Fang Mu explained himself as follows: Based on his analysis of the crime scenes and the data, he had learned that all four victims had had their pants pulled down just below their knees, and their knees themselves scratched up. Also, traces of skin had been discovered on the balcony railings of each building and that skin perfectly matched the respective scrapes found on the breasts of the four women. This suggested that the killer had chosen to rape his victims from behind.
This was a most significant position.
First of all, if a man either holds down a woman's torso or grabs her arms while he is entering her from behind, her ability to struggle will be extremely diminished. And because the women's pants were down around their knees, their leg movements would have been restricted as well. Consequently, this position is the least likely to encounter any effective resistance on the part of the victim.
Second, from a psychosexual standpoint, doggy-style is the most primitive sexual position; as a result, it gives the man the most intense feelings of "conquering" and satisfaction. Therefore, for the man, it is far more psychologically arousing than any other position.
When Fang Mu had stood atop those buildings under the dark sky, he had been given a panoramic view of the whole nighttime cityscape: the immense buildings ablaze with lights in the distance ahead, the flickering river of cars rushing far below his feet.
Savagely thrusting back and forth. The woman beneath him: high class, well-dressed, struggling in vain. The city arrayed before his eyes, filling his heart with delight.
Fang Mu closed his eyes.
Somewhere out there, in some luxury apartment, there's a man anxiously waiting for his wife to come home. Whoever you are, I bet you'd never guess that right now I'm raping your woman-straddling her like a dog!
In his eyes, the whole city was probably nothing more than a gigantic cunt.
And in that moment, he must have felt the delight of conquering it-of conquering the entire city.
Which meant that, in reality, this guy had to be a loser.
Since the killer was raping and murdering his victims as a way of venting his hatred for society, sexual behavior had to possess a special significance for him. The mystery of it must have made him far more curious and excited than the average person. But at the same time, these feelings must have caused him deep shame. When boys are able to form normal relationships with girls from a young age, these sorts of excessively strong feelings toward sex will lessen as their socialization increases. Therefore, the killer was very likely a man unable to form such relationships. And as is often the case with such individuals, he probably grew up in an environment that lacked female affection. Additionally, given his psychological makeup, he was certain to be quite young-for as he grew older, this aberrant sexual fixation would likely be eliminated through normal social experience. And because these problems generally arise during adolescence, an older man still suffering from them would long since have committed a similar crime-however, nothing of the sort had been seen in the city in years.
Thus, the murderer: Male, 25 or younger, from a home with either no female elders or only brothers, and with a history of failure.
As for the location of the crimes, the top floor of an unfinished building clearly satisfied the killer's psychological need to conquer the city. At the same time, it showed that he was familiar with this sort of environment. Therefore, the killer was likely to have had experience working at a construction site.
And given his low wages and psychosexual aberrance, it was probable that he used pornography. Prostitutes? Unlikely, though even if he had visited them, it couldn't have been too many times. His economic situation simply wouldn't allow for it.
Those seedy video playhouses, which often showed pornographic films after midnight, were much more fitting.
According to the autopsy reports, one of the victims had lost a fingernail from her left hand, which was found near her supine corpse. Notably, her body had the fewest cuts and bruises of all the women, meaning that during the rape she must have struggled less violently than the others. The fingernail had probably been torn off afterwards, once the killer had begun to strangle the woman, causing her to fight for her life. Traces of skin tissue (Blood Type A) not belonging to the victim were also found on her broken fingernail. This meant that it probably ripped while the woman was digging her nails into the body of her killer. Because he was strangling her from behind, she would not have been able to reach much of his body, making it highly likely that she had scratched him around the hands and wrists.
Fang Mu also paid particular attention to the fact that the fingernail had torn rather than snapped. This suggested that while the victim was raking her nails across the killer's skin, some object had gotten in the way and ripped one of them off. What kind of thing, worn on the hand or wrist, could do something like that? Fang Mu immediately thought of a watch, and likely a metallic one at that. For a construction worker to wear a metallic watch was rather outside the norm. This man definitely wanted to demonstrate that he was different than those around him.
In that case, he was probably someone who possessed a certain amount of education.
So then, someone no older than 25, with a decent education, a history of failure, and experience working at construction sites.
The likely culprit: a young man from the countryside who failed the College Entrance Exam.
If that's who he was, then there would also be other ways for him to show he was different than the peasant workers laboring at the construction site.
For example, he could keep his hair short and perfectly clean, rather than long and greasy like theirs. Glasses would proclaim his status as an "intellectual", and a white dress shirt would look very different than their cement-stained work clothes.
In sum, he should be rather thin with short hair, wearing a white dress shirt and a metallic watch on his left wrist; there should also be scratches on the skin nearby. And, the fact that he wore his watch on his left wrist meant that he was likely right-handed.
Once Fang Mu had finished relating the grounds for his conclusions, the members of the special investigation team were silent. Each man's face wore a complex expression. Indeed, now that every step of his reasoning process had been explained in painstaking detail, cracking the case seemed perfectly natural-the simplest thing in the world. Yet, how many people could have even taken the correct first step?
At last, it was Xing Zhisen who broke the silence. "Man, you should have just told us Huang Yongxiao's name from the start and saved us all this trouble."
Everyone roared with laughter.
Everyone but Fang Mu, that is. The whole time he remained staring at the floorboards beneath his feet, lost in thought.
After that everything went smoothly, and Huang Yongxiao's trial date was soon scheduled. By this point the people of ChanghongCity were all praising the incredible speed with which the police had cracked the case. Xing Zhisen wanted to give Fang Mu some kind of reward (he had already explained to him, tactfully, that the police could never publicly announce that the case had been solved with the assistance of a 22-year-old university student, and Fang Mu had indicated that he understood). However, Fang Mu refused to accept anything. So Xing Zhisen asked Fang Mu if he had any requests. Fang Mu's answer was simple: He wanted to speak alone and in person with Huang Yongxiao before he went to trial.
Many people were filled with curiosity about this face-to-face chat; however Fang Mu persisted, and in the end the bureau arranged it so that he could speak one time with Huang Yongxiao, by himself and uninterrupted. The conversation lasted more than two hours. Fang Mu jotted notes the whole time. When it was over he had filled half a notebook and recorded two tapes. Ding Shucheng once listened to a segment of the recording, and based on what he heard, it seemed that the talk barely involved the case itself. Fang Mu seemed to be much more interested in Huang Yongxiao's life experiences, from as far back as he could remember up until he was 21.