S.C.I. (Volume II) - Case 6: Chapter 13
The Innocent Killer 13 - The Inside Man
"What did you think of?" Bai Yutang asked curiously.
"Well..." Zhan Zhao stroked his chin, crawled out of bed, ran over to the storeroom, and hauled out three boxes.
"What is this?" Bai Yutang looked at those boxes, puzzled, having originally assumed they were shoe boxes. Zhan Zhao opened the boxes, revealing that they were completely filled with letters.
"They're all written by readers, sorted out and given to me by the editor." Zhan Zhao spoke softly, glancing up sideways at Bai Yutang as he did so.
"Cat..." Bai Yutang pointed a finger at the three shoe boxes. "How come I didn't know about this?"
"You're so jealous..." Zhan Zhao muttered quietly, "If you found out, wouldn't you just secretly burn them all?!"
"Hmph..." Bai Yutang raised an eyebrow, thinking to himself: Just wait until I finish reading them, I will burn them!
Zhan Zhao held the letters up one by one against the light, seeming to look at what was inside the envelopes.
"What are you looking for?" Bai Yutang asked, perplexed.
"I remember a few of them had some petal-shaped things tucked inside."
"Petals?" Bai Yutang also picked up an envelope and held it against the light. "Cat, you've never unsealed any of these letters?"
"Well... I just peeked at every single one; it was quite interesting," Zhan Zhao said honestly. "Ah! Found it!" As he spoke, he pulled out three letters with identical pink envelopes and showed them to Bai Yutang. "Just these few."
"The earliest one was mailed half a year ago." Bai Yutang raised an eyebrow, noting that there was no sender's address on the envelope, only a single name—Student.
"Heh... what a name to pick." Bai Yutang shook his head and opened the envelope. Sure enough, a few petals slid out from inside, except that rather than being red, their color was more like black or rouge. Having served as a police officer for a long time, Bai Yutang was naturally more than familiar with this hue... This was the color of dried blood.
Zhan Zhao swiftly pulled out the letter paper and began reading.
"What does it say?" Bai Yutang curiously leaned forward to read along with Zhan Zhao.
The letter before them was exceptionally long, sprawling across several pages. The handwriting was neat, accompanied by tables and drawings, making it look just like a student's homework, truly living up to the name "Student." The speed at which Zhan Zhao finished reading a page allowed Bai Yutang to only skim a few lines, so he ultimately decided to give up and wait for Zhan Zhao to finish reading and tell him, lowering his head instead to intently study those few petals.
"Whew..." Zhan Zhao swiftly finished reading all three letters, put down the stationery, and let out a long sigh.
"What's wrong?" Bai Yutang looked up at him. "What does the letter say?"
"These letters accurately depict the psychological evolution process of a person!" Zhan Zhao held up the first letter, which was four pages long, and said, "When writing this one, he was a student who was curious and interested in psychology but had strayed onto the wrong research path."
He then picked up the second letter, which was two pages. "In this one, he has already traveled further and further down the wrong path, and has begun to subvert his entire worldview."
"This final one." Zhan Zhao picked up the piece of stationery no larger than a block of tofu. "He has already become deranged."
Bai Yutang took the three letters, looked over them, and asked Zhan Zhao, "Specifically?"
"The first letter." Zhan Zhao pointed at the letter and said, "This person practically recited my book from memory, and raised questions regarding certain viewpoints, roughly meaning this—he was very interested in some topics that I deliberately avoided."
"Deliberately avoided topics?" Bai Yutang also grew interested. "What kind of questions did you deliberately avoid in your book?"
"For instance, certain details of psychological crimes, hypnosis techniques, how to plant suggestions... they are all professional topics that aren't very safe to learn," Zhan Zhao said. "I was afraid that if I wrote about them, someone might learn half-baked knowledge, run off, and use them indiscriminately, harming others and themselves."
"Mhm." Bai Yutang nodded thoughtfully. "But it seems he's even more interested in these non-mainstream technical issues."
