Red Mandarin Dress

in those books. Like Liao’s method, it may help narrow down the range.”
    “Well,” Chen said, “let me try to recall some points. We’ll examine them in the context of our red mandarin dress case.”
    “I am all ears, Chief.”
    “Now, the identity of the second victim suggests something frequently read in those books. A goal-oriented serial killer characterized with an obsessive-compulsive mindset. He has deep-rooted psychosexual problems, psychotic, but not delusional. He is obsessed with the desire to rid the world of the people classified in his mind as undesirable and unworthy. The three-accompanying girls can be so categorized. The goal is to deal a crushing blow to the sex industry, and the victims also happen to be the most vulnerable, easy to pick up. When such a murderer is finally apprehended, he usually turns out to be an upstanding citizen fitting with Liao’s material profile.”
    “So there may be something in Liao’s focus,” Yu said, nodding.
    The waitress came back to their table with a tray of desert samples. Chen ordered a wedge of lemon pie for himself, but Yu chose a steamed bun of barbecued pork. The bar was a mixture of East and West, at least in its desert tray.
    “Now, believe it or not,” Chen resumed, “the sex killers in those mysteries are often impotent. They experience a mental orgasm without a physical ejaculation. So the medical examiner may not find semen in the victim.”
    “Yes, our forensic people have already excluded the possibility of the assailant being a condom user. No condom lubrication left on the victims. So the killer does fit that profile so far. With both victims stripped, yet not raped, he could be a psycho like that.” Yu added thoughtfully, “In one of the books you translated, it has something to do with sexual abuse in his childhood. He grows up all twisted. Impotent.”
    “According to Freud, the importance of one’s childhood experience can never be exaggerated. In most cases, such a killer has experienced some sort of sexual abuse that influenced his behavior.”
    “But how can it help our work?” Yu said. “In China, no one talks about childhood sexual abuse. Admitting it is worse than abuse itself. The very concept of face.”
    “Yes, it’s a taboo, cultural as well as political. Too much face loss,” Chen said, wondering if there was such a term as face loss in Western psychology. “In recent years, it has become quite popular for people there to talk about their traumatic childhood, but it is still unimaginable in China. Also, some childhood traumatic experience here may be taken for granted—in a Shanghai family, with three generations squeezed in the same room, exposure to parental sex, for instance, can be a matter of course. No one talks about it.”
    “Yes, it reminds me of a story from my old neighborhood. A young bridegroom could not consummate because of the creaking sound of his bed, which would be audible to his parents staying at the other end of the room partitioned by a bamboo screen. In his childhood, he had heard his parents’ creaking bed, and he didn’t talk to anybody about it. But he didn’t turn into a killer. After two or three years, he moved into a new room, and all his problems were solved.”
    “But if he had consulted a doctor, he could have gotten immediate help.”
    “Well, I happen to know him, so I can guess at some cause of his problem. But we have no clue at all as to the identity of the murderer.”
    “We do know that he kills his victims and disposes of the bodies in basically the same manner. And that he won’t stop until he is apprehended.”
    “How does that help us, Chief?”
    “If we aren’t sure how he picks his victims, I think we may at least assume that he’ll probably dump a new body in another public location. And on Thursday night. And that’s where and when we have to heighten our patrolling activities.”
    “But in a city like Shanghai, we can’t put our people in every possible corner.”
    “If we are shorthanded, the neighborhood committees aren’t. There are quite a lot of people being laid off nowadays. Not to mention all the retired workers. So we could pay them ten or fifteen Yuan for just one night, Thursday night. Keep them walking about all the time, and checking every suspicious car, possibly with a man and an unconscious woman inside, especially when it pulls up or parks at those public locations.”
    “Yes, that’s something we can do,” Yu said.