Blutiger Handabdruck - Kapitel 14
Hawke silently watched him leave, his expression no longer calm and gentle as usual, a shadow unconsciously settling between his brows. He pulled out a drawer, took out a photograph, and examined it closely. In the photograph, Fang Li's face was like a white magnolia, and his dark eyes gazed calmly into the distance, neither joyful nor sorrowful.
Leaving Hawke's office, Xu Haicheng went straight to the psychiatric ward in the backyard. The nurse on duty was a chubby little nurse who stared wide-eyed at the identification he showed, looking puzzled.
Were you on duty yesterday?
"I also worked the day shift yesterday."
Has anyone come to visit Ma Junnan?
The plump nurse said definitively, "Yes."
"What kind of person is he?"
The plump nurse thought for a moment and said, "It was a young man, wearing a hat, and he looked quite ordinary." As she spoke, she flipped through the visitation register, pointing to the only name on the page for November 3rd, and said, "That's the man. Ma Junnan was watching TV in the activity room at the time, and he went in and sat with him for a while before leaving."
Xu Haicheng looked at the record: Visitor: Lin Junfeng, Visitor: Ma Junnan, Relationship: Teacher-Student, Time: 3:00 PM to 3:30 PM. He flipped to the previous pages of the visitation record, one page per day. The number of visitors each day was pitifully small. No wonder the plump nurse could remember so clearly; many patients stayed for years, long forgotten or abandoned by their families and friends. He sighed sympathetically, just about to see who was visiting Ma Junnan, when he suddenly heard a series of curses coming from the corridor, the language extremely vile. Then came a loud wail, the voice sounding quite old, yet crying like a child.
Xu Haicheng peeked out and saw a tall, middle-aged nurse emerge from the activity room, dragging an elderly man with white hair like a chick. She was still cursing, "Don't cry! I told you not to wet your pants, all day long..." Seeing the old man still crying, she made a move to hit him, but upon seeing Xu Haicheng standing in front of the duty room, she quickly withdrew and pulled the old man into a room. But the cursing and crying continued.
This scene made Xu Haicheng feel a tightness in his chest, especially seeing the plump nurse sitting in the duty room with an unchanging expression, clearly used to it. He quickly flipped through the registration book; most of the visitors to Ma Junnan were his students and his wife, Wang Xiaofen. He put down the visitation book, thanked the plump nurse, and hurriedly left.
As he walked out of the mental health center, the sounds of cursing and crying still echoed in his ears. He felt extremely depressed and lit a cigarette. He knew mental hospitals weren't good places; dealing with mentally unstable patients year-round would wear down even the best character, and nurses were human too. But witnessing and hearing it firsthand still made him feel indescribably distressed.
After calming myself down, I made a phone call to the Mental Health Branch of Jingyun City People's Hospital.
Fang Li remembered when they found the mummified corpse in Zhong Dongqiao's wall. He mentioned that the corpse was holding a protective incantation, a form of witchcraft. He hadn't said anything at the time, but he was skeptical. Furthermore, Fang Li himself had been harmed by the corpse poison and nearly went insane, making him even more convinced that Lu Minghua's mental breakdown was due to inhaling too much of the poison. Now, thinking back, he realized he'd overlooked something: Zhong Dongqiao had inhaled more corpse poison than anyone else, so why was he unharmed? Was Lu Minghua's madness caused by the corpse poison, witchcraft, or both?
The female nurse who answered the phone at the switchboard of the Mental Health Division of the People's Hospital of Seongyun City had a soft and pleasant voice, but when he asked for Dr. Park Jin-hwa, she hesitated and said that he was not there.
Xu Haicheng revealed his identity and said that he knew about Lu Minghua's affairs.
Upon hearing the name Lu Minghua, the young girl visibly paused, clearly indicating that the nurses at Jingyun City Mental Hospital were terrified of her.
The nurse, seeing that the caller ID showed a number from Nampo City, believed him almost completely. She quietly explained that because Dai's family had caused so much trouble, Dr. Park and the hospital director had been verbally abused several times, and they were terrified. Therefore, they always said they weren't available when people tried to reach them. She then asked if she wanted to be transferred to Dr. Park's office.
