Chapter 6 Scratches on the Perfume Bottle
Chapter 6 Scratches on the Perfume Bottle A few seconds later, I looked over the room, outside the window, and around the corridor. As a cop, I didn’t believe in ghosts and spirits hurting people, which meant one of two things: one, Li Ling was lying and never saw any ghosts, or two, she didn’t lie but was mentally ill. As I turned to look at her, I tended to believe the former. “She was like this when you came in?” Haoran asked while glancing at Ling, who was still shivering in bed. His expression was unreadable. Li shook his head. “She was yelling ‘help,” waving her hands around, and telling me what she saw. I told her to calm down, and she went from leaning against the wall to this.” His face looked pale, I suppose he probably believed Ling’s account of why she was freaked out. Even Teng seemed to be affected; he was looking around with anxiety. I saw it has been a while and Ling wasn’t shaking as hard as before, so I sat by her bed, “how are you feeling right now?” Ling looked up at me with fear in her eyes. I began to doubt my a.s.sessment of her; if she was lying, she was a pretty good actress. “You saw the same ghost from the night when you played pen oracle?” I asked gently, trying not to irritate her. Ling nodded at my question. “It was so scary! Am I next? I don’t want to die.” She began to hiccup again. I looked at Haoran, and found he was looking my way as well. I nodded at him, indicating he should take her away for detailed questioning. It would be good to give her time to process this. Sometimes repeating a lie would expose a flaw. It wasn’t that I wanted her to be the bad guy, but she was the only survivor of this roomful of girls. Haoran waved at Teng meaningfully, “take her in for questioning.” After Ling left, I began to search the room carefully. My colleagues had done a sweep before and found nothing. This time, I searched everything, and found the a.s.sessment of the women to be accurate based on their possessions. Ling owned the least things, and most of her clothes and makeup were inexpensive, but there was one bottle of high-end perfume, priced at 1200 or 1300 yuan. Compared to the rest of her stuff, this wasn’t something Ling could buy herself. “This is...?” Haoran asked me, as I held and stared at the perfume. “A bottle of Dior perfume, costs at least a grand, it doesn’t match what she owned.” After all this work, only this stuck out as unusual. Haoran frowned. “Maybe it was a gift. Lin Xiao and Zhao Qi were affluent, and they were close to her.” I was quiet. I realized there were some scratches on the perfume bottle, so I shook the bottle to make sure. The scratches didn’t look accidental, they looked like they were done deliberately. A daring hypothesis appeared in my mind. “Is it possible everything was done by Ling? Since she was from a disadvantaged background, she was really different from the rest of the girls, and so she was really unhappy?” “She killed because she was unhappy?” Haoran seemed to think this reason was a stretch. I organized my thoughts, “if it was done by Ling, she just wanted to use the pen oracle as a cover-up. She was the one who wanted to play the game, and she and Lin Xiao were the first to play. It’s very possible there was no pen oracle at all, and she fabricated everything. She supposedly saw a ghost because the pen oracle wasn’t sent away, and she turned on the light, so no one else saw a ghost. The other three girls never saw a ghost, but from the creepy mood at the time, they were afraid and felt unsettled. Then Ling claimed to have nightmares, which made the other girls feel fearful too. I heard Zhou Nan say Lin Xiao and Zhao Qi were dismissive of the whole idea at first, until things started to happen. One critical thing, a girl from this room killed herself five years ago... how did Ling know about it?” Something flickered in my mind, but it went away before I could verbalize it. Haoran frowned after hearing my deduction. “Even if your theory was correct, what would make three girls jump in the middle of sleeping? Without struggle or fear?” “Right, this is the problem. If they jumped after seeing a ghost, wouldn’t they be scared? But autopsy showed no signs of provocation before they died.” I continued with some resignation. Haoran looked outside the window as if he was pondering something. “You’ve always suspected Li Ling?” I nodded. The girl always gave me a hard-to-identify impression. I continued, “based on Ling’s background, her family really wanted a son, or they wouldn’t have had three girls. So it’s safe to say her family was s.e.xist, and people who grew up in such environments tended to be told to always let one’s brother win, to give up everything like new clothes, toys, snacks, etc. She suffered so much, and with how she had to work while in school to pay for her brother’s tuition, she wasn’t valued in the family.” I stopped and looked at Haoran. Haoran continued my a.n.a.lysis, “after she came to college, she realized the outside world was very different. People from single-child families lived so much better than her. They were all girls, but the others had expensive clothes, makeup, took trips, had plenty of friends, and a fun life. She was stuck studying and working. After seeing the difference, she developed low self-esteem, inspite of being treated well by her roommates, which only made her feel more uncomfortable.” Our eyes met, our thoughts converging. Haoran spoke again, “but I still don’t get how she made the victims jump themselves even if she wanted to kill.” “I think we will know more once we see how Ling grew up. As to why the victims jumped, this is our biggest unanswered question.” I sighed heavily. There was no school today; with three students dying in 10 days, people were anxious. The school had no choice but to have a day off, and to help the police’s investigation. Li Ling was still at the precinct. She said she had nowhere to go, and was too afraid to come back to her dorm, so she waited there for the case to be solved. Before the students left, Teng asked Sun Tao, the boy Lin Xiao and her cla.s.smate, Zheng Lili, had a crush on, to stay. I sat with Lili in an empty cla.s.sroom, while Teng, Haoran, and Tao were in a neighboring cla.s.sroom. “Did Lin Xiao seem different before everything happened?” I asked Lili in a calm tone.