Miss Forensics – Chapter 6

Part One

Clash

A day of boring desk duty in the system came to an end, and with no major cases, Lin Yan stepped out of her office and lit a cigarette, walking and smoking in her high heels, her uniform jacket still draped over her arm.

Before she could finish the cigarette, a flashy Rolls-Royce pulled up at the entrance of the Jiangcheng City Public Security Bureau.

            

Forensic Examiner Lin tossed her cigarette and walked over. The car door opened, and out stepped a woman with exquisite makeup, dressed in a sharp suit.

While the two were hugging and being all lovey-dovey, Song Yuhang was tinkering with her broken little e-bike, wearing a simple army green T-shirt, a pure white towel draped around her neck, her hands covered in grease.

When the little e-bike was finally fixed, she heard small gasps around her and looked up to see the two at the bureau entrance already lost in a passionate kiss.

            

She wasn’t far away. From this angle, Lin Yan’s slender waist was encircled by a single arm; she was tall, and as she leaned slightly down to accommodate the other person, her face wore an expression of absorption.

A flashbulb went off. Probably tomorrow it would be the headline of the entertainment section again.

Song Yuhang shook her head slightly, peeled off her dirty gloves and tossed them into the trunk, started the vehicle, and slowly drove out of the bureau gate.

            

The two people and the car behind her gradually shrank into a tiny dot and vanished.

A moment later, while waiting at a red light, that car caught up and pulled up right beside her, its window slowly rolling down.

Her gaze slid over, unruffled.

            

A slender hand extended from the window and flipped her the middle finger.

This person was still holding a grudge about the morning’s incident.

Officer Song selectively ignored it. The moment the light turned green, she immediately turned and drove off.

            

In the rearview mirror, the Rolls-Royce continued straight, growing farther and farther away from her.

For Lin Yan, a rare day off meant calling up friends, indulging in wine and pleasure, living it up in a drunken haze, with no thought of returning home.

For Song Yuhang, it meant working out and practicing free combat. She preferred to spend her time on such things.

            

When she came out of the gym, she casually bought two catties¹ of apples from a roadside vendor. By the time she got home, the lights were already on inside.

She had lived here for as long as she could remember. Over the years, the Public Security Bureau had built several new family housing compounds, but she and her mother had never moved.

The walls of the old compound were already peeling. Mischievous children had drawn deep and shallow marks on them with ballpoint pens. Higher up, ivy covered the walls, lush and verdant in the height of summer.

            

The buildings weren’t tall, only six stories, so there was no elevator.

Song Yuhang parked her little e-bike at the entrance of the building unit, locked it, picked up the fruit she’d bought, and headed up the narrow stairwell.

With each floor she passed, a motion-sensor light went out behind her — she had just replaced them a few days ago.

            

She reached the sixth floor, apartment 603, and took out her key to unlock the door.

“Mom, I’m back.”

A woman in an apron emerged from the kitchen, in her early fifties, with white hair already at her temples. Seeing her return, a smile naturally spread across her face.

            

“You’re back. Go take a shower — look at all that sweat. Dinner will be ready soon.”

Only in front of her mother did the corners of her mouth, usually so stingy with smiles, curve slightly upward.

“I bought apples, your favorite. Wash them and have some after dinner.”

            

She grabbed her toiletries and went into the bathroom, hearing a few complaints from outside: “You child, we still haven’t finished the watermelon I bought yesterday…”

She raised her voice to reply: “Fruit doesn’t keep in summer. If we can’t finish it, just throw it out.”

“How can we do that? It costs money! Eat less rice later and finish it all for me.”

            

Song Yuhang turned on the shower, the corners of her lips lifting slightly, letting the hot water wash away the day’s fatigue.

The apartment wasn’t large — two bedrooms and a living room. The dining table took up most of the living room.

An old color TV sat opposite the dining table, and on top of it was a small altar table², propped up on a stand. Two memorial portraits were placed one behind the other — one slightly younger, the other older.

