Chapter 16
Chapter 16 2. Eden Lake-07
“Boss, what exactly are you planning?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan stood by the autopsy table, looking at the girl’s body that had been dead for quite some time, full of confusion as he asked his mentor.
“I can’t say I have much confidence, but we’ll give it our best shot.”
Time was pressing. Liu Yi didn’t waste words. He shoved the camera into Jiang Xiaoyuan’s hands, turned on the voice recorder, and clipped it to his chest.
“You handle the photos. For a surface autopsy, the recording is enough. We’ll fill in the written record later.”
While putting on gloves, he added self-mockingly, “Of course, if we don’t find any key clues, we might not even need to fill it in.”
With that, Liu Yi and his student Jiang Xiaoyuan bowed to Su Ruirui’s body, then began examining her pale, lifeless body.
The girl’s body had many bruises of varying sizes and depths.
The lighter-colored ones had faded to pale yellow, edges blurred; the darker ones were deep red or light brown, looking relatively fresh, mostly concentrated on her thighs, arms, and right shoulder.
“There are abrasions from gripping visible on the right wrist.”
Liu Yi gently lifted Su Ruirui’s right hand with his gloved hand, revealing three pale red parallel bruises on the inner wrist, the thickness and spacing consistent with an adult’s forceful grip.
Next to the three parallel bruises were several shallow scratches, seemingly made by nails.
Liu Yi collected some skin scrapings from the scratches with a swab. Although the body had been soaked in water for a long time, making DNA detection unlikely, he still cautiously preserved the sample.
“If you ask me, I think this one on her shoulder also looks like a grip mark.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan roughly understood what his boss intended. He lowered the camera, freed his hand, and pointed to an irregularly shaped bruise on Su Ruirui’s right shoulder, then added reluctantly, “But, after all, it’s through the clothing. The color is lighter, and the edges aren’t very clear…”
Liu Yi waved his hand, indicating this uncertain mark was not a priority for now.
He meticulously examined Su Ruirui’s body inch by inch, searching through overlapping bruises for the clues he wanted to find.
For families refusing autopsies, Liu Yi had encountered most who, influenced by deep-rooted traditions, wanted to preserve the body’s integrity and did not wish the deceased to undergo the trauma of dissection.
Such families were usually persuadable by the police; though grieving, once suspicious circumstances were revealed, they often agreed to an autopsy to allow the police to uncover the truth.
Though Liu Yi had never met Su Ruirui’s parents, her father had left his daughter from a previous marriage at a boarding school in the hometown while he lived with his second wife and son in another city. Upon hearing of her death, he showed little sorrow and quickly negotiated compensation with the school, opting for a private settlement.
These parents usually refused an autopsy simply because they had already obtained the outcome they wanted. Further police investigation would not bring them more benefit, so they were unwilling to complicate matters.
Therefore, what Liu Yi wanted to do now was find evidence to persuade the parents, showing them that Su Ruirui’s death was not as simple as the school claimed, and that uncovering more truth could benefit them further.
Honestly, Liu Yi wasn’t very confident in his speculation. His decisive tone to Qi Shanyu earlier—“give me an hour”—was a bit of bluffing.
But he felt that if he didn’t try even for this hour, Su Ruirui’s death would likely be labeled as suicide under academic pressure, and her bruises and suspicious surveillance footage would turn to ash in the furnace, forgotten by everyone.
“Xiao Jiang, help me brighten the lights a bit.”
Liu Yi gestured to Jiang Xiaoyuan, indicating he should adjust the overhead surgical lamp toward him.
His fingers lightly touched Su Ruirui’s slender pale neck. Parting her messy long hair, he saw two petal-shaped bruises on the right rear side of her neck.
One was deep, one shallow, both angled toward the jaw, dark red in color. At first glance, one could mistake them for postmortem lividity, but the deeper one had a faint crescent-shaped skin abrasion near the jaw, clearly distinguishing it from livor mortis.
“Both bruises are located along the posterior edge of the right sternocleidomastoid, approximately level with the laryngeal prominence.”
Liu Yi analyzed, “This isn’t a typical location for postmortem lividity, and from the shape and the crescent-shaped skin loss on one end…”
He paused, then added, “It looks more like a pressure mark from strangulation.”
“But…”
Jiang Xiaoyuan raised a hand, gesturing near the girl’s neck, voicing his doubt, “If it’s a strangulation mark, wouldn’t nail marks be on the back-of-head side?”
“…”
Liu Yi didn’t answer immediately, instead thinking for a moment, then gestured to Jiang Xiaoyuan, “Come, help me turn her over.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan complied. Together, they flipped Su Ruirui onto her back, pulling all her long hair to expose the back of her thin, frail neck under the light.
“As expected.”
Liu Yi found a faint dark red abrasion on the left rear side of her neck.
Compared to the two complete petal-shaped marks on the right, this one was lighter, only on the upper half, shaped like a halved peanut, and lower, near the base of the neck.
“This size and shape should also be a pressure mark.”
He thought for a moment and added, “When Su Ruirui was found, she was wearing her school uniform, right? The small size of this abrasion may be because the finger pressed onto the collar, with the lower part blocked by fabric.”
“But…”
Jiang Xiaoyuan still seemed unconvinced, gesturing in midair, “If this is a pressure mark, what hand position would cause it? Could this really strangle someone?”
Not surprising he doubted Liu Yi. Based on what Jiang Xiaoyuan had learned, to strangle an adult, one generally needs both hands compressing the neck, restricting blood flow or airway, leaving symmetrical pressure marks, with the bruised ends of four fingers pointing to the back of the head.
“What if it’s like this?”
Liu Yi reached out with his right hand, making a light “strangling” gesture over Su Ruirui’s slender neck.
His thumb pressed the peanut-shaped abrasion on the left side, while his index and middle fingers extended to the right side, fingertips pointing toward her jaw.
“See? Doesn’t this match the pressure marks on her neck?”
“Ah!”
Jiang Xiaoyuan gasped.
“I get it!!”
He shouted, “This action isn’t to strangle her, but to— to—”
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s words stopped. He stiffly looked at Liu Yi’s face, voice trembling in disbelief, “Could it be… to hold her down?”
A disturbing image appeared in his mind—a delicate, frail high school girl, her neck held by someone, head pressed into cold lake water.
“But…”
Jiang Xiaoyuan glanced at Liu Yi’s expression, saw no hint of disdain, and whispered, “But… the surveillance showed she jumped into the lake herself. There wasn’t anyone else with her…”
Liu Yi shook his head, not answering immediately.
“We can’t be certain yet. But based on these two pressure marks, it is indeed possible.”
He gestured to Jiang Xiaoyuan to photograph the bruises on both sides of the neck clearly.
“There’s another thing I found odd from the start.”
Liu Yi took a soft measuring tape from the tray, anchored zero at the outer edge of the left neck pressure mark, and extended it halfway around her neck to the top of the mark on the right, apparently from the index finger.
“About 16.5 centimeters.”
He measured the distance between the two finger marks.
“This length is clearly shorter than the median distance between the thumb and index finger of Chinese men.”
Liu Yi put down the tape, held up his right hand, forming an “L” shape with thumb and index finger. The distance he meant was this “L” shape. For someone like Liu Yi, with long and slender fingers, this measurement was 19.4 cm, roughly comparable to large-boned Europeans.
“So, I think the one who left these marks on Su Ruirui’s neck was very likely a woman.”