Yu’e the IV.

  The young nurse was backed against a table, sobbing and sniffling and saying that 30 minutes after she'd injected the IV, she'd gone to Observation Room 1 to check on Tang Yu’e. When she didn't see her, she assumed that once the IV was empty, the lady had removed it herself and left. After that, she hadn't thought about the matter again.

  Seeing Tai Wei appear, the director quickly motioned for the nurse to shut her mouth. Then, before Tai Wei could speak, he abruptly stated their position: "We don't know a thing, so all this will have to wait until the higher-ups tell us what to do."

  Tai Wei laughed, and then told one of his fellow officers to go to the hospital pharmacy and get the medicine Tang Yu’e had been prescribed so they could take it back to the lab for testing. Then he told the director to summon Dr. Cao, who had been in charge of the woman's case.

  Minutes later, as Dr. Cao was rushing over, he was stopped on the way by members of the dead woman's family. One of them, a man in his early 40s, asked the doctor if he was Dr. Cao. When he said yes, the man slugged him in the face without another word. If the police hadn't heard all the commotion and hurried to see what was going on, Dr. Cao may well have joined his patient in the afterlife.

  Sighing, Tai Wei looked at Dr. Cao's battered face, at the sobbing young nurse, and at the dead woman's family who were still trying to break free of the policemen so they could rush at the doctor.

  "All right," he said, waving his hand, "we'd better just take them back to the station and figure things out there."

  Dr. Cao and the young nurse both shot looks at the outpatient director, but he had intentionally turned away.

  The young nurse gave the outpatient director a hostile look. It certainly wasn’t the way he’d acted two days ago when he was grabbing her butt.

  While trying to get the witnesses into the cop cars, the police ran into some more trouble. The middle-aged, self-proclaimed husband of the deceased simply refused to let them leave with Dr. Cao, saying that he needed to kill him to avenge his wife's death. For a while Tai Wei just held him back, but eventually he got fed up and let him go.

  "Well, go on then," Tai Wei relented. "Kill him! This will be the easiest murder case we ever solve!"

  Hearing this, the man stopped in his tracks and just stared at Dr. Cao, panting heavily.

  As Tai Wei was about to get into the car, the man again stopped him and asked, "This has to be a case of medical negligence, right?"

  "Who knows!" yelled Tai Wei, slamming the door in his face. "We haven't even started our investigation."

  Then as he started the car, Tai Wei clearly heard the man ask the person standing next to him: "So how much does the hospital have to pay if someone dies?"

  Man, what a world, thought Tai Wei. Smiling grimly, he shook his head and drove off.

  Any hope the husband had of compensation was eliminated by the test results. There was no problem in the least with Dr. Cao's prescription, the medication dispensed by the pharmacy, or the compound concocted by the young nurse and then fed into the IV. Although traces of sedative were found in the victim's blood, the actual cause of death was brain swelling and respiratory exhaustion resulting from heroin poisoning. This finding shocked the police, who then closely reexamined the evidence taken from the scene. At last they discovered a tiny, needle-sized hole in the IV tube, leading them to suspect that someone had injected liquid heroin into the victim's IV, poisoning her to death.

  But that wasn't even the strangest part, for while going through the victim's bag, police discovered a pornographic Japanese manga, which contained shockingly graphic drawings of gay sex and BDSM. Taking for granted that a middle-aged married woman like the deceased really did have a special fondness for such stuff, it was clearly best enjoyed secretly, in the privacy of her own home; so what was she doing bringing it to the hospital? And if it wasn't hers, then whose was it?

  After interviewing members of the victim's family and other related parties, the police learned the following information: The victim was a 43-year-old woman named Tang Yu’e who had been unemployed since 1999 after being laid-off at a state-owned company located in Jiangbin City. Her husband, Pang Guangcai, was an electrician who worked for the maintenance department at Jiangbin City University. Together they had one daughter, then in high school.

