18 Headless Body

 

“He lives with such a beautiful woman and you’re telling me their relationship is platonic?” I looked at Wu Jiajia’s photo and shook my head. “Either Wu Jiajia is lying or this new roommate is gay.”

Guan Zhenglin, who sat in the passenger seat rolled her eyes at me through the rearview mirror. “Do you think every male is as sleazy as you? There has to be some redeeming qualities about this roommate or else Wu Jiajia wouldn’t have allowed him to move in with her. Compared to this gentleman, you’re truly a shame to the male species.”

As Gu Chen drove towards the dump site, he said worriedly, “Does this mean Wu Jiajia is still in danger? If the killer has really gotten the wrong target, do you think he’ll come back to rectify his mistake?”

“I’ll give Captain Zhao a call to send some protection for Wu Jiajia until we capture the real culprit.” I nodded.

“Speaking of which.” Guan Zhenglin hugged her chest. “This Wu Jiajia sure is unlucky to have attracted the attention of such a maniac.”

I shrugged. “Well as they say, beauty is the original sin.” I turned my eyes to look at her and then added, “But you won’t have to worry about that.”

“Fuck you too.”

…

As Victor Hugo once wrote, ‘the sewer is the conscience of the city’, but a constant maintenance and protection was needed to keep this conscience running or else it would have gotten clogged on its own sewage. Often you could find many interesting things in the city sewers from children's toys to used condoms, from old lady’s teeth to newlywed’s diamond rings. Or perhaps in our case, a headless body.

The underground sewer system at Qing Dao was large enough to fit a normal motor vehicle. Even though our city’s sewer system was not as grand as Qing Dao’s, it was still big enough to fit two people walking side by side. In fact it was 2 sewer maintenance workers who first spotted this carcass. Sewer maintenance worker was not an enviable career. They had to live with a stench that would permeate deep into their bones, a stench that could not be washed off even after 8 showers a day.

Recently the weather was hot and there was little rain. The sewer was hot and smelly like a toxic room. The two workers held down their nausea and hurriedly tried to finish their job. Actually this job had its own hazard too, but not from a sudden rise in underground water like most would expect but an unlucky encounter with the disenfranchised community that might call the sewers home. The two workers had wondered more than once what they would do if they ran across another person in the sewer. This was because they knew that other than themselves, there were people like the homeless and most dangerously, the escaped convicts who used the sewers.

Therefore, as they turned around the next fork, both of them stopped. Just beyond their flashlights, there was something black crawling on the ground. They halted even their breathing. Their legs turned leaden because upon closer inspection, there was a human shape that was lying on the ground.

‘Maybe it’s not an escaped convict, it could be a homeless person who needs our help. We’ll just run if it gets too dangerous.’ Xiao Gao remembered thinking this to himself. However, Xiao Gao did not do any running, he could not even move his legs. Some people overestimated their own courage. Truth be told, humans had an innate fear of the unknown. 3 minutes passed and the human figure had not moved an inch.

“Can it be a sex doll?” Xiao Gao turned to ask Ol’ Lee.

“Well, you can go and find out!” Ol’ Lee whispered back.

“We’ll go together.” Xiao Gao said. Their footsteps reverberated against the sewer walls. Both of them felt like their hearts were about to jump out from their chests. As their flashlights moved forward, the thing became clearer in their eyes. At the same time, a smell more horrible than normal sewage hit them. This was indeed a person, well, more precisely, a dead person.

“Good God!” Xiao Gao’s scream travelled far down the sewer but only 2 people and 1 dead body could hear it.

“Would you stop that? You’re just scaring yourself!” Ol’ Lee huffed even though his hand that held the flashlight couldn’t stop shaking.

“But, but this body has no head!” Xiao Gao stuttered. When we arrived, the body was still underground. Xiao Gao was regaling the officers with how disgusting the find was. A date with a dead body inside a stinking sewer? Yea, no one was volunteering for that job. Gu Chen scolded, “Bunch of wusses, grab me a scrub, I’ll go get the body.” Half an hour later, Gu Chen emerged in our sight. “Jesus, the smell.” After putting down the body, Gu Chen hurried to the side to vomit.

The body was placed before us. When I saw the real thing, I realized Xiao Gao’s description did not do the body justice. The cadaver was more repulsive than Xiao Gao described and it was due to multiple reasons. In terms of appearance, this body was already showing signs of bloating. The stomach was bulging up like a balloon, the internal organs had been shoved out from the neck. The whole body was purple and some of the tissue matter had started to peel off. At some spots, white maggots were wiggling about, feeding on the putrefaction.

