Chapter 65: The Case of the Hammer Demon (Part 34)

The bitter wind of the twelfth lunar month gnawed back and forth like a rusted saw against Niu Zhanwei’s doorframe. As Zhao Xinmin vaulted over the low wall, he startled the lame mongrel in the courtyard.

The dog did not bark, its clouded eyes merely fixing upon him—he had been here once before, before the murder of Liu Zhihe, while still within the bounds of Xiping County. On that occasion, he had simply passed by Niu Zhanwei’s doorstep.

The pendulum clock in the main room had stopped at 1:07. Zhao Xinmin fished out an octagonal iron hammer; its head gleamed a dull, grayish-blue in the moonlight, bearing a striking resemblance to the silver-inlaid front tooth of the hardware store owner in Miacha Town. He remembered the owner saying on the day he bought it that this tool was handiest for cracking walnuts.

Niu Zhanwei’s heavy snoring drifted from the east room, thick with the stench of alcohol. Zhao Xinmin squatted beneath the window sill to tie his shoelaces, the tips of his shoes smudged with earth from the old ancestral graves. He recalled that during his reconnaissance earlier in the day, he had noticed a fresh pile of paper ash before the Niu family graveyard. A gust of wind had stirred the ashes, exposing half a ghost-money banknote marked with a denomination of "One Hundred Million Yuan."

When the first blow fell, the glass cover of the wall clock cracked. Niu Zhanwei’s strangled scream was cut short by the second blow, sounding precisely like the death squeals of hogs Zhao Xinmin used to hear at the slaughterhouse. Blood spattered against the wall, blooming like a flower across the framed certificate citing them as a "Model Harmonious Family."

The sound of a child crying drifted from the west room. Groping his way through the dark, Zhao Xinmin tripped over a toy car. The hammer struck the railing of the toddler's bed with a sharp *clang*, startling the lame dog in the yard out front. The dog still did not bark, instead scraping its claws against the frozen earth at the base of the wall.

While cleaning up the scene, Zhao Xinmin noticed that the screen of Niu Zhanwei’s smartphone was still lit, frozen on the interface of a card game. He was tempted to slip it into his pocket—it could easily fetch five or six hundred yuan back in the county seat—but he restrained himself. The device had GPS tracking; taking it was signing his own death warrant.

When he peeled off his blood-soaked clothes, they had already frozen stiff, hard as sheet metal. He remembered that during a crime in Xiping last month, he had stuffed his bloodstained garments into a garbage can, only for an old scavenger to fish them out and use them as a rag.

The soil before the old graves was frozen hard as iron; when the hammer was buried, only its handle remained protruding. Zhao Xinmin stamped it down firmly with his heel, suddenly remembering that the hammer had cost forty-eight yuan and fifty fen, enough to buy two packs of Red Pagoda Mountain cigarettes. Down in the reed marshes by the river, the bloodstained clothes sent up a few bubbles as they sank, perfectly mimicking Niu Zhanwei’s dying gasps.

On the road to Luo Cheng, Zhao Xinmin counted the loose change in his trouser pockets: three one-yuan coins, a crumpled ten-yuan bill, and the two hundred and sixty yuan from Niu Zhanwei’s wallet. Passing a gas station, he bought a pack of Plum Blossom cigarettes. The pack bore the warning, "Smoking is hazardous to your health," which reminded him of the "Model Harmonious Family" certificate on the Niu family's wall.

At three in the morning, as the grand clock at the Luo Cheng railway station chimed, Zhao Xinmin was squatting in a corner of the waiting room, gnawing on a cold steamed bun. A ticket collector yawned as he walked past him, the brass buttons on his uniform gleaming icily in the light—looking terribly like the iron hammer buried beneath the old ancestral graves.

At daybreak, Zhao Xinmin passed by the Luo Cheng secondhand market. An old man buying used phones wore thick reading glasses, the lenses caked with a heavy layer of dust. His fingers trembled as he took apart a phone, reminding Zhao Xinmin of Niu Zhanwei’s twitching legs before death.

Yet he had no phone to sell.

As he walked out of the market, Zhao Xinmin caught sight of a missing person poster pasted on a utility pole. The girl in the photograph was smiling brightly. He tore down the poster, balled it up, and shoved it into his pocket, thinking it might come in handy for his next crime. In the distance, across the Luo Cheng bridge, a coal truck roared past, kicking up billows of coal dust that looked uncannily like the drifting spirit-money paper at the Niu family graveyard.

And at that exact moment, the lame dog at Niu Zhanwei’s home finally barked. It howled furiously toward the old graves, startling Widow Wang next door. Widow Wang draped a cotton-padded jacket over her shoulders to investigate and saw the dog digging in the dirt, exposing half a hammer handle. Muttering an oath about bad luck, she turned back toward her house, failing to notice the patch of blackened blood against the base of the wall.

Around 7:00 a.m. on the twenty-seventh, Niu Zhanwei’s father, Niu Zhenyuan, arrived at his son’s house. Seeing no one in the courtyard and the main room door latched from the outside, he called out twice. Receiving no response, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Pushing open the door to the east room, he saw that the glass cover of the wall clock was cracked, its hands frozen at 3:15. His wife, Wang Lan, lay on her side, her graying hair soaked in a pool of blood like a clump of rehydrated white fungus. He reached out to touch her; the blood was half-congealed, sticking to his fingertips like the cheap syrup sold at temple fairs.

His granddaughter Xiaofang had one leg dangling over the edge of the bed, her pink nightgown splattered with dark crimson. Niu Zhenyuan shook as he tried to lift her, his palm encountering the sunken wound on the back of her head, where brains and blood clots adhered to his skin. The little bear desk lamp on the nightstand was still lit, casting an eerie, warm glow over the corpses.

