Chapter 2

The fool was angry. He wanted to prove he was right.

So he took his drawing very seriously.

But he was still the fool, and he had never been to school.

Even when he tried his hardest, all he could produce was a tangled mess of lines.

“What the hell is that supposed to be…”

Officer Li murmured beside me.

But I recognized it.

“It looks like… a house.”

I pointed to the top of the tangle of lines.

“That round stone ornament on top. It’s the abandoned temple.”

Officer Li caught on, too. “The ruined temple halfway up the hill north of your village?”

I nodded.

Officer Li hurriedly gave instructions to a colleague in a low voice.

I caught some of it. He wanted people sent to the temple at once.

And he told them to take tools and dig up the place if they had to.

Then I realized…

There was more to this case.

The fool had not just started muttering “rock, scissors, cloth” a few days ago.

I could not remember exactly how long it had been, but it was certainly several years.

Officer Li must have realized that, too.

He wasn’t sending his colleagues to the temple just to check whether the woman had been killed there.

It was also because—

The “rock, scissors, cloth” murder the fool had witnessed could not have been the murder of this woman.

That meant the killer had murdered someone many years earlier.

Perhaps the body had never even been found. No case had been opened.

For a while after that, they kept me in the interview room to continue talking to the fool.

It did little good. He had no more information to give.

Toward evening, Officer Li opened the door and let me out.

I had barely stepped outside when I heard him say:

“They dug up a body in the temple.”

Just as I had thought.

But his next words surprised me.

“Don’t go home tonight.”

That sounded wrong. I asked at once, “What’s going on? Are you detaining me? Do you still think I’m the killer?”

Officer Li explained patiently. “No. Nothing we have so far points to your involvement. You have no criminal record, and you’ve actively cooperated with the investigation. We can more or less rule you out as a suspect.”

“I’m only advising you to stay, personally.”

“The body from the temple is being brought back for an autopsy. The forensic officer at the scene thinks the person has been dead at least ten years.”

“And the face was completely smashed in, just like this woman’s…”

“Taken together with the fool’s account, our preliminary conclusion is that the same person committed both murders… A serial murder case, with ten years between the killings.”

“But that raises a question.”

“The temple was an excellent place to hide a body. It went undiscovered for over ten years. Why didn’t the killer bury this body there as well?”

“Why take the risk of dumping it in a mud-brick house near yours, where it could be found so easily?”

Now I understood.

“He wants to frame me? He’s after me, too?”

Officer Li shook his head before continuing. “Not necessarily. Obviously, this isn’t enough to frame you. But he must have had a reason for doing it…”

“We can’t say what that reason is, or whether you’re in danger.”

“That’s why I’m advising you to stay. We have spare rooms at the station where you can rest. You could make do for a few nights. What do you think?”

With it put like that, all I could do was nod.

“Can I go back and get some clothes and things?”

He nodded, too, then said:

“Yes. Let’s go now. I’ll come with you.”

Even then, I thought something was off.

He was in charge of the case, and the investigation was at a crucial point.

How did he have time to accompany someone who wasn’t involved home to pack clothes?

Clearly, he had another reason.