Skinner's Box (Fang Mu (Eastern Crimes)) (37 page)

His body was a hideous wreck, the chest caved-in terribly. Careful not to accidentally bump him, Fang Mu kneeled down and spoke into to his ear. "Lu Xu… Lu Xu…"

Lu Xu's mouth twitched, and a foam of saliva and blood oozed from between his lips and dribbled down the side of his chin. A chill went down Fang Mu's back as he realized Lu Xu's ribs had probably punctured his lungs. His voice cracked as he looked up and yelled. "Ambulance! Call an ambulance, hurry!"

A weak sound emerged from Lu Xu's mouth. "Gun…gun…"

Fang Mu hastily scanned the ground, but among all the glass and rubble he did not know where to start. Then his gaze fell to the mangled van lying on its side and his heart leapt. "Quick! Quick! Gun!" he sputtered incoherently. "Someone go search the van for a gun!"

A couple of SWAT team members scurried over to the van.

Fang Mu looked back down at Lu Xu and wiped the bloody foam away from his mouth, all the while murmuring, "It'll be okay…you'll be okay… Just hang on…"

Lu Xu's eyes had closed. His arm twitched slightly, and through his wrist Fang Mu imagined he could feel the motorcycle cop's body temperature dropping.

A few minutes later, a SWAT team member shouted, "Found it!" and forced his way through the circle of police to deposit the heavy metal gun into Fang Mu's hand.

The words somehow brought Lu Xu up from the depths of unconsciousness and caused him to slowly open his blood-caked eyes, which now seemed to sparkle with a light that had not been there before. But all Fang Mu could do was stare stupidly at the gun in his hand. It was a flintlock that had been modified from a starting gun like the ones used to signal the beginning of a race. Not the right gun.

Lu Xu raised his hand weakly, but his voice was loud and clear this time. "Gun… Gun…"

Fang Mu's mind was a blank. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the service revolver at the belt of one of the policemen standing nearby. Wordlessly, he beckoned the cop over and reached toward the gun. The cop instinctively put a hand out to stop him, but then he paused, unclipped the holster, and allowed Fang Mu to draw his gun.

Fang Mu placed the service revolver into Lu Xu's outstretched hand. "Here it is, Lu Xu. We found it; you've got your gun back."

Lu Xu's eyes had lost their focus, but his hand suddenly gripped the gun with a renewed strength. He brought his arm down and cradled the pistol against his crushed chest.

"I..." A barely discernible smile danced across his blood-smeared lips. "...finally..."

And then the light in officer number C09748's eyes dimmed, and gradually went out.

CHAPTER
31
Donor

J
iang Dexian closed his flip phone, face suddenly gone white. He turned the phone's power off, removed its SIM card, and picked up a cloth napkin from the table. Very carefully, he wiped down each and every surface of the phone. When he was finished, he signaled for Qu Rui to hand him hers.

"Your phone; give it to me! Quickly!"

Qu Rui fumbled for her cell phone and passed it over to him. Jiang Dexian repeated on hers what he had done to his own, and then placed it in his inside coat pocket, careful not to touch it with anything but the napkin. He then stood and said, "Wait here. I'll be right back."

As he left the table, he sensed the customers at the table across from them staring at him. He pretended not to notice and made his way to the restroom.

After closing the restroom door behind him, he dropped the phones into the wastepaper bin and tossed the SIM cards into one of the toilets. Then he unzipped his fly and stood at the urinal while peeking out the window. Two people were pacing back and forth along the sidewalk downstairs.

He smirked, did up his trousers, and walked out of the restroom. At the washbasin in the short hallway outside, a man was squeezing hand sanitizer into his hand. Jiang Dexian recognized him as one of the customers that had been sitting at the table across from them.

When he returned to the table, Qu Rui asked impatiently, "What's the word?"

"They had an accident, it sounds like." Jiang Dexian whispered.

Qu Rui's face went white. "How's Tan Ji?"

"Still no word."

Qu Rui jumped to her feet and picked up her handbag to leave. Jiang Dexian grabbed her by the wrist and held tightly. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I have to go see if he's all right," she snapped, struggling to break free of his grip. "Let me go!"

