The Mao Case

all.
    “Chen, that bastard, strikes from the dark —”
    Chen was stunned by the mention of his name, as his knife was poised just inches above the broom head. He hadn’t made a move
against anyone through his connections in the city government, except for lobbying for Xie Mansion to be given the status
     of a historical site. But somebody else might be paying attention to “Mao.”
    “His disappearance wasn’t the result of the warning from my little brothers. What he’s really up to, I don’t know.”
    “Mao” was Mao, who, paranoid that everybody was plotting against him, killed his hand-picked successor Liu Shaoqi, and then
     the next one, Ling Biao, not to mention thousands of high ranking Party officials who had been loyal to him.
    “And he’s connected with that bastard cop who came to my office for information about you. I got rid of him, though.”
    Song — the lieutenant could have uncovered Jiao’s connection to “Mao,” approached him, and, to “Mao,” posed a threat.
    “Yes, you have to say yes to me, say yes!” “Mao” shouted. Yes echoed in the bedroom.
    Jiao didn’t respond.
    The silence thundered over Chen. When “Mao” stopped his monologue, the bedroom was shrouded in stillness, except for his labored
     breathing.
    Chen opened the door further to see before him an astonishing tableau. “Mao” sat naked on top of Jiao, straddling her abdomen,
     his back toward the closet door, his muscles stretched taut, tremulous, his hand rising up from her mouth, as if having just
     given up the effort to stop her shouting. She lay motionless, her white legs spread wide, her pubic hair darkly visible.
    Only a tenth of a second, but long enough for all the details to start etching themselves onto Chen’s consciousness.
    “You —” “Mao” abruptly dropped his Hunan accent. “I did all that for you. Without you, without —”
    Wrenching open the door completely, Chen whirled headlong, flinging himself forward, but stumbled over the broom that was
     falling out of the closet.
    “Mao” jerked up and jumped off Jiao. Swinging, he snatched up
something from the nightstand and hurled it at Chen. But for Chen’s lurch, it might have hit its target. Instead, it missed
     and smashed against the window, breaking through the glass with a loud crash.
    Chen was shocked at the sight of “Mao” — it was none other than Hua, the real estate tycoon he had seen earlier that afternoon
     at the cocktail party. There Hua had spoken with a strong Beijing accent.
    Struggling to regain his balance, Chen countered by lashing out with the knife in his hand. Hua dodged violently, his body
     hitting Mao’s picture above the headboard.
    What happened next came close to an absurd slow-motion scene in a horror movie. It appeared as if the picture of Mao had come
     to life. It groaned, shivered, and crashed hard on Hua’s head, with all the weight of its heavy metal frame.
    “Mao —” Hua swayed, stared in disbelief, slumped back on the bed, and lost consciousness.
    Chen rushed over in two strides and shoved Hua’s body off of Jiao. She lay still on the rumpled sheet, her body spread-eagled,
     cold, and ghastly against the flickering night-light. He touched her throat. No pulse.
    How long it had been, he had no idea, suffering a sudden, overwhelming nausea in his whole being.
    He was reaching for the cell phone when Hua’s body jolted up in a ferocious motion before rolling off the bed with a thud,
     again cracking against the fractured Mao portrait on the floor.
    His fingers touching the phone seemed to signal the abrupt footsteps running outside along the corridor, and then conjured
     up a loud pounding on the door.
    “Open the door! Police Patrol.”
    It was Old Hunter, who was inserting a key into the lock.

THIRTY
    “OH — CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN!” Old Hunter bumped in, panting. “I was patrolling on the street when I heard a crash and saw a black object flying out of
     the window. Is something wrong —”
    He cut himself short at the sight of the naked body on the bed — Jiao, lying stiff, still — and then the other one, a naked man
     on the floor, sprawling over a splintered portrait of Mao.
    The utter disarray of the room was presented in ghastly somberness, with only the tiny night-light flickering in the corner.
     The clothes of the two bodies were scattered around. There was a chunk of plaster on the bedsheet that had fallen from the
     wall above the headboard. A pocketknife