Additionally, we followed the standard practice of testing and photographing the victim’s clothing. The back side of the victim’s jacket was dusty. And it was worth noting that the jacket and pants pockets had bloodstains inside.

  “How do you think the bloodstains got in the pockets?” I asked Bao with a smile.

  Big Bao was getting better and better at fielding my questions. “There are two possibilities: First, after the victim was injured, she reached into her own pockets with bloody hands. Second, after killing the victim, the killer used his bloody hands to search the victim’s pockets. The first would occur only in one set of pockets, whereas the other would put blood in all the pockets. In this case, there’s blood in three of the victim’s jacket pockets and two in the pants, so I think it’s the second scenario, the killer searching the pockets.”

  “Good!” I said with a nod. “Evidence of searching the pockets further supports the idea that the killer was after money, which fits with the missing ring and earrings. We say bodies can talk, but now clothing is talking too. It says this is a murder-robbery.”

  After the autopsy, we rushed to the task force meeting.

  “The victim’s husband can already be ruled out as a suspect. He didn’t have time to do it,” the detective began.

  “Yeah,” I said. “The victim’s jewelry was all taken. And her pockets all have blood smeared inside, the result of the killer searching them. Seems pretty clear this was robbery.”

  The detective nodded. “Further, according to our investigation, Li Yilian was last seen five days ago, on Friday night. A group of coworkers went out for dinner, and she left around eight. Been missing ever since. She didn’t show up at work on Monday or answer her phone. She only comes into the office a couple days a week anyway, so her coworkers just assumed she went to Yuntai to visit her husband.”

  “Went out to eat?” I said. “The victim’s stomach contents definitely didn’t suggest a dinner party. All we found were some corn kernels. Maybe she didn’t die after dinner on Friday after all.”

  “Oh, according to her coworkers, Li Yilian was constantly dieting. All she ate Friday night was that corn.”

  “As for the murder scene, we still haven’t pinned it down,” Lin Tao said, opening a slide show. “Like I said, we ruled out the victim’s apartment, so next we inspected the stairs that she’d take to get up there. The section of stairs between the second and third floors shows signs of having been mopped recently, but there’s no blood spatter on the walls. We even used tetramethylbenzidine to test for invisible blood, but didn’t come up with anything. If the victim’s heart was punctured in the stairwell, there should have been blood spatter, right? So my current theory is that the victim was killed somewhere else, carried here, and dumped in the well.”

  I frowned. “I can’t agree. The back side of the victim’s jacket was covered in dust, so she was probably supine in a really dusty place for some time. And her home probably wouldn’t be that dusty. I see from your survey photos that the first-floor staircase is tile and the rest are cement. The tenants rarely take the stairs, so there’s a lot of dust there. I think that indicates the victim was killed in the stairwell and left there for a while.”

  “Couldn’t the jacket have gotten dusty from rubbing against the stairs on the way down?” Lin Tao asked.

  “No. Dust from rubbing would have a direction to it. This dust is distributed uniformly over a large area. Also, when we examined the body on-site, livor mortis was concentrated in the lower back, which means the victim was supine for at least thirty-six hours after death.”

  “But if the victim was killed in the stairwell, why didn’t we find blood spatter there? Doesn’t make sense, right?” Lin Tao asked.

  “Not every ruptured artery spatters,” I explained. “On this victim, the broken arteries were all in the chest. The victim was wearing work clothing—long sleeves, jacket—so even if there was bleeding, the clothes would absorb it. A chest-wound victim wearing thick clothing rarely leaves blood spatter.”

  “Who do you think did it?” the detective asked.

  I brought my fist down on the table. “Whoever the killer is, he’s a resident of the building.”

  48

  “Just because the building has a security system?” the detective asked doubtfully. “One building, thirty floors, two apartments per floor . . . That’s sixty households who don’t know one another. Someone trailing the victim could have snuck in behind her, right? Like someone from that dinner, or if they met a stranger afterward, couldn’t they get in too? We all think an acquaintance did it. A stranger wouldn’t be able to trick the victim into going into the stairwell.”

