“Your forensic pathology needs some work,” I teased. “It’s all in the book. A shock to the chest wall causes a sudden increase in blood pressure in the chest. The superior vena cava’s blood pressure soars, causing blood to flow back to the brain, which ruptures veins and capillaries, causing a petechial hemorrhage.”

  “Say more, wise master, say more.” Lin Tao laughed.

  “All three victims’ stomachs were empty, which confirms they died at roughly the same time,” I said, ignoring Lin Tao.

  The fourth body was the most difficult, because it wasn’t so much a body as half a body and ten miscellaneous pieces. The worst was that, whenever the half a body moved a little, more intestines would spill out. Their disgusting contents kept sticking to the autopsy table.

  “This victim also died in the blast,” I said, “but there are no white lines on his face.”

  “Meaning he wasn’t facing the blast center,” Big Bao said.

  I nodded. “Right. His injuries are the most severe, so he was closest to the blast, but he was not facing it.”

  “That also means the blast came from inside the kitchen toward his back,” Lin Tao said. “Really cool. Seems like you really can pinpoint the blast area to within a foot and a half.”

  Big Bao and I put the body parts on the autopsy table one by one, painstakingly cobbling together almost all of the victim’s lower body.

  “You forensic scientists must be pretty good at jigsaw puzzles,” Lin Tao said. “It reminds me of the story of when you put that body together at North Central.”

  “The victim died from neurogenic shock caused by limb amputation,” I said. “It could also have been blood loss. But whatever the specific reason, it was certainly from injuries caused by the explosion.”

  I looked at Lin Tao and the Qing District interns and said, “Now, explosion injuries are all about shock waves, high temperatures, and ejecta—explosive projectiles. The shock waves cause the most damage and can be divided into overpressure, negative pressure, and dynamic pressure. Overpressure blast injuries include the oppression effect (caused by pressing on the abdominal organs), the implosion effect (caused by the body’s internal gasses compressing, expanding, and bursting), the fragmentation effect (a stretching force that rips the body into pieces), the inertia effect, and the differential pressure effect (intervascular pressure imbalance and thrombosis).”

  “So complicated,” Lin Tao said, scratching his head. “What do ‘negative’ and ‘dynamic pressure’ mean?”

  “Negative pressure stretches the body, but dynamic pressure throws it, like when we see a grenade explode on TV and send Japanese soldiers flying.

  “It all sounds really complicated, but at a real blast site, there are only five forms of damage.” I pointed at the body on the autopsy table. “The two main forms of damage on this body are fragmentation wounds—because the shock wave created a stretching force, which led to the amputation of the lower body—and burns. There’s no clothing left on the victim’s back, whereas there is still some on the front, so that means there was more severe burning on the back, which supports our earlier conclusion that the blast center was behind the victim.”

  “What about Ren Sufen?” Lin Tao asked.

  “Ren Sufen’s injuries are minor on the outside and severe on the inside. Typical shock trauma caused by compression and impact injuries. These are three of the most common and serious injuries that occur at blast sites. The children’s injuries are the fourth kind, ejecta injuries. Of course, there are other injuries that occur at blast sites, like carbon monoxide poisoning, falls, and crushing.”

  “Quite a lecture, Professor Qin,” Lin Tao said, “but what good are all these mechanisms for solving the case?”

  “Well,” I said, “these body parts flew out through the window and landed really far, which means the blast was extremely powerful, and answers an important question.”

  I saw everyone watching me expectantly. “The weight of the victim’s genitals and patella are about the same, but the genitals were launched farther, so the patella was thrown from a smaller angle and the genitals were thrown from a larger angle. The blast must have gone out radially from the center, which was parallel with Fan Jincheng’s back.”

  “That would put the blast center under the sink,” Big Bao said, looking at the ceiling as he pictured the kitchen.

  I nodded. “The end of the gas pipeline was in front of Fan Jincheng, so it couldn’t have been the center. If the room blew up after filling with gas, there must have been something under the sink that could produce fire or electricity.”

