Chapter 092: Will Strike Again

Luo Feng asked, “Do you mean those two men died because of Z?”

I shook my head. “I can’t say for sure. But for now, both the dead and the strange events seem to revolve around Z. More precisely, they revolve around the child spirit doll.”

This child spirit doll was tied to far too many things. The little ghost thought its scent felt familiar. Inside it was also that photograph Yun Qing had once seen at Three Pines Temple, and before Wu Qingshan died, Xuan Yi had met with him. Since the child spirit doll case began, I too had run into more than my fair share of bizarre happenings. Everything tangled together until my mind was in complete disorder. I tried to trace the connections, but in the end, I failed.

Just like that, a day passed. Chen Fan told me that Tang Jia had gone to meet Zhou Sheng’s parents and, after getting some information from them, had then gone to see the actress Z. The police had already investigated the hotels where Zhou Sheng and Z had stayed, but no one had discovered any sign that Zhou Sheng had ever been in contact with Z.

The police had originally wanted to be cautious and wait until they had confirmed some connection between Zhou Sheng and Z before approaching her. But with nothing turning up, Tang Jia grew impatient and went straight to see Z and Charlie. Chen Fan was astonished and asked me why it was that neither Zhou Sheng’s parents nor the actress Z had told Tang Jia that I had already gone to see them.

I did not even need to think to know the answer. Tang Jia’s questioning of these people had likely been anything but smooth, and she might even have been shut out at the door. Zhou Sheng’s father did not trust mainland police, and Charlie’s temper was poor; add to that the fact that these past few days had left them both on edge, with people constantly coming to bother them. Given Tang Jia’s style and manner of doing things, it would have been a miracle if she had not run headfirst into a wall.

Two more days passed, and neither the police nor I made any real breakthrough. In that time, I visited actress Z and Zhou Sheng’s parents once more. Z was still sleeping very little, barely closing her eyes at all. Her face was even paler than before. With Charlie watching her every moment, the scratches on Z’s hands had not increased, but her mental state and physical condition were both deeply troubling.

As for Charlie, fear had driven him to let the bodyguards come inside as well, so that they could stay in the house with him and Z. When I went to see Z, those bodyguards seemed to want to say something and then stop. They said that maybe it was only in their heads, but they too felt that there was something unclean in the house, and that it made them uneasy all over.

Some of the bodyguards had been newly assigned. The earlier ones had been somewhat frightened, but these men were bolder, and Charlie paid them well, so they were willing to work for him.

Zhou Sheng’s parents, meanwhile, still had not emerged from the shadow of his death. When I went to see them, they were still crying. Zhou Sheng’s father urged me to solve the case as quickly as possible and even said he was willing to pay more. I had gone there hoping to ask a few more questions, but their reaction only irritated me, and in the end I simply stopped going.

I was frustrated, but Tang Jia was patient. Over those two days, Chen Fan said Tang Jia had gone to Zhou Sheng’s father’s hotel several times, but the man had only met her once, and his answers were perfunctory at best. When Tang Jia returned to the team, she flew into a rage and bitterly denounced Zhou Sheng’s father for not even being anxious when his own child had died.

When we heard this, Chen Fan and Luo Feng were both quite pleased. They had not the slightest fondness for Tang Jia.

Chen Fan also checked out actress Z’s new residence. He investigated the house thoroughly from top to bottom and side to side. Taking into account all factors, including alibis, their suspicions were completely ruled out. As for the previous neighborhood, the police had carried out a full investigation there as well, and still no one suspicious had been found.

On the one hand, we were making no progress. On the other, the killer had also remained completely still for these two days. In truth, based on my earlier reasoning, I believed the killer would very likely make another move. That conclusion was not pulled from thin air; it came from my analysis of the killer’s criminal psychology.

The second case, Zhou Sheng’s, bore many similarities to the first, Wu Qingshan’s. I had already guessed that the killer’s purpose was to push both cases onto the child spirit doll, to create a bizarre, unresolved supernatural mystery. I was fairly certain that this was not the killer’s last crime.

