Profiler (Fang Mu Eastern Crimes Series Book 1)

by Lei Mi

  "Yeah?" Tai Wei turned around.

  Fang Mu was staring at him, his face wearing an inscrutable expression. "I think we've been ignoring something very obvious."

  "Oh? What's that?" Tai Wei was suddenly all ears.

  "Tell me, what kind of person devises problems to test other people?"

  "That's obvious; a teacher, of course." Although Tai Wei casually blurted it out, his eyes immediately widened. "Are you saying that the killer is a teacher at the school?"

  Fang Mu nodded. "It's a definite possibility."

  "Now hold up." Tai Wei's eyebrows knitted together as he feverishly pondered something. "Previously you said that our man is most likely between the ages of thirty and forty, well-educated, financially stable and clean cut, with a jealous, competitive personality, correct?"

  "Yeah, that's what I said."

  "In that case, there are way too many people like this on your campus. In my experience, practically all college professors fit this profile."

  "We might not know who it is," said Fang Mu, pulling on his jacket, "but I know someone who might. Follow me!"

  It was Professor Qiao who opened the door. Although he didn't seem surprised by Fang Mu's sudden visit, his expression shifted slightly when he saw Tai Wei was standing behind him.

  He pointed at the slippers placed beside the door, and then turned and walked alone into the study.

  After removing their shoes and putting on slippers, Fang Mu and Tai Wei followed after him. Professor Qiao had already lit a cigarette and was sitting on the couch, smoking gloomily, his expression somber.

  Seeing the professor's mood, Fang Mu didn't quite know what to say. Tai Wei was first to speak. "Teacher Qiao… Oh, I mean Professor Qiao, how are you, sir?" he said politely. "I'm Tai Wei from the city bureau. This is my police ID."

  Professor Qiao didn't even turn his head, just made a brief sound of recognition. Nor did he take the police ID that Tai Wei was holding out for him.

  Tai Wei's arm hung awkwardly in the air for several seconds. Miffed, he angrily pulled it back. Seeing that Fang Mu wasn't talking, he poked him hard in the side.

  Given no choice, Fang Mu forced himself to say, "Professor Qiao, there is something I wanted to ask your advice about."

  "Yes?"

  Fang Mu looked at Tai Wei. Then, summoning his courage, he said, "Professor Qiao, do you know anyone on this campus who's fairly adept at psychological analysis?"

  Professor Qiao tapped out the ash from his cigarette. "I do."

  "Who?" Fang Mu asked. Both his and Tai Wei's ears pricked up at once.

  "Me." Professor Qiao paused. "And you."

  At once the air in the study seemed to solidify.

  Fang Mu stammered: "I…what I was trying to say…"

  "That I already know." Professor Qiao then placed the butt of his cigarette in the ashtray on the table, grabbed a book, and began to turn its pages.

  When Fang Mu and Tai Wei saw this, they had no choice but to turn to take their leave.

  Tai Wei did not look pleased at all. Without even saying goodbye, he left. Fang Mu followed. Tai Wei angrily pulled on his shoes and pounded down the stairs.

  After putting on his shoes, Fang Mu looked up to see Professor Qiao standing in front of him. He was watching Fang Mu, his expression meaningful.

  "Professor…I…think I'm going to be leaving now," Fang Mu excused hesitantly.

  Professor Qiao suddenly reached out and placed one hand on Fang Mu's shoulder. He squeezed it tightly.

  "Take care of yourself," he said, then his voice went quiet. "This will all be over soon."

  This said, he pushed Fang Mu out the door and then slammed it behind him.

  Tai Wei was waiting for Fang Mu in his jeep outside. As soon as Fang Mu got in, Tai Wei stepped angrily on the gas, and the jeep immediately lurched forward.

  "That old guy was obviously screwing with us," said Tai Wei, honking impatiently at the bicyclist in front of them. "You think he could be the killer?"

  "Don't talk nonsense." Fang Mu was still thinking about the last thing Professor Qiao had said.

  "This will all be over soon."

  Was it possible that he already knew who the killer was, and was about to bring him to justice?

