Profiler (Fang Mu Eastern Crimes Series Book 1)

by Lei Mi

  There was a long line for food. Head down, Fang Mu went and stood at the end. The person in front of him glanced back. Suddenly the student gasped and jumped back a step. His face filled with fear, he stared at Fang Mu and then grabbed the person next to him, saying, "You see that! It's him! Let's get out of here!"

  As the two of them hurried off to another food station, the rest of the line turned and looked back at Fang Mu, who was still standing at the end. Then, as if by tacit agreement, everyone scattered at once, allowing Fang Mu to walk up to the front. As they hurried away, everyone had the same expression on their face: panic.

  The cafeteria worker himself was stunned. He stared at Fang Mu for several seconds, and then yelled roughly, "Hey, are you gonna order food or not?"

  Gritting his teeth, Fang Mu walked slowly forward, feeling as if the looks from everyone's eyes were stabbing into him like needles.

  His vision started to blur and the short distance in front of him suddenly felt as long as a football field. "A bowl of porridge and two tea eggs."

  Fang Mu sat in a corner of the dining hall and ate his breakfast. Although he kept his head down the whole time, he could still feel everyone's eyes as they watched him and hear their voices as they whispered to each other.

  No one would sit anywhere near him, making the area around his table seem like a strange no-man's land.

  It was like he was a poisonous plant with long, spreading vines, and if anyone got too close, their life would be at risk.

  After eating half his breakfast, he found his appetite was gone, so he got up and quickly left the dining hall.

  As soon as he entered the third floor corridor, Fang Mu saw that a big mess had been made in front of his door. His computer monitor and tower were sitting on the floor, covered by a bunch of his clothes. A crowd of people were standing around his open door, watching the person inside.

  Had Du Yu returned?

  He hurried forward, reaching his room just as Du Yu threw his blanket out the door. Seeing Fang Mu, Du Yu seemed to pause for an instant, but then he bent over, grabbed Fang Mu's washbasin from beneath his bed, and tossed it outside.

  Fang Mu dodged out of the way and the washbasin smacked against the opposite wall, causing his soap and toiletries inside to fall to the floor.

  "What are you doing?" Fang Mu asked.

  Du Yu didn't respond, just walked over to Fang Mu's bookshelf and knocked all the books onto the floor. Then he picked them up and threw them out of the room one by one. All the people watching outside quickly got out of the way.

  Fang Mu didn't move, letting book after book strike his body and legs.

  This behavior enraged Du Yu, and he grabbed several more books and hurled them directly at Fang Mu's face and body.

  Blood was soon flowing from Fang Mu's nose and mouth, running down his chin and dripping onto his clothing.

  Zou Tuanjie had been watching and he couldn't bear to watch this, so he grabbed Fang Mu and pulled him to the side. "Come on, man," he said to Du Yu. "Don't do this…"

  The words hadn't even left Zou Tuanjie's mouth when Du Yu hit him in the forehead with a book. Zou Tuanjie gave an outcry of pain and shrank back.

  Soon all of Fang Mu's belongings had been thrown into the hall. Clapping the dust off his hands, Du Yu walked out and stared at him for several seconds.

  "Beat it!" he barked through clenched teeth.

  Wiping his bloody nose, Fang Mu squatted down and began picking up his things.

  "Go!" yelled Du Yu, his voice rising in volume.

  Seeming not to hear him, Fang Mu patiently organized his things. When he couldn't find the cap to a pen, he began carefully looking for it in a pile of clothing.

  "Get out of here," said Du Yu, his voice a little quieter, but still ice-cold. "None of us want to die!"

  Fang Mu stopped what he was doing, stood up and turned around. He felt Du Yu and everyone else's eyes boring into his face.

  He looked at them one by one. As soon as they met his eyes, almost everyone quickly looked own. Only Du Yu glared firmly back at him.

  Fang Mu looked into Du Yu's eyes for several seconds. He slowly said: "I won't leave until I've caught him."