  “Maybe not trick,” Big Bao said, “but chase or force. An acquaintance probably would have taken the elevator up and killed her near her apartment. Why drag the body between floors? Then throw the body in a sewage well? You’d have to be stupid.”

  “I agree,” I said. “I think the killer either ran into the victim between the second and third floors, or he was lying in wait.”

  “If he was waiting, then it wouldn’t be an acquaintance either?” the detective wondered.

  “Maybe they knew each other a little, but they definitely weren’t friends. Like I said before, after the victim was killed, she was in the supine position for thirty-six hours or so—long enough for livor mortis to fixate in the back. If the body had been tossed in the well and snagged upright on the wires immediately after death, the blood would have pooled in the calves and feet, and we’d see livor mortis there instead.”

  I cleared my throat and continued. “That the killer was willing to leave the victim in the stairwell so long tells us two things. One, the killer is very familiar with this building—he knew residents never take the stairs. Two, he didn’t know the victim well. If someone had found the body, the killer was confident he wouldn’t soon be suspected. He moved the body later to delay discovery, probably because it started to smell. He didn’t know how to get the body out of the building without being seen, but he did know about the sewer well. Which is more evidence the killer knows the building. Because he lives there.”

  “Yeah, I see what you’re saying,” the detective said. “Knows the building, doesn’t really know the victim—definitely fits with a neighbor in the building.”

  “Right,” I said. “Plus, after the body was moved, the stairwell was cleaned. The killer probably got a mop from his own apartment.”

  “But why would the victim take the stairs? And the killer too?”

  “Well,” I said with a laugh, “I don’t know about the killer, but it’s pretty easy to guess why Li Yilian took the stairs.”

  “Really?”

  “Her colleagues said she was always trying to lose weight, right? Living on the eleventh floor, taking the stairs every day, sounds like a good strategy!”

  “Oh, good call!” the detective said. “According to her coworkers, she didn’t belong to a gym or anything. Now we know what exercise she was doing, stair climbing! But why was the killer there?”

  “We’ll have to go back to the scene to figure that out.”

  Lin Tao, Big Bao, and I spent all afternoon in the stairwell between the second and third floor, scouring it for any kind of clue. We had to take a break at seven for another task force meeting, but then we turned around and went right back. Coming close to breaking the case wouldn’t cut it.

  Down in the lobby, residents were still ogling the caution tape around the sewer well. Even though we had already ID’d the body, the fear of a female ghost lingered.

  As we entered the stairwell on the first floor, sound-activated sensor lights suddenly switched on. But looking up, we could see that the stairs between the second and third floors were dark.

  “I didn’t expect such a big discovery this evening.”

  “Yeah,” Lin Tao said knowingly. “Every floor probably has working lights besides that one. Can’t be a coincidence.”

  “You think the killer picked a dark place to do it?” Big Bao asked.

  “Not sure, but I can find out.”

  Lin Tao ran out to the survey van to fetch a stepladder. He climbed up and carefully, carefully used his flashlight to look at the bulb. His face sparkled in surprise. “Qin, the lightbulb has fingerprints on it! They look fresh!”

  “Get the prints,” I said, handing him the camera. “Then see if the bulb was unscrewed.”

  Lin Tao recorded the evidence, then gently twisted the bulb. It lit up.

  “Ha!” I said. “This really is a breakthrough.”

  “How?” Big Bao said. “You sure the prints belong to the killer?”

  I nodded. “That bulb didn’t burn out; it was unscrewed. Who’d climb up there and loosen a bulb? Only someone who wants to do something in secret. Which means the killer prepared ahead of time to make this spot dark so he could hide himself.”

  “If it’s someone living here and we’ve got prints, we should be able to get him, right?” Lin Tao said, proudly reviewing the images.

  “But how did the killer know the victim would come by?” Big Bao asked.

