The technicians in the room continued their evidence collection with painstaking care, not overlooking even the smallest corner.
Meanwhile, Ding Qi was planning to take the entire mattress back to the lab. Chang Bin and Zeng Yongjia joined in, seriously discussing how they could transport it. The two police cars they had driven over were definitely not going to be enough.
As they talked, He Shu stepped out of the bedroom. After making a circuit of the living room, she turned back toward the entryway. Through the wide-open security door, she noticed the small window built into the old iron security door of the apartment across the hall was half open. A shadow moved behind it.
The instant its occupant realized he had been spotted, the little window slammed shut with a loud bang.
He Shu strolled over. The building had four apartments per floor. As she passed the two units between them, she paused to observe. Both doors were covered with a thick layer of dust, including around the locks. They looked like they hadn’t been occupied in a long time.
Knock, knock, knock! She finally stopped in front of the apartment opposite and knocked on the door.
Because old apartment buildings had terrible soundproofing, noises immediately drifted out from inside. First came rustling sounds, then the scrape of chair legs against tile flooring. There even seemed to be faint voices talking.
Patiently, she knocked twice more. “Hello. I’m a police officer from the Jinghuai Municipal Public Security Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Division. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
The sounds inside abruptly stopped. Nearly a full minute passed before a somewhat elderly male voice called out: “Who are you?”
“Public Security Bureau.” He Shu took out her police ID and held it up to the peephole.
Several more seconds passed. Then the small panel beneath the peephole slid open again from the inside. A pair of cloudy eyes peered out through reading glasses. After carefully examining the identification, the owner of those eyes slowly opened the door.
The door was perhaps as old as the building itself. It emitted a long, despairing creak as it swung open.
Standing inside was an elderly man with a slightly hunched back, clearly well over sixty years old.
He Shu stretched her neck a little and glanced inside. On an old-fashioned fabric sofa in the living room sat an elderly woman of about the same age. A walking cane rested beside her feet as she squinted curiously at He Shu.
“From the Public Security Bureau?” the old man said, sounding relieved. “You people were making such a racket over there that I thought the guy across the hall had gotten himself into some kind of trouble and somebody had come looking for him.”
“Have you two always lived here?” He Shu put away her ID and smiled harmlessly.
Since she wasn’t wearing a police uniform, she looked more like a friendly young woman from the neighborhood chatting with her elders.
“Is it just the two of you living here?”
“That’s right. We’ve lived here for more than twenty years. Usually it’s just the two of us old folks at home. The children are all busy with work and don’t come back very often.”
The old man waved his hand. People of his age always seemed especially sentimental when talking about their children.
He Shu asked a few more casual, seemingly unimportant questions. Little by little, the old man began to open up.
From their conversation, she learned that the two apartments between theirs had indeed been unoccupied for the past two years. In fact, apartments here had once been easy to rent out because several shopping centers nearby created plenty of demand from employees looking for housing. Later, however, several malls went out of business, and customer traffic declined. As a result, many apartments became vacant and were now largely ignored.
“Do you know the person living across the hall?”
The old man frowned and shook his head. “No, I don’t know him. I’ve seen him a few times, though. He doesn’t seem to come back very often. Young fellow, pretty arrogant too. Never even greets us when he sees us.” He paused. “Did he do something wrong? Are you here to arrest him?”
Then he clicked his tongue regretfully. “Such a young man, looked pretty refined too. How’d he end up getting mixed up in this kind of trouble?”
He Shu smiled but didn’t answer the question directly. Instead, she asked: “What makes you think we’re here because somebody’s causing trouble for him? Did anyone ever come looking for him before?”
“Well, it’s because he looks respectable on the outside, but his personal life is a mess.” Patting his chest, the old man sighed and shook his head.
“He’d occasionally bring friends over for gatherings. Old people like us go to bed early. The noise got so bad it even triggered one of my wife’s heart episodes. We actually called the police because of it! Things quieted down afterward, but every time someone came over, he seemed to be bringing women. And every woman looked different!”
“Oh? Different women?”
The old man nodded emphatically. “That’s right. Two of them looked like decent young ladies from good families. The others… not so much.”
He shook his head again. “The way he carried on, he was bound to offend somebody eventually. There’s no such thing as a secret that stays hidden forever. If some girl’s family or friends came looking to settle accounts with him, wouldn’t that be perfectly normal?”
Hearing that, He Shu put on an expression of wholehearted agreement and nodded. “Sir, on the night of May 12, four days ago, after nine o’clock in the evening, did you hear or notice anything unusual coming from across the hall?”
“Four days ago…?” The old man’s face showed some difficulty.
“When you get old, your memory isn’t what it used to be.” As he spoke, he walked over to the calendar hanging above the shoe cabinet and checked it for a moment. Suddenly, he slapped his shiny forehead. “You know what? I do remember!”
