A Devil's Mind Read online

  “This here is Old Capital University,” Kang Xiaobei said, as he pointed to the right. Then he indicated several small brown-roofed Western-style buildings. “That’s the student dorm area.”

  “Yin Aijun lived there that year, correct?” asked Han Yin.

  “That’s right. In Dorm 4.”

  They drove through the university’s north gate and quickly turned onto a broad straightaway.

  “This section of Jade Bird Road was the last place Yin Aijun was seen.”

  So this was the road that appeared in Han Yin’s dream, just not as lonely and deserted. And of course Ye Xi’s head was nowhere to be found. Han Yin let out a deep breath and relaxed.

  Who or what might that young girl have met here on that horrible evening? Han Yin brooded over this.

  After several turns, Kang Xiaobei stopped the car. “We’re here. The sanitation worker found the body parts over there on both occasions.” Kang Xiaobei got out of the car and pointed to a gray dumpster with a black lid. “The body parts were left in front of the dumpster. In the 1996 case, they were packed in a gray travel bag. Inside were mainly pieces of flesh and three fingers. In the recent case, the killer used a big black garbage bag and left it here; it was also full of flesh and had three fingers in it.”

  Han Yin stood beside the car, getting a feel for the surroundings. Though the case file had indicated this was North China Road and was in the downtown area, it was far more bustling than Han Yin had imagined. Buildings towered over the streets. Shops were crammed together. Peddlers hawking all kinds of snacks packed nearly every vacant spot along the road. It was about nine o’clock at night, and the dense flow of people and vehicles was still going strong. Neon lights above the high-rises and shops lit up the black night. A KFC was in front of the dumpster, sandwiched between a coffee shop and a barbecue restaurant. Two noodle shops were squeezed in behind the dumpster, and snack bars were everywhere. Customers sat shoulder-to-shoulder. Business was brisk.

  “From the looks of it, the restaurants here are doing good business and close late, and KFC stays open 24/7. In this kind of place, there’s generally traffic all night long. It’d be a high-risk area for disposing of a corpse. I could understand the killer getting rid of the body on that snowy night in 1996. But why would he want to take the risk of getting rid of the body parts in the same place? Was it to commemorate the perfect crime from sixteen years before?”

  Han Yin paced back and forth by the dumpster. Suddenly, he felt as if he was being watched. Han Yin had a strange sense of beseeching, helpless eyes. It was extremely unsettling. He walked away from where he had been standing, but the sense of those oppressive eyes remained, making his hair stand on end. He turned and looked around. Almost panic-stricken, he rushed into the middle of the road and anxiously searched the faces in the crowd.

  Am I hallucinating? Or is it some kind of sixth sense? Whose eyes were those? Why were they staring at me? Is it you, Yin Aijun?

  “What’s up? Find something?” Kang Xiaobei had quickly run over.

  Han Yin gazed blankly for a moment, then relaxed. He didn’t know how to explain it. “No, nothing. I thought I saw someone I knew. Forget it.”

  “Okay. So now we’ll go and take a look at the next place?” Kang Xiaobei asked.

  “All right.” Han Yin walked hesitantly to the car, his eyes still scanning the crowd.

  They drove to a fork in the road and went north. The dumpster was far behind and gradually became a blur, and the sense of those eyes faded, too. Did they really exist? Han Yin couldn’t tell.

  The second dumping place was at the main door of a big shopping mall facing an avenue broader than North China Road. Big commercial buildings were all around, and the traffic was busier. This was one of the city’s main thoroughfares.

  According to the 1996 file, when this was still a construction site, the killer discarded a blue backpack here, filled with the broken bones of the victim. And in the Wang Li case, the killer dumped a garbage bag, also filled with her bones.

  “How far is it from here to North China Road?” Han Yin asked, gazing back.

  Kang Xiaobei pointed. “This is Broad City Road. Maybe a half mile from North China Road.”

  Han Yin nodded, looked closely at the thoroughfare, and then looked all around. “Okay, let’s go to the next place.”

  They continued north.

