As soon as I spoke, a few police officers swarmed towards me and pressed on my shoulders.
“Who gave you the permission to be here?” the policewoman asked coldly.
“No one did,” I replied, “I just noticed that he made a huge mistake, and I couldn’t help myself from pointing it out.”
“Nonsense!” shouted the coroner. “You mean to say that I got it all wrong? Hah! Don’t you know that I am the most senior coroner in the country? I do admire your courage, though. I’ve seen more than a few kids like you. You must’ve read a few of those Sherlock Holmes novels and now you believe yourself to be a great detective! Let him speak, Xiaotao. Let’s see how he’s going to embarrass himself!”
“We’re too busy to be entertaining this kid, Dr. Qin,” the policewoman reminded.
“Don’t worry,” he replied. “He won’t be taking up much time. Brat, I’m giving you a chance. Why don’t you tell us why it’s a murder and not a suicide? But I must warn you, obstructing police investigation is a crime. You can apologize to me now and I’ll forgive your impertinence!”
My impertinence, huh? I thought. Let’s see who’s going to be the sorry one in the end.
“What if I get it right?” I asked.
“What? That’s impossible!” crowed the coroner, howling in laughter.
“Let’s say I get lucky, then. What happens then?”
“In that case,” said the coroner, “I’ll step down from the investigation, and you’ll be the coroner for this case instead, how about that?”
The other police officers on the scene erupted into laughter. They each eyed me up and down with curiosity as if anticipating how I would be making a fool of myself.
“Dr. Qin!” The policewoman whispered to the coroner.
The coroner made a hand gesture to tell her not to interfere with this. By the looks of it, he probably had a higher rank than the policewoman.
“Let’s hear it then,” he said. “What’s your theory?”
“Well, I’ll tell you!” I replied. When I was under the old tree where the dead body was hanging from, I noticed a big rock that the deceased probably used to get up to the tree to hang himself. But there was a slight indentation on the grass right beside that rock that was easy to overlook.
“Do you see these marks on the grass?” I said. “It proves that when the deceased was ‘committing suicide’, there was someone else there right beside him, hoisting him up. Have you ever heard of someone needing help when committing suicide? Isn’t it clear that it’s a murder?”
The coroner reacted with a laugh.
“I even thought that maybe you’ve found some important clues!” He said. “That’s just the footprints of the gardener who found the body this morning. There’s nothing to it at all! How about that, brat? Are you speechless now?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “These marks aren’t footprints.”
The coroner fell silent. The policewoman looked at him questioningly, and he finally said, “I remember it now. It was because I left my box of tools there when I was examining the body. That’s all it was, and you thought you’ve found a groundbreaking clue just because of that?”
Unbelievable, I thought. This coroner wants me to be wrong so bad that he’s willing to say the marks left by the murderer were made by himself!
Nevertheless, the policewoman believed the coroner’s explanation. I saw the interest in her eyes for me gradually turned back to doubts. Perhaps to her, Dr. Qin was a reputable and experienced coroner, so whatever he said would always hold more water than what I, a random college student she just met, had to say.
To most people, the indentation on the grass might seem unworthy of any attention, but this wasn’t so to me at all. When I was training with Grandpa, he used to make me drink a very bitter concoction of his that he called the ‘Eye Opening Elixir.’ After seven full weeks of drinking this daily, I suddenly lost my eyesight. I panicked, but Grandpa told me to calm down because it was only a readjustment period that my eyes were going through.
Three days later, my eyesight recovered. But it was far from being the same
A sesame seed in front of me now seemed as big as a plate. I could detect the flow of blood through the minimal changes on the skin. Even the movements of the bees’ flapping wings seemed slow to me. Because my eyes were too sensitive, I had to stay in a very dark room for the first few days, because even the flame at the end of a lit matchstick could pierce through my eyes and gave me the worst headache.
Eventually, I understood that Grandpa was training me. It took a considerable period of time before I got used to this terrifyingly sensitive eyesight and was even able to control it. Grandpa said that this was the ‘Cave Vision’ of the Song family that would be of great help to me when I would solve a case in the future.
With my Cave Vision, I could detect the difference in the indentation that objects of different weights and shapes would leave on a bed of grass. In fact, judging by the degree of wilting of the grass that was pressed down, I could surmise that the mark was made about eight to ten hours ago.
I was observing the coroner examining the corpse earlier, and judging from the marks on the deceased’s neck, the stiffness of the corpse and the degree of pupil dilation, it was clear that the time of death was about eight to ten hours ago as well. That pompous coroner, however, determined the time of death to be more than ten hours ago, but I couldn’t be bothered to correct such a basic mistake.
