Chapter 3: Chapter One — The Dizzying Locked Room

Chapter One — The Dizzying Locked Room

To explain this string of strange events, I think the trail should be traced back to March 25, 2000. At 6:47 that morning the Sanmin Precinct in Kaohsiung received a peculiar report: a resident within its jurisdiction called to say that a mousetrap he had set in his living room the night before had caught a dark-red rat, and he wanted the police to come handle it.

The officer who took that call was Wu Jianxiang. He was on duty that night; he was twenty-eight then. Also on watch with him was his senior, Fang Liwei.

“Sounds like the caller made a bigger deal of it than necessary,”
Liwei said after Wu hung up, replaying the recorded call twice. “Still… It’s a little odd.”

“It’s been unnervingly quiet all night — not like the Kaohsiung everyone knows,”
Wu said. “Anyway, there’s nothing going on at the station. I’ll go take a look.”

Liwei shrugged without much interest. “Aren’t you going to catch up on sleep?”

“You cover my shift,”
Wu replied.

He rose as he spoke, grabbed the key ring on his desk and headed for the precinct door. He didn’t turn back, only raised a hand in farewell to Liwei.

There was a reason Wu was unusually intrigued by this odd phone call. Beyond the strange content, he hadn’t merely listened to a muffled recording like Liwei had — he had spoken directly with the caller.

The woman’s voice had been steeped in terror; that fear was something a tape could never fully convey. Like an iceberg adrift in the Arctic, so much danger lay hidden beneath the surface. Though it was intuition, Wu’s sixth sense had been uncannily reliable since childhood.

He remembered once in second grade, during a school outing to the hills, he had stepped out of the shade to warm himself and within a minute a large branch crashed down where he had been sitting, crushing three children; the girl who suffered the worst injury had been sitting right next to him. Another time, after graduating middle school, his family’s first overseas trip was aborted when he suddenly felt freezing cold in the airport and passed out; later he learned the plane they were meant to board had been hijacked. Aside from those dramatic incidents, he couldn’t always tell whether sudden chill was a real warning; he’d had other episodes that led to nothing.

But when the call came, Wu felt that same intense shiver — different from the ordinary cold — a violent tremor that almost buckled him as he reached for the keys.

Was it telling him, “If you stay at the station you’ll be in danger,” or warning, “Keep away from that apartment”?

Lost in thought, he was about to press the buzzer for Room 301 when the door opened and a woman of about fifty stood before him.

“I’ve been waiting for you,”
she said. “Officer.”

Her sudden appearance startled him: she had been watching the peephole, expecting him. The woman, Mrs. Ge by surname, was small and frail with wide, dark, frightened eyes — a look that made Wu think immediately of the rat she’d described. Without greeting him, she hurriedly dragged him into the room, not allowing him the chance to offer formalities.

“Officer,”
she said, trembling, “I’ve been looking out the window at the street. You coming here is such a relief…”

“Where’s the rat?”
he asked.

“Here! Here! Here!”
she cried, frantic.

Wu followed her pointing finger and froze. In the middle of the living room, a rat more than twice the size of an ordinary garbage-scavenging house mouse — perhaps the size of an overfed kitten — was struggling to free itself from a small trap. Its tail and left hind leg stuck outside the cage, its body twisted back against the spring. Its injured left foot scraped weakly at the floor; its long tail whipped like a scourge across the beige tiles, an eye-catching sight.

The cage creaked as it struggled; the rim was warped as if the beast were about to break free. Worse — the rat’s fur seemed smeared with a dark, oily film, and where the fur had fallen away, pink, ulcerated skin showed signs of disease.

When the giant rat noticed two strangers staring at it, its struggles intensified and it hissed with fierce, hostile eyes.

Glancing at Mrs. Ge, Wu imagined how she might react if that beast broke free.

“I smell a strong stench of rot,”
she said. “Really! I used to be a nurse for years — the smell of a decomposing corpse never leaves you. When I was a nurse we had a horror: a terminal patient escaped the ward, the hospital called the family, but no one could find him… And then his body turned up in the morgue. I was the one who found him. Because the morgue isn’t used often, he’d hidden there and died. When I found him a week later, the corpse had completely decomposed. You can’t imagine how terrible it smelled — even deodorizer couldn’t get rid of it! This rat must have fed on a corpse!”