"Put those aside for a moment... Look right here." Zhan Zhao pointed a finger at the last line of the letter. "Look at what he wrote: 'I know you might not necessarily see this letter, or if you saw it you wouldn't take it seriously, but I still want to say this: I LOVE YOU!'"
Bai Yutang curled his lip. "He fell in love just from reading a book?"
"There's also the second letter." Zhan Zhao pointed to the second letter. "In this letter, he recounted many psychological research results of his own, all concerning practical operational technical issues. Look at his final sentence!"
Bai Yutang took a look and saw that the final sentence wrote: 'Tell me, if I commit a crime using the methods I've researched myself... Any answers?'
"Any answers..." Bai Yutang was dumbfounded and flipped to the final letter. "The top doesn't have 'body', does it?"
On the final letter, there was only a single sentence: "It seems all theories are merely empty talk... To do research, one must experiment! Let me go manufacture a body."
At this point, the two of them were completely dumbfounded.
It took a long time for Bai Yutang to recover his wits. "Cat, is this kid running experiments or something?"
Zhan Zhao walked over to the sofa with a frown and sat down, shaking his head. "He's not just running experiments by himself; he also wants me to do it with him."
"What on earth is he aiming for?" Bai Yutang sat down beside him. "Still, this counts as a clue. We can hand it over to the forensics colleagues tomorrow and have them track down the origin of this letter so we can investigate."
"Mhm." Zhan Zhao nodded. "This person should be right around us," Zhan Zhao said in a low voice, "otherwise how would they clearly know our whereabouts and even deliver things right to our doorstep?"
"It's indeed suspicious." Bai Yutang reached out to gather those items, packing them into an evidence bag. "We'll study it back at the police station tomorrow morning; you're tired tonight too!" With that, he pulled Zhan Zhao back to the bedroom and lay down on the bed.
The two of them lay back on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. Half an hour later, abandoning their wild thoughts, the two of them snuggled together and fell into a sound sleep.
The next morning, the two of them stepped out feeling refreshed and invigorated, only to discover that the bloody bouquet of flowers at the doorstep was indeed still there, though the blood had dried. Packing it into an evidence bag, the two strolled back to the police station.
The rest of the SI members had also returned to the station. Unsurprisingly, Bao Zheng attached extreme importance to last night's case. After holding a meeting for everyone and leaving behind the parting remark, "You have half a month; solve the case and there's a reward, fail to solve it and you'll be cleaning the toilets!", he left.
Once Bao Zheng departed, the remaining people stared at each other in blank dismay. Zhao Hu poked Ma Han and whispered, "Tell me, why does Chief Bao always use cleaning toilets to threaten our boss?"
Ma Han didn't answer and just glared at him.
"Did Gongsun's autopsy results come out?" Bai Yutang asked.
"Probably soon," Luo said. "Gongsun has been stuck in the morgue the entire night..." As his voice trailed off, the door was pushed open with a loud bang. Gongsun barged in aggressively, his face pale, dark circles under his eyes, bloodshot veins in his eyes, and a full aura of murderous intent.
Everyone obediently fell silent, waiting for Gongsun to deliver the autopsy results.
Thud! Slapping the documents heavily onto the table, Gongsun panted and cursed, "Damn it, we've been played!"
The rest of the crowd looked at each other in confusion, completely in the dark. Bai Yutang asked, "What do you mean we've been played?"
"Both corpses had drug components in their systems, similar to the kind of drugs used in date rape!" Gongsun sat down angrily. "This is not the same caliber of crime as that first 'I LOVE YOU' case!"
"What?" Zhan Zhao frowned. "There were drugs?"
"There's more!" Gongsun pulled out photos of the corpse from the previous 'I LOVE YOU' case. "Take a look. At the very beginning, we always thought these finger marks were bruises, right?"
"Right," everyone nodded.
"They weren't used to slice up the corpses." As Gongsun spoke, he reached out and grabbed Zhao Hu's arm, saying, "If I cut a slice right here!" He pointed to the location of the artery on the arm. "To drain blood, naturally you have to pinch right here and squeeze it out!"
