Chapter 122

In the early hours of autumn, the world was shrouded in darkness and heavy rain. The relentless downpour echoed in people’s ears, washing away most of the traces. The icy rain continued to fall on their bodies and faces, carrying away the remaining warmth.

The serial killer’s renewed spree undoubtedly kept people on edge, as this perpetrator had started openly taunting. What else was he not afraid to do?

This individual had abandoned the basic morals of being human. Such actions were no different from those of a wild beast.

After the girl was taken away, Lu Siyu and Song Wen entered the duty room.

The duty room of this parking lot was only about two square meters in size, containing only a table and a chair.

The person in charge here had long since left, but the electricity was still on. Now, the light in the duty room was faintly glowing, emitting a white light.

Above the table, there was a small electric heater plugged into the power source, and a cup, probably taken from the pocket of a nearby table, was carefully cleaned and had a tea bag placed inside. There was also an empty mineral water bottle beside it. At this moment, the cup of tea was still warm.

There was also a small note on the table, with the city bureau’s hotline number scribbled on it.

Now, beside the items on the table, evidence markers with L-shaped rulers had been placed, and evidence personnel had taken photos from various angles, waiting to be placed in evidence bags and taken back for examination.

Lu Siyu glanced back at the nearby hospital. From this angle, the red cross light on top could be seen.

The victim might have just finished rescue after an emergency, and encountered the culprit on her way home from work.

The criminal wore a security guard’s uniform and gained her trust… and then…

Images flashed through Lu Siyu’s mind. After committing the heinous act, the perpetrator came here, watching as the rain grew heavier, then entered this small room and turned on the light.

The perpetrator sat here, took out a pre-prepared note, and used the victim’s phone to call the city hotline.

Feeling a bit thirsty, he found a water cup and heater, opened an unopened bottle of mineral water nearby, washed it, and then brewed a cup of tea, calmly taking a few sips.

Then he smugly awaited the arrival of the police, even exchanging glances with the two patrol officers who arrived first.

Song Wen also observed everything in the small room. He ran his fingers through his wet hair, then wiped the rainwater off his cheeks with the back of his hand, trying to restore his usual calm demeanor.

Lin Xiuran finally arrived at this moment. By now, he knew he had made a wasted trip, but since there were no new victims and no need for autopsies, his mood was still quite good.

Tonight, Lin Xiuran wore a thick dark green raincoat. Seeing Song Wen and Lu Siyu standing here, he walked over and stood at the door of the duty room, asking, “I heard the victim was rescued and taken away?”

Song Wen nodded wearily.

Lin Xiuran continued, “It’s really fortunate that she could be saved from such a misfortune.”

“The perpetrator didn’t exert much force tonight, and there aren’t many signs of abuse on the victim’s body.” Song Wen finally breathed a sigh of relief. He asked Xu Yao, who was collecting evidence outside, “Where’s Lao Tian?”

With the ambulance and the crowd earlier, he hadn’t noticed where Tian Ming had gone.

Xu Yao replied, “Lao Tian took a few people to nearby areas to see if they could track down the culprit. But here, there are small alleys everywhere…”

Song Wen nodded. The hope of catching the perpetrator was slim, but they had to try.

Xu Yao added, “Because of the rain, there aren’t many traces left outside. We’ve finished collecting evidence from the security room. We should be done in about half an hour.”

Everything seemed to be in order, so Song Wen finally relaxed a bit.

He saw Lu Siyu standing aside, looking pensive, and said to him, “I’ll keep an eye on things here. You go warm up in the car for a while, at least wipe your hair.”

Lu Siyu shook his head. “I’m fine. I held the umbrella for a while, and there are dry spots on me. But you…”

Song Wen fell silent for a moment, then looked up and said, “The perpetrator has evolved again.”

This evolution was multifaceted; the intervals between crimes had shortened, and the perpetrator had become more cunning. This time, the perpetrator had learned to disguise himself. That security uniform might have been purchased by him. Many ordinary people couldn’t distinguish between security uniforms, police uniforms, and auxiliary police uniforms, blindly assuming that someone wearing them was a good person. Just by wearing that outfit, he lowered the guard of passersby significantly.

Lu Siyu bit his thumb nail, organizing the process of several cases in his mind. After a moment, he looked up and said, “Captain Song, could you accompany me and Zhuang Yi for a chat?”

In the patrol car of the city bureau, the air conditioning was on, making it warmer and drier than outside. Zhuang Yi, sitting in the back seat, had his brows furrowed and looked a bit dejected. He smiled bitterly as he saw Song Wen and Lu Siyu come in, making space for them inside.

Lu Siyu sat down, took a tissue from the box beside him, wiped the water droplets off his face, and then tore off a few pieces to hand to Song Wen.

