Case Files 013

Chapter 133: Human Dumpling

The next moment, everyone turned to the side, unable to resist the nausea anymore. I had a hard time describing my feelings at that moment. The whole table of us vomited as if we were hit by food poisoning. The young officer's face turned green the moment he saw the filling inside his half-eaten dumpling. He practically vomited his whole stomach out. The stench immediately filled up the room. I took a long breath before I could stare at the piece of dumpling again.

The filling was not what we expected. A piece of meat about the size of a person's thumb appeared before our eyes. To be specific, it was a nipple. From the nipple's size and shape, we came to the easy conclusion that this was a human nipple. However, I still couldn't help but ask in a shaking voice, "That is not a human nipple, is it?"

According to Morpheus' Law, the more you didn't want something to happen, the more it would happen. After Guan Zhenglin wiped away her vomit, she said, "I'm afraid you're right." The young officer who had just stopped vomiting, started all over again when he heard Guan Zhenglin's answer, it

The village head turned to his wife and yelled, "What is wrong with you, woman? How could you think to serve us something like this? Do you plan to scare all of us to death?"

Even though his wife was already over 50, being scolded like that, there were tears in her eyes. "How is this my fault? When I woke up this morning, I saw the pack of dumplings already sitting on our doorstep. I assumed it was a gift from Chui Hwa and the girls. How am I supposed to know they're human dumplings" Then she burst into greater tears. "You've changed ever since you got elected to become the village head. You never raised your voice at me before. When you married me, you said you would love me forever but nowadays all you do is complain, you're going to divorce me, aren't you? I can't live this kind of life anymore" All the village head could do was to quickly apologize.

I stepped up to stop this family drama and cut in with a swift question, "Madam, when was the time that you found this bowl of dumpling?"

The lady rolled her eyes at her husband and stopped to answer me, "Kid, I really didn't know about the dumplings. I woke up to prepare and clean the house around 5 am plus. I wanted to check outside the door to see if there's any snow. That was when I found the dumplings."

As I patted the young officer on his back, I resisted the nausea to ask, "Can you tell me in detail how you found the bowl of dumplings?"

She pulled on the edge of her dress in embarrassment. "I opened the door and found the bowl sitting on our window ledge. It came with a plastic lid. It was not from our home. Before I went to bed yesterday night, it wasn't there yet." Then she told me, "I went closer to look inside the bowl, as I lifted up the lid, I saw the dumplings. Due to the weather we have, the dumplings were already frozen when I found them. I thought it was a gift from one of the villagers so I took it in." As if afraid that I wouldn't believe her, she added, "Chui Hwa and the girls will often do that, ask the village head if you don't believe me." The man nodded.

I asked again, "Madam, when you went out, did you see any footprints?"

The madam slapped her thigh and gasped, "Now that you mention it, there was no footprint when I went out this morning! Was it not a villager who gave us the dumplings but a ghost? My God, but we have not done anything to deserve this!"

The village head slammed on the table and groused, "How could you be so superstitious? We're already in the 21st century."

I mediated, "It was not a ghost. The snow was heavy yesterday night so it probably covered up the person's footprints. That meant that the dumplings were left on the window yesterday night and when you went out this morning, their footprints were already gone."

"But" The madam said worriedly, "But what does the person want? Why would they give us human dumplings? This is not the work of that crazed killer, is it? Who would do something like this? Oh, this is not good for us First Drain Village! There goes our usual peace!" Well, she was not wrong about that. I closed my eyes and pulled on my hair. I tried to piece everything together chronologically. First, the killer dumped a leg casually by the roadside; then they shoved an arm into the snow; it was followed by the bloody message left inside our Siheyuan and now this bowl of human dumplings. Now that I thought about it, the killer was quite an attention seeker. The killer could have dumped the leg deep in the mountains and no one would have found it but they did not. If the killer wasn't doing this for the thrill of the kill, why dismember the body? Why go through all these troubles to attract the police's attention? There was a voice in my head telling me that I was still missing an important component of the clues.

"Pick through the dumpling fillings!" I looked at the pot of dumplings and ordered, "We need to figure out how much meat is here and which part of the human body were they from and if possible, the victim's identity!" The others nodded.

The young officer refused to stay any longer, he picked up the evidence bags and left for the city. Even when the village head asked for him to stay, he rejected it. After what happened earlier, there was no way he was going to stay. Unable to persuade him to stay, the village head gave him a few buns so that he could have something to eat on his way back.

At the same time, the rest of us squatted in the yard and picked out the dumpling filling one by one. There were enough dumplings to serve 8 people, there were around 200 plus of them. The village head's wife cooked all of them because she believed us youngsters would have a great appetite. From the fillings, we noticed that the meat wasn't finely minced. They were more meat cubes. After all, if someone had to mince human meat, it would make a lot of noise and that risked discovery by neighbours. However, chopping them into cubes wouldn't expend as much time and effort. Based on the number of dumplings, the killer probably had been prepping the meat since yesterday afternoon. Making 200 plus dumplings wasn't easy work, if the killer wrapped them all alone, it would take at least several hours.

I suspected Ol' Xia because he was a butcher and fitted my criminal profile but after the dog was discovered to be the murder weapon, my suspicion switched to Er Xiao. This was because the German Shepherd was a very loyal dog. They would only listen to the orders of their owner. Then I considered the possibility that there was a duo working together. They might be Er Xiao and Ol' Xiao, the reason I didn't say anything was because I didn't want to arouse their suspicion. But now I realized they wouldn't have the time to do these things.

From the dumplings itself, I knew that they were fresh. Because frozen dumplings were prone to having cracked skin after they were cooked, an effect from being frozen for too long. But in our pot, only a few of the dumplings cracked. So who was the killer? Why was it that whenever I started to lock onto a new suspect, there would be new evidence to challenge my hypothesis?

As we picked through the dumplings, Gu Chen commented, "There are quite a lot of dumplings here. They must weigh at least a ton." The filling that we picked out had already filled half a big bowl. After they were cooked, it was hard to tell what kind of meat they were. With that in mind, I said, "Actually, we should consider ourselves lucky. If the young officer didn't have the dumpling with the nipple so early in the meal, we would have eaten most of these dumplings and wouldn't have known the truth about their ingredients. After all, I remember everyone saying they were quite delicious"

Everyone's faces darkened and Guan Zhenglin directly glared at me. Soon we fished out all the filling. From appearance, only the piece with the nipple had discerning human features. The rest of the meat was smaller and could easily pass as normal meat. I believed the killer did this on purpose, but they probably didn't expect for us to find the winning' dumpling so early in our meal. The killer wanted us to finish most of the dumplings before someone discovered the piece with the human nipple.

"Let's weigh it." I stood up and told the village head.