No matter emotions, appearances or desires, they all change rapidly.

——Bergson

1

This year is really not very peaceful, and difficult cases always occur. Several comrades from the forensic department run around, and the department seems to be closed. Some people even went to the Discipline Inspection Commission to report that the forensic department is inaction and that the re-examination and identification of the injury has been delayed for so long and it has not been accepted.

Ten minutes ago, we received an invitation from the Binyuan Municipal Public Security Bureau, saying that a corpse was found in a wilderness. The cause of death was unknown, the nature was unknown, the source of the corpse was unknown, and the direction of the investigation was unknown.

In summer, we seem to be used to corrupt corpses. In this stuffy environment, as long as the corpses are open, the corpses can form a giant view in three days. The forensic doctor is not afraid of nausea, but is afraid that the corpses will lose some clues and evidence. Fortunately, it is already early September and the golden autumn has arrived. With the arrival of cold air, the temperature has also dropped a lot. The speed of corpses will slow down rapidly, the working environment will improve, and the difficulty of the case will also decrease relatively. It is said that in this case in Binyuan City, the corpses are not corrupt corpses. Thinking of this, I finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"Luckily my name is Qin Ming. If my name is Qin Buming, wouldn't I have to resign sooner or later because I can't solve the case?" After reading the invitation letter, I made a joke. Lin Tao and Dabao were packing up their things, and no one paid attention to me.

When we encountered the case, the people in the department were extremely secreted of adrenaline. Within ten minutes, we completed a series of work such as approval of the leader, dispatching cars, preparing survey boxes, packing toilet bags and luggage. When the driver was still packing his luggage on business trips, we had already arrived at the entrance of the hall to wait.

"Oh, there is a notice." Dabao leaned under the announcement board of the department's office, squinted his eyes and looked at an announcement.

A notice is posted in the bulletin board at the gate. Usually, notices are posted here if there are important things.

"What notification?" I posted the edited "Case on a business trip!" on Weibo, and asked while approaching Dabao.

"It's probably going to raise your salary." Dabao said calmly.

"What? Such a big thing?" I shouted with my phone in my hand. Over the years I have been used to the pitiful, monotonous, and unexpected numbers on the salary slip. So Dabao's words ignited me countless longings and hopes.

The notice reads: Notice on strictly implementing the regulations on dressing and taking office for police officers in the department. The notice requires police officers in the department to wear police uniforms to work, and the Police Security Department will also customize uniforms for police officers every year according to the needs of the police.

"Is this a salary increase? This is a tight curse!" In college, I always yearn for a police uniform, but now, after wearing police uniforms for a long time, it is indeed very inconvenient to sometimes.

"You don't have to buy clothes for a uniform worth hundreds of yuan a year. Save money on buying clothes, which means you'll get a salary increase." Dabao was content. Dabao liked wearing police uniforms very much because what he feared the most was going to the mall or street stalls.

After extreme excitement, my hope was dashed, and I got into the police car that Han Liang, who was already wearing the top, drove over.

"If there is a system, it must be implemented, otherwise you will be deducted points during performance appraisal." Han Liang said.

Binyuan City is located in the northern part of our province, located in the Central Plains of China, with a large plain, with a vast land and a wealth of resources. Although the population is large, the overall social security is relatively stable. The number of murders per year is not many, and difficult cases are very few. Being a forensic doctor in such a city is good and not good. The advantage is that the work is relatively leisurely every year, unlike the forensic doctors in places with many cases, which are very anxious every day; the disadvantage is that they have fewer murder cases and experience accumulation is slow. If they don’t often go to the forensic forum to study and study, their professional level will improve slowly and they are not so confident. Therefore, when difficult cases arise, they ask us for help in order to be on the safe side.

The site is located on the outskirts of a small village on the west side of Binyuan City, on a vast plain.

When our car drove a few kilometers away from the crime scene, we could see a reed marsh swaying in the wind in the distance, and a blue warning belt around the reed marsh. The difference is that although the scene is in the wild, there are not many onlookers.

From the side of the road we got off the bus, there were police guarding him. Maybe because there were no people nearby, the guard belt was pulled by the side of the road.

"If you want to get a guard belt so far from the scene of the crime?" Dabao looked at the police shadows in the reed marsh a few kilometers away.

