Xiaotao smiled. “That’s a good idea. Then let’s start looking for prey!”

So we quickly searched through the list according to this criteria. Anyone older than 35 or younger than 15 were excluded straight away, along with those who were suffering from a disease or were disabled. Those who were either too thin or obese were ruled out as well.

Thinking like the murderer, seeing people as if they were pork belly in the supermarket made me shudder. But we had to do whatever it took to capture this monster as soon as possible!

We threw the excluded names to the left side of the table, and the rest were placed on the right side. Gradually, the pile on the left side grew bigger and bigger, while the pile on the right became smaller and smaller, until in the end, only eight people remained.

“These eight people may be potential victims,” Xiaotao remarked.

“Wait, let me see.”

I looked through the information of these individuals carefully and picked out one of them.

“This person has a history of mental illness and has stayed in a mental hospital for a while. He’s ruled out.”

“Why?”

“Psychiatric patients have to ingest a lot of antidepressants; and with the long-term lack of exercise, the meat quality will be very poor.”

When she heard what I said, I noticed that Xiaotao’s cheeks twitched slightly.

“This person has bad teeth, which means that she must not have been eating well. Judging by her pallor, she looks too yellow and thin; she must’ve suffered from malnutrition for a period of time.”

“This person has had plastic surgery done before. It looks like she has fillers and hyaluronic acid injections too. That must affect the way her meat tastes.”

“This person works as a plumber. The smell of sewers must permeate through his body. His meat should be too stinky. He’s ruled out too.”

I had now ruled out four.

“It’s giving me the creeps listening to you talk,” Xiaotao grumbled. “It really feels like you are that sociopath who makes human meat buns in that movie.”

“If I were a cannibalistic sociopath, the first I’d want to eat would be…” I paused mid-sentence and glanced at Xiaotao, not daring to say anything more.

“Who is it? Who do you want to eat first?” Xiaotao demanded.

“Never mind, let’s not talk about this anymore.”

“Humph!”

At this moment, I noticed the fifth file in my hand. The name of the missing person was Ma Yaozu. He used to work in a slaughterhouse. He was born in a small village near Nanjiang City and he was 32 years old.

Xiaotao glanced over the file and said, “Judging by the pallor of his skin and how thin he is, the sociopath probably thinks he’s not tasty enough. I think he should be ruled out.”

She was about to take the file away from me, but I shook my head and stopped her. “Wait! I have a hunch that this person might be our suspect! Ma Jinhuo!”

“What?” Xiaotao was skeptical. “But his workplace is different here. Not to mention the different name.”

“It’s not so uncommon for people who work in the abattoir to have worked at other slaughterhouses too. Many people from rural villages also have different names that they use for formal occasions. You should ask the staff at the abattoir to see if Ma Jinhuo’s official name is Ma Yaozu.”

“Right!”

As for the remaining three people, one of them was a female worker in a textile factory. All of her characteristics matched that of the dead body perfectly. It could be safely concluded that they were the same person.

The other two were an employee of a supermarket, aged 24, and a worker in a car wash, aged 26. They were both males.

“These two people may be the next victims,” I deduced, then paused. “No, maybe they have already been killed...”

“Let’s go to their place and check it out in case we can discover some clues,” Xiaotao suggested.

“Great idea!”

Xiaotao made a call to investigate Ma Jinhuo’s official name, and then we went to the parking lot and got into the car. We first rushed to the supermarket where one of the two missing people worked and questioned the manager. We found out that his name was Xiaozhang. He was an employee there but had not turned up at work suddenly one and a half months ago. He tried to contact Xiaozhang but the calls didn’t get through, so he reported him as missing after forty-eight hours.

“So Xiaozhang has been missing for a month and a half. Has his family not come to look for him?” I asked.

“It seems that he’s severed all contacts with his family for many years. His landlady even asked me to pay the water and electricity fee that Xiaozhang owed. It’s ridiculous!”

“Do you know his address?”

“Give me a minute, I’ve got it in his employee files. I’ll copy it for you.”

The manager then handed me a piece of paper with Xiaozhou’s address on it. When we were about to leave, he offered us two bottles of mineral water, but we refused.

Xiaozhang’s residence was three streets away from the supermarket. When we arrived, we found Xiaozhang’s landlady. She was a middle-aged woman. When she heard the name Xiaozhang, her ears pricked up. She animatedly described him as a terrible tenant who liked to litter and often dumped dirty water out the window. He even moved away without informing her, and when she went into his room, she discovered that the TV had been on for a whole week. He now owed her more than a hundred yuan in electricity fees!

“Is the room rented out to someone else now?” I asked.

“No,” she answered. “I’m still looking for a tenant on 58.com[1]. By the way, officers, can you help me spread the word about this room? It’s a nice warm place and the rent…”

She went on to advertise her house for a while.

“I’m sorry,” Xiaotao interrupted her. “We’re from the criminal division. We can’t help you with this.”

“Criminal division?” The landlady was shocked. “What has that kid done? No wonder he’s always so reclusive. He’s always shut himself in his room. He never talks to anyone. He must’ve done something that he doesn’t want anyone to know about.”

The landlady had been speaking a lot. If we didn’t stop her, she’d probably run her mouth till sundown. Xiaotao interrupted her to ask if we could see Xiaozhang’s room. She agreed and led us there.

We all walked into the room. The landlady had already cleaned it inside and out. I looked at it roughly and said, “Did you say that when Xiaozhang was gone, the TV and lights were all on?”

The landlady quickly nodded. “Exactly!”

“What about the door?”

“The door was closed, but it was unlocked.”

“Do you remember what he wore when he left?”

The landlady tried to recall her memory. “I remember that when I came in here, his shoes were still at the door and his coat was lying on the chair.”

I saw an ashtray on the window sill. Xiaozhang was probably temporarily going out to buy cigarettes, and then he was kidnapped. You could easily notice a grown man getting kidnapped, so this meant that the murderer obviously had a car.

It was not a trip in vain after all. What I mainly wanted to find out was whether the murderer had premeditated the kidnap and murders for a long time or if it was a spur-of-the-moment thing—judging from what I’d discovered, it was obviously the former.

Xiaotao found a box of military magazines under the bed. In addition, I also saw some model tanks, all of which were hand-made. People who liked these things were usually the indoor type.

I looked out of the window and saw an old run-down building.

“What is that building used for?” I asked the landlady.

“Nothing,” she answered. “It’s just an unfinished building that’s been abandoned. Apparently, the contractor and the investors didn’t see eye to eye about something, so the construction project was halted suddenly. It’s been that way for several years. Tramps often spend the night in there. It’s really bad for the security and sanitation of this neighborhood, but the neighborhood committee has done nothing! Officers, you must do something about this!”

I wondered if the landlady thought we were miracle workers who could make everything bad go away with just a point of the finger. The thought amused me.

“Wanna go check it out?” asked Xiaotao.

“Sure!”

We thanked the landlady and excused ourselves. Then we went to the abandoned building. I had a feeling that we wouldn’t be able to find any clues here though, considering that it had already been a month and a half since Xiaozhou went missing.

Every time I went up a floor, I stopped and looked at the room that Xiaozhang rented. The fourth floor offered the best view of it. I checked the floor and found some cigarette butts. They consisted of three different brands of cigarettes in total. Could it be that the murderer had left them there?

I sniffed the air and detected some unusual smells. I finally turned my eyes to a large concrete pipe beside me...

1. A website for classified advertisements, like Craigslist.