MANNER OF DEATH 1

 

Chapter 1

Prejudice…

It was the first word that came to mind when I picked up a look of disdain on a young female staff. She was sending that disgusting gaze to an old man who walked into a brand-name store. From what I could tell, he was probably in his late sixties. His gray hair was disheveled. He dressed in an oversized shirt and a pair of shabby jeans. The man limped into the store and trying to pick some clothes as if he wanted to buy it.

I hung the shirt, the one I had picked out earlier, in its original spot on the rack before turning to look at this phenomenon with great interest. Would she know that, under the shabby shirt, lay a 5-Bath gold necklace hanging around the man’s neck?

As I had said, prejudice would obscure the perception of reality. She might not be able to see that gold necklace because of the mist she personally created. And even though she could see it, her mind would distort what she saw. Must have been a fake one… there is no way that people like this man would be able to posses a big gold necklace and stroll in to buy designer clothes with these prices… this was what she would’ve thought.

I paid for my things at the counter and walked out the store, holding two paper bags in my hands. There were clothes in one bag and donuts for my breakfast before heading off to work in the other. Tomorrow evening, I’d be having dinner with my best friend in high school. His name was Songsak a.k.a Pert, a young, fervent public prosecutor, who possessed an ultimate weapon: his looks. I was quite envious of him that not only he was handsome and had a nice job, he also dated multiple women. Therefore, I had to wear my nicest attire so that I wouldn’t end up becoming a total loser while standing next to him.

But that wasn’t the reason why I bought a new shirt. It wasn’t that important to look handsome that I had to spend thousands of Bath for this. However, the shirt I wore yesterday during my job was drenched with abdominal fluid of corpse I had performed an autopsy. It was an accidental negligence, caused by an officer, who bumped into me while he was carrying a jug of abdominal fluid before splashing the content inside onto my arm. Because the plastic under my lab coat hadn’t reached my arm, the malodorous liquid seeped thorugh the sleeve of my shirt underneath. I wouldn’t waste my time washing that shirt.

“Hey, Bunn! Why did you apply to graduate school in forensic science?!” Tim, one of my friends, had once asked me. “You’ve been studying medicine for six years, and now you’re going to dissect dead body? I had the class for only two weeks during my fifth year, and I almost get sick.”

“People have different passion,” I replied while brushing the crumbs off my extern uniform. “I like a dead body. You like kids. So, I choose forensic science, while you choose pediatrics. It couldn’t make more senses than this.” I smirked at Tim, who was making a weird face.

“How can you said it out loud that you like corpses? You weirdo.”

“Oi, my weirdness is helping our country! There is an extreme shortage of personnel in this branch of medicine. Plus, I’m the only applicant for this program. The professor almost burst into tears when my application reached the department.” I stood up from my seat in the medical school’s cafeteria, picking up my stethoscope and hung it my shoulder. “Hurry up, Mr. pediatrician. The conference is about to start.”

In truth, I wanted to provide a longer answer for choosing to study Medical Jurisprudence to Tim. But it would be too dull. I didn’t like explaining my own thoughts to anyone. It would be more fun to leave others guessing. My emotions and thoughts would be kept behind the curtain, representing a funny, talkative, and eloquent guy. I was willing to pay whoever claimed to ever see me stressed out.

I’d spend three years as a resident. After graduation, I was persuaded to become a medical professor. But I was sick of university life. I wanted to go live freely the way I liked. So, I decided to go to work at a provincial hospital in the north, almost a thousand kilometers away from my hometown. I stationed there as the sole forensic pathologist in the province.

I immediately became well connected to figures in legal networks. Every police officer, lawyer, prosecutor, or even the judge knew me. My name is Bunnakit Songsakdina, M.D., a 30-year-old forensic physician in the provincial hospital. Single. I used to have a girlfriend, a beautiful bank officer, but she didn’t seem to be happy with a man who had been dissecting dead bodies on a daily basis. So, she left me three weeks ago.

Pert held a glass of beer, laughing his ass off after learning about my single status. “Oii! Since when did your lovely, big-boobies Prae dump you? You’ve never told me.” A tall man in an expensive shirt and a pair of slacks put down the glass of beer on a table. He looked at me with a serious gaze. “Whatever… You guys had already broken up…”

“So?” I frowned, staring at his serious gaze.

“Then, it’s my chance.” His handsome face drew closer to me. The symmetrical mouth stretched into a heart-wrenching smile. I got goosebumps all over my body because of his smile. “…. Give me her number.”

I raised my finger, the same one I always held the scalpel to cut open the dead body, and flicked on his forehead with all my might. Pert cried out, returning to his seat while stroking his forehead. “What the hell? No, I won’t! How about you go and break up with Cherry, Mai, Som, or whoever you’re dating first?”

