The Interior (Red Princess 2)

She pulled out her MPS credential, stepped into the hallway, and walked purposefully down the hall. A policeman sat with his back against the wall, looking green, beside him a splash of vomit. A few of his buddies stood around in support, offering by turns cigarettes and bottled water. But the truth was, they looked none too well themselves. It must be bad, Hulan thought, very bad.

At the door to the room Hulan held up her credential, although the person guarding it was well known to her. Yang Yao had worked at the Ministry of Public Security for almost thirty years, but he’d never risen above the rank of investigator third grade. An announcement of his impending retirement had recently circulated around the office. It was about time. Still, Hulan had hoped he’d be here. Yang was slow and infinitely dumb, which was why he was always assigned to watch the door instead of investigate. He nodded to Hulan and made not one movement and said not one word to prevent the foreigners from going in after her.

The smell of death even in this highly air-conditioned environment assaulted them: the rustiness of blood, the sour odors of excrement, the nervous perspiration of the officers in the room. All death was gruesome—even for those who supposedly died peacefully in their sleep—but even Hulan, who’d seen more murder scenes than she cared to remember, had a hard time processing what had happened to Pearl Jenner and Guy Lin.

They were on the double bed together, both naked. They looked to be involved in some sort of sexual act, although Hulan couldn’t fathom the wheres and hows of such an act. Pearl’s wrists and ankles were bound together behind her by a length of rope. The rope had also been looped around her neck, stretching her whole body back—knees pulled open to accommodate the inhuman position—so that her private parts would have been totally exposed if not for the other victim positioned against her. From the knots that bound Pearl’s ankles, the rope led to the other victim. Guy Lin was bound in much the same position, his loins pressed to Pearl’s.

In her weakened state Hulan felt the blood drain from her head, and she thought she might faint. Then behind her she heard shallow panting. With great effort she pulled herself together and turned to escort David back out of the room. Only it wasn’t David. He was fine—as fine as could be expected given the spectacle—but Henry had gone completely white and was trembling like the old man he was.

“Investigator Yang,” Hulan commanded imperiously. “Take this man to the hall. Find him some tea and a chair.” Yang did as he was told. As she turned back to the hideous tableau, she saw that David had edged closer to the bed where Pathologist Fong squatted, gloves on, bifocals perched on his nose. When Hulan approached, Fong looked up and beamed.

“They always send you out to see the pretty ones, hey, Inspector?” Fong said in heavily accented English for David’s benefit. Fong didn’t stand up. He never liked to be reminded how much shorter he was than Hulan. To cover this, Fong cocked his head back toward the bodies. “Foreigners,” he grunted. “The propaganda tells us they are decadent, but you have to see something like this before you really believe it is true.”

“How long have they been dead?” Hulan asked.

“That’s my inspector!” Fong announced cheerfully to the room. “We have a case of autoerotic death, and she wants to know how long they’ve been dead!”

Some of the others in the room, who were dusting for fingerprints, looking through luggage, and picking through the trash receptacle, chortled. Hulan was not amused.

Fong rocked back on his haunches. “Two hours at most.”

“How were they discovered?”

“The maid came in. Imagine what she thought!” Fong grinned again, then finally turned serious. “Last year

I went to an international symposium on forensic medicine in Stockholm. They had a panel on autoerotic death. I went—curious. I had never seen a case myself, but I’d read about it in foreign literature.”

He pointed at the bodies and assumed a scholarly tone. “You see how it works, don’t you? With every one of his thrusts, her ropes are pulled tighter. Every time he pulls back, his ropes are pulled tighter. The lack of air is supposed to heighten sexual pleasure. People die like this all the time in the West,” he said more in wonder than disapproval.

Neither Hulan nor David enlightened Fong about his misconception.

“But you see the problem, don’t you, Inspector?”

Hulan stared at the bodies. The faces were purple. Pinpricks of broken blood vessels dotted the whites of their eyes, their faces and necks. Hulan shook her head.

Fong glanced over at David. “But you do.”

“I think so,” David said. “I understand the anatomy of what’s happened here, but who tied the knots?”

“Precisely!”

Hulan, blaming her queasiness on her pregnancy, looked numbly at the two men, while David wondered where her mind was. She was usually so far ahead of him in these matters.

“Pretend you’re going to have this kind of sex,” David said. “You want to heighten your experience of orgasm. You cut off your partner’s blood supply. Maybe she cuts off yours. Maybe you rig something that will help both of you. But look, Hulan, look at how they’re bound. Once she’s tied, she can’t tie him and there’s no way he could do that to himself. It’s murder made to look like a sexual mistake.”

“I agree,” Fong said. “But when I get them back to the lab, I will test for semen just to make sure. I will send you the report…”

These words jolted Hulan. Fong didn’t know about her problems. Either that or he knew but chose not to mention them, which was completely out of character. When things were bad, her colleagues enjoyed making furtive asides just loud enough so that she could hear them. But this morning no one had stopped her or even questioned her about the story that was on the television and in the newspaper. This could only mean that Zai or someone higher wanted her to see this.

“One last question, Pathologist Fong. Has the team found a satchel or any papers?”

“Passports and the like. It’s a very clean room except for this.”

With that, Hulan pulled on David’s sleeve. Without good-byes they left the room, picked up a pale Henry Knight in the hall, rode the elevator down, and walked back into the brutal heat without one person stopping them or making a single comment.

“Did the same person kill all of these people?” David asked when they got back in the car.

“I think the better question is, are we supposed to think so?” Hulan replied. “Are we supposed to take that scene at face value—a mistake of sexual deviance? Or are we intended to recognize it as a cleverly staged murder?”