Lei Mi - Profiler

An ominous feeling suddenly came over Fang Mu.

That afternoon, his feeling finally became reality.

One of Professor Qiao's older graduate students, who was getting ready to graduate, came to see Fang Mu and asked him if he knew the professor's whereabouts. When Fang Mu shook his head, the older grad student grew anxious.

"Shit, man, I haven't finished my thesis yet and now he's missing? I think I might have to temporarily change advisors."

The snide comment made Fang Mu suddenly wanted to curse at the guy. But before he could open his mouth, the grad student had walked off.

Forcing himself to calm down, Fang Mu grabbed his phone and dialed Professor Qiao's home number again. It was still busy.

He kept trying. At last he got through.

A worried-sounding woman picked up the phone. "Hello? Who's this?" It was Mrs. Qiao.

"Hi, Mrs. Qiao, it's me, Fang Mu. Is Professor Qiao around?" he asked.

Mrs. Qiao began to softly cry. "Old Qiao hasn't been home for a day and a half…"

"What?" Fang Mu felt as if his heart had been suddenly squeezed in an iron grip.

Professor Qiao was missing.

Professor Qiao's house was packed full of people. The living room, which was already small to begin with, felt terribly crowded.

There were classmates from Fang Mu's year, as well as some of the professor's older male and female graduate students. Bian Ping, the top-ranking officer from the provincial PSB, was there, too, and when he saw Fang Mu come in he gave him a slight nod.

Fang Mu nodded back at him. Unable to wait any longer, he walked over to the sofa where Mrs. Qiao was drying her eyes. He asked her: "Mrs. Qiao, what happened?"

Her eyes already red from crying, Mrs. Qiao choked back a sob. "The night before last, Old Qiao told me he was going out to see a friend and then left without saying who it was. I waited up for him until after eleven, and when he still hadn't returned, I called his phone, but it was off. I assumed he had probably gone out to dinner and then to a public bathhouse, so I went to sleep. He didn't return all day yesterday, and his phone was still off. I thought he must have gone straight to school, but no one there had seen him, either. Up until now there's been no news at all…"

Suddenly the phone rang and Mrs. Qiao, who only a moment before seemed to have lost all her strength, practically dove for it and grabbed it from the cradle: "Hello? Hello…" Her voice fell. "You bought your ticket? …Tonight? Good, come home and help me find your dad. …Yes, okay, okay."

At last, after hanging up the phone, Mrs. Qiao could no longer control herself, and she began to sob uncontrollably.

Bian Ping stood up and helped her to the couch, consoling her softly.

"You told Qiao Yu to come home?"

"Yes." Mrs. Qiao took Bian Ping's hand. "Little Bian, promise me you'll help me find Professor Qiao. He's an old man; if something bad were to happen to him…"

"Don't think like that, Mrs. Qiao," Bian Ping said quickly. "There's no reason to believe that anything has happened to Professor Qiao. Perhaps…perhaps he just went off somewhere to investigate a case." Then as if he realized that this didn't sound very persuasive, he hurriedly added, "I've already sent my men to look for him; we should be hearing some news soon."

But when the other people around her echoed these words, Mrs. Qiao only seemed to be even more at a loss.

Visitors kept pouring in, the dean of the law school and the president of the university among them. When the phone rang again, Mrs. Qiao once more grabbed it with a look of hope on her face, but as soon as she heard the caller's voice she was once more disappointed.

"Yes… Then you should come by, Little Sun. Okay, see you soon."

Another visitor was on their way over.

After looking around the room, Bian Ping said to the students, "You should all head back. We'll let you know if there's any news."

One after another the students said their goodbyes and left. When Fang Mu walked to the door, he suddenly remembered what Professor Qiao had said to him when they were standing in that same spot only a few days before. Turning to Bian Ping, he said, "Chief Bian, if there's any news, please let me know as soon as possible."

At the moment Bian Ping was speaking to the university president, so he just waved at Fang Mu and said, "I will."

After he returned to his dorm, Fang Mu sat beside his bed and was soon lost in thought. He didn't move until it was almost nightfall.

He couldn't help but connect Professor Qiao's disappearance with what he had said to him.

"Take care of yourself. This will all be over soon."

Unless Fang Mu was wrong, then Professor Qiao seemed to know who the killer was.

Had he tried to catch him single-handedly, and then…?

It was a scenario that Fang Mu was unwilling to consider.

By the time the police began officially investigating the matter, Professor Qiao Yunping had already been missing for 48 hours. They conducted numerous interviews at his workplace and apartment building, and went to the telecommunications bureau to check the call records of his cell and home phone, but discovered nothing of value.

From the time that Professor Qiao went missing, a total of four unidentified corpses were delivered to city hospitals. All four were shown to the missing person's family members, who confirmed that none were the missing professor; nor was any trace of the professor found at any of the city's homeless shelters.

The man had disappeared.

While the police were out searching for Professor Qiao, Fang Mu was also walking every avenue and backstreet of the city. He had no leads and no place in mind. At a loss, he walked down crowded, brightly lit pleasure streets and filthy alleyways, always expecting to turn a corner and see Professor Qiao walking toward him, either from across the street or out of a doorway, or perhaps sitting behind the glass facade of some storefront. Many times he thought he saw him, only to realize upon closer inspection that it was merely someone of a similar age and build.

Where are you?

Every night, as the sky began to grow dark, Fang Mu would return to campus, doleful and exhausted. After eating a quick, careless dinner, he would collapse on his bed with his clothes still on. Sometimes he would be able to sleep a little, sometimes he would just lie there with his eyes open until the morning light. Then he would get up and do it all over again, returning once more to the crowded city streets to search for the man whose fate was unknown.

Fang Mu was well aware that searching around the clock as he did was pointless; and yet he couldn't stop, couldn't bear to sit quietly in his room and wait for news. He had to do something, for Professor Qiao, and for himself.

And all the while, he avoided thinking about the one thing that was almost certain to be true: Professor Qiao had already been killed.

Fang Mu was unable, or rather not brave enough, to confront this possibility. He preferred to believe that the professor had contracted some serious illness and was lying in some forgotten corner of the city, on the verge of death.

Professor Qiao was the person Fang Mu revered most. This was a different kind of feeling than those he had for Liu Jianjun and Zhang Yao. Fang Mu had never actively sought Professor Qiao's help on the case and had been bluntly refused the one time he tried to ask for his advice. And yet, all along Fang Mu had felt that if he himself was ever killed, Professor Qiao would not stand idly by, but rather would find the murderer and bring him to justice. This was because Fang Mu deeply believed in Professor Qiao, believed in his power and experience — believed that he was his last, best hope.