  Then he grabbed his blanket and clothes and walked down to Meng Fanzhe's already locked room. With the creak of wood, he swiftly kicked it open. He tossed his things inside, went back to the hallway, collected more, and did the same.

  No one stopped him. No one helped him. As everyone else just stood there and watched, Fang Mu picked up the last of his belongings. He walked inside the room that once belonged to Meng Fanzhe and slammed the door shut.

  After standing empty for several days, Room 304 finally had a new resident. Fang Mu took the left side of the room, making the bed and placing his things on the left desk and in the left cupboard. Only once everything was neatly put away did he realize that the left bed had been Meng Fanzhe's. For an instant he considered moving his things to the other side of the room, but then he took off his shoes, lay down on the bed, and that was it.

  Fang Mu sized up his new lair. No one had lived there after Meng Fanzhe died, so everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. The walls were badly watermarked, as if someone had splashed them with cups of liquid. In short, the place looked awful.

  Fang Mu thought and looked around, looked around and thought. After not sleeping for a whole night, his eyelids began to feel heavier and heavier, until sleep won out.

  When he awoke it was already night. Even though his stomach was growling from hunger, Fang Mu had no desire to get up. The lights from the dormitory across the way shined into his dark room, sending shadows across the walls that moved faintly.

  Feeling a little cold, Fang Mu involuntarily curled up under the covers. By force of habit, he glanced at the other bed across the room, but now there was only a thin straw mattress.

  So this is how cold it is, sleeping alone in a dorm room.

  Compared to Room 313, which had always been packed full of his and Du Yu's stuff, Room 304 seemed terribly spacious.

  So spacious, in fact, that it made him nervous.

  Suddenly Fang Mu wondered whether, during Meng Fanzhe's final days alone in this room, he had also laid here in the dark, silently savoring the feeling of solitude.

  Until he truly lost his mind.

  Will I go mad, too?

  Fang Mu hopped out of bed and looked at the dim lights from the distant dormitory. Seeing them, he felt a little better, a little less alone.

  First, he told himself, you need to get something to eat.

  But no matter what, he was not going back to the dining hall. He reached out and turned on the light and then grabbed a pack of instant noodles. He shook his kettle. Luckily, Du Yu hadn't broken it. It was empty.

  Holding the kettle, he stood in front of his door for several seconds. Then, with what seemed a great deal of determination, he opened it and walked out.

  Something fluttered to his feet. Fang Mu picked it up. It was an envelope with a letter inside.

  He looked down either end of the hallway. It was very quiet. No one was there.

  Fang Mu sat down on his bed and took the letter out of the envelope. It was from Deng Linyue; he recognized her handwriting.

  My Dearest Fang Mu,

  Please allow me to call you this one final time, and please believe that as I do so, I love you. Perhaps this love will gradually disappear with the passage of time, but at the very least, I firmly believe that at the moment in which I write these words, I do still love you.

  By the time you read this letter, I will probably already be on my way home. Don't try to find me (although perhaps this is just wishful thinking on my part; you would probably never consider looking for me if I left). I will not be returning to school for some time; I have entrusted my family with handling the necessary procedures to apply for time off.

  Perhaps you will despise me. Despise me for leaving without saying goodbye, despise me for my weakness and my cowardice. I am just an
ordinary girl, longing to be protected, yearning for a peaceful and romantic life. The instant you rescued me in the gymnasium, I fell in love with you. Just as when a princess is rescued by a prince, I had no choice but to fall in love with you.

  And yet I know that you are not my prince. And I am neither as brave nor as strong as I imagined.

  Yesterday morning, I saw everything that happened at the pool with my own eyes. When you finally revealed that the killer was after you, my first reaction was fear. I didn't even have the courage to go hug and comfort you; instead I fled back to my dorm by myself. Yes, I was scared, more scared even than that night in the gymnasium. The killer had already murdered your best friend's girlfriend, and I was probably next. Waiting for death is more frightening than death itself – at last I understood what this saying meant.

