“Solved it,” I said, still thinking about what Hu had said.

  Han lifted the transparent evidence bag in his hand. “Chief, we examined this again like you asked. The separation point doesn’t show obvious signs of bleeding, and there appear to be multiple incisions, so we’re pretty sure it was cut after death.”

  Inside the bag was a finger, slightly bent. The part where it had separated was black and red with bone chips sticking out of the soft tissue.

  “I’m really stuck on this eleventh finger situation,” I said. “What do you all think?”

  “Yeah, DNA confirmed it doesn’t belong to the victim,” Hu said.

  “And we can rule out the possibility of it being the killer’s because of the lack of vital response.” I took the evidence bag from Han. “It’s really strange, all these fingers lately. On that gutter-oil case, the first thing we found was a finger. Now one shows up in this case too.”

  “I wonder what relationship there is between the two victims,” Chief Hu said. “I mean, we don’t know for sure that the eleventh finger and the disemboweled body are actually connected.”

  “Two unrelated dismembered bodies discarded in the same place?” I replied. “That’d be one hell of a coincidence.”

  “We’ve got people investigating Zuo Fangjiang’s contacts, and others hunting for the rest of the body that goes with that finger. Other than that, we’re at a bit of a loss.”

  I was still staring at the evidence bag. “What about timing? Have we looked into it?”

  Han came over. “Can’t infer time of death based on just a finger.”

  I glanced at the survey kit at our feet, then motioned to Big Bao. “Get me a fresh blade.” I opened the evidence bag, ready to take the finger out.

  The scalpels forensic scientists and surgeons use are the same. Each has a surgical knife handle, and the blade is replaced after each use.

  Chief Hu was shocked. “Wait, right here? Hold on, I’ll lay out some newspaper. This is a new desk, damn it. We gotta maintain hygiene, maintain hygiene!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. After Chief Hu covered the desk in newspaper, I placed the finger on it and pulled on a pair of gloves.

  “A finger’s main structures are skin, fascia, and bones,” I said. “Because the fascia is hard and tough, it will decay much slower than other tissue. This finger’s skin is obviously turning black, and the soft tissue shows signs of blackening too.”

  “It’s only been four or five days since the last examination,” Han said.

  “Yeah, a few days of decay definitely couldn’t cause a finger to reach this level.”

  I cut the tip of the finger to expose the yellow-and-white subcutaneous fascia. “Look, the fascia has already softened, which means we’re looking at a prolonged period of decomposition.”

  “You’re saying the eleventh finger’s owner and the body we examined didn’t die at the same time?” Big Bao said.

  “Definitely not,” I said firmly. “There’s no hard-and-fast rule to determine the exact correlation between time of death and decay of a certain body part. However, the fascia takes at least half a month to soften like this when it’s not particularly hot out, so we’re talking about a death sometime around mid-May.”

  “In other words, the body parts of these two victims weren’t thrown in the garbage at the same time?” Big Bao said. “If the cases aren’t related, I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  “Of course it’s bad,” Han said. “If there’s no relation, that means two cases to solve, and the finger won’t help us find out more about the other body.”

  “I actually think it’d be a good thing,” Chief Hu said. “If it’s one case and the killer just left an extra finger, then he’s really trying to mess with us. With a well-prepared, professional enemy, we’re out in the open, and he’s holding all the cards. That’s no good for us.”

  I shook my head. “Who said the bodies couldn’t be discarded together just because they weren’t killed together? What if the killer disposed of the first corpse earlier but kept this finger, then put it with Zuo Fangjiang’s corpse?”

  “That would be scary—it’d definitely be a provocation,” Hu said. “Hopefully your famous jinx powers won’t work this time.”

  “I’m afraid they will,” I said, “but it’s not jinxing; it’s just judgment. What’s more, I think the softening of the fascia could be more from having been frozen than from regular decay.”

  All forensic scientists know that if a body is frozen and then put back into a room-temperature environment, it’ll decay faster. Some corpses decay so much while thawing that the skin turns blackish yellow.

