Major roads ran through Yanggong County, so they had a lot of accidents, and we often went there to survey accident scenes. This time, they had a difficult case on their hands.

  As the story was relayed to us, a resident heard a loud bang outside at four o’clock in the morning. Going out to investigate, he found that a row of trees on the curb across from his house had been knocked down, and there was a tire in the road.

  That road was a county highway in good condition and with little traffic. Young people often raced or went for joyrides there. One side of the road was a drainage ditch with about twenty feet of water. Since he didn’t have a cell phone, the conscientious man ran half a mile before he found someone on the street and used their phone to call 110.

  Officers rushed to the scene and undertook a rescue operation. After hours of work, they salvaged a Mercedes sedan and four bodies from the ditch.

  Two of the victims were the president and vice president of a company in the county seat; the other two were escorts from an expensive karaoke bar. All of them had managed to climb out of the car after it hit the water, but because of injuries sustained in the crash, they weren’t strong enough to keep from drowning. Blood tests showed that all four were intoxicated.

  The cause of death and the cause of the accident were basically clear, but because drinking and driving was involved, the issue of compensation came up, and the four victims’ families needed forensics to identify who had been behind the wheel.

  Lin Tao, Big Bao, and I hadn’t left town for a job in over a week and were getting a bit restless. When the call came in, we immediately jumped in a car.

  But when it rains it pours. Just as we neared the crash site, I got a call from Chief Hu.

  “Qin,” Chief Hu said, “we need you back in Dragon City. Eleventh Finger has struck again.”

  “What?” My surprise woke Big Bao, who’d been dozing in the backseat. I put the chief on speakerphone and said, “It’s been a month since the last murder, and five months since the first one. What the hell are we dealing with here? How is this monster still committing these crimes, and how do we still have nothing on him?”

  “The killer’s methods are simple,” Hu said. “The simpler the methods, the easier to avoid leaving clues.”

  “This victim’s also a thirtysomething male?” I said. “Same technique?”

  Hu was silent for a second. “It’s not quite the same this time. The victim is female, and her throat wasn’t cut. Plus, she wasn’t disemboweled.”

  “Huh?” I said. “Then how do you know it’s related to Eleventh Finger?”

  “Because Liang Fengzhi’s genitals are in her pocket. And her breasts are missing.”

  I gasped. “The Eleventh Finger killer’s signature! He doesn’t need to bother cutting the throat or disemboweling his victims anymore, because he knows we’re onto him and don’t need any more provoking.”

  “Right, that’s what we thought too,” Hu said. “The killer is simplifying his process.”

  “So what do we do?” I said. “We’re on our way to Yanggong to help with a traffic accident. Practically there.”

  “No rush,” Hu said. “The boss is finally back from that special task force he’s been assigned to all these months. The national police shot down the killer, wrapped up the case. Now that Chen’s returned, he’ll supervise this new murder himself. You just take care of that crash and head back as soon as you can.”

  “Terrific,” I said. “We’ll be back as soon as possible, and this time we’re going to get the guy!”

  I think my adaptive threshold is pretty broad. I can handle flavorful or bland food, hot weather or cold. At a crime scene, if the corpse is horribly rotten, as long as I get a chance to calm down, my mind can block out the stench after a few minutes.

  Hu’s call obviously sent my Eleventh Finger–obsessed mind racing, but once we arrived at the scene of the accident, I took a deep breath and focused on the task at hand. The people, the car, the road—Eleventh Finger was completely forgotten. Okay, mostly forgotten.

  The car and bodies had already been removed and caution tape was up. I saw officers negotiating with repairmen. The accident had knocked down an electrical pole, and torn wires were scattered on the ground. We could see streetlights and households nearby without power. The power company’s phone must’ve been ringing off the hook.

  Hoping to let them restore power as quickly as possible, we started our survey immediately.

