Flower Net (Red Princess 1)

“Humor me,” he said. “Tell me who you are.”

She took a deep breath, then continued reciting from memory. “The Kuomintang officer told the crowd that if the person sympathetic to the Communists did not come forward, then many villagers would die. Hulan gave her mother her ring, a handkerchief, and an ointment tin, then, with her head raised, her eyes clear, and her spirit unbroken, she approached the guards. A soldier asked her, ‘Don’t you regret having to die when you’re only fifteen years old?’ She responded, ‘Why should I be afraid? I won’t yield before death. I’ll never surrender my mind. I have lived for fifteen years. If you kill me, in another fifteen years I will have been reborn and I’ll be as old as I am now.’ She strode bravely to the chaff cutter and they cut off her head. Less than a month later, the Eighth Route Army regained control of Wenshui County. Four years later the murderers were caught and punished. Mao Zedong praised Liu Hulan: ‘A great life! A glorious death!’ Posthumously she was given full membership in the Communist Party.”

“Why would your parents name you after someone who came to such a sad end?”

“They didn’t see it that way,” she answered. “They named me for her because she was resolute in the most difficult and dangerous situations. She was stalwart and empathetic. When I was born, my parents saw a great future for themselves and me in the New China. They hoped I’d have Liu Hulan’s zeal and her iron will. I’m afraid that, if anything, I’ve exceeded their hopes in ways that still shame me.”

Before David could ask what she meant, she had turned away and headed down the hall. She stopped in front of Cao Hua’s apartment. The door stood ajar. Hulan called out, “Ni hao, Cao Xiansheng. Ni zai ma?” She received no response. Hulan gently pressed the muzzle of her gun against the door and it slowly swung open. Before David could react to the weapon, she raised her voice again, inquiring if Mr. Cao was at home. Again only silence. From where Hulan and David stood, they could see only a marble and glass foyer identical to the one in Guang Henglai’s apartment. An incongruous odor of skunk, wet dirt, and rust wafted out to them. She stepped through the threshold, and David asked, “Don’t we need a search warrant or something?”

“Stay here, David,” she responded, ignoring his question. Of course he followed her. Their steps seemed inordinately loud as they crossed the foyer to the living room. Hulan saw it first and instinctively recoiled, backing into David. She turned and buried her head in his chest. For a brief moment, David mistook her action for affection, but when she looked up into his face, he saw that the color had drained from her cheeks and lips.

“Please, David,” she quavered. “Go down and get Peter. Don’t come any farther.” She took a breath to steel herself before stepping into the room. Again, David followed right behind her.

Unlike the excesses of Guang Henglai’s apartment, Cao Hua’s living room was furnished in Spartan style—a couch, a coffee table, a couple of pictures on the walls. These meager decorations highlighted the morbid display before Hulan and David. Blood splattered in an arc against a wall. The body—she surmised it had to be Cao—sat on the carpet beneath the red arterial spray in a pool of still-wet blood. His head was grotesquely deformed. He had been hit by something hard enough to crack his skull open like a ripe melon. But the killer hadn’t stopped at this. He had propped up Cao against the wall with his pulpy head tilted at an improbable angle. His legs were splayed out and his hands decorously laid, palms up, at his sides. Then the killer had slit Cao open from sternum to pubic bone. His intestines had been pulled out and artfully arranged on the floor in the very center of the room.

All of this Hulan absorbed in a fraction of a second. Then her attention was drawn back to David, who was bent over, head down, hands on knees, gasping for air and mumbling to himself. “David, I told you not to come in here.”

“What have they done?”

“David, come on. We’ll go outside.”

“No! I’m all right.” He slowly straightened up. As he once again took in the scene, he exhaled, and it came out as something between a sigh and a groan. Hulan watched his jaw muscles tighten and his throat constrict as he fought the impulse to vomit.

“David,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “Look at me.” He turned his face to hers, but his eyes remained on the monstrous spectacle. “David,” she said sharply. “Look at me!” She could see the horror in his eyes. “You have to get Peter. Tell him we need help. Go.”

He staggered away. Hulan knew she had only minutes alone with the body. Slowly she skirted the blood and the intestines. She edged close to the wall and examined the bloody splash. It, too, was wet. She fought a wave of fear as she realized that the killer might still b

e in the apartment. She remained immobile, stretching her senses. The apartment was dead quiet. Either the killer was here—waiting, watching—or he had just left.

Carefully but quickly, she retraced her steps, hoping to get to the hallway and begin a search of the building but guessing that it was too late. By the time she reached the door, David and Peter were there. Peter had his gun out. When he saw the intestines on the floor, the air wheezed out of him. “Aiya!” His voice was filled with wonder.

David watched as Peter and Hulan spoke in Chinese. They seemed to be arguing about something. Peter kept gesturing at the intestines while Hulan nodded and spoke softly, smoothly. David forced himself to look at the grotesque mess again as the two Chinese talked. Finally Peter jutted out his chin in disgust and left. As soon as he was gone, David said, “Hulan, I think the intestines have been made into some kind of a design.”

“Not a design, David. It’s a character.”

“A character? What does it mean?”

“Let’s not talk about it now. We don’t have much time before the others get here.”

“No! I want to know now!” Her tranquillity infuriated him. “Don’t keep me in the dark. Tell me.”

“The Chinese language…”

“I don’t want a lecture!”

“The Chinese language,” she began again, “is very complex, and the Chinese people like wordplay. For example, the word for fish—yu—sounds like the word for prosperity, so we eat it as one of the celebration dishes at Chinese New Year. In paintings, you often see a vase or a bottle because that word—ping—sounds the same as peace or safety. Similarly, Deng Xiaoping’s name means ‘little peace,’ but it sounds the same as ‘little bottle.’ When Deng was coming back to power, the people sent a message of support to the government by placing little bottles around the city.”

As David stood there listening to her, he remembered how much Hulan loved the complexity of Chinese. He also recalled she often used pedantry as a way of deflecting his probing questions.

Hulan put a hand on his arm. Her face twisted with worry. “David, are you listening? Are you all right?”

Feeling the warmth of her hand, hearing the concern in her voice, David smiled wanly. “I’m fine. Go on.”

“The killer,” she said, “has used a double meaning here. The word for intestines is chang, which has the same sound as the word for flavor or taste. The killer has written the character for flavor with the intestines. This is a message, a warning, to us. I believe the murderer is giving us a ‘taste’ of what is to come.”

Side by side, their shoulders touching, they stared down at the bloody calligraphy.

Soon the local police arrived, as did Pathologist Fong. They did their jobs—securing the scene, examining the body, taking photographs, interviewing neighbors—amid much animated oohing and aahing over the intestinal message. While these men worked, David and Hulan searched the apartment.