Maybe not, but a shoe print was interesting nonetheless. This was obviously the type of place where guests were expected to take off their shoes.

  I didn’t inquire further, just put on my jumpsuit and followed the passage Lin Tao made into the scene. The first floor looked totally normal, peaceful, with two pairs of high-heeled shoes by the doorway. I climbed to the second floor.

  At the top of the stairs was a small living room with an elegant coffee table and stools. A tea set sat on top along with a wedding photo of a handsome man and pretty woman. I picked up the teapot, which was dry. There was no dust on it, however, which meant it was used often. The youthful, refined living room fit the attractive couple well.

  Three doors led off the small living room. The floors in two of the rooms were dusty, which meant they hadn’t been used in some time and that Dong Qifeng didn’t have a housekeeper.

  The principal scene was the master bedroom on the second floor. Just inside was a bathroom, its door closed, lights off. The space seemed peaceful, inviting, but once inside, I faced a horrific sight.

  The room wasn’t small, with plenty of room for a bed, nightstand, dresser, and TV, but it was devastated and blackened. Almost all the furniture showed clear signs of fire damage, with paint and finish peeling off. But the bed was the worst, bedding in ashes, springs bursting out.

  A dead body rested on top. Most of its skin had been carbonized. It was hairless, the face unrecognizable.

  “How awful.” I sighed, remembering the photo of the beautiful woman.

  “Was she burned alive?” Lin Tao asked. “I think I heard the ‘boxing stance’ is a sign of being burned alive.”

  The boxing stance means the body’s limbs are curled up at the joints, which makes the body look like a crouched fighter. There was a photo in my college textbook of a burned corpse that looked exactly like a boxer, and ever since, whenever I’d see a fight on TV, I’d think of two burned corpses.

  “Doesn’t work that way,” I said, shaking my head. “The boxing stance results from the muscular degeneration and contracture. The muscles contract, but the bones don’t shrink, so the joints curl up. That happens whether the person is alive or dead.”

  “Then why would someone burn up like this with no signs of struggle or attempts to escape?”

  Lin Tao seemed to be getting more and more interested in forensics.

  “Oh, lots of reasons,” I said. “Like maybe the victim was drunk or asleep, and the fire burned slow. Large quantities of smoke and carbon monoxide in an enclosed space will make the victim lose consciousness before he realizes there’s a fire.”

  “Oh,” Lin Tao said. “That makes sense. I think I’ve heard you say that burn victims rarely die of traumatic shock. How smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning making someone choke to death are much more common.”

  “That wouldn’t be called choking to death,” I said, trying not to be embarrassed for him. “When hot smoke and charcoal dust enter the respiratory tract, they cause a series of reactions that lead to throat swelling and suffocation. It’s called acute respiratory distress syndrome.”

  “Right, right. How do you even remember all that medical terminology?” Lin Tao said, raising his eyebrows.

  “It’s my job, man. And there’s another main reason why someone burned like this might not struggle: someone setting the fire after the victim’s dead.”

  “But do you think it could be that big of a coincidence with the electricity going off?”

  I circled the bedroom. The floor was covered in cinders and some water left by the fire department. Most of the walls were black from smoke. We’d be lucky to find any trace evidence at a scene like this. I looked at the most burned area and saw a strip of charred wire near the nightstand.

  “In an enclosed room, with the combustion supporter unclear, we usually think of the place with the worst burning as the ignition point,” I said, pointing at the nightstand. “There are wires here. Let’s see what’s connected to that outlet.”

  Lin Tao and I moved the nightstand away from the wall, revealing an outlet. A blackened charger was stuck in it, apparently from an iPhone.

  The lack of discovery is a discovery.

  I stood up. “Either the charger wasn’t connected to a phone, or the phone was taken away.”

  “I think the case is clear-cut,” said Chief Hu, who’d walked in while we were investigating the outlet. “Lots of people are in the bad habit of leaving their chargers plugged in all the time. I think, when the power went out, the victim was already asleep, and when it came back on, the charger sparked and set the sheets on fire. By the time the victim realized, she was already too weak to struggle.”

