I ignored Dr. Wu’s provocation and went back to examine the dead body. He was annoyed by this and stomped over to me and shouted over my shoulders, “Are you deaf, boy? Didn’t you hear what I said? What poison did you detect?”
“If I tell you now, wouldn’t you just copy what I say and take the credit?”
Dr. Wu burst into laughter so loud that my ears hurt.
“You think a legitimate coroner like me would copy you?” he retorted. “Fine, why don’t we write down the poison we detected on the palm of our hands and reveal it together then?”
“Okay!” I nodded. “But if it turns out that you made a mistake, you must apologize to me.”
“No problem!” he answered disdainfully. “I’d even get down on my knees if you like.”
“Okay, deal!”
Judging by his tone, he seemed extremely confident in his test results.
“But what if you got it wrong?” he asked.
“I’ll get down on my knees and knock my head three times on the floor!” I answered without hesitation.
Dr. Wu waved his big hand around the room and shouted, “Did everyone hear that? I, Wu Yue, as the representative of modern forensics, will prove to you today that Traditional Coroners are nothing but quacks!”
“Dr. Wu…” Captain Xing whispered.
Dr. Wu ignored him. He might seem like a hot-headed guy, but from what I saw, he probably wasn’t as insidious as Dr. Qin.
Still, his allegation that Traditional Coroners were just quacks angered me.
“I do acknowledge the fact that modern forensics is amazing,” I argued. “But I’m not sure if you’re good enough to represent it.”
As soon as I made this statement, I saw a few people laughing secretly behind Dr. Wu’s back.
“I’ve been a coroner for the last twenty years,” Dr. Wu snapped, his cheeks reddened with anger. “I’ve also got double doctorate degrees. You say that I’m not qualified to represent modern forensics? What about you, boy? What qualifications do you have? Do you have even one certificate to show me?”
“I don’t have any certificates to show you,” I replied nonchalantly. “All I have are the half a dozen murder cases that I’ve solved to prove my worth.”
Dr. Wu’s face turned even redder. He probably knew that I’d solved seven cases in less than half a year, with a 100% success rate to boot. This was something beyond the reach of even the Chief Coroner in the police force.
“Fine,” he replied. “But get ready, boy! I’ll wipe the smug grin off your face today! Xiaoli, bring me a pen!”
We each took a marker pen and wrote our answers on the palm of our hands.
“Dude,” whispered Dali. “Are you sure you’re not biting off more than you can chew this time? That guy used high-tech equipment to do his testing, after all! Meanwhile, all you did was grope the dead body.”
I glared at him and said, “What do you mean, ‘grope?’ Trust me, he’s got it all wrong!”
Dali remained skeptical, but I knew that Dr. Wu was led to the wrong conclusion because he’d tested the pills he found in this room. It didn’t matter how accurate the machines were if the testing was done on a completely irrelevant object!
Once we were done writing our answers, Dr. Wu showed me his hand, which had the word ‘Papaverine’ on it.
“The cause of the victim’s death is an excessive intake of the drug papaverine,” Dr. Wu announced. “And this is the proof!”
He then took a pill out of his pocket.
“That’s impossible!” the rich young man suddenly interjected. “I took that pill too!”
“Are you a drug addict, boy?” asked Captain Xing.
“No, no!” he quickly denied. “It’s… It’s an aphrodisiac. I bought it when I was in South Korea. I don’t know what’s in it.”
“How many pills did you each take?” Dr. Wu asked.
“I took one and Xiaowen took two,” the young man replied.
I shook my head and snickered. So Dr. Wu really did get it wrong!
“I think everything’s clear as day now,” said Dr. Wu. “The victim had an overdose of papaverine in her system, which led to heart and lung failure. What do you have to say, Song Yang?”
“Well,” I began with a sneer. “I do have some questions, actually. What is the lethal dose of papaverine? And why is one of them completely fine while the other died almost instantly if both of them took the same drug?”
“Well, the lethal dose is…” Dr. Wu paused and started to sweat. He probably realized it now. Even if the pills were 100% pure papaverine, how many grams could two tiny pills weigh? It just wouldn’t be even near the lethal dose at all. When people in the ancient times used opium, a drug similar to papaverine, to commit suicide, they would need about two hundred grams of the drug in order for it to work.
Besides, opioid substances weren’t so foreign in our daily lives. Many hot-pot stalls would add poppy seeds that contained traces of opium in order to make customers get addicted to their food. Even Coca-Cola was rumoured to contain traces of the drug, but only three people in the world knew of the secret recipe.
Dr. Wu must’ve tested papaverine from the pills and came to a hasty conclusion that he’d stumbled on a breakthrough and ran here to show off his discovery without carefully thinking about it first.
Seeing that Dr. Wu had fallen silent for a while, Captain Xing asked, “What’s wrong, Dr. Wu?”
“I… I think I might’ve gotten it all wrong!” said Dr. Wu. He then suddenly pointed at me and continued, “But I refuse to believe that this kid would get it right! He doesn’t have any equipment! It’s impossible for him to get it right!”
I raised my hand to show everyone my answer and said, “The real culprit is nitrite, a common toxin. The lethal dose is three grams, which is an amount that can be easily dissolved in water. Its taste and appearance are very similar to table salt, which has caused many cases of accidental nitrite poisoning. It’s also a cardiovascular drug that can be obtained from any major hospital.”
Everyone was shocked. Dr. Wu laughed and sneered, “Did you figure that out because you tasted it with your mouth?”
“The signs of nitrite poisoning are dark brown blood vessels,” I began to explain, “cyanosis near lips and nails, and a small amount of urine seeping out. You can check the body for the signs yourself, or you can test it with your trusty machines again if you like.”
Large beads of sweat began to form on Dr. Wu’s forehead. I believed that as an experienced coroner, there was no way these signs went unnoticed to him.
“But how was the victim poisoned?” asked Captain Xing.
“The condom!” I answered simply.
“What?” murmured everyone in the room.
“The murderer smeared the poison on the surface of the condom and secretly placed it in the hotel room,” I explained. “There is a mucous layer inside the vagina which would absorb the drug. That was how the victim died mid-coitus.”
Captain Xing glanced at the bedside table and remarked, “But there are three packets of condoms here. How did the murderer know which one would be used? Are all three packets poisoned?”
I turned to the rich man and asked, “Why did you pick this one?”
He was still in shock, but he shook himself out of the daze and answered, “I remember that one of them was opened and the other one looked dirty. That’s why I chose this one without thinking much about it at the time.”
And that was the answer. The murderer was as cunning as a fox. They had deliberately laid out their plan like a game of chess, manipulating the man to choose the poisoned condom subconsciously!
Captain Xing frowned.
“In other words,” said Captain Xing, “the murderer had intentionally set up the scene to frame this man. But isn’t this plan too risky? What if he just brought a condom with him and used that instead?”
I asked the man how he ended up staying in this room and he answered, “I didn’t plan to be here at all today, but Xiaowen suddenly called and said she’d already booked a room, so I hurried over. I did wonder at the time why she would choose such a cheap hotel to stay in! But we just ordered takeaway and jumped into bed after the meal… Then this happened…”
I suddenly had a hunch that the victim might have planned to be in this room with someone else, but for some reason that other person cancelled on her so she called this guy as a substitute.
“Is the victim your girlfriend?” I asked.
“Not exactly…” he replied.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he began with some hesitation, “let’s put it this way: she is one of my many women, and I am one of her many men.”
“Ah, so the two of you are friends with benefits!”
1. An opioid that helps the dilation of blood vessels and is occasionally used to treat erectile dysfunction.