Rain lashed against the windows of the Luming Grand Hotel, each droplet tracing a jagged path down the glass like tears. Detective Chen Wei stood in the doorway of Room 1408, his shoes sinking into the plush carpet as his eyes adjusted to the dim light filtering through the curtains. The air smelled of expensive perfume and something metallic. Something wrong.
"Don't touch anything," said Officer Lin Meiying, her voice tight with the kind of tension that came from seeing too much in too few years on the force. She stood by the window, her uniform still speckled with rain, her gaze fixed on the figure slumped in the armchair.
Chen Wei nodded, pulling a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket. His fingers moved with practiced efficiency, snapping the gloves into place as he approached the body. The victim was a woman in her fifties, dressed in a silk qipao the color of midnight. Her head lolled to one side, revealing a string of pearls still clasped around her throat. But it was her face that made Chen Wei pause-her eyes were open, staring at something only the dead could see, and her lips were painted a shade of red that seemed almost black in the low light.
"Mrs. Zhao Lihua," Lin Meiying said, consulting her notepad. "Wife of Zhao Mingxuan, the glass manufacturing magnate. Checked in yesterday afternoon. The maid found her at six this morning when she came to deliver fresh towels."
"Cause of death?" Chen Wei asked, crouching beside the armchair.
"Not obvious. No visible wounds, no signs of struggle. The medical examiner is on his way." Lin Meiying hesitated. "But there's something you need to see."
She led him to the dressing table. On its surface sat a framed photograph-a portrait of Mrs. Zhao in her younger years, smiling beside a man who must have been her husband. But someone had drawn a crimson X across the glass, the paint still wet and dripping. Beside the frame lay a single white lily, its petals already beginning to brown at the edges.
"The lily," Chen Wei murmured, touching it gently with a gloved finger. "In Luming's flower language, white lilies mean 'restored innocence.' Or 'death has made you pure again.'"
"You think this was a message?"
Chen Wei didn't answer. His eyes had caught something glinting beneath the dressing table-a small glass figurine, no bigger than his thumb, shaped like a swan. Its neck was snapped clean off.
"Get forensics in here," he said quietly. "And find out who else was on this floor last night. Someone wanted Mrs. Zhao to die knowing exactly why."