Chapter 21: The Cursed Piano (1/2)

Lao Yao took his time doing what I asked him to do, eventually completing it when it was already noon. When Dali and I walked out of his room, we nearly collapsed with exhaustion. I’d much rather examine a corpse that had been rotting for two months than endure Lao Yao’s obscene verbal and physical teasing.

Then, I received a call from Huang Xiaotao, who invited us to lunch. So, we walked to the front gate of the college where we found Huang Xiaotao leaning against a black BMW sedan. This combination of a stunning woman and equally beautiful car turned quite a few heads, but it seemed that Huang Xiaotao was used to being stared at and took no notice of it.

“Xiaotao-jiejie,” said Dali with a saccharine tone, “is this beauty your car?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll take both of you out sometime. Come on, let’s find a good place to eat! My treat!”

We finally settled on a grilled seafood restaurant. Dali and I ordered a huge pile of food that filled the whole table: grilled fish, fried shrimp, and some drinks too. Dali and I had been busy for the whole day, so we were both starving. The second we sat down with our food, our chopsticks flew and we wolfed down the food like there was no tomorrow.

Huang Xiaotao, on the other hand, almost didn’t touch any food. She merely drank her glass of milkshake and smiled at us. I noticed and suddenly felt terribly self-conscious.

“You must be thinking that we’re eating like pigs, aren’t you?” I asked.

“No, that’s not it,” she said. “I’m just a little envious of how big both of your appetites are, and how much joy good food brings you. We police officers lead hectic and stressful lives, which quite often causes the loss of appetite and insomnia.”

“Why would you choose to be a policewoman if it makes your life so difficult, Xiaotao-jiejie?” asked Dali. “You look like you come from a rich family, so it can’t be money, can it?”

“You don’t make a lot of money as a police officer,” said Huang Xiaotao. “But I’ve always dreamed of becoming a policewoman ever since I was a little girl. You might not believe it, but I used to be a shy, introverted kid. It’s only when I get to wear this uniform that I become much more self-assured and confident.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed it!” I said.

“Well, I guess the work we do can change us drastically,” said Huang Xiaotao. “Enough about me. I just visited the plastic surgery clinic you mentioned, and would you know it, you were right again! Deng Chao did indeed undergo a plastic surgery there.”

“Did it have something to do with his hands?” I asked.

“Bingo!”

“Who did what now?” asked the perplexed Dali. “I don’t follow you guys at all!”

I then roughly explained the whole situation to him, especially about how the biggest question that I puzzled over, namely the feminine-looking handprints that appeared on both of the corpses, had now been answered, because it was clear now that those handprints belonged to Deng Chao. His roommate even said that he’d been wearing gloves all the time lately, most likely to hide the fact that he’d had surgeries done to change the way his hands looked.

“But I’ve never heard of hand surgeries before,” said Dali. “Is that even possible? Aren’t the hands of a man completely different from that of a woman?”

“That’s not always the case,” I said. “A man’s hand can be small, and a woman’s hand can be big. I’ve seen a picture of Deng Chao, and I noticed that the bone structure of his hands aren’t that big at all. With plastic surgery, he could remove the fatty tissues in his hands and cut off parts of his hand muscles. Then he could easily be left with slender feminine hands.”

“That’s right,” said Huang Xiaotao, raising her fair and delicate hand in front of us. “Look, my fingers are only slightly thinner than both of yours, and they’re not shorter than yours at all.”

“Holy shit, that’s awesome!” exclaimed Dali. “I’ve only ever heard of damaging your fingertips to prevent leaving fingerprints, but who knew you could just change the shape of your hands with surgery? Where do you reckon he got the money to do it anyway?”

“Probably the scholarship he won,” I said. “His roommate did say that he received about twenty thousand yuan of scholarship money recently. If he didn’t use this money to pay for college tuition, that’s more than enough for a surgery.”

“Life is so unfair,” said Dali, bowing his head so low it almost went into his bowl. “Vicious people like this murderer gets to have scholarship money, while good old me never sees a dime.”

Dali’s lamentations cracked me up. It’d be interesting to see how scholarships awarded based on one’s kindness would be like.