Miss Forensics – Chapter 8
by Little PandaPart One
Female Corpse
Clumps of white, cotton-like foam clogged the mouth and nose—a phenomenon known in forensic medicine as “mushroom foam”
Lin Yan said without a second thought, “Hypocritical and self-righteous. Looking at her just makes me feel annoyed.”
Lin Ge pulled her back, his face darkening. “What nonsense are you talking? It’s one thing to talk about me, but how could you…”
Lin Yan fired back, “You haven’t spent any time with her, so you wouldn’t know. That woman says one thing to your face and does another behind your back. With your intelligence, if she really marries into the Lin family, she’ll spin you right around her little finger!”
Lin Ge was so angry that steam was practically coming out of his ears. He couldn’t exactly hit her, so his face flushed red as he said, “Lin Yan, have you had enough?! The first stroke of the character ‘eight’ hasn’t even been written yet!1 I don’t know what kind of misunderstanding you have with Miss Song, but accusing someone in public is just wrong!”
“Let me put it to you this way.” Lin Yan’s lips were practically dry from talking. She turned back and continued, “The Lin family has nothing but money. Oh, that’s not right—they also have an annoying sister-in-law like me. Marriage is a lifelong commitment, after all. Don’t regret it when the time comes.”
Song Yuhang shook her head and took another sip of plain water. “I think you might be overly confident. I don’t dislike you.”
“Huh?” Lin Yan’s brain stalled for a brief second.
“I don’t dislike you.” Coming from Song Yuhang’s mouth, these words sounded incredibly surprising no matter how one heard them.
And yet—
“Overly confident.” Those cold, hard words still slapped her right back to reality.
If it weren’t for the lingering restraint of her aristocratic upbringing, Lin Yan would have slammed the table and stood up long ago. “You with the surname Song, don’t you dare—”
Before the words “throw my kindness back in my face” could escape her lips, both of their phones vibrated simultaneously.
Lin Yan had been brewing a stomachful of curses directed at the other woman’s ancestors of eighteen generations, ready to spit them out, but this sudden ringtone choked them right back down. Without even looking, she angrily pressed the button to decline the call.
The person sitting opposite her, however, answered the call and immediately stood up to leave, fishing out several RMB bills from her wallet with one hand and placing them on the table as she listened.
“My apologies. I’ll have to trouble you to settle the bill today. If it’s not enough, I’ll transfer the rest to you once I’m done.”
Lin Ge quickly stood up, waving his hands in refusal. “No, there’s no need. I’m the one who should be apologizing to you today…”
Song Yuhang didn’t pay attention to what he was saying at all. Her mind was entirely filled with the voice from the command center’s call: “An unidentified female corpse has appeared in the northwestern area of Lianchi Park in our city. The local precinct police have already rushed to the scene. Bureau Chief Feng said to let you…”
“I’ll be right there. Give me the address.”
On Lin Yan’s screen, Duan Cheng’s name kept flashing. Utterly exasperated, she picked up and immediately barked a reprimand right off the bat, “I said, do you have to be so annoying? Don’t you know it’s after-hours right now?!”
Duan Cheng sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “No, Lin-jie, something happened. A case just came in…”
Lin Yan set her wine glass down on the table, took a couple of steps, then ran back to grab her purse. “Lin Ge, I’m heading out first. This meal is on me—tell the owner to put it on my tab.”
“Wait…” Before Lin Ge could finish, the two of them had already rushed out the door, one after the other. He let out a long sigh, looking at the mess left on the table.
“What on earth is this…”
Since she had already dismissed her driver when they got out of the car earlier, Lin Yan stood at the intersection trying to hail a cab. Hailing a taxi during the evening rush hour was no easy feat; several cars passed by, one after another, all packed to capacity.
She squeezed her phone and pursed her lips, preparing to call her driver back, when a white, domestic BYD stopped in front of her.
Song Yuhang rolled down the window, sparing only a single word: “Get in.”
Lin Yan rolled eyes, not bothering to pay her any attention.
Seeing no response, Song Yuhang wasted no more time and prepared to shift into gear. Lin Yan looked at the heavy traffic flowing back and forth through the intersection, then gritted her teeth.
“Fine. Open the door.”
As Lin Yan got into the car, Song Yuhang glanced at her, looking as if she had something to say.
Lin Yan slid into the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt. “If you have something to say, spit it out. Don’t hold it in.”
Song Yuhang pulled a police light out of the center console, slapped it onto the roof with a loud clack, then sat back down to shift gears. She slammed her foot on the gas, weaving left and right through the congested traffic.
“You certainly make yourself at home.”
“Oh, look at you talking like that. It’d be a waste not to take advantage of Captain Song’s free ride.”