  Tang Yu’e had been an honest and hardworking woman never known to have bad blood with anyone. She also lived a highly moral life, and was so strict with her daughter that if there was so much as a kiss on TV, she would immediately change the channel. At one point, the police wondered whether the manga might have belonged to the husband Pang Guangcai, but not only did he flatly deny this charge, he also had only a sixth-grade education, so the difficulty of reading a Japanese comic would have been quite high. Aside from that, every big street in the city was full of shops selling pornography. If he had wanted to read something like this in Chinese it would have been easy; no reason to spend all that effort deciphering a foreign language.

  A significant discovery was soon made while interviewing the staff at the Jiangbin City University Hospital. According to one of the nurses, she had been leaving work the morning of the murder when she saw Tang Yu’e being led by a roughly 5'9", white-coated doctor into Observation Room 2. Unfortunately, she had only glanced at him from behind, and for no more than a moment. Feeling almost certain that this man was the killer, police ordered all the doctors from the hospital to wear white coats and line up facing away from the nurse, so that she could identify whom she had seen. Although she indicated several of them as potential suspects, each man was soon cleared of suspicion. Thus it could be more or less concluded that the killer was someone from outside the hospital.

  This meant that he had most likely disguised himself as a doctor, brought Tang Yu’e to Observation Room 2, found some opportunity to give her a sedative, and then injected enough heroin into the IV to kill her.

  Still, two questions remained. First, why use something as expensive as heroin to kill her? Far cheaper poisons were easily available and just as deadly.

  Second, where had that pornographic manga come from? And what did it mean?

  Tai Wei had the nagging feeling that the manga was not only the most curious part of the case—it was also a way to split it wide open. After considering the matter over and over, he jumped in his car and drove to Jiangbin City University.

  Again he found him on the basketball courts, but instead of shooting alone, Fang Mu was now playing in a fiercely competitive game of three-on-three. Tai Wei had to basically pull him aside to get him to talk. He could tell Fang Mu was a little reluctant.

  Tai Wei hadn't brought the case files, so he just told Fang Mu a summarized version of what happened. Fang Mu kept his head down the whole time and wiped the sweat from his face. But even though he didn’t look too pleased, it was clear that he was playing very close attention.

  When he was finished speaking, Tai Wei turned to Fang Mu and
asked him frankly: "What do you think of all this?"

  Fang Mu didn't immediately answer, just frowned and stared off into the distance. After a long time, and with a seemingly great amount of determination, he finally said: "What does this have to do with me?"

  "Huh?" For a moment Tai Wei was stunned, and he didn't know what to say.

  "Officer Tai, I'm not a cop, I'm just an ordinary person. This stuff has already caused me a great deal of trouble. I don't think I can help you." Fang Mu's eyes were on the ground as he spoke, his voice almost a whisper.

  Tai Wei stared at him for a long time before saying: "You're not still mad at me because of that other thing, are you?"

  "No," said Fang Mu, looking up. "I just feel exhausted, and want to be a normal student like everyone else."

  Tai Wei opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. The two of them sat there in awkward silence for a moment. At last, forcing a smile, Tai Wei patted Fang Mu on the shoulder. "I can understand," he said. "After all, you're still too young to be spending all your time dealing with this kind of stuff." He sighed, and then shrugged his shoulders. "It's funny, this whole time I never thought of you as a student, but as a fellow officer." He smiled and patted Fang Mu's shoulder again. "Take good care of yourself." Then he stood up and got ready to leave.

  "You know…" said Fang Mu, suddenly opening his mouth.

  "What?" Tai Wei immediately sat back down and focused all his attention on him.

  "It's probable that the pornographic comic was put there to dishonor the victim," said Fang Mu, his head down, seemingly speaking to himself. "Especially given that she was this nice, upstanding woman. Yeah, leaving something that obscene beside the body, I'd say he wanted to humiliate her."

  "So what was the motive? Why would he want to do that to her?"

  "I'm not sure. But I'd say it has something to do with sex."