Chapter 3: The Female Suspect Goes Mad

  "Gray said disbelievingly: 'She's over fifty years old, what danger could she pose? Is she going to bite me or something?'"

  Sister Hua didn't say anything either, just smiled at us and then stopped talking.

  I pulled Grey out of the office, my intuition told me that no one in this task force was simple, we were new here and didn't know anything, so it's better to keep a low profile.

  After leaving the police station, we hailed a taxi and arrived at the psychiatric hospital in twenty minutes.

  As soon as I got off the car, all the buildings in front of me were gray and white, with walls over two meters high, and barbed wire on top, giving me a feeling like a prison. The gate was closed, making people feel very depressed.

  I walked with Grey to the front of the iron gate, where there was a doorbell on the side. After pressing it several times, the small door at the side of the iron gate opened, and an old man appeared in the doorway, hunching his back and sizing us up with a strange gaze.

  "Who are you looking for?" The old man asked in a hoarse voice.

  Kerui Lian took out his police badge and said in a pretended old-fashioned tone: "We are the police, here to understand the situation."

  The old man just took a glance and said: "Come in!"

  Gale and I were both first-timers in a mental hospital, so everything seemed curious. It was very clean inside. Not far from the entrance, there was a small garden where several patients were sunbathing. A little further away stood a three-story building.

  The old man pointed at the small building and said: "The doctor is right there, you can go find him yourself!" After that he went back to his own hut.

  As Ge Lei and I walked to the bottom of the office building, a doctor in his thirties rushed down from upstairs, ran directly in front of us, grabbed my hand and said: "You are comrades from the criminal police team, you came so quickly!"

  "For the case!" I asked directly: "Where is the suspect? Can we go see her now?"

  The doctor said: "After receiving your call, I went to see the patient's condition. Mrs. Hu's status is not bad today, you can go see her, but..."

  Grey looked at the doctor hesitantly and asked: "But what is it?"

  "Be careful!" the doctor said, "I've seen many mentally ill patients before, but someone like Mrs. Hu is a first for me. As soon as you get close to her, you get a chill down your spine, and even the temperature seems to drop by several degrees."

  I'm a bit puzzled, what kind of patient would make a doctor say something like that. He's the one who has to face mentally ill patients every day.

  Under the doctor's lead, we arrived at the female suspect's hospital room door. The room was not large, a single room with simple furnishings, only one bed. Mrs. Hu wore a hospital gown and sat quietly on the bed, her back to us.

  The doctor took out the key and was about to open the door of the ward. I said in a low voice: "Wait a minute!"

  Through the small window on the door, the suspect's skin was extremely white, showing a sickly pale color, and you could clearly see the blue veins under her skin. Her hair was messy and scattered over her shoulders, like weeds, with many white hairs mixed in among the black strands.

  We observed for about a moment, the female suspect didn't move at all, only when she breathed could we see her shoulders slightly heaving. Otherwise I would have thought she was dead.

  "Has she been like this all along?" Grey asked in a low voice.

  "It's basically like this, except when I'm sleeping. Even if I wake up in the middle of the night, it's usually okay, but when I have an episode, it's really scary. Once, I even scared a nurse half to death during rounds! She hasn't come back to work for two days."

  "Is this really happening?" I said: "The caregiver's guts are too small."

  "It's not what you think," the doctor explained. "The nurse is a big guy, has been working here for many years, and he's very brave. I don't know what he saw, but he was scared out of his wits."

  Our voices startled the female suspect, she suddenly turned around, her eyes fixed on me.

  I was frightened by Ge Lei's transformation, and in just a few days, the woman had changed beyond recognition. In the photo, Mrs. Hu, although advanced in age, looked well-preserved and still showed signs of being a beauty in her youth, with a lingering charm.

  And the Mr. Hu in front of us, with deep eye sockets and heavy dark circles under his eyes, had no blood color on his face at all, his mouth was slightly open, and saliva was dripping down from the corner of his mouth. His face had lost its human appearance, it's more like a skull covered with a layer of skin.

  The key is her eyes, which are not the kind of eyes that humans should have. Her double pupils emit a fierce light, like a beast, and her eyelids don't even blink.

  "Let's go!" Gray shouted: "This old woman's eyes are so fierce!"

  "What's going on? It was fine just a few days ago when I handed it over to you, how did it become like this in just a few days?! Did you abuse her?"

  "Of course not!" The doctor said with a worried tone: "We also don't know what's going on, doctors and nutritionists have come to see it, but haven't found the reason, we don't want this either!"

  The doctor said was probably true, the female suspect left her bed and walked towards us step by step, muttering something under her breath, but her voice was too low to be heard clearly.

  "Does she often talk to herself like this? Does she know what she's saying?" I asked.

