Chapter 82: Vinegar Echolocation

After hearing my conjectures, Xiaotao’s eyes widened as she exclaimed, “But what would drive a person to such an extent! How intense was the hatred that the murderer had for the victim?”

“No,” I shook my head. “I don’t think this had anything to do with hatred at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the victim’s face.”

Xiaotao and several other police officers immediately went over to examine the victim’s face. They all gasped in horror.

“It looks like… she’s laughing!” Xiaotao exclaimed.

“Maybe it isn’t laughter,” commented a policeman. “Maybe it’s an expression she makes under extreme pain.”

“No, she definitely was laughing,” I corrected. “When a person smiles or laughs, we contract more than twenty facial muscles. There is no doubt that the expression on her face is laughter.”

The atmosphere in the morgue became tense after I spoke.

“But… why would the victim laugh?” asked the policeman.

“The answer is very simple,” I replied. “Because the murderer made her inhale nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas. When the gas enters a human body, it will cause their muscles to twitch and contract and involuntarily laugh.”

The whole room seemed skeptical.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” noted Xiaotao. “Why would the murderer go through such trouble? If he was afraid that she might scream, why didn’t he just cover her mouth? Why go through the trouble of acquiring anesthesia? Wouldn’t that make it riskier for him to be traced?”

I didn’t answer her right away, because even I felt that the answer to this question was incredibly appalling!

Soon after that, a policeman returned with the things that I required to perform the autopsy. I began by adding a small pill into the bottle of vinegar. Then I found a washbasin so I burned the kelp and seaweed into fines ashes, then I poured them into the basin.

Xiaotao asked me what that was, and I answered that it was seaweed ash used to detect fingerprints.

Why did I have to use seaweed ash? Because kelp and seaweed contained a lot of iodine, and iodine could make fingerprints appear. Similarly, forensic scientists also used iodine to detect fingerprints in crime scenes.

I took some of the fine seaweed ashes and sprinkled it on the corpse. I took the utmost care not to spill the ashes onto the open wounds of the body. Then I waited for a while and gently blew away the top layer of ashes.

But alas, no fingerprints were detected at all!

“Get me the ultraviolet light!” I requested.

A policeman rushed out and soon came back with an ultraviolet lamp. I broke my Autopsy Umbrella last time and hadn’t fixed it yet, so instead I prepared a makeshift replacement that consisted of a small piece of red silk cloth coated with a blend of medicinal herbs.

I covered the ultraviolet lamp with the red silk cloth and gently shone it over the victim’s corpse. Shapes of human palms appeared, but there were no fingerprints still, only some textures similar to that of woven fabric.

“The murderer wore gloves,” I stated. I compared the palm print with my hand and continued, “The murderer has been used to heavy physical labor for a long period of time. His palm looks strong and powerful. He should be about forty to fifty years of age.”

“But Consultant Song,” the policeman who had asked questions before argued, “Shouldn’t human hands begin to age after they are thirty years old? Can people in their forties or fifties have such wide palms?”

I smiled. Perhaps not all police officers were observant.

“You’re right,” I replied. “Our bodies will age after we turn thirty years old. But there is one exception.”

“What exception?”

“As is common with human bodies,” I said, “whichever part was used more would strengthen and develop, and whichever part was not used would deteriorate with age. The physical state of our bodies reaches its peak at the age of thirty, and then it slowly declines from there. But for those who are engaged in heavy physical labor daily, not only would their bodies not deteriorate, but they would even go on to become even stronger. If you don’t believe me, you can check the hands of chefs and carpenters.”

The policeman still looked doubtful, but Xiaotao nodded in agreement.

“That’s true,” she remarked. “I’ve seen labor workers who looked more muscular and stronger at forty or fifty years old than some people who are barely thirty. Wang Yuanchao’s palms, for example, are very wide.”

Then she turned to me and asked, “Do you like looking at people’s hands, Song Yang? How do you know all this?”

“It’s just an interest of mine,” I admitted sheepishly.