However, Song Wen wasn’t in a hurry. He held onto the tissue and greeted Zhuang Yi, “Professor Zhuang.”

Zhuang Yi raised his head. “Don’t call me Professor anymore, just call me Zhuang Yi. Hearing that title now feels like sarcasm. Professor is just an honorary title. The university appointed me as a visiting professor for the sake of reputation, but I haven’t lectured at a university.”

As the online forums had mentioned, there was a big difference between a real professor and him. He didn’t have a formal professorship.

Song Wen comforted him, “The perpetrator isn’t targeting you specifically; he intends to commit another crime regardless.” He knew that the last phone call and the new victim this morning had a significant impact on Zhuang Yi.

After finishing speaking, Song Wen looked at Lu Siyu. He didn’t know what Lu Siyu wanted to talk to Zhuang Yi about, and seeing Lu Siyu’s calm demeanor made him suspicious that Lu Siyu just wanted to trick him into warming up in the car.

Zhuang Yi sighed and said, “I’m just theorizing on paper; it’s too far removed from the realities of these abnormalities in life…”

He had never spoken about these things in front of outsiders, but seeing the new victim today filled him with guilt, as if a heavy stone were pressing on his chest. He suddenly realized that sometimes his seemingly casual words had people’s lives hanging on them.

“Behavioral profiling is ultimately not prophecy,” Song Wen reassured him.

Lu Siyu rolled up the half-opened window beside him and then spoke up, “Given the situation, with another victim, we must accept this fact.” He licked his lips and continued, “The situation is unfavorable, but there is still hope. Every time the perpetrator strikes, he exposes himself a little more, making it easier for us to get closer to him.”

His words sounded cold and ruthless, but they were indeed logical.

In many unsolved cases in history, either the forensic technology of the time couldn’t keep up or the perpetrator committed too few crimes, making it impossible to extract more clues and characteristics, leading to the cases becoming cold cases. Classic examples include the Black Dahlia case and the Nanjing dismemberment case.

Now, in this case, although there is another victim, at the same time, the perpetrator has left them with more clues and evidence.

How to gather all the clues, unravel the case, find the truth, and reconstruct the perpetrator’s psychology is what they should be doing now.

In the noisy crime scene, the rain continued outside. The rolled-up car window isolated the sound of the rustling rain. The three sat in the car, their faces illuminated by the orange glow of the taillights.

Lu Siyu continued, “Professor Zhuang, I think your deductions are not completely wrong. Adjusting them could bring us closer to the perpetrator.”

Zhuang Yi smiled bitterly, “When a policeman came in earlier to put things away, I heard him say that the girl said there was only one perpetrator. My previous deductions were just my imagination.”

What “not completely wrong,” it was just the young policeman giving him face. He hadn’t seen Lu Siyu many times, but each time left an impression on him. He always felt that this young policeman was somewhat extraordinary.

“I’ve already said everything I could think of earlier. Now, I still can’t figure out where my thinking went wrong,” Zhuang Yi sighed, still feeling defeated. At that moment, combined with the testimony of the first eyewitness, he almost thought his theory was flawless, but reality slapped him hard in the face.

“You all need to work harder on this case. As a consultant, I still need to clean up my previous mess. I reckon, in a couple of hours, my phone will be blowing up with calls from the media. I’ll talk to Commissioner Gu later about withdrawing from this case.” Zhuang Yi encountered setbacks and didn’t want to face them head-on. Instead, he was thinking about how to make up for the losses and salvage his reputation.

Lu Siyu shook his head, pointing out the inconsistency in his previous reasoning: “I believe the perpetrator isn’t two people, but rather has a split personality.”

Zhuang Yi’s eyes widened in surprise. “But earlier, I…”

“Correct, in our initial discussions, your analysis dismissed this possibility,” Lu Siyu interjected. “But today, I noticed a detail: he didn’t use high-end cosmetics for the women, but rather ordinary non-waterproof ones. So, the heavy rain washed away the girl’s makeup, making her face look less perfect. Do you remember, in the initial profiling, the perpetrator was obsessive about details and pursued perfection?”

Zhuang Yi pondered for a moment. “Are you suggesting that the makeup was applied before the heavy rain?”

The time between the shock of the girl being killed and their arrival at the scene wasn’t too long. From this, it’s inferred that when the perpetrator made the call, it was right after he had just committed the crime, at his most triumphant moment, hence the taunts and laughter. Then the heavy rain came, so the makeup wasn’t applied after the crime.

Song Wen suddenly understood as well and added, “The makeup might have been applied before the strangulation, while the victim was unconscious.”

