Chapter 53: The Case of the Hammer Fiend (Part 22)

The rain was growing heavier, and Li Rui gazed at the overlapping mountain ranges in the distance. In the gathering dusk, a dark figure was clambering over a ridge, resembling a night-roaming ghost.

In the early hours of the 18th, that ghostly figure appeared once again in Maozhuang Village. At the western end of the village stood a courtyard with a south-facing gate and a relatively low wall. He approached the wall and peered inside, where he saw three single-story brick houses, with a kitchen situated on the west side. A four-wheeled cart was parked in the yard, and two white geese squatted in a corner. Perhaps his footsteps had startled them, as a couple of honks echoed from the courtyard.

"A family with both a cart and geese must be living quite well; there's bound to be money in that house." The short man felt a surge of elation, pulled a pair of oversized socks from his pockets, slipped them over his feet, and then put on his gloves.

The night was as dark as ink. Like a foraging wildcat, he grabbed the top of the wall near the kitchen chimney and vaulted silently into the courtyard.

Upon landing, his body instinctively squatted downward, leaving a sock-clad footprint inside the wall. As the soles of his feet touched the ground, the dampness of the earth seeped through, carrying an odor of rotting wheat straw.

The door of the main house was ajar. The turning of the door hinge produced a faint, creaking sound that made his back stiffen.

The interior was pitch black, with only the moonlight streaming through the lattice windows, casting mottled patches of light and shadow on the floor. The western room and the central hall were empty, but steady snoring came from the eastern room. The short man crept closer and saw a family of three squeezed onto a single bed: the man lay flat on his back, the little girl curled up in her father's arms, and the woman turned toward the inner side, her pregnant belly outlining a soft curve in the moonlight.

Seeing that the family was fast asleep, he rummaged through their clothes first, but found no cash. Fearing that taking too long would wake them, he raised the iron hammer once more.

The moment the hammer rose and fell, the snoring stopped abruptly. Fresh blood splattered against the wall like an abstract painting.

His fingers unconsciously rubbed against the seam of his trousers, where the bloodstains from his previous crime still lingered. Suddenly, memories surged like a tide—his father's calloused palms, the cloth bundles wrapped layer upon layer, the banknotes stained with oily sweat... Those images overlapped with the scene before him, making his temples throb violently.

He could not forget how, back in high school, whenever he went home to ask for money, his father would either retrieve a cloth bundle from that faded, unrecognizably worn wooden cabinet or unearth one from beneath several layers of old clothes. Then, peeling away the packaging layer by layer, his father would pinch out a stack of sweat-scented banknotes with his rough, large hands and solemnly place them into his grasp.

He remembered clearly that on the afternoon he ran away from home, his father had taken out money from beneath the sleeping mat at the head of the bed. His father had said that the money had been spared from the New Year festivities, meant to be used for purchasing fertilizer and pesticides when spring arrived. From that stack of sweat-greased banknotes, his father had withdrawn five hundred yuan with an expression of profound gravity—the kind of expression one might wear when handing down an heirloom.

At the time, he had felt that his father was deeply pitiable, but afterward, rather than relying on his own two hands and hard labor to change his father's plight, he simply memorized the hiding place where his father kept his money. In every crime he committed thereafter, he searched for his victims' money using the exact method his father had used to store his own, a method that never failed.

The short man mechanically ransacked the room and finally discovered two thousand yuan beneath the sleeping mat. The banknotes still retained body heat, reminding him of the lingering scent of sweat on that final stack of cash his father had given him.

The short man glanced around the room, but there were no other places where money might be hidden. When he turned toward the little girl, the moonlight happened to shine upon her face. That tender countenance reminded him of his neighbor's younger sister, and of her tear-filled eyes on the day of her wedding.

Yet soon enough, those images were swallowed by desire. He roughly tore open the girl's bodice, as if determined to shred every beautiful thing remaining in his memory.

***

Early the next morning, the villagers went about their peaceful lives as usual, none of them able to imagine that a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions had befallen the family of their neighbor, Liu Zhiming. It was not until evening that a neighbor, Xu Xiangqin, happened to pass by and heard anxious squeals coming from the pigsty. Feeling a bit puzzled, she intended to knock on the door and inquire, but seeing the courtyard gate tightly shut, she assumed Liu Zhiming had accompanied his wife to the hospital. It was only when the pigs' cries grew increasingly shrill toward evening that she realized something was amiss.

