QT- I’m Almost Died
Chapter 216. Bizarre Death
In a narrow, enclosed, high-speed elevator where no one can enter or exit, everything is fine one second, and the next second a cold, lifeless corpse appears out of nowhere. Wouldn’t that be terrifying? Perhaps only the six people in the elevator could answer that question, because most people would never encounter such a horrific and bizarre event in their entire lives, or even dare to imagine it, yet they actually experienced it.
The surveillance video shows that the middle-aged woman who first discovered the body was paralyzed with fear. Attracted by her screams, the crowd turned around and were also terrified. They squeezed towards the door, their backs pressed tightly against the elevator door, wishing they could disappear through the wall.
Someone pressed the wrong button, and the elevator doors opened without warning, sending the six people tumbling out in a heap. Those who had been waiting on that floor tried to enter, but abruptly pulled back as soon as their toes touched the door. Although the security camera’s sound quality wasn’t great, the horrific, intermittent screams could still be clearly heard.
The video abruptly ended there, the image freezing on the solitary corpse. Xiao Li clicked a few buttons, cropping and enlarging the image of the female corpse for Teacher Fan to examine closely, while he himself ran to the window, opened it a crack, and took a deep breath of the cold air outside.
He was the one responsible for editing this short, one-minute-plus video from a monotonous and lengthy surveillance video, so he was the one who experienced the most direct and intense shock. No matter how he rewound, pulled back, slowed down, or fast-forwarded the video, the female corpse would reappear at the thirtieth second, suddenly, inexplicably, and out of nowhere intruding into this cramped space.
Xiao Li even asked a more professional network technician to verify the authenticity of the surveillance video.
Who killed this woman, and why was she found dead in the elevator? These two simple questions now seemed like unsolved mysteries, standing in the minds of all the investigators. Given the investigative methods and techniques currently available to the police, this case seemed unsolvable, impossible to investigate!
So everyone pinned their hopes on Teacher Fan, watching him with bated breath, hoping to get a definite and clear answer from him. For police officers—whose fundamental duty is to uncover the truth—the term “cold case” is likely the most detested and hardest to let go of in their entire lives.
Amidst the expectant gazes of the crowd, Fan Jialuo carefully examined the female corpse on the screen. She sat leaning against the elevator wall, arms and legs spread wide, head tilted back, her dry, cloudy eyes staring intently at a point below the monitor. Even though her soul had long since dissipated, the lingering fear and resentment in her eyes remained intensely palpable. Her clothing was disheveled, her cheeks deeply sunken, exuding an unnatural sickness and emaciation. She clutched a thin leather strap tightly in her hand, the other end of which was attached to a handbag. The zipper of the handbag was open, and its contents spilled out, scattered across the floor, a cell phone, lipstick, sanitary napkin, a ballpoint pen, and so on.
These scattered items appeared along with the corpse, as if they had solidified directly from the air.
Fan Jialuo stared at the photo for a while, then shook his head and said, “I need to see the body and the crime scene with my own eyes. What about Dr. Song? He should be able to glean more information from this picture.”
Just as Meng Zhong was about to answer, a deep voice came from the doorway, “I’m a few minutes late, there was some traffic on the way.”
One second Fan Jialuo’s expression was solemn, the next he turned to look at the newcomer and unconsciously broke into a smile. Noticing his natural change in demeanor and emotion, Song Rui, who had rushed over, couldn’t help but return the smile, his dark eyes sparkling with pleasure.
Today he wore a black wool overcoat, the sharp tailoring accentuating his tall and upright physique, making him appear even more agile. After taking off the overcoat, he wore his usual understated yet luxurious suit underneath, accompanied by a fresh and pleasant woody fragrance.
He strode into the office, and the cluttered, smelly space seemed to transform, as if by magic, into a grand hall. It turns out that the saying “making a humble dwelling shine with glory” is not merely a figure of speech, it is a genuine phenomenon involving real people. The descriptive prowess of the ancients is truly extraordinary.
As Meng Zhong secretly marveled at his friend’s increasingly flamboyant manner, Fan Jialuo naturally stood up, giving up his seat in front of the computer. Song Rui strode over to him, gently pressing him back down to sit. He then bent down to look at the computer screen, his cheek almost touching the young man’s, the distinctive woody scent enveloping him. He whispered in the young man’s ear, “What’s going on?”
“A corpse appeared out of nowhere in this elevator. I’ll rewind the video and show it to you.” Fan Jialuo clicked the mouse.
Song Rui nodded, his gaze fixed on the computer screen, but his hands rested on the young man’s shoulders, as if embracing him from behind.
Meng Zhong’s eyelids twitched, he felt there was something tangentially gay about the friendship between the two. However, the video was very short, and before he could observe it closely, Song Rui asked in a deep voice, “Has the deceased’s identity been confirmed? What about the autopsy report?”