  Previously when Fang Mu had learned that Professor Qiao was joining the investigation, he had felt greatly reassured. Now, however, he didn't feel relaxed in the slightest. Rather, he was even more anxious.

  Tai Wei pulled up in front of Fang Mu's dormitory. After Fang Mu got out, Tai Wei turned to him and said, "It looks like we're gonna have to investigate this ourselves. Shit, before this was all easy. But now that I can't look into anything openly, I'm just going to have to investigate things on my own."

  "All right. Well, you'd better start by looking into whether any teachers also work in the counseling centers of any of the city hospitals."

  "Yeah, I got it. And you be careful." Tai Wei started up the jeep and drove off.

  Fang Mu watched as Tai Wei's jeep disappeared around the corner. He looked up at the sky. Huge, lead-black clouds were rolling overhead, seeming to indicate that a blizzard was quietly approaching.

  As soon as Fang Mu reached the third floor corridor, he saw that several guys were standing outside Room 313 and sticking their heads through the open door.

  Fang Mu's heart skipped a beat. Had something happened to Du Yu?

  He walked quickly over. Seeing him coming, several of the students parted to give him a path to the door.

  Inside the room, Du Yu was sitting in his chair with his head drooped and a stubbly beard on his face. His pant legs were covered with mud. In front of him stood a man who Fang Mu recognized from the law school office. He was yelling at Du Yu and gesturing wildly.

  "If you get caught walking around in the middle of the night with this thing in your possession again, you won't just be dealing with campus security! No, I'll make sure you get sent straight to the police!" He slammed a box-cutter down on the desk. "Trying to get revenge, huh? You think you're going to be able to catch the killer all by yourself? You're just a law student! If you could take him out, then what would we need the police for?"

  Du Yu raised his head to argue, but when he saw Fang Mu standing in the doorway, the words caught in his throat and he just stared at him.

  Fang Mu looked at the puffy, black and blue bruises covering Du Yu's face. He was about to say something, but when he opened his mouth nothing came out, so he just turned and walked away.

  In the middle of the night, the snow finally began to fall.

  When Fang Mu happened to look up from his computer screen where he was intensely scrutinizing the textbook excerpt, he saw that the sill outside his window had already accumulated a thick layer of snow.

  Picking up a cup of water that had long since gotten cold, he walked over to the window and watched the snowflakes dance and swirl through the air.

  His heart suddenly grew warm.

  After people die, do their souls live on?

  If they do, then Chen Xi, Fourth Brother, Wang Jian…

  Help me…

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Who could it be this late? he wondered.

  Grabbing his knife from under the pillow, he tiptoed over and put his ear to the door. He could hear the sound of heavy breathing outside.

  "Who is it?"

  After several seconds of silence, the person outside said, "It's me."

  It was Du Yu's voice.

  Fang Mu hesitated for a moment and then opened the door.

  A heavy smell of alcohol wafted inside. Du Yu stood in the doorway, his hair disheveled and his face haggard. The bruises on his face looked terrible.

  Fang Mu moved to the side and waved for him to come in. As soon as Du Yu walked through the door, he stumbled and then crashed into the doorframe. Fang Mu quickly went to help him, but Du Yu just pushed his hands away. He teetered into the room and sat heavily on the bed across from Fang Mu's.

  Du Yu w
as haggard and unkempt, the stark bruises on his face adding to his miserable appearance. He was gasping for breath, constantly belching from the alcohol. Fang Mu gave him a cup of hot water. Du Yu grabbed it without a word of thanks and downed it in one gulp. Fang Mu tried to stop him, but it was already too late. The water had been nearly 150 degrees, but Du Yu didn't seem to have noticed in the least.

  Fang Mu sat down on his bed.

  After they had each drunk a cup of water, the two of them silently faced each other from their opposite beds. The space between them was less than nine feet across, but it seemed as impassable as a bottomless abyss.

  After a long time, Du Yu cleared his throat and asked hoarsely, "You find him?"

  Fang Mu slowly shook his head and said, "Don't pull any more of this crap."

