"What is this?" Aubrey, whose face still paled as he watched Jack use tweezers to remove a thin black thread from the corner of the victim's eye and examine it carefully under a desktop magnifying glass, asked.
The third victim had been dead for no more than four hours. Although the facial wound was equally horrific, it was much less psychologically impactful than the previous one.
Clay's performance this time was completely different from before. Even a weakling like Aubrey didn't show much discomfort, observing and learning intently.
"It's absorbable suture, model 7/0." The female forensic doctor sent by the Korean side leaned over to the magnifying glass to take a look and said with certainty.
"Is it the kind commonly used in cosmetic surgery?" Jack took the glass dish Clay handed him and placed the suture inside.
The medical examiner nodded. Though her mask obscured her expression, her eyes showed confusion. "Yes, she looks like she's undergone extreme plastic surgery.
The two previous bodies were so severely decomposed that I may have made some misjudgments."
"What do you mean?" Clay quickly pressed on, even though the medical examiner's accent was a bit strange, now that they could finally communicate directly.
"Take her chin," she pointed out, and Jack suddenly realized. "The wound to this body's jawbone wasn't inflicted with pliers or something like that. The cut in the bone more closely resembles a T-osteotomy."
"Please speak in human language," Aubrey said, expressing his unfamiliarity with some of the technical terms.
"A T-osteotomy is a surgical procedure for reshaping the chin. It involves removing a section of bone from the middle of the chin and inserting titanium screws to push the jawbone inward, creating a more pointed chin and a V-shaped face."
Jack indicated with his fingers. This procedure is much more complex than a simple chin circumcision, but it effectively shortens the chin and creates a more youthful facial shape.
Then he pointed at the nose of the deceased and asked, "Is this a trace of imitation rhinoplasty? Both sides of the nostrils are cut, and the cartilage of the nasal septum also has traces of cutting."
The female forensic doctor standing opposite him nodded when she heard this. She was checking the corner of the deceased's eye. It was in this part that Jack found the suture line just now. "Also, the corner of the eye was cut and sutured. This is a canthoplasty. In addition, part of the eyelid was removed.
But I'm not sure if it is a simple blepharoplasty or double eyelid surgery. The deceased herself has double eyelids, just like her nose, and does not need a rhinoplasty."
"But no surgical sutures were found on the faces of the first two victims, right? Did they degrade with the decay of the bodies?" Clay probably understood what extreme plastic surgery was. The murderer used the victims as experimental subjects to practice plastic surgery.
Jack shook his head. "Even absorbable sutures are made of artificially synthesized protein. Absorbable means the body absorbs this protein, but it doesn't degrade easily on a corpse. This is a new technique, and it shows the killer's skills are improving."
After bidding farewell to the professional female medical examiner and leaving the morgue, the three men met Ma Xidao waiting at the door. He was devouring a fried dough stick with relish, holding a bag that looked like breakfast for everyone.
"Eat it while it's hot. Breakfast shops are hard to find in Korea; cafes don't open until 9 or 10."
Although his behavior was a bit reckless, it earned the unanimous gratitude of the three FBI agents. They had been woken up in the middle of the night and were already starving.
The autopsy was only a preliminary examination, not yet the opening. Even Aubrey took little time to recover, grabbing the fried dough stick and eating it as he walked.
Koreans, especially young people, rarely eat breakfast. Coupled with their unhealthy diet of kimchi, their rates of gastrointestinal diseases and stomach cancer remain among the highest in the world.
The four of them had breakfast on the roadside. Perhaps because the hot pot dinner the previous night had brought them closer together, Ma Xidao didn't wear a suit today. Instead, he wore a blue and white striped sweatshirt. With his physique, he looked more like a fitness trainer than a police officer.
He casually wiped his greasy hands with a piece of paper, pulled out a simple tourist map from his pocket, and spread it out before the group.
Itaewon is an area consisting of a main street and numerous alleys, roughly 1.4 kilometers long, running from Itaewon 1-dong to Hannam 2-dong. "
Dong" originally meant "village" in Korean, but it later evolved to mean "block," similar to the terms "new village" or "street" in Chinese cities.
Ma Xidao drew a cross in an alley on the west side of Itaewon's main street. "This is the result my guys just found out. The place where the body of the first victim, Barbara Walker, was dumped should be here."
Jack took the map and pointed at the cross in the northeast of Itaewon. "Is this the place where the body of the second victim, Jessica, was dumped?"
"Yes, there are only two alleys between the two sides." Then Ma Xidao drew another cross in the southeast corner, forming a triangle with the previous two crosses. "This is the place where the body of the third victim was dumped yesterday. It is two and three streets away from the previous two locations respectively."
Clay grinned, feeling a little unbelievable. "That means the three body dumping locations are no more than four streets in total?"
The murderer was very brave. Jack's expression was also very interesting. He thought that if Red was here, he would definitely be happy, because that would be the simple geographical profiling he had done. If he used three dots to draw a circle, the total area would be less than 1 square kilometer.
"The killer might be someone who works or lives in this area."
But as a local, Ma Xidao was more familiar with the situation in Itaewon. Looking at the three crosses on the map, he put his hands on his hips, feeling somewhat embarrassed.
"This investigation is a difficult one. This is the most central and prosperous area in Itaewon. Did you find anything there before?" He nodded toward the morgue.
Jack recounted their latest findings. "Given that South Korea is the world's plastic surgery capital, and plastic surgery is even considered a part of your culture,
and considering the experience required to perform these procedures, we suspect the killer is Korean, working in a profession related to cosmetic surgery."
Ma Xidao scratched the back of his head in annoyance. "Almost a third of all the beautiful women in Seoul hang out in this area, and there are so many black clinics offering plastic surgery around here. But we finally have a clue. Can we narrow it down a bit? Maybe use that geographic profiling technique of yours?"
"Okay, I'll try." Jack smiled and pulled out his phone to call Hannah.
"Yes, Alice and I checked the victims' credit card records. Barbara Walker buys flowers at Red Petals almost twice a week, and Jessica gets a manicure at Sparkling Nails once a week. The two locations are less than 20 meters apart,"
Hannah said, yawning loudly, her voice still filled with undisguised excitement. "Elsa Byquist's shop is on the same street. If she goes straight home from work, she'll pass the same place every day."
Following the address she gave, Jack circled a spot between the three crosses on the map.
(End of Chapter)