“The autopsy report and the evidence test reports haven’t come out yet. The body was only discovered recently, but we can tell from the livor mortis that she’s been dead for about a day or two,” Meng Zhong said solemnly.
“I guess she was a resident of this apartment building, and most likely died of thirst.” Song Rui came to this conclusion after watching the video only once.
Meng Zhong immediately asked, “How did you know?”
Song Rui pointed to a black plastic bag and its contents lying at the feet of the body and said, “Look, this is a pack of sanitary napkins, in a black bag. It’s quite large and couldn’t fit in her small handbag, she must have had to carry it by hand. A woman wouldn’t carry such a private item around outside unless she was about to go home. So I guess she lived in this building.”
Everyone took a closer look and immediately nodded in agreement. Indeed, most women wouldn’t be carrying such a large bag of sanitary napkins around outside, unless they could fit it in a backpack.
Meng Zhong immediately called Zhuang Zhen, who was still conducting interviews at the crime scene, and asked him to focus on investigating the residents.
Because this building was a high-end apartment building that was only for rent and not for sale, most of the residents were single white-collar workers, as well as solo workers who rarely go out. If these people go missing, the police will not immediately file a report, it often takes one or two months, or even longer, before anyone realizes they have disappeared.
“Then how did you deduce that she died of thirst?” Meng Zhong continued to press for answers after hanging up the phone.
Song Rui put one hand on Fan Jialuo’s shoulder and pointed to an inconspicuous little object in the surveillance video with the other, “Look at this lipstick. The cap has been opened, but the lipstick is nowhere to be found. Look closely at the last little bit left. Aren’t there a few tooth marks?”
Fan Jialuo tried to zoom in on the lipstick on the screen, but didn’t know how, so he looked up at Dr. Song.
As he was being stared at so intently, Song Rui couldn’t help but smirk, but he quickly put on a serious expression, placed his hand on the back of the young man’s hand, and held the mouse together, saying softly, “I’ll teach you how to take a screenshot and zoom in.”
They were holding hands, fiddling with the computer together, which made Meng Zhong’s eyelids twitch. These two are getting weird by the second!
A few seconds later, the image was zoomed in, and it was clear that the remaining small piece of lipstick indeed had a row of teeth marks, indicating that it had been bitten off.
“There was no other half of the lipstick in the elevator, so I’m guessing the deceased bit it off and swallowed it. Under what circumstances would someone eat lipstick?” Song Rui asked, looking up.
“Someone driven crazy by hunger.” Hu Wenwen replied immediately.
Meng Zhong shook his head, “The lipstick should have been bitten off, but how do you know she ate it? Just because we couldn’t find the bitten-off half in the elevator? You have to understand, up to now, we’re still not sure if this elevator is the crime scene.”
Song Rui shook his head and chuckled, “If it’s not a crime scene, then what’s with all these scattered things? Surely it wasn’t something the murderer meticulously arranged when disposing of the body, right? Besides, it’s still unknown whether there’s a murderer in this case. If there is, how did he manage to throw the body into the elevator from a distance? Can you explain that?”
Meng Zhong and the others couldn’t explain, so they could only look at each other in bewilderment and then fall silent.
Song Rui continued his analysis, “I believe she died of thirst, or more precisely, organ failure caused by dehydration.”
Meng Zhong looked at Teacher Fan, hoping he could offer some different perspectives.
Fan Jialuo shook his head and said, “I won’t make any judgments before seeing the body and the crime scene. Observing and analyzing pictures is Dr. Song’s specialty.”
Although he spoke vaguely, he still couldn’t help but confirm Song Rui’s guess, so Meng Zhong could only dispel his doubts and let his friend continue the analysis.
Song Rui then pointed to a small pack of cream-colored sanitary napkins that had fallen to the left of the female corpse and said, “Did you notice that the entire packaging of the sanitary napkins was torn open and a small pack was taken out separately? Why is that? You can zoom in on the picture to see.”
Fan Jialuo wasn’t very skilled at zooming in on the image, but after successfully doing so, he couldn’t help but look up at Dr. Song. His handsome face was calm, but his eyes were bright and sparkling.
Song Rui suppressed a laugh and praised, “Well done.”
Fan Jialuo then lowered his head and looked at the screen again.
Meng Zhong: ……
Damn it, there’s definitely something wrong with these two! What’s with this sweet atmosphere?
However, apart from him, no one else at the scene noticed the subtle atmosphere between Fan Jialuo and Song Rui. Everyone was staring intently at the enlarged sanitary napkin, which was only a few centimeters away from the woman’s fingertips, practically within reach. A row of slightly curved red marks was visible on the packaging.
After examining it carefully for a while, Xiao Li suddenly exclaimed, “These are teeth marks, teeth marks with lipstick on them! She bit into this pack of sanitary napkins!”
