Murder in Dragon City Page 4
He didn’t answer.
Big Bao suddenly ran up from behind, panting. “They’re gone?”
“Yeah, they just left.” I looked at Big Bao in confusion.
Big Bao swallowed hard. “Damn. If I’d been a second earlier, maybe I could’ve gotten them to stay—we could still use their help.”
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Another murder,” Big Bao said. “The car’s outside. Hurry up.”
6
“You think we can’t handle some little murder without the big guns? Have a little faith, man.”
“Well, the boss isn’t here either, right?” Big Bao said. “The case they called him in on now is a pretty big deal. I don’t think he’ll be back to help us any time soon.”
“Are murder cases necessarily so tough?” I pretended to be calm. “Don’t worry, we’ll solve it.”
It had been great to have the special task force helping us, but I was determined not to call them again. If Chen was going to be away for a long time, I needed to step up and fill my mentor’s shoes without their help. I was known for my forensic skills throughout the province. This was my big chance to show everyone my leadership skills as well.
Big Bao and I took a few steps before we realized Lin Tao was still standing at the security fence in a daze. I went back and gave him a light shove. “You want to go chase down the airplane and propose?”
The new crime scene was at a garbage can outside a residential complex downtown.
“Did you discover the body parts?” a cop with a notebook was asking a bystander.
An old man in a street cleaner’s uniform shut his eyes and shook his head hard. “No, no. I just saw some bloody goo and called the police.”
There was a white plastic sheet on the ground, on which Han, the city public security forensic scientist, was placing body parts he’d pulled from the trash.
Big Bao and I pitched in with the sorting. Lin Tao took out a special light and checked for blood traces.
The white sheet already held quite a few body parts.
“You guys work fast.”
“Yup,” the city forensic scientist said. “We got guys checking other trash cans in the area. I think we already have everything besides the head and internal organs.”
I kept looking at the two largest parts in the pile. One was the pelvis and upper thighs. The top was neatly cut off at a lumbar disc. The lower end was chopped off at the middle of each femur. The other large part was an armless upper torso. On both of them, it seemed the killer had used a knife to make a slit about an inch deep. A rope about the thickness of a thumb was wrapped twice around the wounds and tied in a knot, the cuts serving as grooves for the rope.
“Hey, Han, these weird grooves—do you think they’re to make the bodies easier to carry?” I asked.
Han nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Without them, the rope would slip off easily.”
“And none of this was wrapped up? He just hauled it right up to a residential complex?”
“Which makes me think he had some kind of vehicle,” Han told me. “Walking down the street with unwrapped body parts would call too much attention.”
“If that’s true, why’d he bother with the grooves?” Big Bao asked.
I thought for a moment. “Maybe to be more efficient. Think about it—all tied up with a rope, he could get rid of most of the body in one go.”
Han stopped what he was doing and used his forearm to wipe sweat from his brow. “There’s something I don’t understand. Even if there was no wrapping on the big pieces, all these smaller body parts must have been in something, but there’s no packaging in here. Why would he take something that incriminating with him?”
“Well,” Big Bao said, “I guess he wanted us to find them.”
I broke into a cold sweat.
“Found the head!”
Another forensic scientist named Wang came running, a black evidence bag in his hand.
“Is it wrapped in anything?” Han and I asked at the same time.
Wang shook his head and said, “No, it was just thrown in a trash can by the residential complex’s rear entrance. Also, we’ve confirmed that the organs weren’t discarded in this area.”
“The head was thrown away around back,” Han said, “and the rest was thrown in the front. Why?”
“Toss far, bury close,” Big Bao said. “That’s the rule.”
This was conventional wisdom among investigators. If a murderer made a real effort to hide the corpse, by burying it, for example, he was probably still relatively close. If the perpetrator didn’t make much effort, he probably came from somewhere else.
I nodded and said, “But even if the killer is far away, that doesn’t explain why the different parts were dumped in trash cans at the front and back.”
“I bet it’s just the route the murderer traveled,” Han said. “That fits with the vehicle theory.”
“We almost have the whole body, but no organs. Why wouldn’t the killer get rid of those here too?” I asked.
“Well,” Lin Tao jumped in, “what if he was after the organs?”
Everyone turned pale.
On the autopsy table, a complete male body was gradually being pieced together.
The body’s sternum had been broken open, and the internal organs carefully taken out. Looking at the precise cuts on the chest and abdomen, we thought of Lin Tao’s conjecture, and chills ran down our spines.
“There’re always rumors online about people getting murdered for their organs,” Big Bao said, “but getting transplant organs that way would be stupid. They didn’t go through blood-type matching, they were probably cut too crudely to survive, and murder conditions are hardly sterile.”
“Can’t be that anyway,” I said. “The killer took almost all the organs, not just ones people want for transplants.”
“It couldn’t be . . .” Lin Tao trailed off, his face full of disgust, and then finished, “cannibalism?”
Everyone shot him a look of annoyance.
“What? Then why’d the killer scoop out the organs?” Lin Tao said.
“Come on,” I said. “If the killer wanted the organs, why dismember the bodies? He could just disembowel them, right?”
