21st Century Necromancer-Chapter 249 - 246: The Pink Hippo

The autopsy of a corpse is an act of near brutality, even cruelty.

Unlike surgeons who use scalpels to cut into patients’ bodies to treat and save them, forensic pathologists use their scalpels on the dead to uncover the cause of death, often cutting out various parts of the deceased’s internal organs to preserve as samples.

In East Asia, where there’s a cultural preference for burying the complete body and resting in peace, dissecting a person after death, leaving the body fragmented and dismembered, is something very difficult for families to accept.

In China, which once vigorously promoted the destruction of the "Four Olds" and cremation, forensic autopsies are somewhat acceptable if they are meant to bring justice to the deceased. However, in Japan, a nation with a more conservative culture, this practice is much less acceptable, which is one of the reasons why the autopsy rate is so low there.

After all, accepting that their loved ones will be disturbed after death is indeed a very hard thing for the Japanese to accept. Moreover, private autopsies, if not judicially ordered, can be very expensive.

As for the samples cut off, they are usually preserved in formalin to prevent decay, because the body decomposes very quickly. Without such preservation, it would be difficult to keep the samples, even in cold storage, let alone use them for testing and analysis.

But for the same reason, if a perpetrator injected a low concentration of formalin into the victim’s body to kill them, it would also be very difficult to detect, because unless particular attention is paid, all samples sent for testing would be immersed in formalin, so the presence of formalin is both very normal and easily overlooked.

Similarly, if someone did specifically test for the presence of formalin, it is a substance that is quite easily detectable, but it’s the very commonness of it that leads to it being overlooked.

"Meiqin, the results are out. There is indeed formalin," Tokairin Yūko said, handing the freshly prepared test report to Misumi Mikoto.

Misumi Mikoto hurriedly took the report and scrutinized it. The test results confirmed her earlier conjecture; formalin had indeed been found in the discovered corpse, meaning that the deceased had indeed died from formalin.

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Dr. Nakado, who had been struggling to contain his emotions, quickly came over, snatched the test report, and read through every single word as if each one could take him a step closer to the truth of what happened years ago.

Eight years ago, his girlfriend was murdered, her body showing traces of a large amount of nicotine. However, because he was the boyfriend of the deceased, his authentication report was invalidated, and he himself was pursued as the murderer for many years, missing the chance to catch the real culprit.

In those eight years, the only time he could sleep was when he lay on the autopsy table in the autopsy room because it was the last place his girlfriend had been.

All these years, he had spent countless efforts chasing leads, but ultimately, the clues he found were few and far between. The red goldfish mark found in his girlfriend’s mouth became an enduring nightmare and obsession for him. Finding the red goldfish again meant that this was the closest he had come to the murderer in eight years.

So, he scrutinized the report with extra care, as if it were his girlfriend’s autopsy report that he had reviewed hundreds of times, memorized each word of; he wanted to break down every word and absorb it into his heart, searching for any clue that might be related to the murderer.

"Since the victim died from formalin, combined with the dust on the suitcase... it’s very likely that the time of death exceeded one month, which means the body was in that house even before the fire occurred," Misumi Mikoto didn’t mind that Dr. Nakado had taken the test report, she walked to the whiteboard, and began to record her deductions.

"No wonder the food in the stomach was so decayed, because it had been dead too long, and the stomach contents had completely rotted," Tokairin Yuko thought back to the stench that had wafted out when extracting the stomach contents during the autopsy and finally understood why it looked that way.

"But this guy changes his modus operandi every time. Even if we know he’s using formalin to kill people, it’s hard to connect him with previous cases. The important clue is still the red goldfish in the mouth," Dr. Nakado said after reading the report, feeling somewhat powerless, and threw it onto the table, pounding his fist on it.

Although they had found the method of the killer, Dr. Nakado had already discovered other bodies with the red goldfish mark over the eight years. Each time, however, the killer’s methods were different, and the only reason he could connect these cases was because of the sole common point of the red goldfish. But such a mark, easily mistaken for a canker sore, was not enough to convince the police.

"About that, I’ve reconstructed it using 3D modeling, and the mark seems to be from a ball.

The killer likely used a toy ball to stuff into the victim’s mouth as a gag," Kube Rokuro suddenly spoke up, lifting his laptop and displayed on the screen a ball riddled with fish-shaped protrusions: "And according to its shape, I’ve searched, it’s a kind of animal-specific toy ball produced 20 years ago, which has been discontinued."

"Damn it!" Dr. Nakado cursed. With this, finding clues just got a bit harder.

Just as everyone felt perplexed, Misumi Mikoto’s phone rang, displaying an unfamiliar number.

"Moshi moshi? This is Misumi Mikoto speaking, who is this?" Mikoto answered the call, and although the number was unrecognizable, she didn’t hang up right away.

"Hello, Dr. Misumi, I have some information about the red goldfish. If you’re interested, come to the building that caught fire. I’ll be waiting for you near Kosei Real Estate," the voice on the phone made Mikoto feel somewhat familiar, yet she couldn’t recall where she had heard it: "If you’re not comfortable coming alone, you can bring Dr. Nakado with you. You can tell him there’s a pink hippo here."

After saying that, the caller hung up, leaving Mikoto holding the phone, somewhat perplexed, but she still turned to Dr. Nakado and asked him, "Dr. Nakado, do you know what a pink hippo is?"