One cat and one dog, it was a seemingly good match, like couple profiles.

The other party was evidently online and quickly sent a message.

Wei Chi: “Teacher Su, I took the liberty to ask for your contact information from the school. Thanks to your help, we are already looking for the suspect’s fingerprints, and we have also obtained information from a buyer, the code name of the person who sold the stump is ‘The Butcher’. We haven’t found him yet, but we’re getting closer to the truth.”

Lu Junchi thought about it over again and again, and felt that he ought to thank Su Hui. After all, it was because of Su Hui’s suggestion that the investigation of the case could go so smoothly. If the suspect was found, they would be able to lock him up quickly.

Su Hui held the mobile phone, listened to the pattering rain, pondered for a while, touched his face and sent out a message…

Hui: Captain Lu, are you still working? Is it nearby the General Administration?

Wei Chi:?

Such an inquiry seemed a bit too intimate, Su Hui pursed his lips, thinking about what to say next.

 

He and Lu Junchi were neither familiar nor strangers, and the relationship between them seems to be a little delicate. From what he knew about Lu Junchi, this man could be trusted and he could ask for help.

Seeing that he hadn’t replied, Lu Junchi sent another message and took the initiative to ask him.

Wei Chi: What’s wrong? Is there anything I can help you with?

Only then did Su Hui summon up his courage.

Hui: I’m outside, it’s raining, and I can’t get a car.

Lu Junchi on the other end of the phone let out a sigh of relief. This Teacher Su really did not spare people from worries. He has bad eyes, can’t hear well, doesn’t like to eat on time, and is always running around.

Wei Chi: Did you bring an umbrella?

Hui: No.

Lu Junchi held his forehead.

Wei Chi: I’ve already got off work, and I’m at the General Administration. Find a place to shelter from the rain, send me the location, and I’ll pick you up.

Hui: I’ll trouble you.

Even if the other party was a stranger who he’d only met twice, without asking for more information, without *frigid irony and scorching satire, quickly formulating a plan and implementing it, this is Lu Junchi’s way of doing things.

Show/Hide Note

Show/Hide Note

*(leng chao re feng) Lit: Frigid irony and scorching satire(idiom) – Fig: To mock and ridicule

The rain in the sky had been pattering non-stop, and after a while, the ground was entirely soaked wet, and the tires pressed and producing bursts of water.

By the time Lu Junchi got to where Su Hui was, thirty minutes had already passed, Su Hui couldn’t clearly tell where he was, so he had to drive around the neighborhood for ten minutes.

The sky was dark, Lu Junchi went around the alley, only to see Su Hui standing against the wall under a small corner of the eaves.

He was about to melt into the darkness, looking very thin, the rain had wet the hair on his forehead, his eyes looked damp, and his delicate and pretty facial features became increasingly fair and clear, with a scholarly flavor that fascinated people.

He was less like a university teacher, and more like a student.

Lu Junchi honked the horn, Su Hui walked over to open the passenger’s door, and then sat in, most of his clothes were already wet.

“Here, wipe yourself down first.” Lu Junchi handed him a box of tissues.

Su Hui thanked him in return and was then hit by a burst of fragrance.

Since his sight and hearing were not very good, Su Hui’s sense of smell had become particularly sensitive. He could distinguish the smell of hamburgers and fries, a package of food was placed between the two…

 

Su Hui suddenly called to mind that he didn’t seem to have eaten much today. It was already past ten o’clock in the evening, and he was a little hungry causing him to have a stomachache.

But… it was already shameless having someone pick him up in the rain, and now it would be a bit too much to eat other people’s takeout. His face was not that thick yet…

Su Hui didn’t say anything but his eyes rolled to that side, swept over the packaged food, swallowed in a conditioned reflex, and then crossed his arms to press down his stomach.

Lu Junchi was a criminal investigation team captain, and he had already discovered his intentions. Seeing that Su Hui was hesitant to say anything, he took the initiative to ask, “You didn’t have dinner?”

Su Hui responded in a low voice.

Lu Junchi’s hand was still on the steering wheel, and he seemed to ask him casually, “Were you very busy with work?”

Su Hui hesitated for a while and said, “I forgot…”

“No matter how busy you are, you still have to eat.” Lu Junchi said turning the steering wheel.

Su Hui didn’t know how to answer. If he had known earlier, he wouldn’t have looked at the packaged food. He lied, “I ate a lot at noon, and I haven’t been very hungry.” He looked at the rain outside the window, but his stomach honestly let out a rumbling sound.

It was even more embarrassing in the cramped car…

Su Hui coughed a few times, and Lu Junchi saw his pale complexion turn red.

At a red light, he stuffed the bag of hamburgers and french fries into Su Hui’s arms, “Eat it ba, you’re welcome.”

Su Hui wanted to eat too much, but he still said reservedly: “This is your dinner… Then what are you going to do?”

Lu Jun said lately, “I bought it for my colleagues on my way here. I’ll just ask them to order takeout later.”