  The trees along the drainage ditch were bent down, but they hadn’t snapped. Their bark was scraped off, and the fallen electrical pole lay near their tops.

  “Looks like the car went into the water here,” Big Bao said.

  “The pole has flakes of silver paint stuck to it,” I said, measuring, “which must be from the impact. The flakes are relatively high up, probably higher than the height of a compact car.”

  “What’s your point?” Lin Tao asked.

  “The vehicle tilted up after uprooting the trees. Although its frame may have been lifted by the trees, the weight of the vehicle and its passengers kept it from flying up. The fact that the impact marks are so high means the car may have flipped over.”

  I took off my gloves. “This scene couldn’t have been staged. This was definitely an accident.”

  The totaled car had already been towed to a repair shop to be inspected, so we went to look it over. The vehicle was a silver-gray Mercedes, the front bumper fallen off, the hood surprisingly intact.

  “This car’s pretty messed up!” Big Bao said.

  I circled the car slowly. “The trees at the scene are quite thin, and none broke. Because the soil on the curb is soft, the trees absorbed the impact while the vehicle was lifted up. There was no serious, direct impact. Look, the airbags didn’t even inflate.”

  I stopped at the trunk. It was collapsed, completely distorted. I measured the depression on the top.

  “This semicircular recess matches the diameter of the electrical pole, which means the car had already rolled. The whole topside of the trunk hit it.”

  “So the pole altered the vehicle’s trajectory,” Lin Tao said. “That’s why it fell into the water. If it wasn’t for that, the car would have eventually stopped. No one would have died.”

  Big Bao was focused on a Transformers bumper sticker. He laughed.

  “I’m sure the traffic department could have easily determined the path of the vehicle rolling over and going into the water,” I said, “but the question of who the driver was needs forensics.”

  “Do you know?” Lin Tao said, bouncing a little in the moving car.

  “Well, if the bodies don’t have clear injuries, I’ve got nothing. Let’s go see.”

  We were hurrying to the place I hated most, the local hospital morgue, the largest in the county.

  The morgue was filled with refrigerated coffins with all kinds of bodies inside.

  I rubbed my nose, pulled on my jumpsuit, and walked to the middle of the room where the four bodies lay on stretchers.

  After several local forensic scientists hurried to remove the victims’ clothing, I looked the bodies over and found no open wounds, not even any clear bleeding under the skin.

  “Well, shit,” Big Bao said. “No injuries, so how can we judge?”

  I calmly examined each of the victims’ limbs. “No, there are. They’re just very light. I think we’ll be able to make a determination.”

  “No serious injuries means there wasn’t a direct collision,” Lin Tao said. “That confirms our account of the accident.”

  I turned to a nearby traffic officer. “The family members agreed to an autopsy?”

  “No.”

  “No? Didn’t they want us to figure out who the driver was?”

  “Yes, but they did not approve an autopsy.”

  After accidents, family members made all kinds of excuses, but they really just cared about compensation. But because of the influence of traditional Chinese thought, they often weren’t willing to let their family members go under the knife.

  I sighed. “Fine. Let’s see what we can see without cutting.”

  Just doing an external examination greatly reduced our workload but also limited the information we could get. Fortunately, we had firm results in three hours.

  I requested a meeting with the family members of the four victims.

  “Did you get it?” the director of local traffic police asked. He was wary of my request to meet with the families, because even the slightest misstep could lead to complaints and petitions. What he didn’t know was that my mind was already hundreds of miles away, focused on the fifth murder in the Eleventh Finger case. I was dying to get back as soon as possible.

  “Sure did,” I assured him. “Don’t worry—I’ll make this quick.”

  “After analyzing the scene and the vehicle, we have clearly determined the trajectory of the accident.” I pointed at a photo slide.

  “Cut the shit. We want to know who was driving,” a guy jeered.

  “Oh, my son, you died so horribly—” a woman howled, sending the room into a cacophony of quarreling and crying. The director himself poured everyone tea to calm them down.

