Red Mandarin Dress

the Big Bucks in business and Big Bugs in the Party. But we don’t have the resources to knock on their doors, one after another, throughout the city, even if our Party Secretary turns on the green light.”
    “What do you make of the locations, then?”
    “For the first one,” Liao said, producing a picture with the traffic light visible at the intersection in the background, “the murderer had to step out of the car to place the body. A high risk. In the area, traffic is practically nonstop. The number 26 trolley bus stops running only after two thirty, and then it starts again around four. Besides, there are occasional cars passing by, and late-working students moving in and out of the institute across the street.”
    “Do you think that the place the body was dumped has a specific meaning in connection to the music institute, as those journalists claim?” Yu said.
    “We looked into that. Jasmine never studied at the institute. She was fond of music, like most young girls, humming a song or two occasionally, but nothing more than that. Nor did her family have anything to do with the school. Since the second victim was dumped at a different location, I don’t see any point in taking the newspaper crap about the music institute seriously.”
    “Li may have a point here. The two locations both being very public, the criminal could be bent on making a statement,” Yu said. “You must have already contacted all the nearby neighborhood committees.”
    “You bet, but the queries focused on one type of criminal—sex offenders with previous records. Nothing so far. The second body came up only this morning.”
    “Tell me what you know about the second one.”
    “The body was discovered by a Wenhui boy who came to replace the newspapers there. He pulled down the mandarin dress over her bare thighs and covered her face with newspapers, then he called the newspaper office instead of us. When we got to the scene, a large number of people had been gathered around there for quite a while, having possibly turned the body over and over. So any examination of the scene was practically meaningless.”
    “Has the forensic report come out?”
    “No, not yet. Only an initial report done on the scene. Again, death by suffocation. The victim seemed to have suffered no sexual assault, but like the first one, she had nothing whatsoever on underneath the mandarin dress.” Liao produced more pictures on the desk. “No trace of semen, with vaginal, oral, and anal swabs taken. The latent-print people have done their job too, and they did not see even a single stray hair on the body.”
    “Any copycat possibility?”
    “We have examined the two dresses. The same material with an imprinted design on it, and the same style too. No copycat could have known or reproduced all those details.”
    “What else have you done for the second?”
    “A notice with her picture has been sent out. Phone calls have been coming in, offering a number of possible leads. The bureau machine is clunking into high gear.”
    “Whether Li likes the term serial murderer or not,” Yu said, “there’s no ruling out the possibility. In a week, we might find ourselves with a third body in a mandarin dress.”
    “Politically, Shanghai cannot acknowledge a serial killer. That’s why Li brought in your special case squad.”
    “In case it is a serial killer,” Yu said, aware of the long rivalry between the homicide and the special case squads, “we need to establish a profile.”
    “Well, the dresses are very expensive, so he probably is rich. He has a car. He most likely lives by himself: he could not have done all of this without a place of his own—an apartment, or an independent villa. Certainly not in a single room in a shikumen house with twenty other families squeezed together—there is no way to quietly move the bodies in the midst of all those neighbors.”
    “That’s true,” Yu said, nodding. “He is also a loner, and a pervert too. The victims were stripped naked, but there’s no standard sexual assault. He’s a psycho who gets his mental release from the ritualistic killing, leaving the red mandarin dress as his signature.”
    “A psychopath with his mental release?” Liao exclaimed. “Come on, Detective Yu. You sound just like those mysteries your boss translates. Full of psychological mumbo-jumbo, but with nothing we can grasp.”
    “But from that sort of a psychological file we may move on to learn other things about