One week later, the officers investigating the two leads reported back to the special team. The group responsible had spoken to informants among the city's addicts, but had not found any buyers who fit the description of the killer. They did, however, learn one important piece of information. While one of the addicts was returning home from buying heroin late one night in mid-September, he was attacked in the street and his wallet and the heroin he had just purchased were both stolen. Although the man had been injured, he had not reported the crime to the police for fear of being arrested himself. Police later interviewed the addict in question, but he had nearly lost his mind to the ravages of drugs and could remember nothing about the person who had mugged him. In the end, police had no choice but to send him to a prison labor camp.
The group responsible for locating the killer's car set to investigating the source of all the cars frequently parked on campus. They found nothing. However, while later searching the school boundaries for entry points, one sharp-eyed policeman located a hole in the iron fence on the north side of campus. One of the bars had been sawed off and then replaced so that the fence still appeared continuous while still allowing someone to easily remove it whenever they wanted. The hole itself was big enough for an adult to climb through. Once inside, it was a one-minute walk to the MultidisciplinaryBuilding (scene of the fourth crime), and a five-minute walk to the track and field stadium (scene of the first crime). Tire tracks had been left on the street beside the fence, but too much time had already passed to identify them. All the same, police decided that, until proven otherwise, this was where the killer had entered the campus.
From these findings, along with the analysis of the Department of Public Security's criminal psychology research division, it was determined that the killer was relatively well-off, strong-bodied, and intelligent, and quite familiar with the campus of Jiangbin City University as well as the surrounding area.
This conclusion was essentially identical to the one Fang Mu had reached earlier.
It was a bright afternoon in late fall, while Fang Mu and Tai Wei were sitting on one of the benches beside the basketball court. Tai Wei had just told Fang Mu their latest find: the factory that produced the plastic mannequin from the fourth murder had been found. However, over a hundred stores in the city sold this model, so it would be very difficult to determine who purchased it. Although Tai Wei said "We're still working on it," Fang Mu could tell that he wasn't very optimistic.
The sun was unusually pleasant, and Tai Wei leaned back and stretched. It felt as if the sunlight was slowly entering the spaces between his bones, warming him to the core. The sensation was delightful. Lighting a cigarette, he slumped back against the bench, thinking how nice the day would be if only he didn't have to worry about the grisly case before them.
Beside him, Fang Mu was thinking the same thing. Bathing in the warmth of the sun, he felt his muscles ache and his eyelids grow heavy. Over the past week, Fang Mu had been studying the case day and night, poring over the data, taking notes, and avoiding Du Yu, who was now more curious than ever. Seriously short on sleep, all he wanted to do at that moment was lie down and rest for days. And yet even on this blissfully warm day, with his eyes comfortably shut and his body relaxed, all the words and photos from the case files continued to flash through his mind, as if someone had taken a knife and carved them onto the surface of his brain.
The police analysis had not been wrong-this guy was inordinately smart. If they were hoping he had gotten sloppy and left some major clue behind, they were going to be out of luck. The only way to catch him would be through meticulously analyzing his behavior and then piecing together a picture of the man himself. And yet, what exactly could Fang Mu hope to learn from these increasingly puzzling cases?
This was what had most perplexed Fang Mu over the past several days. Through research and personal experience, he knew that in committing their crimes, serial killers always acted in a way meant to satisfy some psychological or emotional need. This sort of behavior was often known as a serial killer's personal mark. Determining and then analyzing a serial killer's personal mark was critical to cracking the case. First of all, this behavior was the basis for identifying several murders as the work of one individual, and second, it was a window into the killer's overall motive. And because the personal mark often accurately reflected the character, lifestyle, and experiences of the killer, it could lead to important clues found at the intersection of the killer, his victims, and his chosen crime scenes.
Without a doubt, the killer had meticulously arranged for the number of each crime to be hidden somewhere within the crime itself-this was not just some coincidence. At this point, not knowing anything more about their meaning, there was no choice but to understand these numbers as a kind of provocation. As for the rest of the killer's unusual behavior, could any of it be seen as his personal mark?
Superficially, some of it did seem possess the characteristics of a personal mark: dismembering Wang Qian, and then transporting Qu Weiqiang and cutting off his hands in the first crime; placing a piece of broken ceramic pottery in Jin Qiao's hand, filming her genitals and then returning her to her parents in the third crime; skinning Xin Tingting in the fourth crime. All of this behavior clearly required that the killer expend additional time, patience and skill, while also increasing his risk. And all of it was far in excess of what he needed to do avoid detection; rather, it seemed to have been performed for his own satisfaction.
Even so, this was what most puzzled Fang Mu. Because from said behavior, which at first might seem to so obviously display the killer's personal mark, it was not only impossible to determine how the killer's obsessions were either increasing in force or shifting from crime to crime, it couldn't even be claimed that there was any consistent information about the man at all. In other words, these so-called examples of the killer's personal mark were unable to fully reflect the killer's character or his psychological characteristics.
During the first crime, after the killer raped Wang Qian, he dismembered her and then pieced her back together. According to Professor Qiao, this came from a desire to "build her anew." And as for Qu Weiqiang, the severing of his hands after he was killed was supposedly motivated by jealousy. But at this point, the investigation had found no evidence that this had been a crime of passion. And the syringe that was plunged in Wang Qian's breast also remained unexplained.
During the second crime, a middle-aged woman had been killed. She was not raped, and the crime did not appear sexually motivated. As for the pornographic manga found in her bag, Fang Mu believed it had been placed there in an attempt to dishonor her. But again, the information currently available about the crime could not prove this point.
During the third crime, the killer sexually tortured the victim to death, filmed her genitals and placed a piece of broken pottery in her hand. All this demonstrated a psychosexual disorder, as well as a violent need to control the female body.
During the fourth crime, the killer skinned the victim and then clothed the male plastic mannequin beside her in her skin. This demonstrated a tendency toward transvestism. From the standpoint of academic sexual psychology, transvestism may dispose a person toward torture fetishism, but it is extremely rare for a torture fetishist to transform into a transvestite, and almost unimaginable for such a thing to occur in so short a length of time.