She stared at me wide-eyed. “Weren’t you suspended?”

  “It wasn’t justified,” I said as I led her into the lab. “And it’s just a simple favor. Remember that old Yuntai case with the rapes and the security guard? After Shui Liang was captured, did we get a DNA sample from him?”

  “Of course,” Zheng said. “We take samples from everyone when they’re brought in.”

  “And you guys processed an abandoned baby’s wrap yesterday, right?” I said. “I need to know if a genetic relationship can be established between Shui Liang and the DNA from the wrap. And I need it right away.”

  “You think the abandoned baby was his?” Zheng said. “What an unfortunate family.”

  Before long, Zheng came out of the analysis room. “It’s a match. Shui Liang, the abandoned baby, and the mother are related.”

  “Oh my God, Qin,” Big Bao said. “That indirectly confirms the suspect in this case is Shui Liang’s wife!”

  “Bao,” I said, “this is very serious. I need you to hurry and get this information to the task force. Have them put the suspect under immediate surveillance.”

  The task force was overjoyed to hear that there was finally a real break in this impossible case. They immediately dispatched an elite force to search the woman’s house and the VW Beetle parked in front. When one of the female officers took a bucket out of the trunk, she couldn’t help but scream. In the bottom was a plastic bag containing a human breast.

  64

  The DNA map printed slowly, so slowly. Lab Director Zheng tore it off and pointed with a ruler. “The stains in the victim’s car and courtyard contained human blood matching from Meng Xiangping and Zuo Fangjiang. The soft tissue in the plastic bag is a match for Liu Ciuciu.”

  The room burst into cheers.

  The mountain that had been slowly crushing all the task force officers was demolished at last.

  That afternoon, Pond arrived home and found two heavily armed police officers standing in the yard. She turned to run, but several plainclothes officers had closed in behind her.

  She straightened her clothes and hair, put her hands up, and smiled slightly. “If you fail, you must pay the price. I’ve long been prepared for this day.”

  “You failed, all right, but you can’t pay the price,” Lin Tao said, glaring at her. “Demons go to hell.”

  None of the officers were willing to interrogate her, all unable to believe that this beautiful woman was the perverted, brutal demon who’d killed five people and toyed with several dozen police personnel.

  She said plainly, “I won’t talk to anyone but Qin.”

  EPILOGUE

  My name is Hai Run. I’m twenty-seven years old, from Yuntai.

  The characters in my name all have the radical that means “water” as part of their characters, and I’ve loved water since I was little. That’s why my close friends call me “Pond.”

  Since birth, I’ve always been the best. Once I started going to school, my supplies and bags were better than everyone else’s, and all the boys liked me. Although my mom passed away when I was six, my father took care of me like a mother and father combined.

  He was an entrepreneur, even though he wasn’t born with any connections. He manufactured and sold tetramine to get his first chunk of money. By the time I was in middle school, he’d switched to real estate and become an important man. When I started high school, he was already chairman of the biggest company in Yuntai.

  My father was very busy, but he never neglected me. And no one dared to bully me, because they were afraid of him. My teachers never yelled or hit me. Even if I skipped school or didn’t do my homework, they would just laugh. My life was smooth sailing till I was twenty-five.

  Even though I was obviously beautiful, I always liked roughhousing and playing soccer with the boys. Dad often tried to tell me that girls have to do girl things or no boy will want them. That clearly wasn’t true—my desk drawer was full of love letters. But I didn’t like any of those boys. They were all rule-followers and cowards.

  I just wanted to have fun, so my grades weren’t great. Based on my college entrance exam, I could have attended a university, but I chose nursing school instead. The reason was simple—I liked the outfits.

  Dad was fiercely opposed. He said, “Why not study accounting? Better than waiting on people as a nurse.” But I was very assertive, and eventually, he had to accept my wishes.

  Nursing school was almost all women, and I kept having confusing feelings about some of them. Once, a female classmate got drunk and kissed me, and it felt really good.

  When I told Dad about the strange feelings, he wanted me to drop out and get away from all those women. His plan was to send me abroad to learn about the world and how to manage my money. I was his only child, so he had to consider the problem of passing on his enormous assets. I’d never even left Yuntai City, so I wasn’t willing to go live in a strange country. But I did agree to drop out, because after that first year, I knew there was no way I was willing to do the dirty, tiring, risky work of a nurse.

  With Dad’s help, I transferred to Yuntai University to study finance. But I could never pay attention in class. Accounting, Western economics, management studies, statistics—it was all boring nonsense. In one ear and out the other.

  The only thing I could think about was whether I liked men or women, and how to get my dad to accept it.

  That summer, I was walking into a bank when I felt someone reach into my pocket. Nobody robs me! I turned and grabbed the asshole, not expecting he would take out a knife and cut me.

  I saw the bloodstained knife and thought I was going to die.

  At that moment, a man in a uniform suddenly rushed out of the bank. He aimed his gun at the thief and yelled, “Down on the ground!”

  The cut on my arm wasn’t serious, so I decided not to bother pressing charges. I didn’t have the mental energy to think about thieves. The tall, handsome guard who came to my rescue caught my eye, so I got his number. His name was Shui Liang, and since Shui means “water,” I knew it was meant to be.

  My father used all his connections to pry into Shui Liang’s past, but Shui Liang wasn’t offended. He said he understood a daughter’s happiness meant everything to her father.

  Even though Shui Liang had been born poor and didn’t have a very good job, my father said he had integrity, so he supported our relationship.

