117 The Body Dump

 

Ol’ Xia walked slowly towards the roadside. He made no sound walking on the snow like he was virtually floating in the air. No wonder I didn’t hear anyone coming when he grabbed me from behind at the village entrance earlier. I already had a strange feeling before coming to this Handicapped Village but after meeting Ol’ Xia, the feeling only grew. If every villager was like Ol’ Xia, then this would definitely be a strange place. With that thought in my mind, I followed Ol’ Xia.

“Remember to bring the shovels!” Chief Zhou shouted. Both of the police cruisers had high beam highlights, and the other officers provided extra lighting with flashlights. On this kind of countryside road, the distance between the streetlights was far. Furthermore most of the streetlights were out, I wondered if someone had shattered the lightbulbs, or they were dead from misuse. The branches growled creepily as the wind blew through them. There was just a creepy atmosphere about this place. If I had to walk this stretch of road alone at night, I would be frightened to death. Now I understood why the caller left the crime scene after he called in the body. If I had to stay with a dead body at a place like this, I would not be faring well myself. Even though I was a firm atheist, human beings were like that, they liked to scare themselves with things that weren’t there.

However, Ol’ Xia appeared to be immune to this bizarre environment. He was practically running in the darkness since he had no flashlight. He didn’t even need to stop to check where his feet fell. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the fact that Ol’ Xia was able to tell where the car was headed even though he had kept his eye closed inside the car. Like how I experienced it inside Chu Ye’s tomb, when one lost the power of one sense, the other senses would be heightened.

We proceeded in silence. Even though I was wearing gloves, I could feel the frost biting into my fingers. Along the way, I checked the ground in front of Ol’ Xia who was in the lead. There was only one set of footprints on the ground. If I was not mistaken, the footprints should belong to the person who discovered the body. In other words, it must have been snowing when the body was dumped. The weather had helped cover up the killer’s footprints.

“Here!” Ol’ Xia announced in his mono-syllabic way. His voice was still raspy and loud, it was like the sound of a cannon being fired underwater. Ol’ Xia appeared to only have the ability of talking in monosyllables because it would be too painful for him otherwise. Hearing that, we hurriedly stopped. The flashlights shone on the ground. As we were told, a foot was sticking out from the snowy ground. This was a shoeless foot, it wasn’t even wearing stocking. Then again, that should be expected or else the caller wouldn’t have seen the color of the nail polish. This spot was not that far from the so-called ‘main road’. When the call was made, the sun hadn’t fully set. It was completely possible for a passer-by to notice a foot sticking out from the ground.

But just from a foot alone, I didn’t dare to conclude that this was a woman’s feet. After all, I had seen too many different kinds of people in our previous cases, jumping to conclusions was never a good idea. We didn’t hurry to dig the dead body out because before that we needed to inspect the crime scene. I requested a flashlight and shone around the spot. There was no trace visible. The snow had perfectly muffled the killer’s presence.

“Wu Meng, did you find anything?” Chief Zhou asked, because our team of 3 was technically more experienced than they were in dealing with murder cases. The way he regarded me made me feel more important than I really was.

I answered quickly, “The heavy snow stopped about 3 hours ago. When we received the call, it was still snowing but the amount of snow shouldn’t be heavy enough to cover up a person’s footprints. Therefore, the victim must have died more than 3 hours ago. With regards to the actual time of death, we’ll have to depend on Guan Zhenglin and her expertise.”

“Yes, that does sound logical.” Chief Zhou nodded. I continued, “It is now 9.30 pm, so 3 hours ago, it would be 6.30 pm. Before 6.30 pm, the day was bright. The killer dared to kill in broad daylight and dump the body here, it could only mean that they are very familiar with this path. They knew that no one would use this path after the heavy snow started to fall.” Suddenly, I felt like I was transported back to the first case by the train tracks, the feeling of confidence imbued me. Perhaps it was the 2 months at the peaceful Elm Town that rejuvenated me. “Even if the killer is not a villager at First Drain Village, they must know this village very well!” I said confidently.

Chief Zhou nodded. “Then what should we do now? Dig up the dead woman?”