  “Wait, do you mean like a bomb?” Lin Tao said.

  “In the early morning, the four family members rushed from their bedrooms toward the kitchen, and then the explosion occurred. It’s very possible that this wasn’t an accident.”

  On hearing our report, the task force members looked somber.

  “So what do you think we should do next?” Director Zhou asked. “The investigation thus far hasn’t found anyone with a conflicted relationship to the victims.”

  “We’re going to keep sorting through the scene,” I said, “to see if we can find any possible explosive residue, especially detonation device fragments.”

  “The fire department already did that,” Zhou said. “They found some suspicious materials, but it was hard to be sure because a lot of kitchen appliances have metal parts that are hard to differentiate from detonation devices.”

  “Then we’ll look too,” I said, “and we’ll also search the neighboring houses.”

  We spent that whole afternoon back in the dilapidated kitchen, paying special attention to the sink. Even though it had been blasted into nonrecognition, we still cleaned and examined every chunk of brick. But all we found was a black, rubbery substance.

  “How can there be so much sticky rubber stuff here?” Big Bao said. “Were they hoarding tape under here or something?”

  “No way. If it was a roll of tape, even blown up, the pieces wouldn’t have scattered like this.”

  “So what could it be?” Big Bao said.

  I shook my head to show I didn’t know either. We headed back to the task force, ready to submit our findings to the investigative team.

  We entered a cloudy room.

  “These cops start smoking like chimneys as soon as there’s a case,” Big Bao said, wrinkling his nose.

  “Don’t look down on smokers,” I said with a smile. “Maybe they’re trying to quit.”

  I caught a glimpse of a sealed cardboard box in the corner with a clearly printed label: SPARE BATTERY.

  “What’s this?”

  A detective said, “Found it in a pigpen by the entrance to one of the homes. Seems to be an electric car battery.”

  “A car battery in a pigpen?” I asked. “Who lives there?”

  “No one at the moment. They’re all working in the city,” the detective said. “The pigpen’s abandoned too.”

  “Why would there be a new battery in an abandoned pigpen?” My heart began to race.

  I gingerly set the box on the conference table. Through gaps in the seal, you could see bare wires sticking out.

  “Um, I don’t believe car batteries have external wires.”

  But Big Bao already had his hand on the lid. “Enough talk. Let’s open it.”

  58

  Inside the box were six black, cylindrical objects. They looked like the rolls of coins people gave as gifts during the Republican Era. Red and green wires were connected to the top of each one.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Dynamite,” Han Liang said matter-of-factly.

  “Dynamite?” I took a few steps back.

  He nodded. “Wrapped like that, it’s probably the ammonium nitrate used in mines.”

  All the hairs on my body stood up.

  “Looking at the volume,” he continued, “it’s probably four and a half pounds per roll. Altogether, twenty-six pounds of ammonium nitrate explosives.”

  “That . . . That means . . .” Big Bao was in shock. “If it had a pull-wire, we’d all be dead?”

  Han Liang smiled. “Calm down. If it hasn’t blown up already, it won’t. But yeah, if it did have a pull-wire, when you just opened the lid, not only would we have died, but the rest of the town would have gone up in smoke.”

  “See?” I slapped Big Bao on the back of the head. “You gotta think before you do things, man. My son hasn’t been born yet. I don’t want to get killed!”

  “Ling Dang’s expecting?” Han Liang said, bizarrely calm in the face of disaster.

  “What? No, not yet, I just mean . . . ,” I mumbled.

  The truth was, I’d received a text the night before from Ling Dang saying she got a positive result on a home pregnancy test. I couldn’t wait for this awful case to be over so I could go with her to the hospital to get it confirmed.

  Shaking, I pointed to the box and shouted, “What do we do with this thing?”

  “Well,” Han Liang said, “pure ammonium nitrate is stable at room temperature. It’s not sensitive to impact or friction. But at high temperatures, high pressure, and in the presence of objects that can be oxidized, it can explode.”