“Would the sole heir of the grand Lin Group actually care about a little gas money?”
“Of course. Every little bit counts.”
“I thought—” Song Yuhang glanced at her, leaving the rest of her sentence unspoken.
“Thought what?” Lin Yan pressed. But Song Yuhang merely shook her head, switching on the car’s Bluetooth speaker to focus on listening to the case details.
With that, there was no longer any room for Lin Yan to chime in.
Lin Yan’s thoughts were also drawn to the case, and she was even eager to give it a shot.
She had been dissecting rats and rabbits for days, and her hands were itching terribly.
At the sight of that expression, Song Yuhang’s face darkened a bit. But she had always been one to keep her composure, so she said nothing. She stepped hard on the accelerator, driving straight through the gap between two large trucks amidst Lin Yan’s terrified shrieks.
“** Song Yuhang, if you want to die, don’t drag me down with you!”
Five minutes later, Lianchi Park.
Song Yuhang parked the car on the perimeter. The scene was already packed to a standstill. Police lights flashed, the cordon tape had been put up, and several officers from the local precinct were maintaining order.
She flashed her badge, lifted the cordon tape, and walked inside. Lin Yan, who followed behind, was an unfamiliar face and got stopped.
“Hey, I said—”
Song Yuhang turned around and gently lifted the tape for her. “This is Forensic Examiner Lin, newly joined at our City PSB. Let her in.”
The officers exchanged glances before finally letting her through.
One couldn’t blame them.
Lin Yan, in her exquisite dress and thin high heels, looked exactly like a model stepping out of a magazine—a far cry from what anyone would associate with the words “forensic examiner.”
The personnel from the local precinct were already busy at work. One officer was questioning witnesses while another took notes.
The trace evidence and technical investigation teams were also present.
Song Yuhang swept a casual glance over the area. A sharp-featured, monkey-faced man in his forties walked up to welcome her, proactively pulling out a cigarette to offer her.
“Captain Song, what wind blew you over here?”
“Thanks, but I don’t smoke. Let’s hear about the case.”
The man let out a couple of awkward laughs and tucked the cigarette back away.
“It’s like this. Around seven this evening, a worker from the municipal riverways management office was carrying out cleanup operations…”
A man in his fifties wearing a bamboo conical hat stood there, completely drenched and shivering as he explained what happened, still visibly shaken by the experience.
“It’s been hot lately, so a lot of people come to the park to cool off, and there’s been a lot more trash in the river. I thought I’d do one last sweep before clocking out so I could head home. I had just rowed my raft under that bridge over there when I felt it hit something.”
Song Yuhang looked in the direction he was pointing. Lianchi Park was a scenic park; as the name suggested, it maintained a vast lotus pond. Now, in the height of summer, the lotus flowers were in full bloom. The location where the body was discovered was situated directly beneath a stone arch bridge.
A large crowd of onlookers must have gathered on the bridge at the time. The news of a corpse being dredged from the river had spread as if it had grown wings, flying wild across the internet accompanied by several uncensored, eye-catching photos.
In the span of a single meal, it had already become common knowledge.
No wonder Bureau Chief Feng had been so furious and specifically called her to make a trip down here.
“I thought someone had dumped construction waste into the river again. Oh, it made me so mad! I used my pole to nudge it, and it was awfully heavy! If I tried to pull it up, the raft might have tipped over, so I got into the water, thinking I’d drag it to the bank and then call a few coworkers to help.”
“I didn’t expect that as soon as I got close, I’d smell this terrible stench. I noticed it when I was still on the raft, but I didn’t pay it much mind. It’s summer, after all; when there’s too much trash in the water, it smells like that. But this smell was so foul it made me want to throw up…”
Lin Yan rolled her eyes, thinking to herself: How can the stench of a corpse and the smell of trash be the same?
“As soon as I touched that plastic bag, I felt like something was off. It was cold and slimy. But I still summoned my courage to drag it toward the bank. Halfway there, the bag tore open, and a foot popped out. This old man, right then and there… right then and there…”
He trembled as he spoke, drenched in cold sweat despite the thirty-plus-degree heat of the summer night. “If it weren’t for my good swimming skills, I almost wouldn’t have made it back up either.”
“Do you remember the exact time you discovered the body?”
The old man thought for a moment, then shook his head blankly. “I don’t remember. I only recall it was past seven. But I called the police immediately after I got back to shore. I checked my phone then, and it was around eight-thirty.”
“All right. Please leave your name and phone number. If we need anything else later, we’ll ask for your assistance in the investigation.”
An officer handed over a pen and paper, and the old man hurriedly scribbled down his name and a string of numbers.
