When the police had arrived on the scene, the body was covered from head to toe in towels. Because there were no forensic scientists on-site, no one had removed the towels until now.

  Big Bao’s roar made my heart beat like a drum. I forced myself to calm down, went to the bedside, and looked at the corpse’s head: a uniform green surface. You could vaguely make out a nose, but no other facial features.

  In the dim light, it looked like a robber with a stocking over the face, or something out of a horror movie. I crouched down to get a closer look.

  “How is that possible?” Deputy Chief Chen asked.

  “Any chance it might not be the deputy mayor?” added Wang hopefully.

  “Even if it’s not Ding, it still shouldn’t be faceless.” I pressed my fingers against the green surface, and it wrinkled up immediately.

  “Oh! The corpse’s face is covered with several layers of paper. As the body decayed and leaked, the paper turned the same color as the victim’s skin. In this bad light, it just seemed like it didn’t have a face.”

  Even though it had only been five days, it was so hot and humid in there that the body was very far gone. The once-white sheets were stained by the dark green liquid.

  The rotten corpse lay supine with its hands behind its back, probably tied there by someone. The feet were bound with wide yellow tape that was also wrapped around the bed. I lifted the body and saw its wrinkled hands were also bound with tape.

  As I moved the body, the stench rushed out and made me feel faint. The movement also caused the paper mask to crack slightly, and the jawbone fell open. It was as if the rotting, faceless corpse suddenly unhinged its blood-bowl of a mouth and let ichor pour out.

  Big Bao, who’d been looking under the bed, glanced up at the corpse and yelped. “Shit, go easy. You’re gonna scare me to death.”

  Without the help of a local forensic team, and since funeral homes wouldn’t transport a decayed body, Big Bao and I were going to have to move it ourselves.

  I held the corpse’s feet while Big Bao took the elbows. Gas had gotten under the skin, which, along with tissue liquefaction, caused the smooth surface to become greasy. Big Bao’s hand slipped, and the corpse hit the bed with a bang, causing fluids to splash up. Bao gazed at the green patches of skin stuck to his gloves, then at the wet spots on his shirt—his face a mix of nausea and distress.

  Liquid bubbled out of the broken skin on the corpse’s dropped elbow, exposing the dense green pores of decayed subcutaneous tissue.

  “Whoa! Nice work, clumsy,” I said. “His elbow is injured. I couldn’t see it until you ripped off the skin. Let’s be sure to examine his joints for trauma.”

  Bao and I worked well into the night in the morgue’s blinding autopsy room.

  The corpse was wearing boxers and an undershirt. Being an important official, he’d dress so sloppily only if he was certain he was home alone.

  “We should be able to confirm the time of death soon,” I said. “Based on the stomach contents, the victim likely died about five hours after his last meal. And we know that he ate dinner with his driver at six thirty p.m. on June first. Combined with the info from the documents on the computer, I’d say he probably died around eleven thirty that night.”

  “Attacked at ten, dead at eleven thirty, makes sense.”

  “Nail bed cyanosis, visceral bleeding.” I cut into the heart and said, “No visible blood clot, just fluid decay. Blood there’s noncondensable. Looks like he choked to death.”

  We opened each elbow, wrist, ankle, and knee joint one by one. If the murderer constrained these joints during the crime, there should be blood under the skin.

  Sure enough, each showed signs of subcutaneous hemorrhage.

  “What’s this tell us?” I quizzed Bao, my voice muffled by my mask.

  “It tells us the victim died after someone tied him up.” Big Bao sounded a bit muffled too.

  I shook my head. “One killer probably wouldn’t have been able to control all of the joints.”

  Big Bao thought for a moment, then nodded hard. “So there were at least two. But there aren’t any serious injuries on the body. And there’s no bleeding around the mouth, nose, or neck, so how could he have suffocated?”

  “What about these?” I pointed to several small parallel flaps of skin on the neck, half-hidden in the bloated folds.

  “These are practically scratches,” Big Bao said. “Scratches can’t serve as the basis for mechanical asphyxia.”

  “I didn’t say they were caused by choking,” I said. “They’re probably an intimidation wound.”