  “You may be right,” the detective said. “I just got a call. The victim went to a bar to drink alone at six.”

  “I’m here!” Big Bao’s voice boomed as he ran up to the second floor.

  “I scanned the complex’s surveillance video,” Big Bao said. “The victim was dropped off at the entrance in an Audi TT, then entered alone as the Audi drove off.”

  “What time?” I asked.

  “Nine fifty-one,” Big Bao said. “Then the victim staggered to her front door. The entrance control system here is fingerprint activated, but apartment one-oh-one here is in a surveillance blind spot.”

  “So she probably came in and passed out,” I said. “Though how drunk she was is hard to determine.”

  “Do you think someone accosted her at the entrance?” Big Bao asked, clearly fixated on the blind spot.

  I shook my head and picked up two pieces of charred leather. “She changed into slippers. Would someone accosted change into slippers?”

  “Regardless, we should get to the autopsy room ASAP,” Hu said. “If it gets any later, we’ll be up till dawn.”

  “I’ll hang back and keep looking for traces,” Lin Tao said. “If you find anything there, give me a call.”

  “Mind if I stay and look at the circuitry and surveillance?” Big Bao had recently really gotten into electricity too.

  I nodded, then headed down the stairs with Chief Hu.

  “Why does the chest have a wound?” I asked as Hu watched me use gauze to wipe charred clothing fragments off the victim’s chest.

  “Burning can lead to contraction of the skin, which causes a wound after a certain level of tension,” Hu explained. “But you know that, Qin.”

  Burned bodies often show many suspicious signs of trauma, which confuses victims’ families. For example, the phenomenon Hu was talking about can make a family think someone stabbed the victim. Or when high temperatures cause a skull fracture and large epidural hematoma, people assume the victim was hit on the head. In fact, it’s a common feature of burn deaths that we call a “hot hematoma.”

  “Of course, but if the wound was caused by tension, it would occur along striae. It doesn’t seem like this wound does,” I explained, pointing. “Too bad the skin is burned so bad, it’s hard to make out the striae path. Plus, we can’t tell if the wound shows signs of vital reaction. If the wound was caused by contraction, there definitely shouldn’t be one.”

  “Well, all this talk isn’t doing any good,” Hu said with a laugh. “After the autopsy, whether the body was burned before or after death will be clear as day.”

  Early in the Three Kingdoms Era (AD 220–280), County Magistrate Zhang Ju of the State of Wu did experiments with pigs to distinguish between those burned before and after death. The story of the successful field trial known as “Zhang Ju’s Roasted Pig” was passed down through the generations. Zhang Ju discovered that whether burning happened before or after death is revealed by signs of “hot” respiratory syndrome—that is, the presence of carbon soot breathed into the lungs. Modern technology does something similar by testing for carbon monoxide in the heart.

  Testing a victim’s respiratory tract is often done with the “tongue scoop” approach. The forensic scientist cuts open the body’s chest and abdominal skin and removes the sternum, then cuts the muscle along the lower edge of the jaw. Next, the scientist grips the tongue from underneath the jaw and pulls hard while cutting the connective tissue. This approach not only removes the tongue, epiglottis, larynx, esophagus, and trachea intact, but continues down to the internal organs. It’s the most convenient way to get organs out if testing is needed, but forensic scientists avoid it if possible due to the toll it takes on witnesses.

  Burn victims’ skin gets very hard and takes a lot of physical effort to cut. By the time we got the abdominal cavity open, the three of us were sweating.

  I hurried to remove the sternum and pulled out the pericardium.

  “The victim’s pericardium has a small gash!” I shouted. “The skin could have broken from burning, but not the pericardium.”

  Chief Hu and Forensic Scientist Wang quickly moved closer to see.

  “You’re right,” Hu said. “There is a small gash. Is it possible you nicked it with your scalpel?”

  To answer the question, I cut a V-shaped opening. The pericardium was full of blood.

