The Dress Serial Murders, Part 10
It had never occurred to Xiao Wang that catching Li Tan would be so easy.
He thought the man was bold, all right—pulling a knife in broad daylight, in front of a crowd. But say he wasn't bold, and that seemed true too, so careful and timid in everything he did.
Wang Ying had already restrained Li Tan completely with handcuffs.
Xiao Wang stepped forward, put on gloves, and quickly hauled the suitcase out and set it on the ground.
"Shopkeeper... have everyone leave the café first."
The shopkeeper was reminded, once again, of what all this meant.
She immediately ushered every customer out and away from the café. Soon there wasn't a soul left inside—even the waitstaff had gone.
They probably all had some idea what was in that suitcase, and the farther away they stayed, the better.
Officers on the perimeter had the entire café sealed tight; no one could leave, and no one could come in.
Xiao Wang crouched down and pulled on gloves. Wang Ying had already opened the suitcase: inside, as expected, was a body. Naked, with blood soaking through the case and still seeping out.
The body bore signs of prolonged abuse; the skin was marked all over to varying degrees—marks that made the stomach turn.
"I already called Brother Zhao. He should be here soon," Wang Ying said, frowning.
Xiao Wang nodded. He understood the rules well enough.
The body had turned up in Chaoyang, so jurisdiction belonged to them entirely.
He had already called his mentor too.
His mentor and Sister Guan were still on their way; for now, the scene had to be protected.
...
By the time Guan Zhiyan and Zhou Xun arrived, Zhao Yu was already at the scene, and the forensic examiner was taking down the details.
Seeing the two of them come, Zhao Yu was still turning over how to open the conversation.
Zhou Xun rolled his eyes and spoke first. "Enough. What exactly happened at this scene?"
"Mm... The victim was abused before death, and sexually assaulted; the body was put straight into the suitcase afterward. Aside from ligature marks on the neck and a footprint on her lower back, it looks like he pulled her up by the neck—matching those marks—pressed a foot against her back, and strangled her. They were likely on the bed when it happened. Time of death was about an hour ago." Zhao Yu rubbed his nose, uneasy. He paused, then went on. "It seems they... tried some abnormal methods of killing..."
But he didn't say everything.
Some of what he'd described, he himself found hard to utter.
Guan Zhiyan, having listened, only stepped up to the cordon to look at the woman's body.
Her heart lurched. "Old Zhou—isn't that the neighbor we just saw in the urban village?" It was the striking hair color that would draw anyone's eye, but she had recognized her by the pattern on her arm.
The tattoo was a beautiful, vivid butterfly—scored, though, with many slash marks across it. It was as if Li Tan hated that tattoo with a passion; those marks looked like the work of something gnawing and venting at his core.
At first Zhou Xun had noticed only the hair color, but once it was pointed out he quickly looked at the pattern on the arm. He too needed a careful look to make it out—and doing the math from the time Zhao Yu had just given, it had happened while they were at Hu Yan's place.
"But to kill like that... he didn't make a single sound."
"Which means he killed her in the middle of it."
Guan Zhiyan hadn't gone down that line of thinking at all.
She felt there was no point speculating—there was no concrete direction to it anyway.
There were far too many perverts in the world; see enough of them, hear enough, and it stopped shocking.
She lifted her eyes to Zhou Xun and Zhao Yu, as if guessing exactly what the two of them were thinking.
"Could the two captains keep your minds on the case and stop wandering?"
Zhou Xun shot back at once, "I'm not wandering. I'm thinking about the case."
Zhao Yu, hit where it hurt, coughed awkwardly.
He changed the subject immediately. "I'm having Li Tan interrogated now. Once you've gone through the files over there, Old Zhou, we'll transfer him to your squad."
Guan Zhiyan felt the priority was to see the situation in that room; this side could be left to Zhao Yu. So she looked up at him with a smile and said, "Captain Zhao, why don't we leave this to you for now—we need to take a look at the crime scene."
She felt Zhao Yu was easy to talk to, which was why she was happy to hand the whole matter to him.
A few pleasant words were all it took.
Zhao Yu rubbed his chin and glanced sideways at Zhou Xun.
"Fine, you two go ahead. The interrogation and this scene are on me."
"Thank you." Guan Zhiyan expressed her thanks.
"Xiao Wang!" Zhou Xun called. When Xiao Wang came over, he pointed at the car. "Get Dr. Lin!"
Xiao Wang ran for the car without wasting a second; they drove quickly toward the urban village.
...
Back in the urban village, Hu Yan was still inside waiting for news, two other officers waiting there with her. Below, the sound of police sirens grew louder and louder.
Quite a few people, seeing the scene, stopped in their tracks—no one had imagined anything like this would happen where they lived.
Guan Zhiyan got out of the car and hurried up the stairs after Zhou Xun, past the second floor, straight to the third, and quickly reached the room where the woman had been.
The room wasn't fully locked. Zhou Xun kicked at the lock—the lock was flimsy to begin with, and two kicks broke it open.
Inside, nearly everything had been knocked to the floor; the floorboards were covered in blood, much like the scene they'd seen at the factory.
The white quilt on the bed was soaked red, and red footprints covered the ground.
The scene was chaos.
Everyone on the floor who'd woken was coming to look. Xiao Wang hurriedly set up the cordon—and then saw Zhou Xun kick open the door of the other room as well.
The situation inside was calmer, but the room had been shut up so long that a stench hung in it, the kind that made you cover your nose.
Zhou Xun groped along the wall for the light switch.
In the instant the light flared on, the wall opposite the bed was covered in sprayed blood—spelled out into a single word: "Bitch."
Suddenly, the crowd outside was looking this way again.
Figures outside chattered; faintly, a few words carried over: "Really?", "I heard", "rumors."
Zhou Xun turned and stared at them, an indescribable sharpness in his eyes—the kind that made people afraid. Most of them wanted no part of any of this and began to drift away, but Xiao Wang seized the chance to stop those leaving: no one left until questioning was done.
They had no choice but to cooperate with the inquiry.
Zhou Xun frowned, and saw the police car enter the courtyard once more.
Lin Yitang got out with her apprentice, and the moment they were upstairs the two split off into the two rooms, pulling on shoe covers and gloves before entering the scenes, beginning their survey.
Hu Yan had come downstairs at the first news, looking at the sealed cordon.
And thinking again of that night.
Except now she stood where Qiu Ning once had.
She kept wondering what had happened to Qiu Ning.
Her heart kept lurching; she missed her step on the stairs and only just caught the railing—otherwise she would have fallen straight down.
The rain of that night seemed to sweep past her ears again, never once stopping.
Then the sound of a phone notification snapped her back. She frowned faintly—was it her boss with work, or something else? To keep her job, she took out her phone to see who had messaged her.
She suddenly froze.
The sounds around her vanished, leaving only the endless pop of notifications.
No... hadn't the police already arrested Li Tan?
Then who was sending these messages?
She nearly dropped the phone from her hand.
「Let's switch venues tonight—there's a café near you.」
Trembling, Hu Yan typed back:
「Where? Send me an address!」
The other side showed typing... for a few seconds, then:
「Don't you love that café?」
Hu Yan froze again. She had never told this person which coffee she liked, let alone anything else—the two of them always parted at the very edge of the urban village.
She had thoughtfully told him the inside was too chaotic and he needn't deliver all the way in. Unless...
He had been following her all along?
Her heart could not calm down for a long, long time.
She had no idea how to reply.