Chapter 352: Another Student

2022-05-20

Those two characters written above weren’t anything else—they were ‘Taishan.’ The moment I saw them, I knew what the child was wearing under his jacket. It was the summer short-sleeved uniform of Taishan Elementary. I remembered back when I was in school, teachers insisted we wear uniforms. So in summer we’d just throw our own jackets over the uniform shirts to get by. That was what passed for following the dress code.

It looked like this little boy had done the same. But that raised a problem. The principal assured us their security was airtight—kids wouldn’t be let out unless a parent picked them up. And yet here was another Taishan Elementary student, dead in this place.

I turned to the others and said, “This kid is from Taishan Elementary, too.”

Gu Chen frowned. “Taishan again? There are plenty of elementary schools in this town. Why would the killer target only Taishan students? And every time it’s so brutal. Does the killer have something personal against Taishan Elementary?”

The two of them carefully set the child’s body down on the back seat.

Watching them, I added, “Judging by their actions, the killer really does seem to hold a grudge against Taishan Elementary. Two kids dead, one—Hu Ningning—caught, and they’re all from Taishan.”

Once we had the body secured, Gu Chen got behind the wheel. Uncle Chen, who clearly hadn’t seen many corpses—especially not like this—sat up front riding shotgun. I ended up next to the body in the back. The boy’s corpse was laid out face down, his head turned my way.

Gu Chen glanced back at me. “So what about Gu Hui? You think her case is connected to this? The killer couldn’t have known when she’d leave home. Besides, Gu Hui would never go off with a stranger.”

I could hear the worry in Gu Chen’s voice. No surprise—Gu Hui was family to him. But based on what we knew, I doubted these two cases were done by the same person. In Gu Hui’s case, it really looked more like an accident than a murder.

Or maybe it was murder, but the killer staged the scene to look like a tragic accident.

Either way, whether it was Li Jun or this unnamed little boy, their cases were worlds apart. Fifty-two wounds on Li Jun, and here—dozens of fishhooks stuck in the child. Just picturing it made my skin crawl.

Compared to them, Gu Hui’s death looked like a mercy. It really seemed the cases weren’t done by the same hand, but somehow all of it was tied together. And Teacher Gao’s suicide didn’t seem related to this killer either.

I told Gu Chen, “Right now, there’s no way to draw a final conclusion. Personally, I think they might be somewhat connected, but not tightly. With more investigation, the pieces should start to fit together.”

Gu Chen nodded thoughtfully.

The corpse was right beside me. Looking at the child’s lifeless body, I just felt an overwhelming sense of discomfort. It had obviously been tampered with—if there were that many hooks, there should have been a lot more blood, but there wasn’t.

Not a word was spoken on the drive.

When Coroner Wang saw the body, his mouth dropped so wide you could’ve parked a whole cow in there.

“Bring it in,” Coroner Wang said as we headed to the autopsy room. “Honestly, I thought I’d seen it all in this line of work. Didn’t expect I’d get to see so many corpses up close before I retired…”

We laid the body flat on the autopsy table. Coroner Wang snipped open the clothes with a pair of scissors. There was no way to dress or undress the corpse normally. While he was at it, I snapped a photo of the boy’s face and had Gu Chen send it to Sun Qingqing so she could check if he was one of her students.

By the time we finished, Coroner Wang had already cut away all the boy’s clothes.

Some threads from the clothes had been pierced deep into the flesh by the hooks. There was no way to get those bits out except by removing the hooks one by one.

Coroner Wang muttered, “The past few days, the autopsies have all been tougher than my entire career put together.”

“How long is this one going to take?” I asked.

“Three, four hours at least,” he sighed. “Not going to be quick.”

It was a nightmare of a case—because of the hooks, we couldn’t even lay the boy on his back. Had to leave him face down for the whole thing. Coroner Wang started using a pair of tweezers, slowly and carefully removing the hooks one at a time.

Luckily, since the victim had been dead for a while, the bleeding had already stopped. Very little blood oozed out.

Coroner Wang was all focus, his expression deadly serious. None of us dared say a word. The atmosphere was as tense as an engineer performing delicate work. When he finally got the last hook out, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Outside, night had fallen.

Coroner Wang finally let out a long, heavy breath. “I counted it up as I worked—there were sixty-eight hooks stuck in the child’s body. Most were clustered over the back and limbs. Two more were right by the spine at the neck. Judging from the wounds, they all happened while he was alive—each one bled.”

He paused, then added, “Some only pierced the skin. Some drove deep into the fat and muscle.”

I looked at Coroner Wang. “So that means the killer doesn’t really know human anatomy—probably middle-class, doing alright financially, but not knowledgeable about the body.”

I thought it over and added, “This isn’t someone in the medical field. If they were, the muscle memory alone would make their actions different. This person probably owns a house. Their home is set apart from neighbors—somewhat isolated.”

Coroner Wang kept working through the routine part of the autopsy. For someone with two decades of experience, he could probably do this in his sleep.

I continued, “Their age should be around thirty or so.”

I closed my eyes, sifting through the possible profile of the killer.

“They’re married—have a kid. But now the killer lives alone, spouse and child aren’t with them. Doesn’t like talking, prefers to hole up at home and do nothing. Their life’s a mess, can’t cook to save their life.”

With every thought, pain tightened across my forehead. I pressed my temples, voice strained. “They hate these kids—hate them deeply.”

But the harder I tried to dig, the sharper the pain grew—like my head was splitting open. I couldn’t go on.

Seeing how much I was struggling, Uncle Chen came and patted my shoulder. His voice was gentle. “You alright?”

Gu Chen watched me closely. Once he was sure I hadn’t lost myself in a deep mental dive, he spoke. “Profiling.”

Uncle Chen looked startled. “That’s the thing where you put yourself in the killer’s shoes, right? That profiling stuff?”

I nodded. “Exactly. A psychiatrist came up with profiling. It’s not officially recognized yet, and honestly, not everyone can do it. Every time I use deep immersion, it risks triggering a split in my personality. That’s why I try to avoid doing it.”

“If not for the possibility that this case connects to Wu Zui’s group, I wouldn’t have pushed myself so hard to find the killer.”

Just then, Coroner Wang piped up. “Profiling, huh? I bet you’ve done so much of it without any therapy sessions that it’s left you like this. People who do that kind of thing, odds are they’ll go crazy eventually.”

“Back in that little city, nobody knew,” I said.

“So, any findings from the autopsy?” I asked.

Coroner Wang looked at me, serious as ever. “With the hooks out, I could finally turn the body over. Not a scratch on the front. All the wounds were concentrated on the back. From the bleeding, it’s clear he suffered a lot, but none of the trauma individually looks fatal.”

“No fatal injuries on the back?” I asked. “But there are so many wounds. None of them could’ve killed him?”

Coroner Wang nodded. “Believe it or not, most hooks didn’t go that deep. Most just pierced the skin. The deeper ones only cut some capillaries—no major bleeding. I won’t know the exact cause of death till I finish the dissection.”

“But—”

He pointed at the child’s mouth. “I did notice something here. Take a look…”