"Don't talk nonsense. If you go so far, you will definitely make it so far." I said, taking the lead in putting on shoe covers and exploration equipment. We looked towards the police car, and used our hands to pull out the reeds, walking for several kilometers deep and shallow, and came to the pond in the reed marsh.

There were few onlookers, probably because this was a cemetery. To be precise, this was not a dedicated cemetery, but an abandoned wasteland. There was a small pond in the middle of the wasteland. I heard that this pond was still alive and was a small river across the city. There were reeds that were almost one person tall growing around the pond. The reed marshes were vast and there were no people in a radius of several kilometers. Because the location of this land was relatively remote, few people came here and no one was willing to reclaim this land. So for a long time, this place has been abandoned, and some residents with burial customs would bury their relatives here. The graves were not gathered. We walked all the way from the highway, and we could see a slope of the graves that looked like a pile of graves hundreds of meters away. Some had monuments and some had monuments.

Next to the pond is the crime scene.

Forensic Doctor Tao from Binyuan City came over, shook hands with me, and began to introduce the basic situation of the case.

The reporter was a high school couple. Last night, they made an appointment to sing a nightclub at a KTV in the city, and sang until two o'clock in the morning. After singing, the school gate was closed and we could only return to the school dormitory this morning. So they walked along the road and chatted and came to this reed marsh.

Before twelve o'clock last night, it rained lightly, so the ground in the reed marsh was soaked in rain. Although the weather improved after twelve o'clock, the ground also turned into mud. After they entered the reed marsh, the girl was afraid that she would walk too dirty to wash her newly bought sneakers, so she suggested sitting and chatting with the boy in a high ground near the roadside of the reed marsh, and no longer walking deep into the reed marsh.

Just as they were having aroused chatting, they suddenly heard a rustling sound in the reed marsh. Under the moonlight, there seemed to be a figure. To be precise, it was not a figure, but a ghost. According to the two children, the shadow in the reed marsh was very tall, and the outline of the head and neck could not be seen. The shadow was slowly moving. When they were about five hundred meters away from them, they might have heard their voices, and the movement suddenly stopped. They also found the ghost at this time. The two sides were in a stalemate. After a while, the ghost suddenly moved quickly into the depths of the reed marsh. They were also overly frightened and ran back to the highway.

The two of them were frightened all the way, so they found a small hotel to stay in. After discussing for a long time, they opened 110 at 5 a.m.

After receiving the call, the police rushed to the scene. Considering that the reed marsh was too big and the direction was difficult to tell, they invited the criminal police team and technical team to support. The technicians found footprints shortly after entering the reed marsh, and quickly found a person lying on his back in the pond along the footprints.

The person's head is on the shore, his face is stained with blood, and his chest is soaked in cold water. The technician stepped forward to drag the body, but he felt that the person was still warm through his gloves. When he touched the carotid artery, he seemed to feel a little pulsation.

"The person is not dead?" Dabao said in surprise, "What are we doing if we are not dead?"

Forensic Doctor Tao was shocked and laughed: "Listen to me. Our police quickly carried the injured back to the side of the road, and then used a police car to send the injured to the hospital while calling 120. He met the 120 ambulance on the way."

"The doctor found that the injured person was so angry that he was rescued on the way," said Forensic Tao, "but the rescue was not very effective. After being sent to the hospital, considering that there was a wound on the forehead of the injured person, he immediately underwent a CT scan. Sure enough, the main reason for the injured person's coma was here. His skull was crushed, his depression fracture, brain contusion at the corresponding part, and intracranial hemorrhage."

"I was hit?" I asked.

Forensic Doctor Tao shook his head and said, "No. There are also contusions and bleeding on the brain tissue of the contralateral occipital lobe."

"Ah," said Dabao, "Don't breathe, just say it in one sentence. Such a clear hedging injury must be a brain injury caused by a fall. Isn't that determined? A man came to play with reed marsh while he was idle. He was scared by two students and ran away. As a result, he accidentally fell down. There was a process for death from brain injury, so he lay in the water in a vague consciousness until the police came to rescue him. Haha, the site reconstruction was completed! Hey, it's not right! Since it was a fall, why do we want to come?"

I gave Dabao a blank look and said to Forensic Doctor Tao: "Is the man dead now?"

Doctor Tao nodded and said, "The hospital is preparing for craniotomy, but the person died before the operation began."

"Then what are your technical difficulties?" I asked.