  "The doctor shook his head and said: 'According to our observation, the situation of talking to oneself is particularly rare. Even if he opens his mouth, it's unclear what he's saying.'"

  By the time I turned around to look, the female suspect had already walked to the door and her face was almost stuck to the small glass on the door, her eyes staring at me intensely.

  "He teased: 'Has she taken a liking to you?'"

  "Shut up!" This guy Ge Lei has no filter on his mouth, and he often speaks out of turn. I've gotten used to it a long time ago.

  The female suspect approached me, and I only noticed that her eyes were filled with bloodshot, the entire eyeball was crimson red, and the eyeball was slightly bulging, like a goldfish's eyes. I worried that the eyeballs would burst.

  "Heh heh heh..." The female suspect suddenly let out a chilling laugh, startling us.

  "Ge Lei complained: 'How can this guy laugh so loudly.'"

  The female suspect cursed in a vicious tone: "You will all die, die miserably. He will come to collect your heads!"

  "It's good that he spoke up, I hastily asked: 'Who is he?'"

  "He is everywhere, he's right next to you, and at any moment he'll come and take your head off." The female suspect shouted loudly. Almost simultaneously, I felt a cold gust of air blow past us, giving me the chills.

  Grey's face changed colour as if he had a similar feeling.

  "It's gone bad, he's having a relapse." The doctor shouted: "Someone come, the patient is having a relapse."

  A group of robust nurses rushed over, the door hadn't even opened yet. The female suspect's expression turned very strange, her mouth opened wide and a large amount of fresh blood sprayed onto the glass, the bloody water flowed down along the glass.

  "Sorry, the patient is a bit emotionally agitated and cannot answer your questions anymore." The doctor ordered us to leave.

  "I said: 'We won't disturb you anymore, this is our phone number, if there's anything, contact us. This woman is very important to our case.'"

  The doctor grunted in response and the hospital room door swung open. The female suspect lay unconscious on the floor, being carried out of the room by several people.

  I stared at the female suspect, sunlight streaming in from the window beside me. As she passed by us for an instant, I saw a strange thing in the shadow of her head - it looked like a human head but had three horns.

  Greg looked at me dazedly and slapped me on the back of the head, asking: "What are you staring at?"

  "Didn't you just see?"

  "What did you see?" Grey was completely bewildered, having no idea what I was talking about. I turned my head to look again, and the people had all been dragged away.

  Forget it, I'm not even sure what I saw, and left the mental hospital with Gail.

  It was just noon, the sun was very poisonous, and as soon as Ge Lei came out of the door, he said he was hungry. There is no place to eat nearby, the location is a bit remote, and it took a while to hail a taxi.

  "On the way, Ge Lei asked: "You said that the female suspect just now said who it was? And also wants to take our heads, will she be the murderer?"

  "It's probably not true! Her tone of voice wasn't right." Besides, how much can you believe what a mentally unstable person says?

  "Where shall we go this afternoon then?" Grey's interest in the case was now intense and he didn't even take a break at noon.

  "I thought for a moment and said: 'Let's go to the scene of the case this afternoon!'"

  Photos can't give people a sense of being on the scene, but crime scenes are extremely crucial to solving cases. But thinking that someone died in that place still makes my heart feel a bit uneasy.

  Ge Lei frowned and said: "The scene is in Xinghai Villa, a high-end community not far from here. Shall we call Hua Jie first?"

  I called the office with my mobile phone, and Hua Jie answered. After knowing my intention, she said: "When you arrive at Xinghai Community, just find the property management, the key is in the security guard's hand." Then she hung up the phone directly.

  "How is it? Can I?" Grey asked.

  "Let's go find the security guard!" Grey and I headed towards Xinghai Community. As the most famous community in this area, Xinghai Community is located near the city center, with large apartments or small villas, in short, everyone living in Xinghai Community is rich. It's said that just repairing the main gate cost one million yuan, every time we pass by, we can't help but take a few glances.

  When we arrived at the entrance of the residential area, the security guard stopped us. Ge Lei took out his police badge and said very coolly: "Police, we are here to investigate the murder case of Xie Ping'an."

  The security guard, who had been expressionless just now, changed his face color greatly after hearing Ge Lei's words. He grabbed Ge Lei's hand and said: "You've finally arrived, we were almost scared to death! Comrade police officer, please go and investigate what happened!"

  The security guard's reaction was strange, I asked: "What happened?"

  "It's haunted! It's scary!" The security guard pulled us aside and said, "Ever since that house had an accident, it has been emitting cold air from time to time. When I patrol at night and pass by there, I feel a chill on the back of my neck, as if someone is staring at me with a pair of eyes. Sometimes you can even hear mournful cries coming from inside the room, which are really terrifying. The neighbors around us are all scared out of their wits. They haven't dared to stay home for the past two days!"

  "Is there such a thing?" I feel like it's somehow fake.