Seeing Crime Scenes in My Sleep

Chapter 13: Chapter 13: Dismemberment? Chopped to Pieces?

After a chase lasting over ten minutes, the man was caught by Zhou Tiancheng’s men.

Jiang Li ran over, panting, and pointed at the man. "The tattoo on his hand," she said, "it’s him. The man from that night."

"Bullshit! It’s not like I’m the only one with a damn tattoo!"

Jiang Li looked at the man, bent down, and shoved his sleeve up. A dense web of scratch marks was revealed.

The man’s eyes widened in shock. He stared at the unfamiliar woman before him. ’I don’t know her at all... How could she know everything so clearly?’

Back at the police station, Jiang Li couldn’t help but smile. ’If the last two cases were anything to go by,’ she thought, ’I’ll finally be able to get a good night’s sleep once this is over.’

"Captain Zhou, his name is Du Mingde. He’s thirty-four and had been staying in room 302 for a month. On the night of the eighth, Du Mingde met up with his online girlfriend, Ms. Liu, in person for the first time. He tried to force himself on her, but Ms. Liu refused. A struggle broke out, and he accidentally killed her.

After killing Ms. Liu, he dismembered the body, packed it into a suitcase, checked out of the hotel, and dumped it.

Our investigation shows that besides Ms. Liu, Du Mingde had targeted four or five other women online, luring them to hotels to blackmail and extort them."

"Is the victim in the dismemberment case Ms. Liu?" Zhou Tiancheng asked the officer.

"We haven’t heard back from Forensic Doctor Qin yet, but the fingernail fragment you brought back definitely belongs to Ms. Liu."

Zhou Tiancheng nodded, his gaze falling on the clues spread across the table. His thoughts were a tangled mess.

’Then what about Xu Wan?’

Zhou Tiancheng turned and noticed Jiang Li had fallen asleep on the sofa. The bowl of porridge on the table next to her was only half-finished.

Zhou Tiancheng grabbed a nearby blanket and draped it over her. He then went out to find Ji Qinghe and the others for an update.

Lu Xingye was buried under a pile of statements, surveillance footage playing on a loop before him. He crossed off some files and set the questionable ones aside.

Zhou Tiancheng found Fan Zhenkai and updated him on the progress. If the DNA results from Qin Shu’s lab matched, the case would be all but solved.

Fan Zhenkai was stunned. "You... you already caught him?"

"Yeah. This is Du Mingde’s confession." Zhou Tiancheng handed him the document.

Fan Zhenkai took the papers and read the confession carefully. It all lined up.

Now, all they had to do was wait for word from Qin Shu.

"Hey, Tiancheng, what’s Jiang Li’s story? Could you ask her if she’d be interested in joining the detective squad?" Fan Zhenkai said, putting down the papers and looking at Zhou Tiancheng.

Zhou Tiancheng shot him a look. "Why are you asking me? Haven’t you noticed how uncomfortable Jiang Li is around men?"

The corner of Fan Zhenkai’s mouth twitched. He glanced over at his own team and realized that, indeed, there wasn’t a single woman on it.

"Ah, that’s not a big deal! If Jiang Li is willing, we can have Officer Ji join the detective squad too."

Zhou Tiancheng immediately glared at him. "In your dreams."

With Du Mingde’s arrest, the tense atmosphere in the station instantly eased.

Jiang Li hadn’t been asleep for long when large beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. Her brow was deeply furrowed in pain.

In a vast operating room, she watched her own hand, clad in a rubber glove, hold a high-precision scalpel. It gently sliced open a woman’s abdomen, then reached inside and began pulling out the organs, one by one.

The tip of the scalpel paused as it touched the heart, then punctured it.

SQUISH!

Fear made Jiang Li’s heart race, but she couldn’t close her eyes. She was forced to watch the entire scene unfold.

She hollowed out the cavity, then took out a larger knife and began to cut... slice after slice...

The warmth of the flesh beneath her hands told her the person wasn’t completely dead yet.

Several times, Jiang Li felt herself about to pass out, only to be yanked back to consciousness.

Time moved so slowly that she was forced to watch as the body was reduced to a mere frame, then chopped into pieces and tossed aside.

Jiang Li clenched her jaw, fixated on the scene, completely oblivious to the shouting in the world outside her dream.

"Jiang Li! Jiang Li, wake up! Wake up!"

Ji Qinghe gently patted Jiang Li’s deathly pale cheeks. Her own palm was slick with sweat.

She had just come to check on Jiang Li. The moment she entered, she saw Jiang Li thrashing on the sofa, muttering "no, no." When she realized something was seriously wrong, she started yelling for help.

But no matter how loudly she yelled, Jiang Li wouldn’t wake up.

Qin Shu, who had rushed over at the commotion, took one look at the scene. "Cardiac arrest! Get her to the hospital, now!"

Tossing her gloves aside, Qin Shu pushed Ji Qinghe out of the way and immediately began performing emergency resuscitation on Jiang Li.

Ji Qinghe’s mind went blank for a second before she snapped back to reality and hurriedly arranged for a car to take Jiang Li to the hospital.

In the hospital, Zhao Qinghe’s steps faltered as he saw Jiang Li being rushed past him on a gurney.

"Jiang Li?" Zhang Haosheng quickly turned and followed them.

’Of all his psychiatric patients, Jiang Li was the most unique. She looked perfectly normal, but the things she said could send a chill down his spine.’

’He’d had patients who earnestly told him ghost stories, but she was the first to so matter-of-factly claim to be a murderer.’

Zhao Qinghe was about to follow them when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out, glanced at the screen, and his expression darkened before he quickly walked away.

Zhang Haosheng watched as Jiang Li was wheeled into the emergency room, and he stopped in his tracks.

"Hello, Officer. Excuse me, what’s Jiang Li’s condition?" Zhang Haosheng asked, looking at Ji Qinghe who was standing nearby.

"And you are?" Ji Qinghe asked, looking at the man who had approached her.

"Just an unforeseen complication," Qin Shu said, her hands in her pockets and her expression unreadable as she looked at Zhang Haosheng.

Zhang Haosheng turned to see Qin Shu, and his eyes lit up. "Oh! I used to be Jiang Li’s psychiatrist."

Zhang Haosheng looked at Qin Shu. "Hello. Are you a doctor at this hospital too? What’s your department? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before."

Qin Shu straightened her clothes. "Forensics."

The hand Zhang Haosheng had extended instantly retracted. "Heh heh... Is that so? That’s, uh, that’s impressive."

Ji Qinghe looked at Zhang Haosheng. "You were Jiang Li’s psychiatrist? Can you tell me why she was seeing you?"

"Of course, of course." Zhang Haosheng nodded repeatedly at Ji Qinghe.

"She came to see me claiming she was a murderer. When I asked her where she had killed someone, she said it was in her dreams. My initial diagnosis was schizophrenia.

She spent a whole afternoon in my office that day, and she seemed fine otherwise. I was more inclined to believe she was under a lot of stress and that the nightmares were causing delusions.

I ran into her at the hospital a while back, and she told me she was feeling better. What happened now?"

Zhang Haosheng said, glancing toward the emergency room.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Doctor Zhang," Ji Qinghe said with a smile. She had no obligation to answer his last question.

’It’s for Jiang Li’s safety. The fewer people who know, the better.’

Zhang Haosheng scratched his head awkwardly.

When Jiang Li woke up again, she stared at the white ceiling, disoriented for a moment.

’Where am I?’

Jiang Li started to move, but she froze when she saw Zhao Qinghe walk in from outside. Her body began to tremble uncontrollably with fear.