Han tightened his lips, then said softly, “Looking at the cuts, the killer had some knowledge of anatomy, but not too much. He knew to cut at the intervertebral disc, but not the other joints. Dismembering the body definitely made it easier to dispose of.”
“The killer must be pretty strong,” Big Bao said. “This piece weighs a ton.”
“Here’s what strikes me,” I said. “If the killer was trying to hide the corpse, it suggests he probably knew the victim. But then again, dismembering the body to get to the internal organs suggests he didn’t.”
“So you’re thinking they were casual acquaintances?” Big Bao asked.
Everyone nodded.
“Organs aside, we found the whole body, right?” I asked.
“Almost,” Bao said. “We’re missing a piece of tissue from the abdomen and an ear.”
“Don’t count on finding them.” Lin Tao laughed. “By tomorrow, those tasty bits will have popped out a feral cat or dog’s rear end.”
“Such a nice-looking guy. Too bad about the potty mouth,” I teased.
Lin Tao raised his thick eyebrows and said, “What do you mean? I’m classy as hell.”
“The body shows no signs of asphyxia or injury,” Big Bao said. “Right now there’s no way to determine the cause of death.”
“And there isn’t even blood left to test for poisoning,” Han lamented.
“When one door closes, try another!” Big Bao used his forearm to push up his glasses. “The bladder’s still here, and there’s urine! We could test that.”
“Murder by poison is really rare, and it’s usually committed by women,” Han said.
“Can’t imagine a woman did this,” Big Bao said. “How could she even lift such heavy body parts?”
“If the car was driven right up to the trash can?” Han suggested.
“Not even then,” Big Bao said. “And what woman could be so ruthless as to hack open a body, then disembowel and dismember it? Women don’t have the psychological resilience.”
“You never know,” Han said. “See where the long bones of the limbs were cut? The bone chips indicate that it took over a dozen cuts to get through the thick parts. A large man could have done it in three to five.”
“Oh, come on. Have you ever seen a case where a woman dismembered a body all by herself?” Big Bao said.
“Sure,” Han replied with a smile. “It’s the twenty-first century, man. Women can do anything these days.”
As I listened, I squatted down by the pressure cooker we’d put the pubic symphysis in so we could get past the muscle, cartilage, and periosteum to examine the bone surface. Big Bao and Han both had good points.
“This’ll be done boiling in a second,” I said, interrupting their discussion. “Once we find the cause of death, it’ll be a lot easier to plan our next steps.”
The pressure cooker rattled and squeaked. Steam puffed from the holes in the lid, filling the room with a gag-inducing meaty smell.
“I will never drink bone broth again,” Big Bao said, grimacing.
“Aw, come on, Bao.” I lowered the heat and slowly opened the lid of the pressure cooker. “Work with the nervous system, eat with the digestive system. No reason to let one interfere with the other.”
“Almost sounds like you’re the one who’s been disemboweled here, Qin,” said Han.
I fished the pubic bone out of the milky pot of bone soup and set about peeling off the soft tissue with a hemostat. The surface morphology soon revealed itself.
“Our victim was probably about thirty years old,” I said. “I’ll take it back to get a more specific age. Also, we’d better get started on that toxicology test if we ever want to figure out how he died.”
“Uh, you guys,” Big Bao suddenly said, “why are there eleven fingers here?”
We hurried to the autopsy table. A victim with six fingers on one hand would make identification much easier.
“I don’t understand,” the intern said. “We already pieced the palm together. The victim didn’t have six fingers.”
It took me a moment to react. “What . . . What do you mean?”
It was Han who answered. “Means these body parts include a finger that doesn’t belong to the victim.”
“Oh,” I said. “Damn. Looks like we’ve got two victims. How didn’t we notice that when we were piecing the body together?”
“No, it’s not like that,” the intern said. “There weren’t any incongruities besides this extra finger.”
The autopsy room fell silent.
Disembowelment, rope grooves, no wrapping, a rogue finger. It was all pretty eerie.
“Hey, guys.” Big Bao broke the silence. “Finger or no finger, we already know that the victim, the one all the rest of the parts belong to, is male, five foot nine, average weight, about thirty years old. Once the DNA results come back, I think we can get an ID.”
“Right,” Han chimed in. “And the cause of death might be poisoning. Time of death was around three days ago, around June third. We actually know a lot!”
They’re trying to reassure themselves, I thought, not at all pleased. Is there a ghost among us? What is his finger doing here?
“Medical Examiner Qin.” Xiao Hu from administration suddenly ran into the autopsy room. “I called your desk, but you didn’t answer. Director Chen just called. He wants you to turn this homicide over to the city bureau, then take your team and hurry to Qingxiang City.”
“What? What happened?” I asked.
“Seems a deputy mayor was killed.”
“This case is complicated—I can’t just turn it over!” I paused, then added, “I do forensic work to serve the people, not just the elite.”
“Listen, Qin,” Xiao Hu said. “The local forensic team doesn’t want word getting out, so they need you. Besides, this is an order from Director Chen. You can keep your political opinions to yourself.”