Consequently, Xu Xiangqin turned and went to the home of Liu Zhiming's parents, telling them, "Nobody has been home at Zhiming's place all day. You might want to go over and feed their pigs."

By then, Liu Zhiming's mother also felt a faint unease at having seen no one from her younger son's household all day, so she asked Liu Zhiming's elder brother, Liu Zhihua, to go and check on them.

When Liu Zhihua climbed over the courtyard wall, the moonlight cast his shadow long and thin. The two pigs in the enclosure were frantically shoving against the wooden door, as if trying to escape something terrifying. The beam of his flashlight swept across the central hall, catching the darkness seeping out from the door crack like a giant maw devouring life.

The moment he pushed the door open, the stench of blood rushed over him. The beam of his flashlight trembled as it swept across the room, illuminating the bloodied heads of his younger brother and niece, the gore congealed in eerie patterns beneath them. He mustered his courage, stepped closer, and felt them—they were already cold. His sister-in-law lay on the bed, her body beneath the quilt rising and falling slightly, emitting a faint groan.

"Somebody, come quick!" Liu Zhihua's cry pierced the night sky. The villagers came running at the sound, their flashlight beams intersecting in the courtyard like a silent memorial service.

By the time the wail of the ambulance siren drew near, the short man had long since vanished into the night, leaving behind a house full of blood and shattered lives.

The moonlight still fell quietly upon the Fang family courtyard, illuminating the fresh scratch marks on the pigsty door and the overlapping footprints on the ground—one belonging to the killer, the other to the tardy elder brother.

These traces gradually blurred in the morning dew, much like those departed lives, eventually to be erased by the passage of time. Yet the shadow of evil would forever hang over this tranquil village.

Inside Han Junshan's office, the atmosphere was intensely heavy.

Lei Chen lowered his head, not daring to speak.

"Lei Chen, what on earth are you doing? Didn't you say you had cast an inescapable net? How could the killer strike and murder people yet again?!" Han Junshan roared.

Lei Chen's face flushed crimson. "I... I..."

"You what you!" Han Junshan glared at him. "Don't you understand the blind spot right beneath the lamp? You're a veteran criminal investigator, how could you make such a low-level mistake!"

"It's not that we didn't set up defenses; it's simply that manpower is scarce, making it extremely difficult to achieve a zero-blind-spot deployment," Lei Chen explained. "Director Han, I won't shirk responsibility, I am willing to accept any disciplinary action!"

"Director Han, Lei Chen truly did his utmost. If anyone is to be blamed, it's only that the killer is too cunning!" Wen Rou spoke up in defense.

"Cunning killer, my foot! I'd say you just weren't using your brain!" Han Junshan slammed his palm on the desk. "Do you realize these are three lives, three lives! How are we going to answer to the common people?!"

"I..."

Han Junshan stood up. "We must not let that brute escape again!"

"Yes!"

The wail of police sirens tore through the silence of the night, casting blinding streaks of red and blue light across the rural road. Li Rui gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles turning white from the force. In the backseat, Wen Rou was checking her equipment, the beam of her flashlight sweeping through the car to illuminate her tightly pursed lips.

Rounding the final bend, the outline of the crime scene materialized under the headlights. It was an isolated farmhouse, the cracks in its earthen walls resembling the wrinkles on an old man's face, looking particularly ominous in the gloom. In the courtyard, several flashlight beams intersected, casting the figures of the police officers against the wall and stretching them into distorted shapes.

"Is the scene sealed off?" Li Rui leaped from the car, rain dripping down the brim of his cap.

"It's sealed off," Lei Chen hurried over, his expression grave. "But there are too many villagers; the traces at the scene may have already been disturbed."

Li Rui put on his gloves, his footsteps leaving clear prints in the muddy earth. The beam of his flashlight swept across the courtyard wall, discovering a cluster of chaotic footprints beneath the wall near the kitchen chimney.

"Wen Rou, gather evidence!" There was a suppressed excitement in his voice. "This might be where the killer climbed the wall."

"Xiao Wang!" Lei Chen handed Xiao Wang an evidence bag. "Go help Forensic Doctor Li and Director Wen collect physical evidence. Remember, wear gloves and don't disturb the scene."

The rain grew heavier, washing away the bloodstains on the ground, yet it could not wash away the gloom shrouding the farmhouse.