The gruesome sight in the west room caused the old man to stagger backward. His son, Niu Zhanwei, lay flat on his back, his eyes bulging like the dead fish he had seen at the fish market last year. His daughter-in-law, Chen Jun, was curled up in the corner, still clutching their youngest grandson in her arms—the boy was only three years old, with a hole between his eyebrows like a fully ripened cherry.

He dialed 110 three times before the call went through, his fingers trembling too violently to hit the right digits on the keypad. As villagers flooded in, someone discovered that Wang Lan still had a faint pulse. On the way to the hospital, the siren of the ambulance pierced the dawn, yet it failed to revive this shattered household.

In the hospital corridor, Niu Zhenyuan clutched a crumpled hospital bill stamped with the words "Advance payment: 5000 yuan." The sun rose outside the window, casting its light upon the bill; that string of red numbers was blindingly harsh, looking precisely like the bloodstains on the east room wall.

Li Rui squatted on the threshold of Niu Zhanyuan’s house, ash falling from his cigarette into the dirt. The old man sat with a hunched back, weeping bitterly as he clutched a photograph of his son while holding his granddaughter’s hair clip, its plastic butterfly missing a corner.

"Newlou and the others hadn't slept a single day in it. I was living alone in a two-story house, planning to move in on the sixth day of the first lunar month next year. Who would have thought we'd run into this disaster on the twenty-second?" Niu Zhenyuan squatted lower, rubbing his face with both hands as tears streamed down his weathered, bronze cheeks.

After a pause, the old man intermittently recalled the sequence of events leading up to the family's tragedy.

"Last year in the first month, Xiaowei tore down the old flat-roofed house and started building a new two-story one, finishing basically by the end of last month. I came every day to keep watch over the new house, while my wife, son, daughter-in-law, ten-year-old grandson, and seven-year-old granddaughter stayed in my third younger brother's empty house."

Of this annihilation of his family, he alone had been spared because he was staying to guard the adjacent newly built house. After the police arrived, Niu's mother was rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment, dying ten days later. The other four had died on the spot.

"The snow had just melted that day," Niu Zhenyuan’s voice sounded like a rusted door hinge. "The road was terribly slick; I fell three times."

He pointed to the mud stains on his trouser legs, which had already dried into a hard crust. "At this time of day, Xiaofang should have been skipping and bouncing over to call me for breakfast."

"I went to the kitchen first and saw no fire had been lit. Then I knocked on the door of the big room; after knocking a few times with no answer, I looked closer and saw the iron door bolt was latched from the outside. I pulled the bolt open and went first to the east room where my wife and granddaughter lived. When I called out to her, there was no response. Entering the room, I saw my wife’s eyes blinking, but she couldn't speak, and there was a bloody hole in my granddaughter's head." At this point, Niu Zhenyuan wiped his tears again. "I hurriedly called for help, saying the whole family had been murdered."

"My nephew heard about it and thought they had been poisoned. He rushed into the west room and called out to Xiaowei, but no one answered. Pulling back the quilt, he saw Xiaowei sleeping on the outside, his wife sleeping on the inside, and our grandson in the middle, their faces covered in blood."

Qi Wei walked a circle around the kitchen. Dust coated the stove, and half a bag of unopened flour sat on the chopping board. She lifted the pot lid to find a layer of mold inside. "When was the last time the fire was lit?"

"The first day of the twelfth lunar month," the old man wiped his eyes. "We steamed a pot of mantou. Xiaowei said the new house was almost done and we needed to celebrate."

He walked unsteadily to the west room and lifted the curtain. "Xiaofang picked out this curtain herself, saying the pink color was festive."

Li Rui followed him inside and saw a lopsided sun drawn on the wall, beneath which were written the words, "Grandpa's Home."

There was barely any furniture in the room; a single bed on the ground floor of the west wing served as the old man's sleeping quarters.

"When the incident happened, the main door of the new house hadn't been installed yet—we just had a curtain hanging across the entrance. We were even discussing putting in all the doors and windows in a day or two, and picking an auspicious date after the New Year to move in. Who would have thought they wouldn't get to live in it even for a single day?"

The old man squatted down again, burying his face in his hands and sobbing uncontrollably, tears leaking through his rough, calloused fingers.

He fished out a cigarette and offered it to Niu Zhenyuan. The old man waved his hand. "I've quit. Xiaowei said the money saved would go toward buying school bags for the kids."

"Have you been living here ever since the incident?" Qi Wei opened her notebook, the tip of her pen piercing a hole through the paper.

"Where else could I go?" The old man squatted lower, his fingers digging into the seams of the floor tiles. "There’s a debt of over fifty thousand yuan, borrowed for my wife’s medical treatments. What is an old man like me supposed to do?"

He suddenly raised his head. "I dreamt of Xiaofang yesterday. She said, 'Grandpa, I got a hundred percent on my math test.'"

Li Rui snuffed out his cigarette butt, the sparks sputtering onto the threshold.

Outside, the wail of police sirens drew closer and closer. Qi Wei’s phone rang; it was Old Wang from the forensics department. "The DNA match results are out. It’s him!"

Niu Zhenyuan was still rambling on about the doors and windows of the new house, mentioning that the sixth day of the eleventh month would be an auspicious date. Li Rui reached into his wallet, pulled out a few bills, and forced them into the old man’s palm. "Take this for now, buy some medicine."

The old man clutched the money, his tears dripping directly onto the awkward, childish characters that spelled out "Grandpa's Home." Outside, the rotating beacon of a police car flashed, casting interlaced red and blue lights across the unfinished walls of the new house, looking chillingly like the spattered blood patterns recovered from the crime scene.