Attending ex-girlfriend's wedding, arresting the groom's officer on the spot

“The most crucial thing is still that metal box,” Yang Lin said, gazing at the distant mountains. “If there’s identification or a letter inside, maybe we can make a breakthrough.” Yang Sen shook his head, pointing to the shoe prints on the ground: “I’m more concerned about the pigeon-toed gait. This kind of gait is very common among construction workers. Maybe we can investigate from the surrounding construction sites.” But they all knew that without a clear identity of the deceased, these investigations would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

As the last rays of the setting sun filtered through the tree canopy and fell upon the body, Yang Lin and Yang Sen's investigation had lasted six hours. The clues discovered after expanding the search area—cloth by the cliff edge, machine oil near a cigarette butt, tire tracks on the firebreak, a pencil with a "W" written on it, a blurry note—were like scattered puzzle pieces, unable to form a complete picture. Yang Lin closed his investigation notebook, taking one last look at the body half-hidden by fallen leaves. The fluorescent green windbreaker gleamed eerily in the twilight, as if silently telling a story of an unsolved mystery.

"Call to a halt," Lu Chuan's voice came through the walkie-talkie. "Go back to the lab for further testing, and come back for a re-examination tomorrow." Yang Lin put the last evidence bag—containing the half-pencil—into the investigation kit. As he zipped it up, he suddenly remembered the machine oil next to the cigarette butt: "When the murderer cleaned up the traces, did he leave more clues in the car?" But this thought was quickly overwhelmed by reality. There was no license plate, no surveillance footage. The truck that disappeared at the end of the firebreak was probably driving in some corner of the city right now.

As dusk deepened in the forest, the investigators moved through the shadows, their notebooks filled with questions. Who was the deceased? Why was he in this remote grove? What did the pencil with the "W" carved on it and the note with the word "see" point to? Did the DNA on the cigarette butt belong to the murderer or someone else? These questions, like the forest mist, shrouded everyone's minds, and the answers lay hidden in the evidence awaiting laboratory testing.

While Lu Chuan and others were still at the scene, the body had already been transported back to the Criminal Investigation Detachment, where forensic doctor Zhang Kai began to perform an autopsy.

In the autopsy room, as the highly decomposed corpse was wheeled in, the smell of embalming fluid clashed violently with the stench of death. Zhang Kai, wearing double-layered latex gloves, pinched the zipper of the body bag with his fingertips; the moment the fumes burst out, his assistant, Xiao Lin, instinctively took a half-step back, his mask leaving a deep red mark on his nose. "Prepare for surface measurements," Zhang Kai's voice sounded somewhat muffled through the mask, the scalpel reflecting a cold light on the tray. "The deceased is male, highly decomposed, with large areas of lividity visible on the surface, mainly distributed on the abdomen and flexor surfaces of the limbs."

Xiaolin's measuring tape moved across the body, data rapidly jumping across her notebook: "Height 178cm, weight approximately 75kg, estimated age 40-45." Her pen paused on the words "fluorescent green windbreaker," the fabric having swelled and burst open due to decomposition, the zipper teeth deeply embedded in the subcutaneous tissue. "The clothing is intact, but there are patches of oil stains on the right cuff, preliminarily determined to be diesel fuel, consistent with the on-site investigation report." Zhang Kai suddenly pointed to the deceased's left hand: "Note the finger bone posture, in a semi-fist position, with fiber residue between the fingers; extract samples for comparison."

The post-mortem examination revealed an irregular 5×6cm laceration on the deceased's scalp, with inwardly rolled edges and significant tissue loss. "The edges of this injury are irregular," Zhang Kai said, probing the wound with a probe. Decaying tissue flaked off around the probe. "The wound cavity contained mud and small stones, consistent with blunt force trauma, and it was a ante-mortem injury—because there was slight signs of life activity at the edges, even though most of it was destroyed by decomposition." Xiao Lin suddenly noticed a grating sensation in the deceased's right temporal region. "Professor Zhang, there might be a skull fracture here!"

“Measure the body temperature first.” Zhang Kai didn’t reply, but inserted the electronic thermometer deep into the rectum. The number fluctuated around 28°C. “Ambient temperature 22°C, humidity 70%,” he said, referring to the Henssge body temperature equation, his pen tracing lines on the calculation paper. “The core temperature of the body is 6°C higher than the ambient temperature. Based on the rate of temperature drop of a decomposing body, which is 0.5°C per hour, the preliminary estimate of the time of death is 72-96 hours. However, high levels of decomposition will affect the accuracy, and other indicators need to be considered.”

During the rigor mortis examination, Zhang Kai lifted the deceased's upper limbs. The shoulder and elbow joints were completely ankylosed, and the wrist joint had less than 0.5 cm of range of motion. "The rigor mortis reaches its peak and then begins to subside," he said, pressing his fingers on the quadriceps muscle, which had almost lost its elasticity. "Especially the jaw joint, which was at grade three ankylosis. In a 22°C environment, this corresponds to 48-72 hours after death, but high humidity will delay the subsidence of rigor mortis, so the actual time of death should be longer." Xiao Lin added, "The cornea is completely cloudy, the pupil is unrecognizable, and the iris texture has completely disappeared. These are typical signs of death after more than 72 hours."

As the scalpel made a Y-shaped incision in the corpse's chest, the putrefied subcutaneous fat turned outwards like melted butter, and a network of dark red, putrefied veins was clearly visible beneath the skin, like a tangled spider web. "There is diffuse hemorrhage in the subcutaneous tissue," Zhang Kai said, his scissors separating the sternocleidomastoid muscle. "The bleeding area in the neck muscles is about 8×10cm, and there is a fracture of the greater horn of the left hyoid bone, with slight callus formation at the fracture ends—this indicates that the neck was subjected to external pressure, and it was an injury sustained before death." Xiao Lin picked up a piece of muscle tissue with forceps: "Let's do a tissue biopsy to see the extent of muscle fiber rupture."

The moment the chest cavity was opened, the putrefied lung tissue was grayish-black, its surface covered with bubbles of varying sizes, like a crushed sponge. Zhang Kai lifted the heart with hemostats; the pericardial cavity contained about 200ml of dark red fluid, and the myocardium had lost its normal texture, resembling boiled meat. "There's a 2×3cm contusion on the right ventricular wall," he pointed to the bleeding point under the epicardium, "but it's not a fatal injury; the real problem is on the left side of the chest cavity." As he separated the ribs, the fractured ends of the fifth and sixth ribs were suddenly exposed, the breaks sharp and oblique. "Fresh fractures, with bleeding marks at the ends; although soaked in putrefied fluid, it's still clear they were fractured before death."

“The location of this fracture on the body surface is exactly the area of ​​bloodstains found during the on-site investigation,” Zhang Kai asked Xiao Lin to measure the angle of the fracture. “It is at a 45-degree angle to the horizontal plane, which is consistent with the characteristics of a blunt force strike from the upper right to the lower left.” He suddenly remembered the size 44 work boot print at the scene. “With this kind of force, the murder weapon should be a blunt object with a certain weight, such as a wrench or a steel pipe, which matches the profile that the murderer may be engaged in the construction industry.”

During the abdominal dissection, the putrefied intestines had ruptured, and feces contaminated the entire abdominal cavity; the stench almost overpowered the smell of the preservative solution. (End of Chapter)