If the killer had merely wanted to kill Zhou Sheng and then stop, then by the time Zhou Sheng died, he would already have vanished without a trace. Even if he had been confident enough not to flee, there would have been no need to deliberately create more strange phenomena to mislead the police and us, unless he meant to exact revenge on society or challenge the authority of the law.

But from the clues we had so far, these two cases did not show any such characteristics. In general, when a case is meant to challenge the authority of the law, the killer is usually brazen to the extreme, sometimes even leaving warnings behind for the police. I placed that possibility at the very end.

After Zhou Sheng’s death, the killer continued to create strange events. I did not believe this was because he lacked confidence and wanted to keep reinforcing the idea that the case was tied to the doll. If that were all, then the deaths of Wu Qingshan and Zhou Sheng would already have been enough.

This killer was exceedingly clever and equally cunning. He was not likely to do anything pointless.

For that very reason, I came to believe the killer intended to continue committing crimes.

That underground garage had already been plagued by strange phenomena off and on before Zhou Sheng died, which was plainly part of the killer’s preparation. If there had not been some urgent reason to kill Zhou Sheng immediately, the killer might have continued preparing slowly, making Zhou Sheng’s death look exactly like Wu Qingshan’s.

Alas, Zhou Sheng was already dead. Whether or not he had known anything about the killer’s identity was now impossible to guess.

Setting aside whatever urgent factor had forced Zhou Sheng’s immediate death, the killer’s methods made it clear that he had spent a long time preparing before each crime. That preparation included scouting the location and becoming thoroughly familiar with the underground garage and the power room, along with a host of other arrangements. It was a process that took considerable time. Wu Qingshan’s death, in particular, had obviously been planned with meticulous care. It could not have been accomplished on a whim.

Luo Feng also found it strange. He asked whether my prediction might have been wrong.

These two days had seen no movement from the killer at all. Even Z and Charlie, though still frightened, had not seen any more strange phenomena in the residential complex.

I shook my head at Luo Feng. “Security in the complex has been tightened. Maybe the killer has no way to keep acting. Or maybe he has already begun setting up another haunted place, preparing for the next case. We just do not know it yet.”

Two days had made Luo Feng look a little better. He drew in a sharp breath. “If anyone dies again, then this killer is truly terrifying.”

I nodded. “I’ve already told Chen Fan to pay closer attention to anyone connected to Z. If our guess is correct and the killer does strike again, the target may be someone linked to Z. At present, in Beijing, the person most closely connected to Z is Charlie. I’ve also had Chen Fan warn the production crew to be careful.”

While Luo Feng and I were discussing this, Wang Yazhuo arrived. She brought us a newspaper, and after handing it to me, she stared at me with wide eyes. At first I did not understand what she meant, but after I looked over the paper, I immediately saw through her thoughts. She was waiting for me to praise her.

So I went along with her, smiled at her, and thanked her.

A few days earlier, besides asking Wang Yazhuo to keep helping me look for Xuan Yi, I had also asked her to do me another favor. I had told her to spread the news that actress Z was raising a child spirit doll, and to fan the rumor into a blaze. Before that, the media stories about Z keeping ghosts had mostly been hearsay, or else gossip based on photos of her visiting temples and making offerings. They were little more than tabloid speculation.

This time, however, Wang Yazhuo had followed my instructions and, through various channels, passed on to the media all the details: that Wu Qingshan had once met with Z, that he had later died under bizarre circumstances, and that the crime scenes had all contained child spirit doll figurines. As a result, the reporting this time had a much more news-like quality.

With a little more embellishment, these newspapers were enough to frighten people.

The papers Wang Yazhuo brought me were not local Beijing papers, but newspapers from several coastal cities. She said the reporting in Beijing was too tightly controlled, and ordinary newspapers did not dare to talk nonsense. I shook my head. “That’s fine. This is already enough. Luo Feng, the rest is up to you.”