kvmb Chapter 1166 Commencement of the Autopsy
Chapter 1166 Commencement of the Autopsy
The suspicious light spots in the surveillance video have been given a new interpretation after technological enhancement. The technical department, through spectral analysis, determined that they were traces of a headlamp, and the size of the light spots matched the reflective characteristics of the shovel Xiao Yang had discovered. "The suspect may have been carrying a headlamp," Xiao Wang said at the case analysis meeting, "which matches the occupational characteristics of construction workers or miners." However, a thorough search of construction sites around Dongshan Cemetery revealed no workers who had recently left or gone missing, and the mining community was impossible to trace.
The visit to Zhou Guiying's family yielded no results. Her only son, Zhao Jianjun, who works out of town, answered the phone with obvious impatience: "My mother has been dead for three years, what enemies could she possibly have?" The list of relatives and friends he provided didn't include anyone related to "debt." The only dispute was with a neighbor over land, but the neighbor had moved to the south. "My mother was the most honest person she ever was," Zhao Jianjun's voice suddenly choked, "She couldn't possibly owe anyone money."
By noon the following day, Xiao Wang's team had reviewed over 40 hours of video footage. In the surveillance footage at the east gate of the cemetery, the red motorcycle reappeared at 5:03 AM on May 21st. This time, the license plate was covered by a black cloth, and a long, rectangular object, resembling a shovel, appeared to be strapped to the back seat. "But the distance was too far to confirm," Xiao Zhang said, rubbing his sore eyes. "Besides, many elderly people do their morning exercises in and out of the cemetery at this time, making it difficult to track the motorcycle if it's mixed in."
An investigation of the incense and candle stall's payment records revealed a 25 yuan WeChat payment at 9:14 AM on May 21st. The payer's profile picture was gray, and the nickname was "Past Events Drift with the Wind," with no real-name authentication information. "This payment time matches the man Li Baoguo saw," Xiao Wang asked the cyber security branch for assistance in the investigation, "but the other party registered using a virtual phone number, and the IP address is overseas, so we can't find any real information."
As the setting sun cast long shadows in the monitoring room, Xiao Wang's notebook was filled with 23 clues, but none of them led to a breakthrough. Blurred shadows in the surveillance footage, untraceable motorcycles, anonymous WeChat payments, untraceable debt disputes… these fragments were like scattered chess pieces on a board, unable to form a winning strategy. "Back up all the video footage and bring it back to the branch," Xiao Wang said, closing his notebook, the coffee stains now dried brown. "Pay special attention to those 17 modified motorcycles, and the 'Past Events Gone with the Wind' payment records; continue digging deeper."
As they left the monitoring room, the last rays of sunlight streamed through the window onto the monitors, illuminating the six screens of Dongshan Cemetery, which appeared as serene as a traditional Chinese ink painting. Xiao Wang glanced back at the flickering monitor feed and suddenly felt as if the suspect was lurking within a single pixel, sneering coldly from behind the screen. Although there were no major leads, the blurry images and fragmented testimonies had already sketched a profile of the suspect in his mind, awaiting the lab results to fill in the details. As the police car drove away from the cemetery, Xiao Wang received a message from the technical department: the DNA on the sausage packaging preliminarily matched the skin tissue remaining on the chain lock. This small breakthrough, like a spark in the darkness, rekindled hope in the weary team.
That evening, the body was transported back to the Criminal Investigation Division for an autopsy.
The stainless steel table in the Criminal Investigation Detachment's autopsy room gleamed coldly under the operating lights. When the body was transported back from Dongshan Cemetery, fine water droplets still condensed on the surface of the embalming bag. Zhang Lin, wearing double-layered latex gloves, frowned as soon as his fingertips touched the bag: "Surface temperature 16°C, ambient temperature 22°C, rapid cooling is obvious." Assistant Xiao Lin had already adjusted the incubator; the low temperature of 3°C could delay tissue autolysis. The moment she cut open the embalming bag, a smell mixed with soil and decay filled the air.
The body was in a prone position, male, approximately 172cm tall, wearing dark blue overalls and a gray jacket. The dirt on the clothing was partially dried, leaving varying shades of lines on the skin. "Rigoletto is distributed in the jaw, neck, shoulders, elbows, and hips, with a joint range of motion of 15-25 degrees, indicating the development stage," Zhang Lin said, pressing the sternocleidomastoid muscle of the body with his fingertips. "The stiffness is moderate, suggesting that the time of death was between 24 and 48 hours ago." When he turned the body over, the skin on the neck formed obvious wrinkles, and there was a 2x3cm subcutaneous hemorrhage behind the right ear with irregular star-shaped edges.
"The livor mortis is located on the back and the back of the limbs, and it doesn't completely fade when pressed," Xiao Lin noted, the sound of his pen scratching across the paper particularly clear. "It's a dark purplish-red color, consistent with death by asphyxiation?" Zhang Lin shook his head, his scalpel making a precise arc-shaped incision on the left chest of the corpse. The subcutaneous fat layer appeared a fresh, pale pink: "The dark color of the livor mortis is due to the lack of oxygen in the soil environment, so it can't be directly determined as asphyxiation. Notice the abdominal skin; there's a slight green change, spreading from the lower right abdomen. This is a typical sign of the spread of putrefactive gases from the intestines."
Measuring rectal temperature is a crucial step in determining the time of death. Zhang Lin inserted the probe of the electronic thermometer 15cm into the rectum. The numbers on the display slowly fluctuated, eventually stabilizing at 17.8°C. "Based on the ambient temperature of 18°C for the cemetery soil, the temperature difference is 0.2°C," he calculated using the post-mortem cooling formula. "Considering the rate of temperature drop of 0.6°C per hour, combined with rigor mortis and the degree of putrefaction, the time of death should be 36±4 hours, which is between 2 AM and 6 AM on May 21st." Suddenly, Zhang Lin pointed to the corpse's fingertips: "The fingernails are noticeably cyanotic, the nail beds are bluish-purple, and there are pinpoint hemorrhages under the conjunctiva—these should be signs of asphyxiation, right?"
The neck dissection revealed crucial clues. Zhang Lin gently separated the neck skin with hemostatic forceps, revealing an incomplete fracture on the left side of the greater horn of the hyoid bone, with sharp ends but no callus formation. "A hyoid bone fracture is an important sign of mechanical asphyxiation," he measured the length of the fracture line, "but the fracture was relatively minor, indicating that the force was not particularly great." Deep muscle bleeding in the neck tissues was even more convincing—patchy bleeding in the sternocleidomastoid and omohyoid muscles, dark red in color with clear edges: "This muscle bleeding occurred before death, consistent with the force characteristics of strangulation or ligation."
"So what exactly was the method of asphyxiation?" Xiao Lin handed over a magnifying glass, and Zhang Lin found an important mark on the bruises on the neck: "Look here, there are circular indentations, 0.8-1cm in diameter, spaced 2-3cm apart," he pointed to the direction of the indentations, "extending from the left jaw to the right neck, in an incompletely closed state, more like finger marks formed by strangulation than the grooves of a ligature." The epidermal abrasion at the indentations was relatively minor, but dense bleeding points were visible in the dermis, which is a typical reaction to life.
During the thoracic dissection, the condition of both lungs further confirmed Zhang Lin's judgment.