All of us scrambled to check over the body.

  “Not missing anything but his internal organs,” Sun Yong said, a little disappointed.

  I looked at one end of the victim’s trachea. There were knife marks going upward from the hyoid bone. I pinched open the oral cavity—rigor mortis hadn’t fully set in. The cavity was empty.

  “I got it. He took Cheng Xiaoliang’s tongue.”

  “My God! The killer really is trying to provoke us!” Hu said. He ground his teeth. “He did the tongue scoop to remove the organs and left part of another body to tell us it’s part of a series. Plus, he thinks like a forensic scientist! Who could be this messed up? What did we do to him?”

  “The killer really is highly skilled,” I said. “There are no good clues on this body. We’ll have to look into Cheng Xiaoliang’s relationships. The more people this guy kills, the more we learn his style. I just wish we had an angle for breaking the case.”

  “Damn,” Sun Yong said. “He knows a lot about forensics, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he knows a lot about criminal investigations. Hopefully the detectives can find something this time. We can’t let this bastard keep killing.”

  “For now, let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll have not one but two special task force meetings.” Hu laughed. “Up to our ears in murders around here.”

  I nodded wearily. “Yeah, I need to sleep. Lin Tao and I will go back and recheck Dong Qifeng’s apartment tomorrow at noon.”

  After sleeping a few hours, I felt a little better. Walking outside, I saw my downstairs neighbor. The college girl was striking up a conversation with Lin Tao by the police car. I smiled. Girls are so forward these days, and men are shyer than ever. The world’s changed.

  Lips sealed, I sat my butt down in the car and waited pointedly.

  Lin Tao said to her, “Sorry, gotta go. Let’s talk again soon,” then climbed inside too.

  “Where to, gentlemen?” Han Liang asked.

  “Dong Qifeng’s house,” Lin Tao said, then turned to me. “What took you so long, old man? If you were any slower, that girl would have gotten my number.”

  “Is that so bad? College student, charming.”

  “Come on.” Lin Tao sighed. “Is anyone as charming as Su Mei? Not to mention a brilliant, badass crime scene investigator. Now that’s a woman.”

  Before we knew it, we were at the scene. Lin Tao and I suited up and headed in.

  “Since it’s a murder case, there must be entrance and exit points,” I said. “The area around the apartment is so heavily guarded, though.”

  “The exit isn’t hard,” Lin Tao said. “The front door on the first floor. That explains the shoe print and the glove mark I found, plus Big Bao told us the unit entrance door is a surveillance blind spot. But the entrance point is harder. You already eliminated the possibility that the killer followed the victim inside. Most of the windows have security bars, so the only possible entrance point is right here.”

  Lin Tao pointed to the small window in the master bath. It didn’t have security bars.

  I looked at it in shock. “It’s so small, though. My head couldn’t even fit through!”

  “Your head is pretty big, Qin. No, I know. Of course it couldn’t go through. I tried myself yesterday, couldn’t do it,” Lin Tao said.

  “Maybe if the person was really, really thin?”

  “One way to find out! There’s a security camera outside this window. If they came in here, it was definitely recorded,” Lin Tao said.

  “Excellent. We’ll just have to wait to hear from Big Bao.”

  “Hey, look over here,” a technician said, opening the cabinet door of the nightstand.

  The inside edge of the door hadn’t been damaged in the fire, and blood spatter was visible all along it.

  “Great eye!” I clapped him on the shoulder. “That solves one problem.”

  “When the victim was stabbed, the cabinet was open!” Lin Tao exclaimed.

  I smiled and nodded. “So, the killer closed the cabinet afterward. That means he left us a clue!”

  “But this blood probably just belongs to the victim. What new information could it give us?” the technician asked.

  Lin Tao and I spoke at the same time. “Motive!”

  I looked at Lin Tao and smiled. “If it was some kind of personal crime—revenge, passion—why go through the nightstand? And the victim’s iPhone is gone. What does that tell you?”

  “Oh, you think it was a robbery?” the technician said.

