Red Mandarin Dress

mean?”
    “Inspector Liao will be thoroughly pissed off. He must believe that I’ve played hide-and-seek with the bureau and worked on the case behind his back. So will Party Secretary Li. Li might well be paranoid with political suspicion.”
    “But the fact is,” Yu said, “you brought the first serial murder case in Shanghai to conclusion.”
    “I gave my word to Jia. There is something in the case that I won’t tell. Not just about him. Now that he’s dead, having fulfilled his part of the deal, my lips are sealed. You might understand, Yu, but not the others.”
    He wondered whether Yu understood, but Yu wouldn’t press for an explanation. Not too hard, anyway. They were friends, not just partners.
    “But what can I tell them—the revenge of the Cultural Revolution? It’s out of the question.”
    “Well, he committed the crimes in a fit of temporary insanity. Afterwards he was filled with remorse. So he signed those checks for the victims’ families.”
    “But why should he have given the checks to you?”
    “I happened to be looking into the housing development case and I met him. And that’s true. Director Zhong of the Legal Reform Committee can support my statement. Even last night, Zhong called me about the housing development case, and Jia was in my presence at the time.”
    “Will they accept your story?”
    “I don’t know, but the government won’t be interested in a scenario such as ‘the revenge of the Cultural Revolution,’ as you’ve just called it. Hopefully they won’t push for details. In fact, the less said, the better for everyone. We may pull it off.” He added, “It’s possible that the Party authorities may not even want to reveal the identity of the serial murderer. He’s killed. Period.”
    “Aren’t they anxious to punish Jia—as an example to troublemakers for the government?”
    “But not punished like that, nor at the present moment. It could backfire. Of course, that’s just my guess—”
    The phone rang, unusually loud in the empty judge’s room. It was Professor Bian, who had had an appointment with Chen that morning. The student had failed to show up.
    “I know you’re busy, but your paper is quite original. I would like to know how it is progressing.”
    “I’ll turn the paper in on time,” Chen said. “I’m just having some problems with the conclusion.”
    “It’s difficult to push for a generalization in a term paper,” Bian said. “Your topic is a big one. If you can succeed in finding a shared tendency among a number of stories, it should be good enough. In the future, you may try to develop that into your MA thesis.”
    Chen wondered if he would be able to do so. He didn’t say anything immediately in response. And he was beginning to have second thoughts about his studies.
    After all, it was just one more interpretation of the old texts. People would go on reading, with or without his interpretation. There might have been a sort of anti-love discourse of arranged marriage in Chinese culture, or something like an archetype of the Chinese femme fatale. But so what? Each story was different, each author was different. Like in criminal cases, a cop can hardly apply a general theory to all of them.
    “Yes, I’ll think about it, Professor Bian. And I’ve got some new ideas about ‘thirsty illness.’ ”
    So his literature project might still be something to think about in the future, he told himself. For now, he had to shelve it.
    For him, there might be something more immediate, more relevant. As in the murder case: people might not feel satisfied by a partial conclusion, but at least the killing of innocent people had come to an end. As a cop, he didn’t have to worry too much about making his point, unlike a paper. What the point of the case was, he didn’t even know—
    “You aren’t going on with your Chinese literature program, are you?” Yu queried, breaking into his thoughts.
    “No, I don’t think so. You don’t have to worry about that,” Chen said. “But I still have to finish this paper. You may not believe it, but this paper has really helped.”
    Yu seemed relieved and handed back the envelope. “Oh, there’s a piece of paper in the envelope.”
    “A poem.”
    “For you to publish?”
    Chen took out that piece of paper and started reading.
    Mother, I have tried to make the far-off echo
    yield a clue to what is happening to me;
    in the old mansion people come and go,
    seeing only what they want to