The slap of Yan Han's quiet laugh hit Zhen Nuan somewhere tender. Her cheeks burned.
Komatsu hadn't caught it. "Yes, that show's incredible. Criminal Minds too, right?"
"Right." Yan Han's voice was smooth. "Though it does remind me of those nine years the FBI overruled state police — leaned on criminal psychology, profiled the suspect as white, and let a Black killer take more innocent girls."
Zhen Nuan had swallowed enough today. "My guess may be wrong. But how are you certain it's a suitcase?"
"That's deduction. Not a guess."
She went quiet.
He crossed the room and took the scalpel from her hand without asking. The blade moved to the deceased's upper arm. "The livor mortis settled here, and the skin is white. Indented." He guided the blade down to the forearm. "Here — no indentation. No livor mortis at all. Why?"
Zhen Nuan opened her mouth fast: "She was curled on her side. Upper arm flat on the ground, lower arm raised — braced against her own legs. No contact, no indentation, no pooling—"
She stopped.
The air went out of her.
A person dying alone doesn't hold herself. Arms fall. Livor mortis follows gravity. The only reason the lower arm showed nothing was if something had been trapping it — holding it in place so it couldn't hang free.
Yan Han watched her face change and said nothing for a beat. When he spoke, the warmth was gone. "Think before you talk at a scene. Don't work angry."
Her face stayed red.
She knew she'd been working in anger. She'd known it while she was doing it. She steadied herself and asked, "Why a box specifically? Why not some other restraint?"
He tossed two words out: "Experience."
There's no arguing with that.
He pointed to the side of the body. "The hip and upper arm pressed flat — that's why they're white. And because they're so white, these are hard to see." Two faint lines, shallow, running in slightly different directions through the pale skin.
Zhen Nuan leaned in. On the body she could barely make them out. On the large screen off to the side, the angle caught them cleanly — two straight indentations, different depths, different orientations.
She carefully repositioned the body with Komatsu's help, bending the limbs into the posture — knees drawn up, arms folded in. The two lines ran parallel.
"The tow bars. The ones mounted inside a suitcase."
"Smart."
She had the rebuttal ready and let it go. Experience wasn't something you could argue against in a room like this. It was a skill that had no name.
She wasn't angry anymore. She was impressed. No wonder he'd made captain so young.
Zhen Nuan noted the findings, took a breath, and kept moving.
She worked her way to the hands and wrists.
"Old scarring at the wrists. History of self-harm. No defensive wounds." Two possibilities: the deceased hadn't resisted, or she hadn't had the chance. No resistance meant she'd trusted the person who killed her — or had been incapacitated. No chance meant it was over before her body had time to respond.
"Contusion on the lateral surface of the left upper arm." She leaned closer and lowered her voice without realizing it. "There's a pattern in the bruise."
Komatsu looked. A dense blue-purple mark, thick spiral lines pressed into the skin.
"Width 2.6 centimeters, length 4.8." The color had spread but the shape held. Zhen Nuan cut a thin section of epidermis and took it to the scope. "Recent injury. Superficial — only the uppermost layer, no deeper penetration. Occurred shortly before death. The pattern is preserved cleanly. Whatever made this contact carried texture."
She looked up without thinking. Yan Han was in his chair, expressionless, giving nothing back. As if this were simply what was expected.
Komatsu said, "So she was struck with something — a whip, a rod — with a spiral texture?"
"No." Zhen Nuan shook her head. "She was wearing something with a spiral texture when she was hit. The fabric transferred the pattern."
Komatsu stared.
She went through the clothing recovered from the body, piece by piece. "Nothing matches. These aren't what she was wearing when she died."
In his chair, Yan Han had let his eyes close. The soft ambient hum of the room, and that voice — careful, unhurried, absorbed in its work — was doing something to him. Genuinely restful.
"The death scene was indoors. Rigor mortis begins after death — if she'd been killed outside, finding clean replacement clothing quickly enough would have been nearly impossible. Once the body stiffens, dressing it becomes very difficult."
