Chapter 14 The King of Madmen
"Sister Huo?" Officer Zheng noted the unusual address.
"Mm. We call her Huotuichang," I explained. "Because among madmen, she sits at the absolute peak."
He froze for two seconds, then got it, speechless. "You people really are naming geniuses... How did she end up here?"
"She already had hereditary mental illness. After her husband cheated, she raised her son alone. Her control was so extreme the boy lived under constant pressure.
"Later he fell in love with a girl and ran off with her. When she found out, she took a knife and tracked the girl down. The girl was already months pregnant. She cut open the girl's belly, mashed the fetus, and said the son and everything of the son's belonged to her. No one was taking them away.
"When the police found her, they discovered the son had already been dismembered. His head was cooking in the pot. She calmly told the officers she'd leave after finishing the bowl. She said her son had come out of her belly, and as long as she put him back in, he could only belong to her alone.
"Later the police also found her husband's body in the bedroom. She had bricked him into the wall. For more than twenty years she had slept facing him like that, as if he had never left.
"As far as I know, every officer who handled that case was a veteran detective with decades on the job. Not long after, they all stepped off the front line and needed a long stretch of counseling before they could even start to climb out of the shadow."
Officer Zheng went blank. After a long moment he managed the classic. "Holy shit."