Life in North America, you call this an autopsy officer?!
Chapter 99 - 89: Twenty-Seven Corpses! A Major Case!

Chapter 99: Chapter 89: Twenty-Seven Corpses! A Major Case!

They walked along.

The two of them didn’t encounter any danger. They didn’t even see a hint of wildlife.

Twenty minutes later.

They arrived at a lake with several small cabins.

This was a lake located within the Forest Park area.

Residents nearby often liked to come to such places during holidays for picnics and camping. For safety, the government would arrange for mountain patrols to regularly inspect the Forest Park area.

Such places, unless during official opening hours, were off-limits to fishing and swimming. Anyone caught by the mountain patrol would be fined.

By the lake, there were a few armed men standing.

Next to these men, there was also a middle-aged Black man sitting.

After approaching and interacting with them, Brian and his partner learned what had happened.

The reporter of the incident was the middle-aged Black man.

He had curly hair, was wearing a yellow short-sleeved shirt, holding a fishing rod, and beside him was an empty bucket filled only with water, looking somewhat despondent.

The corpse was placed on the shore, having already been pulled ashore.

Seeing the bruised and disheveled Brian and his partner, the middle-aged Black man had an odd expression on his face.

The mountain patrollers, however, directed more attention to the handprint on Brian’s face.

There was no helping it.

A beautiful female partner, a blatant slap mark, disheveled clothes - all these elements together were bound to lead to speculation.

...

Brian had thick skin.

He ignored everyone’s gazes and, while examining the severely decomposed male body, asked the Black fisherman, "Buddy, that’s quite the catch. Tell us what happened."

The mood of the middle-aged Black man was low.

He said dispiritedly,

"Today’s my day off, so I sneaked here to fish.

But I didn’t catch anything for hours.

Just when I finally hooked something, thinking it was a big catch, I pulled it up only to find it was a corpse. So, I went back to the parking lot, found a park employee, borrowed a phone, and called the police.

Buddy, can you get these guys to let me off the hook for fishing without permission..."

Brian shook his head, "Sorry, I don’t have that authority. However, if the case is solved, as a citizen who provided information, you can apply for a reward from the jurisdictional police station."

"Alright then."

The middle-aged Black man was somewhat saddened.

He hadn’t caught any fish and had caused a commotion.

He would have been better off joining the Air Force!

"Brian, did you find anything?"

Susan squatted beside Brian while Shi San, the dog with the enhanced sense of smell, skulked around the lakeside cabins, sniffing in a somewhat sleazy manner.

Brian glanced at Shi San before pointing out the various wounds, apparent strangulation marks, and entwined vines on the body,

"This is a clear case of murder.

The body’s in an advanced state of decomposition, so we can’t identify the face. We can only estimate from the wear on the teeth that the victim is a male in his thirties.

Due to water bloat, I can’t give an exact time of death right now.

There’s damage to the crown of the skull, which has sustained evident trauma, like it was struck by some kind of irregular, sharp object. That’s likely the cause of death.

Those strangulation marks and vines are probably left by the killer when sinking the body.

But the killer was inexperienced.

The most effective method for sinking a body is to pour concrete over it, and it needs to be more than five times the body’s weight, otherwise, when the body decomposes, there’s still a risk it will resurface."

The Black fisherman was lucky; his hook caught onto the binding vines, and because of the body’s decomposition, all the rocks had been squeezed to one side, bringing the body to the surface.

Susan pointed to the dense wounds on the surface of the body, "Can you tell what kind of weapon caused these?"

"These are marks left by fish feeding."

With that, Brian comforted the Black fisherman, "Buddy, cheer up. It’s not that your fishing skills are bad, it’s that these fish have been well fed."

The middle-aged Black man hadn’t yet said anything when a younger mountain patrol officer suddenly said, "No wonder the dumb fish here used to be so easy to catch. In the past month, they’ve been avoiding the hooks."

His companion quickly tugged on his sleeve.

The fool, was he not just admitting to shirking his duties and breaking the law?

"That month?" Brian seized on the key point, looking seriously at the young mountain patrol officer, "Buddy, I don’t care about your fishing or hunting. Please answer me seriously, is it in the past month that the fish here have stopped biting?"

He was intimidated by Brian’s serious attitude and hid behind his team members.

An older mountain patrol officer caught the implication in Brian’s words and stepped forward to nod,

"Yes, our daily work is quite monotonous, and sometimes we catch some fish from the lake to improve our meals.

For the last month, it’s gotten much harder to catch fish in the lake.

We thought it was because there were too many people fishing last season, leading to a depletion of the fish stock, so we even applied to our headquarters for the release of new fish."

Susan didn’t quite grasp the significance of what he said and looked to Brian.

Brian explained,

"This body’s flesh hasn’t separated from the bone, so the time of death is definitely not more than a week old. It can’t be causing the lake’s fish to stop biting for a month.

