Wings of Angels Part 3
The man was humming bits and pieces of a song, a considerably warm smile on his face. "Don"t be scared. It"ll end in a while. Mama loves you, Mama likes you, little angel…"
The things in his arms emitted colliding sounds. The man carried them as though they were treasures—they were human ribs beside another set of human ribs. "Mama will like you, she"ll like you…"
He paced from the entrance to the corner of the wall and back again to the entrance. In the beginning, the expression on his face was calm and quiet. But as he paced back and forth, it became increasingly twisted and increasingly agitated. Then, his feet kicked one of the clothes originally piled at the edge of the wall. It was a child"s clothing. A pure white, little dress, stained completely with blood. The man"s footsteps halted.
He stopped, carefully putting down the ribs in his arms. He slowly squatted down, two hands holding up the blood-stained dress. He broke into sobs, words incoherent. "I didn"t do it on purpose. I"m not a bad person. I didn"t do it on purpose, it wasn"t on purpose, it wasn"t on purpose…"
And, at this time, a group of policemen carrying loaded guns were gathered near the underground drainage tunnel.
Sheng Yao was in the middle of taking out a cigarette from his pocket when he glanced at Yang Man standing at the side who was currently flipping through the report from the forensic investigator. Then he stuffed it back in again. Two hands crossed, he leaned on the electric pole. Handsome men and beautiful women were pleasing to the eye in the first place—if only the background wasn"t the unsightly underground drainage tunnel.
Inside the tunnel, a group of police officers were searching for the other corpses.
Yang Man waved her hand dismissively. "Go ahead and smoke. Give me one too. This smell—Say, let"s not talk about how this a.s.shole harmed another"s child, but he even threw her corpse here. Isn"t this intentional?"
"When did you start smoking? I remember that you didn"t smoke in the past. Smoke less, tobacco isn"t good for women." Sheng Yao laughed, lighting a cigarette before pa.s.sing it to Yang Man. "Stay a little further. Go to where the wind is blowing from, don"t let the smoke hit your nose."
Yang Man took it, peering at him and curling her lip. "Sheng-gongzi, you"re truly a treasure. When you speak, even a drop of your saliva is made of the ingredients for enticement. Even your breathing is so romantic that it could cause another person to misunderstand."
Sheng Yao blinked. "Beauty, what did you misunderstand?"
Yang Man rolled her eyes. "Get out!"
She surveyed the surroundings. There were a few old buildings at one side. On the other end of the road were alleys and crowded low bungalows. The road where the drainage tunnel was located was at a blind alley. It was possible that for a good few days, you might not be able to see anyone approaching the tunnel either. "Sheng Yao, in this place, what sort of people do you think won"t rouse suspicions if they throw a dead child here?"
Sheng Yao knitted his brows together, walking around the entrance and looking down at the dark underground drainage tunnel from above. "Many people would pa.s.s by this place in the daytime. I"ll think the time they tossed the corpse should either be late at night or early in the morning?"
"There"s a park at the back. I heard that after four in the morning, the elderly would begin their exercise and [1] there. There"s a power plant over at that side while many workers live at this side here. They work overtime and could possibly work until however late in the night." Yang Man flipped through the other stapled doc.u.ments in her hand. "Say, do you think there are hidden eye-witnesses?"
Sheng Yao lifted his head, sharing a glance with her. At this time, a bellow came from the water drainage underground. "Found them! Someone! Found them! Blergh…! f.u.c.king h.e.l.l…"
"Wait up here. I"ll go down for a look." Sheng Yao took off his jacket, throwing it at Yang Man. "Don"t come down. It"s too dirty down there."
Yang Man casually put his jacket at the side, following closely behind. "I am a little bit of a clean-freak, but aren"t we all doing this for a livelihood? What"s there to be disgusted about? In the bureau, even women have to be men. Men can only be used for their strength. You, as someone to be used for his strength, don"t have to be a gentleman to me, a man."
Sheng Yao shook his head, breaking out into laughter. But this laughter was very quickly cut off in his throat. Inspector Sheng who already had numerous fieldwork experiences was finally struck stunned in his original spot. Yang Man followed him down closely behind, following his gaze and looking over. The facial features with delicate makeup contorted for a moment. A young investigator tightly covered their mouth, pa.s.sing the two and dashing out. The investigators who discovered the body took half a step back, allowing the two to look at their discovery carefully.