  “But we didn’t freeze the eleventh finger after that last autopsy,” Han said.

  “Which means the killer may have frozen it before he discarded it with Zuo Fangjiang’s corpse,” I said.

  This case was shaping up to be a doozy.

  “Either way, the only place to start is by IDing that finger,” Lin Tao said, breaking the silence. “If we’re right so far, investigating Zuo Fangjiang’s problematic social relationships won’t do us much good.”

  “Whether it helps or not, we have to check,” Hu said. “Forensics has done all it can—the only thing now is to wait for the criminal investigation part of the task force to give us some good news.”

  “True,” I said. “It all depends on them. I’d like to talk to the detectives. IDing this finger is urgent. Also, have we made any progress on the cause of death?”

  “Tetramine, a potentially lethal amount, was detected in the victim’s urine,” Hu replied. “We believe the murderer poisoned the victim’s food or drink, but the incisions show a slight vital reaction. What we don’t know is if that means the killer didn’t wait until the victim was really dead to begin the disembowelment or just started it moments after he died.”

  “So, since we don’t know if the victim was completely dead when the cutting began, we can’t determine whether the main cause of death was poison or blood loss.”

  “Like I keep saying, poison cases are usually committed by women,” Han said.

  “Get off it, Han,” Big Bao retorted. “No way could a woman be this brutal.”

  12

  “By the way, where’s Director Chen?” Chief Hu asked.

  “A big shooter case,” I said. “Several provinces, several killed. The perp’s some kind of lunatic—started unloading as soon as the bank door opened, took the money, and ran. And I hear he broke through a heavy police blockade and keeps slipping right through our fingertips. The Ministry of Public Security is taking it very seriously, so they called the boss in to help. I doubt he’ll be back before they solve it. I’m doing my best to fill in while he’s gone.”

  “Oh, I know about that case, lots of chatter online.” Hu nodded.

  My cell phone started buzzing like a hornet in my pocket. Maybe it has to do with my line of work, but I’ve developed the unfortunate habit of jumping every time my phone rings.

  “Shit! I just got back—still haven’t gotten a chance to go home and see my wife! There can’t be another case, can there?” I fumbled in my pocket.

  “Uh . . . your exam glove’s still on,” Big Bao said.

  I ripped off the tight gloves. “If I have to go on another work trip, Ling Dang will divorce me.”

  “Yeah, right,” Lin Tao said with a smile. “She’s so good to you, and you helped her family with that impossible case—she should be loyal to you for life.”

  “Qin! I’m deep in it over here, and you can’t even be bothered to answer your phone?” Director Chen’s voice boomed in my ear.

  “Huh? What’s going on?” I said. “Boss, sorry, have you been calling me? I just got back from Qingxiang City. I’m in Dragon City working a murder.”

  “Skip town for a case in Qingxiang, leave the office empty, don’t answer your phone . . . Are you trying to piss me off?” Chen snarled.

  I glared at my phone—the piece of junk was always missing calls. Time to burn a month’s salary on a new one. “So sorry, Boss. What’s up?”

  “Liqiao City’s got a new case. I didn’t catch the details,” Chen said. “You guys hurry over, see if you can help.”

  “Got it. On our way, Boss.”

  As soon as I hung up, I felt exhausted. “Damn, looks like we’re not even going home.”

  And so we jumped in a car and spent half that day on the highway. By nightfall we’d reached Liqiao City’s public security bureau.

  The conference room was lit only by a projector. Clouds of cigarette smoke slowly drifted through the beam of light, turning the space into an acrid fairyland. Even for a smoker like me, the room was suffocating.

  “Ahem, hello, Director Qiang.” I shook hands with the director. “Director Chen told us to get here as soon as possible, but we haven’t heard any details yet.”

  “It’s a pretty strange case,” Director Qiang said with a bitter laugh. “We just started watching this surveillance video. Join us.”

  “This alley is located on the east side of town. It was built during the early Republican Era and is a level-three cultural heritage site,” a detective said by way of introduction. “Most of the old housing in East City has been demolished, but the alleys have been preserved.”