  “Right,” I said. “And not ‘think’—it’s basically certain. This was a burglary that turned into robbery and murder when the victim either woke up or came home unexpectedly.”

  “Based on the entrance and exit points, the nightstand door, and the missing cell phone,” Lin Tao said, “I agree that it’s a case of an interrupted robbery, not a premeditated killing. We’d better hurry to the task force.”

  As soon as we entered the conference room, Chief Hu boomed, “What took you so long? We’ve got a clue!”

  “What is it?” I asked, taking out my notebook.

  “Well,” the lead detective said, “we detected human sperm on the vaginal swabs you did on Dong Qifeng. And listen to this. It matches the other victim, Cheng Xiaoliang.”

  33

  “What?” I was shocked. “How is a basic robbery-murder-arson case linked with the Eleventh Finger killer?”

  “We couldn’t make sense of it at first either, but then we uncovered some things related to Dong Qifeng’s recent activities.”

  The detective flipped through his notebook, organized his thoughts, and said, “Dong Qifeng got married a year ago, but no kids. She and her husband made an appointment at the hospital to get their fertility checked, but her husband found it insulting, so he fought with her, then left.”

  I’d been married for a little over six months myself, and we were hoping for kids too. As the daughter of a prominent OB/GYN, Ling Dang never felt awkward dealing with body-related stuff. She’d even recently suggested we go to her mother’s department at the hospital to see why nothing had happened yet. I wasn’t opposed, but actually getting there kept getting delayed by work. Looked like I’d have to make time to go after I was finished with this case. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me, but no harm in checking things out.

  The detective went on. “According to our investigation, Dong Qifeng’s husband is the son of farmers. After graduating college, he applied for an entry-level position at a small company in Dragon City. Maybe because of the difference in income and status—the woman high and the man low—the marriage to Dong Qifeng made him insecure. A week ago, he took a temporary leave from his job and left home. He’s been back home in Henan, helping his parents on the farm. He hasn’t had any unusual contact with anyone, so we’re not considering him a suspect. As for Dong Qifeng, our research shows that she’s been in a bad way since he left. She texted him every night. It started as scolding, then turned to begging. The evening of August fourth, after getting off work, Dong Qifeng went downtown to a bar called 108 Degrees by herself. But according to the surveillance video, she left the bar with a man at eight o’clock.”

  “Cheng Xiaoliang, right?” I said.

  “Yup. Regulars and staff say Cheng Xiaoliang likes to go to that bar to pick up girls. His usual method is to take the girl out to his car and drink wine, then, you know.”

  “You know what?” Big Bao asked.

  Everyone stared at him a second.

  “You mean the two of them had already had sexual contact before Cheng Xiaoliang dropped her at the gate of the complex?” I asked, remembering Big Bao’s report of an Audi TT on the surveillance footage. There was also a TT at the scene where Cheng Xiaoliang’s body was found.

  The detective nodded.

  “Interesting, but is any of this really useful?” I said. “First, we know from the video that Cheng Xiaoliang didn’t kill Dong Qifeng. Second, the same person couldn’t have killed Cheng Xiaoliang and Dong Qifeng because they were both killed around eleven, and they were far apart by then. Not to mention that Cheng Xiaoliang was disemboweled, which takes time.”

  “But couldn’t someone have hired two people to kill Qifeng and Xiaoliang separately?” the detective said.

  I shook my head. “At the scene just now, we found evidence that the killer went through Dong Qifeng’s nightstand and stole her iPhone. Although we’re sure Xiaoliang’s death is part of the Eleventh Finger series of murders, the Eleventh Finger killer clearly isn’t a petty thief.”

  “Do you really think the two of them having sex and then being killed could be a complete coincidence?” Big Bao said.

  “Sure, why not? Of course, we have to keep looking into their social contacts, especially any unusual opposite-sex relationships. I propose we split the task force between the two cases and communicate in a timely fashion. Do we have any clues from the time after Cheng Xiaoliang dropped off Dong Qifeng?”

