I calmly turned to Xiaotao, "Do you remember the day Deng Chao escaped from prison? When we visited at the time, I stuffed him with a pack of Hongtashan."

"As soon as I saw the body, I thought of him,” she nodded. “This is definitely the murderer’s signature. There’s no mistake about that!"

A few months after Deng Chao’s disappearance, he finally made a comeback. And it happened right when we were about to graduate. I had a vague sense of foreboding.

I waved those thoughts away and began the autopsy. The victim was a middle-aged man of about forty-five years old, with a dirty, full beard that made him seem grubby and untidy. He reeked of alcohol, and had the overall disposition of a low-income bachelor.

The victim’s clothes were covered in dust and grass, his trousers showing drag marks that suggested...