Chapter 1

In this case, the killer had once been repeatedly subjected to brutal abuse by some of the victims themselves.

They filmed it all and tormented her again and again, leaving her to live a life worse than death.

After several failed suicide attempts, she chose another path.

She turned the people who had hurt her into the victims of this case.

The case began in a small village.

The victim had died in the cellar of an abandoned tiled-roof house. When he was found, he lay in a pool of blood, his body horribly mutilated. His face was almost unrecognizable.

Nearly all the flesh from his face down to his neck was gone.

He had bled to death after an artery in his neck was bitten through. The wounds clearly resembled an animal attack.

The man who reported the body was a passing villager named Huang Zhijian. He grew vegetables and had been looking for somewhere to pickle his coming harvest of Chinese cabbage when he happened upon the cellar.

There was nothing down there but the victim’s mutilated body, with no means of identifying him.

With his face destroyed, finding out who he was would not be easy.

Our preliminary examination identified the wounds as canine bite marks.

We also found a broken ventilation opening in the cellar ceiling, large enough for a dog to get through.

Since we could not rule out a wolf or a wild fox, a domestic dog was not our first thought.

Everything else at the scene had been meticulously cleaned.

Apart from Huang Zhijian’s footprints and fingerprints, we found no trace of anyone else.

Our initial investigation put the time of death at more than forty-eight hours earlier.

That meant the victim had most likely been brought here the night before last.

For some reason, he had then become completely unable to move and had been mauled to death by a canine.

The most urgent question, of course, was simple.

Who was he?

After examining the body at the scene, Director Long, our forensic pathologist, offered an assessment that took us all by surprise.

“There’s a good chance he was killed by his own dog. Search the surrounding area and see if you can find it. It might also help us identify him.”

We immediately asked what had led him to that conclusion.

Director Long patiently explained how an attack by a pet dog differed from one by a wild canine.

“Look at the body. The eyes, ears, nose and mouth were bitten off first, followed by the flesh of the face, then the neck and chest. There’s a reason for that sequence.

“As we all know, wild canines eat meat for nourishment. But the most nutritious parts of a human body aren’t in the face.

“In most animals, the internal organs are richest in nutrients and provide more energy. That’s why wolves generally eat the organs first after killing their prey. Hyenas also favor tearing into the anus. These are habits canines have evolved over thousands of years.

“A pet dog is different. It recognizes its owner, so it will try to wake them using its mouth, tongue, even its teeth and claws—licking their face, for instance, or pawing at it.

“And that’s where the problem arises. If there’s no other food available and a claw or tooth happens to break the skin, the scent of fresh blood escapes. A canine can’t resist the appeal of fresh meat. That explains why it starts with the face.”

When Director Long finished, every officer at the scene fell silent, myself included.

This was certainly not common knowledge.

But his explanation gave us somewhere to begin.

We searched the surrounding area, concentrating on finding the dog that had attacked its owner.

While the body was taken away for a full autopsy, we did indeed find a lead nearby.

Just as Director Long had predicted, it was a pet dog.

A husky.

Better still, it was wearing a tag on its collar.

That meant we could quickly use it to identify the victim.

But the dog would prove useful in more ways than one.

When we found it, the husky was in a frenzy.

Afraid of people, vicious and aggressive, it showed symptoms that looked rather like rabies.

Even so, we restrained and caught it without much difficulty.

The tag on its collar was an official registration tag.

Through it, we soon established the victim’s identity.

His name was Lin Shuming. He was twenty-seven, a freelancer who lived alone in the city.

Our inquiries found no social connection between him and Huang Zhijian, which made the man who had reported the body a relatively unlikely suspect.

We also found leads at Lin Shuming’s home.

His computer revealed how he earned his living: he was an online pet blogger.

He did not have a large following, but his focus on pet dogs brought in a respectable amount of traffic.

We also learned that he had two business partners.

Both were men, named Zhang Jun and Chen Zhikang.

The three were about the same age, and all made their living as pet bloggers.

We promptly summoned the other two for questioning.

At the same time, Director Long reported his preliminary autopsy findings.

