“How was she poisoned?” I asked.
Bingxin pointed to the victim’s leg and replied, “There is a puncture wound here. The poison was probably injected there with a needle. Could it be suicide?”
I shook my head.
“Don’t rush to that conclusion,” I warned her. “The worst thing to do in an autopsy is to make up your mind before seeing all of the evidence first.”
Bingxin stared at me and laughed. I asked her what was so funny, and she answered, “You’ve changed, Song Yang-gege. You sound so mature now! Not that I’m surprised though. I knew you’d turn out to be an amazing person in the future when I heard how passionate you were when you told me all the stories about your ancestor Song Ci.”
“You’re overpraising me,” I said. “I just happened to learn more things in the past few years.”
“What should we do now?” asked Bingxin. “Just wait for the police to arrive?”
That would be the normal procedure for most coroners, but there was much more that I could still do here.
“Now it’s your chance to witness the Song family’s peerless ingenuity!”
I pulled out my Echolocation Rod and began to check the victim’s internal organs. Surprisingly, the organs were in their normal state. Then I put the victim’s head on the Yin Yang Pillow and checked the inside of her skull.
I couldn’t believe what I found at first, so I repeated the process again and again to confirm the results.
“Her internal organs aren’t damaged,” I said. “But her skull is filled with liquid.”
“Ew!” shouted Dali. “Did her brain melt?”
I glared at him, and he quickly lowered his head in shame.
“You know all that just from using that little wooden rod?” asked Bingxin.
“I’ll explain it to you later,” I said. “Anyway, it seems that she was poisoned by a neurotoxin that dissolved her brain.”
“So both her brain and her muscles were dissolved?” Bingxin muttered, lost in thoughts.
Even I was at a loss as to what this poison was. I thought of a poison recorded in the The Chronicles of Grand Magistrates that was able to turn someone’s body stiff like a wax figure. But then the conditions of this victim’s body didn’t look too much like what was described in the book.
I tried to approach the puzzle from another perspective. The victim was found almost naked except a pair of underwear. Yet there was no sign of sexual or physical assault. Because there wasn’t much sunlight, I couldn’t use the Autopsy Umbrella, so I sprinkled seaweed ash on the victim’s body instead and gently blew it off. Sure enough, only the victim’s own fingerprints were found.
I went into the tiny room and found that her clothes were strewn on the narrow bed. From there, I found two identification documents—a student ID and a cafeteria pass. The victim’s name was Xiaoli, and she was indeed the hardworking girl the cook talked about earlier.
I scanned the room with my Cave Vision and something under the bed caught my eye. I knelt down and stretched out my hand to pick it up. There was an empty injection vial with no descriptions on it. Next to it was an empty syringe.
I went out and showed them to Bingxin, and she asked me, “Are you going to take it back and test it?”
“I’ll need to know what to test it for first,” I replied. “We should probably investigate more for now.”
“From the position and angle of the needle wound,” remarked Bingxin, “it looks like the victim injected the poison herself. Maybe it is suicide after all?”
“If that’s the case,” I argued, “then she’s chosen a very painful death indeed. Why not choose a poison that kills her faster? If you look at the victim’s posture, you can clearly see that she was struggling to open the door but collapsed to the ground before she could do it. Also, if you look at the buttons on her shirt, they’ve clearly been torn off even though it looks like she took off the clothes herself. Why was she so anxious to take off her clothes?”
“Perhaps she had a high fever?” Bingxin suggested.
I picked up the clothes and smelled them. Some poisons would indeed cause high fever, and if that was the case, the victim would sweat. But there were no signs of sweat on the clothes at all.
“No,” I told Bingxin. “We can rule that out.”
“Show me the vial,” said Bingxin.
I gave it to her and she scrutinized it under the light for a few minutes.
“Song Yang-gege! There’s some black residue in here!”
I froze. An idea popped up in my mind. I pulled out the victim’s student ID and showed it to Bingxin.
“Do you think this girl is pretty?” I asked her.
“Yeah… I guess so,” she answered. “Why?”
“Well, I’ve identified the poison that caused the victim’s death. I’ll give you a hint—it starts with the letter B.”
“Ooh, is this a test?” Bingxin chirped. “Hmm… let me think. It starts with the letter B… Benadryl? Benzocaine? Buprenorphine? No, those poisons won’t dissolve the muscles or the brain…”
I was indeed trying to test Bingxin to see how knowledgeable she was. She was quite impressive, because she went on to name a dozen poisons in a short period of time, some of which I’d never even heard of. It looked like she had a strong grasp in toxicology.
As Bingxin was still deep in thought, Dali finally found an opportunity to interrupt us.
“Maybe she committed suicide with a snake venom like Cleopatra did!” he proposed.
“Did you see a snake anywhere in the room?” I snapped.
“Ah, that’s right!” cried Bingxin. “Silly me! You even hinted at it when you asked me if the girl was pretty!”
She picked up the student ID again and examined the victim’s picture for a while.
“Yes, I can see it now!” she exclaimed. “It’s Botulinum toxin!”
“Bingo!” I laughed.
“What the hell is that?” Dali asked.
“Botox!” explained Bingxin. “Girls like the victim would be familiar with it. It’s used to reduce wrinkles in the face!”
Botox was a neurotoxin that could dissolve proteins. It was precisely because of this feature that it was widely used in the cosmetics industry. But what most people might not know was that it was also the most acutely lethal toxin known to modern science! It was once used as a biochemical weapon by the military until its use was explicitly prohibited in the Geneva Conventions.
One milligram of Botox could kill 200 million mice, but the amount of Botox used in plastic surgery clinics was extremely small that it was absolutely impossible to reach the lethal dose. Nevertheless, it was not uncommon to hear of movie stars suffering from facial nerve paralysis and nerve cramps due to Botox injections.
Botox was a toxin produced by a species of anaerobic bacteria called Clostridium botulinum. The bacteria would not survive once exposed to oxygen-rich air. That was why when Bingxin pointed out that there was black residue in the vial, my suspicions were aroused.
The victim probably tried to inject the Botox into her leg to make them thinner and firmer, but she then noticed that her muscles were rapidly dissolving, so she hastily undressed to check what was going on. Botulinum toxin invaded the brain immediately after entering the bloodstream, making the victim unconscious. This meant that she didn’t have time to reach the door to call out for help before she collapsed to the floor and never got up again.
The bacteria continued to multiply in her body even after her death, and in only half a day all her muscles and her brain had turned into mush!
“The victim probably couldn’t afford to get Botox injections by a licensed medical professional,” Bingxin commented. “She must’ve bought cheap Botox online, which led to her tragic death. Song Yang-gege, this was just a case of accidental death, wasn’t it?”
“No,” I answered. “It’s a carefully planned murder!”
“What?” Bingxin was startled.
I raised the vial and said, “You can even notice the black residue with the naked eye, which meant that there was so much Botox in it that it far exceeded the lethal dose. No merchant would be so unscrupulous and so stupid to let that happen unless they were a terrorist organization! I think the vial must’ve been tampered with, which means that someone wanted the victim dead!”
“That makes sense,” Bingxin nodded. “What should we do next?”
“Protect the crime scene and wait for the police!” I then turned to the still unconscious cook and told Dali, “Can you help me wake him up? I have some questions to ask him.”