Whispers of the Innocent

17

My major in university was bioengineering. Many forensic scientists originally studied this field.

In 2007, I killed my own brother at home. Then, under the pretext, I asked my father for his old clothes and dressed my brother's corpse in them.

I decided to spend a few years forging a plausible body that could pass for my father's.

There were three main points to make it plausible.

The first was age.

In the case of a skeleton, age at death could only be determined by bone age. The bones of minors are still developing, making the detection of bone age more accurate; whereas the bones of adults are fully developed, and the detection of bone age comes with a certain margin of error, only allowing for an approximate age range.

In 1997, when my father disappeared, he was 40 years old; my brother was born in 1975 and died in 2007 at the age of 32, an 8-year difference from my father.

Later, the police determined that the humerus marrow cavity had reached the surgical neck but not the epiphyseal line. They estimated the age at death to be around 30-40 years old, which matched the age of my father when he disappeared.

The second point was the degree of corpse decomposition.

In the reptile room, there was a large ecological tank originally built for breeding reptiles. I buried my brother's body in the soil of the ecological tank, ensuring proper ventilation.

The city where I settled was not far from my hometown, and this area had a temperate monsoon climate. The rate of decomposition of a body in this region was relatively slow.

The ecological tank simulated a tropical rainforest, and this artificial ecosystem had been running steadily for two years. A body would decompose quickly in a tropical rainforest environment, so I could create the illusion of time passing by artificially adjusting the temperature, humidity, and microorganisms. It took just over two months for the body to skeletonize and the stench to dissipate.

To ensure the final presentation of time was reasonable, the rate of decomposition needed to be strictly controlled, neither too fast nor too slow. I couldn't rely solely on air conditioning to regulate temperature and humidity; I needed a reference. So, the body of the sheep I had killed in 1997 came in handy.