Right now everyone in the courtyard was staring at Fang Mu. For a moment, he didn't know what to do.
Then Tai Wei called out to him from a corner of the courtyard. "Over here!"
Walking over, Fang Mu could smell a strong odor coming from that direction. When he reached Tai Wei, he saw that he was standing within a pigpen made of crushed brick, wooden planks, and tree bark.
Fang Mu carefully stepped inside. Thanks to the powerful police spotlight, every inch of the pigpen was immediately visible.
The mud was six inches thick. Pig feed was everywhere. The feeding trough had fallen down and was now half-submerged in the mud. It was indeed a sorry way to raise pigs.
At that moment, however, none happened to be in sight. And even though the mud-covered figure lying absolutely still in the muck before him did closely resemble one, Fang Mu was certain that it was a person.
"Who…is that?" he asked, his voice shaky.
Tai Wei didn't respond, just handed him an evidence bag. Inside was a mud-caked passport. It was open.
Fang Mu could make out a picture in the upper-right corner. In it, a blond-haired, blue-eyed white man grinned vapidly. According to the card, his name was Thomas Gill, he was from the United States, and he had worked for the foreign teachers administrative department at JiangbinCityUniversity.
The victim was a foreigner. It was just as Tai Wei had said-this one was big.
Suddenly Fang Mu looked up and glanced all around, as if he were searching for something.
Tai Wei knew what he was looking for, so he handed over another evidence bag. Inside was a watch, just as mud-caked as the ID booklet. But Fang Mu could still see that the hour hand, minute hand, and second hand were all stopped at five.
Fang Mu stared at the watch. This was the fifth murder.
"How about it, Tai Wei?" yelled the medical examiner, a touch of impatience in his voice. "Can we get started?"
Tai Wei turned and motioned for them to begin processing the scene, and then looked back at Fang Mu. "I made them wait for you to observe the scene before they could begin examining it," he said, "although some police from the local substation did manage to disturb a few things before we arrived. Anyway, I know that seeing the scene in its original state is extremely important to criminal profiling." He gave Fang Mu a very self-satisfied wink.
Fang Mu forced himself to squeeze out a thin smile.
Two policemen wearing rain boots then hopped into the pigpen. After struggling to pull the corpse out of the mud, they laid it on a plastic tarp that had been placed in the middle of the courtyard.
The victim was small in stature, looking to be about 5'6", which meant that in the U.S. he was probably considered quite short. Although his body was caked with mud, several of his wounds were still visible. Some were so deep that the bones stuck out.
"Damn," said the medical examiner, frowning as he slipped on a pair of gloves, "it looks like the pigs have been nibbling on this guy for a while. You go handle your business, Tai Wei. With a body like this," he pointed at the corpse, "it's going to take me a little while."
Tai Wei nodded and then led Fang Mu into the house.
Navigating the chaos of farm tools and cooking utensils that had been placed haphazardly in the central room, they made their way into the inner room of the house.
Just like outside, it was ablaze with light. A bony man who looked like a farmer was sitting earnestly on a small stool in one corner of the room. He was the homeowner, and seemed to be the one who had called the police. Sitting on the edge of the kang bed were two policemen, while an interview notepad had been placed on the kang table in between the two parties.
As soon as Tai Wei and Fang Mu entered, the two policemen stopped the interview and stood up. In the corner of the room, the owner also quickly stood up.
Tai Wei waved for him to sit down and then grabbed the notepad and flipped through a few pages. After a moment, he turned to the owner, who was still nervously standing in place, and said, "Repeat for me everything you just said to these two men."
A miserable look on his face, the owner said, "Chief, I've already told it multiple times and I still haven't eaten yet. Besides, my pigs are over at Second Son Wu's house, and I know that cheapskate would never feed them for me."
After the "Chief" promised to buy both the farmer and his pigs dinner, the man very reluctantly began to talk.
"Yesterday I got in a big fight with my no-good, spendthrift wife," he said, "after which she returned to her parents' home. Once she was gone, I went and played poker at a little store nearby, and then came home around five that afternoon. As soon as I entered the courtyard, it occurred to me that I hadn't fed the pigs all day, so why weren't they screaming for food? They still seemed to be doing all right, weren't making a sound. But in any case I heated up a pot of swill and then went to go feed them. While feeding them, I decided to save some electricity-it's so expensive out here in the countryside, sixty-eight cents per kilowatt hour, you guys in the city only pay thirty-nine cents, right?"
At this point the man launched into a nearly two-minute-long tirade against the government's policies toward farmers, which only ended when Tai Wei was forced to remind him to stay on topic.
"Oh, what was I talking about again?" the farmer said. "That's right, saving electricity. So I kept the light off, but as I looked around I could tell something was wrong. I only own four pigs, so what were five doing in the pen? At first I thought one of my neighbor Second Son Wu's pigs must have jumped the fence, and just as I was feeling really happy about that possibility, I noticed that it was just lying there and not eating, so I prodded it with my stick, but still it didn't move. That's when I shined my flashlight over on it and, my God, it was a person! So I called the police and someone from the local substation came out here, showed me his badge, and then called you guys."
At this point the medical examiner entered the house. He turned on the faucet in the central room and washed the mud off his hands.
From the inner room Tai Wei called out to him. "How's it look out there?"
"Cause of death was shock due to blood loss," said the medical examiner, shaking the water from his hands as he walked into the room. "We still have to take a closer look at some of the places that were eaten by the pigs, but it's clear he was stabbed at least fourteen times."
Nodding toward the farmer, he continued. "It's no surprise he took the victim for one of his pigs. This was one heavy guy, at least two hundred pounds. Your pigs have been eating well." Noticing that everyone was now frowning and looking like they wanted to vomit, he cackled with laughter.
Tai Wei muttered the word sicko under his breath and then turned to Fang Mu, only to find the kid was staring off into the corner, mumbling to himself.
"Pig…pig…pig…" he murmured.
Tai Wei was about to ask him what he was talking about, when Fang Mu abruptly turned to the farmer and asked: "You just said that when you first saw the victim, you thought he was a pig, right?"
The farmer nearly jumped with surprise at the sudden question. "Yes," he said, "that's right. It was dark and I couldn't see any of the pigs clearly. Besides, with him lying face down in the pigpen like that, what was I supposed to think?"
Fang Mu turned and looked at Tai Wei. Although the kid's face was ghostly pale, his eyes were shining bright.
"Where's the CD?" Fang Mu asked.
"What CD?" For a moment, Tai Wei had no idea what he was talking about.
"From the last crime, Room Four-Zero-Four! The one the skinless girl was listening to!" Fang Mu was now so agitated his voice was almost incoherent.