In terms of smell, the unique stench of decomposition was beyond what a normal human could handle. Before a dead body, even Surströmming had to surrender. The pungent smell hit at the human brain like waves. Not all who were present at the scene could stomach such assault. Many had joined Gu Chen’s ranks. I resisted the churning acid in my stomach and asked, “Is there someone who can hand me a gas mask, a normal mask is not going to do much against the sewer gas…”

Ignoring the men, Guan Zhenglin walked towards and picked up a maggot from the festering body. Seeing the maggot trying to wiggle for its escape, I felt strangely sorry for it. After some observation, Guan Zhenglin announced, “These are young maggots but due to the unique environment of the underground sewer, I put the time of death around 2 to 3 days or maybe even less. After all, the sewer is quite damp and hot. Based on the wounds around the neck area, the decapitation should be done by some sort of sharp object. The striation matches the ones on Zhang Mingliang’s head. Thus I conclude, this should be Zhang Mingliang’s body.” Guan Zhenglin continued with her analysis as she knelt beside the dead body, it was like the nausea did not affect her at all. “But to be safe, we should do a DNA check. So we should bring this back to the morgue stat.” Guan Zhenglin stood up and brushed her hands off.

Gu Chen and I shared a look. No wonder she was the coroner. Even though she was just 19, she was unfazed by this discovery which had taken down men much bigger and older than her. I couldn’t help but be impressed.

“She’s quite amazing…” Gu Chen then took another glance at the body. “Actually wait, I feel something else coming up. Excuse me…”

Throughout the autopsy, Gu Chen had visited the toilet more than 8 times but even so Gu Chen  complained that the stink of the decomposition was still stuck on his hands. If you ask me, the smell was more psychological than factual. In contrast though, Guan Zhenglin felt even more in her elements when we were back at the morgue, if that was even possible… I couldn’t help but wonder whether her career of choice had affected her love life but I knew that would earn me more than a glare if I asked her about it.

With this body, I couldn’t see the need for more dissection, most of the flesh had already decomposed. To save my own stomach, I decided to leave the room. When Gu Chen came back again from the bathroom, he sighed with defeat. “I don’t know what to do anymore. The smell is still there.”

“I’d advise you to go take a bath…” I said sincerely. “I believe the main offender is not your hands but your body. After all, when you hauled the body out from the sewer, it came into contact with a large part of your body…”

Guan Zhenglin’s coroner report came out that night. As she rubbed corianders between her hands, she told me, “The body belongs to Zhang Mingliang alright, the DNA matches perfectly. Even though most of the surfaces have decomposed, I can still see the result of Zhang Mingliang’s gender reassignment surgery. She did have all of her male genitalia removed before she died. The time of death is still hard to ascertain, it should be between 11 pm to 1 am the night before last. The cause of death is decapitation with a sharp instrument. That is also confirmed by the blood splatter at the crime scene. There is one thing that struck me as rather strange. There is an exorbitant amount of blood at the crime scene for a body her size, but that can be a simple explanation for that.”

“Thank you for your hard work.” I said with sincerity. “It is quite impressive for a girl to face such a highly decomposed body alone, a normal person wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Guan Zhenglin continued rubbing the coriander leaves and mocked, “Is the sun rising from the east today? Or did I seriously hear a word of praise from Mr. Gu? That is harder than winning the lottery. By the way, where is Gu Chen?”

I shrugged, “He’s still showering. I believe he has scrubbed off a layer of his skin already…”

“He has just joined the unit from the reserved force, there will be more cases like this. I hope he’ll be prepared for that.” Guan Zhenglin dropped the coriander inside the trashbin and materialized a bottle of vinegar from thin air. She dipped a few drops between her palms. “Right, there was another discovery that I forgot to tell you about. It might be crucial to the case.”

“What is it?” I asked.

As Guan Zhenglin washed her hands with vinegar, she explained, “To be honest, this is my first case with a transexual victim too so I was quite curious about the surgery. I dug around her nether region and guess what? Someone raped Zhang Mingliang before she died. I collected some minor samples of scabbed semen inside her reconstructed vagina.”

Instantly, the threatening letter that Wu Jiajia received popped up in my mind. ‘One day, I will rape you and then cut off your head and write with it.’

The world was crazy. The killer did not realize that he had raped the wrong person, more precisely, a trans woman with the same face as the woman he was stalking.

“Looks like we will have to refocus our attention back to Wu Jiajia.” Guan Zhenglin said, “Perhaps she’ll help lead us to our stalker.”

“Let’s not forget about that young thief, they must know something.” I pulled on my hair. “We do not have enough manpower, we need to ask Captain Zhao for help.”