  If I tried to list all the ways Shui Liang was good to me, it would take all night. He was incredibly loyal. I trusted him, trusted him completely. I loved him with all my heart. He said he would never leave me.

  Our marriage was very happy, and my father gave us anything and everything. Last year, our love finally crystalized in an adorable baby boy.

  My father treasured the baby and eagerly took care of him on weekends. That gave us some time alone. Everyone was so happy.

  But our perfect family was broken that day.

  Because of you, Qin.

  The day you took my Shui Liang away, my father and I were sure you had the wrong person. How could such an honest, kind person be a murderer? We refused to believe it.

  So my father reached out to his connections on the police force. They said you had conclusive evidence my Shui Liang had raped and killed a bunch of high school girls.

  The shock gave my father a cerebral hemorrhage. He fell asleep and never woke up.

  I still don’t dare to think too much about that time. My two loved ones left me on the same day—my husband arrested for rape and murder, my father dead from shock and anger. That day, I cried all the water out of my name. I cried the whole night.

  To think that my darling husband could actually do something like that, even after we met, even while I was pregnant. Are there no good and decent men in this world? I hated him, but deep down, I still loved him. That tension between love and hate ripped open my heart.

  And my beloved father, for whom I was the most precious thing on earth, gave me everything I wanted, and I’d gone and chosen a man whose evil killed him. My guilt was like a knife in my broken heart.

  But the one who truly tore my perfect family apart was you, Qin Ming. You thought you solved a big case, did a great job, huh? But your triumph is built on my anguish. The next day, I made up my mind to use all the money I’d inherited from my father to make sure you got a taste of the pain you’d caused.

  But when I went to my father’s company, I found out I had nothing. Some of the vice presidents had been maneuvering to steal the company from him, and his death just made it easier. Only a few days had passed, but they’d already managed to take over my whole stake in the company.

  Luckily, my father still had several hundred thousand yuan in savings, and he’d bought a small house in my name in the provincial capital, so I wasn’t homeless.

  When I got to Dragon City, everything was unfamiliar. With my father’s savings, my son and I were able to survive while I figured out what to do next.

  Then fate struck again. One night, my son suddenly had difficulty breathing. By the time I got him to the hospital, he seemed fine. The doctor said it was nothing and that I shouldn’t worry. Relieved, I took my baby back home. But when I woke up the next morning, he was dead.

  If that horrible doctor had any regard for human life, my son would not have died.

  Now the last thing I cared about in the world was gone. I had nothing, so why go on living? I didn’t cry again, because I had already cried all the tears in my heart’s pond.

  The baby’s legs were flabby, and my trembling hands couldn’t get the wrap around him properly, so I tried string, but that didn’t work either. I tried using a knife to cut grooves for the string, but I couldn’t go through with it. Sometime later, his beautiful little body grew stiff, so I wrapped him up, ready to jump together out the window.

  Crouching there on the ledge, I thought of you. I still hadn’t gotten my revenge.

  So I started researching forensics online. Tongue scoop, dismemberment—they may seem frightening, but I’d already lost my humanity. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, wasn’t afraid of blood, wasn’t even afraid of death.

  I started going to bars and found out how awful men are. They all deserved to die.

  There was an old box at home with some tetramine inside. My father had said even a little bit of the drug could kill someone, so I was never allowed to touch it. He’d kept the box as a memento. After all, it was the bedrock of his fortune. I looked on the Internet and read about tetramine’s stability, how even after many years it won’t lose potency. And how as soon as the police find it, they trace it to the source. But mine was untraceable. This was my magic ancestral weapon.

  My first bar adventure was with a doctor. I hate doctors, and married doctors who go out to pick up women I hate even more, so I killed him.

  I used forensic methods to disembowel the body, then dismembered and discarded it. But after two weeks, the body still hadn’t been discovered. I decided to put the next one somewhere you couldn’t miss it. I would let you find it, let you solve the case. Aren’t you good at solving cases? I wanted to see if you could guess your murderer was a woman.

  I got the idea from a TV show to put one part of a victim with the next body so they could easily be connected, but you idiots still couldn’t solve it. I made sure the killing was done very professionally, with forensic techniques, so suspicion would fall on you. But you cops never want to suspect your own people.

  Then a golden opportunity arose.

  Standing in the crowd outside the caution tape as you surveyed one of my perfect scenes, I heard you and a handsome guy talking about going to the fertility doctor. I followed you there, and perhaps heaven helped me, because the nurse who took your sample was an old classmate of mine. I was easily able to distract her with gossip while stealing a bit of that semen sample.

  If I couldn’t frame you, at least I could ruin your reputation. So I found a woman to plant your DNA on. Her death would help me get my revenge. Revenge for Shui Liang, whom I loved and hated, revenge for my father, my son, and myself.

  Maybe I lost, but I’m at peace. I can go see the three most important men in my life. They’re waiting for me.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Qin Ming, a lead medical examiner by trade, started his long career early and earned the nickname Old Qin. His perceptive analysis of countless bodies earned him another: the Corpse Whisperer. He uses his deft hands to right wrongs and his Buddhist heart to wish for world peace. His bestselling novels have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Photo © 2014 Bethany Ruth Christy

  Alex Woodend is a writer and translator whose fascination with Spanish and Chinese began at Franklin & Marshall College. He continued his studies at Columbia University, where he wrote his master’s thesis on early post-Mao literature.

  The translator of the Captain Riley Adventures series and other titles, he currently lives in New York and is at work on more translations and original fiction.

 

 

  Qin Ming, Murder in Dragon City

 

 

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