The forensic examiner from the local precinct was currently performing a preliminary examination on the corpse. Lin Yan moved closer to observe carefully.
Duan Cheng was holding his equipment but wasn’t taking photos. Several uniformed police officers were gathered around the body.
Lin Yan casually tapped one of them on the shoulder. “Hey, found anything yet?”
The officer she tapped turned around, wearing a face mask, and said impatiently, “Onlookers, step aside. This isn’t a place you can enter.”
Lin Yan was amused. “Seriously? You’ve been looking at it for so long and still haven’t figured out what’s what?”
“I…” The male forensic examiner’s face flushed red, and his voice grew louder. “The cause of death is drowning. There are no external injuries on the body. It is highly likely to be suicide.”
Song Yuhang was so shocked by this astounding statement that she whipped her head around. She pressed her lips together tightly, her gaze darkening.
“Tell me, who commits suicide by packing themselves into a plastic bag before jumping into a river?”
Lin Yan couldn’t help but burst into laughter. “Hahaha, Captain Song, you really have a great sense of humor—”
Halfway through her laugh, she saw Song Yuhang’s expression and decisively zipped her mouth shut.
The precinct’s criminal investigation team captain—the same man who had offered her a cigarette earlier—shamelessly stepped forward. “Oh, Captain Song, don’t be angry. It was just a rookie talking off the cuff. We will definitely investigate this case thoroughly, thoroughly.”
It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the work ethic of these grassroots criminal investigation teams. The municipal bureau set strict annual quotas for case clearance rates. What did they do if they couldn’t meet those quotas? They either poured all their energy into public security patrols to suppress major crimes at the source, or they cut corners by downgrading criminal cases to minor public security offenses. This was especially true for cases like this, where the identity of the corpse was unknown. They would drag it out indefinitely, which was precisely how batch after batch of wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice were born.
Unfortunately for him, the person he ran into today was Song Yuhang, who had always been someone who could not tolerate sand in her eyes2.
“As of this moment, the City PSB is taking over this case.” Before he could even recover from his surprise, Song Yuhang issued a decisive command.
“Duan Cheng, what are you standing there for? Take forensic photographs and video. Fang Xin, extract trace evidence from the scene. The rest of you, interview eyewitnesses on-site and redo the statements. Forensic Examiner Lin—”
Her gaze swept over. Lin Yan had already tied up her long hair and pulled out a pair of gloves from her investigation kit, snapping them on. Her face mask obscured most of her gorgeous face, leaving her profile looking solemn and focused.
Song Yuhang lightly pressed her lips together, then walked over and squatted down beside her.
The plastic bag had been opened. The corpse was in a state of giantism3. The clothing was intact, but most of the outer skin had begun to peel off—particularly on the hands, which from a distance looked as though they were clad in a pair of rubber gloves.
With a single touch, Lin Yan’s hand was coated in a layer of corpse oil. A pungent odor flooded her nostrils, but she didn’t so much as knit her brows. She took her flashlight and peeled back the deceased’s eyelids.
“Petechial hemorrhaging is visible in the conjunctiva.”
Duan Cheng quickly hurried over to take photos and log the details.
“The livor mortis is faint and light red.”
The beam of the flashlight shifted to the deceased’s mouth and nose.
Clumps of white, cotton-like foam clogged the mouth and nose, a phenomenon known in forensic medicine as “mushroom foam4.”
Lin Yan made a decisive determination. “Consistent with signs of drowning before death.”
Song Yuhang, wearing gloves, gave the deceased’s clothing a rough feel. There was nothing that could identify her.
“Fang Xin, come over and extract some DNA. We’ll run it through the database and compare it with missing persons reports.”
“Right away, Captain Song.” Fang Xin was in the middle of extracting suspicious fingerprints from the plastic bag. She answered and ran over, carrying her investigation kit.
Song Yuhang raised her eyes to scan the bustling crowd around them. The terrain here was open, and people were constantly coming and going. If someone had truly dumped a body here, there should have been eyewitnesses.
“Forensic Examiner Lin, time of death.”
Lin Yan didn’t answer her. Instead, she reached her hand out to Duan Cheng for the postmortem thermometer.
The long probe at the end was inserted into the deceased’s anus. Lin Yan leaned over to check. “Rectal temperature is 25.8°C. Duan Cheng, go measure the water temperature. The average temperature for the past week is…”
Duan Cheng eagerly scurried off with the thermometer. Lin Yan was still muttering quietly to herself; her hands were covered in corpse oil, so she could hardly dig her phone out of her bag.
Song Yuhang chimed in, “The average temperature is 30°C.”
In forensic medicine, estimating the time of death based on postmortem indicators, decomposition stages, and ambient temperature involved a highly complex set of calculations. Yet Lin Yan didn’t hesitate for long, speaking up immediately.
