37

  We’d already been at it for over three hours. The afternoon light shone down as the unrelenting smell washed over us in waves. Desperate to be done, we started to divide up tasks. I took charge of examining the victim’s stomach contents and determining the time of death, while Big Bao and Jiang started to look for the cause.

  The victim’s internal organs were too decayed for us to determine whether there was internal bleeding or congestion.

  “The brain tissue has already liquefied. Let’s see what we find when I move it,” Jiang said as he carefully pushed the thick slurry of brain tissue down into the skull cap. “Aha, hemorrhaging around the petrous bone, a sign of mechanical asphyxia.”

  “I think I found something too,” Big Bao said. “On the half of the face that’s got skin left, I found some dark areas around the mouth and nasal cavity, which are probably the result of their being covered and pressed on!”

  “Don’t sound so excited about it,” Lin Tao said.

  “I’ll see if there are any ‘rose teeth,’” Big Bao said, ignoring Lin Tao.

  “Rose teeth” is a forensics euphemism for dental bleeding, a sign of suffocation. The textbooks say teeth will become rose colored at their base during suffocation, a phenomenon that becomes more marked after they’re soaked in alcohol. The textbooks also say that this method is somewhat useful, but not a sure thing.

  That’s because you do see it a lot in suffocation victims, but sometimes in nonsuffocation victims too. Forensic experts have researched the topic and have come to the conclusion that rose teeth and suffocation, though very frequently correlated, do not have a direct causal link. Still, being in the trenches of a forensic examination requires making use of every possible indicator, even if it’s not conclusive.

  As Bao prepared the bone forceps, I stood on the other side of the body, slowly sorting out the gastrointestinal tract. I used a scalpel to cut along the grain of the stomach wall, and the contents slowly appeared.

  “I’ve got time of death,” I said.

  There was the crisp sound of crashing metal, and Big Bao froze.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Uh,” Big Bao said, swallowing hard. “The . . . The forceps slipped. The . . . tooth flew away.”

  “Flew away?” I said. “Go find it.”

  Even though any of the victim’s twenty-four teeth would work, we couldn’t just lose a part of a victim. We had to do everything possible to show respect.

  We soon spotted the tooth on the ground. In the reflected sunlight, the base did reveal a faint red tint.

  “With this much evidence, I think we can conclude the victim was suffocated by pressure around the nose and mouth, which led to death by mechanical asphyxia,” Jiang said proudly.

  “The time of death is clear too,” I said. “Assuming we can find out the timing of his last meal. The shape of the rice in the stomach is intact and the stomach is full. Mostly rice, mushrooms, eggs, and tomatoes—especially rice. The food had just entered the duodenum, so the victim died about two hours after his last meal.”

  “Guess I know what I won’t be eating tonight,” Lin Tao said.

  “The victim is Bao Guangmin, male, eleven years old, a fifth grader at Yanggong First Elementary School,” the lead detective announced at the task force briefing. “He was an only child. His parents sell crayfish at night markets and rent a house in the city. On August ninth, five days ago, at one p.m., while his parents were washing crayfish, he slipped out the back door of the rental house and headed in an undetermined direction.”

  “Slipped out?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the detective said with a nod. “It was Sunday, so the victim should have been home doing homework. The parents were very strict about his studies, so we believe the victim snuck away to play. When the parents finished their work at the crayfish stall and arrived home at one a.m., they realized the victim was not home, so they started to look all over the city but were unable to find him. They called the police the next morning. The dispatch officer searched the area around their home but found nothing.”

  “Did Bao Guangmin call anyone before he snuck out?” Lin Tao asked.

  “No. We looked at all the call records and didn’t find anything useful.”

  The meeting room went quiet. Everyone was looking to me to introduce the forensic findings. I cleared my throat and said, “The victim died of mechanical asphyxia, likely from pressure around the nose and mouth. He died about two hours after his last meal. The principal contents of his stomach were rice, mushrooms, eggs, and tomatoes.”

