Chapter 2

At last, the forensic examiner gave us the preliminary findings.

First, a detailed examination showed that the tears in the victim's genital area had been inflicted after her blood had stopped circulating.

Combined with congestion in the associated glands, including the paraurethral glands, this confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted a second time after death.

Second, blood tests had detected the organic compound C₂H₅OC₂H₅: ether.

It was a controlled anesthetic. Inhaling about two milliliters could put a person into deep unconsciousness.

The examiner stressed, however, that the residual concentration in her blood was extremely low. In another day or two, it might have become undetectable.

Ether took about seven days to be fully metabolized.

I counted backward.

That meant the ether in Li Mengqi's body could date back to the previous week.

Once again, the findings seemed to connect with her “nightmare” the previous Sunday.

Third, her injuries.

The bruises on her wrists and ankles could largely be attributed to forceful pressure from someone's hands. They were also confirmed to be older injuries.

They had begun to fade, and the pooled blood was gradually dispersing. The estimated time they had been inflicted was between three and ten days earlier.

The fatal injury to her neck had unquestionably been caused by a tightly drawn electrical cord.

There were no other injuries.

That suggested Li Mengqi might have been fast asleep when the killer strangled her.

There were no signs of a struggle. She had not even caught anything under her fingernails.

The attack had been swift, precise, and vicious. It had the look of revenge.

But our inquiries showed that Li Mengqi had no boyfriend and no man with whom she was in regular intimate contact. We could rule out a romantic motive.

She led a simple life. Apart from business trips, she went almost exclusively between work and her rented room. Her social circle was uncomplicated.

Her friends and coworkers in the county all spoke positively of her. It seemed unlikely that she had made an enemy.

Then her family finally arrived.

We had notified them immediately, but they took a long time to come.

We needed to take their statements.

That proved far less straightforward than expected.

Li Mengqi's family consisted of her parents and a younger brother in high school.

Instead of coming to the criminal investigation unit, they caused an uproar at the police station downstairs.

We hurried down, but even then we could not put a stop to it.

Her mother was the main problem.

We understood that she had just lost her daughter. We did not reproach her; we tried to comfort her.

Gradually, though, we realized that grief might not be the whole reason for the crying and commotion.

She wanted compensation.

How could we tell?

Because as she rolled about on the floor, her sobbing was interspersed with remarks like these:

“She was so young. Think how many more years she could have worked...”

“There has to be compensation...”

“Why haven't you caught the killer? You have to make him pay until he hasn't a penny left...”

I would rather believe she had not meant to say those things.

But she had said them.

Her husband and son stood to one side, watching coldly.

Suddenly, I understood why Li Mengqi had rented such a place.

Despite her company's good pay and benefits.

It was because of these people.

If she had not been trying to save money by living there, perhaps she would not have...

Never mind.

We spent more time dealing with her family than we had spent on the inquiries I have just described.

It was dark before we finally settled matters with them, promising to notify them as soon as we solved the case.

And then, at last, we got a lead.

That night, an officer reported a suspicious piece of footage.

There was no outside camera with a view of Li Mengqi's window; its position made that impossible.

The footage had come from a traffic camera directly in front of the building's main entrance.

The time stamp was 11:29 p.m. the previous Sunday.

It showed Li Mengqi returning from her business trip.

The night of her “nightmare.”

But after dropping her off, the car did not leave.

Three men got out. All wore baseball caps. They slipped after Li Mengqi.

An officer had tried to obtain footage from the building's own cameras for the same period. Unfortunately, to save money, the landlord had installed a hard drive with very little storage. Recordings were automatically deleted after three days.

The officer then tried to contact the car's owner.

That was when he discovered the plates were false.

The car was carrying cloned plates.

There was definitely something wrong with those three men.

Our colleague thought they might have been watching Li Mengqi for a week.

The owner of that car could be the killer.

Perhaps the week-long interval had allowed him to study the area and plan his movements, explaining how he had left so little evidence.

We acted immediately.

One team went back through the surveillance footage, searching for anything connected to the car.

Meanwhile, I contacted Xu Xiaoai. She gave me the location of the office Li Mengqi had visited in the city, and we established roughly where she had been picked up for the return journey.

That same night, I contacted the city's criminal investigation unit and requested security-camera and traffic-camera footage from the area.

By daybreak, the city officers on duty had identified the driver.

Since the case was under my jurisdiction, they could not proceed on their own. I took a team into the city, and together we arrested the suspect at his home.

His name was Zheng Jie. He was twenty-six and worked at a nightclub, promoting and taking table bookings.

When we searched his phone and computer and found large quantities of pornographic videos, he confessed at once.

He had two accomplices.

What they had done was an outrage against every shred of decency.

We thought we had found the killers.

We had no idea how much more complicated the case would become.

According to Zheng Jie, he and his accomplices had a sideline.

They illegally sold short videos through various online channels.

Where did the videos come from?

They “made their own,” of course.

His nightclub job gave him opportunities to approach women he considered promiscuous, or to “pick up” women too drunk to look after themselves.

He had two regular accomplices, Liu Kai and Zhang Zhiming.

When a potential target appeared at the club, Zheng Jie would contact them, and the three would act together.

They secretly filmed the entire “encounter” and sold the recording.

Most of the women, of course, had no idea they were being filmed.

The women who became helplessly drunk, with no friend or relative to collect them, suffered especially badly when the men “picked them up.”

They offended repeatedly without being punished. Their nerve grew.

In search of more excitement and more money, they adopted another approach.

Drugging women and raping them.

Videos of respectable women, students, and girls seen as well-behaved could fetch higher prices.

Zheng Jie bought an illicit vehicle, fitted it with false plates, and used shared rides to approach such women.

They rarely went to nightclubs.

Some, however, used ride-sharing services.

Li Mengqi was one of them.

Returning to the county from the city the previous weekend, she had booked a shared ride to save money.

Zheng Jie was experienced and calculating. He picked her up first, then collected his two accomplices.

They pretended to be fellow passengers.

All three were polite throughout the journey, and Li Mengqi, unsuspecting, had little reason to be on her guard.

She even let slip her address.

That night, Zheng Jie and his accomplices made her their target.

I thought back to the “nightmare” Li Mengqi had described.