Could there be a body hidden in her apartment? Her husband was dead; both her sons lived elsewhere. She was alone in this old building. “You must find that body,” she pleaded. “If there’s a corpse in my house I can’t sleep. If you don’t find it I’ll go mad — please, you must help me…”

Mrs. Ge’s hysteria rose. Wu did not want to inhale deeply to check the air — and he also understood why younger people might avoid living with her. Besides, the stench of decayed human flesh and rotten animal carcass can be indistinguishable; much of what she claimed could be psychosomatic.

“Mrs. Ge,”
Wu said, forcing calm, “this kind of call is usually handled by the fire department.”

“What did you say? What did you say?”

“But please step into the corridor for a moment. I’ll take care of the rat.”
He asked, “Do you have a black trash bag?”

She handed him one. Wu closed the door and prepared to deal with the rat alone. He put on gloves and approached the trap.

The rat’s struggles became frantic when he neared. Its pus-glazed snout bared sharp yellow incisors and squealed. Wu lifted the trap by its handle, feeling its weight and the animal’s desperate thrashing. He intended to drown the creature in the bathtub, but before he could, the rat managed to buck: the right hind leg slipped free, grinding metal against metal, and the creature’s bulk flailed, its hind legs clamping onto Wu’s trousers, claws snagging his cuff.

Startled, Wu reflexively drew his baton from his belt and struck the rat’s tail. There was a sickening crack as pelvic bone gave way.

As the rat squealed, its upper body still thrashing, Wu hurled the trap into the tub and ran the water until it overflowed. The animal paddled, then stilled; bubbles rose faintly, its motions ceased, its glossy black eyes went vacant.

He sat on the tub edge for a long time, breathing until his heartbeat slowed, and then noticed a bucket beside the toilet — he chastised himself for not using it earlier. He could not let Mrs. Ge bathe in the tub that had held the drowned rat; she would never bear it. So he decided not to tell her exactly how he had dealt with it.

At last, the problem seemed solved. He lifted the trap, bagged the wet corpse into the black bag; the once-menacing eyes were now empty, the red tongue protruded, the limp body dripped water. The rustling of the swollen plastic bag gave the illusion of movement.

As he prepared to drain the tub, he noticed a film of liquid floating on the water.

“Is this blood…?”
he muttered.

He remembered the dark sticky film on the rat’s fur, but he was reluctant to reopen the bag and inspect the corpse closely.

“If there’s nothing more, I’ll take my leave,”
he told Mrs. Ge after a long moment. He decided to bring the carcass back to the station and have the forensics team test whether the substance on the fur was human blood, instead of lingering at the apartment and conducting aimless searches.

But Mrs. Ge wouldn’t let him go. “Officer, please, that rat is wrong! I’ve lived here so long and never seen one like it. There must be a corpse in the living room. You must find it!”

Wu paused. “If there’s a body, why do you think it’s in the living room?”

“Because… Because I remember locking the bathroom and the kitchen before bed. I also locked my bedroom door tight. Under those conditions, a rat shouldn’t show up in the living room. Before calling, I looked along the corners and up at the ceiling — no holes. So the rat must have been in the living room last night and I didn’t notice. The sticky stuff on it is recent — someone must have snuck into my house last night, killed someone in the living room, hidden the corpse there, then the rat came to feed on the body!”

Wu was momentarily speechless.

Mrs. Ge continued: “I feel like someone keeps coming in and out of my room. The gas I left off is sometimes on in the morning; lights I shut off are on; faucets and fans are turned; even the door has been opened. No matter how many times I check I can’t stop it. This morning the kitchen counter was wet — but I wiped it clean before bed…”

“Please calm down,”
Wu said, trying to stop her escalating fear. “The living room is sparsely furnished; nothing could hide a body.”

“That stranger who broke in must have taken the body away and left me a huge greedy rat!”
she wailed.