  The detective nodded. “That conforms to our findings. The victim had lunch at noon on the ninth—rice, mushrooms, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes.”

  “In that case, the victim died around two p.m. on the afternoon of August ninth,” I said. “We believe at least one motive for the killing was molestation. There was clear damage to the victim’s anus.”

  Everyone lowered their heads and whispered in agitation.

  The head of the task force, Deputy Director Gao Biao, said, “Then is our line of investigation flawed? It’s been centered on a suspect.”

  “There’s a suspect?” Music to my ears. “As I said, it might only be a partial motivation. It doesn’t eliminate the possibility of enmity between the killer and the victim’s family. What’s the situation with the suspect?”

  “The suspect is named Li Li,” the detective said. “Male, eighteen, principal income is from crayfish stalls. He’s poached business from the Bao family and caught a beating for it by Bao Guangmin’s father.”

  “Then we definitely can’t rule him out,” I said.

  “Oh?” Gao said. “You have any insight? Say the word and we’ll arrest him.”

  “There isn’t enough evidence for an arrest,” I said. “I just think his age fits.”

  “You mean the crime was committed by a young person?”

  I nodded. “There’re two key points here. One, the victim was likely killed indoors in a remote place. An eleven-year-old boy would have the basic awareness to keep from being easily abducted. Seeing as he was tricked into going somewhere with the killer, the person who tricked him was either someone he knew or someone around his age, like a teenager. Children are more likely to trust teenagers. With adults, they’re more cautious.”

  “Makes sense,” Gao said. “I think I remember something like that from my college psych class.”

  “Second, we found a lot of strange wounds on the victim’s body. Some of them are slash marks on bones that can’t be cut apart—we suspect from a botched dismemberment attempt. Others are burn marks from holding fire directly against the skin—probably also a botched attempt at disposal. These methods for destroying a corpse would seem ridiculous to an adult.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think a teenager would think of them at all,” Gao said.

  “They would if they searched ‘corpse disposal’ on the Internet,” Big Bao chimed in. “I saw a popular online post the other day about treating a body with lime, smashing it with a hammer, and dumping it in the sewer. That’s as silly as it gets.”

  “Whether or not these botched attempts reveal the killer’s a specific age,” I said, “they definitely reveal a lack of experience.”

  “Time to bring Li Li in for questioning,” Gao declared.

  While we waited for them to apprehend the suspect and question him, Big Bao, Lin Tao, and I drove into the city so we could take a walk around. We weren’t there to play tourist or eat crayfish from the food stalls. We wanted to familiarize ourselves with the area between Bao Guangmin’s home and where his corpse was discarded.

  Sometimes the drawings of a scene really fail to convey the orientation and spacing of a place, especially for those among us who aren’t so good at math.

  Bao Guangmin’s home was in a residential area in the northwest quadrant of the city, the area with the most food stalls and nightlife. Bao Guangmin’s parents were wise to rent there. Their house was only a ten-minute walk to their stall. But dense neighborhoods like that with the houses right up against one another were mostly constructed illegally. If a fire should occur, the trucks would have no way of getting in. There were no security cameras either.

  It took us fifteen minutes to walk from Bao Guangmin’s house to the road. Then we got into Han Liang’s car and headed to the place where the body was discarded. The route seemed to cut through the city on a diagonal. A half hour later, we finally arrived at the southeastern quadrant where the body was found. It was also a residential area, but the houses weren’t cramped together, and at only nine p.m., all was quiet.

  I dialed the lead detective and handed my phone to Han Liang. “Liang, have an officer give you directions to Li Li’s place,” I said. “I want to take a look around.”

  We often called Han Liang our human GPS, because he traveled a lot, liked studying maps, and had a great sense of direction. There was nowhere in the province he couldn’t find. He quickly drove us to the suspect’s home in the center of the city.

  Li Li’s three-wheeled motorcycle was parked downstairs. The flatbed contained cookware, his livelihood. Even though he lived in the city center, he commuted to his stall in the northwest quadrant every day.

