The Untouched Crime Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2014 Shanghai Insight Media Co., Ltd.

  Translation copyright © 2016 Michelle Deeter

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as 无证之罪 by Hunan People’s Publishing House in Mainland China in 2014. Translated from Chinese by Michelle Deeter. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2016.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503937390

  ISBN-10: 1503937399

  Cover design by Rex Bonomelli

  CONTENTS

  PART 1 COME AND GET ME

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  PART 2 THE TRAGEDY OF THE LOGICIAN

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  PART 3 NO EVIDENCE

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  PART 4 A GENIUS DESIGNS A PERFECT ALIBI

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  PART 5 AN EQUATION WITHOUT A SOLUTION

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  PART 6 COVERING ONE’S TRACKS

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  PART 7 THE UNAVOIDABLE TRAP

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  PART 8 THE MAGNETIC PULL OF THE TRUTH

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  PART 9 REACHING THE SAME END BY DIFFERENT MEANS

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  PART 1

  COME AND GET ME

  Chapter 1

  There were too many people at the scene. The five police cars could barely park.

  Zhao Tiemin, captain of the Hangzhou Criminal Investigation Division, had just opened the car door when someone thrust a black microphone in his face.

  “What is this?” he growled, rubbing his forehead as he stood. More cameras appeared, blocking his path, and several reporters all started asking questions at once.

  “This is the fifth murder; do you think you can catch the serial killer this time?”

  “The killer left another sign saying ‘Come and get me’ at the crime; do you have any comments?”

  “Could you give us a brief rundown of the case?”

  Captain Zhao did not respond, pressing his lips into a thin line to suppress his annoyance. He had raced to the scene to investigate, and already these reporters were getting in the way.

  If he were still a rookie, he probably would have lost his patience and shouted something along the lines of “I haven’t even arrived at the scene; what the hell do I know?” But an outburst would only land him on the evening news. As the highest-ranking officer on the scene, he knew that keeping up appearances was important.

  Zhao Tiemin coughed loudly and clapped to get everyone’s attention. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “For further information on the case, please contact the publicity department of the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau. I’m afraid I am not in a position to comment.”

  He hated dealing with journalists. With a wave of his hand, he ordered his team to disperse the crowd. The onlookers parted like the Red Sea, and Zhao Tiemin and ten of his officers stepped under the crime scene tape. The representative of the district Public Security Bureau securing the scene hurried to greet them.

  Zhao nodded in greeting, his face expressionless. “Has Old Chen arrived yet?”

  “Yes, some time ago. Dr. Chen is examining the body right now.”

  “Right. Your men can hand things over to us—this case will be handled directly by the city PSB.”

  Zhao scanned the area from his spot on the grassy area next to Wenyi West Road. Just beyond, a pop-up canopy had been erected over a body on an expanse of concrete. Several officers milled about.

  Zhao walked towards the canopy to get a closer look at the dead man, who had several labels affixed to his round body.

  His eyes were bulging and bloodshot—the capillaries had ruptured. He was naked from the waist up, and his chest and arms were covered in tattoos. It was highly likely that he hung out with the seedier crowd in Hangzhou. His tongue lolled out of his mouth, and a cigarette was stuck between his plump lips.

  “What do you know so far?” Zhao asked Dr. Chen, who was crouched next to the body.

  Chen lifted the dead man’s chin with his gloved hand and pointed to a long bruise on the man’s neck. “This, combined with his red eyes and protruding tongue, lead me to believe that the victim was strangled by a rope from behind. The marks suggest that the killer’s left hand was stronger than his right, probably a lefty. The time of death is somewhere between eleven and one. I can pinpoint a more exact time when we complete the autopsy. But we should hurry.” He looked towards the September sun, now beating down on them. “At this temperature, the body starts to decompose almost immediately.”

  Zhao rubbed his nose. It had been an extremely hot summer. Though the man had only been dead for eight or nine hours, the stench was awful.

  Chen delicately retrieved the cigarette and put it in a small plastic bag.

  “Not again . . .” Zhao’s eyebrows furrowed.

  “A Liqun cigarette, yes.” Chen shook his head and frowned. “Every detail is exactly the same as the last four cases. The weapon was found in the grass about five hundred yards away from the body. It was a jump rope, like those used for PE class. There were fingerprints on the wooden handles. The killer attacked from behind, strangling his victim with the rope. Once dead, he put a Liqun cigarette in the victim’s mouth and left a white piece of paper with the words ‘Come and get me’ printed on it. We have already collected that evidence.”