  “No. From the surveillance video, it looks like he went straight to campus. His phone records don’t show that he contacted anyone at all.”

  So the Eleventh Finger case had hit a dead end once again. For a few moments, the task force sat in silent frustration.

  “Oh, Big Bao, I wanted to ask you,” Lin Tao said. “We determined Dong Qifeng’s killer must have gotten in through a window in the master bathroom. Did you see anything on the surveillance video?”

  “Not a thing,” Big Bao said, and spread out a blueprint. “But when the complex lost power, the cameras turned off.”

  “Oh right!” Lin Tao slapped the table. “So what do you think?”

  “Uh, I think,” Big Bao said, pushing up his glasses, “the circuitry is such that each apartment has its own breaker, all of which connect to the unit breaker. Those unit breakers are connected to building breakers, which are finally all connected to a master breaker behind the security office. Supposedly, the electric company worker reset the master breaker and the whole complex got electricity back, but there’s a big problem there.”

  “What problem?”

  “If it was some kind of short circuit, then the individual apartment breaker should have been reset first, then the unit breaker, the building breaker, and only then the master breaker. If the electric company just reset the master breaker, the people in the building with the short couldn’t have gotten electricity back. So why did they?”

  “You’re saying someone intentionally turned the breaker off?”

  Big Bao nodded. “Right. Adding in your nightstand discovery, I’m thinking the killer turned off the electricity to the whole complex and went in through the window. When he accidentally hit the nightstand and woke Dong Qifeng up, he stabbed her, then grabbed the valuables and lit the room on fire. Next, he left through the front door. The cameras were still out, so none of it was caught on tape.”

  “So did he know his way around the complex, or was it dumb luck?”

  “Oh, he knew it really well! Otherwise, he would’ve gone right for the window without disabling the cameras first.”

  “Makes sense,” I remarked. “Captain Nie, I think you’d better start looking into people familiar with the complex’s surveillance system. It could be someone who works there, or a worker involved in recent renovations. Someone short and skinny who needs money.”

  “But there are probably lots of people like that,” the lead detective complained.

  “I don’t care how many there are! Line them up for me,” Captain Nie sneered. “This case is solvable, much more so than the Eleventh Finger quagmire. Let’s catch the killer fast so we have something to show the higher-ups. City and provincial officials are already leaning on us about the Dragon City University case.”

  “Heh, of course, a little prince died,” I said. “People like that contribute nothing to society, but they still get all the attention.”

  Another detective stepped in to review details gathered about Dong Qifeng’s business contacts, which struck me as pretty irrelevant at this point, so I zoned out. A few minutes later, my phone began to ring, and Lin Tao’s name appeared on the display. I looked around in confusion. I hadn’t even noticed him leaving the meeting room. Stepping outside, I took the call.

  “Where’d you get off to?”

  “When I heard Big Bao say the killer turned off the electricity himself, I ran over to the complex to see if there’re any traces on the master breaker.”

  “You do have a good sense for evidence—I’ll give you that. Any results?”

  “A fresh fingerprint, good quality!” Lin Tao said. “The killer put on gloves before going into the scene, but forgot about that little detail when turning off the electricity.”

  Heading back into the room, I interrupted the detective. “Forget the business contacts; Lin Tao’s got a fingerprint. Don’t worry, Nie. We’ll solve this case for you.”

  34

  When detectives asked Zhao Bifeng for his fingerprints, he turned and ran. He never imagined one of the detectives had been a high school track star. The guy didn’t get ten yards before being tackled to the ground.

  It turned out that Dong Qifeng wasn’t just a resident of the luxury complex—she’d supervised the construction. And she’d hired Zhao Bifeng to install the security system.

  Zhao Bifeng knew Dong Qifeng was well-off, so he figured her home would be full of cash. Also, she was so pretty that he wanted to have a taste. But before he made his move, she married an insecure man who followed her everywhere like a stooge.

