Super Time Detective

After hearing Ye Huairui's thoughts, Mai and her assistant looked at each other, their expressions seemed a bit tangled.

Indeed, Forensic Ye was right.

The tire-run wound on Xie Nan's leg was indeed different from common fresh wounds.

The yellow fat layer was exposed, the wound surface was too pale, and the skin flap drooped like soft rubber, like a poorly painted special effect makeup prop.

"This one……"

Mai frowned, "Maybe it's because Jie Nan was seriously injured?"

She thought for a while and added:

"And this corpse has been frozen in the freezer for more than four years. It is normal for the wound to be different from the fresh corpse..."

As the forensic doctor Mai said, if the deceased suffered a great impact, such as falling from a high place, or being hit to pieces by a fast-moving train, etc., the person would die almost instantly, and the heart would stop pumping effectively. Blood, the amount of bleeding from open wounds will be much less than wounds of the same size and depth, and may even show an almost lifeless response.

Especially if the deceased had a substantial organ rupture, the skin would appear paler than that of an ordinary corpse when the internal bleeding was extremely large, and the amount of bleeding from open wounds would also be reduced.

Furthermore, as Mai said, long-term frozen and then thawed corpses, because the ice crystals inside the cells will destroy the cell structure, causing a large amount of intracellular fluid to seep out of the tissue after thawing, and also take away part of the blood components. The wounds that may have caused the remains were not in the same condition as they were before being frozen.

So, Mai didn't want to take this case seriously because he was too troublesome, but because he considered other possibilities and felt that he should be more cautious.

"Yes, you are right."

Ye Huairui nodded, and smiled at the female forensic doctor, "So, I still have to look under the mirror."

If the general situation observed by naked eyes may be disturbed by many subjective and objective factors, pathological examination under a microscope can give more and more accurate clues.

After a person is injured, a series of physiological reactions will occur in the wound.

A tissue biopsy examination showed that there were blood clots forming at the injury site, perivascular edema, various inflammatory cells infiltrating the injury, etc. under the microscope.

These changes are influenced by how long the deceased survived their injuries.

The longer the deceased lived after the injury, the more obvious the corresponding life reaction at the wound would be. Conversely, if the person was injured after complete death, these changes would not appear at the wound.

"Well, I see."

Mai agrees.

"I'll make arrangements."

Microscopic examination of tissue sections requires a series of steps such as taking materials for fixation, dehydration and transparency, embedding in wax, and baking slices. Moreover, the forensic laboratory where Mai works has its own set of procedures for microscopic examination, which cannot be completed in a short while. of.

The autopsy continues.

Mai and his assistants worked together to turn Xie Nan's body over, clearly exposing his back.

In addition to the two obvious tire marks on his chest and legs, Xie Nan also had large abrasions and contusions on his back, buttocks and right outer thigh.

Ye Huairui silently outlined the outline of the entire scar in his heart, and had a vague guess in his heart.

"These bruises and abrasions are quite dark in color..."

The assistant brother murmured, and secretly glanced at Ye Huairui while muttering.

Just now, he didn't think it necessary to perform an autopsy on a body that had obviously died in a car accident.

But after Ye Huairui pointed out that the stripping injury caused by the tire was too little bleeding, and saw the injury on the back of the deceased, the assistant brother suddenly lost his confidence.

If Xie Nan was really killed by a vehicle while lying flat on the road, then the crush injury should be the most obvious scar on his body.

In fact, the car that ran over at high speed did cause him a lot of damage, and even peeled off the skin of his lower half of his leg like taking off a sock.

But even the half-baked assistant brother could see something was wrong at this moment.

According to common sense, compared with the front chest and legs that were directly run over by the wheels, the force-bearing area of ​​Xie Nan's back should be larger, and it should be blocked by a layer of shirt. Tires have shallow indentations.

However, the scars on Xie Nan's back were very distinct, showing a bruised purple color, and the scrapes exposed to the skin could still see scattered blood clots.

These are all manifestations of injuries during his lifetime, and the color is even more obvious than the tire marks from the front and rear wheels. The bright reaction to life slapped him in the face of the previous deduction.

"This……"

The assistant brother still wants to struggle a little bit.

"Could it be that Xie Nan fell down before the car accident..."

"I don't think so."

Ye Huairui shook his head, motioning for Mai and his assistant brother to look at Xie Nan's right arm.

"what!"

The assistant brother let out an exclamation:

"Is this—!?"

On the outside of the deceased's right forearm, there was a very strange bruise-two parallel bands of bleeding, with a pale bleeding area in between, like railroad tracks lined up.

There is an interesting way to describe this kind of scar, which is called "bamboo hitting hollow".

