Chapter 15: Steaming the Corpse with White Vinegar (2/2)

“The eyes can be deceiving,” I said. “When witness accounts and material evidence don’t agree, I would always trust the material evidence. I don’t think the deceased is Deng Chao. This corpse had been moved here from somewhere else.”

“Why would the murderer do that?” asked Huang Xiaotao.

“It’s too soon to say,” I answered. “But if we keep on investigating, the truth will out one way or another.”

At that moment, Dali ran into the room.

“Dude, I’ve got everything you asked f-f-for…”

He went silent and his eyes were fixed on the corpse, the naked headless body that was on the iron plate, to be precise. Understandably, he was staring at it aghast for a few seconds before he could speak again.

“Well butter up my butt and call me biscuit if you guys don’t start doing more and more ludicrous things while I was gone!” exclaimed Dali. “Holy hell, are you steaming the corpse?”

“Nah,” I said with a shrug, “we were debating whether it’s better to steam it or to fry it.”

Dali immediately shoved the stuff he brought for me into my hands and ran out the door while covering his mouth, trying to resist throwing up right then and there.

Even Huang Xiaotao’s face turned sickly green when she heard my comment.

“Can you not talk about food when we’re examining dead bodies?” she asked. “It’s disgusting! Are you really a college student, by the way? You’re as stoic about this macabre business as a seasoned officer.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I just happened to have some training in these matters, so it didn’t affect me much.”

Dali had evidently got the magnet from an audio speaker. I hovered the white sheet of paper over the neck of the corpse and moved the magnet over the paper to collect metal particles from the corpse. Then I turned the paper over and carefully held them with both of my hands and showed them to Huang Xiaotao.

Although the particles were very small, and I could easily lose them all if I sneezed, but because of the stark color contrast with the white paper, anyone could see them with the naked eye.

“These are…” Huang Xiaotao said as she came in closer to examine it.

“They’re tiny metal splinters,” I explained.

Huang Xiaotao looked at me with scrutinizing eyes, then looked at those tiny particles on the paper.

“Unbelievable,” she said. “These things are even smaller than little mites! How did you see them?”

“I eat lots of carrots so my eyesight is excellent!” I said with a laugh.

“Then where did this sharp metal splinter came from? The piano wire?”

I wrapped up the white paper carefully to prevent the precious evidence I obtained from being blown away. Then I picked up a piano wire and showed it to Huang Xiaotao. It was as fine as a human hair, but when observed closely it was clear that it was a metal thread made up of bundles of microscopic metal wires. It was impossible for this type of object to leave sharp metal splinters behind, no matter how you used it.

“What can leave splinters like we saw,” I explained, “would be a saw blade. It is commonly made of iron, and due to the friction caused by sawing motions, metal residues are often left behind.”

“A saw?” asked Huang Xiaotao with widened eyes. “You mean to say that the victim had his head sawed off alive?”

“It’s too soon to make that conclusion,” I said. “By the way, do you have a handkerchief?”

“One moment.”

Huang Xiaotao then borrowed a handkerchief from one of the officers and handed it to me. I snapped a piece of the succulent plant from the pot and wrapped the handkerchief around it. I then squeezed out the juice of the succulent plant and used that to apply to the wound on the neck of the corpse.

Gradually, the wound turned purple, and one could clearly see cut marks on the flesh and a different mark of friction that suggested sawing motion on the bones.

“Do you get it now?” I asked. “This proves that the flesh of the victim was sliced off with a knife, but the bones were sawed off with a saw blade!”

“How did you do that?” asked Huang Xiaotao, still stupefied.

“It’s all very simple,” I said. “Succulent plants are very sensitive towards metal, so if I use its juice and apply it to the wound, I can easily see the trace left behind by the sharp metal instrument used to cut the flesh and bones.”

“Song Yang,” she said, “I’ve only known you for an hour, yet I’ve already seen you do half a dozen miraculous and bizarre things that I’ve never seen before ever since I became a police officer. Tell me, who are you really?”

Huang Xiaotao stared piercingly straight into my eyes — the steely determination I saw told me that she would not back down unless she got an answer.

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