Chapter 2

How could he possibly know my secret?

I took a few breaths and forced myself calm.

“Forensic pathologists all have a keen sense of smell.”

“Really?”

He slowly straightened, like a snake raising its body.

“But I’ve heard some people… have unusual gifts. They can taste other things in food.”

He spoke the last words softly.

They struck my ears like a sledgehammer.

He wasn’t merely suspicious.

He was almost certain.

He thought I was one of his kind.

“Travel safely, Dr. Trần.”

Before I lifted the cloth curtain to leave, his final words reached me.

“There are roads… once you take the wrong turning, there’s no way back.”

My hands shook all the way to headquarters.

Not because his threat frightened me.

Because the contempt for human life beneath every word made me sick.

I called Lâm Hiểu immediately.

“Two urgent things. Put Old Trần’s under surveillance now, and investigate every transaction, contact, and property in Trần Kiến Quốc’s name.”

“Have you tipped him off?”

“He warned me. Lâm Hiểu, if anything happens to me, there’s a black notebook at the bottom of the left-hand drawer in my desk. The code is my badge number backward. It contains everything I’ve investigated over the years.”

Silence on the line.

Then her anxious voice:

“Trần Mặc, what the hell are you hiding?”

“I’ll tell you when this is over. Hurry.”

I hung up without waiting for an answer.

As soon as I reached headquarters, my desk phone rang.

“Dr. Trần? I own the grain shop beside that restaurant. After you left, Mr. Trần closed up and loaded several blue plastic tubs into a vehicle out back. Looked heavy. He’s heading toward the wholesale market in the north!”

There was no time to wait for backup.

I sent the information to Lâm Hiểu, grabbed my coat, and rushed downstairs.

“Trần Mặc! Wait for backup—”

“There’s no time!”

The northern wholesale market was twelve kilometers away.

If Trần Kiến Quốc wanted to hide something, it was ideal.

Hundreds of warehouses.

Chaotic management.

Many places didn’t even have surveillance cameras.

I had to find him before he disappeared.

I got in, started the engine, and drove out of the police compound.

I let out a long breath.

I knew this violated procedure.

I knew how dangerous it was to go alone.

But I also knew some truths couldn’t wait.

Some regrets only needed to happen once.

My tongue had tasted hell.

Now I would follow those last traces of ash and dig out the darkness by its roots.

Whatever lay buried beneath.

5

Section D, northern wholesale market.

A silver van stood outside Warehouse 17.

The roller door was half open.

I circled around to a small side window.

Trần Kiến Quốc had his back to the entrance, bending over the blue plastic tubs.

Three industrial freezers stood inside. In the middle was a stainless-steel worktable covered with knives.

The scene matched what I had seen in the memories.

I pushed through the side door.

He spun around.

He wasn’t surprised to see me. Instead, he gave a peculiar smile.

“Dr. Trần. I knew you’d find your way here.”

“What’s in the tubs?”

“Guess. Even if you get it right, it won’t matter. You won’t be walking out of here today.”

A boning knife had appeared in his hand.

Long, narrow blade. A faint goat’s head carved into the handle.

Exactly as in my memory.

“Why did you kill them?”

“Why?”

He laughed.

“They volunteered.”

“I need fresh ingredients. My master stock needs the best. Those women needed money. I gave them money. A hundred thousand for a kidney. Three hundred thousand for a heart. A fair transaction.”

“And Lý Vũ Đồng?”

“Her? She happened to see me collecting a shipment. Had to deal with her. But the quality of her meat was excellent. Young, healthy…”

“Shut up.”

My voice was ice.

Every word he spoke defiled the powerful feelings I had tasted in the victims’ memories.

“What’s wrong? Can’t bear to hear it?”

He stepped closer.

“Dr. Trần, you’ve tasted my stock. You know how wonderful it is. You made a contribution to it yourself.”

I froze.

“Three years ago, at the city’s central hospital. You donated blood, didn’t you?”

“Type O. Your blood… saved my son’s life. He had kidney failure and needed a transplant. Your blood helped his body accept the new kidney.”

I remembered.

Three years ago, the police had organized a blood drive.

“Your son’s kidney…”

“From the first woman.”

He said it as calmly as if discussing the weather.

“Your blood prevented rejection. So we’ve had a connection for a long time.”

“Later, I discovered your blood was special. I had someone test it. Apparently, it contains an extremely rare antibody. That was when I started watching you.”

“I also heard about your miraculous case-solving, so I thought… perhaps you were like me.”

“In what way?”

“Able to taste the true nature of things.”

His eyes shone with twisted fervor.

“I have a similar ability. Only I can taste whether meat is good or bad. I can’t taste memories.”