Wu couldn’t dissuade her. He sat her down and promised he would try to help.

“I’ll ask the caretaker for last night’s surveillance tape,”
he said, “and see if anyone broke in.”

They went down to the lobby. When Wu flashed his badge, the half-awake caretaker sprang to life and cooperatively pulled out the playback machine and monitor. Wu fast-forwarded and rewound, scrutinizing hours of footage. Nothing seemed amiss: the corridors showed only familiar residents coming and going, and the third-floor corridor had no recorded entries into Room 301 all night.

So unless someone had descended from outside the third-floor window, the idea that “someone brought a body into Room 301 and took it away” didn’t hold.

How, then, did the rat appear? Back in Room 301, Wu and Mrs. Ge searched the walls and ceiling and checked every door and piece of furniture; they could not find a single bloodstain, let alone a corpse.

It was baffling.

Wu tried to think calmly: perhaps he had missed something. With no other leads, he proposed checking other apartments. But the whole 301 unit felt like a sealed concrete box — Mrs. Ge had locked every external exit before bed, including bedroom windows and a balcony door.

While searching for potential entry points, Wu learned Mrs. Ge had once worked in a hospital emergency ward and morgue; she had always lived with a tightly wound anxiety and suffered chronic insomnia. Only after her children grew up did she sleep more easily, but her husband’s death and her sons’ independence revived her unease. Still, after his own search Wu was increasingly convinced she had not made things up.

He considered what possibilities remained. From the caretaker’s tapes, no one had entered Room 301 that night; the living room had no hole for a rat to enter; Mrs. Ge insisted someone had been entering her apartment. The first and third points contradicted each other, yet her terror suggested she was not lying. The second point — there were no entry holes — seemed incompatible with the rat carcass.

Suddenly, as if struck by lightning, a thought flashed through his mind and the whole solution snapped into place.

“Mrs. Ge,”
Wu said, hearing his own heart thud, “tell me: in this building, is there any resident you haven’t seen around lately?”

Around 11:20 that same morning, a police car screeched to a halt at the intersection of Jianguo and Nantai Roads under a sun that seemed determined to eliminate any remaining cool of spring. Three officers stepped out.

In the back seat sat Senior Detective Gao Qinfo; the driver’s side yielded Wu’s junior, Zheng Shaode. The third was the sleep-deprived officer Fang Liwei.

“Why would Wu have to wake you up?”
Shaode asked. “Looks like this ‘big-rat homicide’ isn’t so simple.”

“Stop joking — the killer in the big-rat case is Wu himself,”
Liwei yawned.

Gao said, “Wu’s instincts are usually right. He called the whole squad for a reason.”

They asked the caretaker and went up to the third floor, where Wu waited at the corridor exit.

“Captain,”
Wu said, “I asked everyone here so we can divide the work and finish quickly.”

“All right,”
Gao nodded. “What’s your plan?”

“First, Shaode, take the rat carcass back to the station and have forensics test whether the stuff on the fur is human blood.”

“What? I have to carry the dead rat in the car? That’s disgusting,”
Shaode complained.

“Liwei, I need your lock-picking skill. Help me open Room 401’s iron door.”

“No problem,”
Liwei replied. “But don’t expect me to break any of my personal speed records when I’m half asleep.”

Liwei was renowned across southern Taiwan as the precinct’s lock-picking ace. For him, an old iron apartment door was child’s play.

“Captain, I’ll explain the case background once we’re ready,”
Wu began.

At that moment Mrs. Ge pushed open the outer door and shouted at him: “What is going on? I told you everything — why won’t you tell me the truth?”

Wu looked troubled. “Because… The truth behind this isn’t pleasant. I’m afraid you won’t take it well.”

“I don’t care! Isn’t the police supposed to protect people? Why be so secretive?”

“Xiao Wu, even if you don’t tell her, she’ll probably hear from someone eventually,”
Gao said. “You called us because it’s serious. Rather than have the press make a mess of it, tell her plainly. You’ll tell me anyway.”