These fish are usually dumb and easy to catch. The only reason they wouldn’t bite is that they’re well fed and aren’t lacking food!"

Susan now understood, "Are you saying there might be other bodies in the lake?"

Brian nodded, "It’s highly probable!"

...

Upon checking,

Among the boats tied to the lake’s edge, one had a rope with very fresh wear marks.

This meant that someone had been using this boat frequently in the recent past.

But it wasn’t certain yet whether it was used by people fishing or by those who entered the park secretly for picnicking.

After about fifteen minutes,

The young mountain patrol officer who had butted in earlier came to the center of the lake by himself. He tied a rope around his body, wearing only shorts and with a reluctant face, he jumped into the lake.

He was a good swimmer, easily ascending and descending in the water.

Seeing this,

Brian approached the older mountain patrolman and asked, "Buddy, do you guys often come around here?"

The patrolman shook his head:

"We usually come for a walk at a set time every month, incidentally recording the distribution of animals in the mountains.

If we find traces of poaching, we carefully search the mountains. Also, if we receive GPS rescue requests, we will enter the mountain to search, which is our biggest source of extra income.

Otherwise, nobody likes to stay in the mountains."

Here, mountain rescues come at a price.

And they are not cheap.

Brian continued, "How has the rescue business been lately?"

The veteran patrolman realized something was amiss.

He looked toward his partner, "Sam, we haven’t received many rescue requests since last month, have we?"

Sam was a chubby fellow.

He spread his hands and said, "Buddy, didn’t you notice our bonus was a lot less last month?"

Damn.

Now everyone knew something was wrong!

You know,

due to the good welfare system, many youngsters in Los Angeles like to take risks.

Whenever they have time, they roam everywhere.

Forest parks with their regular removal of wild animals and nice scenery were their preferred destinations.

Often, people would sneak in during off-hours when few people were around.

Because of this, there were many shops renting satellite phones and GPS distress beacons outside Forest Park, with lots of advertisements posted at each entrance to the park.

The patrolmen were happy to have a good source of side income each month. They would even purposefully post their patrol times on related websites and forums as a reference for those youngsters planning to sneak in.

Not everyone has extensive wilderness survival experience.

Without external influences, the number of unlucky individuals requesting assistance in Forest Park each month wouldn’t suddenly plummet.

Unless they had no chance to call for help.

Just then,

the young patrolman who had previously dived into the center of the lake emerged from the water, frantically shouting and swimming towards the boat as if mad.

He collapsed onto the boat, vomiting and crying: "F**k! F**k! It’s all bodies! My God! There are only bodies underwater!"

The scene he saw underwater would become a lifelong nightmare for this unfortunate guy.

Seeing this, Brian silently lit a cigarette. After a deep inhale, he turned to Susan and said, "Team leader, call the reporting center and ask for backup, explaining the situation here."

Although he didn’t know how many bodies were underwater, even five or six would be a hassle to deal with.

Underwater operations were even more troublesome and required specialized equipment to support.

...

Seven or eight hours later.

Nearing evening,

one by one, the retrieved bodies were laid out on the shore of the small lake.

Flashes of reflected light flickered through the surrounding forest.

Those were the camera flashes of reporters who had come to surreptitiously take pictures, well-informed.

It couldn’t be helped.

Too many people had come this time; it was inevitable that some staff had contacts with those reporters and took the opportunity to make some extra cash. Besides, with today’s powerful cameras, it was hard to prevent leaks of information without high-level directives.

"It looks like this case is going to attract no small amount of attention," Susan’s face looked somewhat grim.

Even as a layperson, she knew the difficulties in solving random wilderness crimes.

The number of bodies discovered had already surpassed twenty!

Once these reporters broadcast this story, there was no doubt it would top the news in Los Angeles, perhaps even in all of California.

It was a significant test for Team B6.

Brian’s expression was not relaxed either.

He had already activated his enhanced sense of smell and scoured the surroundings.

But environmental effects were significant.

The open area, combined with the constant mountain breeze, made it difficult for odors to linger.

Even more problematic was that the bodies had been soaked in water.

This time, Enhancement of his sense of smell might not be of much help.

Brian bit his lip and went back to examine the bodies.

There were men and women, adults and children. The most severe case had been gnawed by the fish in the lake to the point where only a skeleton remained.

Besides that.

Brian couldn’t find any obvious injuries on these bodies. The only commonality was that they had all been opened up, and their brains were missing.

It seemed the killer had some kind of compulsion.

The wounds on the tops of these victims’ heads were very small and all centered.

As for the missing brains, these were difficult to use as evidence.

It could be that small fish had entered through the wounds and eaten the brain matter and some tissues.

The underwater search team did find many rocks underwater.

That caused considerable trouble for their search.

This was the only useful clue.

It was not easy to find so many rocks in the forested area!

...

By evening.

The underwater search finally concluded.

Twenty-seven mangled, severely decomposed bodies were arrayed in a long, chilling line.

What a major case!