As the name suggests, it is a characteristic contusion formed on the soft tissue by hitting hard objects such as sticks, and it is called "hollow contusion" in forensic medicine.

Usually, the shape, thickness, diameter, and other morphological characteristics of the club-like object struck on the skin can be clearly obtained by measuring this characteristic contusion.

However, this time, the "weapon" that left the trace of "strike hollow" on Xie Nan's body was not any stick or other strip-shaped hard object, but was precisely inside the deceased's own body.

That is, the ulna of his upper arm.

Mai repeatedly pressed the hollow contusion several times with her hand, then turned to Ye Huairui and said:

"That's right, it does exactly match the shape of the ulna."

The assistant brother looked at forensic doctor Mai, then at Ye Huairui, his lips hidden under the mask opened and closed a few times, like a goldfish lacking oxygen.

He tried his best to connect all the doubts and clarify the key points, but he was too young, inexperienced, and the stock of knowledge in his brain was not enough, so he couldn't think of a definite answer.

"Although I'm still not completely sure..."

Ye Huairui strictly abides by the observation rules of "look at the eyes and don't move your hands", and does not use his hands to make gestures on the dissection table, but only describes in words:

"There is an obvious contusion on the right side of the back of the corpse, showing the characteristics of 'unilaterality' and 'directionality', and there is a hollow contusion on the right forearm that matches the shape of the ulna..."

Having said that, he spread his left hand flat in mid-air, indicating that this is a "plane", then raised his right arm, and touched the "plane" with the side of his ulna.

"Huge shock."

Ye Huairui said:

"So, it should be a high fall injury."

The assistant's mouth under the mask opened into an "O" shape.

"——So, so to speak..."

He exclaimed in surprise:

"So, he fell to his death first, and then was thrown on the road, pretending to be a car accident?"

Wednesday, August 2021, 8, at 25:45pm local time in Siam.

After a whole afternoon, Mai and her assistants finally completed the autopsy on Xie Nan's body.

"It should be clearer when the results of histopathology come out, but the current evidence is quite sufficient."

While talking, Mai took off her dirty gloves, and signaled to her assistant brother to be in charge of the finishing work, to re-sew Xie Nan's body, and turned to look at Ye Huairui:

"It seems that what you said is right. Xie Nan fell from a high place, and then his body was transferred to the road, pretending to be a car accident."

The real cause of Xie Nan's death was not being run over by a car, but falling from a height and breaking his liver.

In fact, after excluding the injuries that were intentionally crushed to disguise the cause of death, Xie Nan's corpse showed a typical "light on the outside and heavy on the inside", and almost most of the trauma can be explained by one formation .

This "lightness on the outside" is manifested in the fact that Xie Nan's body surface is only scratches and contusions on his back, buttocks and right forearm, which does not look fatal.

However, in fact, long before the high-speed car ran over Xie Nan's body, four parallel slits had been broken in the right lobe of his liver, and a large amount of blood gushed out from the shattered organs. Eventually died of internal bleeding.

In addition, he suffered a fracture of the occipital region of the back of the head, a contusion of the frontal lobe, and a closed fracture of the right femur.

These injuries almost attest to the posture in which the deceased fell to the ground.

At that time, Xie Nan should have fallen from a high place—whether he was pushed down by someone, jumped off by himself, or accidentally fell down.

In short, he landed on the right side of the body, and his back and right buttocks hit the ground heavily. The strong impact caused his liver to rupture and blood gushed out, which has already determined his death.

Then, under the action of inertia, the back of his head hit the ground, the occipital bone was fractured, and the brain wrapped in the skull bounced forward under the action of the hedge, causing damage to the frontal lobe at the forehead.

As for the complex and extensive fractures of the ribs and thoracic vertebrae, because the body was run over directly from the chest by a car later, it was difficult to distinguish whether it was the trauma suffered during the fall from a high altitude, or whether it was the result of being run over by the car later .

Generally speaking, fall injuries are more common in accidents and suicides, and a large proportion are homicides.

There are also a few cases in which the murderer pretended to be Gao Zhuang after killing people by other methods, trying to cover up his crime with "accidents".

However, Xie Nan's case is very special.

He fell to his death, but someone moved his body onto the road and tried to disguise it as a car accident.

Whoever did it, and for whatever reason, he almost succeeded.

Or more accurately, he's been doing it for four years.

If Ye Huairui, a foreign forensic doctor, hadn't suddenly appeared and tried his best to request an autopsy, Xie Nan's body would have been cremated or buried, and he would have succeeded forever.

"The issue is……"

Mai looked back at the dissecting table, her brows furrowed, and she murmured in doubt:

"And why would 'he' do it?"