Chapter 1

I once investigated the rape and murder of a woman who lived alone. The investigation took one turn after another, but it was the truth at the end that chilled me most.

We eventually caught her killer.

But he was not the only person responsible for her death.

The victim, whom I will call Li Mengqi, was twenty-five and single. She worked for a construction company in the county town. Her family lived in a village about ten kilometers away.

She rented a room in a neighborhood packed with privately built houses.

Her employer was a local branch of a major corporation based in a first-tier city. The pay and benefits should have been decent.

Her accommodation, by contrast, was appalling.

Most of the tenants worked in small factories and workshops. The neighborhood was filthy and chaotic.

It was a particularly unsuitable place for a young woman as attractive as Li Mengqi.

When we arrived in response to the report, we immediately began collecting evidence from her room.

First, the condition of the body.

Her clothing was disheveled. Both her nightclothes and underwear showed signs of having been torn by force.

A deep band of bruising encircled her neck. Examination established that it had been caused by a hair dryer's power cord. This was the fatal injury.

From the depth of the ligature mark and the state of the lividity, the forensic examiner provisionally placed her death between two and six the previous morning.

There were also pressure bruises on her forearms, legs, and ankles, though they were less pronounced. The examiner's initial assessment was that these were older injuries.

In other words, they had not been inflicted during the murder.

There were clear indications of sexual assault, but the perpetrator had taken great care to remove the evidence.

Then there was the room itself.

It was a simple room with a bathroom on the top floor. The furnishings amounted to a bed, a fabric wardrobe, and a small table and chair.

There was a window. When the body was discovered, it was shut and the curtains were drawn.

The scene was exceptionally clean. We found no trace of anyone else.

No hair. No skin cells.

There were not even any shoeprints on the floor—not the killer's, and not Li Mengqi's.

Someone had cleaned the room thoroughly.

That suggested a deliberate, planned crime.

The killer might well have known her.

We also discovered that the door had been closed and locked.

Either the killer had used another way in and out, or he had a key.

The possibility that she knew him became stronger.

A local police officer had forced the door. He told us that a coworker of Li Mengqi's had called the police and insisted that they break in. In the end, he had done so.

Tenants generally changed their own locks after moving in, so the landlord had no spare key.

The damage to the lock matched the officer's account.

While the evidence was being collected, we began narrowing down the suspects.

First, we obtained the surveillance footage covering the building's entrance and checked for anyone suspicious coming or going.

Next, we questioned everyone who lived there, including the landlord.

Finally, we interviewed the coworker who had called the police. Her name was Xu Xiaoai, and she worked closely with Li Mengqi.

Xu said she had raised the alarm so quickly because Li Mengqi never missed work without an explanation.

She took her job very seriously. Her abilities were unremarkable, but she was highly responsible.

Yet that morning she had failed to appear without so much as a call or a message.

Xu had immediately feared that something had happened to her.

We sent officers to their company to check her account.

Everything they learned supported it.

Their coworkers also told us the two women were extremely close. They were good friends and often helped each other at work.

That explained why Xu had become so anxious when she could not reach Li Mengqi, and why she had called the police at once.

On the face of it, there was nothing suspicious about her.

But she gave us a peculiar lead.

“Mengqi... a little while ago, she saw a ghost.”

“What?”

My first thought was that the shock had unsettled Xu so badly that she was bringing up things with no bearing on the case.

Only later did I understand that everything was connected.

Fortunately, I listened while she told me about Li Mengqi's “ghost.”

Of course there are no ghosts.

And this had not been a haunting.

It had been something disgusting and tragic.

The conversation had taken place that Monday.

During a break at work, Li Mengqi had told Xu Xiaoai what had happened the night before.

She had experienced “sleep paralysis.”

That weekend she had attended training at the company's city office and had not returned until Sunday evening.

Xu assumed she was exhausted. She asked whether Li wanted to take a day or two off to rest.

But Li insisted that was not the explanation. She even had proof.

There were bruises on both her wrists.

“Look. I'm not making it up... Something really was holding me down. It pinned my arms and legs so hard it hurt them.”

