Chapter 3

Of course, there was another possibility.

He had wiped the fingerprints away himself, staging the scene to make everyone think he'd been framed.

But why?

What grudge could he have against the victim that would make him give up his career, his standing, even trade his life for hers?

Honestly, it wasn't very likely.

To put it bluntly, if Zheng Shaoming wanted a prostitute dead, he had a hundred ways to do it.

None would require implicating himself.

There were too many people involved at the hotel. I decided to start with the bar.

I staked it out for three days straight, until I was on friendly terms with all the servers.

“Delivery!”

An employee hurried outside and carried in a quantity of pork and lamb.

I was curious.

“Your little bar uses that much meat?”

“The boss's idea. We serve meat snacks and some home-style dishes too.”

I glanced outside.

A truck with an out-of-province plate.

Out of province?

I'd grilled skewers for a living. I usually bought my meat at the market. Plenty of stalls sold good meat cheaply.

This was only a bar. It didn't use all that much. Did they really need an outside supplier?

I went out and struck up a conversation with the driver, who was squatting in a corner smoking.

“Hey, where's the meat from?”

“Jincheng.”

“Not too far, then. How much? I use lamb too.”

“Don't know. You'll have to talk to the boss at the plant. I just deliver.”

After a few exchanges, he clearly didn't want to keep talking.

Something was off.

Even if they bought directly from a factory, Qincheng had meat-processing plants of its own.

Why insist on getting it from Jincheng?

I paid my bill and waited in my car.

When the meat truck pulled away, I quietly followed.

It drove toward the border between Qincheng and Jincheng, winding down one road after another into increasingly deserted country.

Finally, it passed through the gates of a livestock-processing plant.

The truck stopped. Its engine went off.

It was still daylight. Not a good time to go in.

I'd have to wait for dark.

I reclined my seat all the way and lay back to rest.

This case was getting interesting.

Something strange hung over both the hotel and the bar.

What secret, then...

Was hidden in this processing plant?

Eleven p.m.

Not a soul in sight.

I slipped out of the car, kept my footsteps light, and climbed over the plant's perimeter wall.

I didn't know whether anyone patrolled the yard at night. I dared not make much noise.

An occasional bark sent a chill down my spine.

If someone caught me red-handed, how the hell was I going to explain this?

“Hm? What's that smell?”

A strange stench drifted from a small building I'd just passed.

This was a meat-processing plant. Bloody, gamey smells were perfectly normal.

But this stench...

No.

If meat had rotted this badly, surely it would have been disposed of already.

I switched on my phone's flashlight and shone it through the window, but couldn't see much.

I walked around the building.

Apart from a locked door, there was no way in.

The windows were barred.

“Shit. Now I really won't be able to explain myself.”

Muttering, I found a thin piece of wire nearby.

I poked at the lock a few times.

Click.

It opened.

“Woof! Woof, woof!”

A dog barked furiously inside.

They kept a dog in here?

This wouldn't do.

I had to think of something. If it kept barking, someone would come sooner or later.

I slipped into the little building.

The stench hit me full in the face. I nearly threw up.

A large yellow dog was chained to the wall, barking more and more fiercely.

“Come on, old man. Quiet down. I'll buy you some meat buns, all right?”

It ignored me and barked harder.

But it didn't seem to be barking at me.

It was staring deeper into the darkness, growling, even lunging that way several times.

Without the chain, it would have charged long ago.

I moved the flashlight.

A rusty iron table stood in that direction.

On it...

Was a human head.

It was rotting, oozing pus.

Its eyes stared straight at me.

Shaking, I tried to unlock my phone.

My palms were so sweaty that the fingerprint reader barely worked.

It took three attempts to enter the right passcode.

“H-hello... I want to... call the police...”

It wasn't that I was a coward.

I'd dealt with plenty of serious criminal cases before.

But those bloody scenes had existed only in case files.

Cold paragraphs and horrifying photographs.

This was the first crime scene I'd seen with my own eyes.

And I was alone in an unfamiliar place, facing something this terrible.

I braced myself against the wall and retched until I nearly brought up every last drop of stomach acid.

The clinging stench of death filled my nose and mouth. I couldn't get rid of it.

The police arrived quickly.

The man leading them wore plain clothes and hurried toward the little building.

Passing me, he glanced over.