“Dr. Bunn, don’t stand in the way. You’d better let your exes go to a decent man like me.”

This was a casual conversation between Pert and I whenever we were off working grounds in a courtyard of an outdoor restaurant where people were strolling around. Nearby tables situated only a few meters away from one another. We wouldn’t discuss our work which related to crimes of assault or murder in public like this. Therefore, our usual topic of discussion would inevitably involve the love affairs of two lonely men in their thirties.

“By the way, why did you two break up…?” Pert asked me with a more serious tone.

“I don’t know. We couldn’t get along, I guess.” I shrugged, making a point that I was unperturbed. I had broken up with Prae for a certain reason, which I wasn’t planning on telling anyone anyway. There was no way Pert could know about my genuine feelings under my deceptively calm face. No one would ever know.

“Aw man, couldn’t get long? I thought you cuddled her after you had dissected a rotten corpse and forgot to take a shower.”

“If that’s the case, we would have been broken up within the first three days ‘cause the rotten corpse came after I dated Prae for a few days.” I just realized that I spoke too loudly when a middle-age woman next to our tabled eyed me disapprovingly. I turned to her apologetically and lowered my voice. Our conversation went on leisurely. Luckily, after I had moved to another province, I ran into him. We also worked in related fields of career, allowing Pert and I to meet each other on several occasions both in and out of the court. In time of work, Prosecutor Songsak would be the one who questioned me as a medical expert witness. But outside of the court, he would turn in to ‘Pert’, a former handsome boy who usually sat at the back of the classroom, the buoyant boy who couldn’t stop talking nonsense.

By the time I arrived home, it was already midnight. I opened the gates of my one-story rental house, the one I had been renting since I moved here to work for the government. In truth, the hospital did provide accommodation for me. But after I had seen a desolated wooden house in an extreme state begging for innovation, I decided to rent a house outside the hospital instead. Fortunately, there were houses for rent in a housing estate not far from the hospital, so I decided to rent a one-story house on this land of 280 square meters.

I was going to fish out my house key from my pocket to unlock the door when my cellphone suddenly vibrated in my pocket. I pulled out my phone to see who had the audacity to call me at this time.

It was a landline phone.

Having someone calling by a non-mobile phone number wasn’t something unusual. If it were a calling from the hospital, it would be a landline number. But I had already saved the hospital’s number on my cell phone. Then, whose number is this?

I decided to take the call while unlocking the door. “Hello.”

[Uh…] The end of the the line was a man’s voice. [Is This Nath’s number?]

Who the heck is Nath? I immediately deduced that this was a misdialed call, “No, you’ve dialed the wrong number.”

[Eh?] The end of the line was quiet for a few seconds, [I think I’ve punched the correct one. May I know who this is?]

I openend the door and walked inside the house. I wondered why this person wanted to know who I was. “Then, you’ve got the wrong number. This is not Nath’s number.” I immediately ended the call. If the owner of this number called again, I wouldn’t answer it. That girl, Nath, probably had given him a false number. Sorry about that.

A night of rest after hanging out with my friend passed by peacefully. I slept all night soundly without having any strange number calling me again.

---

I turned to look at a young female intern, who was standing with her pale face, with my amusement mixing with sympathy. On a steel table before us lay a dead body of a young man. He was sent here for an autopsy to determine the cause of death. From the records, this person died in a car crash after he had collided with utility pole around 4 a.m. When the rescuers arrived at the scene, they could no longer find the pulse. I spent half an hour reviewing how to examine the external conditions of the body with her. Next, I ordered the officers to start the process of dissection.

“Did you have breakfast yet, Fai?” I turned to ask the small intern, whose presence was requested by a staff in an emergency room to review forensic science with me. Poor her.

“I… I already had my breakfast, Professor.” It’s common for an intern to call an autopsy staff as ‘a professor’. Her face grew even paler when the autopsy staff peeled the scalp over the face of the deceased, revealing his cranium. I eyed Fai in her lab coat, wearing a green, surgical cap, a mask over her nose, and rubber boots. Her body seemed to shrink in this uniform. I smiled tenderly at the sight.

“Come on, let’s hurry up and finish the autopsy. I’ll take you to lunch.” I guided her away from the table, waiting for the staff to open the deceased’s skull. “What do you think is the cause of his death?" asked Fai without any serious expectations. Back when I was just a medical student, I had only two weeks of forensic class. If I hadn't pursued a graduate degree in this field, I was relatively positive that I wouldn't be able to remember anything either.

"Umm…” Fai turned to the body with an unsure expression. "Hypovolemic shock from excessive loss of blood?”