  “Definitely wasn’t my fault,” I crowed, filling a syringe with not-yet-coagulated blood. “The heart is also ruptured. If it were a surgical accident, there wouldn’t be this much pericardial bleeding. The heart being stabbed probably sent it into arrest. Let’s take this vial of blood to the toxicology department and get them to check the carbon monoxide content.”

  “But there was no sharp instrument that could cause cardiac rupture found at the scene,” Hu said, “so it really is a murder case, and the power going out was just a coincidence.”

  Going ahead with the tongue scoop, we found the victim’s respiratory tract very clean, no congestion or traces of soot.

  “The victim died from cardiac rupture,” Hu said. “The body was burned after death. You stay here, Wang. Qin and I will go request a task force be formed.”

  32

  “What? Murder?” was Lin Tao’s first reaction.

  Some female officers stifled laughter at Lin Tao’s surprise.

  “Yes,” I said. “The victim was stabbed in the heart.”

  “Preliminary physicochemical testing showed no carbon monoxide in the blood from the victim’s heart,” the chemical lab director chimed in.

  “That means the victim was already dead before the fire started,” I added.

  “But other than some questionable shoe prints, the trace team and I didn’t find anything suspicious at the scene,” Lin Tao said. “It doesn’t seem like a murder.”

  “The crime scene was destroyed by fire, and the killer didn’t do anything complicated,” I said. “So it makes sense if there’s not much trace evidence.”

  “Can’t be,” growled a weary Captain Nie from the head of the conference table, irritated at having been called in in the middle of the night. “There was no blood at the scene.”

  “The heart doesn’t bleed like an artery,” I said. “It’s surrounded by the pericardial sack, and we believe that the victim went into cardiac arrest after being stabbed, so not much blood would come out at all. You’re right that there should be some. But given that the scene was set on fire and then hosed down by the fire brigade, it’s understandable that we wouldn’t find it.”

  “That complex’s security is flawless. Why hasn’t the video analysis team got anything yet?” Captain Nie said.

  “They’re hard at work, I promise,” the chief detective told him. “In the meantime, what should we do next?”

  I turned my wrist to look at my watch. Already four a.m. Sometimes it seemed like I’d never see my wife again.

  “I think we’d better get a couple hours of sleep,” I said. “Lin Tao and I will take another look at the scene in the daylight.”

  Captain Nie nodded. “You’ve been working hard. While you’re resting, I want the investigation division to track Dong Qifeng’s last movements, who she met with and who she talked to on the phone. I want all relevant physicochemical and DNA test results by morning too!”

  When I heard his words, my exhausted body slumped, embracing the promise of imminent sleep.

  Just then, Chief Hu jogged into the room. “Looks like we’ll be here all night, men.”

  “What’s up?” Lin Tao asked.

  “A custodian at Dragon City University found a body in a remote corner of campus.”

  “Forgive me,” I said. “I’ll look at the body soon, but I gotta sleep a couple hours.”

  “Are you sure, Qin?” Hu said. “We think it’s connected to the Eleventh Finger.”

  For two months, we had been desperate for a new development in the Eleventh Finger case, so the conference room buzzed with anticipation.

  Captain Nie gave clear orders: “Everyone in this meeting room who has worked on the Eleventh Finger case is to head to Dragon City University right now. Wake up any task force members at home. Call in backup as needed to take over the Dong Qifeng case.”

  “So?” Chief Hu grinned at me.

  Jolted awake by the words “Eleventh Finger case,” I nodded hard and said, “I’m coming. I can sleep when I’m dead.”

  By the time we got to Dragon City University, dawn was almost breaking. With students on summer break, campus was quiet. A small grove the kids used for romantic trysts was already surrounded by caution tape and full of busy survey staff.

  “When I got here, rigor mortis was beginning to set in,” Sun Yong, the forensic scientist on duty, said. “We concluded the victim died about five hours ago.”

  “Right now, I’m most interested in why you think this case is related to the Eleventh Finger,” I said, looking at the body in the distance.