  “Oh! So we’ve got constraints, we’ve got intimidation—you think the murderer was interrogating him?”

  “I’m thinking about how the hell I’m going to get the victim’s fingerprints,” said Lin Tao, who’d come to check on our progress. “As soon as I touch this skin, it comes off.”

  The buildup of liquid and gasses had separated the victim’s upper and lower skin layers. I used a scalpel to make an incision around the wrist, then peeled the skin off the hand like a glove. I carefully fitted the “human leather” over my hand and said to Lin Tao, “Okay, then, let me at that fingerprint pad.”

  Lin Tao stared at me wide-eyed with shock. “Y-y-you, I—I—I . . .”

  “You, me, what?” I laughed. “Come on already.”

  Lin Tao held up the fingerprint plate and mumbled, “You’re so gross, I can’t handle it . . .”

  Big Bao was studying the body’s face. “Qin, I got it. The stuff on his face is toilet paper, lots of it.”

  8

  “What’s the killer trying to say?” Big Bao asked. “What’s the point of killing someone, then covering the face with a bunch of toilet paper? Why not just use a pillowcase? And he used towels to cover the rest of the body, so why toilet paper on the face? I really don’t get it.”

  I was confused too. I held the stack of toilet paper sheets Big Bao had taken off and turned them back and forth. The side of the paper near the mouth was damaged, but not all the way through; on the other side, you could make out some kind of corrugation.

  A lightbulb snapped on. “Weren’t we trying to figure out how the victim suffocated? From this, of course.”

  “What?” Big Bao and Lin Tao asked in unison.

  “Fortune Paste!” I said.

  “Fortune Paste” is an ancient torture and interrogation method. Interrogators would wet mulberry paper and paste layer after layer of it on a prisoner’s face until they either talked or died of suffocation. When the paper dried, it would have indentations from the prisoner’s face like the mask worn onstage during a traditional “Fortune Dance.”

  “The victim shows no signs of mechanical asphyxia,” I continued, “but there’s this wad of toilet paper on his face. And it’s damaged on the face side, I think because it was wet and the victim used his lips and tongue to try to break through and breathe. But the killer or killers pasted on ten or twenty sheets, and the victim suffocated.”

  Big Bao and Lin Tao both nodded in startled agreement.

  I called Deputy Chief Chen down to the autopsy room and explained our findings. “Do you think the murderers wanted to get some kind of information from the deputy mayor?”

  “Ding was in charge of culture and education,” said Chen. “He wouldn’t have had political secrets of interest to others.”

  “Could it have been robbery?” Lin Tao asked.

  “No,” Chen said. “All the doors and windows were intact—no signs of a break-in. Plus, there wasn’t anything out of place in the house. Nothing points to a robbery.”

  “So it was probably an acquaintance?” I asked. “The deputy mayor wouldn’t let strangers in late at night.”

  Chen looked reluctant. “I’m afraid I don’t know any more than you. The city party secretary is insisting on confidentiality, and it’s created a lot of mystery.”

  “Isn’t she just a secretary?” Big Bao said. “Does she think she’s a special agent or something?”

  “Let’s call it a night.” I was exhausted. “We already got the cause and time of death. And we’re pretty sure it was an acquaintance crime with two or more killers who restrained and threatened the victim—maybe to get information. That’s enough for now. Tomorrow, Lin Tao will take a look at the tape from the victim’s hands and feet and see if he can find anything.”

  Lin Tao shook his head, face full of disappointment. “No point, the murderers were wearing gloves.”

  Back at the hotel, I couldn’t help but call the provincial bureau chief. The strange case with the eleventh finger was still on my mind, and I had to admit it was distracting me from the deputy mayor.

  “Chief Hu, how are you?” I asked. “Any new developments?”

  “The toxicology test confirmed our hypothesis,” Chief Hu said, sounding almost as tired as I was. “Tetramine in the victim’s urine—the victim died of poisoning.”

  “I’m still thinking about that eleventh finger,” I said. “Was it from another person?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Chief Hu said. “All the other body parts were verified as belonging to the same person. Just that one finger doesn’t. It’s another male’s.”

