“So are you going to push ahead with your theory?” Yu said, rising.
“It’s just a theory in books,” Chen said. “In fact, your focus on the possible triggering factor in Jasmine’s murder may be the right direction. But we may have to move back further in history.”
Yu didn’t know how much further they could move back. Still, there was no telling what surprises his boss would come up with.
FIFTEEN
ON TUESDAY MORNING, CHEN woke up still exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept at all. There was also the suggestion of a nagging headache. He started rubbing his temples.
He had spent the weekend working on the red mandarin dress case, pushing along several fronts.
He’d phoned a friend in the United States, asking for her help with a background checkup of Weng. With her connections, she soon obtained the required information. What Weng had told Yu was basically true. He had been a special buyer for an American company. The divorce proceedings with his wife had hit no snag and should be finalized in a month or two. In fact, his wife was looking forward to it, as she had a new boyfriend.
He’d contacted Xiong, the city government cadre who had spoken to Tian’s factory about his actions during the Cultural Revolution. Xiong said that he’d done so because of an anonymous letter he’d received about Tian’s atrocities. According to Xiong, he didn’t try to put any pressure on the factory. Once somebody in Xiong’s position had spoken, however, it was a matter of course that other people would do everything possible to comply. That spelled the doom for Tian. An anonymous letter was smart, though not necessarily suspicious, as it allowed the author to “kill with somebody else’s knife.” Xiong had no idea at all who had written the letter.
Chen also researched the mandarin-dress-related mass-criticism during the early part of the Cultural Revolution. Like Peiqin, he recalled the image of Wang Guangmei being mass-criticized and humiliated in a mandarin dress. Thinking that others could have suffered like that as well, he had a computer search done by White Cloud and then, also with the help of White Cloud, he got in touch with Yang, a movie star who had been mass-criticized in a mandarin dress. There were some minor differences in details, though. As far as Yang remembered, it was a white dress, and she wasn’t barefoot. Instead, she had on worn-out shoes, which symbolized a bourgeois promiscuous lifestyle. Yang offered one more detail that differed. Her dress slits had been cut up to the waist, revealing her panties, and it had been done by the Red Guards with a pair of scissors. The murder victims’ slits, in contrast, seemed to have been torn, as in a struggle. He immediately checked with Yu, who confirmed his impression. With the first victim, the dress could have been torn in rage by the perpetrator, and for the second and third, possibly in an effort to produce similarity among the victims. Whatever the interpretation, the suggestion of sexual violence was unmistakable.
On Monday, he talked to Ding Jiashan, the attorney who represented the diners in the food poisoning case against Tian. According to Ding, there was something suspicious about the whole thing. It was a case few attorneys would be interested in. The attorney’s fees would almost certainly be higher than what the clients would recover from such a small restaurant, but the diners seemed to be so determined that they were willing to pay his fee up front. And they were prepared too. They had the receipt from the restaurant, they had the record from the hospital, and their stories supported one another. So, on their behalf, the attorney complained to the business bureau first, which fined Tian heavily and closed the restaurant for violations. The diners seemed to be happy with the initial result but, a few days later, when he tried to contact them about the next step, they had canceled their phones. The attorney wasn’t even sure that they had given him their real names.
This further confirmed the scenario that somebody had been after Tian. But that wasn’t necessarily a lead in the red mandarin dress case.
In the meantime, he read through the material prepared by Yu and Hong. Hong had not called in during the weekend, though. She must have been busy with her decoy assignment.
He also experimented further with focusing on the contradictions in the case, which seemed only to lead to more contradictions.
By Tuesday, however, he had again arrived at the conclusion that he could hardly do any better than his colleagues, in spite of the fact that he had been going all out, concentrating on the serial murder case.
Just as he was about to brew a second pot of coffee in frustration, Professor Bian called and asked about his progress with the paper.
“I’ve been working on it,” Chen said.
“Do you think you can turn it in with others?” Bian asked. “It’s a promising paper.”
“Yes, I’ll turn the paper in on time.”
After he hung up, he became worried. He had a longstanding habit of setting deadlines for himself, as he needed the extra pressure to complete a project, such as a poem or a mystery translation. This time was different. He was already under too much pressure. Since all of his efforts in the investigation seemed to be going nowhere, with not even the suggestion of a possible breakthrough anytime soon, he decided he might as well try to finish his paper first. In the past, he’d found himself coming up with new ideas about a project after temporarily putting it on the shelf. The working of the subconscious, perhaps.
It was no longer possible for him to focus while at home, however. Phone calls kept coming in, and unplugging the phone line didn’t help. Now that there were three victims in the case, his cell phone number had become suddenly known to many, including the media. Even at the library, he was recognized by a couple of people who then peppered him with questions about the murder case. Last night, a Wenhui journalist had come knocking at his door, carrying a package of barbecued pork and a bottle of Shaoxin wine, eager to discuss her theories with him over the feast-almost like a passionate female character stepping out of one of those romantic stories.
He decided to go to the Starbucks Café on Sichuan Road.
Starbucks, along with McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, had mushroomed in the city. The café was regarded as a cultivated resort for the elite, and the atmosphere there was supposedly quiet and peaceful. At the café, where he was nobody, he could have an undisturbed morning and concentrate on the paper.
Choosing a corner table, he took out his books. He had gathered five or six stories, but three might be enough for the paper. The third one, “Artisan Cui and His Ghost Wife,” was originally narrated by Song dynasty professional storytellers in marketplaces or tea houses where old people sat talking loudly, cracking watermelon seeds, playing mahjong, and spitting to their hearts’ content.
Sipping at his coffee, he started reading. In the tale, Xiuxiu, a pretty girl in Lin’an, was purchased as an embroidery maid by Prince Xian’an, the military leader of three commanderies. In his household worked a young jade carver named Cui, who gained the prince’s favor for having carved a marvelous jade Avalokitesvara for the emperor. So the prince promised to marry Xiuxiu to Cui in the future. One night, fleeing from a fire at the prince’s mansion, Xiuxiu suggested to Cui that, instead of waiting, they become husband and wife there and then. So that night, the two left for Tanzhou as a couple. After a year, they ran into Guo, a guard for the prince. Guo reported the whereabouts of the fugitives to the prince, who had them brought back. At the local court, Cui was punished and banished to Jiankang. Xiuxiu overtook him on the way there, telling him that after getting her punishment in the back garden, she was set free. As it happened, the imperial jade Avalokitesvara needed repairing, so the Cuis moved back to the capital, where they again ran across Guo. Once more the prince sent for Xiuxiu, but when the sedan chair supposedly carrying her arrived, there was no one inside. Guo then got a severe beating for his false information. Next, Cui, too, was brought to the prince, at which point Cui learned that Xiuxiu had been beaten to death in the back garden. So it was Xiuxiu’s ghost who had been with him all this time. When Cui returned home, he begged her to spare him, but she took away his life so he could keep her company in the next world.