Then she told Xu everything.

After taking a shared ride home from the city, she had been too tired even to shower. She had changed her clothes and gone straight to bed.

Almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, she was dreaming.

But her sleep was far from peaceful.

In the middle of the night, she suddenly felt someone pressing down on her.

She tried to move. She could not.

She tried to scream. No sound came.

She felt fully conscious, yet she could not even open her eyes.

The helplessness was terrifying.

Fortunately, it did not last long.

At one point she felt a cool breath of air pass across her face, and she woke up.

She immediately turned on the light and searched the room.

Of course, she found nothing.

She assumed it had only been a nightmare.

So she lay down again.

But as soon as she fell asleep, it happened a second time.

She was paralyzed again.

This time it was worse.

Not only could she not move, she could distinctly feel something pinning her arms and legs.

She struggled harder.

She still could not open her eyes, but she managed to part her lips.

She began making faint sounds, weakly calling for help...

Then a cold voice spoke beside her ear.

“Not even the gods can save you.”

Her terror deepened.

Another rush of cold air brushed her face, and she woke again.

She sat up and turned on the light.

Still, the room was empty.

It all seemed to have been another nightmare.

This time, however, she dared not go back to sleep.

She left the light on and huddled in a corner of the bed, clutching her quilt, forcing her eyes to stay open as she waited for daylight.

But the business trip had exhausted her. Eventually, sleep overcame her.

Fortunately, this time there were no nightmares. No paralysis.

When she woke, it was finally morning.

She seemed perfectly normal. She was even lying neatly in bed with her head on the pillow.

Only something felt wrong.

She clearly remembered switching on the light the last time she woke.

Now it was off.

After a whole night of nightmares and paralysis, though, her thoughts were a mess.

Perhaps she had turned it off herself before falling asleep?

Confused and exhausted, she decided a shower might help.

It was only while she was washing that she noticed them.

Distinct bruises on both her wrists and both her ankles.

At that moment, she became certain it had not merely been a dream.

Something really had held her down.

It had taken considerable patience to hear Xu Xiaoai out.

But by the time she reached the end, my own heart had lurched.

My conclusion was very different from Li Mengqi's.

I did not think it had been a ghost.

I thought someone had been in her room that night.

Yet that did not make sense either.

The room was tiny. There was nowhere for anyone to hide. If she had woken several times, how could she have failed to see an intruder?

The account contradicted itself.

And yet the bruises on her wrists and ankles might well have dated from that night.

With those questions in mind, I returned to the criminal investigation unit and kept pressing the forensic examiner for preliminary findings.

A full autopsy report would take several days. During an investigation, however, we could obtain findings as they became available and use them to guide our work.

The first results came instead from the officers collecting evidence at the scene.

They had spoken to everyone living in the building, but a brief conversation was not enough to establish who might be a suspect.

They all seemed ordinary. None appeared to have any connection to Li Mengqi.

The officers had also reviewed all the entrance-camera footage at increased speed.

Their conclusion: no suspicious person had entered or left the building in the previous three days.

There was a camera in the corridor outside Li Mengqi's room as well. It too showed no suspicious person entering or leaving her room during that period.

In other words, the killer had not used the door.

The window was the likeliest alternative.

It had been shut and the curtains drawn, but it had not been locked.

Both closing the window and drawing the curtains could have been done from outside.

Perhaps Li Mengqi did not habitually lock it. Her room was high up and difficult to reach.

Difficult, however, did not mean impossible.

I told the officers to widen the search and look for nearby security cameras that might cover the window or the street beneath it.

Just then, I remembered the “sleep paralysis” Xu Xiaoai had described.

It had happened the previous Sunday night.

Almost as an afterthought, I added:

“Extend the time frame. Go back to last Sunday. Start reviewing all the footage from then.”

We had no evidence yet that Li Mengqi's nightmare a week earlier had anything to do with her death.

But I could not explain it, and it would not leave my mind.

Thank goodness I said it.

Because Li Mengqi's “nightmare” had been a nightmare more terrible than we could have imagined.