The Mao Case

glittered beside the rumpled pillow. A broom lay not too far away, sticking out of
     an open closet, pointing to the bed.
    How did Chen come to be in the midst of all that?
    Chen looked distraught, his eyes bloodshot, his hair disheveled, and his T-shirt and pants crumpled and soiled, as if he had
     been just released from a prison cell. Old Hunter knew that Chen had just come back that morning on the night train from Beijing.

    However, nothing about the eccentric chief inspector would be surprising.
    “I’m calling for an ambulance,” Chen said, producing his cell phone.
    Feeling for a pulse on her ankle, Old Hunter said, shaking
     his head, “It’s too late, Chief. Who’s the man?”
    “His name is Hua. They had a fight. She started shouting, and he tried to stop her —”
    “So he strangled her —” Old Hunter didn’t finish the sentence, wondering where Chen had been at the time. He checked to see
     if the man on the floor was breathing. There was a thin trail of blood congealing along his temple, but he breathed evenly.
     “He’s alive.”
    “I let myself into the apartment and was looking around. Then they came back unexpectedly — no, Jiao arrived first, and then
     Hua, possibly through a secret door. So I had to hide in the closet. I couldn’t see and I could hardly hear.”
    Old Hunter turned on the lamp on the nightstand. The light glared on her white body, which had a purplish bruise around her
     shoulders and neck. Her breasts were flat and appeared unbruised, yet bore something like a bite mark. There were no other
     outward signs of sex — no semen around the genitals, thighs, or in the black pubic hair. Her large eyes remained open, staring.
     The corneas were not yet cloudy, a sign of a recent death. Her fingernails had hardly lost their pinkish color.
    Chen picked up her crumpled dress and covered her in silence.
    Technically, they should wait for the arrival of the detectives
     from the homicide squad or Internal Security before touching anything, Old Hunter thought, shifting his glance toward the
     closet.
    “I should have come —” Again he left the sentence unfinished.
A couple of minutes earlier?
He was outside on the street, unaware of the situation here. As in an old saying, the water’s too far away for the fire close
     at hand. Still, he didn’t want to sound too critical of Chen. It could have been hard for Chen to judge the situation in the
     room while hiding in the closet. “But you subdued him.”
    “When I became aware that something was terribly wrong, I jumped out of the closet. He hurled the cinerary casket of Shang
     at
me. It was empty except for a picture of Shang inside. Then, in an effort to dodge my attack, he caused the Mao portrait to
     fall and hit him on the head with the full weight of the metal frame.”
    “Mao’s spirit worked,” Old Hunter murmured, shuddering at the realization. He didn’t really believe in the supernatural, but
     there was something so unbelievable about the case. It was almost like those Suzhou operas. “Hua killed Shang’s granddaughter
     under his portrait, and Mao knocked him out. Mao’s not dead.”
    “Mao’s not dead — you can say that again.”
    “But how did Jiao and Hua get together?”
    “Here’s what I think,” Chen said. “Hua learned about her family history while she was working as a receptionist at his company.
     He then overwhelmed her with his Big Buck advances, buying her the apartment and everything else, cutting a ‘little concubine’
     deal with her. He did all that, however, not because of her, but because of Shang, her grandmother.”
    “I’m totally lost, Chen. It’s even more mind-boggling than a Suzhou opera ghost story. Shang died so many years ago. Is Hua
     such a crazy fan of hers?”
    “No, he fell for Jiao because of Shang’s affair with Mao. I should have made that clear.”
    “So — Hua fucking Jiao was like a parallel of Mao fucking Shang. Is that what you mean?”
    “It’s more than that. By sleeping with Jiao — Shang’s granddaughter — Hua turns himself into Mao. He started talking like Mao,
     thinking like Mao, living like Mao, and fucking like Mao too.”
    “But Hua is a Big Buck. He could have girls like Jiao and live like an emperor — like Mao too. Why all the bother, Chief?”
    “Being Mao gave Hua a meaning he had never known before. In terms of the cultural unconscious, it’s the emperor archetype — Son
     of Heaven, with the divine mandate and