Before anyone could process this information, Song Rui uttered a chilling statement, “If you look closely, doesn’t this kind of packaged sanitary napkin resemble a small bread roll?”
Everyone: ……
Hu Wenwen blushed and whispered, “Actually, we girls secretly call sanitary napkins ‘bread’ because they really look like it, and we’re too embarrassed to say it out loud, so we use this nickname.”
Song Rui concluded, word by word, “First she ate the lipstick, then she gnawed on a sanitary napkin that looked like bread. Coupled with her excessively thin and haggard face, I can be sure that she had endured extreme hunger before she died. Now look at this sanitary napkin that was thrown far away and twisted into a ball as if it had been squeezed. Can you tell what its purpose is?”
Meng Zhong and the others looked at it carefully, and as if they had realized something, their expressions changed drastically.
Song Rui nodded and said, “That’s right, I think the same thing you all think. I believe it was used to collect urine. The deceased urinated on the sanitary napkin, then wrung it out and drank it. Why would someone drink their own urine? Because she was dying of thirst.”
Meng Zhong and the others couldn’t help but gasp, then looked at the female corpse on the screen with astonished and suspicious eyes.
They watched the video repeatedly, but their attention was always focused on the mysterious appearance of the female corpse, without having time to discern the details. However, Dr. Song’s arrival immediately provided them with the key to unraveling the mystery. His insight was frighteningly sharp.
Meng Zhong stared at the picture for a long time before finally nodding and saying, “Your speculation makes a lot of sense.”
Fan Jialuo patted Dr. Song’s hand, which was still resting on his shoulder, silently conveying his praise and admiration.
The others exchanged glances, then looked at the sunken cheeks and despairing eyes of the female corpse on the screen, and suddenly felt a chill run down their spines. In today’s society, finding someone who died of hunger and thirst is incredibly difficult, unless they were imprisoned in a place without food or water. In other words, this deceased person had likely been deprived of her freedom before her death, and the place she was in had no food or water, and she had no way to escape. So, after a period of desperate struggle, she finally died.
But where is that place?
The moment this question arose in everyone’s minds, they heard Dr. Song say with certainty, “She should be trapped in this elevator. She hasn’t been moved, and her body hasn’t been dumped.”
“Impossible!” Meng Zhong retorted decisively.
Song Rui pointed at the female corpse and said, “Look at her sitting posture. She was completely in sync with the elevator. The scattered items seem disordered, but they were actually blocked by the inner wall of the elevator, leaving some mechanical marks. If it were a body disposal, these things would not be scattered in such a natural way.”
Meng Zhong immediately retorted, “But look at her hands, her fingertips are already bloody and mangled, and her nails are all turned outwards and broken off. These are marks left from scratching the walls in search of a way out. If she was trapped and died in this elevator, why are there no traces of blood left on the elevator doors? This elevator is open to people every day, how could it possibly trap someone to death inside?”
Song Rui pondered for a moment and said, “Even if she wasn’t trapped in this elevator, she was trapped in a similarly narrow and enclosed space. Judging from the posture of the body and the scattered items, I am more inclined to believe that this is the primary crime scene.”
Meng Zhong said helplessly, “That’s right. Judging from the situation at the scene, I also think that this is the most likely primary crime scene, but the problem is that we can’t find any evidence to support this conclusion.”
He patted his throbbing head and continued, “If she really was trapped in this elevator, why didn’t the surveillance cameras capture it? This elevator has been operating normally the whole time, with people getting in and out almost every minute. It couldn’t trap someone to death.”
Sun Zhengqi raised his hand and said, “I think you’ve gone off-topic. Shouldn’t our main concern be finding out why the corpse inexplicably appeared in the elevator? That’s the key issue, isn’t it?”
“The key question is where she was trapped before,” Song Rui retorted.
Xiao Li countered, “What if she didn’t die of thirst? Then there wouldn’t be any problem with her being trapped, right?”
As soon as Xiao Li finished speaking, a forensic technician walked in, holding up a report in his hand, “Director Meng, we found teeth marks on the deceased’s lipstick and sanitary napkin, and urine residue in the used sanitary napkin, which tested and confirmed to belong to the deceased. These three suspicious points are very important, please take note.”
Meng Zhong had just received the report when the forensic doctor called again, saying, “Director Meng, the deceased died of thirst the night before last. Based on her degree of dehydration and stomach contents, we determine that she had not eaten or drunk anything for at least three or four days.”
Xiao Li: ……
Fan Jialuo put down the mouse, looked up at Dr. Song, and unconsciously clapped softly.
That’s impressive, Doctor!
The Villain Becomes The White Moonlight
Did The Affectionate Love Interest Collapse Today?
I Have A Secret
Leave a Comment