The following day.
Zhou Ning arrived at the technical departnt, bypassed the office directly to change clothes, and went to the autopsy room, but as soon as he entered, he saw several familiar figures, all wearing gas masks, standing in front of a row of autoclaves.
"Heh, you got here early enough."
Zhu Xingxing was fishing out a bamboo basket from the pot, then carefully picked the bones out of it, placing them on a tray to one side.
"Don’t worry, Team Leader, we’ll have everything sorted out soon, but I want all our group mbers to experience this."
Zhou Ning smiled, walked over to a platform next to the autopsy table, where part of a skeleton had already been laid out. He had to comnd the city bureau’s facilities; they had boiled the flesh off the bones after dealing with a highly decomposed body the night before, and amazingly, there was no sll today.
Zhu Xingxing brought over the tray and laid out the bones on the platform, then stretched languidly.
"We ca down a little after five, and we’ve finally finished assembling it."
Zhou Ning was sowhat surprised.
"Did you rest in the dormitory?"
"Yeah."
"Why didn’t you go ho?"
"My family has gone out of town, there’s no one at ho, so it’s better to make do in the dormitory. Coming here early, so we could assemble the skeleton, doesn’t delay things."
Zhou Ning nodded; he didn’t ask any further. After all, she and Mr. Zhao were raised together. From the bits and pieces he’d heard about her, it was in a military compound, with all the attendant status and family backgrounds, and he thought it was better not to know.
However, Zhou Ning still found it difficult to understand why soone with her background would choose this line of work.
After putting on gloves, Mr. Zhao had already passed him the articulating magnifying glass. Zhou Ning walked over to the skeleton, began to examine it carefully.
After a thorough inspection and a comparison with archived images of the pubic symphysis, Zhou Ning concluded that the victim’s age range was between twenty and twenty-two years old.
Of course, on the right shinbone, the tibia, he noticed a thickened fracture line that would have been undetectable without careful examination. The fracture was wider than typical bone fractures, with faint traces. Zhu Xingxing, holding the magnifying glass, looked puzzled.
"I noticed this thickened part when I was fishing it out, but since the girl doesn’t play soccer, such fractures in the middle of the shinbone are quite rare. Could it be caused by a severe sport or twisting and jumping injuries?"
Zhou Ning glanced at the left shinbone and fibula where the left leg’s shinbone also had a thickened area similar to the right leg’s, narrow and elongated, with both fractures spirally winding around the shinbone. They appeared to be quite old, sowhat resembling a spiral shape.
"Both this fracture and the crack occurred between twelve or thirteen years ago and ten years ago. As the bones grew, the position of the cracks was stretched, hence leading to this kind of trace formation. If it were in an adult, the positions of fractures and cracks would not have changed."
Zhu Xingxing still looked confused.
"But the victim was only about ten to twelve years old ten years ago. What could cause fractures and cracks at that age?"
Zhou Ning shook his head, gazing at the mutilated hands and feet of the corpse, pondering before saying:
"We can’t judge that. Perhaps this is related to why the victim’s hands and feet were chopped off. Have the results from the forensic lab co back yet?"
At Zhou Ning’s question, Mr. Zhao quickly gestured to Mr. Sun, and Sun Gaotie quickly approached, holding a stack of docunts.
"Mrs. Cui sent soone to deliver these."
Zhou Ning carefully flipped through them. The victim’s lungs showed no signs of seawater, no toxic substances were detected in the blood within the heart from the toxicology tests, and no parasites or genetic diseases were found in the samples taken from the major organs.
Turning to the last page, these were the reports of three bone marrow slides. No blood cells were found in the bone marrow of the neck, hands, and feet.
Zhou Ning sighed, closed his eyes, and handed the report back to Sun Gaotie.
Mr. Zhao and the others also leaned in, with Mr. Zhao patting Zhou Ning on the shoulder. In this beheading and dismbernt case, where the victim was discarded, the pressure was indeed imnse since there were so few leads. Any details that could reveal the victim’s identity had already been severed by the murderer.
The loss of the head, in particular, left the laboratory clueless, as their expertise lay in facial reconstruction from skulls. But what to do without a head?
Zhou Ning glanced back at the whiteboard, continuously recording known conditions, the dumping site, various photos, each pinned on the board, then he looked at Zhu Xingxing.
"Based on the records on this whiteboard, draft an autopsy report. As for the victim’s ti of death, it’s estimated at around one month ago."
Zhu Xingxing uttered an acknowledgnt and nodded, wisely refraining from naively asking what the team leader intended to do.
Seeing Zhou Ning taking off his coat and going upstairs, Mr. Zhao gestured to everyone to continue with their tasks.
"All right, everyone get back to work. Hamr out that autopsy report as quickly as possible. As for the victim’s skeleton, let’s just keep it in this autopsy room, moving it around is too much trouble."
By this ti, Zhou Ning had arrived at the fourth-floor laboratory. After swiping his card, he pushed the door open and saw Xia Momo standing in the center of the room.
"Momo, do you have a pattern for that tattoo found on the victim? Relying on your artistic intuition, help analyze the aning behind this pattern."
Xia Momo had already turned on the computer. She magnified the tattoo on the screen. Actually, calling the design a cat seed a stretch to Zhou Ning because the pattern was very abstract, like two curved tails coiling in opposite directions. However, at the top end of the ’tail’ on the upper right, there were two shapes resembling cat ears, and below was a curled and deford ’r’.
