1960: My uncle is the FBI Director

Chapter 71 Better than my grandfather's cooking

The forensic doctor stepped forward and took the ulna and radius, while Theodore took the knot.

Bernie stood in the river with his arms outstretched, but no one paid any attention.

He shook his head, climbed up with the help of the patrol officers, took off all but his underwear, and crawled into the car.

On the way back, Theodore took out the rope and examined it from all angles.

The rope doesn't look like an industrial product, but more like a hand-woven rope. It's rotten and looks quite old.

Bernie glanced at it and told Theodore that it must have come down from a hunting trap in the nearby mountains.

Theodore looked at him.

"This is a slipknot lasso. It's a knot that old hunters often use."

“Some veteran hunters like to use local materials, such as vines, to weave ropes. They believe that wild animals have a keen sense of smell, and such ropes are less likely to be detected.”

After explaining, he asked Theodore what his opinion was on the case.

Theodore examined the knot and shook his head.

He was still unable to determine whether this was a murder case.

Due to the complexity of the river's source, it is difficult to determine whether the rope and the bones originated from the same source or simply happened to get tangled together.

We'll have to wait for the new head of the forensic department to give us the autopsy report before making a decision.

Back at the police station, Wenner reported the situation to him, and Wenner agreed with Theodore's assessment.

He asked the two men about the new head of the forensic department and inquired about their impressions.

Bernie told the truth that the new manager hadn't even been to the site.

Theodore had no opinion on the new manager; he simply said, "If it were Samuel, we would already know how they died."

Wenner frowned and asked him directly, "Are you dissatisfied with him?"

He introduced them to the new head of the forensic department, who was a professor of medicine at Felton University and had many titles, too many to fit in the office.

Theodore was indifferent to titles. If he wanted, he could have a whole list of titles that would fill two thousand words.

Wenner was somewhat helpless and told them to let them adapt and get to know each other first.

The forensic report didn't arrive until the afternoon of the following day, after all the colleagues who had gone to help at the patrol station had returned.

The report was quite thick, packed in two separate file folders, bulging with volume.

The book begins with a large number of photos, hand-drawn sketches, and a series of comparisons; the middle section is filled with technical jargon; and the conclusion is only on the last two pages.

The skull is large with a vertical forehead, smooth brow ridges, completely closed sutures, moderately worn molars, and no caries.

It is presumed to be an adult woman, aged 30-50.

Small skull base with a ring-shaped bone fissure at the edge of the foramen magnum, suggestive of mandibular absence. Unclosed sutures, unerupted permanent teeth, and missing mandible.

The estimated age is 6-12 years old, but gender cannot be determined.

Both skulls have dense, parallel knife marks on the zygomatic arch and supraorbital margin, and the large skull has a chisel notch at the root of the nasal bone.

The bones felt rough to the touch and had a yellowish surface, suggesting that the time of death was 5-6 years ago.

These are two fairly standard autopsy reports.

The report was sent directly to Wenner's desk. After reading it, he looked serious, but did not immediately summon his team to announce the start of an investigation.

The autopsy report clearly states that this was a case from five or six years ago.

Another reason is that the dreary summer is over, the weather in Felton is about to cool down, and people are regaining their energy.

A peak period for homicides is approaching!
The homicide squad has limited resources, and experienced detectives have already put aside old cases and entered a state of rest and recuperation.

Is it appropriate to focus our energy on an old case?
Wenner took out two chocolate balls and put them in his mouth, then took out two more, then two more, and finally made a decision.

He called Theodore and Bernie into his office and handed them the autopsy report.

Bernie read the first few pages but found he couldn't understand them at all, so he simply flipped to the end and went straight to the conclusion.

Theodore was reading page by page.

The autopsy report was very comprehensive, giving him the feeling of being back in college reviewing lecture notes.

After reviewing the two reports, Theodore asked Wenner for the reports on the ulna and radius, but Wenner told him that they hadn't been sent yet.

Wenner then asked for his opinion, while Theodore hoped to get the reports on the ulna and radius first.

Wenner pushed the two reports over, saying, "This case is your responsibility."

After leaving Wenner's office, the two went to the forensic room first.

Theodore wanted to see the ulna and radius, which weren't mentioned in the report.

They met the new supervisor in the forensic department.

He was a middle-aged man, wearing a classic gray three-piece suit and glasses.

He introduced himself as Gary Mitchell, a university professor.

When they arrived, Gary was drawing up a report on the forearm bone.

After questioning, Theodore received a verbal conclusion:
These two bones are relatively well preserved, suggesting that the time of death was 5-8 years ago.

Theodore asked him if the forearm bone and the skull belonged to the same person. Gary cautiously replied, "That possibility cannot be ruled out."

He then asked whether the large and small skulls were related, to which Gary replied, "That possibility cannot be ruled out."

Theodore glanced at Gary, who adjusted his glasses and met his gaze.

The atmosphere was a little awkward for a while.

"What can you be sure of?" Bernie broke the silence.

Gary pointed to the report.

"Do you think they are mother and son or mother and daughter?" Bernie pressed.

Gary shook his head cautiously. "That possibility cannot be ruled out."

Bernie grabbed Theodore and turned to leave.

He missed Samuel, that lame old man.

After leaving the medical examiner's office, Bernie asked Theodore what to do next.

Theodore pulled out the hand-drawn sketches of the cheekbones, eye sockets, and the root of the nasal bone from the report, pointed to the markings on them, and asked...

Why would the killer treat the victim this way?

Bernie looked at the picture, imagined it for a moment, and said, "Torture?"

Theodore nodded and added, "Or collect the spoils."

"Collecting loot?"

Theodore found a complete drawing of the skull and explained, "Some killers like to collect the victim's belongings or parts of the victim's body as trophies."

"They can look at their spoils and relive the thrill of committing the crime."

Bernie tried to imagine it, but he simply couldn't fathom what kind of perverted behavior this was.

He began to look at Theodore with a complicated expression.

Now he was 90% certain that Theodore was acting strangely. Otherwise, what normal person would think of such a thing?

Is this the price of communicating with ghosts?

Bernie pondered to himself, unsure how to bring it up with Theodore.

Theodore had no idea what Bernie was thinking, and he continued, "Some strange religious rituals can also leave similar traces."

Bernie recalled Theodore's mention of voodoo, "like writing the name of the person you want to curse on a dummy?"

Theodore gave a vague reply and remained silent.

Bernie took the report and began flipping through the illustrations inside; he hadn't really looked at the pictures properly before.

He stopped moving after watching for a while.

He pulled out a diagram of the eye sockets and cheekbones and showed it to Theodore.

"These should be knife marks from making the specimen."

He pointed to the enlarged parallel knife marks on the diagram and explained...
"This is a technique for removing soft tissue from the face, used to make skull specimens. I saw my grandfather do it when I was a child."

He gestured to his eye socket, saying, "He had a huge bull skull specimen, and the scratches around his eye socket were just like this."

"Moreover, judging from his technique, he should be even better than my grandfather. His knife marks are evenly distributed and arranged neatly and naturally. He must be a master of specimen making."

Please wait a moment. Another chapter is still being written.

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(End of this chapter)