  Fortunately, I’d had Lin Tao remove photos of the corpses from the presentation; otherwise a riot would have broken out.

  “Okay, let’s talk about injuries, then.” I coughed drily. “After examining the bodies, we determined that Male Number One was the driver.”

  “Bullshit!” that same man interrupted again. “The car was my son’s, so you just assume he was the driver? Is that how you solve cases? What are you good for? Eating donuts?”

  “So you’re saying he couldn’t have been driving his own car?” This time I was angry. “So tell me, who was? Or better yet, let me present the evidence.”

  The other victims’ family members started to scold him and, chagrinned, he sat back down.

  “Male Number One had scratches from broken glass on his left arm and a contusion from a smooth, hard object on his right. Only the driver’s side of the Mercedes has a window on the left and the gearshift and hand brake on the right. Male Number One also had a contusion on the right side of his waist, which lines up with the driver’s seat belt buckle.”

  Male Number One’s father hadn’t jumped up to argue, so I went on. “Furthermore, Male Number One’s body had bruising on the insides of both ankles, which means there was a hard object with a relatively coarse surface between his feet. The only thing in the car that matches this is the brake pedal. That wound is unlike all the other victims’. Also, the pants on his left knee had scratch marks. After inspecting the vehicle, we found the hood-release switch there with a sharp corner that could have scratched his clothing. None of the other positions in the car had objects hard enough to leave such a mark.”

  The driver’s father seemed a little stumped, but he wasn’t ready to let go just yet. “So . . . so tell me where the other people were sitting! If you can explain that clearly, maybe I’ll believe you.”

  I smiled slightly, thinking we were lucky each victim’s wounds were unique. “Female Victim One had bruises on each arm. The only position where both lower arms could come into contact with a flat object was the front passenger seat.”

  “So she couldn’t have been driving?”

  “No. Think about it for a second. If the driver hit the dashboard, the steering wheel would damage the chest. Female Victim One had no chest wounds. Also, of the four victims, only Female One’s body showed no cuts from glass. And the only glass that didn’t break was the front windshield and right front window. She was definitively sitting in the front passenger seat.”

  Hearing no objections, I went on. “Male Victim Two sat behind the passenger seat. His right side had scratches from glass, and his right temporal region had a large hematoma. As I wanted to explain earlier, the vehicle flipped over, so his head likely hit the door frame at that time.”

  Faint sobbing filled the room as I hurried to finish. “Last is Female Number Two. She sat behind the driver. Her right palm was cut up because, when the car was rolling to its right, she braced herself against the right window. If she’d been behind the passenger seat, she wouldn’t have had enough distance to reach her arm out like that.”

  The conference room was silent.

  “That’s all. You have my condolences.”

  The driver’s father opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He slunk silently out of the room.

  After the families had filed out, the director said excitedly, “Qin, in all my years in traffic policing, that was the most brilliant, persuasive analysis I’ve ever heard! Thank you!”

  I was flattered by the praise but tried to show modesty. “Oh, it’s nothing. The case’s conditions were favorable, that’s all. Glad we could help. Now we have to head back.”

  61

  That traffic accident analysis made me feel pretty great, and I couldn’t wait to tell the boss how his protégé was upholding his reputation in the field. Plus, it had been months—I missed the guy. Then it was time to head to the hospital with Ling Dang to see if our dreams had really come true.

  But when we got to his office, Chen looked very gloomy.

  “Boss, today I—”

  “You’re suspended,” he barked.

  “Suspended?” Lin Tao was the first to react.

  My whole body felt numb. “Boss, who’s suspended?”

  He just stared at me, his eyes like torches.

  I looked at dumbstruck Big Bao and astonished Lin Tao, then back at Chen. I gathered my courage and asked, “Wait, me? What’d I do?”

  “Go home and wait to be summoned. Don’t leave town.”

