Yu did not give too much credit to the random-act theory, but it was not a case assigned to his special case squad. He knew better than to cook in other people’s kitchens.

“So sensational,” Yu repeated, feeling obliged to speak again, since neither Li nor Liao made a response. “The very location of it.”

Still no response. Li started panting, his eye bags hanging heavier in the ominous silence. A man in his late fifties, Li had extraordinary eye bags and thick gray brows.

“Any breakthrough?” Yu said, turning to Liao.

“Breakthrough?” Li growled. “A second body in a red mandarin dress was found this morning.”

“Another victim! Where?”

“In front of the Newspaper Windows by the number one gate of the People’s Park-on Nanjing Road.”

“That’s outrageous-in the center of the city,” Yu said. The Newspaper Windows were a row of glass-covered newspaper cases along the park wall, and a large number of readers gathered there most of the time. “A deliberate challenge.”

“We have compared the two victims,” Liao said. “There are a number of similarities. Particularly the mandarin dress. The identical material and style.”

“Now the newspapers are having a carnival,” Li observed as a stack of the papers was being delivered to the office.

Yu picked up Liberation Daily, which featured a color picture of a young girl in a red mandarin dress lying under the Newspaper Windows.

“The first serial sex murder in Shanghai,” Liao said, reading aloud. “‘Red mandarin dress’ has now become a household word. Speculations spread like wildfire. The city shivers in anticipation-”

“The journalists are crazy,” Li cut him off short. “Precipitating an avalanche of articles and pictures, as if nothing else mattered in our city.”

Li’s frustration was understandable. Shanghai had been known for its government efficiency and, among other things, its low crime rate. Not that serial murders had never happened in Shanghai before, but because of the effective media control, they had never been reported. Such a case could have implied that the city police were incompetent, an implication that government-funded papers were anxious to avoid. In the mid-nineties, however, newspapers were now responsible for their own bottom lines: the journalists had to grab sensational news, and media control no longer worked out so well.

“Nowadays, with all the western mysteries in bookstores or on TV-some of them translated by our Chief Inspector Chen,” Liao said, “people start playing Sherlock Holmes in their columns. Look at Wenhui. It’s predicting the date of the next strike. ‘Another body in a red mandarin dress by next Friday.’ ”

“That’s common knowledge,” Yu said. “A serial killer strikes at regular intervals. If uncaught, he may continue throughout the course of his life. Chen has translated something about a serial killer. I think we should talk to him-”

“Damn the serial killer!” Li appeared exasperated by the term. “Have you talked to your boss? I bet not. He’s too busy writing his literature paper.”

The relationship between Chen and Li had not been good, Yu knew, so he refrained from responding.

“Don’t worry,” Liao commented sarcastically. “Even without Butcher Zhang, people will still have pork on the table.”

“These murders are a slap in the face to the police bureau. ‘I’ve done it again, cops!’ ” Li went on heatedly. “The class enemy is trying to sabotage the great progress in our reform, damaging the social stability by causing panic among the people. So let us focus on those with deep-rooted hatred for our government.”

Li’s logic was still echoing that little red book of Chairman Mao, and according to that logic, Yu reflected, anybody could be a so-called class enemy. The Party Secretary was known for formulating political theories about homicide investigations. The number one Party boss sort of fancied himself the number one criminal investigator too.

“The perpetrator must have a place to commit the crime first-most likely his home,” Liao said. “His neighbors could have noticed something.”

“Yes, contact all the neighborhood committees, especially those close to the two locations. As Chairman Mao says, we have to rely on the people. Now, in order to solve the case as quickly as possible,” Li concluded with all the official seriousness in his voice, “Inspector Liao and Detective Yu, you are going to head a special team.”

It was only after the Party Secretary left the office that the two cops were able to discuss the case in earnest.

“I know so little about the case,” Yu started, “practically nothing about the first victim.”

“This is the file about the first one.” Liao produced a bulging folder. “At the moment, we are still gathering the information about the second.”

Yu picked up an enlarged picture of the first body. The victim’s face partially covered by her black hair, she showed a good figure, her curves accentuated by the tight-fitting dress.

“Judging from the bruise on her arms and legs,” Liao said, “she could have suffered some sort of sexual assault. But there is no sign of any semen or secretion in her vagina, and the medical people have ruled out condom-use as the reason. There was no condom lubrication found there, either. Whatever he did to her, he afterward put the dress back on her rigid body roughly and in a hurry. Which explains the torn slits and loose buttons.”

“But we can be pretty sure that the red mandarin dress was not hers,” Yu said, “since the second victim was found in an identical dress.”

“No, the dress was not hers.”

Yu examined the torn slits and loose buttons in the picture. If someone had indeed gone to the trouble of arranging for an expensive, fashionable dress beforehand, then why had he dressed the body in such a reckless way-and on both occasions?

“On the second victim, is the dress also torn in its slits?”

“I see what you are getting at,” Liao said grumpily, nodding.

“When did you establish the identity of the first victim?”

“Not until three or four days after the body was found. Tian Mo, twenty-three. People called her Jasmine. She worked at the Seagull Hotel, which is near the intersection of Guangxi and Jingling Roads. She lived with her paralyzed father. According to her neighbors and colleagues, she was a nice, hard-working girl. She didn’t have a boyfriend, and none of the people who knew her believed that she had had any enemies, either.”

“It appears that the murderer dumped her body from a car.”

“That’s too obvious.”

“What about a taxi driver or a private car owner?”

“Taxi drivers work in a shift rotation of twelve hours. After the second victim was reported, we immediately checked those working on both of the two nights. Less than twenty fit into the time frames, and every one of them has receipt tabs for at least one of the nights. Now, how would a taxi driver between fares have time to murder her, wash her-probably in a private bathroom-and put her into the mandarin dress?” Liao shook his head before moving on. “The private car is a possibility. The number of them has been increasing dramatically in the last few years, with all 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.”