"Sit your ass down!" Jiang Dexian's face twisted horribly. "Do you want to get everybody killed?"

"What does it matter? What are our chances anyway, if they've had an accident?" Qu Rui was close to hysteria. "Let go of me!"

Jiang Dexian's palm made contact with Qu Rui's cheek, stunning her into inaction with the slap.

"I'm sorry, Q," he whispered. "There might still be some hope. But first we have to keep our cool."

His words calmed her down for a moment, but then she suddenly broke into tears. "My god... Oh, my god... Tan Ji..."

Jiang Dexian comforted her with a wry smile. "Don't fret. Some folks should be coming any minute now to bring us some news. But you must remember—say
nothing
."

Sure enough, less than half an hour later the teahouse exploded with activity as a rage-faced Zheng Lin came running in, followed closely by a file of police officers. Behind them came Bian Ping and Fang Mu, and the alleged
customers
at the other table were already standing over them.

Jiang Dexian stood. "What are you—?"

Before he could finish the thought, two plainclothes police officers were bending him over face-down on the table and roughly cuffing his hands behind his back. Another officer stepped forward to search his pockets.

"What are you looking for? Do you have a search warrant?" Jiang Dexian shouted, face sideways and pressed firmly against the wood surface of the table. "This is illegal!"

Zheng Lin ignored him and took the cell phone from the cop who had been searching Jiang Dexian's pockets. The female officer who was searching Qu Rui's pockets also came up with a phone, which she handed to Zheng Lin as well. He dialed the numbers he had for both the suspects' phones, but neither of the cell phones rang. His face changed color.

"These aren't the ones! Keep looking!" Zheng Lin glanced at Jiang Dexian's red face and waved at him dismissively. "Release him first."

They turned the two suspects' personal items inside out, but still there was no sign of a third cell phone. Zheng Lin thought furiously for options, and then sent the undercover team that had stayed at the teahouse outside to check with the officers that had been on the street monitoring the outside of the building. According to them, none of the teahouses windows, restroom or otherwise, had been opened. This eliminated the possibility that the phones had been tossed out a window. One of the undercover officers that had been sitting at the table across from the suspects had a sudden idea then. He ran back upstairs and into the restroom. A minute later he trotted back out with a plastic evidence bag in hand and two cell phones inside of it.

Zheng Lin held them up to his face and asked the officer, "Did you see him toss these with your own eyes?"

The officer's reply was a bit sheepish. "No, I only saw him go into the restroom and then come back out a little while later."

Zheng Lin cursed under his breath, and then ordered one of the men to take the cell phones back and dust them for fingerprints. When he returned to the table, Qu Rui had already been taken into a private tea room for a strip search. Zheng Lin sat across from a disheveled-looking Jiang Dexian and glared at him for a full minute before finally saying, in measured words, "Tell me why you think I've come for you."

Jiang Dexian, already having regained his composure, sneered. "You know what I do for a living. Trying to force me to confess to something is useless."

Zheng Lin snorted. "Don't act so proud of yourself. You think I'd come for you without any evidence?"

At around 12:30 this morning while on patrol near the Medical University Hospital, two police officers came across a vehicle that aroused their suspicions. When they approached to get a closer look, they discovered that one of the van's occupants looked a lot like the wanted fugitive Luo Jiahai. The officers told everyone to get out of the vehicle, at which point the driver suddenly opened fire and drove off. Fortunately, the multi-functional police vests worn by the two patrolmen were thick enough to stop a bullet even at such close range, and so the officer fired upon survived with only minor bruising to the chest. When they called in an incident report, the Municipal Bureau immediately organized a dragnet, and this morning at around 1:20 they intercepted the suspects' vehicle. Suspect Huang Runhua was shot and killed, suspect Tan Ji was seriously injured, and the third suspect, Luo Jiahai, escaped and continues to be at large. The police paid a heavy price during this operation; Officer Lu Xu, badge number C09748, gave his life honorably while in the line of duty.

Two other suspects, one Qu Rui and one Jiang Dexian, have been legally detained. Due to its profound suspicions that these two people are heavily involved in a criminal organization, the task force on duty has filed a formal request that their periods of mandatory detention be extended to 30 days.

