Chapter 84: Three Missing Persons (1/2)

Xiaotao smiled. “That’s a good idea. Then let’s start looking for prey!”

So we quickly searched through the list according to this criteria. Anyone older than 35 or younger than 15 were excluded straight away, along with those who were suffering from a disease or were disabled. Those who were either too thin or obese were ruled out as well.

Thinking like the murderer, seeing people as if they were pork belly in the supermarket made me shudder. But we had to do whatever it took to capture this monster as soon as possible!

We threw the excluded names to the left side of the table, and the rest were placed on the right side. Gradually, the pile on the left side grew bigger and bigger, while the pile on the right became smaller and smaller, until in the end, only eight people remained.

“These eight people may be potential victims,” Xiaotao remarked.

“Wait, let me see.”

I looked through the information of these individuals carefully and picked out one of them.

“This person has a history of mental illness and has stayed in a mental hospital for a while. He’s ruled out.”

“Why?”

“Psychiatric patients have to ingest a lot of antidepressants; and with the long-term lack of exercise, the meat quality will be very poor.”

When she heard what I said, I noticed that Xiaotao’s cheeks twitched slightly.

“This person has bad teeth, which means that she must not have been eating well. Judging by her pallor, she looks too yellow and thin; she must’ve suffered from malnutrition for a period of time.”

“This person has had plastic surgery done before. It looks like she has fillers and hyaluronic acid injections too. That must affect the way her meat tastes.”

“This person works as a plumber. The smell of sewers must permeate through his body. His meat should be too stinky. He’s ruled out too.”

I had now ruled out four.

“It’s giving me the creeps listening to you talk,” Xiaotao grumbled. “It really feels like you are that sociopath who makes human meat buns in that movie.”

“If I were a cannibalistic sociopath, the first I’d want to eat would be…” I paused mid-sentence and glanced at Xiaotao, not daring to say anything more.

“Who is it? Who do you want to eat first?” Xiaotao demanded.

“Never mind, let’s not talk about this anymore.”

“Humph!”

At this moment, I noticed the fifth file in my hand. The name of the missing person was Ma Yaozu. He used to work in a slaughterhouse. He was born in a small village near Nanjiang City and he was 32 years old.

Xiaotao glanced over the file and said, “Judging by the pallor of his skin and how thin he is, the sociopath probably thinks he’s not tasty enough. I think he should be ruled out.”

She was about to take the file away from me, but I shook my head and stopped her. “Wait! I have a hunch that this person might be our suspect! Ma Jinhuo!”

“What?” Xiaotao was skeptical. “But his workplace is different here. Not to mention the different name.”

“It’s not so uncommon for people who work in the abattoir to have worked at other slaughterhouses too. Many people from rural villages also have different names that they use for formal occasions. You should ask the staff at the abattoir to see if Ma Jinhuo’s official name is Ma Yaozu.”

“Right!”

As for the remaining three people, one of them was a female worker in a textile factory. All of her characteristics matched that of the dead body perfectly. It could be safely concluded that they were the same person.

The other two were an employee of a supermarket, aged 24, and a worker in a car wash, aged 26. They were both males.

“These two people may be the next victims,” I deduced, then paused. “No, maybe they have already been killed...”

“Let’s go to their place and check it out in case we can discover some clues,” Xiaotao suggested.

“Great idea!”

Xiaotao made a call to investigate Ma Jinhuo’s official name, and then we went to the parking lot and got into the car. We first rushed to the supermarket where one of the two missing people worked and questioned the manager. We found out that his name was Xiaozhang. He was an employee there but had not turned up at work suddenly one and a half months ago. He tried to contact Xiaozhang but the calls didn’t get through, so he reported him as missing after forty-eight hours.