  Du Yu sunk once more into silence. A moment later he began to suddenly wail. He buried his head between his knees and tore at his hair. The veins on his hands were all sticking out, as were several wounds that hadn't yet healed. He continued his mournful cry, his voice rising until it was almost a scream, sounding like something being broken apart.

  Fang Mu stood and walked over and put one hand on Du Yu's shoulder.

  Do you remember how you once put your hand on my shoulder like this?

  But Du Yu swung his arm and pushed Fang Mu's hand off him. "Get away!"

  Du Yu cried for 10 minutes straight. At last he stopped as suddenly as he had begun.

  After grabbing Fang Mu's tissues, he tore off a few pieces and wiped his eyes. He loudly blew his nose and threw the tissues on the floor. He climbed to his feet and walked to the door.

  He turned around and said quietly, "When you find him, tell me first." He paused. "If you're still alive, that is." Then he opened the door and walked out.

  Fang Mu remained sitting on the bed with his head down until the sound of Du Yu's steps disappeared at the other end of the corridor. He looked up at his closed door. "...Okay."

  The room was silent again, as if the visitor from a moment ago had never even been there. Suddenly the room began to feel a little stuffy, so Fang Mu stood up and opened the window a crack.

  A strong, snowy wind immediately burst inside, blowing the papers on the desk into the air, where they spun for a moment and then floated to the floor all across the room.

  He quickly slammed the window shut as snow rapped against the glass, the flakes seemingly very proud of this surprise attack.

  All of the documents that had been on Fang Mu's desk were now scattered about – on the bed, on the floor, all over the place.

  After picking them up one by one, Fang Mu discovered he was missing a page. When he looked again, he found that it had floated under the bed.

  Crouching down, Fang Mu reached as far as he could under the bed, but he still couldn't grab it.

  He looked around the room, but there was no long stick or anything he could use to pull it out. Sighing, he crawled under the bed.

  The space underneath was not covered with dust as he had imagined. Instead, as he felt around, he found that there was only a thin layer of the stuff.

  His breath caught in his throat at the realization. After pulling out the piece of paper, he grabbed his lighter from the desk and crawled back under the bed.

  As the flame burst from the tip of the lighter, the narrow space beneath the bed was illuminated. Moving the light about, he discovered that while there was a thick layer of dust beneath the corners of the bed, the area underneath its middle was quite clean, as if someone had made a point of sweeping it.

  Fang Mu looked closely at the clean portion of the floor. He slowly rolled over and lay on his back.

  As he held the lighter up to the underside of the bed, shadows fell across several places where the surface appeared uneven.

  Fang Mu's eyes suddenly went wide.

  All across the bed board a single name had been carved over and over again: Meng Fanzhe.

  Some of the characters were written almost neatly, as if they had been carved with a knife. Others were very rough, as if they had been scratched out with a key or something similar.

  From the look of things, Meng Fanzhe had not done them all at once.

  He twisted about under the bed, shifting his position. Soon he discovered that under the head and foot of the bed Meng Fanzhe's name was written as well.

  Fang Mu suddenly realized that during the final days when Meng Fanzhe had lived alone in the room, he had probably crawled under the bed like he was doing now and, trembling, had carved his name into the bed board over and over again.

  After lying there for some time, Fang Mu crawled out from under the bed, shaken. Now dust-covered, he sat in the chair and zoned out.

  After a few moments of internal debate, he suddenly leapt up and ran to the door.

  Throwing it open, he burst into the hallway and looked at the number on the door.

  As expected, between the 3, the 0, and the 4, he saw two faint marks. From the look of them, they appeared to be "+" signs.

  Someone had made a point of erasing these two marks, but for some reason they hadn't been completely removed. Still, if one didn't look closely, the marks could easily be overlooked.

  Just as he had thought. Someone had been controlling Meng Fanzhe.

  Seven hours later, Fang Mu and Tai Wei were sitting together in the room.

  Tai Wei washed his hands in the washbasin and patted the dust off his body.

  "Hypnotized?" he said.

  "Yes, I think that's a definite possibility."