  The third dumping site was next to an old-fashioned residential neighborhood. The actual location was under a parasol tree on a sidewalk between the neighborhood and Eastwater Road, near a four-way intersection. This place also wasn’t ideal for getting rid of body parts. The large intersection gave an unobstructed view, so there was a good chance of being spotted. But it would have been a different story on a snowy, windy night.

  “In the 1996 case, the killer discarded some of the victim’s clothing and internal organs here. The clothes were precisely folded, and the organs were placed neatly in a plastic bag. All of these things were wrapped in the victim’s red coat. The killer did the same thing for this year’s case. The black garbage bag had the victim’s clothes and internal organs, with the clothes neatly folded and the body parts nicely placed in a small black garbage bag.”

  Kang Xiaobei was extremely familiar with the case. His detailed description didn’t differ in the slightest from the file. It looked like this young fellow was not only quick-witted but also very dedicated. Ye Xi had gone to a lot of trouble to arrange for him to assist Han Yin.

  In both cases, the killer had made an effort to be consistent about not only where he dumped the body parts but also in how he arranged the contents of the bags. Han Yin figured the deliberate preparation coupled with the choice of high-risk dumping sites meant that disposing of the body parts was not just to avoid detection but possibly to give the killer a thrill.

  “How far is this from the previous place?” Han Yin asked.

  “A little over a mile,” said Kang Xiaobei.

  Han Yin nodded and walked over to the car. Kang Xiaobei followed, got in, and started the car. They continued north on Eastwater Road, alongside the river.

  The Gu River flows through the city from east to west, cutting it into two districts, north and south. South of the river is the main part of the city, which is developed and prosperous. North of the Gu are rural communities and lots of hills, an area rich in scenery. The fourth dumping site of the two cases had been in a scenic place north of the Gu River called Tiger King Mountain.

  They followed the river in an eastward direction. Han Yin rolled down the window and looked at the water. The pitch-black night smeared the water into a dark sheet. The surging river was the only sound.

  A gust of cold wind. In the Yin Aijun case, the collected dismembered parts were incomplete. The pelvis and reproductive organs were missing. Could they have been tossed into the river?

  “How far is it from here to Eastwater Road?” asked Han Yin as he gazed at the river.

  “About two miles.”

  Kang Xiaobei wondered why Han Yin kept asking about the distances between the dumping sites.

  The surface of the Gu gradually reflected some light. Han Yin could now see the famous Gu River Bridge, which spanned a natural moat. Spectacular. More than a thousand lights crisscrossed in the night sky.

  Kang Xiaobei turned, passed the police sentry post at the head of the bridge, and drove onto it. The bridge linked the north and south districts and was the city’s most precious landmark. The night had deepened, but sightseers still filled the bridge’s walkways, and all kinds of vehicles shuttled back and forth. Han Yin was particularly interested in the Public Security Bureau vehicles mixed in with the traffic. His eyes followed them as he reflected. Kang Xiaobei wanted to point out the sights on the bridge, but he noticed Han Yin’s contemplative state and thought better of it.

  Darkness came upon them as they left the bridge. North of the Gu River was more modest, and the streetlights were considerably dimmer. As they penetrated the abnormal quiet, drowsin
ess seeped into Han Yin, and he dozed off.

  He felt a jolt, and the car came to a stop. Han Yin opened his eyes and saw a large white memorial arch ahead. “Tiger King Mountain Scenic Spot” was written in the old-style characters on the lintel above the main passageway.

  It was very late at night. The mountain wind was unusually strong. Other than the sound of rustling branches, it was deathly silent. Kang Xiaobei led the way with a police-issued flashlight.

  The mountain was mostly twisting paths. Some were paved with green stones. Some were simply dirt trails. It had rained heavily that evening, and it was muddy. On either side of the paths were thick stands of trees, dark and dense. Occasionally, at a fork in the path, they could see temples and pavilions, but these were all dilapidated ruins.

  “Isn’t this supposed to be a scenic location? Why does it look like this?” Han Yin asked.

