Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 12

Chapter 12: A Pitch-Black Shadow

“Are you trying to pull rank?”

The deceased’s family members were not satisfied with the female officer’s attitude and shouted at her back, “We just don’t agree to you doing the autopsy.”

Shen Yiyi paused briefly on the steps, but she didn’t turn back, immediately striding forward.

In her eleven years on the job, scenes like this were nothing new.

The gender discrimination in the workplace had shifted from implicit to explicit. It wasn’t that it hadn’t existed before and had suddenly increased, but rather like an astigmatic person putting on corrective glasses. With a wider field of vision, they could see the original appearance. Oh, it had been growing in the cracks of human bones for so long that it was impossible to shave off.

So Shen Yiyi had come to see it with a detached view.

She saw with detachment that everything was deliberate, that nothing could withstand scrutiny.

In the news, she was a “female leader.” In the official account’s long articles, she was a “female director.” Even the title of “outstanding technical individual” would be suffixed with “female police officer.” Sometimes, when she arrived at a scene carrying a case, the local officers would always mistake her for a colleague from the case filing department, not the female forensic pathologist who had come to examine the body.

Even the task of being dispatched to the production’s table read was decided by her superior in a single sentence: “How can those old men in the department teach actors? Your speech at the lab’s opening ceremony was excellent, and you’re a great leader at the training base. Go ahead. It’ll save you from smelling the stench of corpses at a scene in this hot weather.”

It seemed like a great benefit, but it effortlessly summed up your life.

She was thirty-three this year.

Since she had entered the profession, the role models or mentors she had seen were all male. Even the master who had trained her at the grassroots level was a male officer.

Capable female students would be recommended for transfers by their teachers after graduation. They would all say: “Girls should go for the biological examination post. You can sit in a lab and not have to smell the stench of corpses under the scorching sun, not have to move bodies in stinking ditches, not have your hands ache from frozen bodies that won’t thaw, not have your nose choked with bone dust when sawing bones. And most importantly, you won’t have to worry about not finding a partner.”

She didn’t believe it. She had clawed her way up from the bottom of the medical student hierarchy, not to play a role they wanted her to.

She just wanted to do her job well, whether she was a female screenwriter, a female director, a female salesperson, or a female corpse retriever.

She wasn’t doing it for anyone else, just for herself.

So she became a stenographer, picked up severed limbs from garbage dumps, sifted through insects in cesspools, and pursued a master’s degree while working. Now she was striving for her doctorate. She juggled scientific research and case-solving rates, almost never taking a vacation. She never complained, even when she was on a business trip for half a year for a major case.

But the results were always a sobering wake-up call.

She had to work until all the mediocre male forensic pathologists had had their turn before she could be promoted. She only got a chance to stand out when the department had to push a female cadre forward. Even when she had dinner with the leadership of the Institute of Criminal Science, the dinner conversation was full of communication barriers.

These were all vicious cycles. They had blocked the sunny path, forcing people to climb a single-plank bridge.

Now, in the entire identification center, she was the only experienced, unmarried female forensic pathologist who had the time to dissect this “virgin.”

The younger male forensic pathologists were relying on her to increase their autopsy count and accumulate practical experience. The more experienced male forensic pathologists were all busy with academic cliques and socializing around the world.

Other outstanding female colleagues had chosen to take on family roles in their middle age and had slowly withdrawn from the front lines. Besides her, no one else was willing to come.

So, not getting married, not being in a relationship, was the most responsible thing a forensic pathologist could do for their partner.

Shen Yiyi felt that this point, in particular, should not be distinguished by gender.

She often advised the girls in her department not to marry male criminal police officers; their lives would be exceptionally painful.

She didn’t want to admit that her master was right, that a forensic pathologist sitting in a lab was a better fit for a woman. But she had to admit that physiological factors would lead to individual differences.

She was indeed not as strong as a man. She couldn’t move a 200-jin, nearly liquefied burly man. During her period, running to four scenes in a row, she really couldn’t learn from the men who could easily relieve themselves anywhere.

But she didn’t think she was that much worse off. These tasks weren’t meant to be completed by her alone. As long as it was teamwork, there would be a division of labor based on strengths and weaknesses.

Besides, they weren’t that much stronger. Her colleagues were emotional, her leaders loved to shift blame, and even her assistant loved to compete on physical strength, building up an invisible barrier before labeling you as unsuitable.

Shen Yiyi didn’t think it was a big deal. She wouldn’t get used to this discrimination, nor would she let it go. Like today, debating right and wrong with people who lacked common sense and logic was the biggest waste of time. She didn’t care if the other person was male or female.

Life was a journey toward death. She didn’t want to be pushed toward death prematurely by idiots.

“Lin Puping.”

Shen Yiyi walked through the dark funeral home.

“Yes, Director.”

“Get all the tools ready when you come in. Bring the large toolbox. The CT scans and the simulator tablet are in the passenger side drawer.”

“Got it, I know.”

Lin Puping craned his neck to reply, then was dragged back into the crowd.

***

Twelve-thirty in the morning.

Shen Yiyi, wearing four layers of rubber gloves, sat dejectedly on a stool. Before her was a body that had been in the water for a long time, its surface decomposed, frozen for too long, and its stomach cut open.