Komatsu said, "So what was she wearing? And why would close-fitting clothing have thick spiral texture?"
The quiet broke.
Yan Han opened his eyes. Sat up. He looked at the pale blue screen, at those spiral lines pressed into pale skin, for a long moment. Then he pulled out his phone.
"Guan Xiaoyu."
Zhen Nuan glanced at the wall clock. 5:30 in the morning.
"I'm having Komatsu send a photo to your computer. Bathrobe pattern. Refine it as fast as you can."
Komatsu was already pulling off his gloves, opening his laptop.
Zhen Nuan stared at the screen. She hadn't said bathrobe. She'd described a thick spiral textile pattern, and he'd gone straight to bathrobe. She didn't know whether to be unsettled or awed by how his mind worked.
Another call. "Scouts out at 7. No need to canvas guests individually — 56 farmhouses, 23 guesthouses, 10 resorts. Every property pulls its bathrobes and photographs them. Bring everything back."
The voice on the other end was loud with relief. "This changes everything. We were looking at every face in the region. Now we have something to narrow it down. Easy work when you're involved, Captain Yan."
"Not me," Yan Han said. "The new forensics officer."
Zhen Nuan's heart knocked once, hard. She turned away before he could see her face, and told Komatsu they were ready to open the body.
The Y-incision started behind both ears and ran clean down through the chest cavity to the groin without hesitation or correction.
Komatsu's eyes widened slightly.
Yan Han noticed too. Her instrument control was surgical — genuinely surgical, not forensic-adequate. The scalp work had been the same: blade moving with the kind of ease that comes from years, not months.
She found subcutaneous bruising during the internal exam that hadn't shown externally. Each wound was sampled, categorized, described, recorded on video and voice.
No major trauma. No broken bones beyond the skull. No signs of a violent struggle from within.
She removed the sternum, handed organs to Komatsu for photography and sampling, and kept moving. "Pathology will give us a tighter death window." She opened the stomach. "Food's partially digested — send it with the rest."
Then the skull.
She extended the incision behind both ears and cut the scalp free. Every motion deliberate and clean, no tearing, no waste. The blade separated tissue from bone with nothing left behind on either surface.
The room had gone very still. Even Komatsu had stopped looking at the slides.
Yan Han watched her face. Brows pulled together, nose slightly wrinkled, mouth pressed flat with concentration.
Something moved in the back of his mind. Medical school. Summer. A classroom he hadn't thought about in years.
Ah Shi's hands — slender and pale and always cool. The particular way she'd grip his hand tightly, or rest her palm against his face, or—
He pressed his fist against his nose and looked away. Then back.
The skull emerged.
Zhen Nuan straightened, worked her lower back with one hand, then picked up the circular saw. The cut ran clean around the cranial cap. She lifted it free.
"Parietal fracture, depressed pattern. Occipital and temporal, slight depression. Frontal fracture. Nasal bones, zygomatic, maxilla — comminuted."
She documented the brain and interior skull damage, extracted tissue samples, noted everything.
By the time the dissection was complete, pale morning light had started filtering through the blinds. The rain had stopped at some point without anyone noticing.
[The following section is in the original Chinese and has been preserved below in translation:]
Zhen Nuan's eyes ached. She was preparing to close the body when something nagged at her — faint, insistent. Some part of the examination felt unfinished.
She looked at Yan Han. He was still in his chair, clearly exhausted, but his eyes were alert.
She looked back at the body from the top down. Then she remembered: the woman's chest.
She pressed carefully, and felt something wrong.
A moment of stillness. Then she reached for the forceps.
The wall clock read 6:47.
Zhen Nuan had shadows under her eyes now, a faint red thread in each. But she was smiling — lit up, almost giddy — holding up a small silicone implant under the light. A serial number was etched into the edge.
"She has an identity now."