  I thought it over and said, “The killer must’ve been very familiar with these stairs—knew the victim used them and other people didn’t. Which means the killer is someone who would regularly see the victim taking the stairs . . .”

  Lin Tao considered this a second. “So, not people who live above her, right? But people living on the eleventh floor or below might notice that the victim used the stairs every day!”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “That leaves only twenty-one households. I think we can break this case tonight.”

  As it came time for Big Bao to test his math skills again, he stuck out his fingers and called after us. “Hey, wait! How’d you get twenty-one?”

  “Eleven times two, minus one,” Lin Tao said, turning around.

  In the task force meeting room, there was a big map of the Guilin building and a list of condo owners provided by management. Detectives were going through the list door by door.

  “Three-oh-one’s owner hasn’t been home for a long time, four-oh-one has two elderly women living there—neither fits,” a detective said. “This is a fancy complex. How could something like this happen?”

  I pursed my lips and said, “What about six-oh-one, a rich kid living alone?”

  Apartment 601 had been bought by a high-powered businessman named Han Shi for his son, Han Feng. The photo of a young kid with dyed red hair, a thick gold chain, and crooked eyebrows quickly caught the task force’s attention.

  A couple hours of investigation turned up traffic violations, assault, and drug use—all manner of delinquent behavior. Instead of questioning him directly, the task force decided to see if we could arrest him on drug charges and compare his fingerprints to the ones from the lightbulb.

  Han Feng was quickly located in a private room of a nightclub, high out of his mind and in the arms of a cute girl.

  Lin Tao grabbed the kid’s limp hand, pressed a finger onto the paper, then after a three-minute examination under bright light, said, “We got him!”

  49

  Han Feng never worked, just hung out with his friends in bars, karaoke clubs, and skating rinks, chasing girls and drugs.

  Sick of all the trouble caused and money wasted, his exasperated father finally decided to cancel Han Feng’s credit cards, hoping the prodigal son would be forced to reevaluate his life.

  But the punishment failed. Han Shi didn’t know his son had become addicted to heroin. Han Feng sold his jewelry, cell phones, designer clothes—everything he had to feed his habit. When all that ran out, he had to find a new source of cash.

  He remembered seeing a strange woman wearing jewelry in the stairwell. He couldn’t remember what she looked like, but he remembered the jewelry. It looked expensive.

  So Han Feng started lurking and watching. He spotted a woman who took the stairs every day before and after work. Hers was the only shadow that passed all day.

  He lay in bed for two days, not just sleeping but designing the whole murder-robbery.

  That night, to make his chosen spot darker, he loosened the lightbulb, then crouched in the corner. But the woman didn’t come home after work at her usual time, so Han Feng waited and waited, worried he’d have to give up. Around nine, though, she finally arrived. He leapt out of the shadows, wrestled a shocked Li Yilian to the ground, covered her mouth, and desperately stabbed her chest with a fruit knife till she stopped struggling.

  It was the first time Han Feng had killed someone, but he wasn’t afraid. His head was filled only with thoughts of his next hit.

  He yanked off Li Yilian’s jewelry and riffled through her pockets, thrilled to find a significant wad of cash.

  Han Feng rushed out to score the heroin he craved, shot up at home, and then passed out. When he woke up a day and a half later, he realized the body was still there.

  There’s that weird well downstairs, he thought. I’ll just throw her in, mop up the stairs, and no one will ever know.

  When detectives charged him with murder, Han Feng was surprised, but he was entirely without remorse. “I thought I was in the clear this morning. How’d you even find me?”

  50

  Captain Huang of Yuntai may have liked to call me “Jinx,” but Big Bao was the real jinx, always tempting fate. As we were leaving Cheng City, Lin Tao let out a big sigh.

  “All these murders! I wish they’d all just lay off for a minute and let us focus on the Eleventh Finger case!”

  “Oh no,” Big Bao moaned. “Just hearing the words ‘Eleventh Finger’ makes my head hurt. Let’s forget about dead bodies for a minute, hurry home, hug our families, and have a nice Mid-Autumn Festival.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, I felt a faint foreboding.

