C48

On June 24, Ding Wei and Shen Yuan received a call from a security officer in the city of Lai, saying that an unexplained death had occurred in the Grand Canyon beneath the Gossamer Mountains at Qiuyun Village. They hoped that they could send someone to assist the police in solving the case.

The source of the report was the villagers of Qiuyun Village. They said that a man's corpse and a woman's corpse were found on the sandy ground beneath the cliff of Qiuyun Village's Grand Canyon.

Shen Yuan and Ding Wei arrived at the scene on the 25th. The two of them were able to identify the two corpses. The female one was Wang Kaili and the male one was Ah San.

The two corpses were thirty meters apart. Wang Kaili's pants were pulled down to her knees, her legs were spread out, and her clothes were lifted up to her neck, revealing two white breasts. The clothes on the two bodies were stained with dry mud and broken grass and branches. Wang Kaili's posture appeared to have been sexually assaulted. Apart from the larvae of flies, the medical examiner found traces of human spermatozoa in her body. However, due to the contamination and consumption of maggots, the protein of the invaders on the inner surface of YinX had been destroyed, making it difficult to accurately detect the DNA of a certain person.

After the public security personnel took photos, Shen first measured the air temperature and the surface temperature of the body, then collected 12 kinds of insects and arthropods from different parts of the body.

The body was taken to the autopsy room of the Forensic Research Department of Nanhua University School of Medicine. The autopsy results were surprising, with no trauma and no pathological features in any of the organs, suggesting that both men were healthy before death. The alveolar wall of the dead person was dilated and ruptured, the lung appeared edema and emphysema, the lobes of the lungs were blunt and round, the surface of the lungs had rib indentation and asphyxial punctate hemorrhage. The two diatoms enter the respiratory tract with drowning and then pass through the alveolar wall into the systemic circulation, which is found in many of the organs throughout the body. There was no injury in the body center, liver, kidney and bone marrow, but diatoms were detected. The medical examiner concluded, therefore, that the deceased had died of drowning. To Ding Wei and Shen Yuan's bewilderment, the body was found in the dry desert, and there was a contradiction between it and drowning. When he killed a dead body, other fatal wounds were often found on it, or deadly toxins were detected in the body. Both did not seem to exist in the deceased. The autopsy ruled out throwing the body after death, drowning after being beaten up, and drowning after being knocked unconscious by a drug.

In both cases, several ribs were fractured in varying degrees. Police believe the rib fracture was caused by a collision with a corpse floating in the air. Could a rib fracture also appear on a dead person who drowned to death?

The medical examiner at the University of Nanhua explained that when the body was drifting, the ribs could indeed fracture from impact or even be cut by the ship's propeller, resulting in a parallel sharp injury. However, such a fracture of the ribs can only form abrasions on the surface of the body, without subcutaneous bleeding and intercostal muscle bleeding. Fractures before birth are often accompanied by abrasions, contusions, and bleeding of the intercostal muscles. It infiltrates the muscles at the site of the fracture, which cannot disguise the bleeding after death. Therefore, it is only necessary to judge whether there is any such reaction in the fracture of the ribs, and whether the fracture was caused before death. Obviously, there were no traces of blood at the fracture site of the two bodies. This showed that the fracture occurred after death. How did this strange phenomenon happen?

This was a rare situation for the police, like strong X, not like strong X, like murder, and it was also incredible that people would drown in the sand if they died from drowning.

The police investigated the villagers of Qiuyun Village. Investigation records show that the last date of their discovery was 11.30 a.m. on June 18. The two of them entered the mountain from Qiu Yunzhuang towards Qiu Yunsan. Amongst them, A-San was carrying a detector as he walked ahead. Not long after, Wang Kaili also followed the canyon with the camera on her back.

Other than Wang Kaili and Ah San, there was a man and a woman who entered Qiu Yun Mountain. However, Wang Kaili and Ah San went down the branch road and entered the bottom of the canyon, while the man and woman behind them went up the branch road. The eyewitness was Auntie Guihua of Qiuyun Zhuang. Before nightfall that day, only one young woman descended the mountain.