  The detective took a sip of water and continued. “The area consists of seventeen north-south and east-west alleys that form a kind of a maze, so locals call them the ‘Lost Lanes.’ The Lost Lanes have twenty-one family dwellings, each a traditional courtyard building. Of the twenty-one households, sixteen are renters and five are long-term residents.”

  The detective aimed a laser pointer at the screen. “Because of a prior rape case, the local police station installed several surveillance cameras. This image was captured by one of the cameras.”

  The detective tapped on the computer, and the screen began to move. A man dressed in dark clothing passed through the frame. Then there were four or five minutes of just a blinking light in the corner of the alley. I yawned, rubbed my tired eyes, and looked up just in time to see a shadow flash across the screen.

  The shadow belonged to a short-haired woman in a dress. She looked right into the camera, then, leaning on the wall, slowly turned away from it.

  The detective spoke again. “Based on her body shape and clothing, we believe this to be Tao Zi, a missing person. After she came upon this camera, she realized the alley had come to an end, and she escaped in the other direction. Unfortunately, there’s no camera there, so we couldn’t see that.”

  On the screen, Tao Zi was squatting against the wall and covering her face with her hands.

  “Watch the opposite corner.”

  As he spoke, a dark shadow appeared there, looking like the silhouette of a long-haired woman. Tao Zi leapt up. She grabbed her hair, then turned her face to the wall and covered her eyes.

  “Looks like extreme fright, right?” Director Qiang said.

  Seemingly terrified, Tao Zi rushed toward the corner of the alley, but as she was about to disappear from view, she fell. Her legs were still in the frame, but her upper body was obscured.

  “Here’s where it gets really bizarre,” the detective said.

  On the screen, the shadow of the long-haired woman slowly grew bigger and bigger until it covered Tao Zi’s legs. Then, a hazy white light appeared to slink around the corner and envelop the fallen figure. The detective stopped the video with a click.

  “We asked our video-processing colleagues to clarify this image, and this is the result.”

  In the enlarged picture, we could see that the shadowy white light was half a person—the other half was blocked by the wall. The visible half showed a long head of hair covering the face, and below it, a whole white body, but the arms and legs were not visible.

  The Ring, I thought, shivering. It was the scariest movie I had ever seen. But being a forensic scientist, how could I believe in ghost stories? To comfort myself, I turned to Lin Tao and joked, “You believe in ghosts, right? This time, it’s the real thing.”

  Lin Tao blanched. “Let’s share a hotel room tonight. Big Bao can stay by himself.”

  “When a female officer reviewing the tape saw this part, she got so scared, she cried,” the detective sneered. “She’s convinced her district is haunted. In my opinion, it’s just someone in a white sheet pretending to be a ghost. Don’t they say ghosts don’t have shadows? This one sure does.”

  The detective tapped his keyboard, and the video continued.

  The white shadow seemed to squat down and edge closer to Tao Zi’s body. Soon, the “ghost” stood up and dragged Tao Zi away.

  The detective opened another image, a diagram of Lost Lanes. “The red dots mark the locations of our cameras. We retrieved all the video, and only this camera recorded Tao Zi before she went missing. After the footage you’ve just seen, Tao Zi and the white shadow just disappear.”

  “Disappear?” Lin Tao squeaked.

  “Right,” the detective said. “If the white shadow was very familiar with Lost Lanes, there were two routes they could have taken to get out without being seen.”

  “Or White Shadow lives somewhere in Lost Lanes,” I said.

  “Or she’s a ghost,” Lin Tao whispered.

  “So what all do we know?” I said over Lin Tao, afraid the local cops would laugh at my superstitious friend.

  The conference room lights were abruptly switched on, making me squint.

  “So,” Director Qiang said, “this morning, Commissioner Tao of Liqiao City’s inland revenue department called the police to report that his sixteen-year-old daughter, Tao Zi, had gone missing. It seems that, around eight last night, Tao Zi got a call from a friend inviting her for karaoke at Guosheng KTV. When a taxi arrived, Commissioner Tao looked down from his balcony and saw three of her classmates inside, so he didn’t worry. But Tao Zi still wasn’t home by midnight, so Tao called some of her friends. They all said Tao Zi had headed home by herself at ten.”