“But I know there are people like us in this world. We’re the ones who truly understand flavor.”

“I will never be like you.”

“You’re a monster.”

“You think I’m a monster, Trần Mặc?”

Suddenly, he spread his arms, his voice taking on a martyr’s fanaticism.

“Look at this city! How many organs fail every day? How many families weep in despair in hospitals?”

“What’s the difference between people queuing for kidneys and people picking scraps from rubbish heaps? They’re all dregs abandoned by fate!”

He stepped forward, eyes blazing in the dark warehouse.

“I give them money and solve their poverty. Then I use the parts they no longer need to extend other people’s lives and hopes!”

“I’ve created a perfect cycle! Far more efficient than the sham order your laws uphold!”

“So…”

My voice was hoarse, but each word came clearly.

“You call murder charity?”

“Destruction, transcendence?”

“Smell this air!”

I pointed at the blue tubs.

“What’s here besides blood and formalin?”

“No hope. Only your own rotten desires!”

“You can’t taste it, can you?”

I stared as though I could pin him in place.

“You can’t taste the fear caught in their throats while you exploited them!”

“You can’t taste the burning longing in their last look at the sunlight outside the window!”

“Or how hard they were trying to keep living, in their own clumsy ways!”

“All you’ve collected is your own greed. Stop dressing it up as something sacred!”

My words seemed to pierce his deepest delusion.

His face twisted into pure rage.

“What do you know?”

“Who are you to judge me?”

He roared, abandoning all pretense, and charged with the knife.

I twisted aside.

The blade sliced open my coat.

He was fast, and far stronger than me.

I grabbed an empty cardboard box and threw it at him.

He slashed it in two.

Amid the flying scraps, I ducked and lunged onto the worktable.

He immediately kicked me hard in the lower back.

I crashed to the floor.

My sampling knife flew from my hand.

Old injuries and fresh pain erupted together.

He straddled me, raising the boning knife.

Only morbid curiosity remained in his eyes.

He laughed.

“Die!”

“Don’t move.”

A cold voice came from the warehouse door.

Lâm Hiểu stood with her gun raised.

Behind her were two armed detectives.

“Drop the knife.”

Trần Kiến Quốc froze.

Slowly, he lowered it and raised both hands.

Before they led him away, he turned to me with a complicated look.

“Dr. Trần, your blood… really is excellent. My son is very healthy now.”

I said nothing.

My blood had unwittingly aided a crime.

Another terrible thing I had been too late to stop.

But at least…

I had prevented the next victim.

Dust and a deathly stillness filled the warehouse after the violence.

Pale emergency lighting cut across the disorder.

My colleagues’ footsteps.

The clicks of evidence cameras.

Broken reports over radios.

Together, they formed the familiar background noise of a case.

Lâm Hiểu took no part in any of it.

She walked straight through the crowd, like a bullet immune to gravity, and stopped precisely in front of me.

Our colleagues exchanged glances and wordlessly moved aside.

There was no relief on her face.

Only frozen anger.

“Trần Mặc.”

Her voice wasn’t loud.

It could almost have been called calm.

But every word carried a subzero weight.

I didn’t move or speak.

My back rested against the cold steel table.

Pain pulsed where he had kicked me, like a rusty gear turning slowly inside my body.

It kept me alert, almost numb.

“Look at me.”

Her command left no room for refusal.

I raised my head.

In the harsh light, her pupils had contracted to tiny points, reflecting my bedraggled figure.

“What you just did.”

She spoke word by word, as though afraid that speaking faster would break her control.

“That wasn’t bravery. It wasn’t decisiveness.”

“It was a suicidal breach of procedure from beginning to end.”

“And you very nearly managed it.”

…

“If you’d died.”

“At that madman’s hands.”

“Thirty seconds before backup arrived.”

“I wouldn’t even have been able to explain in my report why you charged in here.”

“All I could write would be: ‘Officer Trần Mặc judged the situation urgent and acted alone.’”

“And then what?”

“Have the bureau give you a posthumous medal for recklessness?”

…

“Say something!”

Her voice suddenly rose, echoing through the warehouse.

“Give me a reason!”

“One I can understand!”

“One I can put in a report!”

“So next time you decide to play the lone hero, I’ll know how to work with you…”

“Or whether I should knock you out and drag you away!”

I parted my lips.

My throat was dry.

I seemed to taste that complex flavor from the goat soup again.

Those fragments of memory screamed in my head.

They were my entire reason.

And a secret I absolutely couldn’t reveal.

“Was it intuition?”

She pressed, stepping closer.

Close enough for me to see the trembling corner of her mouth.

“That damned, terrifyingly accurate intuition of yours again?”