Insights Chapter 148: Sudden Death

Chapter 148: Sudden Death

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

In the morning, Qi Yi’an drove with Shen Junci to the deceased’s home. It was a one-room apartment with a living room, quite messy inside, indicating it hadn’t been cleaned for days. The neighborhood was relatively new, but the property management was lax, with many cameras damaged and no surveillance available.

The deceased was a 28-year-old programmer. Officers from the Third Precinct had arrived to investigate the scene, along with a medical examiner from the precinct. The time of discovery of the corpse was 6 am this morning. The deceased’s family couldn’t reach him last night, and upon learning he hadn’t shown up for work, they rushed over.

This morning, the family and the landlord went to the apartment and found him dead inside, prompting them to call the police. At this moment, the deceased’s mother sat in the living room, crying bitterly. The boss from the deceased’s company was also present, standing solemnly aside.

The detective was questioning the boss about basic details.

The boss explained one by one, and finally said with some frustration, “There are so many people in the company, I wasn’t close to him. We only met during meetings.”

The mother raised her head and said, “My son clearly said he had become the Chief Technical Officer. If you don’t even know your own company’s CTO, how can you run a game company?”

Qi Yi’an caught the gist of it. The company where the deceased worked was a privately owned medium-sized gaming company with over a hundred employees, and they had recently launched a new project. He whispered to Shen Junci, “I’ve heard of this company before. They had a hit game before, and recently they’ve been in talks with big companies for acquisition. At a time like this, an employee’s sudden death definitely calls for discreet handling.”

Shen Junci nodded, then went into the bedroom and approached the bed to examine the deceased.

The deceased lay on the bed, with the positioning of his limbs seeming somewhat unnatural.

Shen Junci put on a mask and gloves and asked the precinct’s medical examiner, “Has the body been moved at all?”

The medical examiner replied, “No, just took a few photos.” Then the medical examiner explained, “The deceased’s family believes he died from overwork and wants to hold the company accountable, but the boss thinks he died at home from illness. Even if compensation is due, it would be out of humanity’s sake. They were arguing about this just now.”

With both sides unable to resolve their dispute, the medical examiner’s autopsy results would be crucial in making a judgment. Since the case seemed a bit tricky for the precinct, they decided to play it safe and call in the City Bureau’s medical examiner.

Shen Junci began the external examination of the body. The deceased was dressed in clothes and socks, covered with a thin blanket on the bed. He appeared to be exhausted, perhaps falling asleep without even washing up or brushing his teeth, and never waking up again. Shen Junci lifted the blanket and knelt on the bed, leaning over to inspect.

The bedroom door was half-open, and they could still hear the conversation in the living room.

The mother cried while saying, “Since he joined this company, he’s been working overtime every day, waking up at six and not returning home until after midnight. He said something about a new version going online recently, and just two days ago, he stayed up all night.”

The boss snorted, “Before this, he was begging the vice president to let him join this project…”

“My son was perfectly healthy before. How could he suddenly die for no reason? This is overwork.” The mother raised her head and asked, “Did he work overtime at your company?”

The boss didn’t dare to admit directly, fearing it might serve as evidence later. “We discuss KPIs with our employees. If others can meet them, why couldn’t he? Does he expect others to do his work for him?”

Qi Yi’an shook his head and whispered, “He definitely worked overtime, quite a lot too. This boss is actually complaining about a dead person.”

The precinct’s medical examiner nearby said, “KPIs killed him.”

“What KPIs, OKRs, performance evaluations, and layoffs. Isn’t this just workplace pressure?” Qi Yi’an remarked.

The medical examiner replied, “When you’re young, you exchange your life for money. But when you’re older, that money might not buy you another life.”

According to Shen Junci’s assessment, the deceased had been dead for over thirty hours. At this point, the body temperature had completely equilibrated with the room temperature, rigor mortis had eased, and livor mortis was evident. Shen Junci first measured the body temperature, then began examining the head of the corpse. After carefully observing the pupils of the corpse, he used his hands to examine the jaw and mouth of the deceased. He spoke up, “There’s no rigidity in the jaw joint.”

Qi Yi’an was recording nearby. Shen Junci looked again, furrowing his brows slightly. He asked Qi Yi’an and the officers from the precinct to help remove the clothes from the corpse. With the clothes removed, the skin of the corpse was fully exposed, and the marks of livor mortis on it were clearly visible.

They turned the corpse over, facing upwards.

Qi Yi’an took a few photos and muttered quietly, “There seems to be an issue with the livor mortis on this corpse.”

“Not seems, there is,” Shen Junci said. “This corpse has been moved.”

After Qi Yi’an finished taking photos, Shen Junci approached the leading detective and said, “The cause of death still needs to be determined specifically after the autopsy, but we have found some other clues.”

The detective hurried over to check.

There were some dark red livor mortis marks on the corpse, very prominent.

Shen Junci pointed at those marks and analyzed, “Livor mortis is generally formed by blood pooling, which means it usually appears on the lower parts of the body. When we found the corpse, it was in a supine position, so the livor mortis would mainly form on the neck, back, sides of the buttocks, and posterior sides of the limbs.” He then pointed at the lower limbs of the corpse and continued, “Based on the scene, there are more livor mortis marks on the lower limbs, fewer on the upper limbs and back. So we suspect the corpse was moved. In other words, the deceased died in a sitting position, and about eight hours later, he was moved to a supine position on the bed. By that time, livor mortis had already formed, only partially shifting. Additionally, someone forcefully disrupted the rigor mortis, so there’s no rigidity in the jaw joint of the deceased.”