Under the slight, dim light, all kinds of rotten smells flooded the air. Inside the underground drainage tunnel, four children"s corpses were arranged in a row. All of the corpses were beheaded. The newest corpse still hadn"t rotted much yet, but the skin on their back had been completely skinned. The ribs were gone, revealing the internal organs. A few mice were eating those exposed organs right now. These children had lost their heads.
Sheng Yao couldn"t hold himself back from turning his head away, saying in a low voice, "Luckily Junzi isn"t present."
—This sight was too big a blow to anyone who was a parent.
After Shen Yexi received the call, he drove the car as though it were an airplane, reaching the scene of crime in lightning speed. Yang Man was waiting for them on the surface, her face a little green. Seeing that they"ve arrived, she nodded. "Sheng Yao is down there. The forensic investigator hasn"t started yet and had been waiting for you to look at the scene first—Xiao Jiang, go back up and wait there. Don"t go down."
Jiang Hu hesitated for a moment, steps pausing. Shen Yexi had already greeted the forensic investigator waiting at the side and jumped down into the drainage tunnel without any second thoughts at all. Jiang Hu thought for a moment. "Yang-jie… I want to go down and take a look."
Yang Man waved her hand dismissively. "Really, don"t go down. You won"t be able to take it. We"ve fought with the dead for so many years now, but when we saw this, we still find it mentally unbearable, you know. In a short while, you"ll have to give us a little counselling. You didn"t even see Sheng Yao"s face just now."
Jiang Hu asked, "But if I don"t know anything about the situation at all, how do I give you counselling?"
Yang Man said, "No problem. It"s fine as long as you know there"s a dead person underground."—They all said that Yang-jie is sharp and blunt. Surely enough, she lived up to that name.
Jiang Hu didn"t make a sound anymore, just looking at her like this before looking back at the drainage tunnel, expression a little conflicted.
Each time she saw his conflicted expression, Yang Man felt that she was about to turn into an oppressing wolf. Being looked at like this by the other party with big eyes, that feeling was exactly like she just s.n.a.t.c.hed a ten year old"s lollipop. The sense of guilt was like a small spark, tormenting the few bits of her conscience. After a few seconds, Yang Man was once again defeated, helplessly waving a hand.
An Yining said, what went around came around. Sheng Yao said, everything had a weakness.
Jiang Hu immediately took off his jacket, rolling up his pants and the sleeves which were slightly too long before jumping down—his actions had never been this swift before. Even if Yang Man wanted to stop him, she couldn"t make it in time anymore. She could only sigh and shrug her shoulders, stepping to the side to make way and wait for Jiang Hu to dash out five minutes later to retch.
"Look at these children. Rather than saying that they were thrown here, we might as well say that they were meticulously placed like this." Sheng Yao was squatting at the corpses" side, hands gloved. He lifted his head to tell Shen Yexi, "I really don"t want to say this, but… I feel that this murderer seemed to be very concerned over these children. As though they"re full of apology or something. They put the corpses here with careful handling."
Shen Yexi nodded, also rolling up his pants to squat down. "The corpses are all lined up here and the distance between everyone seemed to be been fastidiously measured. They"re very similar."
Sheng Yao furrowed his brows. "You think that there might be issues with this murderer"s mentality?"
"The Psychoa.n.a.lytic School of Thought believe that attacking others or self-harm are the doings brought about by the death instinct. But I think that all of these are mental abnormalities that abruptly manifest in the conflict between your suppressed and intense psychological states." Shen Yexi still hadn"t had the time to answer when he heard a voice behind him say neither loudly nor softly.
He looked back sharply, seeing Jiang Hu standing there. Under the dim light, Jiang Hu"s gaze couldn"t be seen clearly. The image of the young man standing there was a little frail, a little sorrowful.
Sheng Yao was surprised for a moment. "Xiao Jiang, why did you come down?"
Shen Yexi"s shock was because of this young, muddleheaded scholar"s calmness right now. In the underground drainage tunnel full of foul things, he did not seem uncomfortable at all, just as though he was used to seeing corpses and death. He did not panic in fear, neither did he throw up in revulsion.
Bureau Chief Mo had done too many illogical things, including wanting the establishment of a special investigative team in the big case back in that year, including making Shen Yexi who was only twenty-six back then the leader, including a number of many other things. In the end, it all proved that this person was correct—then, could it be that him making Jiang Hu come along for fieldwork was also one of his silent arrangements?
