The best way for two strangers to get to know each other quickly is to talk about someone they both know.
Officer Liang betrayed his classmates without mercy and exposed someone's past: "Every time we solved a case, we would announce it in the group chat. He said in the group chat several times, 'We caught the suspect just after arriving at the scene', 'The murderer confessed, and we were not at the scene'."
She spread her hands and said, "I've heard of your name. It's not surprising."
Jian Jing: “…” Want to beat someone up.
"Of course, I need to confirm it again." Officer Liang said with a serious expression, "What is your relationship with this case? If there is any problem that may arise, I hope you can tell me in advance. Don't worry, I believe you."
Jian Jing knew that her last sentence was bait, so she didn't care: "I just met the painter for the first time yesterday. I didn't know her before. I have no reason to kill her."
Officer Liang's eyes flickered: "Why do you think it was 'killing'?"
"The painter was lying in the bathtub, with water covering her mouth and nose. She looked like she had drowned due to drunkenness, but she had no signs of drowning. I am more inclined to believe that someone disguised it as an accident to cover up the crime of murder." Jian Jing went straight to the point.
Officer Liang asked, "Do you know anything about autopsies?"
"I write mystery novels, so I've learned at least some basic knowledge." Jian Jing took out a pair of gloves from her pocket. "Can I see the body?"
Officer Liang thought for a moment and made way: "Okay, tell me your judgment."
Jian Jing first observed the overall condition of the corpse.
Painter Chang was lying face up, with his head leaning against the edge of the bathtub. When he opened his eyelids, he could see that his cornea was cloudy and had white spots. According to forensic common sense, the time of death can be roughly estimated to be between 5 and 12 hours.
The environment has a greater impact on the corpse, and the water temperature at the time of death is very low, which may cause errors.
She carefully turned over Painter Chang's body and checked for corpse spots.
This is a characteristic of death often mentioned in mystery novels - after a person dies, blood circulation stops, and blood flows to lower blood vessels due to gravity, and red blood cells settle. When blood penetrates the skin, it appears as purple or dark red patches.
Lividity can generally be divided into three stages: early and late stages or sedimentation, diffusion, and infiltration, which can be judged using a simple method.
Jian Jing stretched out her hand and pressed the livor mortis slightly, and it temporarily disappeared. When she released her fingers, it reappeared. Obviously, this was livor mortis in the settling stage, which usually appeared within 12 hours after death.
I pinched the muscles and they were extremely stiff.
Based on the characteristics of rigor mortis—it begins to appear 1-3 hours after death, spreads to the whole body in 4-6 hours, reaches its peak in 12-15 hours, and eases in 24-48 hours (of course, rigor mortis is greatly affected by the environment and there are discrepancies)—the above judgment can be supported.
"The painter should have died about 12 hours ago." Jian Jing made a deliberate judgment. "It is now 2:45 in the afternoon, so he died almost in the early morning."
If she was given a thermometer to measure the body temperature directly, she should be able to get a more accurate value. Unfortunately, she had no tools and could only barely infer the approximate time period based on a few characteristics.
Officer Liang nodded in agreement with her assessment and asked, "You said before that it wasn't drowning?"
"Her mouth and nose are very clean." said Jian Jing.
When a person drowns, the drowning fluid enters the respiratory tract through the mouth and nose, stimulating the respiratory tract to secrete a large amount of mucus. During intense breathing, the mucus, drowning fluid, and air mix with each other to form a large amount of fine and uniform foam. If anyone has used a milk frothing cup to make milk foam, it is not difficult to imagine this process.
These bubbles, like milk bubbles, last for a long time and continuously overflow from the mouth and nose. Once they are wiped away, they will reappear.
She picked up a jar of something beside the bathtub, examined it for a moment, swiped some water from the bathtub to smell it, and then bent down to sniff Painter Chang's nose: "Her water smells like bath salts, but the body doesn't."
Officer Liang was immediately convinced: "So what was the cause of death?"
"There are no obvious scars on the surface of the body." Jian Jing was also distressed. She carefully touched the area covered by her hair with her fingers, but did not find any wounds.
She really wanted to buy a magnifying glass and look at it inch by inch, but unfortunately she couldn't afford it, so she could only squint her eyes and look slowly.
Officer Liang began to walk around the bathroom.
There is a window in the bathroom, facing the bathtub, you can overlook the lake and mountains in the distance. A glass of red wine, a pool of hot water, and an aromatherapy lamp should be an extremely wonderful enjoyment.
It's a pity that the owner is not lucky enough to enjoy it.
Officer Liang checked the window and found that it was a single-sided glass, locked from the inside, with a bare surface on the outside. It would be difficult to climb in unless someone was a trained special police officer.
"Although the bathroom door was open, the bedroom door was locked. This means that this was a murder in a closed room." Officer Liang muttered, looking for the key everywhere.
Painter Chang did not hide it on purpose, she found it on the bedside table in the bedroom.
The key was stuffed into a makeup box with a lid that had a buckle and the drawers that were sewn shut. There didn't seem to be any mechanism to lock the key from the outside and return it to its original place.
Officer Liang went to check the lock again.
The bedroom lock is a double-tongue lock, one requires a key and the other can be simply unlocked by turning the safety button.
She called Eddie and confirmed with him the action of opening the door. Eddie said: "I opened this one. She only locked this safety and never used the key."
Officer Liang nodded and took the opportunity to ask, "Are you and the painter just pure friends?"
"Yes, we are just friends, although we also have sex." He answered nonchalantly.