  I opened my laptop and scanned through the photos of the dismemberment case.

  “The finger was definitely dead before it was cut off,” I said. “Means the killer couldn’t have injured his own finger. There must be another body!”

  Chief Hu said, “We sent out a group of officers and search dogs, but they came up with nothing.”

  I went silent for a moment, then asked, “What about IDing the body?”

  “We’ve gone through missing persons files and compiled a list of individuals who meet the victim’s description; we’re hoping to find the family and ID the victim soon. We’ve got another group combing the tetramine black market to see if we can find the source. Tetramine is an illegal substance. If the murderer got hold of it, we want to know how.”

  Hanging up the phone, I collapsed into bed and, staring at the ceiling, my thoughts a mess, somehow fell asleep.

  Early the next morning, Secretary Bao asked us to come to the temporary headquarters. The secretary seemed to have put away her contemptuous air for the moment.

  “Please sit, gentlemen.” She bowed slightly.

  Her courtesy made me uneasy. Was the case at an impasse? Had my standing up to her yesterday weakened her pride?

  “On behalf of the city party committee, I would like to tell you gentlemen about the preliminary case findings,” Secretary Bao said with a stiff smile. “We had a suspect, another deputy mayor, Chen Feng. Chen and Ding were rivals—clashed politically. At meetings, they fought to the point where open conflict almost broke out on more than one occasion. Recently, when the provincial government was looking into promoting Chen, we received an anonymous tip that he’d accepted bribes. So not only did Chen’s promotion go out the window; he was placed under disciplinary review. In short, we suspected Deputy Mayor Chen hired someone to kill Deputy Mayor Ding in revenge for exposing him.”

  I tilted my head and thought it over. “Could be. Based on what we’ve found, the killers subdued the victim, then threatened and coerced him, like they were trying to get some kind of information. They may have wanted Ding to confess to reporting Chen.”

  “That’s the reason I asked you back here,” Secretary Bao said, a little embarrassed. “After last night, we can exclude Deputy Mayor Chen and his family as suspects. We have determined that he didn’t commit the murder, nor is it likely that he hired others to do it.”

  No wonder Secretary Bao had changed her tune. The case really was at an impasse: there was no lead, no evidence, no suspects. Now the arrogant lady realized our importance and her mistake.

  “I see, of course. Well, you’re in charge, Boss! Just call and we’ll come running,” I said with a sneer.

  Lin Tao elbowed me and shot me a look that said, Shut up.

  Secretary Bao gave Lin Tao a grateful nod. Indeed, if I kept talking, Secretary Bao would be humiliated in front of her subordinates.

  “We’ll get to work, give you our preliminary results tonight,” I told her.

  Back at the crime scene, we began a second survey of the room. It was daytime now and, with the window open, the sun shone in, revealing something I’d missed the night before.

  “Lin Tao, come look and tell me what the color variation in this stain is from,” I said, pointing at the massive green splotch on the bedsheets.

  “It looks like residue left by a colorless liquid after evaporation,” Lin Tao said, “but it’s definitely not water.”

  Big Bao lifted the stained portion of the sheet, smelled it, and said, “It . . . I think it’s alcohol.”

  “Alcohol?” Skeptical, I sniffed it as well but only got a noseful of rotten flesh. “I know you like to drink—you didn’t by any chance go out alone last night, did you?”

  “I don’t remember swapping our Big Bao for that bloodhound Bao Zhan from the special task force—how ’bout you, Qin?” Lin Tao apparently didn’t smell alcohol either. “Well, I’ll take these sheets back for tests, and we’ll see if he’s right.”

  “This too.” I picked up a soaked towel and stuffed it into Lin Tao’s evidence bag.

  It was getting close to noon, and we hadn’t found anything else new. The elegantly decorated home was calm and still. With the body gone, it was as if nothing had happened. Birds sang cheerfully outside, and the sun was shining.

  “Why would they have suspected Deputy Mayor Chen of hiring a hit man?” I was suddenly doubtful. “Think about it. If it were hit men, why would the victim have let them in?”