“That day, my son happened to bring the grandkid over. They stayed for dinner and hung around for quite a while before leaving. I walked them to the door. The moment I opened it, my grandson got the scare of his life.”
“Guess what?”
“There were two people across the hall, pressed up against the wall and hugging each other.”
He made a pained expression. “The kissing, oh my…”
“You tell me, why are young people in such a hurry these days? They hadn’t even gotten inside the apartment yet. Could they really not wait that little bit longer?”
“Did you get a good look at the woman?”
“Not really. The lights in this hallway are old. They’re so dim they might as well not exist.” Then he beckoned He Shu closer.
After she leaned in, he lowered his voice. “But the way she was dressed, you could tell she wasn’t exactly respectable.”
He gestured toward his chest. “The top only came down to about here, leaving a whole lot exposed…” Then he gestured around his upper thigh. “And the skirt only came down to about here…” His face was filled with unmistakable disapproval.
“What time was this, roughly?”
“After ten o’clock.”
Based on the description, the woman didn’t seem to match Zhang Shengnan, Tang Jia, or Pan Yu. But to be safe, He Shu still had the old man look through photographs of all three women. As expected, he identified none of them. Afterward, she thanked him politely. Once the security door had closed again, she remained standing there, deep in thought.
“Captain He, find something?” At some point, Zeng Yongjia came to stand beside her.
“The fourth person has appeared,” He Shu said, snapping out of her thoughts and raising an eyebrow.
…
Municipal Public Security Bureau.
Chang Bin burst through the office door like a gust of wind and stopped abruptly in front of He Shu’s desk. Waving a report in his hand, he announced: “Captain He, the Technical Division has finished analyzing the bloodstain patterns. The blood evidence and other forensic findings indicate that when the victim’s carotid artery was cut with the murder weapon, he was lying on his back.”
“Based on the blood distribution on the ceiling, there’s a distinct blank area in the center. That suggests the killer was straddling the victim’s upper body at the time, using their weight to pin down his chest.”
“A portion of the blood sprayed onto the killer.”
“Whoa!”
Several steps away, Zeng Yongjia was drinking hot water beside the office water dispenser. Hearing Chang Bin’s description, he instinctively imagined the scene.
“Talk about not knowing how you died. One second you’re happy as can be, the next you’re headed straight for the eighteenth level of hell.”
After saying that, he took a few steps forward. By chance, he noticed the information files on Zhang Shengnan and the others displayed on He Shu’s computer screen, as well as the interview records spread across her desk. He was just about to ask why she was reviewing those materials again when the office landline suddenly rang loudly.
Chang Bin set the report down and walked over to answer. “Special Case Unit…”
A few seconds later, he turned around. “A body has been found at the Golden Sunshine Bathing Beach. Male. No clothes on the body whatsoever…”
He Shu immediately stood up. “Notify the medical examiner and the Technical Division. Head to the scene now!”
About twenty minutes later, the police vehicles finally pulled up beneath a large overhead sign reading Sunshine Grand Bathhouse. Officers from the local precinct who had been waiting on-site led them toward the crime scene.
On the way there, one of the officers gave them a brief overview of the situation: “The body was discovered by a nearby shop owner. It was found in the reef area. It’s dangerous over there, and there’s nothing particularly scenic about it, so ordinary tourists rarely go that way.”
When they arrived outside the police tape, the forensic and crime scene technicians lifted the barrier and entered first.
He Shu and the others remained outside for a moment, studying the surrounding terrain.
The landscape here was even more complicated than the first dump site at Zhenxiong Bay. The rock formations were larger, and if a body became wedged into one of the crevices, it would be even less likely to be discovered.
Over there, Zheng Jian and his assistant carefully rolled the corpse onto its back without causing additional damage, then immediately began the preliminary examination.
“Estimated time of death is approximately fourteen hours ago, around midnight. Cause of death was rupture of a major artery in the neck, resulting in fatal blood loss. There are unexplained bruises on both wrists that occurred before death. No other suspicious external injuries are visible. Further details will have to wait for a full autopsy back at the lab.”
As he spoke, his gaze settled on a particular part of the body. After a brief pause, he continued: “The victim’s male genitalia is missing. The cut surfaces are smooth, suggesting they were removed with some kind of sharp blade.”
“The method is exactly the same, and the disposal site matches the previous case in most respects…” Zeng Yongjia spread his hands. “That means our earlier theory was correct. In Nie Han’s case, the killer probably removed it before dumping the body as well. It wasn’t eaten by those stray cats and dogs after all.”
Chang Bin’s expression grew serious. “Only four days separate the two murders. If this is a first-time killer, that’s an awfully short cooling-off period, isn’t it? What do you even call that? Making a splash right out of the gate?”