Lei Mi - Profiler

After putting on a pair of rubber gloves, Tai Wei carefully lifted the stereo out of the drawer. Through the plastic covering, he could clearly make out the sound of a rapidly spinning disc.

This horrifying, skinless corpse was actually listening to music.

Tai Wei signaled for the medical examiner to remove the corpse's earphones.

Confronted by this strange scene, the medical examiner started to tremble, but composing himself, he reached forward and removed one of the earphones. However, when he tried to take out the other it wouldn't budge. Redoubling his efforts, the medical examiner gave it a much stronger yank, but rather than pull out the earphone, he instead nearly tore the stereo from Tai Wei's hands. Although Tai Wei was quick enough to hold onto it, the force of the maneuver caused the earphone cord to pop out of the stereo.

Instantly an explosion of noise erupted within the classroom, so deafening it seemed like a sledgehammer was smashing against the skull of every cop in the room. One of the men who had been carefully examining the back of the classroom was so surprised that he immediately fell onto his backside, but no one laughed. Everyone was too busy staring with fear and alarm at the stereo in Tai Wei's hands.

As for Tai Wei, he very nearly threw the screeching thing to the ground, but then he quickly got ahold of himself and hit the "Stop" button.

Her head lowered, the female corpse seemed to be secretly laughing at Tai Wei and the rest of the cops, while beside her, jostled by all the commotion, the straight-backed mannequin clothed in human skin appeared to rock with amusement.

The event that morning caused a great deal of discussion across campus, and as the days passed and Fang Mu waited to hear the real scoop from Tai Wei, he also did his best to collect what clues he could about what actually took place. He listened to both official news and rumor, and heard stories true and obviously false. But a few things were certain: someone had been killed in the MultidisciplinaryBuilding that morning, the victim was a woman, and from what he had heard, the crime scene was truly horrifying.

Sure enough, Tai Wei showed up at Fang Mu's dorm three days later. As soon as he walked inside and saw no one else was there, he flung himself onto Fang Mu's bed.

"You have anything to eat?" he asked. "I'm starving."

"Just instant noodles," said Fang Mu. Noticing Tai Wei's unkempt hair and bloodshot eyes, Fang Mu thought he looked more like a migrant worker who hadn't eaten in days than an officer of the state.

"Let me go to the dining hall and buy you something," said Fang Mu.

"Don't worry about it. Instant noodles will do fine. And if you have some hot Sichuan pickles to put on top, that would be even better."

Fang Mu poured some boiling water into a bowl of instant noodles, and then added a pack of Sichuan pickles whose month and even year of expiration were totally unknown. Before the noodles were remotely soft, Tai Wei began wolfing them down, all the while pointing at the black briefcase he had brought with him.

"Take a look at what's inside," he said, his mouth full of food.

The victim was a sophomore physics student named Xin Tingting. She was 20-year-old and from the city of Zhouxi in Sichuan province. When the crime was committed, she had already been missing for 36 hours. However, because she had numerous online friends and had left the city unannounced to meet them on previous occasions, none of her roommates had been concerned and no one had notified any of her teachers.

The victim's body was left in Room 404 of the MultidisciplinaryBuilding. It was found by a cleaning lady, who in the dim morning light believed that the victim was wearing red clothing. But when she turned on the light, she discovered that in fact the corpse had had all of its skin peeled off.

According to the interviewer's notes, the cleaning lady had seen two people when she entered the room. So without lifting his head, Fang Mu asked Tai Wei, "Who was the other person?"

Tai Wei stopped chewing at once. Based on the look on his face, he seemed to be remembering something awful.

"It wasn't a person," he said, forcing himself to swallow the food in his mouth. "It was a plastic mannequin."

Fang Mu frowned. "A plastic mannequin?" he repeated, and was about to ask more when he saw that Tai Wei had already begun to retch. Fang Mu quickly pointed at the trash can beside his desk.

Feeling rather embarrassed, Tai Wei gulped down several mouthfuls of water and cleared his throat. Then pretending as if nothing had happened, he said, "Damn, I ate way too fast."

When Fang Mu didn't respond, but rather just gave him a long look with a hint of derision in his eyes, Tai Wei got a little annoyed.

"All you students are real wusses, you know that?" Tai Wei snapped. "From what I've heard, none of you are willing to even step foot in that classroom anymore. Small wonder, given that it's Room Four-Zero-Four on the fourth floor. With that many fours, it's bound to be unlucky." (Translator’s note: In Chinese, the number four is pronounced almost the same as the word for death.)

Fang Mu smiled and asked again, "So a plastic mannequin, huh? What kind, and where are the crime scene photographs?" But then, with no warning whatsoever, he suddenly leapt to his feet and cried, "Wait! What did you just say?"

Caught completely off guard, Tai Wei swallowed the water in his mouth too fast, and started coughing violently. Fang Mu immediately began hitting him hard on the back, all the while continuing to loudly ask, "What did you just say?"

"What did I say when?" said Tai Wei, panting for breath. "Are you trying to scare me to death or something?"

"Think," said Fang Mu anxiously. "What did you say just now-it was something about the number four."

"Oh, um, I was saying… The fourth floor, Room Four-Zero-Four. What about it?"

Fang Mu didn't respond, just stared at the corner of the room, lost in thought.

Tai Wei watched him, completely baffled. After a while, he realized the kid was mumbling something under his breath: "One, two, three, four…"

Just as he was about to ask him what was going on, Fang Mu turned around and began to speak. "Tai Wei," he said slowly, a strange light flashing through his eyes, "you need to combine the cases. It's the numbers."

"What numbers?" asked Tai Wei, even more confused.

"I can guarantee that all of these murders were committed by the same person, because at every crime scene the killer left behind a number," said Fang Mu, sitting down on the bed. "It's just that this number doesn't refer to the individual victim per se, but rather to where the crime falls in the overall sequence. At this point, murders one through four have already happened."

"I don't understand."

"In the seven-one double murder, the male student whose hands were cut off-what do you remember about him?"

"That case I don't know much about, but I think he was the goalie for the school soccer team."

"What number jersey do goalies usually wear?"

He paused. "I don't know, but the French goalie Barthez wears number sixteen." On the day that Fang Mu had nearly been killed by Ma Kai, Tai Wei had happened to notice this piece of information while walking past the TV in the on-duty room.

Getting back on topic, Fang Mu said, "Number one, they generally wear number one. And I know for certain that Qu Weiqiang did, too, because I went to his jersey retirement ceremony."

"One. Now I understand. The hospital murder took place in Observation Room Two. That was two. But what about three?" Scratching his head, Tai Wei puzzled over this question.

But Fang Mu had long since thought of the answer.

"The packing box that the little girl's corpse was delivered in," he said slowly. "Do you still remember what it looked like?"