Unfortunately, others couldn’t see what I could clearly see, and so the policewoman gave up on me and started to order her officers to take me away.
“We’ve wasted enough time,” she said. “Somebody get this boy out of here!”
“Wait!” I cried. “But it’s not just the marks left on the grass! The murderer left some handprints on the body as well. Didn’t any of you notice it?”
The policewoman froze, then used her eyes to wordlessly order the police officers who were restraining me to step back. The coroner, on the other hand, was chuckling.
“Look at him babbling nonsense again,” he said. “I’ve just checked the body with UV light and found no fingerprints at all!”
“I never said there were fingerprints,” I said. “I said there are handprints. Any object that was handled would leave some marks on the surface. And a human body, once it’s dead, would be no different from a table or a rock since there was no more blood flow.”
“You brat,” said the coroner, eyeing me scornfully. “Are you daydreaming? Even my high-tech forensics instruments couldn’t detect anything, and you expect me to believe that you can see these marks with your naked eyes? Pah!”
“What if I can prove it to you?” I asked with a confident smile. “What would you say then?”
“That’s absolutely impossible!” said the coroner. “My instruments cost tens of thousands of yuan, there’s no way a brat wet behind the ears like you could do anything they couldn’t!”
“And you blindly believe your gadgets just like that?” I asked. “Machines aren’t perfect, nor are they omnipotent. Sometimes a simple piece of paper can accomplish a task better and faster than a machine that costs tens of thousands of yuan.”
The female police officer once again looked at me as if I piqued her interest.
“What are you studying in college?” she asked me.
“That has nothing to do with this,” I said. “I may not be studying forensics, but at least I know I’m still better than him.” I pointed at the coroner just to provoke him further.
Dr. Qin predictably exploded.
“Let him examine the corpse!” he said. “I want to see how he’s going to make a fool of himself! I’ve been working as a coroner since before this brat was born, I don’t believe that a spoiled brat who’s been reading some random books could detect something that even I couldn’t! If I’m wrong, I’ll resign immediately!”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea, Dr. Qin?” asked the policewoman.
“Don’t worry,” the coroner said, “This arrogant little brat needs to be taught a lesson!”
“You’d better not go back on your own words!” I laughed.
“That goes without saying!” he said. Then his cunning eyes stared straight at me. “But what if your little experiment doesn’t work?”
“Just arrest me then.” I shrugged.
The policewoman let out a heavy sigh.
“Listen to me,” she said, “you’ve been delaying our investigation for quite a while now, so I’m afraid I will have to charge you with obstruction of justice if it turns out that you’ve been wasting our time, do you understand? You seem to be in your third or fourth year of college. You do realize that with this kind of record you might never find a job, right?”
“I’m well aware of that,” I said calmly.
It wasn’t that I was conceited, by the way. Although I couldn’t see any marks on the deceased’s body with my Cave Vision, I knew that the clues to find the murderer was right in front of me, because unless if the murderer was able to make the victim’s body levitate, there had to be some handprints on the dead body!
From that knowledge, I know that with a little bit more inspection I would be able to come up with a solid and logical deduction, and it was with logic and deduction that I had full confidence in.
“Very well,” the policewoman said with a forced smile on her face. “Go ahead and do whatever you have to do. Tell me if you need any tools from the forensics team.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I don’t use any of those.”
I then turned my gaze towards the border of the police line and saw a very anxious-looking Dali standing there.
“Dali!” I shouted. “Get over here!”
He immediately stepped over the police tape,
“Dude, have you lost your mind?” he asked when he reached me. “What were you thinking telling the police they’ve got it wrong? You don’t even dare to talk to girls normally! Oh, by the way, did you get to ask the policewoman her name? Is she single?”
“Look,” I said, trying to be patient with the idiot, “I need your help. Can you run back to the dorm and get the red oil-paper umbrella in my closet for me?”
“What do you need that for, dude?”
“This is not the time to ask questions,” I said. “Just go get it for me, okay? And remember not to touch anything else in my closet!”
“Okay, got it,” said Dali. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He then turned around and ran towards our dorm room.
Dr. Qin casually lit up a cigarette and said, “I think I’ll just take a break for a minute while I wait to see what kind of circus show you’re going to come up with.”
“Good!” I said, raising up my head. “Then get ready for the greatest show you’ve ever seen!”
1. It may sound like a dull and ordinary object, but oil-paper umbrellas have a much than you might think.