Two steps later, he stopped.

“Wu Yang?”

I squinted at him.

The local criminal-investigation captain was my high-school classmate, Xu Youshan.

He came back toward me.

“It really is you! What are you doing here?”

I waved him toward the building.

“Do your job first. Let me recover a bit. I'll explain later.”

...

An hour later, there was nothing left in my stomach.

In the car mirror, my face looked white as snow.

After I explained everything to Xu Youshan, he told me a little about what they'd found inside.

Only the basics, of course.

Besides the head on the table, there was a small meat grinder.

Small by factory standards, that is. Nothing like a household appliance.

A machine that powerful could crush bone.

They'd found what appeared to be human tissue at both the intake and the outlet.

The blood at the scene was probably human too.

They would need lab tests to be certain.

“So... this is where a body was disposed of?”

“Yes. Most of it had already been processed. For some reason, the work was abruptly interrupted when only the head remained.”

“What about the part that was ground up?”

Xu Youshan was silent for a moment.

“Remember the dog in the room?”

“Urgh—”

I started vomiting again.

This head...

Was it the one missing from Room 1203?

If so, why was it here?

“Oh, you said you came here because of your client, Zheng Shaoming?”

“Yes.”

“He's been here. A camera got a clear frontal view of his face. We haven't established whether he's involved in this case. Once we do, we'll decide whether to investigate the two cases together.”

“When was he here?”

Xu Youshan took out his phone and showed me a short video.

Zheng Shaoming got out of the passenger seat of a black SUV.

The driver stayed inside. I couldn't make out who it was.

After getting out, Zheng entered the building alone.

A timestamp showed in the upper-right corner.

9:51 p.m., July 19.

What?

Shouldn't he have been at the Yunduan Hotel then?

Hadn't he said he wanted to hire a prostitute?

Why was he here?

The second time I met Zheng Shaoming, he was much as before, except for the more obvious impatience in his eyes.

The trial was drawing closer, after all.

“Lawyer Wu, any progress?”

Instead of answering, I asked, “Where were you at nine-fifty p.m. on July 19?”

“Where else? At the hotel.”

“You're lying.”

He straightened.

An almost palpable pressure filled the room.

“What do you mean?”

“You were at a meat-processing plant in Jincheng.”

“Wu Yang!”

He flared up, then immediately lowered his voice and tried to control himself.

“Investigate what I tell you to investigate. Do you fucking understand?”

“Sorry. I happened across it.”

“Don't play innocent. Drop it. Isn't your job right now to prove I've been falsely accused?”

I nodded.

“You have been.”

I took out my cigarettes, remembered smoking wasn't allowed here, and settled for holding one beneath my nose.

“Proving it is actually very simple. Just tell them where you went on the night of the nineteenth.

“The vehicle's route and surveillance footage can all corroborate it.

“When that prostitute died, you weren't in the hotel room at all. It's quite possible you left immediately after checking in.

“Maybe you never intended to hire a prostitute that night, let alone kill anyone.

“So why won't you tell the truth?”

Zheng Shaoming glared at me without a word.

“Because at that time, you were involved in another murder.

“You were disposing of a body at the meat-processing plant.

“If you told the police where you'd really been, you'd be dragged into that murder too.

“And that case would be even harder to deal with than this one.

“So you went along with it and had me defend you in this murder case instead.

“Because you had a better chance of winning here.

“After all, you really are innocent of this killing.”

“I've hired my own bloody overlord.

“Are you planning to go into court and land me with an extra murder charge?”

“No.

“I'll argue for acquittal.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Oh?”

“Including in the Jincheng meat-processing case.”

“Let's hear how.”

“The Qincheng police have evidence that you were at the Yunduan Hotel after nine, suspected of rape and murder.

“But the Jincheng police also place you at the meat-processing plant after nine, suspected of murder.

“Both sides have ironclad police evidence, but the timelines contradict each other. Whichever set the prosecution uses, I can rebut it with the other. A judge can't simply pick one of two murders and convict you. So I can argue for acquittal.”

Zheng Shaoming burst out laughing.

“Fuck. Genius!”

“Unless the Qincheng prosecution obtains other evidence. But that evidence would have to establish your innocence—prove you had no time to commit the hotel murder.”

“Wu Yang... you're an interesting man.”