“Do you think he was injected with poison?” asked Xiaotao. “Should we test it?”

“I’ll get a sample now,” I replied.

I brushed the inside of a cup used in cupping therapy and held it over a flame. Then, I placed it on top of the puncture wound. I repeated the process and placed a few more cups on the victim’s abdomen where the liver should be. If there was any toxin in the human body, it would penetrate the skin and hair follicles, which could be pulled out using this traditional Chinese medicine technique.

Apart from that, this technique worked best on slow-acting toxins. I suspected that the victim was not poisoned but was injected with an unknown drug that turned him into a ‘living corpse!’

We waited for a while, then suddenly Xiaotao exclaimed, “Song Yang, look!”

Droplets slowly seeped out from the skin under the cups. I pulled off the cups and used cotton swabs to collect samples of these droplets. These would be given to the forensics team for further testing. The samples collected from the puncture wound and those from the liver area were kept separate and should be tested separately too.

At that moment, an officer came in and said, “Huang-jie, someone just died at the hospital!”

We were both shocked. Xiaotao instantly asked, “Is it the rich lady?”

“No,” answered the officer, “it’s her secretary. The rich lady has been kidnapped!”

Xiaotao and I exchanged a look. We had planned to question the rich lady after the autopsy. Neither of us had predicted that the murderer would make his next move so quickly.

“Let’s go to the hospital now!” Xiaotao shouted.

We got into a police car immediately. Dali came along too, and I explained what was going on to him on the way. The idiot paid no attention to the details of the case, though. All he asked was what kind of food and drinks were served at the party and whether I saw any celebrities there.

Several police cars were already parked outside the hospital. We headed straight to the rich lady’s ward and found that the door had been cordoned off from the public by police tape.

One of the officers tasked with guarding the rich lady reported that the rich lady was very flustered when she woke up. She kept begging them to protect her and to stay alert at all times, but when asked who was trying to harm her, she clammed up and refused to speak. At noon, the officers went out to grab lunch, and that was when things went south. When they came back, they found the secretary killed and the lady gone.

“Have you checked the surveillance video?” Xiaotao asked.

“We’re still talking to the hospital about it,” the officer answered.

As soon as we entered the ward, the heavy stench of blood filled my nostrils. The secretary lay dead on the floor face down in a pool of blood. Glass fragments littered the floor.

I kneeled down to examine the body. The victim’s back was riddled with deep wounds, and they were all round in shape. I pried one of the wounds open with a pair of tweezers and picked out a glass fragment from it. I looked up and saw that the IV bottle was missing from the stand. That gave me an idea of what the murder weapon could be.

“There should be a serial number on the IV bottle, right?” I asked the officer.

“Yes,” he nodded.

“Go to the nurse and find out this serial number,” I ordered. “Search for it around the hospital. If you find a broken IV drip bottle with the corresponding serial number, that’s the murder weapon!”

“That’s awful!” Dali commented while covering his mouth. “He was beaten to death with the IV drip bottle?”

I asked Dali to put on the gloves and help me turn the body over. I found that two of the victim’s nails were broken. I looked around and find that the curtains were closed and undisturbed. There was no sign of fighting in the room either. I turned my gaze to the door and asked the officer, “Was the door open when you found the body?”

“It was open when we came back,” he replied. “The nurse did mention that they usually leave the doors to single wards like this one closed for hygienic purposes, though.”

“Let’s check for fingerprints!” I said to Dali.

I pulled out the Autopsy Umbrella and an ultraviolet lamp from my bag. Dali held the lamp as I turned the Autopsy Umbrella around the body. The same set of fingerprints were found on the bed, on the victim’s body, and on the doorknob.

I looked at the victim’s hand again. It looked like there was dandruff under his nails. The murderer’s skin cells were often found under the victim’s nails in many murder cases, so this was very important evidence. Xiaotao jumped up excitedly when she saw it.

“I’ll call the forensics team right away!” she cried.

“Don’t get too excited,” I shook my head. “This is not dandruff or any kind of human skin tissue at all.”

I pointed at the body and continued, “The murderer attacked him from behind. He fell facedown. Judging from this scenario, the victim had no chance to scratch the murderer at all.”

Then I placed the victim’s hand under my nose and smelled it. “It smells like processed leather.”

“Leather?” Xiaotao wondered.

“Do you remember what kind of bag the rich lady had?” I asked her.

“It was too chaotic to notice that kind of detail back then,” she replied. “Wait, are you implying that the victim was clutching at the rich lady’s bag, and then it was violently snatched away from his hand?”

“That’s not all,” I added. “The truth is, the rich lady wasn’t kidnapped at all. She was the real murderer!”

Everyone gasped when I revealed this fact.

“Look,” I added, “there were no traces of outsiders breaking into the room. The victim collapsed close to the bed, so where would the murderer stand to attack him? On the bed? That’s not possible since the rich lady was still lying there.”

I stood up and scanned the room. Then, I began to reenact the case.

“At the time, the rich lady was sitting on the bed. She then asked her secretary to get her bag. As soon as the victim turned his back, she grabbed the IV drip bottle, broke it against the bedframe and hit the victim with it. The victim fell to the floor. She jumped out of bed and snatched the bag from the victim’s hands.”

“But why would she kill her own secretary?” asked Xiaotao. “Did she lose her mind? Didn’t she know that there are surveillance cameras in the hospital? She must know that we’d catch her in no time!”

“This murder and Chen Da’s own murder attempt at the party have one thing in common,” I said. “They were acting in a way that they would never do in normal circumstances.”

I wondered what in the world could make them suddenly behave so abnormally.

The police then obtained the surveillance video. Sure enough, at about 2 pm, the rich woman was seen sneaking out of the room while still wearing the hospital gown and holding her bag in her hands. It was also clear that no one had entered the room apart from the secretary. This proved that the rich lady was undoubtedly the murderer.

“What about the murder weapon?” asked Xiaotao.

“It’s in the bag, of course!” I replied. “She acted as if she didn’t want anyone to know that she murdered someone, which means that she was definitely conscious at the time.”

“But wouldn’t she look suspicious if she ran out of the hospital dressed like that?” asked Dali.

I gave it a thought and answered, “No!”

I drew the curtains and looked outside. There were many people wearing the hospital gown in the hospital compound. It wouldn’t look conspicuous to walk around dressed like that within the hospital, but it would indeed look suspicious if she tried to leave like that.

“What happened to her car?” I asked.

“It’s still in the hotel’s underground parking lot,” an officer replied. “The secretary accompanied her in the ambulance when she was sent here.”

“She must’ve planned to take the cab somewhere if she took her bag with her,” another officer chimed in. “Should we check all the cabs that came to the hospital today?”

I looked at the car park outside and considered the question, then replied, “I won’t rule out the possibility of that happening, but I think it’s more likely that someone picked her up downstairs.”

“What are you waiting for?” Xiaotao asked the officers. “Go get the surveillance videos of the parking lot now!”

They left and then returned with the surveillance videos of the parking lot. There were three cameras there. We quickly played the videos on a laptop. As we were in the middle of one of the videos, Xiaotao suddenly interrupted and told an officer to pause it and replay the last few seconds.

What happened in the video was that it changed from the scene in the car park to nothing but the blue sky. We checked the other two cameras and sure enough, the picture video turned to that of the sky right about the same time it happened to the first camera.

“Very cunning!” exclaimed Xiaotao. “They pushed the camera upwards so we can’t see anything!”

“Let’s go and check the car park now!” I urged.