Forensics

Another quiet night.

At three o'clock in the morning, the fire suddenly lit up the night sky in Penang, and flames spread from a residential house.

The fire burned in a two-storey self-built house at the foot of the hill in northern Penang, and soon the entire house was surrounded by flames, with thick smoke billowing up into the sky.

The wind was very strong at night, and the fire spread rapidly with the help of the wind, making a lot of noise.

Lie Yan licked the bricks and tiles, danced ferociously in the night wind, the scorching heat was enough to swallow everything.

The nearby neighbors were quickly woken up, and they came to the window with sleepy eyes, and then they smelled the strong smell of smoke and saw the flames soaring into the sky, and their seven souls were scared away.

I don't know who was the first to shout: "It's on fire!!"

Then the nearby lights came on one after another.

The situation was urgent, and the flames kept licking everything around, and it might even spread at any time, spreading to neighbors' courtyards.

At this time, it is obviously impossible to use basins and water basins to fight the fire.

"A house is on fire! That direction, it can't be Old Qiao's house, right?"

"Did their family escape?"

"Don't hurry up and call the police?! Such a big fire is dangerous!"

Just a few minutes after the fire alarm was reported, the fire department arrived in a hurry.

Two fire trucks clamped the front and back of the house, and several firefighters got out of the car quickly.The fire was sprayed continuously with a high-pressure water hose. After half an hour, the fire gradually became smaller and gradually extinguished.

Firefighters entered the house, extinguished the remaining fire, and checked the scene of the fire, which killed a family of three.

After the firefighters and the criminal police of the local branch inspected the scene, they had doubts about the cause of the fire and reported it to the Municipal Bureau.

Several police teams in the city bureau had unsolved cases in their hands. In addition, three people died in the fire, which was considered a major incident, and the case was assigned to the Special Criminal Division.

At 04:30 in the morning, Gu Yanchen was woken up, and then he called the team members one by one, and a team immediately assembled and rushed to the scene.

Before five o'clock in the morning, when Gu Yanchen and Shen Junci arrived, several other people had already arrived and had just handed over to the criminal police here.

Lu Ying greeted them, and couldn't help yawning: "Damn it, if I had known that I would be on the field so early today, I wouldn't have stayed up late to watch that game last night."

Gu Yanchen took Shen Junci to check the scene, while Bai Meng checked the information, but no one answered at all.

Lu Ying sighed: "I'm not the only one in our team watching the tournament, am I?"

Finally, Qi Yi'an answered in a low voice, alleviating the embarrassment: "That game was quite exciting, 30 to [-], and a lore in the last [-] seconds."

With dark circles under her eyes, Lu Ying said, "Thinking about someone staying up all night with me, I suddenly feel less sad."

Qi Yi'an said truthfully: "On the way here, I happened to scan the clips on the Internet..."

Lu Ying: "Damn... I thought I met a bosom friend!"

Holding the laptop in one hand, Bai Meng began to introduce information to Gu Yanchen and the others: "The ones who died at home were a family of three, the parents and the daughter who had just entered college. It is now the summer vacation, and her daughter's name is Qiao Siwei. In a few days, I left to go to a foreign university to report, but I didn’t expect a fire to break out at this time.”

Gu Yanchen asked: "Who was the first to call the police?"

Bai Meng said: "Neighbors nearby, when we called the police, the fire had already started."

Gu Yanchen approached the scene, stretched out his hand and opened the cordon, and took the flashlight that Lu Ying handed over. The light of the flashlight penetrated the darkness and shone into the houses.

It looks like a spooky haunted house here.

Shen Junci followed behind Gu Yanchen while wearing gloves. The fire truck had just left. Because he suspected that this was a murder case, he did not touch the scene.

Lu Ying was the first to go up to explore the way, and then called the others to go upstairs.

The wooden fence leading from the first floor to the second floor has been burned to pieces of charcoal, and the stairs are also full of wood residues, and there are still a lot of water stains.

When going up the stairs, a section of beams and pillars that had been burnt to ashes suddenly fell down, heading straight for Shen Junci.

The beams and pillars are made of wood, as thick as the mouth of a bowl, and more than one meter long.

The incident happened suddenly, and the angle of the fall was tricky. Shen Junci wanted to hide, but stood on the stairs. There were people in front and behind who had nowhere to hide. He instantly closed his eyes subconsciously.