"First of all, we haven't found out the source of the corpse yet," said Forensic Doctor Tao. "Secondly, we looked at the corpse surface of the corpse in the hospital and couldn't understand a star-shaped wound on his head. The leader currently believes that the cause of death was an accident or suicide, but from the forensic point of view, the wound on the forehead is difficult to explain."

"Why is it difficult to explain?"

"The star-shaped wound on the head has a cystic cavity under the skin." Forensic Doctor Tao said, "Generally, such wounds are formed by contact between the forehead and the hard texture of the ground and angular displacement. That is to say, there is some displacement at the moment when the forehead and the ground contact. Because of this displacement, the skin and bones are staggered, tearing apart the subcutaneous tissue connecting the skin and bones to form a cystic cavity."

"It's very common to have a cystic cavity," I said.

"But with this kind of rubbing displacement, it will leave mud on the face, especially in the wound." Forensic Doctor Tao said, "and I think the star-shaped wound is difficult to form on the soft mud ground."

Dabao said: "There is no mud, which may be because the doctor has cleaned his face, and the wound may be formed on hard objects beside the pond, such as stones."

"The doctor did clean his face, but there was no debridement and suture. There shouldn't be no mud in the wound." Forensic Doctor Tao said, "There are stones by the pond, but no blood was found on it."

"There are two possibilities without blood. One is that there is really no, and the other is that we have not found it yet." I said.

Forensic Doctor Tao said: "That's true, but I'm afraid that there will be big controversy in the nature of the case when the case develops later, so I'll ask you to come and check it in advance and intervene in advance, and I have a clear idea."

I smiled slightly, patted Dr. Tao on the shoulder and said, "Thank you for your trust, let's come on!"

Under the leadership of Forensic Tao, I, Dabao and Lin Tao, walked around the reed marsh. The ground of the reed marsh is basically soft mud, and there are many physical evidence signs along the way. The physical evidence sign is a small sign with numbers written on it. After the technician discovers the physical evidence, he will place a sign next to the physical evidence. The function of this sign is to clearly reflect the physical evidence in the photo. In addition, the police officer can also remind him that there is physical evidence here, so he should pay attention to protection and not trampling.

"We have found hundreds of footprints," said Forensic Doctor Tao. "They have taken photos and videos. Some of the footprints have been destroyed by police officers who sent the police in advance because of rescue of the injured, while others are relatively clear. At present, we are expanding the search scope to find all footprints with identification value."

"Have you compared it?" Lin Tao said.

Forensic Doctor Tao shook his head and said, "There are only a few people in our bureau's trace test, all of them have been on, but there is no time to compare them. They just simply discover and record them. When they go back, everyone will study and compare them together."

"The deceased is lying here." After a circle, we returned to the pond. Forensic Doctor pointed to the pond and said, "According to the police, the deceased had a lot of blood on his face, but when we saw the body, the face had been cleaned by the doctor. However, we conducted a blood pre-experiment around the depression formed on the head of the deceased, and no signs of blood stains were found."

There is a pit in the shape of a human head on the muddy ground by the pond. It can be seen that the deceased is lying here.

I looked around and saw the traces of mudba were very messy, as if I could see the panic of the police officers who came out to rescue the injured. The traces around were completely destroyed, and I could only look for something around that could form the wound described by Tao Forensic Medical Doctor.

In fact, there are many objects that can form star-shaped, because there are many pebbles around the pond. If the head falls on the stone and moves, it can form a wound on the head. Although there is mud around, there are some relatively smooth and clean pebbles. In addition, the doctor cleanses the face and does not find mud in the wound.

However, no blood was found on all the pebbles, which is really hard to explain.

"Or when rescued, a policeman kicked the bloody pebbles into the pond?" I had a sudden whim.

Forensic Doctor Tao frowned and pondered for a while, and said, "This possibility really cannot be ruled out!"

"No matter how you look at it, it doesn't look like a murder case." Lin Tao said, "After all, when we found the deceased, he was not dead."

2

The scene was very simple, and the rest was left to Lin Tao to continue the investigation, comparison and search. Dabao and Forensic Doctor Tao decided to drive to the funeral home to conduct a preliminary examination of the body.

When we arrived at the funeral home, the hospital had just handed over the body of the deceased to the funeral home. The funeral home staff were moving the body from the car and making hand signs for the body.

Forensic Doctor Tao stepped forward and said hello enthusiastically, handed a cigarette, and the funeral home staff pushed the body directly into the autopsy room.