  Holiday weather was sunny and breezy, perfect for the full moon. But ever since the Eleventh Finger case had started in June, neither the full moon nor recreation could capture my interest. The case was like a splinter, a bug bite, a rash. I might forget about it for a minute, but then there it was again, driving me nuts.

  A reporter from a local TV station had a crush on Lin Tao, so he got invited to watch the live taping of a musical variety show. To take the pressure off, Lin Tao invited me and Ling Dang as well as Big Bao and his wife to come along.

  “Look, look, look,” Big Bao said. “Tonight’s moon is so full, how romantic.”

  “Perfect for seducing your lady, Lin Tao,” I said, eyeing the dozens of people in front of us in line outside the studio. “This side door isn’t even open yet. When are they gonna let us in?”

  “Don’t worry,” Lin Tao said, lifting his badge. “Everyone over here’s a VIP. There’re way more people at the main entrance.”

  “My first time as a VIP,” Big Bao said, admiring his own badge.

  Just then, some people circumvented the line and went straight into the studio.

  The crowd rippled with resentment.

  I smiled and said to Lin Tao, “See that? Those people are real VIPs. We should have brought lawn chairs.”

  “Shut up,” Lin Tao snapped.

  Half an hour later, the side door finally opened, and the crowd slowly surged inside.

  Dingling-dingling . . .

  My phone rang, and I immediately thought of Big Bao’s jinx.

  I struggled to get my cell phone out of my pocket in the crowd, and when I did, I saw two words displayed: “Command Center.”

  “Hey, you guys, hold up a sec.”

  “This is Sun Tongsu from command,” a low voice said. “I just received a report that a body was found in a quarry on the outskirts of Dragon City. They’re saying it’s murder.”

  “Mhh . . .” My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

  “Today’s a holiday, Examiner Qin. Have you been drinking?” Sun Tongsu said.

  “No, no.” I turned and looked at Lin Tao and Big Bao. They were making their way back against the crowd.

  “Okay, good. Director Chen wants you right away,” Sun said. “Please head to West Dragon City, the far end of Dragon City Avenue. There’s a quarry there.”

  “Got it.” I put my phone away and gave Ling Dang a guilty look.

  Her drooping eyelashes flickered. “No worries. Mrs. Bao and I will keep each other company. You guys go. Drive carefully.”

  Ling Dang’s gentle sadness made me feel even worse. It had been a long time since I’d taken her out on a real date.

  Mrs. Bao made a flirty face and took Ling Dang’s arm. “Go on, go. Ling Dang, they don’t appreciate music anyway. It’ll be better with just the two of us.”

  Watching them disappear into the crowd, I called Chief Hu and handed the car keys to Lin Tao.

  “Hello, Chief. Happy holiday. Sounds like a perp sent us another present. Any clues?”

  “Not sure yet,” Chief Hu said. “All we know is it’s a murder and the body was dumped. The men started survey work and cleared a path to the scene, but I still haven’t seen the corpse.”

  “I’m wondering if it’s connected to Eleventh Finger.”

  “Not likely,” Hu said. “The body appears to have been burned.”

  “Burned?” I said. “Could the Eleventh Finger killer be expanding his methods?”

  “Please! Don’t jinx it!” Hu cried.

  “I’m not the jinx,” I said, shooting Big Bao a nasty look. “But I know one who’s making us travel to the edge of town on Mid-Autumn Festival.”

  Big Bao looked sheepish. “Do you get reimbursed for gas if you drive your own car?”

  Although it was the provincial capital, Dragon City was pretty safe and not too big, so murders were fairly rare. But once Eleventh Finger started, all our best detectives were assigned to the case. If another tough murder case fell in our laps, manpower would be spread thin. I hoped this would be a simple one.

  The car rolled over bumpy village roads for over an hour before we stopped and met Chief Hu, who pointed to a mountain with the front half dug out and said, “Over there.”