  “This place had its heyday, but it lost out to more appealing tourist spots in the area, so fewer visitors came. After that, druggies made it a hangout. But its past glories or current sorry state have nothing to do with the Yin Aijun case. The tourist area was developed a year after. Originally this was old-growth mountain forest.”

  “So you’re saying that in 1996, this place was even more desolate and wild? Then how was the victim’s head discovered?”

  “A group of college students out on a hike stumbled on a cloth bundle in the ravine. The killer had used a blue plaid bedsheet to wrap the head. In the Wang Li case, we based our conjectures on the three early dump sites. We found this all on our own.” Kang Xiaobei shined his flashlight back and forth on a little slope and said, “Well, this is the place.”

  Han Yin quickly followed Kang Xiaobei up the slope and saw the ravine he had mentioned. Actually, it was a gully formed by the slope and a nearby little knoll of high ground. In it were clumps of dried grass. It would have been a foot and a half high.

  “All that snow didn’t help the killer; otherwise the victim’s head wouldn’t have been found so easily,” Han Yin said.

  “The killer’s just a pervert. He doesn’t care that the head was found. If he had gone farther, that bunch of trees is deeper and denser. If that’s where he’d gotten rid of the head, no one would have found it for another year or so.”

  Han Yin stared at the dark-forested mountain in the distance. After a while, he said, “Xiaobei, I think I hear something moving up ahead in the woods. Should we take a look?”

  Kang Xiaobei instinctively felt for his pistol. There was fear in his voice when he said, “Uh-uh. I don’t hear anything.”

  “I must be hearing things. Okay, let’s go take a look at the bottom of the gully.”

  “Hey! Hold up! Brother Yin, look!” He shined his flashlight over the footprints covering the ground. They led right into the gully.

  “What time did it rain?” Han Yin squatted down and stared at the prints.

  “About five in the evening. It went on for a few hours.”

  “So these footprints should be fresh.”

  “Definitely. And, look! More than one set of footprints!”

  Han Yin closely observed the prints and said, “Very messy.”

  “Wonder who it was? Even if details of the earlier case came out, very few people could have found this place, unless it was a fanatic or one of our guys. Or maybe the killer,” said Kang Xiaobei.

  “It’s possible. During the cooling-off period, sometimes killers like to return to the scene to relive the thrill. But if that’s the case, there was more than one of them.”

  Han Yin hadn’t expected this.

  3

  ANALYSIS OF THE DUMPED CORPSE CASES

  As they came down from the mountain, Han Yin reminded Kang Xiaobei that they needed to look around the memorial arch to see if they could find anything, and that was when they discovered a set of tire tracks.

  Kang Xiaobei raised the beam of his flashlight. Han Yin used Kang Xiaobei’s cell phone to photograph the tracks. Then he looked up at the clouds, which were scudding south; it shouldn’t rain again. Han Yin told Kang Xiaobei to notify the techs first thing in the morning and have them cast a mold to check for cars that might match the tracks.

  It was near midnight when they made their way back. The earlier discovery excited them, but Han Yin showed no sign of this as he looked out the window.

  As they drove to the Gu River Bridge, Kang Xiaobei broke the silence. “Now that you’ve seen the places the body parts were dumped, do you have any thoughts you want to share with me?”

  Han Yin turned to face him. “When was this highway from the bridge to Tiger King Mountain built?”

  “You mean Ningba Highway? Probably during the 1960s. Until the end of the 1990s, cities north of the Gu River had to use this road to get into our city.”

  “Hmm, that’s right,” said Han Yin, as if a thought struck him.

  “What’s right? Can you tell me how you see it?”

  Han Yin chuckled. “How about you go first?”

  “No way! I’m not going to show off in front of the master!”

  Han Yin could see that Kang Xiaobei was itching to have a go at it. “Go on. We’ll discuss it.”

  “Okay, then, here goes.” Kang Xiaobei slowed the car and collected his thoughts. “I feel that in the Wang Li case, the killer used a car to dispose of the body parts. The city is always alive and bustling, and the night he did it, the sky was clear. If the killer hadn’t driven, he would have been spotted.”