  “Didn’t they say they already ruled out the possibility that Chen hired someone?” Lin Tao asked.

  “Another problem,” I said. “Tell me what kind of person hears a knock at the door, answers it in his underwear, then invites the guest to his bedroom.”

  “You’re right!” Big Bao said. “They would have stayed downstairs. And maybe other people don’t have the decency to put on pants, but he was a deputy mayor!”

  “So, we overlooked some really obvious clues,” Lin Tao said. “Looks like you two are as distracted by the Eleventh Finger case as I am.”

  I went back to update Secretary Bao. “No matter how familiar the killers were, Mayor Ding wouldn’t have brought anyone into his bedroom in the middle of the night if he was wearing only underwear and an undershirt. And Ding isn’t even from around here.”

  Secretary Bao, whose job didn’t normally involve criminal investigations, thought over my argument for a long time before responding. “So, what then? Weren’t the doors and windows intact? How did the criminals get in?”

  “Keys,” Lin Tao and I said in unison.

  “But only Mayor Ding had keys to that apartment.” Secretary Bao thought a second, then corrected herself. “No, that’s not true. The maid must’ve had a set too.”

  I smiled generously and said, “Your guys will want to interrogate her, huh?”

  Lin Tao, Big Bao, and I went to Qingxiang City’s physical and chemical laboratory to test the sheets and towel. This was the first nationally accredited lab in our province—talented people, sophisticated equipment. As for the maid, I had faith that the local detectives would have results within a few hours.

  The graph on the chemical testing device jumped all over the place. Lin Tao didn’t take his eyes off it. “Big Bao really does have a good nose—it’s ethanol.”

  Big Bao scratched his head bashfully. “Heh . . . wild guess.”

  “Ethanol?” I wrinkled my brow. “How could it be ethanol? Which section did you test?”

  “Several sections showed the same profile,” Lin Tao said. “I’m confident that the color variation on the sheets was caused by evaporating ethanol. Furthermore, the towels from the body show traces of ethanol too.”

  “But we didn’t smell any in the room.”

  “The body stank so much, it covered the alcohol,” Big Bao pointed out.

  “So only a drunk like you could smell it, huh?” I said with a laugh. “But there was no alcohol container on-site, so the killers must have taken it away with them.”

  “Why would there be so much alcohol on everything?” Lin Tao wondered aloud.

  “The killers knew the victim, and they came to drink with him,” Big Bao said hopefully. “They drank and drank, then started to fight, then the murderers killed him.”

  We ignored our enthusiastic intern.

  “We’ve already established that the killers and victim probably didn’t know one another,” I said. “I suspect that the killers were hiding in the house ahead of time, waiting for an opportunity to strike.”

  “Still, where’d the ethanol come from?” Lin Tao asked.

  “Examiner Qin,” a detective said, running into the lab. “The maid has been questioned, and we have her in custody.”

  9

  The maid’s name was Fang Xiangyu. She was twenty-one, a high school graduate from the countryside, and quite plain. It hadn’t taken much to get the young woman, still dazed from her mother’s death and the discovery of Ding’s body, to talk.

  Fang Xiangyu knew Deputy Mayor Ding had spent most of his life as a bachelor. She confessed that, six months ago, he’d come home drunk after a business dinner and she’d taken the opportunity to seduce him.

  After their tryst, Fang Xiangyu told Ding that if he didn’t want to be reported, he had to double her salary. As a bonus, she’d let him make sexual demands of her anytime, at a rate of one thousand yuan per night.

  According to Fang Xiangyu, Ding did not call on her services again. And while she admitted to blackmailing the deputy mayor, she firmly denied any involvement in his death.

  “So we should release her?” the detective asked.

  I nodded. “But the people around this Fang Xiangyu need to be investigated further, because apart from the victim, she was the only one with a key to the house. Oh right, one more thing. Did the local surveillance cameras catch anything?”

  “We’ve looked closely at the footage from after ten p.m. on the night of June first,” the detective said. “No suspicious vehicles came through, and only a few small groups of people left the neighborhood.”