The mother of the deceased stood up, her eyes red, and asked Shen Junci, “What do you mean? I don’t understand all these professional terms.”

Shen Junci turned to the mother and said, “What I mean is, your son died sitting somewhere else, around eight o’clock the night before last. He was later moved to the bed.”

When a corpse is moved shortly after death, changes in livor mortis cannot be observed, and even if moved within four hours post-mortem, the formed livor mortis may disappear. However, once the corpse is moved after more than six hours, some early-formed livor mortis will not disappear.

After seven to eight hours post-mortem, and after the disruption of rigor mortis, it won’t reform. All these signs indicate that the corpse had been moved.

As Shen Junci analyzed to this point, in the living room, the face of the company’s boss turned pale. The mother rushed over and started hitting him, shouting, “The medical examiner said the corpse was moved! My son clearly died in your company, you owe me my son’s life!”

The officers hurriedly separated them.

The corpse was transported to the City Bureau, where it was determined through autopsy to have died from heart failure. Just as they finished dealing with this case, news came from the Third Precinct.

Surveillance footage along the route captured the boss’s car passing through the nearby area around 3 a.m. The deceased’s phone also indicated that he hadn’t made any actions since 8 p.m. two nights ago after complaining to his friend about being tired from overtime. Faced with overwhelming evidence, the boss of the company immediately confessed.

On the night before last, he had been having an affair with the company’s secretary in the office. When he came out around 11 p.m., he found the deceased still sitting at his desk, having already passed away for some time, and his body had started to cool.

At that moment, he and the secretary were frightened, fearing that if someone died of overwork in the company, it would affect the acquisition. They were also afraid of being seen leaving the park at this time, so they pushed the corpse, still in the office chair, to the president’s office and locked it away. Later, they came up with the idea of moving the corpse.

They knew the deceased lived alone and knew the location of the room he rented. At 3 a.m., they made preparations, claiming that a colleague of theirs had fallen seriously ill and secretly returned to the company from home. Then the two of them took the deceased’s phone and keys, pushed the corpse on a cart, and put it in the trunk of the car.

They cooperated all the way, entered the deceased’s home, placed the corpse on the bed, and then pretended to go to work as usual, taking the opportunity to delete the surveillance footage in the company. They thought they had covered all the details flawlessly, but they didn’t expect the corpse to speak. The medical examiner quickly deduced the truth based on the traces on the corpse.

After hearing the results from the Third Precinct, Shen Junci stood up and lit an incense stick in a corner of the office. White smoke quietly wafted out, as if to mourn the deceased.

Qi Yi’an rested his chin on his hand and said, “If there’s really an afterlife, I hope he won’t be a programmer.”

Shen Junci said, “It’s not necessarily that being a programmer will lead to an exhausting death. It’s more about getting into a good company and encountering a conscientious boss.”

Qi Yi’an pondered for a moment. “That’s true.”

With this case wrapped up, it was time for lunch. Medical examiner Shen strolled over to the Criminal Investigation Building to have lunch with Gu Yanchen.

Gu Yanchen had just finished a meeting with the detectives about Jian Yunxi’s case four years ago.

They went to the cafeteria and sat down. They ordered a plate of shrimp. Gu Yanchen went to wash his hands, peeled the shrimp one by one, put them in Shen Junci’s bowl, and even fed him a few pieces casually.

Shen Junci said, “Don’t just give them to me, eat some yourself.”

Only then did Gu Yanchen leave a few for himself, wash his hands, and sit back at the table.

While eating, Captain Gu briefed Shen Junci on the morning’s investigation results. They have not yet determined who sent the box or what their intentions were.

“The feedback from the forensics team confirms that the contents of the box belong to Jian Yunxi. Perhaps this is the killer’s challenge to the public and the police, or maybe someone wants to expose the crime and suggest that the killer is still at large. In any case, this case needs to be re-investigated.”

Shen Junci pondered with his chopsticks in hand. “Are you sure this case has nothing to do with the previous cleaning company?”

The initial suspect of the police has died, turning this case into a dead end. It’s too much like finding a scapegoat.

“The best way to verify is to ask Ding Yueran,” Gu Yanchen said, “I’ll make a call to ask Li.”

He made a call on his phone and spoke with Li Zhongnan for a few minutes before hanging up. “Li said Ding Yueran and they are on a mission, wait for them to come back and talk to us.”

At this time, in a black car in Penang East, sat four men. Their car was parked on the side of the road. The man sitting in the front passenger seat, with a scarred face, said loudly, “Just a few days ago when we recruited people, those cops were really funny. They wanted to play cop, but I saw through both of them. Honestly, whether they’ve been in or not, I can tell just by a word.”

He naturally had a loud voice, resonating in the car. He didn’t care whether he would be heard by people outside.

A skinny man sitting in the back row flattered, “That’s right, Boss Zhu. How could those little tricks fool you? It’s good that you finally found An Nan. Anan is really reliable.”

Boss Zhu took a drag of his cigarette and turned to look at a handsome man sitting in the back row. “You kid, you’ve got brains. Follow me in the future.”

Hearing this, the man who called himself An Nan smiled at them in the back row, but secretly rolled his eyes. He was Ding Yueran in disguise, who had infiltrated this group three days ago and was out with them today. Ding Yueran turned his head and looked out the window, his gaze falling on several cars parked not far away.

Li Zhongnan and several members of the Special Criminal Division were sitting in those cars. These people thought they were lying in wait for prey, but they were actually the mantis stalking the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. They had long been targeted by the police.