Yan Han rubbed his temple without getting up, and smiled faintly. "Good. That's intact — give it to the investigators. They trace the manufacturer, the manufacturer pulls distribution records, finds the cosmetic clinic, the clinic has client files."
He paused. Voice lower, rougher from the long night: "Well done."
Zhen Nuan was so unused to that from him that she looked away before she could stop herself. She told Komatsu to sort the evidence by lab destination and send the pathology samples to the senior analysts first. "I'll close the body and come down after."
Komatsu loaded the evidence cart and left.
She worked methodically, suturing the incisions closed in sequence. The body had stayed clean throughout. The stitching was even.
Fifteen minutes in, the silence became noticeable.
She looked up. Yan Han was asleep again — head tilted against the chair back, breathing slow, eyes shut. Asleep with his whole face, the sharpness of him completely gone. He looked younger. Softer. A five o'clock shadow was coming in along his jaw, and faint shadows sat below his eyes.
She watched him for a moment longer than she meant to.
She looked around for a blanket. Before she could find one, his phone rang.
He was awake in an instant — no lag, no blur, eyes sharp before she could look away. She caught the edge of his gaze head-on and turned fast.
He answered and worked through assignments for the detective unit, clear and efficient, no trace of fatigue in his voice.
When he put the phone down, he leaned back and pressed his knuckles into his eyes.
"Getting old," he said, half to himself. "I used to be able to stay up all night."
Zhen Nuan knew he wasn't even 29. And this wasn't a late night — this was sustained sleep deprivation across multiple shifts. Anyone would be wearing down.
He glanced sideways at her. "Joke. Mostly it's you."
"Me?"
He turned his phone in his hand, a slow smile starting. "Your voice is sedating. Put me under more than once."
"It is not."
"It really is. Just — " He circled a finger near his ear. "Buzzing. Constant buzzing."
She stared at him. "Like a fly?"
He didn't answer. Just kept the smile.
She turned back to the body.
The suturing was done. Zhen Nuan needed to move the deceased to the drawer unit, and she couldn't do it alone. Komatsu was gone. She turned to Yan Han. "Help me move her."
He didn't move. His expression cooled, slowly, deliberately. "You missed something."
She went back through everything in her mind. External exam, internal exam, documentation, sampling, organ removal, skull, brain, implant — nothing.
"I didn't. I'm sure."
His eyes didn't leave her face. Something passed through them — disappointment, maybe, or the edge of anger. "You missed something."
She almost raised her voice. "There's nothing left. I went through all of it."
He said nothing. Just looked at her. Waiting.
She moved toward the body herself, reached for the deceased — and his hand locked around her wrist.
She pulled. "What are you doing, let go—"
"Did your professors not teach you?" His voice was flat ice. "The last step. The most important step. Did they skip it, or did you decide it didn't matter?"
It landed.
She knew exactly what he meant.
It hit like ice water.
She wrenched her arm free. "Let go of me." Her voice cracked slightly. She turned her back before he could see her eyes go red.
She heard him cross to the door and close it quietly behind him.
The room was very still.
Zhen Nuan stood alone in the middle of it, eyes burning, throat tight. The body lay under the white lights — faceless, skin pale as paper, the sutured lines running across her like a map of everything she'd been through.
Zhen Nuan felt the urge to cry come up fast and real.
Yan Han was right. She'd closed the body without offering the only thing left to give. She'd been thinking about evidence and time and procedure and she'd forgotten the person.
She walked to the table. Stood over the woman who had no name yet, who had been folded into a suitcase, whose face had been taken from her, whose life had ended in violence and was now known only by its wounds.
I'm sorry. We opened your body to find the truth of what happened to you. Please forgive us. We will write down everything you left behind. We will find who did this. We will speak for you.
Please rest.
She bent at the waist, ninety degrees, and held it.
Tears hit the floor one at a time.
Yan Han was in the hallway, shoulder against the wall, hand in his pocket again out of habit. Still no cigarettes.
The door opened.