There was a talented coroner in the Song family who collected all the facts and knowledge about shapes of hands and palms in a book called The Book of Hands. It had nothing to do with palm reading, mind you, but it contained a collection of observations of the palm shapes of different groups of people according to their occupations and age. He even recorded the facts in very poetic language.

And although the occupations of ancient and modern times were quite different, I always found the facts in the book to match my own observations in the modern world, and it turned out to be very helpful to me.

I asked the police officers to take photos of the handprints. Then I turned off the ultraviolet light and sprinkled the remaining seaweed ash on the plastic bag that the body was kept in. When I blew off the seaweed ash, something unexpected happened. A lot of messy palm prints and fingerprints appeared!

There was a burst of exclamation in the room. The police officers who took the pictures earlier quickly rushed forward and took more than a dozen photos.

“What is going on here?” wondered Xiaotao. “The murderer seemed to be cautious enough to wear a glove, yet why did he leave so many fingerprints on the plastic bag?”

I was shocked myself. I had not anticipated to find so many fingerprints on the plastic bag at all. But this led me to one speculation.

“There may have been two people involved,” I said. “One person murdered the victim; the other dealt with the aftermath.”

I noticed that the ropes at the mouth of the bag were tied sloppily, and there were several places where the knots were loose. It was completely uncharacteristic of the cautious and careful murderer. Obviously, this other person was nervous and flustered!

This should have been an important piece of evidence, but I was frustrated when I looked at the fingerprints. The bag had been dragged on the ground. That and the dirt in the sewer had completely destroyed the fingerprints, making it beyond being identifiable.

Xiaotao noticed it too.

“I’ll still ask the forensics team to run the fingerprints through the database just in case,” she said.

I shook my head and sighed.

“I don’t think you’ll find anything there,” I stated. “Judging by the messy fingerprints and the loose knots, it’s probably a rookie without any criminal record.”

I picked up the vinegar bottle and found that the vinegar had turned purplish-brown after the pill was completely dissolved.

“What did you put inside there earlier?” asked Xiaotao.

“A vinegar neutralizer,” I explained. “It can turn the pH of the vinegar to neutral, like water.”

“Why didn’t you just use water instead?” Xiaotao couldn’t help but laugh.

I smiled. “Because vinegar is heavier than water. I’m going to add the vinegar in the victim’s stomach, but the acetic acid will have a certain corrosive effect in the body. This neutralizer will take effect within an hour, and the vinegar will be broken down into water, so you don’t have to worry about damaging the dead body. The purpose of the post-mortem examination is to bring justice to the victim, but we also must take care not to damage the dead body more than necessary.”

Xiaotao nodded her head thoughtfully and remarked, “You’re very dedicated to what you do, Song Yang.”

“Of course!” I replied.

This neutralizer was in fact not a chemical, but a species of bacteria grown in a willow root for ten years. It can break down acetic acid and hence lower the acidity. In order to acquire this, I spent quite a sum to buy a willow tree root from the wood carving market. It also took considerable time and effort to grow the bacteria.

As a Traditional Coroner, I had to be dedicated as Xiaotao said and learn as much as I could. I understood that the rules and taboos laid down by my ancestors must be obeyed and followed as much as possible, because if I didn’t, I would regret it sooner or later.

I asked a police officer to help me lift the body up and had another officer to stuff the funnel into the victim’s mouth. Then, I poured the vinegar down into her throat.

I then used Organ Echolocation to listen to the sound of the vinegar flowing inside the dead body. I closed my eyes to focus on the sound more intently. I signaled to the rest of the room to not make a peep, and I even stopped breathing for a few seconds.

This method was a more advanced version of the Organ Echolocation that I normally used. Through the echo generated by the liquid flowing inside the internal organs, I could construct a stereoscopic map of the dead body’s internal cavity in my mind and judge the pathology and damage suffered by the corpse.

I listened for about five minutes. Everyone was tense with anticipation. When I was finally done, I heard everyone sigh in relief.

“What did you find out, Song Yang?” Xiaotao asked.

I frowned and answered, “The victim’s stomach is completely empty!”