            

After her shower, Song Yuhang came out, lit a stick of incense, and then took her seat.

The home-cooked dishes were light and refreshing, not large in portion. The few slices of meat were all placed into her bowl.

Song Yuhang shoveled rice into her mouth. “Mom, just say what’s on your mind.”

            

Mother Song paused her chopsticks, a little embarrassed. “Well… I took the liberty of arranging for you to have dinner tomorrow after work with that Mr. Lin you met last time…”

“Cough, cough —” A grain of rice went down the wrong pipe. Song Yuhang quickly drank some tea to wash it down.

“Mom —”

            

“Mom knows you’re not willing, but all these years you haven’t had anyone you like, and you’re so busy with work. Once people hear you’re a criminal police officer, they don’t want to introduce anyone. It’s rare to find someone who doesn’t mind. Just listen to Mom and give it a try. After all, feelings are built through spending time together, aren’t they?”

Song Yuhang knew that whether feelings arose from love at first sight or grew over time, they all came down to the secretion of dopamine and adrenaline. She had ten thousand scientific arguments to refute her mother’s words.

But she couldn’t bring herself to say them, especially in front of the memorial portraits of her father and older brother.

            

“I understand, Mom. I’ll contact him after dinner.”

Hearing this, Mother Song immediately perked up and added a few more pieces of red-braised pork³ to her bowl.

“Good, then eat up. Tomorrow, you dress up nicely and spend more time with him. No need to rush back. I’ll go dancing with your Auntie Wang after dinner.”

            

Speaking of which, this Mr. Lin was also introduced by Auntie Wang. She said she’d gone to his dental clinic to get a filling, and that he was very handsome and had a great sense of humor.

Most importantly, he was a returnee from overseas, single, and unmarried.

Song Yuhang had met him once or twice but didn’t have much of an impression. She just felt he didn’t have the usual bad habits of most men — at least he wouldn’t smoke in front of a lady. He was fairly suave, considerate, and attentive.

            

Speaking of which, they both had the surname Lin, so why was the gap between people so huge?

Song Yuhang thought of that domineering Forensic Examiner Lin and unconsciously furrowed her brow. She finished the rice in her bowl. “Mom, I’ll go wash the dishes.”

The next day, it wasn’t until the sun was high in the sky that Lin Yan groggily woke up. She pushed the woman’s hand off her body, sat up, and felt for a cigarette on the nightstand. She lit it and took a drag to ease her hangover headache.

            

“Stay with me a little longer…” the woman mumbled, reaching to wrap an arm around her shoulder.

Lin Yan, cigarette between her fingers, made a stopping gesture. She leaned against the headboard and unlocked her phone screen — a flood of missed calls.

Duan Cheng: “Jie⁴?! Are you coming to work today?”

            

Zheng Chengrui: “Forensic Examiner Lin, I bought you breakfast and put it on your desk.”

Attached was a picture of soy milk, fried dough sticks, and steamed buns.

Lin Yan felt a toothache coming on.

            

Finally, Fang Xin, with a trembling emoji: “Lin-jie, Captain Song has been looking for you for ages…”

Lin Yan’s toothache intensified.

The woman, oblivious to danger, wrapped her arms around her. “Why go to work? I’ll support you.”

            

She flicked her fingers, nearly stubbing the cigarette out on her face. The woman shrieked and jumped away. “Holy shit, what the hell is wrong with you so early in the morning?!”

Lin Yan threw off the covers and got out of bed. Yesterday they’d been all lovey-dovey; today she was turning her back on her without a second thought.

“Your skills aren’t bad, little sister, but if you want to support your big sister, you’re still far from it. So long, and may we never meet again in this world.”

            

She stood calmly before the mirror, adjusting her clothes. She was full where she should be full, slender where she should be slender, without a single ounce of excess flesh. Her skin was fair, and her small bare feet on the floor stirred the imagination.