Lu Siyu nodded. “The split personality isn’t one evil and one guilty. It’s one violent personality capturing prey…” He paused before continuing, “And the other deviant personality does the makeup and completes the final kill.”

At this moment, Lu Siyu’s hair was wet, strands hanging on either side of his snow-white forehead. Perhaps due to the cold, his lips were pale, devoid of color, yet his gaze was sharp as a sword, portraying him as cool and rational.

The theory put forth by Lu Siyu shocked Zhuang Yi momentarily. He furrowed his brows and thought deeply, realizing it perfectly aligned with the actual circumstances of the case.

Lu Siyu extended his slender fingers and counted off four steps. “We previously divided the murder into four steps: violent capture, victim control, killing, and dressing the body.”

Then, Lu Siyu began closing his fingers one by one as he spoke. “But the actual sequence is: violent capture, victim control, dressing, and then killing. His dressing actions and covering the victim’s face with clothing made you mistake it for guilt and pity, but in reality, those steps were for his own enjoyment.”

Lu Siyu concluded solemnly, “After controlling the victim, the perpetrator underwent a personality shift. That’s why our previous eyewitness heard him seemingly conversing with someone else. And it’s also why you thought the perpetrator had an accomplice.”

“Why does the personality shift happen at that stage?” Zhuang Yi asked, finally voicing the question that had been perplexing him.

TN:

Black Dhalia Case:

A famous cold case in Los Angeles from the 1940s involving the murder of Elizabeth Short. On January 15, 1947, at 10a.m a housewife was out with her son when she came across the gruesome scene of Elizabeth’s murder. At first, she thought it was a mannequin because of how white it was but upon closer inspection was shocked to discover it was actually a woman. Her body was gruesomely mutilated. The killer split her up in two from the waist and drained of all her blood. Parts of her body like her intestines were removed and tucked beneath her butt and some pieces of flesh were cut away. Her face was also mutilated with numerous slashes, the worst being slashes from the corners of her mouth to the ear(Glasgow Smile; think Joker). Marks on her body suggested the woman had been bound and tortured, and her official cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage and shock. She was given the name Black Dahlia(in reference to the movie called Blue Dahlia that came out around that time) post-humously mostly due to her striking dyed black hair and the black clothing she wore. Numerous rumors that circulated after her death spoke of her promiscuous nature and teasing men(she had been in contact with like 75 men at the time). Some also claimed she was a prostitute. There were numerous theories about who killed her but none ever came to fruition. A person claiming to be the killer at one point contacted a magazine called The Examiner and sent Elizabeth’s belongings to prove he was the killer. There was a partial print on the package but they couldn’t analyze it as it was damaged in transit. They even sent a note to the police with a location but never showed up. The case went cold and some suspect it was due to police cover-up because one of the main suspects at the time, Leslie Short, was ultimately not brought to trial because of clerical errors. There’s also a former police detective, Steve Hodel who published a true crime book called Black Dahlia Murder: A Genius for Murder, that believes his father, Dr. George Hodel, was the murderer. The case remains unsolved to date.

Nanjing Dismemberment Case:

This is the case of the murder of Diao Aiqing, a 19-year-old first-year student at Nanjing University’s Adult Education College. It was dubbed “The Black Dahlia of Nanjing”. The last time she was seen was when she angrily left her dorm after receiving collective punishment due to one of her roommates using an electric appliance against school regulations. 9 days later on 19th January 1996, Diao’s body was found cut up into over 2,000 pieces and scattered across the campus. The discovery of Diao’s remains in the winter of January 19 was first reported by a sanitary worker who found meat in a bag. Initially thought to be pork, the worker brought it home for food. While preparing the meat, three human fingers were found. The worker reported the discovery to the police who confirmed they were from a human. Human remains in plastic-wrapped packages were eventually discovered across eight locations around the university, including at a stadium, entrance gate, hospital, and along roadsides. Many of the body parts and organs, including Diao’s head, had been cooked for several days. Crucial organs including the heart, liver, and spleen were never found. Relatives were able to identify her through a “mung bean-sized” mole on her right cheek. At the time, China’s police were some years behind in most modern training in forensic science or approaches to criminal pathology. Following five days of emotional appeals, Diao’s family was persuaded to leave the city and return home. The university reimbursed Diao’s tuition fees; after three months, the task force who’d assured the family of a swift and just solution was quietly dissolved; news of the case vanished from the local press. This might be because the case would eventually involve both local and provincial security departments, as well as the Nanjing University Community Committee. They were more concerned about saving reputation opposed to actually solving the case so they hush-hush about the details. Diao’s parents weren’t allowed access to their daughter’s body, let alone bury her remains; they remain in police custody. The case remains unsolved.