  “Summoned?” I racked my brain, thinking how I always played by the book, and about how many tough cases we’d solved while the boss was gone. Had I made some mistake? Something bad enough to need to be summoned?

  The boss took a stack of photos out of his drawer and tossed it in front of me. “She look familiar?”

  The woman in the photos wore a white knitted top, a black skirt, and lace stockings. She lay on the floor, pale as could be. She had clearly died of blood loss—the right side of her chest was soaked red.

  I suddenly thought of the Eleventh Finger victim Chief Hu had mentioned—how the killer had cut off her breasts. This must be the same person. The last photo was taken while she was still alive. Her smile was lovely, but her face was definitely unfamiliar.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know her. Is she our fifth victim?”

  “What were you doing during the National Day holiday?”

  “That week? I was home with my wife, trying to figure out how to have kids.”

  “The victim’s underwear had your DNA on it, Qin,” the boss said sharply. “Ling Dang’s trying to get pregnant, and you go do this?”

  Everything went numb again. “What? I—I—I . . . How’s that possible?”

  Every forensic scientist’s DNA is recorded in a database in order to guard against contamination during autopsies and sample-extraction processes. I hadn’t attended the fifth victim’s autopsy, so the only way my DNA could be on the victim was if we’d come into contact.

  “Whoa, Director Chen, you can’t possibly think the Eleventh Finger serial murderer is Qin here, right?” Lin Tao said.

  I felt bewildered, wronged, angry, confused, and so much else that my heart felt clogged. The pressure was so great, I couldn’t speak. I just looked directly at the boss, who stared back at me with a mixture of fury and concern.

  After a brief stalemate, he said, “The victim, Liu Cuicui, was poisoned, strangled, and disemboweled using the tongue scoop method. From what I hear, the task force has always suspected Eleventh Finger could be someone on the inside, but they never expected to find your DNA.”

  “What was it?” Lin Tao said. “Hair?”

  Chen was silent for a moment, then said, “Semen.”

  I had just gotten myself under control and was preparing to speak, but the revelation shocked me into incoherence all over again.

  “I—I—I . . . Sh-sh-she,” I stammered.

  “Very little was found, but the DNA is definitely yours.”

  “No.” Big Bao’s face was unusually mature and authoritative. “Absolutely not. Qin would never. And anyway, we’ve been busy solving murder cases together almost nonstop ever since that handyman home invasion.”

  “Yes, I’ve been catching up on the reports,” the boss said, “and it’s because of all that excellent work that you aren’t under arrest right now. You’ve never lied to me, Qin. Tell me, are you connected in any way to this or the other Eleventh Finger crimes?”

  “No!” I shouted, finally finding my voice.

  “Okay! I believe you, son. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have told you so much. But this looks bad. The task force is willing to hold off charging you with anything, pending investigation, but you can’t work for a while. Go study old cases in the archives so you don’t waste your time.”

  How was I supposed to focus on closed-case files and a wall of whispering archives?

  Me, a renowned forensic scientist, now a murder suspect. This was insane.

  I picked up Liu Cuicui’s photo, trying to figure out if I’d ever had anything at all to do with her. But after staring for a long time, I could honestly say I didn’t know her at all.

  It was getting late, but I still didn’t go home. I didn’t know how to tell Ling Dang what was happening, and we definitely couldn’t go to the OB/GYN department right now. I texted her and lied, saying I was out on a case. In the deserted archives, I slowly paged through the files, trying to compartmentalize my spiraling thoughts.

  Suddenly, the door swung open, and Lin Tao and Big Bao came in.

  Big Bao said darkly, “We stole the materials from all five Eleventh Finger cases and made copies for you.”

  “He’s not kidding about the stolen thing,” Lin Tao said, looking behind him. “If the task force finds out, we’re dead.”

  “Yeah,” Big Bao said, nodding hard. “We don’t want to get stuck in here looking at boring old archives like you.”