  On August 4, when he heard his colleagues say Qifeng’s husband had left home, he knew his time had finally come. According to a plan he’d been developing for a year, he’d sneak into Qifeng’s house while she was sleeping, find the valuables, then cover her head, rape her, and leave. He even had a condom ready. But when he was looking for valuables, Qifeng woke up and started to scream. He got scared and stabbed her.

  When she collapsed, lifeless, Zhao Bifeng panicked. Murder wasn’t the plan. He set the sheets on fire and fled the scene. We’d never have caught him if not for his fingerprints on the circuit breaker.

  “Well done with that circuit-breaker situation, Big Bao. If you hadn’t figured out the electrical system, Lin Tao wouldn’t have found that fingerprint,” I said. “Without that and that bloodstain the tech found, Zhao Bifeng would be running free and we wouldn’t be able to focus on the Eleventh Finger case.”

  “I can’t believe Eleventh Finger has stalled out again,” Chief Hu said. “My guys have been looking into all of Cheng Xiaoliang’s acquaintances. Serious social butterfly, this guy. There are so many people that we’ve got nothing.”

  “As soon as the case got linked with Eleventh Finger, I knew it’d get bogged down,” I said. “Having too many people to check up on is one thing; detectives losing heart is another.”

  “It’s not just losing heart,” Chief Hu said. “Now that this is turning out to be a real serial-killer situation—and especially now that a politically connected kid is dead—there’s a lot of pressure on us. The men are overwhelmed.”

  “The scene where Cheng Xiaoliang died is really clean too. Besides the blood, I don’t think we’ll find any other trace evidence,” Lin Tao said. “Just like before, the killer did a brilliant job cleaning up, didn’t leave any clues for us to find. What’s the game here? Is he trying to commit a series of perfect crimes? It really seems like only a law enforcement professional could do that.”

  Big Bao furrowed his brow. “There’s nothing more forensics can do at this point. We have to let the detectives take the lead for now.”

  “You guys have been working like crazy,” I said. “I have too. I’ve barely gotten any time with my wife since we got married. She’s starting to think we can’t get pregnant, but I blame stress and the fact that I get called to a new murder scene every damn night. I’m gonna rest a couple days, then go to the hospital and get checked out. After that, I’m going to give the Eleventh Finger case some serious thought and figure out how to stop that demon from hurting anyone else.”

  35

  Fertility testing was terrifying, but Ling Dang and I were perfectly healthy.

  “Guess we just haven’t been worthy of a visit from the fertility goddess,” I said with a grin.

  “You can’t blame the fertility goddess for your being gone all the time,” Ling Dang countered.

  “I won’t go anywhere today. Tonight will be all about making a baby!”

  “No new cases?” Ling Dang asked.

  “Shh . . . ,” I said. “Don’t jinx it.”

  Before my voice even faded, the phone rang.

  “Look, look, look,” I said, pointing to “Command Center” on my screen. “I don’t know what’s up recently! Every time things get quiet, bodies start turning up. It’s creepy.”

  “Yanggong County has a murder case. Please come lend support,” the command center officer told me. “We need all available forensic and trace personnel, so please inform Lin Tao.”

  “But,” I said, gritting my teeth, “we’re on Dragon City’s Eleventh Finger case. I’m afraid I’ll have to stay here.”

  “I’m following instructions from leadership,” the officer said. “The Eleventh Finger investigation has no new leads. The detectives will call if they need your input, but for now, your assignment is the Yanggong crime scene.”

  Hanging up, I looked at Ling Dang. Her face was calm, resigned. Even though she didn’t like my running around the province like this, she understood how important my work was. To cheer us both up, I improvised a silly song, opera style: “My darling wife, we can’t make babies, and poor Lin Tao can’t find a wife, all thanks to these dastardly evildoers! Once the intrepid young hero catches them, he will return to his beloved to start a family!”

  Mama Zhao was over seventy years old, living in the east end of Yanggong in a small traditional courtyard house. She had several children working in other cities who came back to visit once a year. They gave her some money for living expenses, but Mama Zhao supplemented it by collecting bottles and cans, which kept her fit.