The villagers who found the bodies claimed to have found the two bodies at the foot of the mountain while they were searching for wild fruits.

Shen Yuan collected the insects on the corpses and picked out the larger maggots one by one. In order to prevent them from shrinking or looking younger after changing color, he decided to kill and fix them on the spot. He put the insects in water ten to fifteen seconds below the boiling point and then put them in 80% ethanol. There were also some unidentifiable maggots placed in specific containers. A small piece of beef or chicken liver is placed at the bottom of the container to ensure that maggots eat it, while a fine layer of sand is spread at the bottom to absorb the moisture.

In order to better restore the circumstances of the incident, on June 28, Shen Yuan collected soil samples from the place where the body had lain. Although all the specimens were well packaged, there was still a distinct odor coming from the package. Shen Yuan placed all the soil samples through the funnel of the Burrow for 48 hours, allowing all the arthropods to enter the preservative through the soil. Then, Shen Yuan turned his attention to the insects. Shen Yuan found four species of flies in the embalming specimens and living specimens, three of which were common in rotting human and animal carcasses. Shen Yuan recognized the larvae of the secondary trypanosomes because they had dark brown nearly black breathing tubes. There are also red flies in the larvae, is a common Lai City flies. The red flies, usually found in the facial features of the natural opening, were found in the dead Wang Kaili's YinX. Flies were collected in YinX, indicating that Wang was likely to be sexually assaulted. Because the flies usually like to lay eggs in the facial orifices, unless the smell inside X attracts it.

The third type, because it was difficult to identify, was identified as a flyfly after Shen Yuan had them continue to develop into adults. It was a type of meat fly in the family Zygidae.

In addition to the maggots, there are also adults of the great cryptopterygidae. This insect feeds on the maggots that eat the corpse, and is usually involved in the decomposition of the corpse very early on, but it has no interest in the corpse itself, and only eats maggots and other insects that eat the corpse.

Shen carefully examined the soil specimens with a microscope, searching for specimens that had died or had not passed through the funnel before they were processed. Shen Yuan found a small plate of armor in the soil beneath the female's body, and a few early mites. During the selection process, Shen Yuan also collected the pupa of another type of fly, which became an adult and was found to be a secondary trypanosome. In addition to the insect samples, Shen Yuan also collected the local meteorological data, specially placed the hygrometer on the scene for a few days to determine whether there was a temperature difference between the weather station and the incident point. Based on the difference in temperature, Shen Yuan determined that the average temperature at the location of the incident was 32 degrees Celsius. From the time of death of two people to the collection of insects on the carcass, it can be inferred from the development time of the secondary trypanosome — the third instar worm in this case, whose most mature maggots took about 120 hours to develop, so it can be inferred that the two corpses died 120 hours before the insects were collected.

After the police heard the time of Shen Yuan's death, they still had some doubts they couldn't resolve.

How did they die? The death of the couple in the desert was unusual, and it seemed unlikely that they would be drowned elsewhere and transported to this remote place. Why were the two bodies thirty meters apart when they were found? Were they moved after they died?

"The answers to these questions are in the weather data." Shen Yuan pointed with his pencil to a sketch he had drawn, which was marked with various signs and symbols. "On June 19th, a heavy rain fell on the afternoon when the Grand Canyon stopped late in the afternoon. This rain was enough to form a flood in the region of the Grand Canyon. It seemed that the two of them had left a small path in the canyon and found a small cave to shelter them from the rain. Unfortunately, that night, a torrent swept through the valley and flooded into the cave, drowning them. The flood had washed their bodies off the cliff and into the sand below, so they were thirty meters apart. The next day, as the temperature was very high, the water evaporated quickly, leaving not a trace behind. During the day, the temperature went from 26 to 37 degrees Celsius, and their clothes dried up, followed by insects. That's why they were found drowned in the sand five days later. "