Chapter 54.2: Could She Have Seen Her Before?
“There’s nothing we can do about it. Drawing is a skill that comes with practice. You have to put in a huge amount of practice.”
Jiang Xia wasn’t expecting them to organize a course right away anyway. She still wanted to solve a few more cases first. If they really made her teach an intensive one-year portrait-drawing course right now, it would basically be sending her straight back into her nightmare.
“We can’t organize a training course, but we could consider having you take on students. That way, you could still train a few people.”
Chen Yongyi wasn’t willing to give up on the idea. He said with some regret, “It’s just that you haven’t worked on any major cases yet, so you don’t have enough experience. We’ll have to wait for another opportunity. Once you’ve solved more cases, there’ll be plenty of people willing to learn composite sketching from you.”
“In my opinion, it definitely won’t take too long.”
As he spoke, Chen Yongyi turned his head. Looking at Jiang Xia’s almost ridiculously young face, he couldn’t help joking, “Who knows? By then, your students might all be older than you.”
Jiang Xia laughed and played along.
“Then I’ll take that as a blessing from you.”
As they talked, the two entered the Municipal Public Security Bureau.
Everyone from the Criminal Investigation Division was on high alert. Apart from the administrative staff, there wasn’t a single person on the first floor. Jiang Xia walked up the corridor, and as soon as she turned the corner, she saw Lu Yixing waiting for her in the second-floor hallway.
He was holding a kraft-paper bag just like hers.
“Lu Yixing?”
Jiang Xia looked surprised.
“What are you doing waiting here?”
“I figured you’d come over to wait for news.”
“The cafeteria here doesn’t serve breakfast,” Lu Yixing explained. “I saw some breakfast stalls outside, and I was worried they’d pack up before you got there, so I bought you some pan-fried buns and sesame balls ahead of time.”
As he spoke, Lu Yixing’s gaze fell on the kraft-paper bag in Jiang Xia’s hand.
Oh…
Jiang Xia felt both pleased and a little helpless.
“So we bought too much.”
She gave the paper bag in her hand a helpless little shake. “I bought three meat buns for you too.”
“It’s fine.”
The corners of Lu Yixing’s mouth rose involuntarily.
“I can still eat two right now. I’ll have the rest for lunch.”
“Give me yours.”
Jiang Xia reached out as she handed him her bag.
“I want a sesame ball.”
Lu Yixing handed it over with practiced ease.
Jiang Xia took the paper bag, opened it, and saw a sesame ball about the size of a baby’s fist. She casually picked it up and took a bite.
It had already gone cold, but it was still pleasantly crisp, and it tasted pretty good.
Chen Yongyi raised an eyebrow slightly.
These two were interesting. They seemed familiar with each other, but not that familiar.
“Expert Chen!”
As if she’d heard the commotion, Forensic Doctor Hu opened the door to her office. The moment she saw Chen Yongyi outside, she immediately walked over and invited him with utmost seriousness:
“I’ve heard for a long time that you’ve also done research in forensic medicine. I have a case involving anthropology that I’m working on. Could you come over and give me some guidance?”
The Criminal Investigation Division was still completely silent. No news had come through yet.
Chen Yongyi also had no intention of spending another day comparing fingerprints, so when Forensic Doctor Hu came over to invite him, he readily agreed.
“Sure.”
“The material is in my office. It’s a piece of bone.”
Forensic Doctor Hu turned and led the way.
“Come with me.”
A bone? That was worth taking a look at.
Jiang Xia was intrigued as well. She swallowed the last piece of sesame ball and followed them.
Forensic Doctor Hu was in full work mode now. Her loose hair had been tied up and coiled at the back of her head, and she was dressed in a rather practical, professional manner.
She pushed open the office door.
Jiang Xia, following right behind her, glanced inside and immediately fell silent.
The office’s decor was extremely characteristic of a forensic doctor’s workplace.
Both walls were covered with several colorful human anatomy charts. A complete skeleton stood in the corner, its skull’s hollow eye sockets staring straight at the doorway. Judging by its yellowish-gray color, it was clearly made of real human bones. Various photographs of wounds were scattered across the desk as well.
The whole environment was a little creepy.
Forensic Doctor Hu also realized that her office might be a bit frightening. She hurriedly grabbed a white cloth and covered the skeleton.
“Sorry, Expert Chen. I’ve been teaching students these past two years, so I keep some teaching props in the office. It looks pretty scary at first glance.”
“People in our line of work see this sort of thing all the time. It’s fine.”