In fact, Lu Junchi had already eaten. When he came to pick up Su Hui, he saw a fast food restaurant on the way and thought that he might not have eaten and bought it specifically for that reason. If Su Hui didn’t eat, he would be prepared to take advantage of the few members of the team working overtime.

He said this just because he didn’t want Su Hui to think that it was specially bought for him.

However, Lu Junchi didn’t give Su Hui the food directly. He wanted to give him a little very minor “punishment” so that Teacher Su would have a better memory and remember to eat on time.

Su Hui wiped the rain on his face with a tissue, then brought the hamburger over, lowered his head, and said, “Thank you.”

The hamburger in his hand was made of beef and cheese, which were very suitable for replenishing energy at this time. Su Hui was *not courteous. He was already hungry after running around all afternoon. He took out the hamburger and ate it in small bites, thinking while eating, why did he cut a sorry figure every time he met Lu Junchi recently?

Show/Hide Note

*Jian wai – To treat somebody with the formal courtesy accorded to a guest or host.

Lu Junchi watched him eating the hamburger. He had just chatted with Su Hui on WeChat, and now he couldn’t help but feel that he had picked up a drenched and starving little stray cat.

The food quickly soothed the stomach and warmed up the body, and those dispirited thoughts were cleanly swept away.

They drove out of that area, and Lu Junchi asked, “Where do you live?”

Su Hui responded with an address.

Lu Junchi turned up the air conditioner, set up the navigation, and drove in that direction.

After Su Hui finished eating the hamburger, he carefully put away all the rubbish, slipped Lu Junchi over at night, and then ate someone’s dinner, Su Hui looked at Lu Junchi and said, “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, I seem to owe you a favor again.”

Lu Junchi: “It’s okay, you gave me advice on the case before, and it has helped me a lot.”

Su Hui said in a low voice, “Those are just casual mentions, it’s out of the question to consider a favor.”

Hearing what he said, Lu Junchi brought the topic to the case. He always felt that Su Hui was hesitating every time, and he wanted to get more information from him.

“Teacher Su, after chatting with you last time, we went to rummage through the coffee shop’s trash. It has already been categorized, but there are many fingerprints on it, and the contamination is a bit serious. Those fingerprints can be used as comparison fingerprints, but it is not enough to check in the fingerprint database.”

That is, if they now have a suspect, and got their fingerprints, they could use the fingerprints from those coffee cups to confirm that the suspect was in the coffee shop and help them identify the perpetrator.

But those are incomplete fingerprints, and the error is large, and they cannot directly find the murderer in the fingerprint database of the ID card.

Lu Junchi concluded: “We now have some information about the murderer, such as blurred images, incomplete fingerprints, and shopping habits, but we still haven’t been able to find him. He was very careful and didn’t reveal his vehicle information. We found his Internet numbers are all registered from abroad. I remember you said that after we found those stumps, the murderer would commit the crime again soon.”

Since taking this case, Lu Junchi had been inexplicably uneasy, feeling as if a sword is hanging over his head.

The advice Su Hui gave him greatly accelerated their speed of solving the case, but this was not enough, they had to catch him before a new victim appeared.

Su Hui thought for a moment: “The suspect now knows that the police are investigating him, and he may change his usual way of doing things.”

“That is, he might give up women’s clothing temporarily?” Lu Junchi frowned.

If the suspect continued to wear women’s clothing, he actually had a better chance of being arrested, but once he abandons this pattern of behavior and becomes like a normal person, it would be more difficult for them to catch him.

 

Su Hui replied: “The current information is still uncertain.”

Lu Junchi was silent for a moment and said, “This murderer always reminds me of Edward Gein.”

Trigger warning: Graphic descriptions

Show/Hide Note

Edward Theodore Gein. Dubbed ‘The Butcher of Plainfield’/ ‘Plainfield Ghoul’ was an American serial killer convicted for the murder of two women, a store clerk, and a local bar owner, who he perceived resembled his deceased mother. When he was arrested, the police found the skulls and body parts of other victims. He exhumed as many as 40 corpses from local gravesites and kept the body parts and skins as his prized possessions. He used them to make household items e.g skulls as bowls, lips as curtain bind, utensils made of bones, a face lampshade, and chairs upholstered with human skin, clothing eg a belt made of women’s nipples,, and masks. Upon the death of his mother, he kept her corpse and had posthumous conversations with her. His mother was abusive and domineering but he was ‘obsessed’ with her. He stitched a suit using the skin of various women because he wanted to climb inside and ‘become’ his dead mother. He made these clothes and walked around with them because he wanted to feel like a woman, specifically his mother. He admitted to his crimes but pled insanity. He was tried 11 years after his arrest and declared criminally insane. He was ordered to spend the rest of his life in a secure mental hospital, where he died at the age of 77.

Known as the small-town hitman, Edward had been adapted into many films, most notably Buffalo Bill in {The Silence of the Lambs} and also {The Texas Chainsaw Massacre}.