  Zhao pressed his lips together again.

  Typically the district Public Security Bureau would handle any homicide that occurred in its jurisdiction. But this case was immediately transferred to Zhao because the of
ficers could tell it was the fifth case of the serial murders. As soon as they saw the “Come and get me” sign, the district officers reported to the higher-ups, who transferred the case to the city level.

  The serial murders were famous—each new case brought a panicked uproar from the city.

  When the first killing happened two years back, the provocative “Come and get me” sign left the police reeling. Every media outlet offered nonstop coverage, and both the provincial- and the city-level government officials were furious. The mayor had slammed his hand on his desk and ordered the police to catch the killer.

  The province and the city formed a joint special task force to investigate. Half a year later, the force was disbanded because it had made zero progress.

  But not long after the special task force was disbanded, a second murder was committed. The location had changed, but nearly every other detail was identical. As before, the task force assembled was eventually disbanded after no new evidence was found.

  The task force had now been disbanded four times. Different officers must have made several thousand trips to the crime scenes in that period, but it amounted to nothing. During each investigation, the police collected as many fingerprints as possible from local residents, but to no avail. In every case, the crime was committed in a suburban area where there were few security cameras, and those in existence did not seem to record anything useful. A few suspicious types were rounded up, but after thorough investigation, each was eliminated from the suspects list.

  The police supervisors raged, but the investigators didn’t have the slightest idea of who the killer could be. At first the mayor kept pounding his desk with nothing to show for it. After a while, he didn’t bother.

  For this fifth case, Zhao had been selected to be the head of the newest special task force.

  It looked exactly the same as the other four cases. The murder weapon was a simple jump rope, the victim was strangled from behind, and the rope was abandoned, seemingly carelessly, not far from the body. Fingerprints were found on the handles of the rope.

  Even more baffling, the killer always left a Liqun, a local brand of cigarette, between the lips of his victims.

  What did it mean?

  Was he trying to convey that smoking was unhealthy, or was he endorsing Hangzhou’s favorite cigarettes?

  The special task forces had discussed it time and time again, but they never reached a satisfying conclusion.

  Chen studied Zhao’s distressed expression. The past four special task forces started out with plenty of power and momentum, but they couldn’t crack the case. Now it was Zhao’s turn. Could he solve it?

  Chen coughed slightly. “This murder does have a few aspects that are different from the last four cases,” he informed Zhao.

  “What differences?” His eyes widened.

  Chapter 2

  Chen pointed at the ground, near the victim’s right hand.

  Zhao looked down. “There’s writing! Do you think the killer did it?”

  Chen shook his head. “From the looks of it, it was probably written by the victim while he struggled with the killer. I found a small rock in the victim’s right hand.”

  Zhao stared at Chen, puzzled. “What does it mean? It looks like nonsense.”

  “It’s not nonsense; the victim didn’t have a chance to finish what he was writing. I think it might be ‘local.’”

  “Local?” Zhao looked at the letters for a long time before nodding. “Probably. Does that mean the victim was trying to tell us the killer is from Hangzhou?”

  “That’s what I think,” Chen agreed. “We found an ID card. The victim’s name was Sun Hongyun, from Shandong province. That’s all we know at the moment. Shandong province is over five hundred miles from here, so ‘local’ must refer to the killer.”

  Zhao considered this. “Compared to the last four cases, this is a breakthrough. If we can confirm that the killer is a local and not a migrant, that would significantly reduce the number of possible suspects.”

  “Based on this clue, I think it’s likely that the killer and the victim knew each other,” Chen added.

  “Not necessarily.” Zhao shook his head. “For the last four cases, the likelihood that the killer and the victim were acquainted was almost none. If the victim wrote the word ‘local,’ that leaves us with two possibilities. Either the victim knew the killer, but not well enough to know his name—or, during the attack, the killer spoke some Hangzhou dialect.”

  “There is one other aspect that sets this case apart from the other four,” Chen said. “The place where we found the body is not where the killer started his attack.”

  “Do you mean to say that the killer moved the body after the murder?” Zhao asked, looking around. If the body was moved, then the crime would involve two steps: killing the victim and moving the body. That could lead to more clues.

