Chapter 191: The Bone Density Fluid (1/2)

It was close to eight o’clock in the evening, yet Bingxin still hadn’t arrived. “I’d better go check on her,” I told Xiaotao.

She stopped me, then told me to bring some food for her. I laughed and said, “So you do care about her!”

“Of course I do!” she replied. “We’re the only women in the team! Who would take care of her if I don’t?”

“Oh, but must the master detective deliver the food himself?” Director Feng interjected. “Surely any other officer can do it!”

“I’d better do it myself,” I said. “Her dad did ask us to take good care of her, after all.”

“Oh, that’s right,” added Xiaotao, “her father is Sun Tiger, by the way.”

Director Feng’s cup slipped through his fingers. He shot up to his feet and cried, “You should’ve told me earlier! I’m terribly sorry!”

He then insisted on going with me. Yuanchao came along too. We headed towards the morgue in the police station and found Bingxin carefully studying the broken bone fragments. Officer Chen was right beside her.

Director Feng hurried to Bingxin and said, “Miss Sun, I’ve been remiss as a host! Please forgive me! You should take a rest and have some food!”

Bingxin stared confusedly at us, probably wondering why Director Feng’s attitude changed so suddenly.

I echoed Director Feng and told Bingxin to take a rest and have dinner, but she refused. She said she was really puzzled by the bones, and it would drive her crazy if she didn’t make sense out of it.

There were more than six hundred bone fragments. Apart from being dismembered by the killer, the victim’s body had also been gnawed at by the stray dogs at the construction site. In fact, the body was discovered when someone noticed the dogs fighting over a human limb. When the police got to the scene, the body parts were so scattered that they could barely identify it as a human corpse.

I asked Bingxin what she’d discovered so far, and she replied, “Judging by the bone size, the victim was most likely a male in his thirties. His bone joints are thick, so he must’ve been engaged in manual labor during his life. I just can’t identify what type of bones they are! All the things I learned in the textbooks are useless!”

“How about this?” I suggested. “I’ll show you how to do it tomorrow. I promise you that I’ll be able to identify them within an hour!”

Bingxin’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Just do it now, Song Yang-gege! I want to see it now!”

“No,” I shook my head. “I need time to make some preparations.”

I wrote down a list of Chinese herbs and handed it to Officer Chen, asking him to buy them for me.

Bingxin then began to eat right inside the morgue. She had changed so much since we were young. She used to be scared of cockroaches, but now, she could sit down and have a meal right next to a pile of bones without batting an eye.

In order to make up for his indifference to her earlier, Director Feng started to ask Bingxin all sorts of questions. He even planned to let a female officer accompany her and assist her while she was here. Bingxin didn’t know how to respond to his barrage of questions, so she just replied with a pursed smile.

“Right,” I interjected, “since we’re already here, could you show us the body from the other case?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Detective Song,” Director Feng answered. “The corpse was cremated. The victim’s family demanded it. People here are very religious, sometimes they make it difficult for us to do our job…”

After a while, Officer Chen returned with the materials that I needed, so we went back to the hotel.

There still wasn’t much to do on the first day. Some police officers were playing cards in their room. I shared a room with Yuanchao. The minute we came back, he hopped onto the bed and lay there drinking from his silver flask the whole night, not saying a single word to me. I was used to that by now, so I spent the time surfing the Internet. At around midnight, the sound of firecrackers outside broke the silence in the room. It was going to be the new year soon, and I suddenly felt a little homesick.

The sound of shattering glass downstairs broke my train of thoughts. It was quickly followed by the deafening noise of a car alarm. Yuanchao jumped out of bed and looked out the window.

“Someone’s smashing a car window!” he said.

“Let’s go downstairs now!”

We quickly put on our coats and ran out. As we passed by Xiaotao’s room, I heard her voice shouting through the door, “Yuanchao! Whose car got broken into?”