  "Are you saying that everything Meng Fanzhe did that night was the result of hypnosis? Including writing the plus signs between the three-one-three on your door, and then trying to kill you? Can it really be that powerful?"

  "A person can be hypnotized into doing various simple things, but getting them to kill one person in particular is probably outside the realm of possibility." Seeing the puzzled look on Tai Wei's face, Fang Mu clarified: "Meng Fanzhe did not intentionally write the plus signs on my door, nor was his attempt to kill me premeditated. Do you remember how he paused briefly while he was following me that night?"

  Frowning, Tai Wei thought back. "Yeah, I do remember something like that happening. He stopped for a little while when he was in the hallway. And you know what? I think it was right outside the door to this room."

  "That's right. Now take a look at this."

  After leading Tai Wei out into the hallway, Fang Mu pointed at the light marks on his door number.

  Tai Wei stared at them, dumbstruck. "My God," he mumbled to himself. "At the time we just looked at your room number. We didn't pay any attention to this one."

  "This shows that Meng Fanzhe did not purposefully choose me for his target. Instead, he was merely instructed to search the hallway for the number seven." Fang Mu pointed down either end of the hall. "Right here we have rooms three-hundred-one to three-twenty. Three-twenty-one is the bathroom and three-twenty-two and up are all in a separate section behind a locked door, so he couldn't get to them. Therefore, the only room numbers that could form seven were three-hundred-four and three-thirteen."

  "So when he tried to kill you, was that also a result of the hypnosis?"

  "At first I was really puzzled by this, too, because like I said, hypnotizing someone into killing a target should be just about impossible. Then I saw the names carved under the bed."

  Tai Wei frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Just wait a minute; first I'm going to give you a simple explanation of what hypnosis is, " Fang Mu decided. "Hypnosis is mainly about causing neurological, biological, and physiological changes through psychological suggestion. For example, hypnosis can be used to cure anxiety and depression and eliminate phobias. It is an extremely complex process and often requires that the hypnotist use various kinds of suggestive signals to help his subject enter a hypnotized state."

  "Oh, this stuff I already know," Tai Wei said. "There's a Japanese movie called Hypnosis in which the suggestive signal wa
s something like the sound of metal striking metal."

  "Right. Now there's also something called post-hypnotic suggestion. This is when the hypnotist provides his subject with a signal that can still cause him to react even when he is no longer hypnotized. For this post-hypnotic suggestion to remain effective, the subject must have a tremendous amount of trust in his hypnotist and must subconsciously recognize the authority of this signal. From what I know, Meng Fanzhe was someone with a vulnerable psyche, making it very easy for him to become psychologically dependent on other people. In other words, he was an ideal candidate for post-hypnotic suggestion. From that night on, I always suspected that Meng Fanzhe had received this sort of post-hypnotic suggestion therapy, but I could never figure out what the signal was. That was, until I discovered the names."

  "Are you saying that those names were the suggestive signal?"

  "Correct. Meng Fanzhe had a secret that nobody knew about. He was scared of roll call," Fang Mu said. "Most likely nothing else was impressed as deeply on his mind than his own name. At some point he must have gone to see the killer – in his role as the so-called doctor – for psychotherapy. The killer probably then used Meng Fanzhe's fear of roll call to turn his name into a post-hypnotic suggestive signal. There was one time before that night when I spoke to Meng Fanzhe in the bathroom and discovered that when I said his name, he would undergo a very unusual emotional reaction. Then on the night when he tried to kill me, I initially said a few words to him and he barely even responded; but as soon as I called out his name, he suddenly attacked."

  "Hey, I just thought of something," said Tai Wei, his face lighting up. "You remember that night in the city bureau, when we were trying to interrogate Meng Fanzhe? At first he didn't respond at all to any of our questions, but then when one of our interrogators said his name, he went absolutely crazy."

  "Exactly. I'm thinking that the killer designed the suggestive signal so that when Meng Fanzhe heard his name, he would attack whoever said it."

  For a moment Tai Was lost in thought. He pointed under bed. "So then what was the point of him repeatedly carving his name into the bed board?"