  Chen shook his head. “He must have been killed here because just before he died, he wrote the word on the ground. Let me recreate the scene according to the existing clues. Somewhere between 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m., the victim was walking along this road. He approached the grass to relieve himself. In that moment, the killer approached from behind and wrapped the rope securely around his neck. The killer pulled the victim this way until he reached this spot, where the victim ultimately died. We discovered urine in the grass and we’re taking a sample back to the lab to see if it belonged to the victim, whose fly was down when we found him. But there’s just one thing that doesn’t check out. The killer pulled him here, crossing at least seventy-five feet of grass. There are drag marks, but strangely all we can find are footprints of the victim, not of the killer.”

  “What?” Zhao exclaimed. “You’ve got to be kidding. The killer pulled the victim all the way here without leaving a single footprint?”

  Chen nodded. “I think it’s crazy too, but we looked and looked and could only find the footprints of the victim. There were signs of a struggle, but we didn’t find a single footprint for the killer.”

  Zhao sighed. The killer pulled the victim over seventy-five feet without leaving one print. Could he fly?

  Zhao felt uneasy.

  Chapter 3

  It was September, but the brutal summer heat persisted.

  Even at seven in the evening, the sky was still bright.

  Guo Yu got off the bus, his whole body fatigued, and started walking to his apartment. He wore thick-rimmed glasses that hung heavy on the bridge of his nose. He was too thin and had a gloomy expression on his face—both results of working overtime on a regular basis.

  He had gotten a job as a programmer at a private company straight out of college and had been working there for three years now.

  He was just a low-level programmer, but his workload was heavy and demanded long hours. He consoled himself with the one good thing about his job—it provided him with a modest but steady income. Every month when the six thousand–odd yuan appeared in his bank account, he felt a little bit better.

  It was hard to get by in this city. His tiny apartment, about four hundred square feet, still cost him fifteen hundred a month, and he often sent a couple thousand yuan to his parents, who still lived in the countryside. When he had been accepted into a local college, his family borrowed tens of thousands of yuan for his tuition. Then last year, his father was injured at work, and it wasn’t covered by his insurance, setting the family back another twenty or thirty thousand yuan. His younger sister had a disability and needed constant care.

  Basically, everything cost money and he struggled to make ends meet. He wanted to settle down, buy a house and a car. But that was just a fantasy.

  Some people never have to worry about clothes or food their entire lives, while others face enormous pressure from the moment they are born.

  He was grateful for the steady job. Sure, the overtime was exhausting, but there was not much he could do about it. Even getting a job at a bigger company was a far-fetched dream.

  He turned onto a
smaller road towards his neighborhood and saw that two young men had tied up a mutt with wire for no reason at all. The puppy, no more than five months old, had his legs bound to his body and couldn’t breathe properly. The two thugs dragged the dog up and down the street, laughing.

  The dog’s snout and legs were being rubbed raw, and he yelped and whined. Guo Yu could see the fear in his eyes.

  The scene quickly attracted a crowd of onlookers, and people shouted disapprovingly.

  One of the thugs answered scornfully, “It’s my fucking dog; I can do what I want with him!” The front of his fauxhawk was dyed yellow, which everyone thought looked foolish.

  Guo Yu frequently came across these jerks. They were locals—rumor had it that they lived with their families in a rural part of the province until their house was demolished a few years back. The families now lived in multiple apartments, and the young people had too much time on their hands. They stirred up trouble every day. Even though local police locked them up once in a while, they never committed serious crimes, so they were never severely punished.

  Guo Yu had grown up in a small village. His family had dogs when he was a kid, and he loved them. Whenever he came across a stray and had food, he would share it with the dog. Watching those thugs drag the poor dog around enraged him. But he was timid and generally avoided confrontation. Besides, he was an outsider and these guys were locals. He stood in the crowd, quietly seething and watching it unfold.

  Finally an old man from the area bellowed, “Stop! Nobody treats dogs like that! Hey! You’re Zhang’s boy, aren’t you? Do you want me to go and get your father?”

  Despite the fact that they were in their twenties, the young men were unemployed and completely dependent on their parents. Watching the crowd grow, they put the wire down and began to walk away—but not before kicking the dog and cursing to save face.

  A twenty-something girl rushed forward to help the dog, who still couldn’t breathe. She removed the wire and examined his injuries. Some other people also stepped forward to help.

  Guo Yu recognized the girl. She and her older brother had a little noodle shop in the neighborhood, and Guo Yu ate there almost every day. Seeing her face was always a highlight, but he never told her that he liked her because he thought he should wait until he earned enough to support a girlfriend. Still, some days he managed to make a little conversation. That was enough.