Chen Yongyi had seen plenty of bones himself, so he wasn’t particularly disturbed. After a polite response, he pulled over a chair and sat down.
Then he asked, “What was the story behind the bone you mentioned?”
“This happened a year and a half ago.”
Forensic Doctor Hu walked over to a cabinet and opened it. She took out a plastic bag less than a foot long and walked back over to Chen Yongyi.
“The bone was found outside the city. It was a patch of wasteland, and the village collective wanted to plant some fruit trees there, so everyone went to turn over the soil together. Someone ended up digging up a piece of bone. They were originally going to just throw it away, but there was an old butcher in the village who took a look at it and realized it wasn’t animal bone. It looked like human bone, so he immediately reported it to the police.”
As she spoke, Forensic Doctor Hu placed the plastic bag on the desk and untied the cord around it, revealing half of a bone along with three fragments.
Jiang Xia examined it carefully.
The bone was small, only about the length of her palm. It was grayish-white overall, with brownish spots in some areas. The broken end had a radiating, splintered pattern, while the edges bore several parallel scratches. The fragments beside it were only three or four centimeters long. One side was grayish-white, while the other still had traces of decomposed organic matter clinging to it.
A faint smell escaped, but no one paid it any attention.
“After carefully examining it, I determined that this should be a human tibia. Judging by its size, its owner was probably between four and seven years old. I can’t really determine the sex. As for the degree of skeletonization, I’d estimate that the remains had been there for less than two years.”
Forensic Doctor Hu continued, “After we confirmed that the bone was human, we dug around the area, but we couldn’t find any other bones. Captain Rong also took people to visit several nearby villages, but they didn’t find any children who had died unexpectedly or gone missing. Eventually, the matter was dropped. We didn’t even open a case. But I always felt there was something strange about this bone fragment, so I kept it all this time.”
“Oh?”
Chen Yongyi turned his head toward the unused gloves sitting on the desk. He picked them up and put them on, then took the bone from the desk.
As he examined it carefully, he asked, “What do you find strange about it?”
“Normally, even if a family had certain taboos and didn’t want to bury a child who died young in the family grave, and instead buried the child somewhere outside, they’d still bury the whole body. There’s no way you’d end up with only a section of the tibia, especially one that’s been broken apart.”
Forensic Doctor Hu furrowed her brows slightly.
“The villagers were planting trees at the time, so they dug about forty centimeters down. That’s not an easy depth to dig. It doesn’t look like some mischievous children nearby found a corpse somewhere, broke the bones apart, and buried them here. And the condition of this tibia is strange too.”
“I’m not sure whether the unusual condition was caused by it being broken before burial. In any case, compared with other tibias, the trabecular bone structure here is more porous, and it has absorbed more iron and manganese ions. In other words, the darkening is much more pronounced. Look here—under normal circumstances, a bone would have to be buried in soil for three or four years to reach this condition.”
Forensic Doctor Hu pointed at the area, then moved her finger toward the broken end.
“And there’s this. There are still some scratches here, along with small circular marks. It’s difficult to tell what kind of tool left them.”
Jiang Xia listened carefully to Forensic Doctor Hu’s explanation, and her heart immediately sank.
The lessons from the “Uncle Draw” crowd rapidly surfaced in her mind. Her expression gradually stiffened as she desperately prayed inwardly.
‘Heaven above, please, please don’t let it be what I think it is!’
“Children’s bones haven’t finished developing yet, but judging by the thickness, I personally think it’s more likely that this was the tibia of a boy.”
Chen Yongyi first examined all three pieces of bone thoroughly, then focused his attention on the fractured edges.
Forensic Doctor Hu promptly handed him a flashlight.
After shining the flashlight inside the tibia and examining the two fragments, Chen Yongyi furrowed his brows and shifted his attention to the marks beside the fracture.
The fracture in the tibia showed a radiating pattern, with some cracks extending three or four centimeters inward from the broken edge. It looked as though the bone had been struck with some kind of narrow, hard object with considerable force.
The marks beside it were shallower—thin, elongated, parallel scratches. There were several of them, with some along the side and others overlapping the fracture. Opposite these parallel scratches were four tiny, circular indentations arranged in a row. They were extremely small, almost like ants’ footprints, and looked somewhat like marks left by insects boring into the bone.
Worried that he might not be seeing them clearly, Chen Yongyi took out a magnifying glass and examined them inch by inch.
Jiang Xia stood behind him, observing along with him.