“Estimated time of death is roughly three to five days ago. The specific timing will have to wait until we get back to perform an autopsy and examine the stomach contents and liver temperature. For a body dumped in a place like this, estimating the time of death depends heavily on factors like the environment, water depth, and location. Don’t get your hopes too high.”
She was certainly rigorous.
Song Yuhang stepped back and gestured for them to put the deceased into a body bag first. If they let the onlookers keep staring like this, it would surely make the headlines of Jiangcheng City tomorrow.
After the body was loaded onto the vehicle to be transported to the funeral parlor, the next step would be a massive, tedious, and meticulous round of door-to-door interviews and field investigations.
Lin Yan and Fang Xin brought the biological evidence back to the City PSB for further testing.
Zheng Chengrui began rubbing his eyes as he started reviewing the surveillance footage.
Song Yuhang, on the other hand, began wandering around the park alone—at least, that was how it appeared on the surface.
By now, it was already past ten o’clock at night. The summer heat had dissipated, and the park was gradually growing quiet.
Lianchi Park was not large. It was a project completed by the municipal government only a few years ago. With no admission fee, it was open twenty-four hours a day, which meant the foot traffic was extremely heavy. While this posed a challenge for criminal investigation work, it also meant that body disposal would have been exceedingly difficult for the killer.
Because they would have been very likely to be seen.
If it were her, she would absolutely never choose to dump a body here; it was far too easy to be exposed.
As long as the police were willing to put in the effort, solving the case would only be a matter of time.
Song Yuhang placed her hand on the stone arch bridge’s railing and looked down. Not far below the bridge was the spot where the corpse had been found.
Beside it, a lush patch of reeds had already been trampled into a disheveled mess by the river cleaners and the first responders. She walked down the steps.
At her very first glimpse of the body, a question had crossed her mind: it was too clean.
Setting aside IDs, driver’s licenses, wallets, or bank cards, modern people would surely carry a cell phone with them when going out.
Especially adult women; unless they worked in a specialized profession like hers, they would almost always wear a few personal accessories.
The extravagant Lin Yan, for instance, wore a Rolex watch.
Even the plain-styled Fang Xin would wear a pair of stud earrings or a bracelet.
It was simply a natural inclination toward beauty, and few were exceptions.
She turned on her flashlight and waded through the waist-deep weeds, searching carefully in an attempt to find some clues.
Most robbers would take the victim’s valuables, but if robbery was the sole motive, why go through the trouble of packing the body into a plastic bag to discard it? Perpetrators of that kind of crime mostly committed crimes of passion; whether the victim struggled or cried for help, traces would inevitably be left on the body.
Was it an acquaintance?
What was the motive?
She placed a giant question mark in her mind.
The late-night dew dampened her clothes. Song Yuhang held up her flashlight and looked around. The area was rarely visited; most flower-watchers would stand on the stone bridge rather than come down here. The patch of reeds where the corpse had just been lying was flattened into a distinct shape.
There were no surveillance cameras nearby, and the willow branches hung extremely low, making it a natural blind spot.
She squatted down, stepping into the mud by the riverbank. Slipping her gloves on, she searched the ground inch by inch.
She firmly believed that there was no such thing as a perfect crime, much less a perfect crime scene.
If this was indeed the primary dump site, something must have been left behind.
Her hard work paid off. Just as her phone began to ring, Song Yuhang pulled a ring out of the half-finger-deep mud. She shone her flashlight on it; the ring was smooth, likely made of sterling silver, and entirely unadorned except for a small letter “S” engraved on the inside.
Song Yuhang placed it carefully inside an evidence bag, pulled off her gloves, and answered the phone. “Hello?”
Lin Yan cleared her throat. “We’ve found the deceased’s family.”
Footnotes
- The Chinese idiom 'bā zì hái méi yī piě' (八字还没一撇) literally means 'not even the first stroke of the character for eight is written yet,' signifying that plans or situations are still in their very early stages and far from finalized.
- The Chinese idiom 'yǎn lǐ róu bù dé shā zi' (眼里揉不得沙子) literally translates to 'cannot tolerate sand in one's eyes,' describing someone who is unable to tolerate any injustice, deceit, or cutting of corners.
- The forensic term 'jù rén guān' (巨人观), translated as 'giantism' or 'postmortem bloat,' refers to a stage of decomposition where gas buildup causes the body to swell and bloat heavily.
- The term 'xùn zhuàng pào mò' (蕈状泡沫), or 'mushroom foam,' refers to the white, cotton-like froth that clogs the airways of a drowning victim, indicating they were breathing when they entered the water.
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