The Corpse Reader by Antonio Garrido & Thomas Bunstead

Author:Antonio Garrido & Thomas Bunstead
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction / Thrillers
ISBN: 9781612184364
Publisher: Amazon Pub
Published: 2013-05-28T08:00:00+00:00

24

Further examination confirmed Cí’s assertion: the corpse had no female reproductive organs. Kan was astonished. Seating himself on a bench, he asked Cí to go on.

With a confident tone, Cí went on to assert that the wound to the lung had been the sole cause of death. Though its edges didn’t have the hard, pinkish patches produced when living flesh is cut—nor did the ankle and neck stumps, nor did the gash around the sex—Cí found definitive signs of collapse in the lung, which happened only when a living person’s lung was punctured.

He rejected the idea that an animal had been involved. The lung had clearly been removed with a great degree of brutality, as if someone had been trying to access the heart, but, he pointed out, there were no scratches or bite marks, nothing to indicate the involvement of any large animal. And though the ribs had been broken, they were clean breaks, as if made by some kind of tool. It seemed, in any case, as though the murderer had been looking for something inside the corpse. And it would appear that whatever it was had been found.

“Why? What might he have been looking for?” asked Kan.

“That I don’t know. Maybe an arrowhead broke off inside and the killer tried to remove it because, say, it was reinforced with some kind of precious metal or something else that would point to the culprit.”

“As for the amputations…”

“I believe they were a red herring. Professor Ming’s idea that the corpse belonged to a noblewoman, and that the feet had been removed to prevent her identification—though an excellent reflection—is, I think, what the murderer wanted us to believe. Add that to the smooth, feminine body, and the breasts above all—”

“Male genitalia, but also breasts? Should we be thinking about the victim as some kind of aberration of nature?”

“Not at all. The deceased was, in fact, none other than an Imperial eunuch.”

But Cí’s astuteness did not have the desired effect. From the way Kan clenched his fists and muttered under his breath, it seemed that he was kicking himself for not having drawn the same conclusion. Everyone knew that eunuchs often developed feminine features, especially those castrated before puberty. Kan glared at Cí as though he were responsible for the oversight, as if he had somehow caused Kan to misinterpret the evidence.

“That will be all,” he hissed.

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