Lei Mi - Profiler

"Damn," said the medical examiner, frowning as he slipped on a pair of gloves, "it looks like the pigs have been nibbling on this guy for a while. You go handle your business, Tai Wei. With a body like this," he pointed at the corpse, "it's going to take me a little while."

Tai Wei nodded and then led Fang Mu into the house.

Navigating the chaos of farm tools and cooking utensils that had been placed haphazardly in the central room, they made their way into the inner room of the house.

Just like outside, it was ablaze with light. A bony man who looked like a farmer was sitting earnestly on a small stool in one corner of the room. He was the homeowner, and seemed to be the one who had called the police. Sitting on the edge of the kang bed were two policemen, while an interview notepad had been placed on the kang table in between the two parties.

As soon as Tai Wei and Fang Mu entered, the two policemen stopped the interview and stood up. In the corner of the room, the owner also quickly stood up.

Tai Wei waved for him to sit down and then grabbed the notepad and flipped through a few pages. After a moment, he turned to the owner, who was still nervously standing in place, and said, "Repeat for me everything you just said to these two men."

A miserable look on his face, the owner said, "Chief, I've already told it multiple times and I still haven't eaten yet. Besides, my pigs are over at Second Son Wu's house, and I know that cheapskate would never feed them for me."

After the "Chief" promised to buy both the farmer and his pigs dinner, the man very reluctantly began to talk.

"Yesterday I got in a big fight with my no-good, spendthrift wife," he said, "after which she returned to her parents' home. Once she was gone, I went and played poker at a little store nearby, and then came home around five that afternoon. As soon as I entered the courtyard, it occurred to me that I hadn't fed the pigs all day, so why weren't they screaming for food? They still seemed to be doing all right, weren't making a sound. But in any case I heated up a pot of swill and then went to go feed them. While feeding them, I decided to save some electricity-it's so expensive out here in the countryside, sixty-eight cents per kilowatt hour, you guys in the city only pay thirty-nine cents, right?"

At this point the man launched into a nearly two-minute-long tirade against the government's policies toward farmers, which only ended when Tai Wei was forced to remind him to stay on topic.

"Oh, what was I talking about again?" the farmer said. "That's right, saving electricity. So I kept the light off, but as I looked around I could tell something was wrong. I only own four pigs, so what were five doing in the pen? At first I thought one of my neighbor Second Son Wu's pigs must have jumped the fence, and just as I was feeling really happy about that possibility, I noticed that it was just lying there and not eating, so I prodded it with my stick, but still it didn't move. That's when I shined my flashlight over on it and, my God, it was a person! So I called the police and someone from the local substation came out here, showed me his badge, and then called you guys."

At this point the medical examiner entered the house. He turned on the faucet in the central room and washed the mud off his hands.

From the inner room Tai Wei called out to him. "How's it look out there?"

"Cause of death was shock due to blood loss," said the medical examiner, shaking the water from his hands as he walked into the room. "We still have to take a closer look at some of the places that were eaten by the pigs, but it's clear he was stabbed at least fourteen times."

Nodding toward the farmer, he continued. "It's no surprise he took the victim for one of his pigs. This was one heavy guy, at least two hundred pounds. Your pigs have been eating well." Noticing that everyone was now frowning and looking like they wanted to vomit, he cackled with laughter.

Tai Wei muttered the word sicko under his breath and then turned to Fang Mu, only to find the kid was staring off into the corner, mumbling to himself.

"Pig…pig…pig…" he murmured.

Tai Wei was about to ask him what he was talking about, when Fang Mu abruptly turned to the farmer and asked: "You just said that when you first saw the victim, you thought he was a pig, right?"

The farmer nearly jumped with surprise at the sudden question. "Yes," he said, "that's right. It was dark and I couldn't see any of the pigs clearly. Besides, with him lying face down in the pigpen like that, what was I supposed to think?"

Fang Mu turned and looked at Tai Wei. Although the kid's face was ghostly pale, his eyes were shining bright.

"Where's the CD?" Fang Mu asked.

"What CD?" For a moment, Tai Wei had no idea what he was talking about.

"From the last crime, Room Four-Zero-Four! The one the skinless girl was listening to!" Fang Mu was now so agitated his voice was almost incoherent.

"It's at headquarters. Why, what are you thinking?"

Before the words had even left Tai Wei's mouth, Fang Mu had already leapt to his feet and was on his way out of the room.

"Come on," he said, "we need to get that CD!"

Tai Wei drove back at lightning speed, keeping his siren on the whole time. By the time they reached the station, everyone in the Material Evidence Division had already gotten off work.

"We're out of luck," said Tai Wei helplessly, as he turned to Fang Mu and shrugged. "All we can do is wait until tomorrow."

"Unacceptable!" yelled Fang Mu. His answer was short, but utterly decisive.

Having no other choice, Tai Wei called one of his colleagues from the Material Evidence Division. Thirty minutes later, the CD stereo was sitting before their eyes.

Fang Mu turned it on, put on a pair of headphones, and then silently listened to the music.

Tai Wei didn't know what exactly Fang Mu was trying to do, but he figured that the kid already had a pretty good idea about the connection between the CD and the fifth murder case, so it would be best not to disturb him. Lighting a cigarette, he sat beside Fang Mu and watched him in silence.

Fang Mu listened to one song after another, pausing every now and then to jot something down. Some songs he listened to all the way through, others he skipped after only the first few lines.

At last, he came to one song that seemed to really interest him. He listened to it over and over again, rapidly scrawled two words in English, and then circled those words many times over.

Tai Wei quickly leaned over to see what he had written.

"Helter Skelter."

"Helter Skelter?" asked Tai Wei, confused. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Fang Mu had drawn his circles with so much force that he'd punctured the paper, giving it an appearance that aligned with the mindset represented by the two words.

Fang Mu slowly removed his headphones and, ignoring the fact that the CD was still playing, lit a cigarette from the pack on the table and began to smoke. Tai Wei noticed that the kid's hands were shaking slightly.

"Charles Manson," said Fang Mu in a low voice.

Tai Wei felt he had heard this name before, and vaguely recalled that it belonged to the leader of some perverse religious cult. What did he have to do with this murder?

"Charles Manson was the infamous leader of the Manson Family cult," said Fang Mu, "which was active in the U.S. in the late sixties and early seventies. He planned to incite an apocalyptic war by killing white people and then starting a race war between the whites and the blacks. His first group of victims included the wife of the famous director Roman Polanski, their unborn child, and four other people who happened to be staying in their house. The second group was the family of a supermarket executive. There the Manson Family scrawled the words 'Kill the Pigs' on the wall of the crime scene. According to Manson, he had received instructions to start his apocalyptic war by a Beatles song. That song," Fang Mu pointed at the CD player, "just happens to be on the same CD as Revolution 9 . It's called Helter Skelter ."