That’s a pervert who digs corpses from graves, and what he did transcended what people call the bottom line.

Lu Junchi felt that the murderer in front of him had some of the same characteristics as Edward, including women’s clothing and the use of corpses.

Su Hui shook his head: “No, they are not exactly the same. When you face these people, you can’t just look at their characteristics, but at their motives and the nature of the crime. The police will enter a habitual misunderstanding, which is to use normal thinking and known common sense to infer the perpetrator, and trying to connect criminal behavior with known cases, this will only make you stray farther and farther away from the real perpetrator.”

Lu Junchi asked humbly for advice: “Then what are their similarities and differences?”

The rain outside the window had been rustling, Su Hui’s voice was low, slightly hoarse, but his face is calm and rational: “Edward’s IQ was very low, he had never really been with women in his life, his mother was the only woman he knew, he had never really been integrated into human society, and he was a mental patient.”

“But the murderer in front of us, he’s good at disguises, can adapt and integrate into human society, he doesn’t like decay, so he thinks of various ways to keep the stump fresh. He is meticulous, he has a plan, premeditated, deliberate, every step of his is not superfluous, an unyielding purpose…”

Su Hui’s eyes narrowed slightly, looking at the swaying wipers in front of him, “He will try to coexist peacefully with his special hobby, weaken his guilt by selling stumps, and get money, he has enough camouflage, and may even have normal social interactions and excellent communication skills, it will be more difficult for you to catch him than a murderer who is out of tune with the crowd.”

“However, I think he may have something in common with Edward, and I also feel some characteristics of a perverted serial killer in him. I think his choice of female coffee shop clerks is probably related to his mother. His mother may be powerful, and he may live in her shadow.”

Su Hui began to analyze involuntarily, and then he suddenly stopped. He suddenly felt that this discussion seemed to have taken place at some time. This scene gave him *deja vu...

Show/Hide Note

*deja vu – the experience of seeing the exact same situation a second time.

He had long vowed not to conduct unsubstantiated profiling analysis, but as soon as Lu Junchi asked, he naturally continued. There was a sense of tacit understanding between them as they chatted, which made Su Hui a little frightened…

Lu Junchi didn’t notice anything unusual about him, and said, “I think your analysis is very good, and it will be very helpful for the next step in our work.”

Su Hui was suddenly praised and stunned for a moment.

It seems that it has been a long time, and he has not been close to these police officers and these cases.

Since he came to teach at the Chinese Police Academy, he had not gone out, gone shopping, partied, or participated in any entertainment for a long time.

He imprisoned himself on the campus, only facing those students.

There was silence in the car for a while, and then Su Hui sighed softly: “Why are there so many monsters in this city…”

Lu Junchi spoke with numbers: “Take the summary of the work of the city’s public security system last year, there were nearly 10,000 criminal cases in Huadu, and 25 detention centers in the city are nearly full all the year round. The worst of them are cases that are temporarily unsolvable and will be given to the Major Crimes Unit. With a population of 25 million, it is not surprising that there are several perversions.”

Granted that after receiving this case, Lu Junchi had to refresh his three views at the beginning, he soon got used to it and made an all-out effort to focus all his attention on arresting the murderer.

Su Hui also knew that cases with fewer than two victims, or independent cases with a clear murderer, were not under the jurisdiction of the serious crime team. The cases that Lu Junchi took over had to be the most twisted, complicated, and troublesome in the entire city.

There may be tens of thousands of victims in tens of thousands of criminal cases.

And that’s not counting so many missing, or unknown cases.

It turns out that in this seemingly peaceful city, there are so many people struggling and dying…

In addition to those ordinary criminal cases, the police, especially the Major Crimes Unit would inevitably face one type of person – a serial killer.

They are extremely cruel and addicted to killing. Their minds keep churning thoughts about killing. They’re not interested in money, they just want to enjoy the thrill of killing.

Those evils are like cancer cells that grow wrong, however, when there is no timely attack, you cannot prevent it and even more so take precautionary measures against them.

You can only use the fastest speed after the crime has happened, find them, execute them, and stop the spread of the killings.

The author has something to say: 

Lu Junchi: I fed my wife today.

TN:

First Jerry Brudos (The Shoe Fetish Slayer) and now Edward Gein (The Butcher of Plainfield), this perpetrator is really giving crawled out of hell to bring terror and disgust. I’m noticing a similar pattern in that both these psychos have mommy issues which seem to greatly influence their perverted tendencies. Childhood is the most psychologically impressionable age. The experience people go through end up shaping who they become. Maybe if Jerry’s mom didn’t give him shit for wearing women’s shoes he would have ended up being a cross-dresser slaying, metaphorically of course, at drag shows or he could have revolutionalized women’s footwear and been Jimmy Choo’s idol, or maybe he was just not right in the head. But my point is to TREAT YOUR CHILDREN WELL PEOPLE. Don’t breed any more mentally unstable psychopaths for us.