Born Criminal (Part 1)
Twelve years ago, I was thirty-four and riding high in the city homicide squad.
I was on track for a promotion to deputy captain when Captain Trent suddenly brought in a police academy intern.
The young man's name was Ryan Yang. Among the chain-smoking veterans, he kept his head down, spoke little, and looked like a student who'd wandered into the wrong party.
The case that made his name—Trent and I were the only ones who watched it unfold from beginning to end.
When it closed, Trent called him into his office for a three-hour conversation.
Back then, I called him Young Yang.
Now, I call him Captain.
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The case was bizarre.
On the night of March 8th, a storm with hail lashed the northern suburbs.
By 9 AM the next morning, the squad had received a call: an unidentified female body had been found in the northern outskirts, in a gruesome state. The caller was nearly scared out of his mind.
The body was hidden in a patch of low trees, about twenty meters from a dirt road. The torrential rain had collapsed a small hillside, revealing the toe of a red shoe—how the passerby had spotted it.
But the downpour had also destroyed trace evidence on the body. The muddy road made footprint recovery impossible. Collectible clues were extremely limited.
The woman wore a maternity winter coat, her clothes soaked in blood. She lay spread-eagle on the ground, with visible ligature marks on her neck.
Captain Trent said, "Pardon me," and pulled back the hem of her coat. That's when we saw it—her abdomen had been sliced open with a sharp blade, and the fetus was missing.
Seeing this horror, even in early spring, I broke into a cold sweat.
Young Yang, however, was calmer than expected.
No murder weapon was found at the scene, and no information could confirm the victim's identity.
Twelve years ago, technology wasn't what it is now. Fingerprint and DNA databases and the surveillance network were underdeveloped. We had to use old-school methods—identifying body features and cross-referencing missing persons reports.
The victim appeared to be around thirty, with fair skin—clearly an indoor worker. In her coat pocket was a receipt so water-damaged we could barely make out two items: medicated patches, six per box, and a bottle of polyvinyl alcohol eye drops, half-used.
This was painfully little to go on.
Young Yang, however, offered a suggestion: "Hal, could she be an accountant?"
That threw me.
He pointed to the eye drops. "Polyvinyl alcohol is an artificial tear, typically used for dry eyes. Medicated patches reduce swelling and promote circulation, but pregnant women shouldn't apply them to the waist or abdomen. If she was using them on herself, she'd only put them on her hands, shoulders, or neck. At the scene, I noticed a faint scent of medicated oil on her right hand and wrist."
Young Yang concluded that given the victim's age and constellation of symptoms—dry eyes, neck pain, and tendinitis—there was a good chance she was an accountant.
"Of course," he added, "it's just a hypothesis."
It was a bold hypothesis. The symptoms couldn't be confirmed, and using them to narrow down the victim's identity risked derailing the investigation.
I suspected he'd noticed other things he wasn't sharing, keeping his options open.
Four days later, an elderly woman reported that she couldn't reach her daughter-in-law. The missing woman was named Mia, twenty-eight years old, thirty-six weeks pregnant.
Her occupation: accountant at a real estate conglomerate.
Almost simultaneously, an abandoned premature infant was found three kilometers from the crime scene.
The baby was premature, small and gaunt, wrapped in a cotton-linen sheet, but clean.
DNA confirmed the infant was the fetus taken from Mia's body.
When the elderly woman came to identify the body, Mia's husband had just returned from out of town. He was a construction foreman working in a neighboring county—he'd only seen his wife twice since the Spring Festival.
Originally, the old woman had planned to move in after the holiday to care for her pregnant daughter-in-law, but her own husband had injured his back. By the time she sorted things out, Mia was already unreachable.
Mia's husband was eight years older than her, with a weathered face and calloused, scarred hands. He covered his face, tears seeping through his fingers.
"What happened? She was fine during the New Year. I just went away for work, and now she's gone? My baby's gone too... what happened?"
What happened, indeed.
The question hung heavy over everyone.
The autopsy report showed Mia died between 8 PM and 10 PM on March 8th. Her upper arms bore large bruises. She'd taken sleeping pills before death, and the cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation.
The weapon wasn't a rope or belt—it was softer, like a scarf or a long towel.
Mia's stomach contained undigested strawberries. Young Yang and I canvassed the area and, six kilometers from the crime scene, found a newly opened strawberry farm. The owner confirmed that Mia had visited with two other people in a private car on the day of the murder.