The longer she looked, the colder her heart felt.
Seeing those unmistakably regular rows of scraping marks, Jiang Xia simply closed her eyes.
‘Confirmed. They’re human tooth marks—and they’re incisor marks at that!’
“This fracture is very clear. It should have been caused by some kind of sharp object striking the bone.”
After a long while, Chen Yongyi finally spoke. He stared at the shallow marks on the broken edge with a furrowed brow and said helplessly,
“But these scratches are harder to determine. They’re most likely not animal marks, but rather marks made by some kind of tool. Exactly what kind of tool, though, is difficult to tell. A knife could certainly leave marks this sharp, but normally there would only be a single cut. It’s difficult for a knife to produce parallel marks like these. As for anything else… I really can’t think of what it could be right now.”
Forensic Doctor Hu fell silent.
These marks had been bothering her for a long time. She had thought that an expert from the provincial department might finally be able to offer some insight, but unexpectedly, even he couldn’t identify them.
Jiang Xia wasn’t surprised, though.
There was already some research into bite marks at the time, but it mainly focused on impressions left in pliable foods or on areas of the human body such as the face and upper limbs. These were usually obvious, symmetrical, semicircular marks. There was little to no research concerning bite marks on bones. Moreover, since the remains had been buried deep underground and exposed to insects, grass roots, tree roots, and microorganisms, such marks could easily be damaged or contaminated, making them extremely difficult to identify.
“I have a question.”
Jiang Xia thought about how best to lead them toward the answer, then took the initiative to ask, “What was the condition of the soil around the bone when it was found? Was there a lot of organic matter?”
“Not much.”
Forensic Doctor Hu recalled the circumstances and answered, “The soil around it was very clean. It didn’t look like there had been a large amount of flesh and blood decomposing there.”
Chen Yongyi immediately said, “In other words, this wasn’t dismemberment. The bone itself was buried directly.”
A possibility vaguely surfaced in his mind, but it felt as though there were still a thin membrane separating him from the answer. He simply couldn’t put it into words.
“And the bone that was buried had already been shattered by some kind of sharp object…”
Seeing that Chen Yongyi was only one step away from figuring it out, Jiang Xia simply broke through that final barrier. She put on a thoughtful expression and reasoned seriously:
“Normally, even if someone killed a person and dismembered the body, they would bury the body parts along with the flesh. They wouldn’t scrape all the meat off and bury a single broken bone by itself. The fact that only the bone was buried suggests that the flesh was useful to the killer.”
“What could human flesh possibly—”
Chen Yongyi instinctively objected, but countless thoughts surged through his mind in an instant. All the abnormalities connected together, rapidly pointing toward a single answer.
Shock appeared on his face. He didn’t want to believe it, yet he couldn’t deny the possibility.
“Comrade Jiang… you’re not saying they ate the person, are you?!”
“Yes.”
Jiang Xia nodded. After a brief pause, she continued, “Forensic Doctor Hu has already ruled out most of the other possibilities. In other words, we can determine that the fracture was caused by a person. And if the bone was struck while the flesh was still attached, it would have been difficult to remove the meat completely. More likely, the flesh was removed after the bone had been boiled… and then the bone was smashed and the marrow sucked out. That’s why the internal cavities of the tibia are so unusually porous.”
She paused briefly, then added, “Though I’m not completely certain. It’s also possible that the bone was broken first and then boiled… In any case, this tibia was definitely boiled.”
“Hiss—”
Hearing Jiang Xia say that, Forensic Doctor Hu drew a sharp breath. She immediately put on her gloves and picked up the broken bone for another examination. She carefully squeezed it several times, and her expression gradually became more serious.
“Boiling human remains does cause changes to the bone.”
Forensic Doctor Hu’s breathing quickened. “This tibia also feels more brittle than normal human bones. At first, I thought that was because it was a child’s bone and hadn’t fully developed, but if it had been boiled, then that would completely explain it too!”
“Then this case may be even more serious than we thought.”
Chen Yongyi’s expression turned extremely grave. “This may be an extremely rare case of cannibalism!”
As he spoke, Chen Yongyi looked at Jiang Xia.
He couldn’t help feeling puzzled.
Cannibalism was a horrifying but exceedingly rare crime. Even he hadn’t thought of it right away. So how had Jiang Xia so quickly concluded that the flesh attached to this abnormal tibia had been taken away and eaten?
And on top of that, she had been so certain that the bone had been boiled.
She couldn’t possibly have actually seen something like this before, could she?
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