Emotional disputes are always the focus of social relationship investigation. Officer Liang asked, "Aren't you dating?"
"She's 40, I'm 24. Are we dating?" Eddie sneered. "We each get what we want. What's the point of dating?"
Officer Liang nodded: "Besides you, do you know who else the deceased had a similar relationship with?"
Eddie said calmly, "I don't know, I don't care, and I don't give a shit."
Officer Liang then asked: "When was the last time you saw the deceased yesterday?"
"Last night. After they finished drinking, I came over and talked to her for a while." Eddie replied.
Officer Liang: "What time is it?"
"Around ten o'clock, I can't remember exactly."
The inquiry ends here.
Officer Liang let him go and asked Jian Jing, who was in the bathroom, "Do you have anything to add to his testimony?"
"He came to see me around 8:30, when the painter was probably still drinking." Jian Jing said, "We need to sort out everyone's time."
Officer Liang asked, "Why did he come to see you?"
Jian Jing: "Make friends."
"I see." Officer Liang understood, "Have you found any new clues?"
Jian Jing said, "There was some slight bleeding on the painter's oral mucosa and gums. She might have been suffocated. I found a little bit of fiber in her nose. It was a blue filament."
Before he finished speaking, their eyes fell on the pillows on the sofa by the wall at the same time.
It was an embroidered pillow that Painter Chang had specially found, with the pattern being a starry night from Van Gogh.
Officer Liang thought for a long time and said, "Maybe we should extract the fingerprints on the door lock."
"Did you bring your tools?"
She said, "There is a trace detection tool kit in the car, but I don't know how to use it."
Jian Jing: "... I will."
Officer Liang: “…very good.”
It is not difficult to extract fingerprints, especially from smooth surfaces like door locks, which can be done using powder and tape.
The powder is the most common lead powder, which is made from pure aluminum powder. You need to wear a mask when using it. Jian Jing took a brush made of gray squirrel hair, dipped a little powder in it, tapped the handle with her fingers, and shook it on the door lock.
This technique is similar to shaking off loose powder. The key is to do it lightly, evenly and softly.
After a uniform layer of powder is formed on the surface, use a clean comb to gently sweep it until the texture of fingerprints appears, then sweep away the remaining powder.
Finally, use a special tape, just like using transparent tape in the past to remove the wrong pen writing, and remove it easily.
Jian Jing extracted two incomplete fingerprints, but she was not optimistic at all.
“It’s so clean, there are only two of them,” she said. “They must have been left when Eddie opened the door. Someone must have wiped the lock.”
If the door was locked by Painter Chang, it would be impossible for two such clean fingerprints to be left. Now there are only Eddie's fingerprints on it, which can prove that someone wiped off the traces and locked the door to create a secret room.
Officer Liang took a magnifying glass and carefully observed the door lock. He said, "There are no traces of wire friction, nor any sticky tape. It should not be a mechanism. The person must have climbed out from the balcony."
"I think so too." Jian Jing laughed, "It's too difficult to make a mechanism in reality."
You have to know that those wonderful chain reaction videos on the Internet can only show amazing results after countless attempts. Unless it is a simple old-fashioned door, no one can guarantee success after a few attempts.
Compared to locking the door with some mechanism, climbing up the balcony is obviously simpler and more reasonable.
"Let's go. If we're lucky, maybe we can extract some footprints."
The footprints were detected using a portable flashlight, a flat light source that could easily illuminate footprints. After eliminating the shoe prints of Eddie and Jian Jing, they found half a shoe print on the balcony railing.
There is a logo printed on the shoes, and they are custom slippers made by the hotel.
"VG, Van Gogh, these are the shoes from our building." Jian Jing said.
There are three buildings in the resort hotel. The Monet Building on the left is where Eddie, Xiaolu and Xiaotian live. The Da Vinci Building in the middle is where only Painter Chang lives. The Van Cleef & Arpels Building on the right is where Mr. Tao, Xia Tianxin, Writer Wu, Jian Jing and Kang Mucheng all live.
Officer Liang was thoughtful: "Why do all of you guests live here?"
Jian Jing said: "The view is the best, facing the lake."
“Are you sure it’s not your shoe?”
"I was wearing sneakers when I climbed over the balcony. I went to the mountains in the morning and brought some mud." Jian Jing pointed to the smallest shoe print next to it, very sure.
Officer Liang looked around the shoe prints twice and said, "These are shoes from your building, but they don't necessarily belong to someone from your building. We need to ask for everyone's alibi yesterday."
In order to achieve the best results, Jian Jing and Officer Liang acted separately.
Officer Liang asked each person individually about their alibi, while Jian Jing, together with the others, tried to find clues through small talk.
Oda was very worried: "How did the teacher die?"
"I don't know. The medical examiner hasn't come yet." Jian Jing made full use of her novelist's talent for writing stories and said seriously, "I just checked. There are no wounds on the body."
Oda hesitated and whispered, "What does this mean?"
"She drowned, right?" Mr. Tao speculated. "She was drunk, and the water kept pouring on her. Did she drown?"
Xia Tianxin turned her head and asked in confusion: "The bathroom should be full of water."
Mr. Tao was stunned and scratched his head: "That's right."
Writer Wu, however, seemed to have no interest in the truth and kept checking his phone: "When will the road be cleared? I'm so annoyed. What bad luck!"
He tried his best to look irritated and depressed, and couldn't stop complaining. But Jian Jing listened and felt that his anxiety had other reasons.
The situation is becoming more and more interesting.