Shen Yexi had the intention of observing this new colleague of an unknown depth, so he silently made some way as he moved to the side, giving Jiang Hu some s.p.a.ce.
Jiang Hu was silent for a while, asking Sheng Yao, "You didn"t call Su-ge right?""
Sheng Yao grinned knowingly, shaking his head. "No. I"ve warned Yining. It so happens that they have to visit four families, so the two of them are very busy too. We asked them not to come over anymore."
Shen Yexi"s feet were a little numb, and he shook them a little. "Dr. Jiang, do you have a deep understanding of criminal psychology?"
"I have studied cla.s.ses in this area before." Jiang Hu hesitated for a moment before answering.
"Then have you ever heard of criminal profiling?"
Jiang Hu lifted his head to give him a glance, shaking his head. "I"m not especially practiced in the theories and techniques of criminal profiling. There"s currently no official use in the detective work in the country right now. Moreover, if it"s only my speculations and not the entire team"s, it"ll be far too subjective. It might create a very huge discrepancy and affect your deduction."
"Which means that you can do it." Shen Yexi said in a low voice. The feigned friendly half-heartedness vanished, revealing that exceptional sharpness of his. "Don"t worry. Dr. Jiang, you can give it a try."
Jiang Hu and Sheng Yao were both a little shocked. Even if it was someone very familiar and very close with this person, Shen Yexi, they"d also find his thoughts a little difficult to follow at times. Just like how earlier, he didn"t pay much attention to Jiang Hu, this fieldwork member who didn"t look very useful at all. But now, he suddenly became serious.
Seeing Jiang Hu still hesitating, Shen Yexi added, "No need to worry. I will have my own judgement. I won"t be so easily misled by you. Say it. Just like how you pointed out the performance formation in the car."
"What performance formation?" Sheng Yao asked.
"Dr. Jiang found out that in the performances that the missing children partic.i.p.ated in prior to the kidnapping all stood in the same position."
"Actually… not all of them either." Jiang Hu pointed at the corpse on the ground. "When the first kid, who was that girl called Lu Hui, vanished, the choirmaster was changed to someone else in a choir performance. That child had also been in the same position, but did not get kidnapped. I couldn"t make sense of it at first, but now I do."
Sheng Yao looked like he saw some exotic animal, widening his peach blossom eyes. He also stood up, silently listening to him.
"It was because that child was too tall." Jiang Hu said, "When I saw the photos of that performance, I felt that the group formation wasn"t very good. It might be because of the position of the mic or some voice type reasons, but the boy choirmaster was over half a head taller than the children beside him. He practically blocked the row of children behind him. It was afterwards that the choir teacher moved him to the side, swapping his position with another choirmaster. That choirmaster was the second kidnapped child."
"You"re saying that the reason these children were chosen—other than the position they stand in—was also because of their height?" Shen Yexi"s gaze shifted to the children"s corpses laid in a row. After he stood up, his line of sight became higher. At this time, he noticed something very bizarre. These neatly-arranged corpses" feet and head were all in a single line. The children"s height before death looked pretty similar, and the little differences in length of the chopped heads and the bodies were actually to line them up neatly.
Shen Yexi pointed at the corpses on the ground, opening his mouth, a little repulsed. "He chopped them into halves to make these children completely become the same height?"
"No… I feel that it can be more accurately be said to allow these children"s corpses to be arranged neatly." Jiang Hu followed his gaze and looked over. "This murderer has a certain degree of anxiety disorder, like an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Patients with OCD will obsessively do things that seem completely illogical. For instance, when they walk on the road, they will walk around the cracks on the ground. For instance, everything has to be placed in a definite arrangement. They have an exceptional impulse towards "neatness"."
"I… don"t quite understand." Sheng Yao asked.
"You won"t be able to understand it. Until now, there isn"t a unanimous explanation for OCD. They won"t be unable to control themselves from doing some things or thinking about some things. Otherwise, they will be abnormally anxious."
Sheng Yao and Shen Yexi shared a glance. Shen Yexi asked, "Can you be more specific?"
Jiang Hu pondered for a long time. Just when they all thought that he was going to announce a speech that will greatly showcase his expertise and just when they were getting ready to listen in full, respectful attention, they heard him agree with Sheng Yao"s very initial conclusion in an extremely slow speed. "I just want to say, this fellow might be a little abnormal."
Wow, how very insightful of you.