Chapter 100: Top Ten Unsolved Mysteries (1/2)

I prized open the victim’s mouth and observed. According to The Chronicles of Grand Magistrates, if the victim was burned to death, there would be a lot of dust and ashes collected in the nose, mouth, and trachea. But the mouths of these two victims were completely clean.

So what was going on?

One more thing that bugged me was the victims’ body posture. Whether someone was burned to death or burned after death, the body’s proteins would be coagulated by the intense heat. The body would tense up into a boxer’s stance—it meant that the arms were lifted and the fists were clenched.

But that didn’t happen to the two bodies at all. So were they burned?

I asked Xiaozhou for a scalpel and cut a small piece of skin to check it. I found that the skin was very brittle and the blood inside the blood vessels had congealed, which was clearly a common feature of burning.

I could only say that these bodies were full of contradictions from beginning to end!

The difference between bodies that were burned to death and bodies that were burned after death was a major puzzle for both Traditional Coroners and modern forensic science. My ancestor, Song Ci, who wrote the Collected Cases of Injustices Rectified, used to burn live pigs and dead pigs to test the differences.

However, these two bodies in front of me fit neither the characteristics of bodies that were burned to death nor bodies that were burned after death. This puzzled me, and at the same time, it excited me.

I would describe it as the excitement of a math whiz encountering a mathematical conundrum that was hard to solve!

I sniffed the bodies, and detected a slight pungent smell. But it was unlike common combustion fuel like gasoline, kerosene, or alcohol. I was not sure what it was, and I handed the small piece of skin that I had just cut to Xiaozhou. I told him to conduct two tests.

Firstly, I needed to know the combustion fuel involved. The other was the level of carboxyhemoglobin in the victims’ blood.

Carboxyhemoglobin was a product formed by the combination of hemoglobin and carbon monoxide in an extremely hypoxic environment, i.e. an oxygen-deprived environment. If the level of carboxyhemoglobin exceeded a certain amount, it would be fatal. This was an important indicator to judge whether the victims had burned to death or if their bodies were burned postmortem.

In fact, this could be judged by the naked eye alone. When the body contained too much carboxyhemoglobin, the corpse would be bright red or cherry red, but neither of these bodies were like that.

I had Xiaozhou do the test anyway just in case. After all, this was turning out to be a mysterious case indeed!

I also cut a small piece of clothing and asked him to check if the fabric and the body surface had the same flammable components.

Xiaozhou put the sample into a plastic test tube and remarked with a smile, “Have you forgotten something, Detective Song?”

“What?”

“DNA, of course! Why didn’t you tell me to test for such an important thing?”

I laughed. “But the identity of the victims have not been determined yet. It is meaningless to test DNA. Save the effort. You should instead take a trip to the dental hospital in Nanjiang City tomorrow.”

I then pried open the older victim’s mouth and asked Xiaozhou to observe the two molars inside. He shone a flashlight into the mouth and exclaimed, “He’s a rich man! He’s got golden teeth!”

“It’s palladium porcelain teeth,” I corrected him.

Xiaozhou reexamined them carefully and relented, “You’re right. They’re not gold.”

Palladium porcelain teeth were a kind of high-grade dentures, and the value even exceeded that of gold teeth. I assumed there wouldn’t be no more than five hospitals in Nanjiang City that could produce such fake teeth, so if Xiaozhou could reference these teeth and ask around, he’d be able to identify the victims in a short period of time.

As for the other person, the police could just investigate further! If you knew the identity of one of them, you could find out the identity of the other person by using DNA analysis.

Xiaozhou looked at me strangely. I jokingly asked him, “What’s wrong?” Did he fall in love with me?

Xiaozhou answered, “Song Yang, you are both a master Traditional Coroner and you have great knowledge of modern forensic science. I feel that if you go through the exams, you could definitely get a coroner’s certificate in minutes. You’d be better than most of the professors!”

I smiled, “Why do I need the qualifications? Am I not already investigating crimes? You should go quickly.”

“Nothing else for me to test?” asked Xiaozhou.

“No, I’ll take care of the fingerprints and hair samples. Leave the UV lamp for me. You and the rest of the forensics team can go back now.”

They soon left. Xiaotao looked at me and smiled.

“You’re good at giving orders now!” she commented. “Maybe I should hand over my position as the task force captain to you!”

“No, no, I don’t want that. I’m more comfortable working under the Empress.”