  Why does he want to kill you? Why did he have to kill so many other people? I know you will not be willing to answer these questions, but that is all right. At this point, the answers are no longer important to me. Although I once believed that I was brave enough to stand by you through every trial, when I was truly confronted by the possibility of death, I chose to do the same thing that any normal girl would do.

  Forgive me, forgive me for being an ordinary girl who once thought she was something more. Perhaps you never did love me; now I truly hope that is so. Because if it is, then for both you and I, this will be a little easier to bear.

  I will pray for you.

  Deng Linyue

  12/25/2002

  Although the letter was short, Fang Mu was still reading it over half an hour later.

  His mind and heart were at ease.

  He tried to tell himself: She has left you. You should be filled with sadness.

  And yet, feeling a chill unlike any he had ever experienced, he couldn't keep from laughing aloud.

  Good, very good.

  At last, you are alone again.

  Though perhaps, you have always been alone.

  CHAPTER

  25

  Room 304

  The victim was a 23-year-old girl from the city of Kaifeng in Henan province. She had been an English language grad student in the Jiangbin City University Foreign Language Department's class of 2003. The cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation, the murder weapon likely a hemp rope. The victim's hymen had already been broken prior to the night of her murder and there was no sign of rape. According to the autopsy and the testimony of the victim's friends, her time of death was determined to have been between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. on December 25. After the victim was strangled to death, heavy makeup was applied to her face, and then her body was placed in the Jiangbin City University outdoor pool and her ankle was tied to the drain with a hemp rope. The pool was then filled with water.

  According to an examination of the scene, the killer used a hammer-like tool to smash the lock on the pool gate so he could transport the body inside. No fingerprints or footprints were found at the scene.

  According to the victim's schoolmates and boyfriend, the yellow tube top, short leather skirt, black platforms, and blonde wig that she was wearing when discovered did not belong to her. Her original clothes were not found at the scene.

  In addition, a piece of paper was found inside the platform shoes that the victim was wearing. Because it had been underwater for a long time, the writing was unclear. However, it was later identified as a page from the sixth edition of a fourth grade Language and Literature summer reading textbook published by the People's Education Press. This page in particular was from Resplendent Sunset.

  According to the victim's boyfriend, on the night before the murder he received two strange phone calls, after which he and the victim got into an argument and she left alone. The police soon located the phone number in question at the telecommunications bureau. They discovered it had never been used to make any other calls besides those two that night. After further investigating the number, they found that it had been purchased from a private seller, and as a result no identification was needed to be shown. Therefore, it is be impossible to determine who had made those two calls.

  "Right now, this is all I've found. The case is being handled by Old Zhao and his men, so I had to pull a few favors to even learn this much." Tai Wei passed the case folder to Fang Mu. They were in Fang Mu's dorm room, going through what they could of the evidence report available to them. "Oh, and there's another thing. Over the last few days I've gone to several hospitals around the city, including the one where Ma Kai was treated, and looked into the psychologists they have on staff. You should know, though, that right now I'm only able to investigate this on my own, so my effectiveness is limited. Up 'til now I haven't found anything of value."

  Fang Mu smiled at him. "Thank you," he said.

  Tai Wei just carelessly waved his hand.

  You still believe in me. I can tell, even if you don't say it aloud.

  "How's it going over here?" Tai Wei asked. "Any progress?"

  Fang Mu looked down at one of the pictures in the folder. In it, a seductively dressed Zhang Yao lay beside the freezing pool.

  "What does an outfit like this make you think of?" asked Fang Mu, showing the picture to Tai Wei.

  Tai Wei didn't mince words. "A prostitute. This is the classic sex worker getup."

  "That's correct." Fang Mu nodded. "This time he was copying the Green River Killer."

  "The Green River Killer?"

  "That's right. Do you still remember those two symbols I told you about? The ones that were written on the window of Meng Fanzhe's home?" Fang Mu grabbed a piece of paper and sketched something on it. "At the time I thought he had written a lowercase q and an uppercase A. Later I realized I was mistaken, and in fact he had written GR, both uppercase. Because the letters were written on a condensation-covered window, when the water drops slid down it made them look like a q and an A."