Zhen Nuan stood in the frame, fingers picking at the edge of the doorway. Eyes red. Lashes still damp. She looked at him for half a second and then down.
Her voice was barely there. "Can you help me move her? I know I was wrong."
He walked over. His voice dropped. "What I said to you in the car — I owe you an apology for that too."
Around ten in the morning, the pathology results came back.
The deceased had been in poor general health, organs otherwise unremarkable, no toxins detected. Time of death between 10:30 and 11:30 p.m. on November 6th. No semen present; lubricant residue consistent with a condom; evidence of recent sexual activity.
Cause of death: blunt force trauma to the skull. Primary blow to the parietal bone.
Zhen Nuan finished logging everything, then went downstairs to the chemistry lab. She'd been thinking about the glass fragments recovered from the scalp wound since before the sun came up. Refractive index, density — if they found a match scene-side, it would hold up.
The chemistry researcher, Gu Qingming, was at a microscope with two assistants. His features matched his name — clean, clear, even. White coat, no expression, dripping liquid onto a glass fragment with total focus.
"What is that?" she asked.
"Becke fluid."
She waited. He didn't continue.
"Becke fluid," he repeated, apparently satisfied.
"I don't know what Becke fluid is."
"Oh." He looked up, stared at the air for a moment. "Used to measure the refractive index of glass."
"How does it work?"
He looked back into the scope. "When the fluid's index is higher or lower than the glass, a Becke line appears at the boundary."
"Can I look?"
He lifted his head, thought about it, and then actually flipped open a binder — C-Lab Chemistry Laboratory Code of Conduct — and paged through it systematically.
Zhen Nuan tilted her head. A beat passed.
"You can look," he said, closing the binder.
She was fairly certain he hadn't found a rule against it.
Through the eyepiece: a single fragment resting in fluid, a ring of silver-white light framing it, shifting — narrowing, widening, alive.
"It's beautiful," she said quietly.
"Thank you."
...I meant the phenomenon.
He adjusted the fluid, precise and unhurried. "The refractive index of Becke fluid can be changed by adjusting the mixture ratio. When it matches the glass exactly—"
The silver line vanished.
"Remarkable. I'd never heard of Becke fluid before."
"I mixed this batch myself. Named it too."
She looked at him.
"There are several methods for measuring glass refractive index. I prefer the Becke line. I developed this for it."
She let that sit for a second and moved on. "The red fragments from the head wound — have those been processed?"
"Paint."
"So the weapon had paint on it."
"Yes."
"A painted weapon." She said it almost to herself. "What would that be?"
"I don't know."
I wasn't asking you. "I've built a paint database. Once we have the composition, we can cross-reference."
She stood there a moment longer than needed. This lab, these people — each of them had built something. Carried their work further than the job required.
She thought of the overseas forensic lab where she'd interned, where auto paint databases held tens of thousands of entries — manufacturer, composition, model year. Where fiber libraries covered synthetic and natural textiles. She'd wondered, back then, when that would exist here.
Standing in this basement lab at not-quite-7 a.m., she thought: not long now.
She took the stairs back up and opened her notebook.
Autopsy Key Points:
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Glass fragments in the sharp-force wounds on the skull. Blunt-force pattern irregular — possibly multiple weapons. One weapon had red paint.
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Lighter impact on the right side of the head, with glass abrasion. Primary lethal force came from the crown and rear. Facial injuries were post-mortem — disfigurement, not cause of death.
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Contusions across the shoulder blades — consistent with a struggle. No defensive wounds on the hands or forearms. Resistance was limited or absent.
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History of long-term sexual violence, likely domestic.
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Prior self-harm.
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Had sex before death. No signs of resistance.
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Spiral bruise pattern on the left arm transferred through fabric — she was wearing a bathrobe when it happened. She was found in street clothes. Death scene was indoors. A body in full rigor cannot be dressed.
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Held somewhere warm for several hours post-mortem. Rigor broken artificially — likely to fold the body into the suitcase for transport.