  The lights in his place were on, and weaving flashlight beams told me officers had entered to conduct a search.

  I stood by the side of the car, thinking, and suddenly slapped myself on the head. “Idiot, we got the wrong person.”

  “Why?” Big Bao asked. “Doesn’t he fit the profile?”

  “Personally, yes. Geographically, no,” Lin Tao said, thinking along the same lines I was.

  We drove back to the task force where, as expected, we found a room full of frowns.

  “Seems it wasn’t him,” Deputy Director Gao reported. “Nothing unusual came up during questioning, and there was nothing suspicious in his home. We’re working on verifying his alibi.”

  “Yeah, he probably didn’t do it,” I said. “We were focusing on the criminal’s characteristics, but we overlooked the key fact: time of death. Bao Guangmin ate at noon on the ninth and didn’t leave home until one thirty. So there was only a half hour between then and when he died. Li Li couldn’t have gotten Bao Guangmin home and killed him, even on his bike.”

  “Could Bao Guangmin have taken a cab to Li Li’s neighborhood?” Gao asked. “After all, their age difference isn’t that great, and maybe Bao Guangmin didn’t know about the problems between Li Li and his father.”

  “No,” I said. “Walking to a major road from Bao Guangmin’s house takes fifteen minutes.”

  “Then could Li Li have killed him in his own neighborhood?”

  “Also no,” I said. “Dense area, victim died in the middle of the day, people everywhere. Plus, there’s the molestation and the various attempts at corpse disposal. The crime must have taken place inside.”

  Gao looked dejected.

  I understood. A case getting stalled like this meant more trouble ahead. Since the scene was destroyed and the body was so decayed, we weren’t likely to extract any more clues, and we didn’t have any good suspects.

  After a few long moments of silence, Gao got up and opened the conference room door. “You guys worked hard all day; go get some rest. We’ll stay here and figure out the next steps.”

  I accepted his offer gratefully. A good night’s sleep would help get the horror of that awful autopsy out of my system. In the morning, I’d be able to get a new perspective on the case.

  “I think,” Big Bao said on the ride to our hotel, “we should focus on that line on the victim’s ankle. It could be our breakthrough.”

  “Bao,” I said, “great minds think alike.”

  38

  After showering, I flopped on the bed. Lin Tao knew that I had a tendency to snore loudly when I was extra tired or shaken up. And examining the maggot-ridden body of a violated child had definitely given me a fright.

  He eyed me and said, “Yeah, I think I’m bunking with Big Bao tonight.”

  Fatigue rolled over me like an avalanche. I began to drift off before I could even think about that dividing line on the victim’s ankle.

  But just before I passed out cold, Han Liang, lying in another bed, suddenly spoke up. “Remember on the highway, when you saw that dead dog—what’d you say?”

  His unexpected words startled me awake, and I was suddenly moved. Han Liang had had a hard day too. As a full-time driver, he didn’t get any free time, but his mind was still on the case.

  “I think I said that water speeds up decay.” Hearing it again, I felt a flash of inspiration and leapt up happily.

  Han Liang was startled by my reaction. “So if the rate of decay depends on whether there’s water or not, could the line on the victim’s ankle be explained by water?”

  “Yes, yes!” I shouted. “I love you!”

  I raced over to Lin Tao and Big Bao’s room in my underwear and desperately banged on the door. Big Bao looked surprised as I rushed into the room and sat down in a chair.

  Lin Tao was already in bed. He propped himself up and pulled the blanket over his chest. “What’s going on?”

  “Han Liang helped me figure out the cause of the decay dividing line,” I said. “We all know bodies decay faster in water, right?”

  Big Bao nodded. “Sure. The body was wet. That explains why it decayed quickly, but it doesn’t explain the line.”

  I grinned. “We’ve never seen a line like this before, because decay is a gradual process. What could cause such a straight line?”

  Big Bao and Lin Tao both shook their heads in confusion.

