Chapter 187: Broken Bones

On the autopsy bed, thick liquid kept flowing out.

At first, when it flowed a lot, someone would rinse it with clear water. Gradually, everyone pretended not to see it.

The whole autopsy room was like being submerged by abalone juice. This scene was as rare as boiling four big pots of dried abalone in a Cantonese restaurant kitchen.

The pressure cooker started to steam "pu pu pu".

Another large stainless steel pot was moved over.

Wang Lan said: "Boil this pot normally, use this bag..."

The corpses in the four bags had been stored for different years.

The oldest one, the flesh inside was almost liquefied. The most recent bag seemed to have some muscle tissue hanging on it. However, as the pocket opened, its oxidation degree was visible to the naked eye, and it could also be used to take some DNA.

The one just boiled in the pressure cooker was a corpse of intermediate level. Now, Wang Lan chose the oldest one.

Because if you use a normal pot to boil, the process is even more complicated. Choosing the oldest one makes it simpler to remove the bones.

Two unknown forensic doctors stood up and silently picked some bones and put them into the large stainless steel pot.

Qinghe Bureau bought a stainless steel pot used for steaming buns locally. If you lay cage drawers layer by layer inside, steaming fifty or sixty buns is not a problem.

Now putting in bones and meat, putting in thirty or forty jin is not a problem.

Some meat that hadn't been completely removed, connected to the bones, was piled into the stainless steel bucket.

Two forensic doctors deliberately put less, chose spine and pelvis, added water, and started boiling on the fire.

A room of forensic doctors was a bit silent.

It was mainly because the familiarity between each other was a bit poor, and secondly, the smell was too difficult to smell.

Especially the boiled bones, there was a bit of fragrance, and there was the smell of rot, and it was the smell of corpse rot filling the nasal cavity...

Jiang Yuan guessed that the reason why humans are so disgusted with this smell is that the body has solidified the dislike for such smells in the DNA chain—it is estimated that it means "cannot eat, run fast".

"Have you all eaten?" Niu Tong, forensic doctor Niu, felt that he should fulfill the friendship of the landlord.

"You go, I'll watch the boiling." Wang Lan, a forensic doctor, usually plays auxiliary, and this time she also did the host.

Speaking, the water in the stainless steel pot boiled. Wang Lan, a forensic doctor, stepped forward and turned off the small fire, saying: "This pot needs to be boiled with gentle fire for three or four hours. You go eat something first and come back to scrape the tendons."

Boiling human bones to remove bones is the same principle as boiling pig bones to remove bones.

Similarly, when the meat is boiled to remove the bones, there will still be some tendons or fascia remaining on the bones. In this case, boiling it again will easily deform the bones, so scrape it clean with a knife.

Jiang Yuan instinctively didn't want to eat anything and said: "I won't go either, changing clothes is too troublesome."

Several younger forensic doctors decided to stay.

The shower head in the bathroom is not enough. Even if everyone wants to go out completely, it is impossible. Just the smell stained today, if you don't wash and brush well, you can't get out of the door at all.

Rather than stripping naked to carry forward the style, it is better to carry forward the style while wearing clothes.

Wang Lan probably had the same idea. She is a female forensic doctor, and she is usually not affected. It is inconvenient to use the bathroom at this time.

"Then we will go eat first and come back to pick you up." Niu Tong greeted, pulled the forensic doctor Old Ye from Longli County and others, and went to wash first.

Wang Lan said "Yeah" and didn't say much, went to take a soup spoon, stirred the bones in the stainless steel pot, so as not to stick to the pot and be difficult to handle.

Wang Lan, who never cooks at home, who knows, she is extremely good at boiling deboned meat.

Jiang Yuan took advantage

The quality of the plastic bags is excellent, and there are stones inside to weigh them down; one could carefully scan for fingerprints and DNA, though Jiang Yuan doesn't hold out much hope for that.

Jiang Yuan is sifting through the body parts mainly to see if there are any features on them that could help trace their origin.

Better examples would be tattoos, which might remain even if the body has decayed. Another example is hair; if it still exists, it at least proves the body wasn't bald or shaven.

Facts proved that Jiang Yuan had overthought it.

All four bodies appeared ordinary; at the very least, none had joined the U. S. Marine Corps or anything similar.

After Wang Lan stirred the stainless steel pot three times, the bones in the pressure cooker were cooked.

Wang Lan tightened her face, found a pair of chopsticks, and lifted the pressure valve of the pressure cooker; she heard a *pfft-pfft* sound of steam releasing, and a rich meaty aroma wafted out.

Several forensic doctors remaining in the autopsy room were too lazy to speak.

To be honest, in terms of time, everyone was a bit hungry, but at this moment, it really wasn't appropriate to even sip water.

Setting aside whether others felt it was appropriate or not, Jiang Yuan himself felt it was inappropriate.

Fortunately, the abalone sauce had all been eaten, otherwise it would have just gone to waste.

"It's open." Wang Lan waited for the steam in the pressure cooker to release completely before opening the lid.