Qi Yi'an followed behind, seeing that Shen Junci was about to be hit, he let out a fright.

Gu Yanchen's reaction was quick, and as soon as he turned around, he pulled Shen Junci into his arms, and stretched out his right hand to block the falling beam. The beam hit his forearm, making a loud bang, and fell to the side.

Gu Yanchen usually bears it, but after all, he is still a body of flesh and blood, and his arm hurts, so he let out a low "huh".

When Shen Junci reacted, he was already protected in Gu Yanchen's arms.Realizing what happened just now, his expression changed, and he hurriedly got out to see where Gu Yanchen's arm was smashed.

Gu Yanchen shook his hand and said, "It's good that you're fine, my arm doesn't hurt, it should be a minor injury."

Shen Junci was not at ease, so he untied his sleeves and pinched his ulna. He judged by the feel of his hand that the bone was fine, so he breathed a sigh of relief: "Fortunately, there is no fracture."

Gu Yanchen said, "It's good that you're not injured."

Shen Jun resigned, "Thank you, Captain Gu." He saw Gu Yanchen's arm turning purple instantly, and couldn't bear it, "Go back to my place, I'll give you some medicine."

Seeing how Shen Junci cared so much, Gu Yanchen suddenly felt that the wound didn't hurt anymore, and he used his other hand to protect his forearm: "It's really not serious, let's go up first, it's not safe here."

Seeing the crisis resolved, Qi Yi'an who was following behind finally heaved a sigh of relief.

Everyone went up to the second floor.

The more serious burning was in several bedrooms on the second floor of the house.

The original white walls were burnt to blackness, the side windows were burned to the point where only the frames were left, and the furniture inside the room also showed obvious signs of overheating. There was a mess everywhere, and the body felt warmer when standing inside than outside. A lot, and the whole room still smelled of a pungent burnt smell.

As the firefighters had just left, water was everywhere in the room, and the water dripping down from the beams of the house gathered into patches on the ground.

The ground was covered with black residue, which creaked when stepped on.

Gu Yanchen was more careful, and after confirming the safety of the scene, he let the forensic doctor in. Shen Junci and Qi Yi'an began to examine the corpse.

The daughter was lying in the second bedroom, and the parents were lying in the master bedroom. The three bodies were all burnt, and there was no possibility of them surviving. The family of three had been wiped out.

Looking at the second bedroom, which was seriously damaged, the girl sleeping on the bed had extensive carbonization of her pajamas and bedding, her hair had also been grayed out, her face was beyond recognition, and even her facial features could not be seen.The elbows of her hands were bent back, raised somewhat strangely, and curled up in front of her chest, clenching her fists tightly, which is a common fist-fighting posture in burns.

Qi Yian came to the bedside with the investigation box, looked at the corpse on the bed, he couldn't help rubbing his nose, besides the burnt smell, he smelled a smell of burnt meat, that smell was better than rotting corpses Too much, but when he remembered that it was a human being, he couldn't help feeling sick.

However, Shen Junci had already started to bend over to observe the dead body carefully.

Burns are divided into four degrees according to their severity, and the corpse in front of him clearly belongs to the highest fourth degree burns.

Shen Junci first observed the head of the deceased with a flashlight.In fire cases, forensic doctors can often rely on the side of the head of the corpse to determine whether the victim survived when the fire was lit.

If a living person is burned to death, generally the face and body will face away from the side that was burned.

Generally, during a fire, people will reflexively close their eyes and form deep folds at the outer corners of the eyes. If the skin inside the folds has not been smoked and the cornea has no soot attached, the possibility of dying directly from the fire will be lower. big.

The head of the female corpse lying on the bed was twisted to the right, not facing the window on the left.

It is a pity that due to the excessive time, the face is almost completely charred, the skin at the corners of the eyes is cracked, and the skin around the eyes and the condition of the eyes can no longer be used as a reference.

They then looked at the other two bodies, of which the one of Qiao Siwei's mother was obviously the most severely burned.

Qi Yi'an took a closer look, and asked Shen Junci: "I found that this corpse was the most burned. Could it be because the corpse was close to the fire source?"

Shen Jun said: "This is the wick effect in the fire."

Qi Yi'an suddenly realized.

When Bai Meng heard this term for the first time, she was a little strange: "What is the wick effect?"