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t find any words. I nodded to my team, and we reluctantly took off our lab coats.
7
By the time we arrived in Qingxiang City, night had fallen. With no time to rest, we followed a howling squad car to an upscale, secluded residential district.
There were a dozen or so police cars but few onlookers. The north side of the neighborhood had seven or eight six-story apartment buildings, while the south side had ten duplexes. Our crime scene was in one of the duplexes. Each duplex building was divided into east and west.
“Huh . . . fancy. Guess this is like a town house?” Big Bao asked.
“Okay, men, let’s get to it.” I noticed several city bureau inspectors packing up equipment, probably wrapping up the preliminary site survey.
A police inspector hopped out of the squad car we’d followed, walked over to me, and said quietly, “The eastern unit is the principal crime scene, but we’ve requisitioned the unoccupied western unit as a temporary operational headquarters. We’ll go there first so you can meet with the party secretary.”
“It’s just a homicide,” I said with a frown. “Why all the fuss?”
Lin Tao tugged on my sleeve and whispered, “Easy, Mr. Man of the People. Let’s not make everyone think we province-level guys don’t know politics.”
We followed the officer inside.
“Gentlemen, this is our city’s party secretary, Bao Chenbin,” he said obsequiously.
The woman, dressed in a fitted black suit, was in her early thirties. She had long hair, a beautiful face, and arrogant brows. If it weren’t for all the kowtowing, no one would have guessed such a young woman occupied such a high position.
Secretary Bao didn’t deign to look up. She just glanced at her watch and said, “The city government attaches great important to this case. I hope you can solve it within a week. You can go now. Please try to be as fast and efficient as possible.”
Who did this woman think she was? I dropped my notebook on the desk, pulled out a chair, and sat down unceremoniously. “First, tell me what work’s already been done.”
Secretary Bao stared at me solemnly. “That’s confidential.”
“Then I apologize,” I said. “As an expert, I have the right to refuse to handle a case if I’m not provided with sufficient information.”
I picked up my notebook and turned to leave.
The police inspector hurried over, gave Bao a fearful look, and pulled me out into an adjacent room.
“Take it easy, big guy. I’m Wang Jie, newly appointed commissioner of public security. Here’s what we know: This afternoon, Deputy Mayor Ding’s help reported that he had been killed.”
“Help?”
“His maid, to be precise,” Commissioner Wang said. “This maid usually comes every other day to clean Deputy Mayor Ding’s house. But her mother passed away, so she’s been off the past week. She got back to the deputy mayor’s house around noon today and called the police.”
The east and west units were separated by only a narrow hallway. As we talked, Wang led my team and me over to the crime scene.
“How is the smell so strong?” I covered my nose.
“Yeah,” Wang said. “The body is already very decomposed. That’s why the maid called the police as soon as she walked in.”
I glanced at the thermometer by the entrance. It was eighty-eight degrees. “So it’s been at least several days. And no one wondered why he didn’t show up at work?”
“According to our preliminary investigation, the last person to see Deputy Mayor Ding was his driver,” Wang said. “On the night of June first, he took him home. Deputy Mayor Ding said he would be working on a research article all week, so the driver shouldn’t worry about coming by.”
“A politician who wrote his own articles?” Lin Tao marveled. “And how did he manage his meals?”
“Ding really was a good deputy mayor,” Wang said gloomily. “He was sent down from the Provincial Party Propaganda Department. His wife died young, and he raised his son alone and sent him to college. He was very down-to-earth, went out, cooked his own meals. This isn’t even his house—the city provides it.”
My initial resistance to the case evaporated.
“June first was Saturday. Today is Thursday, the sixth . . .” Big Bao cracked his knuckles.
We walked to the second-floor bedroom, the stench intensifying with each step. In the dim light, I glimpsed a dark outline on the bed.
“Listen, our forensic director is related to the suspect,” Wang said. “Which meant our forensic guys couldn’t work the case.”
I was surprised. “There’s already a suspect?”
Wang’s gaze faltered. “Uh, yeah, but the city party committee requested confidentiality.”
I didn’t pursue it further and instead peered at the laptop on the desk. “Has this been inspected for traces?”
Wang looked to the deputy chief of the criminal police division, Chen Junyi, who’d joined us in the room. Chen nodded and said, “There are fingerprints, but all of them appear to be Ding’s.”
I saw the laptop was in standby mode, so I put on gloves and tapped a key.
The display lit up and a document appeared: “Feasibility Report on the City’s Cultivation of Literary Works.” There were only three lines written. I opened the document properties and found it had been last modified on June 1 at 22:05.
“The victim was probably attacked at this time,” I said, pointing at the display.
“Uh . . . agreed,” Big Bao said. “He must’ve been attacked right after he got started.”
I walked around the bed. Besides the body, everything appeared undisturbed.
“Nothing else unusual has been found?” I asked.
“No,” Chen said. “The house is extremely clean. There are a few dusty footprints, but they’re messy, overlapping, and deteriorated—of little value.”
“My God!” Big Bao suddenly shouted. “Why doesn’t he have a face?”