For a moment Tai Wei appeared lost in thought. Then, as if something had just occurred to him, he said: "What about the first crime? You never said who he was copying there."
Frowning, Fang Mu said, "I've also been racking my brains about the first crime. There are too many historical examples of serial killers who dismembered their victims after murdering them. Based on the method used by our killer, it's extremely difficult to judge who exactly he was imitating. However, one of his motives for the crime was definitely jealousy, I'm certain of that. Think of the risk he took transporting Qu Weiqiang's body from his apartment all the way to the soccer field. That's got to mean something."
After thinking for a moment Tai Wei said, "What about Professor Qiao's idea about the killer wanting to rebuild Wang Qian anew. Could that be some kind of clue?"
Fang Mu didn't reply. Picking up the folder from the first case, he flipped directly to the crime scene photographs.
Wang Qian's body lay on the floor, cut into six parts and pieced together in a spread-eagle position.
Fang Mu stared at the photograph, as well as its accompanying description. All of a sudden he seemed to notice something, and his brow furrowed in concentration.
"Head to the north, feet to the south… head to the north, feet to the south…" he muttered to himself, before abruptly asking: "Where were the door and window located at the crime scene?"
After thinking about it for a moment, Tai Wei replied, "I think it was a north-south arrangement. The door was north and the window south. I remember Old Zhao saying to me at the time that the victim's head was pointed towards the door and her feet towards the window."
"What you're saying is, when the police entered the room, this is what they saw?" Saying this, Fang Mu thought for a moment, and then rotated the photograph. Wang Qian's spread-eagle body was now upside-down, her head, arms and legs pointing in five different directions.
Fang Mu's swept his eyes across the victim's head, torso, arms, and legs. Suddenly his breathing grew rapid. Pulling his cell phone from his pocket, he quickly dialed a number. Tai Wei could see his hands were shaking.
After a few seconds, Fang Mu heard Du Yu's voice on the other end: "Hello?"
"It's Fang Mu. Du Yu, do you still remember what that five-pointed star on our door looked like?"
"Five-pointed star? What five-pointed star?"
Fang Mu leapt to his feet in agitation. "The one from the night of the World Cup finals! We watched the game at a restaurant, came back, I went to the bathroom, and then when I returned to our room, you were wiping something off our door. You said it was a five-pointed star. Do you remember or not?"
"Oh, now I remember. Yeah, that's what happened. What made you think of it now?"
"That's none of your concern! I just need you to tell me, what did that five-pointed star look like?"
"It had five points man, what else can be said? As I recall it was pretty damn ugly, too."
"C'mon, just think; was there anything else special about it? For example…"
"Oh yeah, I just thought of something. The five-pointed star, it was upside-down."
"…Upside-down…" said Fang Mu, seemingly speaking to himself. All of a sudden, his face was ashen.
"That's right. It was drawn with one point down and two points up. Why do you want to know? …Hey, Fang Mu, can you still hear me? Hello, hello…?"
Ignoring him, Fang Mu slowly hung up the phone.
Looking as if all his energy had left him, Fang Mu leaned back against the bench, his eyes empty. From Fang Mu's conversation with Du Yu, Tai Wei more or less understood that on the eve of Qu Weiqiang and Wang Qian's murders, someone had drawn an upside-down five-pointed star on Fang Mu's door. Now he wondered what it was supposed to mean.
"What's the significance of an upside-down five-pointed star?" asked Tai Wei.
Fang Mu seemed to be so scared that he had begun to tremble. It took him a long time to reply. At last, lips shaking, he said, "Richard Ramirez. American serial killer. On multiple occasions between 1984 and 1985, he snuck into peoples' homes, killed all the adult men, raped the women and children, and then dismembered their corpses. Once he was finished, he would leave behind the same symbol at every crime scene: an upside-down five-pointed star. Sometimes he would leave it on the wall, sometimes on a mirror, and sometimes directly on the bodies of his victims."
He pointed at the crime scene photograph. "Wang Qian's head is facing the door and her feet are facing the window so that when police entered the room she would have looked just like an upside-down five-pointed star. Ramirez was different than other serial killers. Not only did he lack any trademark method of murdering his victims-he'd shoot them, beat them to death, slit their throats, strangle them-he also didn't seek out any particular kind of victim. He killed children under five, men and women over seventy, and people of all races and walks of life. As a result, he was extremely difficult for police to catch. At last, Ramirez was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to death in 1989."
With that, Fang Mu dropped his head and said no more.
Lighting a cigarette, Tai Wei slowly organized his thoughts.
"Richard Ramirez, Harold Shipman, Tsutomu Miyazaki, Ed Gein, Charles Manson," he said at last, seemingly lost in thought, "it really does seem like this guy is copying famous serial killers from history. And he even left a clue to the first crime on your door-the five-pointed star…"
The moment these words left Tai Wei's mouth, he abruptly stopped talking and his eyes went wide. The cigarette in his hand was immediately forgotten. For several seconds he sat there, stunned. He then turned to face Fang Mu, who was trying to light a cigarette, but his hands were shaking too much to use the lighter.
At last, with what seemed great determination, Tai Wei slowly said: "Fang Mu, I think this guy is coming for you." He gave the kid a careful look. His face was now deathly pale. "He's testing you, trying to see whether you can guess who he'll be copying next. No one else on campus understands this stuff as much as you do."
Tai Wei spoke slowly and softly, but to Fang Mu, each word felt like a bullet shot straight at his heart. "You think so?" he asked at last. "No way, that's impossible." Lighting a cigarette, he inhaled deeply, and then turned to Tai Wei and forced a smile.
What kind of smile was this? Tai Wei had to wonder.
Disheartened. Indignant. Despairing. Terrified. Was he trying to convince himself that this was all just a coincidence?
Don't be such a fool, Fang Mu thought as his thin, self-deceiving smile twitched involuntarily.
Time passed and the sky grew dark. To Fang Mu, it began to seem as if all the dim shapes around him were growing nearer. The basketball hoops, the chain-link fence, the trees, even the dorms all appeared to come alive, and with the deepening darkness they seemed to be secretly laughing at him, as if they were closing in on him, malice in their hearts, step by step.
He felt his throat become dry, his mouth bitter, and his head spin. At last, unable to stop himself, he bent over and began to vomit.
Tai Wei sat there motionlessly, watching as Fang Mu retched so violently that his body appeared to split in half.
His heart was filled with sympathy and misery.
CHAPTER 18
Fang Mu lay in bed all day. He didn't eat, didn't drink, didn't say a single word; just stared at the ceiling and ignored everyone. Although Du Yu was already accustomed to this sort of behavior, he had a vague feeling that something was different this time.