  I looked at the ashtrays full of cigarette butts. “Then we’d better get it out of here quick.”

  That a box of dynamite sat peacefully in a crowded room full of cigarettes for a whole afternoon was a stroke of luck. Once the physical and chemical crew had taken the box away, everyone calmed down a little and whispered to one other.

  “Despite the close call,” I announced, “we’ve made a huge discovery. The dynamite we just saw was wrapped in black rubber tape, which matches debris we found at the blast center. The explosion was caused by the ammonium nitrate dynamic.”

  “But this is a strictly controlled explosive,” Director Zhou said. “And there isn’t a mine nearby.”

  “According to our survey,” a detective jumped in, “a lot of people work outside the village. There are definitely people with access to explosives.”

  “No one would do such a horrible thing for no reason,” Zhou said. “Step up your investigation of the victims’ family members, especially anyone who works in a mine and recently came back to the village.”

  “But how will we identify a suspect?” the detective said. “We don’t have any evidence.”

  “Give us an hour,” I said, “and we’ll get you some.”

  I looked at Lin Tao. “We know the bomber went into that pigpen, and he definitely went into the victim’s yard to set the bomb. When the officers arrived, the gate was locked, so the killer must’ve climbed over the wall. Think you could find some traces?”

  “You know it,” Lin Tao said with a slight smile. “Plus, there’re bound to be prints on that box. I got this.”

  Zhou nodded appreciatively and then looked to me. “Qin, what are your thoughts on site reconstruction?”

  “Simple!” I declared, brimming with confidence. “The killer went over the wall and hid in the victims’ home, then planted the bomb. Actually, judging by the additional explosives, he may have been planning another. But while he was planting the first one, he made a noise and woke up the Fans, who turned on a light. Seeing it, the killer hurried back over the wall to escape. The old couple went downstairs and woke up Fan Cheng, who got out of bed and followed. When the three of them left the house, Zhao Liqian also woke up and, finding herself alone, ran outside without shoes.”

  I paused and took a deep breath. “At that moment, Fan Jincheng stepped on or came into contact with the detonation device and set off the explosion. The four of them died right then and there.”

  “So terrible.” Zhou sighed. “If the timing were any different, the kids at least might have survived.”

  “Yes,” I said sadly. “Fate is a slippery thing.”

  “No shortage of footprints around the pigpen,” Lin Tao boasted when he returned to the task force, “including several prints belonging to the same person. We also found partials on the inside and outside of the wall near the kitchen. And guess what? They match those in the pigpen.”

  “Nicely done, my man!” I exclaimed, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’ve got the bomber’s footprints!”

  Lin Tao smiled. “But wait, there’s more. The bomber was wearing canvas People’s Liberation Army sneakers. Those shoes aren’t so common these days, and the sole pattern is unmistakable. Plus, we found fingerprints on the cardboard box, very fresh. Other than Big Bao’s, I mean.”

  “Excellent work,” Director Zhou said. “A lot of fancy testing requires days, but you all used your naked eyes. High-tech tools are great, but the key to good detective work is still boots on the ground. Now it’s time to find our man.”

  “The sooner the better,” I agreed. “This piece of shit blew up some little kids. Who knows what he’s capable of?”

  Happily, we didn’t have to wait long. Our officers headed out to resurvey the village, and one of them spotted a man carrying an old-fashioned bundle, ready to travel. On his feet were those old canvas PLA sneakers.

  Suspicious, the detective approached the man for questioning. But when he saw the officer headed his way, the villager suddenly threw down his bundle and ran.

  Did he really think he could get away? Before he ran three hundred yards, three of our men tackled him to the ground.

  “Hey, let me go! Who do you think you are?” the villager squawked as he struggled.

  “Police, and you know it. What’s your name?”

  “Fan Pao.”

  That made the officers chuckle because pao is the word for “run” in Chinese. “All right, Pao, you’re coming with us.”