"And the legs... the neck... all the bruises were caused during the bloodletting! They drained the blood first, and then dismembered the bodies!"
"Blood..." Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao exchanged glances, instantly recalling the bloody bouquet of flowers from last night.
"I was wondering why almost all the blood in the corpses had been drained, yet the volume of blood on the ground didn't even amount to what three people would bleed... Turns out it was carted away!" Gongsun pointed again at the corpses of Pang Xiaoqin and An Lingli, saying, "The way these two bodies were handled was much simpler and cruder than in the first case! It feels like it wasn't even done by the same person!"
"Now this is getting bizarre!" Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao. The two of them took out the bouquet of flowers and several letters, placing them before everyone's eyes.
"What is this?" Gongsun picked up the bunch of dark flowers to inspect them, then called over a forensic police officer to take them for testing, comparing them against the blood of the previous corpses to see if their origin could be traced.
"Judging by what was written in the letters... the culprit should be a single person," Bai Chi said with a puzzled expression. "So why would this phenomenon appear?"
"Impossible." Zhan Zhao shook his head. "This killer is almost obsessed with things like hypnosis and suggestion... How could they possibly resort to such unprofessional methods as drugs?"
Just as they were speaking, Lu Fang walked in with a dark expression and said, "Something's happened!"
"Why are there so many things happening lately?" Bai Yutang frowned.
"Watch the TV!" Lu Fang reached out and turned on the television. On the news broadcast currently airing, the report went as follows: "According to reliable sources, the recent string of cases are criminal acts aimed at challenging the police. The killer left messages at the respective scenes such as 'I LOVE YOU', 'Any answers', and 'body'. The identities of the victims also appear to be indiscriminately and randomly selected... Most outrageously, according to this set of photos, the killer once mailed related warning letters to Dr. Zhan of SI, stating that he intended to use humans to conduct experiments, but this failed to arouse any vigilance whatsoever from the police... This time, it has even culminated in the tragic spectacle of a police officer's daughter being murdered right in front of numerous police officers..."
Bai Yutang was baffled upon seeing this and turned back to look at Lu Fang. "How do they know so many details?"
Lu Fang sighed. "This morning, major newspaper offices and television stations all received video materials, and on major web portals, the news is even more detailed... Clearly, someone leaked them intentionally."
"Who has so much time to waste?" Zhao Hu glared.
Zhan Zhao looked at him and said calmly, "The killer!"
No sooner had his voice fallen than the phone in the SI office rang. Jiang Ping went over to answer it, froze for a moment, hurriedly pressed the speakerphone button, and then tiptoed over to the computer to trace the source of the call.
Seeing his actions, everyone concentrated their attention to listen. Before long, a voice distorted by metallic wave interference came from the other end of the phone, speaking in a half-mocking tone: "Hello, Dr. Zhan, and members of SI."
Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang exchanged glances and asked, "Who are you?"
"The killer." That person chuckled softly. "The dismemberment case, the mutilation case, and this latest 'blending flowers onto a different tree' case were all done by me."
Bai Yutang frowned and sneered, "The dismemberment case has already been solved."
"Heh heh..." That person chuckled twice and didn't answer, instead instantly pivoting to a different topic: "Dr. Zhan, let's play a game."
"What game?" Zhan Zhao asked coldly.
"First of all, you need to know that everything I do is for a single purpose." That person's voice sounded somewhat excited as he spoke.
"What purpose?" Zhan Zhao asked.
"I LOVE YOU!" said the person on the other end of the line leisurely.
Zhan Zhao sneered, "I certainly didn't see it."
"Heh heh, you'll see it in the future." That voice continued, "Let me state the rules of the game."
"Speak."
"Very simple! You find 'Any answers' within the shortest possible time, otherwise, you will find more and more 'body's!"
With that, the phone hung up, leaving behind a busy tone of beep, beep, beep, beep.
Bai Yutang looked up and asked Jiang Ping, "Did you trace it?"
Jiang Ping's hands shook as he stuttered, "Tr... traced it..."
"Where?" Bai Yutang sensed something amiss with his expression.
"Right... right here in this building!"