Because of frequent contact at work, forensic doctors and funeral home staff generally have a good relationship. Funeral home staff often envy the thrilling work of forensic doctors, while forensic doctors envy the high wages of funeral home staff.

The body was a little old man, lying quietly on the dissection table. Although he had been sent to the hospital before his death, he died because he had only undergone CT examinations. Therefore, the body had not undergone any medical treatment, except for rescue and cleaning of the face. Even so, there were still some scattered dry blood scabs on the face of the body that had not been completely cleaned. The chest of the body had tape for the electrocardiogram monitoring joint, as well as post-mortem injuries left by the pacemaker, and several tiny pinholes on the wrist.

"I have been wondering, this person is neither strong nor tall, why do the two reporters see a tall figure without a head?" Dabao said.

"This is not surprising," said Dr. Tao. "It is normal to be misled by human vision in such dark night places."

"When the investigation department was asked to investigate and rescue, the doctor gave a total of several injections to open the venous passage? Also, did he perform cardiac pacing?" I said.

For forensics, it is crucial to pay attention to the discovery of needle holes on the corpse. With the high IQ of the crime, many murderers use injections and other methods to kill people in an attempt to hide the truth. In fact, it is not difficult to find needle holes on the corpse, especially those formed during life. However, if the deceased was rescued in the hospital before his death, it will bring difficulty to the work. If there are needle holes formed by criminals and doctors, because they are all formed during life, the forensic doctors cannot make a judgment. Which needle holes formed by doctors? This requires investigation to cooperate. The needle holes found in the investigation are smaller than those on the corpse, and doubts will arise in the case.

"Five injections. I did go through cardiac pace." Forensic Doctor Tao said, "Now our police officers in the police station know the evidence of protection and have all the knowledge about these common sense."

Because the deceased in this case was sent to the hospital by the police, in addition to the record of law enforcement supervision instruments (the police equipped with a micro camera to supervise the police's law enforcement behavior, and can also record the original on-site situation), the police also carefully asked the doctor and nurse at the first time, and had a full understanding of the entire rescue process.

"It's true that there are only five needle holes, and it doesn't look like a murder case no matter how you count the needle hole." Dabao finished counting the needle hole and used hemostasis to pick up the skin around the wound on the forehead of the deceased.

"The wound appears star-shaped," I said, "can be a flat blunt object, or a convex object that appears star-shaped."

After saying that, I used a survey lamp to illuminate the inside of the wound. There were crisscrossing intertitering bridges in the wound. Because the skin on the forehead was very thin, you could see the skull under the skin. The periosteum of the skull was intact and there was no rupture that should have occurred.

"This should be formed with a flat blunt object," I said, "Jeep pebbles are fine."

Doctor Tao nodded and said, "I agree with this professional question, but I always feel that it is a coincidence that the police officers who came out of the country kicked a stone that might have been stained with blood into the water. Isn't it a coincidence?"

I didn't say anything, took off my first layer of gloves, and picked up the CT film taken by the deceased on the instrument table next to the anatomy room before my life.

After a few days of being fumigated by the waxy body, I would wear two layers of rubber gloves every time I dissected it, which effectively prevented the invasion of the odor of the corpse. After getting used to it, I found that the two layers of gloves did not affect my normal work.

It is normal for the CT scan to have a bone window. Through reading at all levels, it can be confirmed that there is a comminuted fracture on the forehead of the deceased, because the periosteum of the deceased is not ruptured, but is just a simple fracture, which can be further confirmed that this is a fracture formed by a smooth blunt object impact.

At the same time, the CT film can also clearly tell me that the head injury of the deceased was caused by slowing down movement, that is, his head suddenly hit the blunt object during the movement, forming a skull fracture and a hedge injury of the corresponding brain tissue. Generally, this degree of brain contusion should be saved as long as it is treated in time, but because the deceased was unconscious by the pond alone, intracranial hemorrhage increased progressively, to the extent displayed on the CT film, it is basically impossible to turn things around.

"I did fall to death." Dabao took off his outer gloves, took the CT scan, and looked at the light outside the dissection room window.

I put on the gloves again, picked up the deceased's arms and looked at it: "The deceased has some nail marks on both sides of the arms. Is this not easy to form, right?"

While I said, I used my hands to experiment on my arm, using various postures to try to form nail marks on the deceased's arm in similar positions.
To be continued...