  "GR? Green River?"

  "Exactly. The Green River murders began in 1982 in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. The killer was named Gary Ridgeway. In total he killed over forty-nine people, the majority of them female prostitutes and young women who had run away from home," Fang Mu said. "The bodies of his first few victims he dumped in the Green River, which was located in the southern outskirts of Seattle. The person who discovered the first victim said it looked like she was standing in the middle of the river. This was because the killer had wedged her legs into a crack between some rocks on the river bottom." He shivered. "This was identical to what I saw in the pool that day. Beginning in 1987, the police made Ridgeway their prime suspect, but because they had no evidence and he was twice able to pass a lie detector test, he managed to get off scot-free. Then DNA testing began to be used in criminal investigations. Last year, the police compared a sample of his saliva with the semen that was found in one of the victims. It was a perfect match. Still, even after his arrest, Ridgeway has continued to deny his guilt. Because several of his initial victims were found in the Green River, and because Ridgeway's initials are G.R., he is known as the Green River Killer."

  Tai Wei frowned in thought. "The majority of the victims were prostitutes… Is that why Zhang Yao was made to look that way?"

  Fang Mu nodded. He flipped through the case files in his hands. "Just now you said that the victim wasn't raped that night?"

  "Yeah, why?"

  "Hmm, this is rather interesting," said Fang Mu, deep in thought. "It was Ridgeway's custom to have sex with his victim's before strangling them to death. So if the killer wanted to perfectly copy his crimes, why didn't he have sex with Zhang Yao?"

  "There could be a ton of reasons for this. Time, place – perhaps even the killer's mood." Tai Wei chuckled, but then immediately realized that it was inappropriate. His smiled disappeared.

  "Mood?" Fang Mu gave a grim smile. "He wanted to destroy me mentally. Now perhaps he, too, is reaching his breaking point."

  He reached out and grabbed one of the photographs. It was of the excerpt that had been found in Zhang Yao's
shoe.

  "Resplendent Sunset?" Fang Mu looked the photograph over. "I remember reading this when I was a kid. I think it was written by Xiao Hong."

  Tai Wei moved closer. "You think this is a clue to the killer's next crime?"

  Fang Mu thought for a moment. "If nothing else unusual was found at the scene, then yes, tentatively, I believe we can regard it as one. What's the police opinion on the excerpt?"

  After hesitating for a moment, Tai Wei said, "Zhao Yonggui believes the paper fell inside the shoe by accident. Therefore, he thinks that there's a kid in the killer's household who's currently attending elementary school. As for the rest of it, I'm not too sure." Tai Wei sighed. "Old Zhao doesn't really want me to take part in this case. Not that he has anything to worry about though – it's already under the jurisdiction of the State Enterprise Investigative Division. At this point all I can do is using some of my connections to find out what's going on."

  "All right, then I'll look it up online." Fang Mu sat in front of his computer and searched for the text of Resplendent Sunset. Once he found it, he began reading it slowly and carefully.

  Seeming a little bored, Tai Wei grabbed a book from the shelf and flipped through it. He then stood in front of the window, took out a cigarette, and began to smoke.

  "Not many people out on campus today," he said.

  "Yeah, exams are coming up soon," said Fang Mu absently, his eyes not leaving the screen. "They're probably all inside studying."

  "Are you going to have exams soon, too?"

  "Huh? Oh, graduate students don't have exams." Smiling without real humor, Fang Mu patted the monitor. "This is my exam."

  Tai Wei just shook his head.

  Fang Mu's attention returned to the screen, but now he seemed unable to absorb anything he was reading.

  Exam?

  "Tai Wei…"

  Tai Wei had been staring at a tall, beautiful girl standing outside the building, and it took him a moment to register that Fang Mu was talking to him. His voice sounded a little shaky.