Chapter 61: The Hammer Demon Case (Part 30)

On November 5, outside a hardware store on North Bank Street in Lu County, a tense-looking figure walked out quickly.

He bought a four-pound, eight-sided hammer. The hammerhead gleamed with a cold light, resembling the moonlight at the crime scene.

Leaving the hardware store, he strolled southeastward. His backpack contained the murder tools: a hammer, clothes, shoes, gloves, a flashlight, and a food clip improvised from number 8 iron wire.

When he reached Yanwan Village, the straw hats woven by the villagers gleamed golden in the sunlight. Passing through the village, he saw Yan Qing's grocery shelves laden with goods, like a tree full of fruit.

"Running a grocery store, he must have money." He fancied Yan Qing's house because of its remote location, far away from other people.

Before the sun had set, he turned and slipped into the alley of a neighboring village, waiting for night to fall.

Around 11 PM, he crept in along the path north of the village. The moonlight stretched his shadow long, like a blood-dripping sickle. Yan Qing's courtyard wall had no gate; when the wire clip pried open the wooden door, it made a whimper as thin as gossamer.

When the hammerhead fell, Yan Qing's snoring stopped abruptly. The head of his elderly wife, Pan Guilian, struck the shelf, and the soy sauce from the cracked glass bottle trickled down, converging into a black stream on the floor.

The wooden chest was pried open with pliers, and nearly three thousand yuan was found inside. The smell of banknote ink mixed with the stench of blood crept into his nasal cavity. The short man stuffed the money into the leg of his quilted trousers, the thin cord biting into his skin as he tied it tight. The household register, identity card, disability certificate, and Shanghai-brand wristwatch were packed into his backpack, the watch dial phosphorescing in the moonlight.

Then he locked the door and ran east. Small change scattered along the ridge of the field, the coins rolling into the gaps of the wheat straw stacks.

At dawn, he was already standing on the streets of Bozhou. The hammerhead in his backpack was stained with dew, looking precisely like the bloodstains at the crime scene.

Half an hour later, the police cars of the Lu County branch crushed through the puddles. In the crime scene investigation report, the victim's wound resembled an open mouth. The fax machine of the provincial department spat out a joint-investigation notice, the ink still wet and warm on the paper. In the special investigation team's office, red pins marked the crime scenes, connecting a bloody sickle from southern Henan to northern Anhui.

After committing the murder, he hid and fled amidst the howling wind and snow like a wild wolf tracked by hunters.

During the day, he pretended to be a petty peddler, wandering aimlessly everywhere.

At night, wherever he happened to be, as long as he deemed it safe, he would curl up and sleep.

On the evening of the 6th, he fled to a vineyard far away from the village.

The winter vineyard was desolate and withered. Fruit growers had just pruned the grapevines. Standing on this side of the vineyard, looking through clusters of bare vines, one could see the wheat fields on the opposite side.

In a corner of the vineyard, close to the roadside, stood a small shack used by the growers to watch over the orchard in summer. It was now abandoned and empty. The shack had neither doors nor windows, and the interior was filthy. On the roof, a few withered weeds trembled in the cold wind.

The short man felt this dilapidated shack was the best shelter he could find for the night. He casually gathered a few discarded grapevines dropped by the growers outside the shack, spread them on the earthen floor, wrapped himself in his clothes, and slept on the damp ground.

At this moment, police officers were setting up roadblocks everywhere to hunt down the murderer. In the middle of the night, he was suddenly awakened by a flurry of footsteps. When he tried to open his eyes to look, a blinding beam of a flashlight shone directly at him, dazzling him so much he could not keep his eyes open.

Before he could even move, an authoritative voice rang out: "Who's there? What are you doing?"

He rubbed his eyes and sat up, staying put and pretending to be dazed, assuming an air of leaving his fate to others.

It was the local police station's officers conducting a sweep, and they immediately took the short man to the police station.

In the duty room, the steam from instant noodles blurred the window glass. Seeing a man being brought in, someone turned to look at him, then continued eating.

The short man squatted on the ground, the steel rings of the handcuffs gleaming coldly under the fluorescent light.

He thought to himself, "This is much better than sleeping in the wild shack."

The officer who brought him in began to question him, "What is your name?"

"Zhao Xinmin."

"Where are you from?"

"Zhaojiazhuang, Shannan Town, Juyang County."

"What do you do for a living?"

The short man shook the balloons in his hand, sighed, and said, "My family is too poor to afford food, so I came out to run a small business."

The questioning officer seemed very dissatisfied with this answer and asked, "A peddler? If you're a peddler, why didn't you stay in a hotel?"

The short man patted his dirty clothes and said, "Aren't I afraid of spending money? My business is small and profits are thin, how could I afford a hotel?"

Although the short man's answers were extremely reasonable, the questioning officer still found him suspicious and proceeded to inspect his belongings.

The officers dumped everything out of the snakeskin bag, casually poking through small items like balloons and nail clippers. As they rummaged through the miscellaneous goods, a small flashlight rolled out from among them.

An officer picked it up, looked at it, and tossed it back into the snakeskin bag.

Suddenly, a map wedged among the small commodities caught an officer's attention. He picked it up, looked at it, and asked teasingly, "You carry a map with you while running a small peddling business?"

This question gave the short man quite a start, but he quickly calmed down and said, "A student dropped it on the road, and I picked it up."

The questioning officer looked at his watch; it was already past 3:00 AM. He stretched and said, "Bear with this for a moment."

The handcuffs clicked shut around the leg of a chair, and the officer left, yawning. The wall clock in the duty room stopped at 3:17, its second hand jammed in the folds of a "Fortune" character New Year sticker.

By this time, the short man was the only one left in the duty room. He straightened up and looked outside; there was no one guarding the door.

He thought that if he took this opportunity to pick the handcuffs and escape, he could completely get away.

However, since he had given his real name and address, running away would only prove that he had something to hide, whereas staying might result in him being released soon.

The next morning, the police station brought in several women. In the identification room, the women's gazes swept across his face. He knew they couldn't recognize him, because everyone who had seen his face was dead.

The result was just as he expected. After the identification, those women shook their heads one by one and left.

An officer unlocked his handcuffs and told him to go shovel the accumulated snow outside the station. The sound of the iron shovel scraping the ground sounded remarkably like an iron hammer chiseling through a skull.

After finishing, the officer handed him two steamed buns, their steam condensing into white mist in the cold wind. The short man devoured them ravenously, the sweetness of the flour mixed with the phantom stench of blood creeping into his nasal cavity.

Due to his impoverished upbringing since childhood, his pursuit of money was not particularly lofty.

In the beginning, he thought that once he made twenty or thirty thousand yuan, he would wash his hands of it and quit. But as the blood debts piled up and his crimes grew graver, it was already too late to put on the brakes.

He simply gave up and threw caution to the wind, committing crimes whenever an opportunity arose, robbing whenever he lacked money.

He knew he would be caught sooner or later. But before that, he wanted to indulge himself to the fullest. Like a trapped beast tearing at its last chunk of flesh before its cage collapses. A demon playing with fire at the crater of a volcano, the firelight reflecting countless faces of the dead.

The police sirens outside the window drew closer from afar, the Beidou locator flashing an eerie blue light, mimicking precisely the moonlight at the crime scene. The short man finished the last bite of his bun, patted the flour off his hands, and walked toward his next target.