CSI: Asia-Chp2

CHAPTER 2: THE DEAD DO SPEAK

“OK, what do we have here, Jon?”

“Three siblings, namely Jackie, Peter and Suzie Han. Found dead in their rooms practically turned into bite-size meatballs.”

The three mutilated siblings of Lionel Han’s were taken into Justin’s domain—the surgery autopsy room. He had just done washing his hands and was getting ready with his plastic gloves while turning on the tape recorder. He had a habit of recording anything he had said during his autopsy.

“Um, is it OK if I talk too?” Jonathan asked tentatively, looking at the tape recorder which was on.

“Be my guest,” Justin replied. “It’ll be good to have another human talking instead of me babbling to myself for a change. I don’t want to end up catching any unearthly sounds on tape. It gets eerie when you’re around dead bodies.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Jonathan shivered a little. “So what’s your analysis for the day?”

“Let’s see…” Justin replied as he took a closer look at each and every one of the victims. “Well, this little boy, Jackie, right? He was hacked really hard, and from that clean cut I’d say it has to be a heavy sharp weapon, most probably an axe. Pretty nifty and sharp though. Check the relaxed muscles on his face. There is no indication of shock or tenseness of any kind. The perpetrator must have hacked him in his sleep.”

“Well, at least he never felt a thing,” Jonathan said as he looked at the mangled brain of the little boy. With that kind of state, the undertaker is going to expect his job cut out for him.

“Yes, and the murderer started out with the head too because he didn’t want Sleeping Cutie here to wake up the other kids,” Justin said as he pointed at the other hack wounds on his abdomen, chest and the amputated right arm. “See these wounds here and those tiny squishy clumps? That’s pieces of his brain and skull fragments stuck to it, courtesy of axe-hacking leftovers, and hey,” Justin used a pair of tweezers and plucked a strand of hair from his gut, “I found Sleeping Cutie’s hair in his colon.”

“Well, Sleeping Cutie sure had a gross end to his life,” Jonathan replied, trying to keep his dinner in his gut. Though he had been working in this field for quite a while and has been trained to look directly at dead bodies, he could never hang on for too long. “What about Suzie?”

“Well, Suzie here is a much kinder case. Let’s see…” Justin rubbed his chin and scrutinized the body. “You’re in a right track here, Jon. This girl definitely was stabbed, and look,” he pointed at the deep gash that ran into her chest, “this guy must have put in a lot of force because judging by the pressure of the skin and the muscles embedded down into the lungs and also that punctured heart, he definitely had stabbed her real deep to make sure that she was killed unaware and die in an instant. He had the whole blade shoved down to her lung and through her heart. Ouch, that’s gotta hurt!”

“Sure it is,” Jonathan said, feeling the steamed fish he just ate going up his throat. “And it did hurt her until she woke up the other brother Peter. Jude gave her theory about him putting a struggle with the perpetrator and…”

“Oh, Peter! How can I forget about you?” Justin exclaimed, as if this entire autopsy was a sort of fun activity for him. He rushed over to Peter’s body, which was also as mangled as his other brother, and went through him with much interest. “Yes, yes, of course. He did put up with a struggle. Look at his slight bruise on his cheek—well, what’s left of it, that is. It looks like our psycho tried to beat the lights out of him but it didn’t work, so he tried to strangle him.”

“Strangle?” Justin’s words distracted him a little from the goriness. He looked at where Justin was pointing and sure enough, there were finger marks on the boy’s neck and serious bruising that followed.

“That’s one thing that surprises me, because this guy actually tried to strangle him with one hand,” Justin said as he continued pointing certain parts of the finger marks. “Usually when you want to strangle someone to death, you use both hands to apply more pressure and tighten the airway,” Justin demonstrated to him with his own hands, “and the marks usually have an overlap or a double set of finger marks on both sides of the neck. But this,” Justin pointed at the neck again, “is a one-hand deal. The finger marks were only present at the right side of the neck, which means he was using only his left hand to strangle him.”

“Or to hold him down,” Jonathan remembered the huge patch of blood Judith shown at the crime scene where she got her theory on the kid being dragged back to bed. “The murderer was trying to hold the kid down while he/she hacked his brains off.”

“There’s no way a normal human can hold a kid down with just one hand,” Justin said as he checked his tape recorder to see if there’s any tape left. “I mean, he’s got to be at least 8 years old, and an 8-year-old still has enough strength to break free from a one-hand grasp. Unless we have a very strong man who plays basketball.”

“You mean the kind like Sakuragi in Slam Dunk where he holds the basketball with one hand? It’s possible.”

Both boys turned to Judith who was standing there with her usual file of manga artworks in one hand and eating a chocolate bar with another. Jonathan grimaced; how could she stomach that food in the presence of a threesome of dead mangled bodies? Judith tossed another chocolate bar to Justin who was turning off the tape recorder. He thanked her, unwrapped the chocolate bar and ate it with flourish. Jonathan could have sworn that the coke he just drank was churning in his stomach, ready to be regurgitated. He grabbed Judith’s arm and dragged her out of the autopsy room.

“What? What? What’s wrong, Mark David?” Judith asked in surprise.

“Don’t you ever, ever eat in front of a corpse while I’m around!” Jonathan said between clenched teeth. “It’s filthy and disgusting and down right…”

“Interesting?” Judith grinned as she took another bite from the chocolate bar. She just loved to intimidate the ever temper-disordered Jonathan.

“Stop acting like Hakkai! You’re not Cho Hakkai at all!”

“Well, we took the Genzomaden Saiyuki personality test together and you saw who I’m like,” Judith replied, putting a mock cute face. Before Jonathan could argue, she pointed, “That’s right. I’m Cho Hakkai and my attitude suits it, and don’t you try denying it. Why don’t you just ignore me like the Genjo Sanzo you are?”

Jonathan let out a long, deep breath before growling, “Alright~! What were you doing at the autopsy room anyway? You’re not going to show off another of your manga artworks, are you? We’re in the middle of a case here!”

“I know that!” Judith said, punching his shoulder lightly and grinning all the way. “I just came by to tell you that we’ve the results of the evidence we’ve bagged in.”

“And…?”

“Well, no lead for the knife, ‘coz we couldn’t find any fingerprints on it. Whoever this guy is or how rushy he was to leave the scene, he didn’t go there unprepared. But we have a small lead on the thread you found from the window.”

“What about?” Jonathan asked.

“I’ve taken it to the lab to do some microscopic checking and asked Rebecca for help to check on what kind of fabric this thread might come from, since she knows more of these girl things than I do,” Judith replied as she handed the plastic evidence bag to Jonathan. “Turned out it’s from a kind of black rayon shirt which thieves often wear when they want to burglar a house, and she told me that rayon clothes are so last season and the shirt must have been way old judging by the polarity of the thread. Even burglars wear either synthetic or normal T-shirts to rob nowadays.”

“So we’re looking for someone who could be an athlete, especially a basketball player, and has a serious fashion sense deficiency. Hmm…” Jonathan stared at the thread in the bag for a moment before patting Judith on the head, like he used to when he was in college with her. “Good work, Jude. Keep it up, and keep me posted on anything new.”

“Yeah, Mark David, sure. No problem.”

Judith stared at Jonathan as he walked down the corridor and went to the lift. He has left the building to probably check up on the case for further info. She sighed.

“Some things just don’t change.”