Now without makeup, her long brown curls cascading down, her profile sharply defined, the morning sunlight filtering through the gauze curtains gave her a touch of a young girl’s fresh, untainted charm.

Once she was ready, before leaving, she pulled a stack of RMB from her wallet and placed it on the table. “Your skills aren’t bad, little sister, but if you want to support your big sister, you’re still far from it. So long, and may we never meet again in this world. From now on, don’t you fucking dare show your face in front of me again, or I have plenty of ways to ruin your reputation.”

            

Having dealt with the trouble, Lin Yan, in a rather good mood, walked into the city bureau with a cup of coffee, hung her uniform on the coat rack, and comfortably slumped into her chair.

Duan Cheng came over and placed a report in front of her. “Jie, sign this.”

“Yesterday’s injury assessment?”

            

She flipped through a couple of pages hastily. Seeing no major issues, she pulled a ballpoint pen from the pen holder on the desk and scribbled her name with a few swift strokes.

Duan Cheng, holding the signed document, hesitated, then smiled ingratiatingly. “Um… maybe you should take this to Captain Song yourself.”

Fang Xin leaned in and whispered, “She came by this morning asking for the file, but you weren’t here, so Duan Cheng didn’t give it to her…”

            

“Tch, I thought it was something serious. It’s just a file, right? I’ll go, let her look it over, then send it to the archive room for storage, yeah?”

Lin Yan snatched the thin sheet of paper, stuffed it into a folder, and stood up. Fang Xin asked, “Do you know where it is? Want me to go with you?”

“No need. If I don’t know, can’t I look or ask?” Lin Yan waved her off and strode out the door in her seven-centimeter heels.

            

Along the way, officers passing by cast curious glances at her. Lin Yan kept her eyes straight ahead, seemingly just walking, but in reality she was observing the CCTV cameras in the corridor.

One, two, three…

After three cameras, going upstairs led to the bureau chief’s office, the deputy bureau chief’s office, the command center, the political department…

            

Up one more floor, the cameras noticeably increased. She looked down at the patterns on the floor tiles, and when she counted the fourth one, she had reached the archive room.

Lin Yan knocked twice. After registering her identity and stating her purpose, the staff member was about to take the file inside for her, but she pulled it back and leaned over the counter with a grin.

“Hey there, young man, I just started yesterday. I’d like to go in and have a look around, broaden my horizons. You know, forensic doctors are always interested in strange cases. Could you do me a favor?”

            

She was already blessed with an extremely alluring face — eyes slanting upward at the corners, long and narrow like a phoenix’s tail. When she smiled, her peach-blossom eyes brimmed with rippling charm, her voice soft and gentle with a hint of coquettishness. The spring allure that her uniform buttons could barely contain was practically bursting forth.

The young, hot-blooded officer’s face instantly flushed red. Stammering, he said, “Ah, well… okay… but you have to leave your phone here. You can look things up inside, but photography is prohibited.”

“Sure, no problem.” Lin Yan readily pulled her phone from her pocket, placed it on the desk, and slid it over, throwing in a couple of flirtatious winks that made the man blush even more furiously.

            

The archive room was nearly empty this early in the morning. A few computers for data storage and indexing were set up at the entrance.

Like a library, all kinds of archives were neatly arranged by category — criminal, civil, year, location of incident, and so on. The farther in you went, the older the records. She knew that much.

Her high heels made no sound on the floor. When someone passed by to retrieve materials, she simply tucked her hands into her pockets, a file clamped under her arm, walking with an air of perfect composure.

            

Though she was engaged in shady business, her face betrayed not a single clue; her expression was open and unruffled.

Her fingertips brushed over the neatly arranged boxes one by one: 2008, 2007, 2006… all the way to 1994.

After all this time, her heart still started pounding uncontrollably.

            

She knew this wasn’t the right moment. She had already mapped out the positions of the CCTV cameras here. The best plan was to sneak in after dark with her equipment.

But the moment she saw that year, she was almost supernaturally compelled to reach out. Just as her fingertips touched the box, the hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood on end.

