Bingxin was here as the intern coroner, so I gave her the opportunity to use her knowledge and identify the victim. She studied the bones for a while, and concluded, “The victim was a male of about 35 years of age. He was about 1.7 meters tall. The thick joints of the hand indicate that he was engaged in manual labor all year round. Two of his phalanges are missing. It’s uncertain whether the bones were lost before or after his death.”

She then picked up the fragments of the skull and added, “The cause of death is an impact to the head with a heavy blunt object roughly triangular in size. The width of the object is probably about 50 centimeters. Could it be a hammer? But that’s a weird shape for a hammer…”

I considered it for a while and suggested, “Perhaps a clothes iron?”

“Yes!” Bingxin answered with glee. “A clothes iron! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Coroners do not need to explicitly identify what type of weapon was used,” I reminded her. “You only need to describe the shape and characteristics of the weapon. You could easily mislead the investigator if you name the weapon. It’s unprofessional.”

Bingxin stuck out her tongue and mockingly answered, “Yes, Professor Song!”

Then she picked up the tibia and examined it, and said, “After his death, the victim’s body was dismembered using a long jagged object. Then the remains were eaten and gnawed on by a type of carnivorous animal.”

“You can just say that the body was cut up using a saw and eaten by dogs,” I commented, slightly amused.

“But you told me not to name them!” Bingxin pouted.

I sighed and Xiaotao laughed.

“It seems that you need more practice, Miss Sun!” Xiaotao remarked.

“Continue with your analysis!” I urged Bingxin.

She picked up a bone and placed it under the sunlight. “Once the victim was dismembered, the killer cooked the corpse in a pressure cooker which caused the periosteum[1] to peel off.”

“Oh no,” Xiaotao groaned. “Not another psychotic cannibal!”

It was too soon to jump to that conclusion. The killer might’ve boiled the body just so they could handle it more easily. Cooked bodies wouldn’t produce suspicious odors. They would not emit the signature stench of blood at all, even when discarded in the open. Judging from this, it followed that the killer handled the victim’s body quite professionally. I suspected that this was not the killer’s first victim.

Bingxin picked up a rib and studied it for a long time. Then she suddenly gasped and announced, “There’s a wound on the victim’s back, as if he was stabbed by a sharp and narrow object!”

“What’s the penetration angle?” I asked.

She acted it out and explained, “The killer probably attacked with a knife from behind, like this.”

“What about the wound on the skull you described earlier?”

She acted it out again and explained, “He was hit from the front, right on his forehead.”

I had a hunch that we’d stumbled upon a major discovery. I asked Bingxin, “Was the victim standing up or lying down when he got stabbed?”

Bingxin looked at the bone for a long time and finally shook her head defeatedly, crying, “I’m stumped!”

I took a closer look at the bone and stated, “He was stabbed while still standing up, because the knife was pulled out after it pierced the victim’s body. Look here. The scar obviously showed that the knife was pulled downwards here.”

Bingxin clapped her hands again and exclaimed, “You’re truly a genius, Song Yang-gege! Your analysis is much more thorough than my professors’!”

“Is this detail important, Song Yang?” asked Xiaotao.

“Very important!” I answered. “If the victim was lying down when he got stabbed, it could be that the killer hit him on the head to immobilize him before finishing him off. However, the victim was still standing when he got stabbed, and at the same time he was hit on the forehead. Which means…”

“The killer has an accomplice!” Xiaotao finished my sentence.

Xiaotao asked me if there was anything else to add. I re-examined the vertebrae, which were the bones that were most easily deformed. The joints clearly indicated that the victim was engaged in heavy physical labor, yet why were the vertebrae in completely normal conditions?

An idea flashed in my mind about the possible profession that the victim was engaged in, though I was still unsure. “Tell Xiaozhou to test the bone marrow!” I ordered.

