The figure appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He wore a pale, well-washed old-fashioned suit, black leather shoes worn white at the edges, and neatly combed dark hair. At first glance, he appeared a clean, tidy sort of man.

All of the officers had seen the photograph Wang Yu had filed with the clinic, and they recognized him immediately. Even so, the two gave no sign — waiting quietly until Wang Yu drew close before pouncing, pinning him to the ground and clicking cold handcuffs onto his wrists.

Wang Yu, as expected, denied everything. He insisted that the blood in his home had come from a rabbit he had caught in the hills. The rabbit had gotten loose into the bedroom, he claimed, and he had slaughtered it there with a knife, chopped it up for eating, and then, finding the mess unsightly, had bought paint and redone the walls.

But for all his desperate resistance, another iron-clad piece of evidence was placed before him.

Perhaps the net of justice was inescapable. Perhaps Wang Yu’s luck had simply run out.

The officers dredging the Liao River had pulled up a case from the riverbed.

It was a leather case — imported from abroad, the kind sold only at the major department stores in Shun Cheng.

The case should, by all rights, have been carried downstream by the current. But by an extraordinary chance, its handle had caught on an anchor hook resting at the bottom of the river. The water there flowed slowly, and so it had remained.

Inside the case were the remaining body parts of Huo Li. And hidden in the inner lining was a medical record in Wang Yu’s handwriting. Though waterlogged, the text was still legible, including the printed words “Shun Cheng First Hospital” and, at the bottom, the signature: “Wang Yu.”

Cross-referenced against the department store’s sales records, it was further confirmed that Wang Yu had purchased an identical case the previous year.

Confronted with evidence as solid as iron, Wang Yu finally bowed his guilty head.

Wang Yu had once been a physician at a Shun Cheng hospital — skilled enough to be valued by the institution, and supplementing his income with private pharmaceutical commissions. His life had been comfortable, things going smoothly.

His fortune changed during a single surgery. A nurse who had been inattentive while passing him instruments caused the scalpel to sever the tendons in his own hand. The injury was treated, but the hand could no longer perform precise surgical work.

The hospital deemed him a liability, found a pretext to dismiss him, and Wang Yu — accustomed to an extravagant lifestyle — found himself suddenly without an income. He was forced to sell his property and drain his bank accounts.

To survive, to sustain his love of dancing at the finest dance halls, Wang Yu had no choice but to seek employment wherever he could. With his disability, no hospital would take him. He lowered his sights to private clinics, and still no one would hire him. In the end, it was Dr. Rosen who took pity and brought him on for small, incidental duties.

In February, he met Huo Li, who had come to the clinic for her appendectomy.

Huo Li took a liking to this attentive man, and the two stayed in contact after her discharge. Wang Yu had presented himself as a specially retained physician at the clinic — a man of talent and virtue — and Huo Li believed it completely.

At the end of March, Wang Yu went to a dance hall he frequented and happened to encounter Huo Li there. After dancing several sets together, Huo Li found herself quite impressed by his skill, and the two got along famously.

Huo Li was dripping in jewels and spent freely, which filled Wang Yu — who was by then barely keeping afloat — with envy.

The following day, the two met again at the dance hall. This time, Huo Li’s mood was visibly poor. When Wang Yu asked, he learned that she had argued with her boyfriend Liu Fei. Wang Yu consoled her carefully, and after she had drunk too much, took her back to his home.

Huo Li had always believed Wang Yu to be a man of talent and comfortable means. She had not imagined he lived in a mud-brick house, with not a single decent piece of furniture to his name. She felt deceived.

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