Long-honed vigilance made her react without turning around — an instinctive elbow strike, a reflex in times of danger.

            

Song Yuhang also defended on instinct. In a flash, the two had silently exchanged several moves. Using her height advantage, she was the first to pin the other against the shelf.

This spot was far from the exit, the curtains hadn’t been drawn, and the light was dim. When their eyes met, the usually composed officer frowned slightly.

“What are you doing here?”

            

The two still held their grappling stance — Song Yuhang’s elbow was pressed against her throat, while Lin Yan’s hand had grabbed her tie. Her full chest was pressed against Song Yuhang’s arm. Realizing the impropriety, Song Yuhang wanted to let go.

Unexpectedly, the other woman still clung tightly to her tie, and even latched onto her arm, with the air of someone who would cling relentlessly and never give up.

“I just went to your office to find you, but you weren’t there, so I came here. Tsk tsk tsk, why are you chasing after me and getting all handsy?”

            

She raised her voice just enough to be heard by others but not clearly — a kind of suggestive ambiguity.

Song Yuhang already sensed someone approaching. She took a deep breath, her tone growing cold.

“I said, let go.”

            

She lowered her voice, enunciating each word. The tight line of her lips carried an imposing authority that needed no anger.

Lin Yan could certainly feel she was on the verge of losing her temper, but she had always been shameless and had no bottom line.

One of her daily pleasures was watching people get angry, especially someone like Song Yuhang, who couldn’t stand her but couldn’t do anything about her.

            

If she could make a crack appear on that expressionless, unruffled face, she’d wake up laughing from her dreams.

“I…” She moved closer along her arm, rising slightly on tiptoe, as if naturally wrapping her arms around her neck, and breathed softly into her ear, her breath like orchids.

“Officer Song, why are you so angry?” A sweet, fresh scent of women’s perfume wafted into her nostrils. The woman’s tone was perfectly coquettish.

            

Song Yuhang gently closed her eyes. She saw the faint twitching of her masseter muscle.

Lin Yan’s lips curved into a seductive smile as she pressed closer. “I won’t let go. What are you going to do about it?”

The footsteps drew nearer.

            

Before she could enjoy her triumph for long, her smile froze on her face. With a loud bang, the back of her head slammed hard against the metal shelf, sending stars bursting before her eyes and leaving her dazed and disoriented.

The officer from earlier rushed over, his hand already on his holster. “What happened?!”

Song Yuhang pulled the file from her arms, took a fountain pen from her own uniform jacket, and signed it, her tone indifferent.

            

“It’s nothing. Forensic Examiner Lin accidentally slipped. You can go back to work.”

“Oh —” The young officer belatedly withdrew his hand, still casting a worried glance at her. “The floor is slippery here. Be careful, Forensic Examiner Lin.”

“I —” Lin Yan clutched the back of her head, her eyes reddening from the pain. It had been many years since she’d suffered physical pain like this, and the sudden shock left her momentarily unable to react.

            

Song Yuhang cut in at the right moment, stopping her from speaking. “Here’s the file. Take it and put it away properly.”

The young officer took the file she handed over, feeling that something was off between these two.

It looked like Forensic Examiner Lin had hit her head pretty hard. Why wasn’t Captain Song lending a hand to help her up?

            

Of course, he had no idea that this fall, which had Forensic Examiner Lin in such agony, had been caused by none other than the usually dignified and steady Captain Song herself.

Song Yuhang capped her pen, tucked it into her jacket pocket, and walked out with him, not even glancing back.

“From now on, don’t let just anyone into the archive room. Follow procedures strictly. Any retrieval of archives must be signed off by a cadre at the division level or above. Understood?”

            

The young officer quickly stood at attention and saluted. “Yes, Captain Song!”

Wasn’t the division-level cadre at the city bureau just her?!

It was said that at noon that day, the sound of Forensic Examiner Lin’s national curses⁵ echoed through the entire corridor.

            

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