“All right.”
Wu and Captain Gao entered Room 301 with Mrs. Ge; Liwei took his lock tools to the fourth floor. Shaode sulked, carrying the strange black bag downstairs.

Once they’d sat, Wu described the case.

“The sticky liquid on the rat is highly likely to be blood. So there is a good chance a corpse is present in this building.”

“See!”
Mrs. Ge cried. “Where is it?”

“In Room 401,”
Wu said quietly.

“Why?”
she demanded.

Wu composed himself. “Mrs. Ge, I need you to be psychologically prepared and not panic. It’s over now.”

“I know! I know! I know!”

“Mrs. Ge, you are a sleepwalker.”

Her face went white, lips trembling.

“What you said about the gas being on in the morning, lights left on, doors open — those are episodes of sleepwalking. The clinical term is somnambulism; it’s more common in children and women and in those with anxiety. During episodes, sufferers perform daytime activities unconsciously: turn on lights, open doors, walk around, use appliances. What you think is an intruder is actually you — you don’t remember it, so you believe someone else did it.”

“How does that relate to a corpse in Room 401?”
Gao asked when Mrs. Ge went still.

“With somnambulism, the rest of the puzzle falls into place. Mrs. Ge must have opened the kitchen door while sleepwalking, and the rat used that opportunity to slip from the kitchen into the living room.”

At the thought that a huge rat had skirted by her feet while she slept, Mrs. Ge nearly screamed, her teeth clenching.

“Why the kitchen?”
Gao pressed.

“The rat’s only route was the kitchen sink drain. Mrs. Ge said she had scrubbed the sink before bed, but found watermarks in the morning; that may be wet traces left when a rat squeezed through the drainpipe.”

“And because the rat’s appetite is large, its original food source must have been exhausted, driving it to crawl here for bait. The building’s drain system is interconnected, so the rat likely came from another apartment. Which leads to my question: which resident have you not seen around lately?”

Wu explained: Mrs. Ge’s nursing instincts were probably right — the rat had fed on a corpse, which should be in some apartment in the building. A roommate who had been absent recently would fit: either dead or gone. Finding that unit was critical.

“Room 401 fits the ‘missing for a long time’ condition,”
he said.

“Exactly. Before I called you I checked with the caretaker and tried the door to 401, but his backup key wouldn’t open — maybe the tenant changed the lock. So I had Liwei brought to force it.”

“I thought my sleepwalking had gotten better…”
Mrs. Ge said. “I didn’t expect it to come back after thirty years…”

“You knew you had sleepwalked before?”
Wu asked.

“No… Only vague memories. My father said I’d get up and open the refrigerator at night when I was a child. I thought he was scaring me. I didn’t know it was real.”
Her voice broke.

The detectives exchanged looks, unsure what to say. The woman feared she was mentally unwell — yet extreme anxiety is itself a disorder.

“Officer — I must thank you,”
Mrs. Ge said to Wu. “Your deduction is amazing. We’ve only known each other this morning and you solved a lifetime of doubt.”

“It’s… Um…”
Wu began, but the doorbell rang. Liwei returned.

“So?”
Captain Gao asked. “Is there a body in 401?”

Liwei’s face was flat. “Captain, the iron lock turned. But we still couldn’t get in.”

“Why?”

“It looks like someone barricaded the door from the inside with something.”

Under Captain Gao’s direction, the breach team prepared cutting tools and at 1:30 p. M. Began the operation.

They left Mrs. Ge pacified for the moment and retreated to the station to eat and plan the afternoon’s strategy. For some reason, Wu felt no sleepiness after a long morning; Liwei, who hadn’t slept well, refused to join the forced-entry work, saying he only liked to pick locks — not smash doors.

That same tremor — the “shiver” — always electrified him when fatigue crept in. It was both a thrill and an excruciating ache; when it came, he felt alive and torn at once. It had stirred in him that morning when the rat mystery unraveled.

“This case feels like it’s aimed at me,”
he thought. Great detectives often speak of mysterious intuitive guidance at crisis points in a case — a faint inner voice that opens the path when all else fails. He felt that now.