  “After the victim’s throat was cut, he was disemboweled. The tongue scoop method was used to remove the majority of the organs,” Sun Yong said. “Like in the other two Eleventh Finger murders.”

  “Yes, definitely similar, but this body wasn’t dismembered, right? Transporting it all the way here intact would be pretty hard, correct?”

  “We believe the victim was killed right here,” Sun Yong said, pointing to the Audi parked outside the small grove. “That car belongs to the victim, Cheng Xiaoliang. License and registration are inside. The photo matches the victim.”

  “Cheng Xiaoliang?”

  “Cheng Xiaoliang, male, twenty-five, the only son of Dragon City U’s party secretary,” Sun Yong said. “We looked in his car. Everything’s normal. No signs of a fight, no blood. Campus surveillance video shows him driving himself through the gates at eleven last night.”

  “Was there anyone in the passenger seat?” I asked.

  “No one.”

  “So the killer was lurking on campus?”

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “The TT is a two-door with four seats. If the killer hid in the backseat, the cameras wouldn’t have caught him.”

  “Then would there be video of him fleeing the scene?” I asked.

  “Nah, there are lots of ways to get off campus. Cars can only enter through the north, south, east, and west gates, but people can go through the smaller entrances where there are no cameras.”

  “Once again, the throat was cut after the victim was drugged,” Lin Tao said, pointing to the ground near the body. “How much you wanna bet it’s tetramine?”

  There was a lot of blood on the grass from the complex wound on the victim’s neck. It looked like the victim had been defenseless when the carotid artery was severed.

  “This is definitely the primary murder scene. Let’s get back to the autopsy room ASAP,” Chief Hu said.

  It felt strange to rush to the autopsy room twice in the same night. Everyone was excited about another Eleventh Finger murder, but grim at the prospect of it going unsolved and of the killer continuing to beat us. And with the burn victim on top of it, we were feeling a little overwhelmed.

  “The other bodies were dismembered before they were discarded. Why aren’t there any signs of dismemberment this time?” I asked.

  Chief Hu said, “Maybe the dismemberments were just to make the corpses easier to discard. They were probably killed and dismembered indoors. That wasn’t to attract our attention—the disembowelment was. So, since this murder was done in a secluded area outside, there was no need to dismember. This is personal, Qin. The Eleventh Finger killer is talking directly to us.”

  “Why was Cheng Xiaoliang heading to campus in the middle of the night?” Sun Yong said. “There are no faculty residences on campus, and the students are supposed to be on break.”

  “Maybe some of them stuck around,” I suggested.

  He nodded. “You’re right, that’s totally possible. And maybe Cheng Xiaoliang had some beef with another student and they got in a fight. And it just happened to be the same person responsible for the Eleventh Finger crimes! Could the serial killer be an undergrad?”

  “Whoa, what the hell is this?” Hu, who was examining the victim’s organs, suddenly shouted.

  When examining the scene and body, I’d caught a strong odor of formalin, a solution of water and formaldehyde that forensic scientists use to preserve human tissue. It’s easy to prepare, but laypeople don’t use it, so I’d assumed I was hallucinating from sleep deprivation. Then I saw the object in Hu’s hand.

  Hu was holding a formalin-soaked ear. We all looked at Cheng Xiaoliang’s head. Both ears were intact. So whose ear was it? My mind churned as I thought about the bodies of Zuo Fangjiang and Meng Xiangping. Suddenly, I had an epiphany.

  I took off my gloves and pulled out the autopsy files. “I was right! When we found Fangjiang’s corpse, it was missing an ear!”

  “Really?” Hu said. “I completely forgot.”

  “Really!” I showed the record to Hu and said, “This is Zuo Fangjiang’s ear! Even though we found him later, don’t forget that Meng Xiangping died first. He was missing a finger. And we found Zuo Fangjiang first, but he was killed second—had an extra finger on him, but was missing an ear. If this is the killer’s calling card, then Cheng Xiaoliang with this extra ear should be missing something else.”