Traces of a controlled drug—a muscle relaxant—had been found in Lin Shuming’s body.

This suggested the whole thing had been planned.

Muscle relaxants were controlled substances, not something an ordinary person could easily obtain.

The drug had left Lin Shuming conscious but unable to move.

In other words, he could open his eyes and see everything happening in front of him, but could not even part his lips, let alone call for help.

He had been forced to watch his own pet dog bite pieces off his face and swallow them.

Until it bit through his neck, he had endured that horror over and over.

It was perhaps the most terrifying death I had ever heard of.

This was most likely revenge, driven by a hatred that ran very deep.

Without a hatred that intense, the killer would never have gone to such lengths to arrange so dreadful a death for Lin Shuming.

What had he done to earn it?

Why was killing him not enough? Why subject him to such a terrible “punishment” as well?

Perhaps his two business partners could give us the answer.

We contacted Zhang Jun first.

When he learned that Lin Shuming had been killed by his own dog, he panicked. It was obvious he was hiding something.

We repeatedly stressed that Lin Shuming’s death was very likely a revenge killing.

Yet we had found no mortal enemy among his known associates. We needed Zhang Jun to think carefully about what might have led to the murder.

At first, he refused to say anything.

We suspected he was afraid that talking would land him in prison too.

So we put pressure on him for nearly two hours, using a few methods to jog his memory.

For instance, we pointed out that once he stepped out of the Criminal Investigation Unit, he might be killed. He would be better off telling us everything and getting himself detained. At least he would stay alive.

Finally, he admitted to the criminal operation the three of them had been running.

“Apart from making normal videos, we also… did some pimping. We lured in fans, drugged them, had our fun, filmed it and sold the videos…”

So that was it.

On the surface, all three were respectable social media bloggers.

Behind the scenes, they ran several groups where they traded videos and even sold “sexual encounters” for enormous profits.

They had chosen pets as their niche because most people who kept cats and dogs at home were single women.

What was more, these women tended to be compassionate, trusting and easier to deceive.

Needless to say, we opened an investigation immediately.

Zhang Jun successfully secured himself a “ticket to detention.”

At least now, if the killer wanted him dead, they would probably have to wait until he got out of prison.

That would take a long time.

Zhao Jun and I then split up and launched an urgent investigation.

First, we had to identify the killer. There were several avenues to pursue: tracing the controlled drug, identifying every woman the three men had harmed, then assessing who was the most likely suspect…

Second, we had to find Chen Zhikang and bring him in.

He was a perpetrator in one case and a potential victim in this one.

Yet it was Chen Zhikang who would give us our biggest surprise.

For a start, we could not find him.

He had disappeared.

Zhang Jun did not know where he was either. Chen Zhikang often went off on his own, usually on dates with a new girlfriend.

With so many fans, he was never short of girlfriends.

Once he tired of one, he would even sell her to someone else as though she were merchandise.

Apparently, Chen Zhikang had the highest and most consistent success rate.

After all, getting drunk with your boyfriend was perfectly ordinary. Waking up together in a hotel seemed no more unusual.

But the poor woman might never learn what disgusting things had actually been done to her the night before.

While I was getting nowhere in the search for Chen Zhikang, Zhao Jun came to me in a fury.

“Can’t we find something more serious to charge that bastard Zhang Jun with? Something that’ll put him away for life?”

“You can’t be that angry just because you share a given name…”

I was about to tease him when I caught myself.

“Wait. What else has that animal done?”

“We went through the videos. They make you question everything. Fuck. The fact I haven’t killed him myself shows how much self-control I’ve got…”

Zhao Jun slammed a hand on the desk and began to explain.

What Zhang Jun and his partners had done was far worse than he had admitted.

Deceiving women, drugging them, filming their abuse and selling it to customers—that description barely scratched the surface.

The ways they had violated those women were utterly inhuman.

One detail alone was enough to make anyone furious.

They were pet bloggers, weren’t they?

Their dogs appeared in the videos too.

These were no longer merely secret recordings. They were sick, depraved videos.

I stared at him, speechless.