  “How far is Guosheng KTV from Lost Lanes?” I asked.

  “Not far,” the detective said. “Probably a couple hundred yards. But the karaoke bar is on a major road, so it’s easy to catch a cab. If Tao Zi was going home, there was no need to walk through Lost Lanes.”

  “Have we searched each of the Lost Lanes households yet?” I asked.

  “We’re just finishing going through all the video this afternoon, and we’re just beginning an inquiry into the twenty-one households. Meanwhile, we’re making contact with some of Tao Zi’s classmates.”

  “And Tao Zi herself? Where is she?”

  Everyone shook their heads. Qiang said, “We haven’t found her yet.”

  I immediately felt uncomfortable. “Wait, why’d you call us in if you don’t have a body?”

  Qiang touched his head in embarrassment and gestured at Lin Tao. “The thing is, we called Director Chen to ask him to send Trace Technician Lin to help us find Tao Zi and examine some trace evidence we found. But Director Chen was busy with that big case and didn’t have time to let me explain, so he sent your whole team down.”

  “Ah,” I said curtly. “I see. So Big Bao and I can go home?”

  Lin Tao grabbed my sleeve. “Don’t go! Just wait a day or two and go back with me. Tomorrow’s the weekend anyway, so there’s nothing to do. Besides, if you take the car, how am I gonna get back?”

  I knew he was afraid of staying here alone. “Nothing to do? Maybe I want to spend the weekend with my wife! You ever heard of newlyweds?”

  “The truth is that we may well end up needing you, Examiner Qin,” Qiang said. “From the looks of it, Tao Zi is not in good shape. I’ve got men sweeping the area. We might have something for you very soon.”

  “You shouldn’t talk like that,” I objected. “You’re making it sound like the poor kid is doomed.”

  “We’ll see,” the detective said. “For now, it’s only seven thirty. Why doesn’t Trace Technician Lin come with us to take another look at the scene?”

  Lin Tao flashed me a desperate look.

  I smiled. “Y’know, I think Big Bao and I will come too.”

  In the dim light of the streetlamps, it really did feel like we were entering a maze. With the detective’s help, we found the spot from the surveillance footage.

  “According to our analysis using the light angle and shadow length,” he said, “that white-looking shadow belonged to someone about five eight.”

  Lin Tao nodded, lay down on his stomach, and peered at the ground. “Did you protect this surface?”

  The detective shook his head. “We didn’t see the footage until ten hours after the fact, so by then there was no point.”

  Lin Tao jumped up and brushed the dust off his pants. “No use. Can’t see any traces; they’ve all been destroyed.”

  “Didn’t you say there are two ways out of Lost Lanes that bypass the cameras?” I asked.

  The detective nodded.

  “Then take us along those routes. Let Lin Tao see the walls there.”

  It wasn’t until we were tracing the second route that Lin Tao found something.

  “This looks useful!” Lin Tao shouted. “A palm print and a wipe trace.”

  I leaned in closer. “Huh? What’s that mean?”

  Lin Tao pointed at the wall. “The palm print wasn’t made by direct contact with the wall, but through a very fine fabric. And there’s a wipe mark about four inches above the print.”

  “Why would you get a print through fabric? It’s too warm for gloves.”

  “The shadow in the video looked like someone wrapped in a sheet, right? So, if even their palm was covered and it touched the wall, it would leave this kind of mark!”

  I nodded.

  “Not only that,” Lin Tao crowed, “there’s also this wipe mark here, probably from fabric rubbing against the wall. Judging by the height, it was left by something being carried on the person’s shoulders.”

  “You’re saying someone wrapped in a sheet and carrying Tao Zi on their shoulders leaned against the wall right here?” I asked.

  Lin Tao nodded.

  “Awesome, so we’ve got White Shadow’s route. Maybe she lives in this direction,” the detective said.