Oh my Ghost [YiZhan FF]

Chapter 24 - On the trail of truth

We had been reading through all the files for days, getting an idea of everything, and something struck Zhan and me. No one, except Shuang's ex-wife, had ever identified the body! His ex-wife was asked to look at the already decomposing body in the garden house and said, "Yes, that's my ex-husband." That was the end of the matter for the police.

In the coroner's office, an autopsy was performed, which also failed to verify the identity once again. And there was also only an external examination, since they found the empty liquor bottle and the empty pillbox with the corpse. The only thing that the coroner noted was that it was stated that the new husband had been in the garden house only two days before the body was found, and that there was no body there yet, cannot be true.

The coroner said that at that stage of decomposition, the body should have been there for at least a week. It was explained then with the temperatures. It was very warm those days and the heat would always accumulate in that little garden house. Or rather, there would be a lot of heat in the garden house. With that, the medical examiner was satisfied.

Zhan talked to him on the phone and asked him why he never checked the identity and he told Zhan that he didn't do that because the body had already been identified by the ex-wife and he didn't get an order to check the identity either. However, he also had good news. He said he had frozen DNA tissue samples from the body at the time and they were still available.

While DNA verification would sometimes take several weeks or even months, the medical examiner plans to have the tissue samples tested. He also confirmed that the intense heat at the time caused the body to decompose faster. But, he again made it clear that he had already factored this into his investigation and still concluded that the body must have been there longer.

Zhan then spoke with a specialist in forensic entomology. So someone who is a criminal biologist and examined the biological traces. Larvae, flies and so on. And he also confirmed that the corpse must have been about a week old, according to his examinations of the larvae and flies that were found on and near the corpse.

I have to mention at this point that I thought all this would weigh me down. I mean the pictures of Zhan's dead parents, the decomposing corpse in the garden house. But that was not the case. It didn't leave me cold to see the pictures of Zhan's parents. The severe injuries they suffered and died as a result, it's not like that. But I didn't feel blocked because of that and continued routinely.

All the time I was following Zhan, who was handling everything like a real professional. And that even though it concerned his own parents. I think his absolute will to find out the truth kept him from bursting into tears and going on and on. Finding new clues in the old documents, asking questions and searching further.

After a week, we obtained recent pictures of Shuang's ex-wife and her new husband. We then showed these to Yanli and Cheng and they confirmed that the couple at the time that Shuang took out of the garbage truck and did not help any of the injured was that very couple. But that was circumstantial and not real evidence, Zhan told me.

"At most, we could get them for failing to render aid. But that's about it." He explained to me, as I demanded with vigor that we go after the two of them now.

In addition, we still lacked a judge's decision that we may officially reopen the case of the corpse in the garden house. So far, we had only been allowed to review the attack on Zhan's family.

Since all this was dragging on, I asked my uncle for help. Normally this kind of thing goes very quickly, he said to me when I explained to him that we were searching for the true identity of the dead man. He also couldn't understand why the judge took so much time. But thanks to the help of my uncle, we finally got the decision after almost 2 weeks.