The deceased was a 16-year-old male. He was found in a river channel 10 kilometers from his home five days after he went missing. At the time, the body was floating face down in the water, wearing only half a pair of shorts.

Because the river channel was narrow and in the suburbs, surrounded by overgrown weeds, there were no suspicious items found nearby. In early July, Shanghai had experienced a half-month long plum rain season, and the water level had risen, the current relatively fast.

The police immediately dispatched officers to search two kilometers upstream on both sides. They found the deceased’s discarded clothes and personal belongings outside the grassy area, but no special abnormalities or signs of a struggle.

Due to being in the water for too long and the high summer temperatures, the river had a large bacterial population. The body’s autolysis and decomposition were severe. The skin on the hands and feet had already sloughed off from the dermis. The entire body was barrel-shaped, and the face was swollen.

When Forensic Pathologist Little Wang did the initial external examination, he had even punctured the body’s stomach to release the gas.

The forensic pathologist wrote in the preliminary examination report: Due to high decomposition, multiple open injuries on the body cannot be distinguished as post-mortem or ante-mortem. It is also impossible to determine from the wounds whether the injuries were caused by the retrieval process or by bumping into things while floating. Even whether the dark red color of some tissues is due to hemorrhage, whether the subconjunctival hemorrhage is a false positive, the compression of the chest and abdomen, and the small amount of foam flowing from the mouth and nose. Foreign matter from the eyelids and diatoms from the oral cavity were sent for biological micro-examination to determine if the deceased had any vital reactions at the time of death.

The field team’s investigation found that the boy’s suicidal tendencies were not obvious. On social media, he had only complained a few times to his classmates about his parents and teachers.

The city’s surveillance cameras captured his last image at 5 p.m. five days ago, eating alone at a noodle shop near the river channel.

Because the rainy season had washed away the footprints on the bank, the entry point into the water alone could not determine if it was voluntary. There were no cameras nearby, so an autopsy to look at specific organ inhalation and other criteria would be the most concrete.

Little Wang had shown this case to both Shen Yiyi and Hong Ziguang.

But the two had different opinions. They said an autopsy was fine, and not doing one was also fine.

After all, the family had already accepted that the boy had committed suicide, and their desire for an autopsy was not strong. Plus, the criminal tech department was already busy. An autopsy would waste the department’s funds and manpower, and might even be a thankless task.

But Shen Yiyi felt that an autopsy was just a bit more tiring, requiring a few more reports, but it would clarify the case and add to her experience.

But Director Hong hadn’t given a clear order, only saying that if she wanted to do it, she could, as long as she handled it cleanly from beginning to end, and took Old Geng’s apprentice along to observe.

Handling it cleanly meant not letting the department take the blame. So she called the review department and applied to the procuratorate for an autopsy. After getting approval, she arranged for Little Lin to handle the related matters.

Now, Shen Yiyi had finished the autopsy, but she still couldn’t easily draw a conclusion.

The criteria for determining drowning are difficult. The signs on a highly decomposed body can be atypical, so they can only use the process of elimination.

She had opened up that staring, skin-peeled, green, bloated person.

His hands showed signs of spasm, and there was nothing special about the rigor mortis and livor mortis. Because he had been in the water for too long, the bronchial foam was not significant. After opening the chest cavity, she found that the lungs were over-inflated, with rib impressions. The hemoglobin concentration difference between the left and right ventricles was significant. The gastric mucosa at the base was torn, with a large amount of residue mixed with foam, exhibiting the Wydler phenomenon. It could basically be determined that he had drowned while alive.

But determining that he had drowned while alive did not mean it was suicide.

There were other possibilities of violence, such as whether he had taken drugs, or been externally threatened. It was also very possible that he had been drugged and knocked out, then quickly pushed into the water, and his body disposed of while he was dying.

Forensic pathology is a high-risk job. It’s not like rewinding a surveillance tape. You can’t see everything clearly. The limitations are significant.

As a highly decomposed body freezes and thaws, the signs on the body can change, making it impossible to determine the actions before death.

Was he pushed, did he slip, or did he fall in voluntarily…

She had indeed done a lot of useless work tonight.

She sighed, her head resting against the wall. Three days of non-stop work had left her in a daze. A pile of pitch-black afterimages floated before her eyes. She stared blankly, just staring calmly.

“Director, I’ve finished the extraction. The specimen slides are also done.”

She had just asked Little Lin to extract a specimen of the stomach contents for Lin Puping to take to the lab for comparison with the water sample from the scene, to determine any errors in the actual entry point, and for toxicology testing.

Shen Yiyi nodded. “Don’t forget to send the toxicology slides later.”

Lin Puping let out a huge yawn. “Okay, I’ll go in a bit.”

Shen Yiyi closed her eyes and began to retrace every step of opening the chest in her mind. But the one dissecting the body in her mind was not her, but a black shadow, as if it were draped over her. She was like a marionette, swaying and following its movements.

She was so tired. She wanted to stop. For some reason, an ice cream bowl suddenly appeared in her mind.

Then a pair of hands with an expensive watch, elegant hands, appeared.

Shen Yiyi’s eyes snapped open, and she let out a deep breath.