Chapter 129: The Joy of Killing

2022-05-20

With that thought, I turned to the Village Chief. “Chief, if what Erxiao said is true, then the killer should still be in the village, not somewhere nearby. That would mean the killer is very likely one of our own villagers. Has anyone gone missing lately?”

The Village Chief warmed his hands by the fire, replying slowly, “We have maybe two or three hundred people here, not a big crowd. If anyone had disappeared, or even if a neighbor was nowhere to be found, their family would have reported it to the Village Committee by now. But so far, not a single complaint about anyone missing.”

He added, “How about this: it’s getting late, let’s just head back for today and come back tomorrow morning. I’ll have Old Xia gather everyone in the village together and see who’s absent. If that doesn’t work, we can go door to door. If the killer is a villager, the body must still be here.”

I shook a finger and said, “That won’t work. There’s too much snow now—what if the killer hid the body in a snowbank in their own yard? We’d never find it. We can’t go digging up every pile of snow in the village either—might as well wait for spring when the snow melts.”

“Besides,” I continued, “it’s wrong to accuse people without evidence. Even you and I would be upset if someone pointed fingers at us without a reason.”

“Then what should we do?” The Village Chief nodded and looked at me for answers.

I said, “The killer placed that arm in the snowbank at noon today—they can’t have left the village yet. What we need to do is guard both ends of the village. If anyone tries to sneak out, we need to know about it immediately. The snow has blocked off the roads—they can’t get far without us noticing.”

The Village Chief sipped hot water before replying, “That works too. Erxiao, you watch the east entrance. If anyone tries to escape toward the highway, you let me know. We’re all locals here, if you see their face you’ll know who it is—no way they can run far.”

Erxiao hadn’t really followed our whole conversation, but now he got it and quickly chimed in, “I like this. It’s just like those informants in TV shows, right? Alright, leave this to me—you picked the right guy, I’m bored out of my mind anyway.”

Not sure if Erxiao really was up to the job, but he looked so confident I couldn’t say anything. Besides, if a stranger was hiding here, folks would notice soon enough. That meant the killer was likely someone among us.

Could it really be Old Xia, the one who seemed most like a butcher?

Still, something about it didn’t sit right with me. The pieces weren’t lining up.

But with only three hundred people in the village, my odds of catching the killer were one in three hundred—and even without clear leads, finding this person wasn’t actually that difficult. The thought calmed me down a bit. All I had to do was wait until morning, gather everyone up, and use my profiling to narrow it down.

Even after Erxiao refused a few times, Gu Chen tossed fifty yuan onto the counter for good measure. We put on new gloves—finally, our hands didn’t feel so cold.

With that sorted, it was time to head back into the village.

As we walked, Captain Zhou spoke up, “So if that’s the case, the killer really must be a villager. But everyone here seems decent—does anyone really have it in them to do something this cruel? I mean, none of them look like people capable of butchering someone.”

I shook my head and told Captain Zhou, “People are never as simple as they seem. You never really know who you’re passing by.”

After a moment, Captain Zhou said, “Wu Meng, you’ve studied psychology. If someone kills and then cuts up the body, what’s driving them? And why let a dog gnaw on it?”

I tugged at my hair and answered slowly, “Based on the evidence, my profiling points to a killer with a butcher’s mindset. Someone who suffered trauma and kills to satisfy their own urges—this kind of person revels in the act itself.”

Captain Zhou looked like he only half understood, so I explained, “In psychology, there’s actually a term for this—’pleasure killing.'”

Captain Zhou scratched his head with a curious look. “That’s a new one for me. Why don’t you explain it while we walk? We’ve got nothing else to do anyhow.”

The others glanced over, clearly interested too.

I cleared my throat and began, “As you know, our needs come in order, like Maslow’s hierarchy—a pyramid with five levels, starting from the bottom. We work our way up, one step at a time.”

Everyone nodded.

“If we rank the three primal human desires, it’s sleep, food, and sex. When these aren’t met, people kill for one of three reasons: crimes of passion, where stress or exhaustion makes someone snap and later regret it; killing for desire, which covers lots of ground—like robbing someone for an iPhone; or to satisfy sexual urges.”

“Makes sense,” Captain Zhou agreed.

I held up three fingers, dropping them one by one. “But after all those needs are met, killers still exist. ‘Pleasure killing’ doesn’t fit with the other three. These people kill random victims just to fill the emptiness in their hearts.”

I paused, then added, “And that’s the problem. When the killer’s motive and their link to the victim are a mystery, it gets much harder to crack the case. There’s a paradox: the more victims, the likelier we are to catch the killer, but by then, the damage is done.”

Captain Zhou nodded. “You’re right. I’ve never understood why some people would kill for no reason—no grudge or anything.”

I agreed. “These killers are utterly vicious, and dismemberment is almost a hobby for them.”

“But the main thing is,” I said firmly, “they enjoy it.”

Gu Chen let out a cold snort. “No matter who they are or how long they’ve been on the run, murder is murder. We’ll never stop hunting them down. Isn’t there some list of the top ten cold cases? I bet the other nine will be solved soon too.”

I nodded. “That killer’s almost sixty now. From 1988 to today, nearly twenty years have gone by. If we catch him this time, maybe all those innocent souls can finally rest in peace.”

“Hard to believe people like that exist,” Captain Zhou said, a bit moved.

I sighed. “Yeah, the world’s a big place. There’s all kinds of people out there. Profiling was developed overseas to handle cases like these. A profiler has to put themselves in the killer’s shoes and sketch out their patterns with practically no clues to work from.”

“So, does profiling ever miss the mark?” Captain Zhou asked seriously.

He frowned at me, deep in thought.

I nodded. “Of course it can be wrong. If profiling was foolproof, solving crimes would be easy. In reality, profiling relies a lot on big data analysis—what a killer looks like, their childhood, their psychology—these things can make someone more likely to kill.”

“But honestly,” I continued, “it’s not foolproof. Just because someone looks like a butcher doesn’t mean they are. Profiling helps us see things in a new light, but it’s never a hundred percent. For example, I’m already starting to doubt my own conclusion.”

“What do you mean?” the others asked.

I pulled at my hair again and replied lightly, “Right now I’m actually questioning my whole profile. When every clue points perfectly at just one person, that actually feels off—like someone being a top basketball player, a top soccer player, and a top pool player all at once.”

“People like that are rare in real life,” I told them. “They only exist in stories. There’s no reason for one person to check every box for psychological deviance.”

“So the killer might not be a butcher?” Captain Zhou pressed.

I nodded, then shook my head. “It’s too soon to say. We need more clues before we can be sure.”