Chapter 87: Mad Cow Disease (2/2)

“H-Huh?” I was eating seaweed when I heard this. My face reddened immediately and my mouth opened wide, making the stringy seaweed hang out the corner of my mouth. I must’ve looked like a clown.

“You told me you like girls with long hair, didn’t you? I just met a girl who fits the bill. Want me to introduce her to you?”

“Th-that’s… that’s no longer necessary.”

“Huh? You mean you’ve got someone on your mind already?” she inched her face close to mine and stared into my eyes.

I lowered my face and muttered, “Yummy! What a delicious seaweed soup!”

“You idiot!” Xiaotao smiled and hit me playfully.

Just after eating, I received a call from Dali.

“Where have you been, dude?”

“I’m investigating a case.”

“Do you need help from me?”

“You can come if you want to.” I then told Dali the address of the restaurant.

“Okay, I’ll get out of bed now. I’ll see you there, okay?”

If I was still eating, I would’ve choked on my food. The bastard had just woken up!

When I hung up the phone, I found that Xiaotao had been on the phone too. She told me in a somber tone, “They’ve found the second body…”

“Should we go back to the police station now?” I asked.

“No,” she replied decisively. “We’ll go straight to the crime scene.”

My equipment was all still at the police station, though. I asked Xiaotao where the crime scene was, then called Dali and asked him to fetch my backpack at the police station and then follow us to the next address.

“Shit, dude. It’s gonna be hectic! But it’s what I signed up for as your assistant, I guess. Can you tell Xiaotao-jiejie to drive slowly, please? I think I’ll need an hour to catch up with you guys.”

Despite Dali’s request, Xiaotao and I rushed to the crime scene as fast as we could. The second body was found under an old bridge. Because the water level had dropped in the fal, a large mud field was exposed. Anyone who walked there would leave a distinct set of footprints.

The body was stuffed into a black plastic bag, half of which was exposed above the surface of the water. There was a hole in the plastic bag that revealed a male human head that showed signs of advanced decomposition. The officer who found the body said that it might have drifted here from somewhere else.

Xiaotao looked at the sets of footprints. They were probably all left by the police, but she couldn’t help but ask, “Did you take photos of this spot? Were there any footprints left behind by the criminal?”

“We’ve taken photographs, captain, but there were no footprints. The residents nearby say the water is still here. When fall arrived, the water level went down too.”

I put on rubber gloves and picked up the bag from the water. The body was not heavy at all. I tore the bag open to reveal the corpse inside. At that moment, I could hear everyone there draw in a sharp breath.

The body had decayed to a point where it was almost unrecognizable as a human corpse. Like the previous victim, the muscle and fat tissues in the abdomen, chest and the limbs were cut off in large chunks, leaving only the underlying bones and internal organs. The intestines had spilled outside of the bag, and there were maggots and locusts crawling all over it. I noticed that water had seeped into the bag, so the knot at the opening of the bag was probably not very tight. Because of that, the little flesh that was on the corpse was swollen and deathly white, and it was covered with a layer of greenish wax.

But it seemed that he wasn’t killed by Lingchi like the first dead body because there was none of that creepy smile on this victim’s face. There was a deep knife wound on the victim’s throat where the veins and the trachea underneath the skin were cleanly cut.

A few police officers ran out to vomit the second the corpse was revealed. Xiaotao’s face turned pale. Even I found it almost unendurable. This might have been the most decayed body that I had ever worked on so far.

However, I had to keep my composure in front of these police officers, so I gritted my teeth and went on with it.

After doing a routine examination on the corpse, I summarized, “The victim is between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. He is a male, physically thin, and has no signs of any illness or disabilities. The time of death is about forty days ago. The direct cause of death is the severed trachea, which caused asphyxiation…”

I pressed the victim’s chest, then blood spilled out of the cut throat. There was also a white foam with a disgusting smell. The moment that came out, I heard a number of people saying ‘eww.’

I smashed the locusts that climbed onto my hand and pointed out, “There’s a lot of blood in the lungs.”

“Is it the first missing person—that man who was an employee at the supermarket?” asked Xiaotao.

I turned the victim’s face over and examined it. Although the skull was considerably decayed, some of his facial features were still recognizable.

“Yes, it’s him!”

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