He put on protective gear and told himself: this case is mine.

They had cut a square large enough for a person to crawl through, but behind the iron door stood a heavy metal cabinet, blocking the hole. The cabinet was filled with heavy things and couldn’t be pushed aside, so they set to cutting through the cabinet wall. The chainsaw noise echoed along the corridor; the breach crew rotated to keep up efficiency.

Fortunately the cabinet wall wasn’t thick. In under twenty minutes they made a thirty-centimeter square passage and found it filled with stones.

“What the hell!”
someone swore.

Captain Gao was silent. Wu’s earlier investigation had shown the 401 tenant, Zhong Sizao, had been missing since about six days earlier; given the rat’s evidence of feeding on a corpse, Zhong’s survival looked unlikely. The black bag seen earlier was likely full of those stones.

Why had he sealed himself in?

Zhong had effectively turned 401 into a fortified sealed room — almost a suicidal act. If he intended suicide, why take such extreme measures?

They hauled the stones into the corridor until it looked like a landslide. Exhausted and sweating, the officers were more puzzled than ever. After clearing most of the stones, Wu crawled through the small opening and pried open the cabinet’s inner door. He shone a penlight and shouted back, “All clear! We’ve made a passage!”

The officers cheered. Finally, the sealed fortress had a breach.

“According to forensics’ grouping, enter 401!”
Captain Gao ordered.

Wu crawled out into the pitch dark of the apartment and swept his light around. The room was in chaos: a coffee table and stool toppled to a corner, an audiovisual system in tangled cords lay discarded. The floor plan mirrored Room 301: living room opposite the door, bathroom to the left front, kitchen at the far end; a right turn led down to the master bedroom and storage.

Three officers followed, the air in the closed space thick and stifling.

“Search!”
they called.

They fanned out into each room, tiny beams of orange light flitting like fireflies. One officer ran his hand along the wall to locate the overhead light switch while others checked corners.

Wu hurried to the bedroom and found the door badly battered. The door’s core panel was broken away, hinges twisted; a TV and desk that should have blocked the doorway lay toppled, the tube of the TV smashed as if some tremendous force had burst into the room. It looked as if a small cyclone had raged through.

A cold, clinging smell of decay hung in the air — he knew the body would be here.

At the foot of the bed stood a wardrobe, its door ajar beside a single bed. A pillow had been slashed, its stuffing spilling onto the mattress. A royal-blue sheet was shoved under the bed; a kitchen knife lay nearby. Blood speckled the floor and sheet; the blade and handle were caked with dried blood.

Wu’s heart pounded. He slowly reached to pull the sheet. Under the beam of his flashlight, the bloodstains grew and the metallic stink intensified.

Was Zhong’s body wrapped in the sheet?

As he dragged the sheet out, the expected weight of a corpse did not present itself.

Instead — stuck to the sheet — was a wrist crawling with white maggots.

Wu stifled a cry and forced himself to focus. It was a right wrist, alive with writhing maggots feasting on rotting flesh. The skin sloughed like wet clay from the bones; the phalanges of the index and ring fingers were exposed. It seemed the kitchen knife had severed this hand; the wrist end was too decayed to clearly discern a cut.

Even more horrifying: the sheet’s trailing edge had been caught on the adjacent wardrobe door. As the sheet was pulled, the wardrobe door swung open and a crouched, curled body suddenly sprung out, collapsing atop the head of the bed.

The corpse was swarming with fat maggots. A huge rat poked its head out and nibbled at the remaining decayed flesh, watching the newcomers with no fear. Unlike the rat Wu had drowned that morning, this rodent was larger still and utterly undaunted.

Seeing the decayed body, Wu realized the truth at once: two large rats had been feasting on the corpse; they had eaten most of the flesh and organs, including eyes and brainstem. The smaller rat had been driven out of the bedroom, forced to escape through the drain. In fact, that morning’s rat had probably been at the very limit of what a drainpipe could accommodate; after consuming this corpse, there would be no more food for it.

In other words: the reason the giant rat in front of him stared at Wu without fear was because it had discovered another food source.