Captain Trent rapped the board, which was covered in sticky notes: "These two people must be Mia's friends. Why did they leave her alone in the suburbs? Did something happen that made her ask to be let out? Or did they murder her together?"
Regardless of who the killer was, the first priority was to find those two people.
Mia's phone was missing, and her husband, busy with construction work, wasn't familiar with her social circle. We could only start from the real estate conglomerate, screening the men and women closest to her.
Soon, the target locked onto a young married couple.
The man was named Leo, thirty-one, a property consultant who worked in a different project department at the same company as Mia. Due to their work, they had frequent contact.
According to colleagues, Leo was a caring man—he'd even given Mia a bottle of eye drops when he learned about her dry eyes.
The woman was named Tina, twenty-eight, currently unemployed and staying at home.
Leo came from a humble background; Tina was from a well-educated family. They attended the same school—Leo was two grades ahead, a former student council vice chairman popular with girls. Tina, raised in comfort, was naive and completely infatuated with Leo.
When Young Yang and I visited their home, only Leo was there.
He was limping slightly, his right hand wrapped in gauze, and he was cooking. When he opened the door, he was holding a gleaming cleaver that nearly made me flinch.
He let us in, then returned to the kitchen and pulled the door shut.
I didn't bother with pleasantries and asked directly about his whereabouts on March 8th.
Leo was good-looking, and perhaps it came with the job—his smile was warm and practiced. "It was Women's Day, so I took Tina and Mia to the strawberry farm. We left around one, but traffic was terrible and we didn't arrive until after three. We stayed until sunset."
I asked, "And you all came back to the city together?"
Leo shook his head. "Mia separated from us. We were going to eat at a farm restaurant, but I got a call about overtime—a big contract, the client needed materials ASAP. Mia didn't want to hold me up, so she said she'd hail a cab and let Tina and me go ahead."
I frowned. "Mia was pregnant. You left her alone in the suburbs?"
Leo's smile grew awkward. "I know it sounds bad, but Mia's home and my project are in opposite directions, and I couldn't take her. Besides, where she got out wasn't far from a main road—catching a ride wasn't hard. I was in a rush, so I didn't press the issue."
After dropping Mia off, Leo took Tina back into the city, where she went home on her own. He drove to his project site and worked until nearly ten. Since he might have been drinking with clients, he took a cab to the nightclub instead of driving, partied until dawn, checked into a hotel to avoid waking Tina, and drove home the next morning.
"Who knew Tina would think I was out carousing," Leo said, his face a picture of misery. "There were hostesses that night, but I swear nothing happened—just some perfume on my clothes. Tina wouldn't let it go, we had a huge fight, and she packed her bags and moved back to her parents'. I still haven't been able to win her back."
The conversation seemed to have hit a dead end.
Then Young Yang spoke up: "Mr. Lee, you're good with flowers?"
Both Leo and I were startled.
Leo recovered faster, glancing at the potted plants by the coffee table and claiming it was just a hobby.
From the moment I walked in, I'd noticed the plants—several pots and two empty ones beside the coffee table. One clivia was especially striking, with thick, glossy leaves topped by a vibrant red bud. The soil was fresh and damp, clearly just repotted.
Young Yang nodded, his meaning unclear. "Clivia are hard to bloom. This one has such a beautiful bud—you must have tended it carefully for years."
Young Yang's comment seemed to come out of nowhere. I was about to redirect the conversation when he added:
"For something so well-tended, you should know you don't repot during the bud stage."
That single sentence sent an instinctive shiver down my spine.
I immediately remembered that Mia's husband had mentioned Mia had a silk scarf—warm in winter, cool in summer, inexpensive, and she loved wearing it. After her death, the scarf was nowhere to be found.
Without waiting for Leo's reaction, I reached into the soil of the clivia pot and pulled out a clump of unburnt fiber!
At the same time, Young Yang headed for the kitchen.
Leo shot up from the sofa, positioning himself between Young Yang and the kitchen door, insisting the exhaust fan was broken and the kitchen was full of grease. There was no way he was letting anyone inside.
I put on gloves and told Young Yang to push through.
Leo was no match for a police academy graduate—within seconds, Young Yang had him pinned back onto the sofa. I pointed at him, growling "Behave," and he flinched.
A few minutes later, Young Yang emerged from the kitchen with a full set of knives.
They were well-maintained, gleaming—except for one missing boning knife.
Young Yang glanced at me. I looked at Leo, whose face had gone ashen. He didn't say a word.