  Han Yin nodded. “The task force hasn’t found anything from investigating the vehicle?”

  “Some of the dumping sites don’t have surveillance cameras. The Gu River Bridge does, though. But at night, the traffic’s bumper to bumper. It would be too difficult to check them all one by one. Also, now it’s much different. There are now four new bridges and a tunnel. The killer had numerous options for crossing, so it would be nearly impossible to tell how he went. The task force has made every effort to check the cars that came and went on the night the dumping took place but no developments so far.”

  Han Yin paused, thinking, then motioned for Kang Xiaobei to continue.

  “About the earlier Yin Aijun case, I don’t have much to say. At the time, the task force thought the body parts were thrown from a bicycle, and I think that’s right, although there are some problems with that theory. It’s about four miles from the first dumping spot to the Gu River Bridge, and the bridge itself is about three miles long. From the bridge to Tiger King Mountain, it’d be around four and a half miles. Adding the distance from the murder site to the first dump-off, I figure one round trip would be over twenty-five miles. Plus, there was a heavy snowfall. Let’s assume the killer got rid of the body in one go, wanting to get it all done in a night. This would have been hard to do, considering the weight of the load and the time. Multiple dumpings would have made it even harder. Let’s say he used a motorcycle; in those years, a motorcyclist going over the bridge would have been questioned by the police before crossing. I think the killer would have avoided that.

  “He could have taken a car, but very few people had cars in 1996, and generally the ones who did had power and influence. A girl from out of town who’d been at the university such a short time wouldn’t likely have met a person like that. Bicycles, motorcycles, cars . . . all of these are possibilities, and yet all of these scenarios have holes.”

  “Other than the means of transport, what are your other thoughts?” asked Han Yin.

  “I’m positive the killer’s a deviant. How could a normal person chop someone up into several hundred pieces? There was no need for such excess, even to make getting rid of the body easier. Also, he had the nerve to boil the flesh and head and dump them downtown. And both times the bodies were thrown out on the same roadway as a clear challenge!”

  “So you believe the two murders were committed by the same person?”

  “Yeah, and all the task force people think so, too.” Then Kang Xiaobei softly mumbled, “Only Ye Xi has reservations a
bout that.”

  Originally, the task force did not agree. What Kang Xiaobei said raised doubts in Han Yin’s mind, and he recalled his meeting with the deputy chief, Hu Zhiguo and Deputy Task Force Head Fu Changlin that afternoon. One of them had been putting on airs, and the other was cold and perfunctory. Han Yin was suddenly worried. Perhaps this invitation wasn’t just to assist with the case. No matter what happened, he had to do everything he could to keep his distance and avoid the politics and power struggles that had nothing to do with the case.

  Kang Xiaobei was excited and stopped the car alongside the road. “Brother Yin, would you please tell me your take on this?”

  Han Yin reflected a moment and cautiously said, “All right. There are a lot of details I want to study again, so I’ll just talk about two points. From the geographic profiling of crime theory, crimes committed near a highway are mostly done by people from elsewhere. This also fits the corpse-dumping mentality of the Yin Aijun case. I tend to think the killer in that case is not from J City.”

  Han Yin went deeper. “Tiger King Mountain sits very close to the Ningba Highway, and back then this road was one of the northern routes into the city. I suspect the killer was from north of the Gu River but had lived a while in J City. Maybe he worked or studied here. When he’d go back and forth between here and his hometown for festivals and holidays, Tiger King Mountain would be on his route. So after he murdered and dismembered his victim and wanted to dump her head, the mountain seemed like a convenient place. But if he were a local, he’d have been much more familiar with the city and could have thought of a more suitable spot south of the river where he wouldn’t have had to take the risk of getting past the armed police guarding the bridge. Plus, it was a deserted place then, and maybe locals weren’t all that familiar with it.”

  “You’re right. You’re so right!” said Kang Xiaobei. “I didn’t even know it existed until after the area was developed. And my family only knew about the mountain after the murder.”