I nodded. “Yes. But it’s still too early to confirm that the victim is female. A man could wear nail polish too.”

Chief Zhou slapped his forehead. “You’re right! How could I forget about that?! A police officer shouldn’t carry their preconceptions into the cases, I always forget about that.” He turned to the other officers. “You people heard that? You should learn from Wu Meng when you have the chance. He might just be in his 20s but he’s so much more experienced than you…”

We stepped back while Chief Zhou ordered his people to clear away the surrounding snow. Thankfully, the snow was soft so it didn’t take that long to remove them. In less than a few minutes, we heard Chief Zhou say, “We’ve done it!” We were blocked behind the layers of officers so all we could see was the back of people’s heads. We couldn’t tell whether the victim was male or female or even their body features.

“So, is it a male or female?!” I shouted. Chief Zhou coughed and said, “Wu Meng, I really can’t tell!”

“You can’t tell?” I was confused. “What do you mean?”

Chief Zhou was silent for a long time before he hesitantly said, “Well, since there is no leg hair, I suppose it is a female…” The vaguer Chief Zhou was, the more befuddled I became. I squeezed my way through the layers and finally understood Chief Zhou’s difficulty. The body had been dug up but there was only a single leg. Sometimes, life was like that. When you were confident about something, life would use a more surprising way to prove you wrong. I had considered that the victim might not be a woman but I was not expecting that the foot would not be connected to the rest of the body. I frowned as I looked at the leg which was dismembered around the upper knee. I ordered, “Quick! Search around if you can find other body parts, split up now!” The officers heard me and started to dig around with the shovels.

Just from the leg alone, it was hard to tell the victim’s gender. After all, not all men had leg hair and not all women didn’t have them. I studied the cross section of the cut and noticed the wound was not even, that meant that the weapon used to dismember the leg was not sharp. It was not a clean cut, but instead there was plenty of sawing, pulling and yanking. From the size of the leg, I believed the owner of this leg was on the slender side. The leg was about 1 metre long, so the victim should be quite tall.

I held the leg carefully, it was already frozen solid. I didn’t dare to use too much force because it was common knowledge that the harder one thing was, the more fragile it was. If my hands accidentally slipped, the leg would shatter into icy chips. Guan Zhenglin used a flashlight to examine the cut closer. After some studying, she said in a serious tone, “Wu Meng, I’m afraid this case wouldn’t be simpler than the ones we were used to dealing with at Dong Xing City.” As a very professional coroner, I had all the reasons to believe Guan Zhenglin.

“What’s your view?” I asked softly.

Guan Zhenglin answered, “From what I could see, cellular activity was still ongoing when the leg was removed. There is copious bleeding around the wound, the capillaries are dry and the muscles have shrunk. To put it simply, the victim was still alive when this leg was removed…” For some reason, hearing that, the leg in my grasp felt instantly heavier. From the uneven cuts, we knew that the dismemberment wasn’t clean. The killer slashed many times before the leg was detached. Only a psychopath could do something like this. The victim must have been in great and intense pain before they died.

Guan Zhenglin was not wrong. This case was as sick as the big cases we faced back in Dong Xing City. The image appeared in my mind. In a snowy afternoon, the killer wielded a dull blade and hacked into the victim’s leg again and again. Perhaps the victim was tied to a bed. They struggled and wiggled but were unable to stop the life was seeping away. Enveloped by intense pain, the victim finally passed away from overwhelming blood loss. The killer then picked up the victim’s leg, came out here and dropped it into the snow before hurrying away.

The snow continued to fall and eventually covered up the killer’s tracks.

“There’s nothing else around here!” Chief Zhou shouted from afar. “It’s getting too dark. If there are other body parts buried out here, we wouldn’t be able to spot them easily. How about we seal up this place and come back to comb over it in more detail tomorrow?”

“Okay.” I shouted back. However, I worried that the search tomorrow would also come up with nothing. The killer probably only left us with a leg.

“You heard the man!” Chief Zhou announced. The officers started to gather back together. I looked at Gu Chen and Guan Zhenglin, “If I’m not mistaken, this is not going to be the killer’s last dump, we’ll encounter more instances like this!”