It had a feel of ancient wall painting. If he were to share his first impression, Zhou Ning leaned more towards the pattern being that of a seahorse, but as soone who knew only a little bit about drawings, Xia Momo was the expert in this field.
Xia Momo did not hurry, found a book titled "The Transformation of Alphabets and Logo Design," flipped to a particular image, and handed it to Zhou Ning.
"Actually, when I got back last night, I flipped through this book. Is there a possibility that the pattern isn’t an animal, but a transformation of a letter? If we analyze it from this angle, the figure as a whole looks more like an X. If we divide it into two parts, this here looks more like the curlicue at the bottom of a capital T, which is a curly r."
Zhou Ning paused because he had just seen the r as well. However, Xia Momo’s analysis seed very reasonable, and he nodded continuously as he stared at her.
"If we analyze it this way, could the figure be imagined as two combinations, XTR or simply TR without striving for an overall form? I think it might be a na."
"Heart too soft?"
Mr. Zhao looked puzzled and blurted out. Seeing Zhou Ning glance over, he quickly covered his mouth and raised a hand in apology.
Xia Momo tilted her head and continued to analyze:
"I don’t think it has to be her own na; it’s more likely her boyfriend’s na."
Zhou Ning paused, then shook his head decisively.
"The edges of this tattoo are sowhat greenish, not the pure black kind. I think the tattoo must be at least five or six years old; it’s not a fresh tattoo. According to the analysis of the pubic symphysis earlier, the deceased’s age is between 20 and 22, so she got the tattoo at fourteen or fifteen? I don’t think it’s very likely."
Xia Momo smiled, offering no rebuttal. After all, Zhou Ning was more expert in this area; it was enough for her to help with the analysis.
"I phoned Xu Da, and actually this analysis is a direction too."
...
"Okay, I’ve got it. Based on the death ti of about a month, we found a missing person from Liuhe District. I am going over to take a look and won’t talk to you anymore."
After hanging up the phone, Xu Dayuan waved at Bai Ruixin.
"Didn’t eat enough, or did you buy your driver’s license with money?"
Bai Ruixin floored the accelerator, and the intense sensation of being pushed back caused Xu Dayuan to close his eyes. Bai Ruixin kept grumbling.
"I’m telling you, chief, this car has more than one or two traffic violations. I have no more points left," Bai Ruixin said.
Xu Dayuan didn’t open his eyes at all. The car swiftly sped along, and it wasn’t long before they arrived near Shazikou in the southernmost part of Liuhe District, heading straight for the Shazikou Border Defense Police Station.
Having just conducted a search in the system, Xu Dayuan saw over twenty possible missing persons fitting the criteria, but it was the woman from Shazikou that caught his attention. The others were either the incorrect age, the wrong gender, or didn’t match the height.
Especially since the body was found on Xiaofudao, and the nearest coastline to the land there was exactly Shazikou, it all seed too coincidental.
Feeling the car stop, Xu Dayuan opened his eyes.
Exiting the car in one fluid motion, he didn’t get to hear what Bai Ruixin, who was locking the car and muttering to himself, had to say.
At that mont, another police car that had been closely following them also stopped. Mr. Zeng glanced at Bai Ruixin and barked irritably:
"You’ve been speeding all the way; were you being chased by a dog?"
Bai Ruixin felt wronged beyond belief and pointed in the direction where Xu Dayuan had disappeared:
"You know what the boss’s temper is like; he’s still complaining about my speed. I can’t fly, can I? If I could have flown, I would have flown here already."
"Enough with your nonsense."
Mr. Zeng followed him in, only to see Xu Dayuan shaking hands with soone before coming out with a file.
"What’s up, Mr. Xu?"
"Let’s head to the next room; the missing person’s husband is here. Let’s go ask him so questions."
They saw a man who looked honest and straightforward, definitely over forty years old. Xu Dayuan looked through the file; the man’s na was Cheng Zhipeng, 44 years old. He had married a woman 22 years younger than himself. There might be so unknown reasons behind this.
Standing in the interview room with dark skin and a thin build, his hands were constantly rubbing at his sides, showing clear signs of nervousness.
"Don’t be nervous, we just need to verify so details with you. Is the missing person your wife? What’s her na? How old is she? Tell us about how she went missing, or any information you know."
"My wife’s na is Zhu Cuifeng, she’s 22, and we have two sons, one five and the other two years old. She went out on September 7th and never ca back. Her hotown is in Shannan Province, she doesn’t have many acquaintances here, so it’s like she’s alive but unseen, dead without a body!"
Xu Dayuan paused, his thoughts returning to Zhou Ning’s assessnt: the deceased hadn’t had children. Evidently, this missing person had nothing to do with the deceased. He sighed, but he wasn’t yet willing to give up.
"Does Zhu Cuifeng have any tattoos on her legs?"
The man blinked.
"I don’t know, never noticed!"
Xu Dayuan narrowed his eyes and slapped his hand on the table.
"I’m from the criminal police, not the Shazikou Police Station. Do you not realize the seriousness of the situation? Could you have been called here if there wasn’t a problem? Now, tell the truth!"
Cheng Zhipeng collapsed to his knees with a thud, trembling all over.
"I’ll talk! I bought her for 30,000 yuan six years ago, and her running away ans I’ve lost 30,000 yuan!"
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