  The sole pattern and fingerprints confirmed that Fan Pao had blown up the house. Now we were all dying to know why.

  59

  Fan Pao’s parents died young, so his uncle, Fan Jincheng, had raised him. Three years ago, Fan Jincheng had arranged for Fan Pao to marry a beautiful woman. The two of them were happy together and even welcomed a lovely son a year later.

  Thanks to Fan Jincheng, the lonely orphan now had a good life. But Fan Pao knew he’d never make much money for his young family if he stayed in the village farming. So, two years earlier, he’d gone to work in a Shanxi coal mine. Although the work was dangerous and hard, the money wasn’t bad.

  During the Lunar New Year holiday that year, he took the ten thousand yuan he’d saved up and headed home to surprise his wife. He never expected to hear moaning coming from his own bedroom.

  The man having an affair with his wife turned out to be his cousin, Fan Jincheng’s eldest son, Fan Shengli.

  “My dad took you in, gave you a nicer wife than you could ever get yourself, so what more could you want?” Fan Shengli laughed. “My having some fun with her just helps you out. Better to keep the fertilizer on the family fields than have her run off with some outside man, right?”

  Fan Pao had been bullied by Fan Shengli his whole life. Nervous about his status within the family, he’d never dared to fight back. But even after twenty years of taking the abuse, he could never have imagined a betrayal like this.

  Fan Shengli swaggered out of the house as Fan Pao’s wife sobbed, and Fan Pao’s mind spun.

  Fan Pao was so used to Fan Shengli’s bullying that he turned his pent-up anger on Fan Jincheng. The old man claimed he was giving me a wife, he thought, but it was a trick. He was really giving his own son a concubine.

  The humiliation weighed heavily on Fan Pao as he went back to the mine in Shanxi. One night, he snuck into a storage shed and stole twelve sticks of dynamite, as well as blasting caps and detonators. Then he splurged on a gypsy cab to take him and his box back to Qing District.

  Once home, Fan Pao set his awful plan in motion. He divided the dynamite in half, planning to blow both Fan Jincheng’s and Fan Shengli’s homes to smithereens.

  That fateful morning, after planting the bomb in Fan Jincheng’s dark kitchen, he knocked over a pan on the stove. The crash of metal gave him a terrible fright, so he hurried back over the wall. Just a few minutes later, he heard the deafening boom.

  Fan Pao rejoiced. He hadn’t imagined it would go so smoothly. Now he just had to wait for things to blow over before taking out Fan Shengli’s house as well.

  He never thought the police would figure out it was an intentional explosion—and certainly not so fast. Once they started poking around, though, he decided he’d better sneak off before they caught him. He was sad to abandon part two of the plan, but he consoled himself with the thought that, even though Fan Shengli didn’t die, his father and Fan Shengli’s son both did. Fan Pao felt avenged.

  “You Dragon City guys really are as good as they say,” Director Zhou told us. “If you hadn’t cracked the case so fast, Fan Pao would have gotten away from us.”

  Lin Tao visibly swelled with pride.

  Big Bao, on the other hand, was perplexed. “Hard to be happy when four innocent people died.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Poor Fan Jincheng and his wife gave Fan Pao everything, and this is how he thanked them, by killing Fan Shengli’s children, even though they didn’t do anything wrong. It’s really unfair.”

  Still, getting to stretch our brains to solve a huge bombing case was exciting. On the drive back to Dragon City, Lin Tao, Big Bao, and I decided to get a drink to celebrate.

  But Han Liang admonished us from the front seat. “Don’t celebrate now, boys. Wait and get that drink after we break the Eleventh Finger case.”

  60

  Forensic work isn’t just about helping solve murders. A lot of the time, it’s routine stuff like assessing injured people or doing toxicology for drug cases. Forensics is also essential for traffic accidents. We figure out whether the driver was under duress or some kind of coercion; we determine who was driving the car or sitting where to create a basis for liability. Since we were the provincial forensic department, helping municipal traffic departments was routine.