At dawn, four police cars stood outside an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Jinghai City, their yellow crime-scene tape glaring in the pale light. Guan Qingyun had been up all night and rushed over as soon as she received the call. Before she could even get out of the car, Xiaoling ran up to tell her they had found several body bags.
Guan Qingyun stepped out. “Has the medical examiner assessed the scene?”
Xiaoling shook her head. “Sister Lin isn’t here yet. She spent most of last night trying to piece together that other body.”
As Guan Qingyun listened, she headed toward the bags. The stench of decay reached her before she got close.
Thank God she had skipped breakfast. Otherwise, this would have been a very different scene.
“There won’t be any witnesses out here. Whoever chose a place this remote has done this before.” Guan Qingyun crouched and held out a hand to Xiaoling.
Xiaoling immediately understood. She pulled off the white gloves she was holding and passed them over.
Once the gloves were on, Guan Qingyun began examining the black bags. Saying the victim had been cut into pieces was no exaggeration. The dismemberment was meticulous, as if the killer understood human anatomy.
Her first guess was a doctor, perhaps even a butcher. With a closer look, they might also find that the killer already had a police record.
Ten minutes later, another car pulled up outside. A man in a brown leather jacket got out first, his hair lifting in the wind as he ducked beneath the crime-scene tape.
“Qingyun, what do we have?”
Guan Qingyun summarized the situation, then looked at the medical examiner following behind him. “Sister Lin, there are four or five bags. This will be difficult to process here. I think we need to take them back to the station.”
Lin Yitang did not disagree. “Xiaoling sent me the basic details before I came. I thought the same thing, but Captain Zhou insisted I examine them here first.”
She gave a helpless smile, walked past Guan Qingyun, and turned her attention to the remains.
Guan Qingyun approached Zhou Bin and took a letter from her bag.
“Zhou Bin, look at this.” She lowered her voice.
He accepted the envelope and joked, “What is this? Sending me a love letter now?”
Impatience edged Guan Qingyun’s reply. “It was delivered to the station last night with my name as the recipient. There was no sender or return address. I questioned the courier first, but he didn’t know who had sent it. All he knew was that it came from somewhere in this district.”
Zhou Bin saw the gravity in her eyes. The moment he opened the envelope, his casual manner vanished. He looked up at her tensely. “I’ll have it checked for fingerprints. We can’t be sure whether anything in it is really connected to our mentor.”
“You can weigh the possibilities. I can’t wait any longer.”
“I know you can’t. But police work requires evidence. Belief matters, but we can’t rely on our own assumptions.”
With that, Zhou Bin pulled out his phone. He needed to explain the situation to the evidence unit and arrange to hand over the letter when they returned.
Guan Qingyun could barely contain herself, and the strain made her restless.
Her father’s case had gone unresolved for far too long. She blamed herself more than anyone. It was why she had entered the police academy in the first place and fought through every obstacle until she became deputy captain of the criminal investigation detachment.
She let out a long breath. When Lin Yitang walked over, Guan Qingyun forced her emotions back under control.
“Qingyun, I’ve made a preliminary examination. The remains are incomplete, and several pieces show signs of burning. The cuts vary considerably. The wound across the pelvis may have been made with a large, heavy blade—possibly an axe or something similar.”
“There are no drag marks at the scene, either. This may be the primary crime scene,” Guan Qingyun said slowly. “Let’s return to the station and see what answers the remains can give us.”
She turned. “Zhou Bin?”
He rubbed hard at his brow. “Qingyun’s right. From here on, we’ll have to rely on the forensic team.”
Zhou Bin drove back with only Guan Qingyun in his car. The medical examiners traveled separately.
Throughout the drive, Guan Qingyun kept thinking about the letter.
Was the sender inside the police force or outside it? Were they trying to threaten her?
Zhou Bin glanced at her through the rearview mirror. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but remained silent.
When they reached the station, the two of them went first to the evidence unit and found Xiao Wang.
Xiao Wang took the evidence bags from Zhou Bin. They contained not only the anonymous letter, but also items recovered from the dismemberment scene.
“Xiao Wang, process the letter separately,” Zhou Xun said, stressing every word as he slapped the desk. “The instant you get a result, send everything straight to my office. Understood?”
Rather than frightening Xiao Wang stiff, the order sent him scrambling nervously into the innermost room.
“Sister Guan?” Xiao Wang suddenly poked his head back out. “Do I report the results to you too?”
Guan Qingyun nodded. “We’ve had a lot of cases lately. I’ll treat everyone to milk tea when this is over.”
At crucial moments, a little incentive kept people moving.
Rewards and consequences had always been basic principles for her.
“Yes! Thank you, Sister Guan!”
“Back to work!” Zhou Bin shouted with a laugh.
Zhou Bin was strict and relentlessly driven. He was easygoing with himself, but trained his subordinates like a demon. Whenever the higher-ups pushed another case down onto the detachment, it was always the people below who suffered.
He had been like that when Guan Qingyun first met him. By now, she was used to it.
“Let’s go to forensics and see what they’ve found,” she said.
Zhou Bin nodded. They soon reached the forensic department, with the autopsy room at the far end. Through the observation window, partially reassembled remains lay across an autopsy table.
“Captain Zhou, come look at this,” Lin Yitang said, getting straight to the point. “I’ve pieced together what I can, but roughly thirty pieces are still missing. The remains show several different injuries. Most of the internal organs are present and suffered relatively little damage…”
Before she finished, she pushed her notebook into Zhou Bin’s hands. Guan Qingyun leaned in to read it as well.
“Total weight is forty jin. This wasn’t a heavy person. Despite the severity of the attack, the remains aren’t as damaged as you’d expect, which suggests the killer wasn’t simply hacking at random. The burn on the lower left arm is especially severe. That may be our breakthrough,” Guan Qingyun concluded from the notes.
“Not necessarily. Apart from the burn, there are shallow knife wounds across the body. They look superficial, but every one of them is positioned over a vital area. Any of those cuts could have been fatal.”
“We still need a full autopsy,” Zhou Bin said thoughtfully. “And to estimate the time of death, we need the original scene-survey data. Until that comes in, we can’t draw any conclusions.”
They needed firmer evidence. Guan Qingyun suggested that Zhou Bin wait there while she went to the technical unit. Its report might arrive sooner.
He agreed at once.