"Hmph, it's possible. Blood loss commonly occurs with injured patients from the accident. However, from the external appearance, we couldn't see any bleeding except from the nose and ears. There might be some internal bleeding. This person has a large bruise on his stomach and chest. Once we open his lungs and abdomen, we should be able to see it. “I don't think this person died from excessive loss of blood though…" Fai turned her head back to me skeptically. I wiggled my eyebrows at her, "Wait and see…”

The cranium was opened beautifully. Then, the brain was transported onto the block. I guided Fai to look at the head that was exposed.

"Bingo, a fracture of the skull base. Do you see it?" I pointed at a sign of cracks ran across the skull base for her to see. "At first, we saw pink, frosty sputum dripping out of his nose as well as other evidence revealing the mechanism of asphyxia death. His skull base was fractured, then, blood from the cranial base entered his respiratory tract. This person must have been dead from choking in his blood."

I saw Fai's round eyes alight with excitement. She looked quite cute. After completing the autopsy, I drove Fai to the steakhouse not far from the hospital. Whenever the interns were sent to study with me, it was customary for me to take them out to lunch. Then, I would drive them back to the ER so that they could continue with their duty.

"Why did you choose to study forensic medicine, Professor?" Fai asked me while we were waiting for food. This was a popular question every intern would ask when I brought them to lunch. "I think it's fun. We communicate with people through words. But the dead communicate with us with their bodies. Depends on whether we would hear them. The dead who fell off the building could be determined as suicide. But then, we found high levels of toxic substances in their blood. The dead are trying to speak to us, saying that I didn't kill myself, Doctor! I was murdered!'”

Fai scrunched up her face, "Professor, you sent goosebumps all over me.”

I laughed, "Hey, it was just an analogy. If the dead one had actually spoken, I would have run for my life.”

"Are you still afraid of ghosts?!" Fai said in a high-pitched tone.

"Of course, I am! I pray every night before I go to sleep." Fai and I laughed at the same time. I felt like this was a good opportunity. "Uh… Actually, you don't have to call me professor. This is not a medical school. Let's keep it simple. You can call me Bunn.”

Fai smiled broadly. "Okay. You’re very kind, and you teach very well, Bunn."

I was going to thank her for that compliment when the sudden ring of my cellphone interrupted. I pulled it out and looked at the number. It was the name I had saved as ‘Captain Aem.’

Three words popped in my head when I saw this name appeared on the screen during office hours. Those words are: Something came up…

I stepped out of the hospital van, Fai jumped down after me. I decided to take the intern along to offer her an experience at the crime scene because during out of office hours, the intern who was on duty in the ER would be the one who performed an autopsy at the scene. I wore a black jacket with large alphabets, ‘FORENSICS’ on my back, and sneakers for agility. Three of us, consisting of Fai, Anun, a male coroner, and I walked into the building. Anan carried a bag in one hand and while taking out a compact camera in his other hand and dutifully take pictures of the location. This building was a condominium in the middle of the city. There was a small group of people gatherings on the ground floor. They must be people who had been living here.

My eyes wandered around the ground floor to take in the ambiance and suspicious individuals. This was what I do automatically even though it went beyond the call of duty. My duty laid where the dead body was concerned only. From the scene, I had to be able to tell who the deceased was, when did he/ she die, what the cause of death was. And if it was necessary, I had to send the body to the Forensic Department of the hospital to perform an autopsy. The investigator would gather information from my report and determine the cause of death and identify the suspect or the murderer, along with other pieces of evidence. However, I liked playing this one game with myself. If this was a murder case, I would guess who did it without any solid evidence. I would keep the answer to myself, and I would wait for the revelation from the police or wait for an identification test, like a DNA test.

You may call it a gift because, as of present, my statistic still proved one hundred percent correct.

A police officer approached me, “Dr. Bunn,”

“Oh, Captain Aem,” I sent a big smile to a tall, muscular man in the uniform who was a local investigator in this area. My hand gestured towards Fai. “Today I brought a first-year intern to observe the scene. Her name is Fai.”

I saw the Captain sending gleaming eyes to the petite female physician. I seriously wanted to take this picture and send it to his wife. "Okay then, please take the elevator this way. The scene is on the fifth floor.”

We moved to the elevator that was already opened. While we were in the elevator, the Captain turned to talk to me. "There is a suicide note, Dr.Bunn. The older sister of the deceased has confirmed that it's the deceased's handwriting. The deceased was diagnosed with a depressive disorder. We have found an awful lot of antidepressants and sleeping pills as though she refused to take them after she was receiving it. We have inquired her sister, and she said that the dead woman was stressed because of her love life lately. Her boyfriend threatened to end their relationship, or something like that.”

I nodded in acknowledgment. "From what I've heard, it's inclined towards the possibility of suicide, isn't it? Ah… and you said that the boyfriend was the one who found the body, right?”