Xu Haicheng wasn't in a hurry. Based on his years of experience in handling cases, he knew that the more junior the staff, the more useful the clues they could provide.
"I heard from Dr. Park that you were all terrified."
"A little." The young nurse was tight-lipped and cautious in her speech.
"Were you on the night shift that day?"
Section 29: Chapter Five, Part Two of the Abiding Calamity (6)
"No, I'm on the early shift." The nurse's tone held a hint of relief.
Did the night shift nurses notice anything strange that night?
The young nurse hesitated, but Xu Haicheng's familiarity with the situation convinced her that Dr. Park had indeed described it in detail, as he had said. So she said, "Lu Minghua is always quiet, so her ward area is relatively spacious. The doctors and nurses on duty are quite far apart. The patient in the room next to her once shouted 'Ghost! Ghost!' in the middle of the night, but patients often shout randomly, so no one took it seriously. Later, when asked, he said he saw a ghostly figure flash past the window. His room is on the first floor, where there are many trees, so everyone guessed it was just the trees shaking and he was seeing things."
"How is Nurse Dai doing now?"
The nurse gasped for breath again, and after a long pause, said, "This isn't good. He's a complete carbon copy of Lu Minghua."
Recalling what had just happened, Xu Haicheng asked, "What do you think of Nurse Dai as a person?"
The young nurse hesitated, "What do you mean?"
"What I mean is, how do you think she does her job? And how does she treat her patients?"
"It's alright," the nurse said, sounding rather reluctant.
Xu Haicheng understood immediately; Xiao Dai was probably another middle-aged nurse he had just seen. "Could you please help me pick up Dr. Park?"
The phone rang a few times, and someone answered after a moment. It was Dr. Park's voice. "Captain Xu, did you need something?"
"Dr. Park, how's Nurse Dai doing these past few days?"
Dr. Park sighed and said, "What else can we do? No nurses in the hospital dare to take care of her; it's so pitiful."
"Dr. Park, do you know what kind of people usually visit Lu Minghua?"
"Her parents usually come once a month. When her younger brother was in high school, they came once a week, but after he went to university, they came every two days during winter and summer vacations. I heard about six months ago that her brother also had an accident, so I haven't seen him since."
"Dr. Park, could you please check who visited Lu Minghua the day before her recovery?"
"good."
Xu Haicheng heard Dr. Park talking to someone over the phone. After a while, he said, "Two people came that day, but only one of them was registered. He was called Lin Junfeng and said he was her relative..." The person who received the two was Nurse Xiao Dai, so no one remembered what the other looked like. He was probably too ordinary.
It's Lin Junfeng again. What role did he play in these two sudden recoveries?
Note ○4: Excerpted from badcamel's "Strange Tales of Tianjin Criminal Police"
Note 5: A family was murdered in the middle of the night, and the young child next door dreamed of the entire murder. Some believe the child witnessed it and mistook it for a dream. Others say it was because the child received the brainwaves emitted by the neighbor before their death. ESP (Spiritual Perception or Sixth Sense) research indicates that the younger the child, the closer their brainwave frequency is to 7.5 MHz, meaning they resonate with the vibrations of the universe and are more likely to experience resonance.
Section 30: Chapter Six, Part Three of the Abiding Calamity (1)
Chapter Six: The Third Stage of the Calamity
I don't know what it is, I only know that it comes from the darkness and goes back to the darkness, covered in blood...
(Excerpt from "Police Detective's Diary")
After clarifying the details of Lu Minghua's sudden recovery, Xu Haicheng vaguely made a judgment: both were sudden recoveries, and while Ma Junnan seemed different from Lu Minghua, they were all closely related to the same person, Lin Junfeng. He pondered this as he drove towards Nanpu University.
Ma Junnan's home is in the faculty residential area of the university. According to Hawke, after being rescued, he was emotionally unstable and afraid of the dark. He was initially treated at the Affiliated Hospital of Nanpu University, and was only transferred to the Nanpu City Psychological Rehabilitation Center a month ago.