Then the bones were packed up and we returned to the police station. The local officers listened to our discoveries and analysis, and they were all immediately convinced of its veracity. The coroner even jotted down what I said in a small notebook.

“Master Detective Song truly deserves every bit of his reputation!” squawked Director Feng. “You’ve only been here for two days and you already solved a case! How wonderful!”

I shook my head and smiled wanly, explaining, “It’s too early to say that the case is solved, Director Feng. We’ve only just begun!”

“But I’m sure that with someone like you on our team,” he continued, “the killer will be captured in a matter of a few days!”

His oleaginous words made me feel incredibly uncomfortable.

Xiaotao assigned some tasks to the officers. She ordered a group of officers to investigate the family of the victim of the other case, while Yuanchao and I would investigate the spot in the forest where the body was found. Bingxin would be following Xiaotao.

I found the arrangement very reasonable indeed. If either of them was to follow me, the other would be dissatisfied, so it was best that they should be working together. In fact, I was beginning to see that they both made an excellent team.

Director Feng sent someone with us for protection. I told him that would be unnecessary, but he insisted on it adamantly. Before we left, he pulled me aside and whispered, “Detective Song, you might hear some outlandish rumors when you’re out there. Please remember that they’re all unfounded! Don’t ever believe them!”

I stared at him with curiosity. Rumors? Had he secretly done things that he’d prefer to be kept under wraps?

He seemed to notice my suspicion, so he quickly added, “It has nothing to do with me, of course. I’ve never done anything to bring shame to the police force—you can trust me on that!”

Then he reminded us to keep the receipts for any payments made, as we would later be reimbursed, and asked us to come back early for dinner.

I was greatly relieved when I finally got into the car and escaped Director Feng’s clutches. “He thinks you’re the Li Lianying[2] of our team,” Yuanchao mocked me with a snigger.

I glared at him, but then realized that it actually rang true. In Director Feng’s eyes, Xiaotao was clearly our leader. His position as a small county director was nothing compared to hers as a task force leader of a metropolitan branch. Because of my reputation, he must’ve thought of me as Xiaotao’s ‘favorite,’ which explained his fawning attitude towards me. Perhaps he even assumed that I must come from a powerful family to be appointed as a consultant to the police at such a young age. Unfortunately for him, I was really just an ordinary college student who could be of no use to him at all.

The crime scene where the corpse was discarded wasn’t very hard to locate. In the forest not half a mile away from the main road, there was an area still cordoned off by a police tape. No one usually came here, and when the corpse was found, it had already been here for a week.

Because of constant rain and wind, the clues at the scene were all but gone. Still, I at least obtained one crucial piece of information: the exact location where the killer left the corpse.

Using the crime scene as the starting point, I walked for about five hundred meters, where I found a small village. I remembered it being mentioned in the case file, and we all agreed during the discussion that the suspect probably lived there.

A tractor carrying bricks slowly approached us. A middle-aged man who was the driver asked us, “What are you lot up to?”

“We’re the police,” I explained. “We’re here to investigate the murder.”

“The police?” he eyed us suspiciously. “How many times do you need to come here? It’s almost the new year and you’re spoiling the festive mood, don’t you know? Those dead women aren’t from this village anyway! You should try investigating somewhere else!”

“What did you say?” I was staggered. “How many women have been found there?”

The man stopped the tractor engine and got down. “You don’t sound like you’re from around here, do you? Are you new or something? They found four or five women there. Didn’t they tell you?”

“Were they all found in the same condition?” I asked.

The man thought about it for a few seconds. “Yeah… They were all disfigured, weren’t they? And they all wore red dresses too. It’s a crying shame, what happened to them. I heard they were all brutally killed!”

I cursed at Director Feng and all his ancestors under my breath. This was clearly not a simple murder case. Instead, we were dealing with a serial killer!

1. The layer of connective tissue enveloping the bones.

2. A highly influential imperial eunuch who was Empress Dowager Cixi’s favorite attendant.