"Yes, at 11.30 a.m., the deceased's boyfriend came to see her in the room. He said he knocked, but no one answered. She didn't answer his call either. So, he went downstairs to ask for a spare key from the staff, claiming that the owner of this room suffered from depression, with a possibility of suicide. He entered the room and found the woman hung herself from the shower head in the bathroom. He rushed to hug the body, and almost carried her down to do CPR. Good thing the staff stopped him in time and swiftly called us.”

I made a small ‘tsk’ sound. I preferred the untouched dead body. "Hug? His hairs must have fallen all over the body."

Captain Aem laughed. The elevator arrived at the fifth floor and glided open. I walked out and looked down the hallway. There was one room with a door open. A group of police officers and forensic scientists were standing in front of that room. Nearby the door, two people were talking to the police. One was a woman who was crying. The other was a tall man in a white-shirt and gray-slacks. His black hair slicked backward neatly. He was a good-looking fella, looking outstanding, especially when he was standing among people like this.

"That's her sister and her boyfriend," Captain Aem quickly confirmed my suspicion.

The reaction to the loss of our loved ones was different for each person. Some people would be angry; some would be sad; some would be struck by guilt. I looked at the man, the boyfriend of the woman who had died. His expression was calm. In contrast to the sister of the deceased, who was currently sobbing her heart out, his face and eyes didn't show any feelings.

I kept this observation in mind.

I walked by the forensic investigators, who were inspecting the place, into the room. The Captain led me to the bathroom on the left. The next thing I saw was a body of a 28-year-old woman with long hair. She was in a pink nightgown, hanging from the shower head, which attached to the bathroom wall. Her feet were above the ground, a round four-legged plastic chair lying on the tile. The tips of her hands and feet had turned dark purple. Her face was bloated and turned green; tongue protruded.

I heard a series of shutter sound from the compact camera in Anun's hand while Fai stood there, her face looked pale. I took rubber gloves out of the bag and handed them to everyone on the team. I approached the body and inspected the external conditions to look for physical evidence on the body, such as blood or hair.

"The deceased's name is Janejira Sukyod, aged 28. She used to work as a primary school teacher. She had just resigned from the position for two weeks," The Captain said while observing my work. "Her sister said that her depression has gotten worse. Her older sister was the last person who saw her. They had dinner together here at 7 p.m. and her sister went back at 9 p.m.”

I used my finger to press on the dark areas at the end of her feet and hands. And tried to move her arm. “She might have been dead for about 8 to 12 hours. It matches the time frame when she was alone." I stood on my tiptoes to look at a noose closely. It was a white cloth tied to the wall-mounted shower head.

Eh!?

My eyes caught something unusual.

Above the mark of the rope on her neck, there were a few small, long scratches, with bruises under the rope. I called Anun to take a picture of this area clearly. Fai approached hesitantly.

"What is it?"

I pointed at the mark. "Can you see this? Looks like a fingernail scratch, don't you think?” And this area looks a little too bruised. I turned to Captain Aem, "Are there any signs of struggle in the room? I haven't seen it yet."

The Captain shook his head. “Everything seems to be in it place. From what I've asked her sister, nothing has been moved.”

I reached out to feel the area of the bruise. I could detect laryngeal fracture which would definitely not be found in the person who hung herself. I gradually exhaled and turned to the Captain, who was standing there, waiting for me in anticipation. I couldn't wait taking this body back to the hospital for a thorough autopsy.

"Sorry for dumping more work on you, M." I was silent for a moment, "But this doesn't seem like a suicide. I would like to send her to the Forensic Departement for an autopsy.”

This woman was strangled to death, and then her body was staged as if she had hung herself.

After completing the preliminary autopsy at the death scene, I took off my gloves and walked out of the room where the incident took place. I inhaled the fresh air outside deeply into my lungs. The body would be taken to the Forensic Department for a thorough examination. I was ready to dissect this case. There was much more work to be done. My heart was pounding, excited every time I encountered a murder case. I had already become addicted to this feeling. This was the reason I was totally in love with this profession.

When this seemed to be a murder case, started to play my favorite game. Who was the murderer…?

My eyes suddenly glanced over to the man who was identified as the deceased's boyfriend, the person who discovered the body. His face remained impassive. Wasn't he grieve the death of his girlfriend at all despite the fact that they had already broken up?

His long, slender eyes looked back into my eyes as though he was aware that he was being watched.

I averted my gaze somewhere else, my heart was still pounding because of excitement. My gut was telling me that this guy was no regular person. He was hiding something. And considering his strong, symmetrical body with 5'11 feet height, I thought this man could easily lift his girlfriend and hang her.

I hoped the police would be of the same mind about this person and take a thorough investigation of him.

This man was a murderer, I decided. And I was confident that my hundred-percent statistics would not be destroyed.