Chapter 52 Cause of Death Analysis
Shang Lu was afraid that if she said too much at once, no one would understand, so she nodded, picked up a pen, and stood next to the small blackboard, trying to list the key points while she spoke so that everyone could understand the relationship more intuitively.
"It's like this. First of all, although Xie Lingling went to the hospital two months ago, this does not affect the relationship between her death and poisoning. If she died of arsenic poisoning, combined with my current autopsy report, then I can now make a conclusion that Xie Lingling should have died of chronic arsenic poisoning."
"What do you mean?" Gu Nankai interrupted and gave her a chance to catch her breath.
"It's like this. If it was acute arsenic poisoning, I would find through autopsy that the deceased's stomach was inflamed and swollen, and there might be some arsenic residue in the digestive tract . In addition, because her red blood cells were destroyed, her skin would be slightly yellow. But I didn't find these characteristics in Xie Lingling, which means that the possibility of acute arsenic poisoning can be preliminarily ruled out."
"Then how do we determine that her death was caused by chronic and severe illness?" Cao Cang asked at this time. Gao Yuan and Li Meng were already deeply attracted by Shang Lu's analysis. They didn't expect that this girl knew so much.
"Combined with the clues we have now, it seems that we can infer it." Shang Lu was not at all childish at this moment as she usually was when they were together. Her baby-like face was very serious and solemn. Every time when she was analyzing her professional field, she would become like this, as if she didn't care about her relatives and only had work in her mind.
"First, in the case of chronic arsenic poisoning, my assumption is that Xie Lingling has been suffering from arsenic poisoning for some time. Based on this assumption, victims of chronic arsenic poisoning may experience burning pain in their limbs, loss of sensation in various parts of the body, local swelling and skin allergies, rash and peeling, hair loss, cirrhosis of the liver, jaundice, nausea and vomiting, cramps, weight loss, impaired vision, and heart failure. However, these symptoms are too similar to gastrointestinal discomfort. Almost no one would associate vomiting and nausea with poisoning. The murderer should not have had the opportunity so her condition would have improved a lot and she would have been discharged. Then what would happen after she was discharged?"
"Continue to poison after she is discharged from the hospital. Even if Xie Lingling is hospitalized again, it will only be due to gastrointestinal discomfort. She will be discharged soon like last time." Cao Cang quickly understood this and spoke.
Gu Nankai nodded silently and thought. Shang Lu had already responded to Cao Cang: "Yes, the murderer used this method to kill Xie Lingling in the end. This can explain why Xie Lingling's corpse rigor mortis formed quickly. Because of arsenic poisoning, her heat reaction is very reasonable. In the Victorian era, people could not diagnose arsenic poisoning. Doctors usually called this condition "stomach heat disease". Victims usually have cold and damp skin, low blood pressure, dizziness and weakness, and convulsions and coma. Usually death due to circulatory failure."
"So, Xie Lingling's rigor mortis formed quickly because of this. She was most likely in a feverish state at the time." Cao Cang nodded to himself and quickly wrote down something in the notebook in front of him.
"Yes, including why Xie Lingling suddenly fell down. All of these can be explained by arsenic poisoning as the cause of death," Shang Lu continued.
"How long will it take to give us an accurate analysis?" At this point, Gu Nankai knew that everyone had a pretty good understanding of the situation. Under the current circumstances, the statement made by Xie Lingling was their only direction of investigation, but everything was still just a guess. Only with accurate test results could it be determined whether it was correct or not. It also affected whether their next direction of investigation was correct.
Shang Lu pursed his lips and said, "Although this has been confirmed, I haven't had time to analyze her blood and tissues. If we can determine the arsenic concentration in her blood and tissues, we can be sure that she died of arsenic poisoning. The cause of death can be determined, but we still have to analyze her hair to determine the time of poisoning."
She looked at Gu Nankai and pointed to the office clock to let him know that it was already very late. "I can work overtime to test the arsenic concentration in blood and tissue to determine the direction of our investigation, but the hair test has to be handed over to colleagues . I can give you a report tomorrow morning, but the technical department will probably have to wait for two days. They need time to do this."
Being able to determine the cause of death was already good enough for Gu Nankai. He nodded to express his attitude, then motioned Shang Lu to come back and sit down. After she sat down, Gu Nankai concluded: "I think everyone understood what Shang Lu said just now."
Except for Shang Lu, everyone else nodded. Gu Nankai continued, "Now we assume that Shang Lu's analysis is correct. Although it is complicated, we can at least get a very important clue from it."
He paused for a moment, put both arms on the table and interlocked his fingers, and said, "That is, since it is chronic arsenic poisoning, the suspect must be someone Xie Lingling can often come into contact with. If the murderer did not have long-term contact with Xie Lingling, then he would not have the opportunity to continue poisoning her."
"Yes, that's the truth, so the scope of our suspects is now narrowed a lot." Shang Lu immediately agreed.
"But we know nothing about Xie Lingling's social relationships right now. How should we start investigating?" Wu Qingluan, who had been silent all this time, suddenly spoke.
Gu Nankai remained silent and turned his gaze to Gao Yuan, staring at him intently. Gao Yuan immediately felt his scalp tingling, and then heard Gu Nankai say with a fake smile: "Didn't we find Xie Lingling's phone at the scene? As a modern person, a phone contains almost all personal information. This matter is left to our computer experts."
He turned his gaze to Cao Cang and said, "Cao Cang, give the phone to Gao Yuan."
Cao Cang immediately turned around, found the phone among the evidence took it and placed it in front of Cao Cang. Cao Cang was dumbfounded when he saw the phone with a screen that was shattered into pieces. He pinched the evidence bag with two fingers and shook it in front of his eyes, then wailed: "Captain Gu, this phone is scrapped, is there anything we can find out? How could Xie Lingling break the phone into such a state?"
Cao Cang was standing next to him at the time. After hearing what he said, he quickly responded, "I also felt it was strange at first. Logically, considering the force with which Xie Lingling fell, the degree of shattering of the phone screen should be less severe than this. So I roughly compared the traces and found that Xie Lingling's phone must have been dropped before she died. The screen shattering appeared at a different time. Time is running out. If we want a more detailed analysis, we will have to work overtime tonight."
"We Cao Cang are always efficient in doing things." No one in the serious crime team questioned Cao Cang's work efficiency. After hearing his words, Gao Yuan stopped being pretentious. Although the phone was dropped and there was a high possibility that there was something wrong with the internal storage card, he still chose to keep silent at this moment.
"Cao Cang, you should go home first." Gu Nankai said to Cao Cang.
"Why?" Cao Cang didn't react for a moment and asked subconsciously.