One could see a thick layer of oil floating on top of the blackish broth.

Wang Lan sighed and said, "People are a bit too overweight these days."

"The fat must have gone rancid." Another forensic doctor from the municipal bureau said, then leaned in to take a look and added, "Maybe they were a fatty in their lifetime; this is even oilier than when I boil pork knuckles."

"Pigs only have a body fat percentage of 15%, which isn't much different from mine." Wang Lan is very lean. It's just that women naturally have a much higher body fat percentage than men.

The forensic doctors present couldn't help but size Wang Lan up and nod to themselves.

Wang Lan rolled her eyes and went to fetch a large bottle of alcohol, pouring it into a basin.

After rinsing the outer layer of the boiled bones with water, soaking them in alcohol finally clears away the remaining lipids.

The white bones then became stark white and clean; when illuminated by the light, they even had a slight yellowish tint, and the visual impact was very faint—after all, the autopsy table nearby was piled with dirty, foul-smelling body parts.

"Let's arrange them, the two of us." Wang Lan called Jiang Yuan over to identify the characteristic bones together.

Among the forensic doctors present, Jiang Yuan was the one she trusted the most.

Although the other young forensic doctors were a few years older than Jiang Yuan, in terms of ability, they were still orders of magnitude behind him.

Wang Lan had carefully reviewed the autopsies Jiang Yuan had performed, as this was also part of her job. In forensic anthropology, Jiang Yuan was clearly very gifted.

And among the various tasks at the scene, identifying bones was considered the easiest.

Jiang Yuan and Wang Lan cleared an autopsy table together and arranged the bones on it one by one, using the appearance of a skeleton lying down as a model.

Others helped throw the white bones into the alcohol to clean them, poured out the water used to boil the bodies, put in other body parts, added fresh water, and continued boiling.

At the same time, several young forensic doctors were also observing the work of Jiang Yuan and Wang Lan.

Dismemberment cases are still quite rare.

For the forensic doctors, this was also a rare learning opportunity.

In fact, in normal dismemberment cases, the body parts are not cut this small.

Most killers, even those in dismemberment cases, may have initially committed a crime of passion. When they decided to dismember the body to cover up the crime, most had not thought through the difficult scenes they would face.

Human bones are actually very hard and heavy.

People nowadays—women can weigh under 100 jin, while men's weight is at least 30 jin more, and 150-jin men are also very common. In other words, if one were to dismember a man into 5 pieces, each piece would weigh 30 jin; just the process of moving them would exhaust anyone.

Imagine a butcher cutting up pork; common pigs weighing over 100 or 200 jin are all hung in mid-air to be cut. That is because this position is the most labor-saving.

Ordinary people, having no experience in dismemberment, wouldn't know the importance of iron hooks and hanging ropes.

Furthermore, the cutting itself is also very difficult; "butchering an ox" requires at least LV6 skill difficulty.

Those who can't even tell which piece of meat is the tenderloin, but know to cut once at the waist and once at the neck, are already considered skilled. To dismember more meticulously, one must either know how the greater trochanter and lesser trochanter work, or use powerful cutting equipment, such as a chainsaw.

But even so, it would still be very difficult and tiring to cut.

Therefore, in most temporary dismemberment cases, the body parts are relatively large.

Many of the body parts in this case weigh less than 10 jin, which at least indicates the killer is physically strong and knows how to operate powerful machinery.

Jiang Yuan picked up a bone, looked at it, placed it on the autopsy table, and then picked up another.

Wang Lan did similar work, but she first searched through the pile of bones, found the specific bone she wanted, and then took it out to place on the autopsy table.

Everyone present was a forensic doctor, and they all quickly saw the difference.

Wang Lan silently stopped.

Although she was also sufficiently familiar with bones, she could naturally manage to pick up a random bone and place it in the fixed position on the autopsy table without doubt—but her efficiency would be much lower.

Most importantly, this method didn't allow Wang Lan to form a sufficient understanding of the skeleton, which affected her judgment of the remains.

Therefore, Wang Lan simply stopped and prepared to wait for Jiang Yuan to finish arranging the bones before she started looking from the beginning herself.

Jiang Yuan quickly laid out the pelvis.

The young forensic doctor nearby saw this and had already made a judgment, saying:

"It's a female. She has given birth."

"Around 40 years old."

"Height is 170 centimeters."

Jiang Yuan said this at that moment, leaving everyone stunned.

Wang Lan couldn't help but ask, "How did you judge that?"

The most commonly used bones to judge age are the long bones of the limbs, but because the space in the pressure cooker was limited, the long bones hadn't been boiled out yet.

Jiang Yuan said, "I judged it using the lumbar vertebrae first; we can verify it in a while."

"Then note it down first." Wang Lan was half-believing and half-doubting.

Although it is said that using a single bone to judge everything is the goal pursued by forensic anthropology, the difficulty involved is also very high. Wang Lan's research in this area was not deep.

The several young forensic doctors nearby suddenly became well-behaved.

Everyone had some understanding of the limits of forensic anthropology, but when could such limits actually be used in work?