Tan Ji lay on the bed in the Medical University Hospital's intensive care unit, an oxygen mask covering the bottom half of his face and his body bristling with protruding tubes of varying thicknesses. Fang Mu stood at the side of the bed looking at him for a while, and then turned to Zheng Lin, who had been standing behind him with arms crossed. "So what's the prognosis?"

"He came out of surgery not long before you got here." Zheng Lin sighed. "As you can see, he suffered a severe head injury. But it doesn't seem to be life-threatening anymore."

"When do you think he'll wake up?"

"The surgeon said there's no way to know; could be three days, could be thirty years." A disheartened expression darkened Zheng Lin's features. "Apparently it's quite possible he could end up a vegetable."

Fang Mu thought about the implications of this. Currently there was not enough hard evidence against Qu Rui and Jiang Dexian, and given the fact that Huang Runhua had died, Tan Ji's potential testimony had been the only thing that might have kept them from being released at the end of 30 days. Now, because there was no telling when Tan Ji might regain consciousness, their only hope was to capture Luo Jiahai as soon as possible.

A buzzing noise woke him from his thoughts. He retrieved the vibrating phone from his pocket and glanced at the incoming number. It was Bian Ping.

"Get your butt back to the Bureau this instant," the captain's voice rasped. "They found something inside that van!"

Although the van had been severely damaged in the crash, forensic investigators had still been able to recover a great deal of material evidence from it. The most important piece of evidence had been a corpse.

The deceased was male, between 35 and 40 years in age. His body was found completely naked and stuffed inside a gunny bag. The medical examiner determined the time of death to have been some time between 8:00 and midnight the previous evening, and the cause of death to have been mechanical asphyxia. Based on findings during the autopsy, it appeared someone had strangled the victim with his bare hands.

The deceased had extremely rough skin, but tests of some chemicals extracted from his face revealed them to be residue from skin care products. This, as well as the hair styling gel found in the victim's hair, seemed to indicate that he had been a man who cared a great deal about his personal grooming.

Fang Mu bent down and sniffed the air above the corpse, then wrinkled his nose. "He still smells great even after being dead for so long."

"Uh-huh," the medical examiner grunted, looking up from his work. "This guy must've used a ton of cologne."

Fang Mu nodded and turned to one of his task force colleagues. "Any word yet on who this guy was?"

"Not yet. He didn't have any ID on him, but we've already issued a body identification notice."

"Mm-hmm." Fang Mu nodded again. "Go make inquiries at any large- or medium-sized entertainment venues you can find, especially ones that might put on stage productions like plays and musicals and so on."

The detective saluted and left. Fang Mu turned back and pointed at the red circles drawn at various places on the corpse. "Why did you guys draw these red circles? Are they to mark out places that you've swabbed for testing or something?"

"No." The medical examiner shook his head, looking up from his work. "We didn't draw those."

"What?" Fang Mu exclaimed. "You mean they were already on the corpse when it was brought here?"

"Correct."

Interesting
, Fang Mu thought, suddenly revived by the new development. He looked closely at the red circles. There was one around each eye, and several on the victim's torso.

"There are two more on his back." The medical examiner pointed at his lower back. "Here and here."

"What's under there? What organs are in those positions, I mean?"

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that." The examiner raised his brows with sudden interest and looked over the body a moment. "This one's over the heart, this one's the liver, this one's the small intestine, this one... Let's see... This should be the pancreas, and those two on the lower back are where the kidneys are...” He chuckled. “Interesting."

"Why is that interesting?"

"Have a look," the medical examiner said, pointing at the red circles drawn around the victim's eye sockets. "These correspond to his corneas. Heart, liver, small intestines, pancreas, and kidneys, plus the corneas—these are all common donor organs. If you add to those the skeleton, skin, arteries, and hematopoietic stem cells..." He gestured up and down the cadaver. "…Then this chap's entire body is a veritable gold mine," he decided with a chuckle.

But instead of laughing, Fang Mu frowned, suddenly lost in thought.

According to testimony from the two on-duty policemen, when they discovered the van it had been parked in front of the Medical University Hospital. The killers had drawn red circles on the victim's body where donor organs were located. Had they been planning to dump the body in the hospital morgue so that people would think it was a donor organ cadaver?