  “Standing water. Water surfaces are flat. Think about it. If the body was immersed in water, but one of his feet was sticking out, then the water surface would form a line like that around the ankle.”

  “But even then, there wouldn’t be such a huge difference in the level of decay, right?” Lin Tao said.

  “If we’re talking about clean water, then definitely not,” I said. “But what if we’re talking about dirty water? Really, really dirty water.”

  “You mean like a sludge pit or septic tank?” Big Bao asked. “Why would dirty water like that have such a powerful effect?”

  “I must admit, I have pretty good intuition,” I said proudly. “Like I said, the line and the maggots were linked. We were wondering why there were so many maggots, more than we’d ever seen. That’s the reason.”

  I grabbed a cup of water from the coffee table and took a sip, not caring whose it was.

  “Maggots are the reason why dirty water makes such a difference. If the victim was immersed in a septic tank, the fly eggs would stick. And even though the body was wrapped up later, the fly eggs that were stuck to it would still hatch and accelerate corruption. The part below the ankle wasn’t in the dirty water, so no fly eggs adhered, and it decayed much more slowly.”

  I looked at Big Bao, who seemed dazed, and added, “The strongest evidence I have to support this argument is how straight the line is. Only a liquid surface could make a boundary that perfectly straight.”

  Big Bao’s and Lin Tao’s expressions turned joyful.

  “I’m going to call now and have the team check for septic tanks or still ponds near the victim’s home,” I said. “The victim died only a half hour after he left, so he was definitely attacked near his house.”

  “Then for now, our task is still sleep,” Lin Tao said, lying down again. Then he stuck his head back up and said, “Damn it. The AC’s too cold in here.”

  The next morning, the conference room table was covered with a map of the area around the victim’s home. It matched what we’d seen on the ground—crowded little houses and winding, narrow streets.

  “Residents’ living conditions are better these days,” a detective said. “When we got your call, we did a walk-around, but we couldn’t find a public toilet or open septic tank or dead pond. The residents all have modern flush toilets.”

  “Really?” My heart sank. Even if the killer hadn’t been caught, I hoped we’d at least find some septic tanks to help us limit the possible area where the killer lived.

  I let my thoughts settle as I ran my finger down a road on the map. It quickly landed on a blank spot in the corner of the residential district.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Before the city redeveloped, there was a pig farm there. We didn’t go in, but we got confirmation that there are no public toilets or ponds.”

  “Does it have to be a toilet or a septic tank?” Han Liang asked tentatively from the corner.

  “No,” I said. “Any place with very dirty liquid would work, but besides septic tanks and ponds, I can’t think of what that would be.”

  “I could be wrong,” Han Liang ventured, “but I think places where they raise pigs generally have a digester, similar to a septic tank.”

  “Digester?” I was surprised. “First time I’ve heard of it! Let’s go look.”

  On the road, Han Liang told us about the appearance and function of a digester.

  When we arrived, the place was overgrown with weeds, but some indistinct marks caught Lin Tao’s attention.

  “Those tire marks are pretty fresh,” he said, eagerly snapping pictures.

  Forensic Scientist Jiang and I walked ahead, and, suddenly, a huge pool opened up before us. It was overgrown with weeds that hid the surface of the filthy water. I threw a stone into it, which made a plop sound and caused many flies to take off.

  “Whoa! This could definitely be the place.”

  “Why don’t you guys care about these tire marks?” Lin Tao complained. “Don’t you realize if the killer committed the crime around here, he had to transport the body six miles to dump it in that junk room?”

  “True.” I really hadn’t thought of that.

  Big Bao said, “So they must have used a car! But could a teenage suspect drive one?”

  “Not necessarily.” I shook my head. “You guys, what if the killer and the person who got rid of the body are different people? Think about it. A teenager still needs his parents, right? If parents know their child killed someone, they might help get rid of the body. Don’t forget, we believe the killer was male, because of the nature of the sexual assault. But the bag was tied with a white scarf, which seems like something a woman would wear.”