Shen Junci explained: "Among the three, only Qiao Siwei's mother wears pajamas with long sleeves and trousers, and she is relatively obese, with the most fat in her body. When the fire ignited her pajamas, along with The epidermis fell off, and her subcutaneous fat melted and overflowed, wrapping the clothes in reverse. The fat is like a candle, and the clothes are like wicks, which will burn until the fat is burned out. It is for this reason that a corpse wearing clothes is often better than an unclothed body. Clothes burn faster and burn harder."

Lu Ying hissed when she heard this: "This man has turned into a candle, that's really pitiful."

Gu Yanchen stood aside and observed the scene. The fingerprints and footprints were almost destroyed. It is estimated that it would be difficult to find relevant traces. The most severely burned was the second bedroom where the girl lived. Among them, the wall with curtains should be the first to burn. Obviously carbonization is more serious than other places.

The ignition point may have been on the second floor at first, but there was no sign of an electrical appliance being on fire, and it felt like someone had intentionally ignited it.

Lu Ying asked: "Is there any bandit nearby recently, or is it an arsonist?"

Bai Meng searched in the police system: "In the past three months, there have not been many fires nearby, and there are clear causes for the fires. Two were due to aging lines, one was a cigarette butt that ignited the bed sheet, and one It is an electrical violation. Moreover, there have been no fire casualties in this area for a while. There is no news about bandits."

Gu Yanchen said: "There is no sign that the door lock has been picked. It doesn't look like an arsonist. Arsonists seldom break into a house and set fire to it, and they rarely aim to kill people. The priority should be whether it is a vendetta or arson to destroy corpses and wipe out traces." .”

After observing the surrounding environment, Gu Yanchen turned his head and asked Shen Junci: "Can we determine from the corpse whether it was a homicide or a fire?"

Shen Junci deliberately tested Qi Yian, and asked him: "You analyze it."

Qi Yi'an took the investigation form and tried to analyze: "The corpse is highly carbonized, and it is impossible to see whether there is any wound. At present, it can only be judged that the deceased did not move or struggle after the fire. It cannot be ruled out whether the death was due to heat respiratory syndrome or carbon monoxide poisoning. .”

Shen Junci helped him conclude: "An autopsy must be performed to confirm."

Gu Yanchen asked Bai Meng again: "What time was the fire?"

Bai Meng said: "The alarm time is 03:30 in the morning, and the fire time will be pushed forward for about half an hour. The bodies of the three deceased were all found on the bed. From the sleeping position, they are all peaceful... The fire point was at In the house, it can be ruled out that it is caused by the aging of the line. The detailed information of the deceased has been retrieved, and I will send it to your mobile phone."

At this point, Bai Meng manipulated a few times, and everyone's mobile phones beeped.

Gu Yanchen looked at the information sent. The young female deceased was named Qiao Siwei. She was 19 years old this year. She had repeated her studies for a year and was a prospective freshman student at Siege University.

The fire started from Qiao Siwei's room, so it was necessary to check it from her.

Gu Yanchen asked, "Does the deceased have a boyfriend?"

Generally in this kind of case, the girl's emotional dispute will be the first to be suspected.

"According to the information I have so far, there is no boyfriend." Then Bai Meng added, "The neighbors who called the police responded that the deceased was very obedient and had never seen her interact with anyone in society. The girl repeated her studies for a year, and her mind was basically They are all studying. Qiao Siwei's mother works in a nearby street, and her father is an ordinary employee."

The family's social connections sound simple enough, but that may just be the surface.

Several police officers carefully surveyed upstairs and downstairs.

Gu Yanchen suddenly discovered something, he called the physical evidence over, pointed to the sill of a small window at the end of the corridor on the second floor and said, "Here, there is a footprint."

The fire on the second floor did not burn to this side, and the water used for fire fighting did not contaminate evidence, allowing this footprint to be completely preserved.

Naturally, this position was not left by the firefighters, nor could it be left by family members.

The physical evidence, Chen Mian, hurried over. The window was not big, it was half-hidden, and it was more than enough for one person to get in.At this time, the window was not locked from the inside, and through the glass, one could see a vague footprint facing outward on the window sill outside.

The footprints were still fresh. Chen Mian measured them with a ruler and judged: "Look at the size and pattern, it's the footprints of a man, and the shoes he wears are about size 42."