Dean completed a basic visual inspection, crouched down, and began to examine Mike Smith's limbs.
The fingers on both hands were bent, with indentations at the joints. This indicated that the joints were held together only by the skin, the insides having become separate entities.
Such neat indentations appeared to have been caused by a blunt instrument. It would be difficult to achieve this with bare hands alone.
Both lower legs were pierced by steel rods.
There isn't much muscle in the lower legs, which are mostly comprised of skin and bone.
Without looking, one could tell that the steel rods had directly penetrated Mike Smith's lower leg muscles and bones, nailing him to the ground.
The tops of the steel rods showed spread indentations, caused by mechanical forging.
Such machinery is generally very heavy.
But strangely, there were no traces of machinery being dragged nearby.
Dean kept this doubt in mind and lifted Mike Smith's sagging head.
A face that bore a semblance of a smile appeared before everyone's eyes.
Harry muttered with a strange look in his eyes, "This guy has been treated so miserably, yet he can still smile. Is he a masochist?"
Holz shot him a look. "Do you see the small dots on his face? Those are paper clips. Someone used paper clips to fix his facial expression like that!"
Dean nodded in agreement. "Holz is right. This technique isn't easy. The person who did this must be highly knowledgeable about human anatomy and might even have considerable expertise in plastic surgery."
Mike Smith's eyes were wide open, which, in combination with his seemingly smiling expression, gave an eerie sense of fanaticism.
Dean bent down and examined closely.
There were traces of solidified glue around the victim's eyelids.
The perpetrator had forced him to watch something he didn't want to see, keeping his eyes constantly open.
This, however, facilitated Dean's observation.
The victim had been dead for over twelve hours. His lenses had become cloudy and diffuse, and the whites of his eyes were barely visible, almost entirely overtaken by the pupils.
Looking at it for too long induced an unfounded sense of dread and eeriness.
But for someone like Dean, who had slept among corpses since childhood, this wasn't even an appetizer.
He noticed burn marks on Mike Smith's corneas.
These were injuries to the corneas caused by ultraviolet light, commonly found in patients with snow blindness.
But Los Angeles was in the midst of January's cold season, with short periods of sunlight and mostly overcast weather. So, even if the victim's eyelids had been glued open, such severe burn marks shouldn't have appeared.
Unless he had been subjected to a long period of intense light exposure!
This method is usually used in torture interrogations.
Dean rose to his feet. Taking in the professional knots on the body, the painful yet non-fatal wounds, and the meticulously fixed facial expression, he fell into deep thought.
Based on the clues, the perpetrator was a professional interrogator familiar with human tissue and proficient with methods of torture. They also bore a grudge against the victim and had hence gone to great lengths to torment him.
But there was one thing Dean couldn't understand.
Why had the perpetrator arranged the body in a half-kneeling posture?
The more one does, the more mistakes one makes! Professionals, under normal circumstances, rarely make superfluous movements because doing so increases the likelihood of leaving clues behind. If he could resolve this doubt, perhaps they would find the right direction for the case.
Robert, who had been loitering to the side, boredly kicked at the fallen leaves at his feet.
He actually wanted to learn something by following Dean.
But after staring for a long time, he couldn't make out what on earth Dean was observing.
Robert had to admit, some things were like math; if you didn't get it, you just didn't. Pretending to understand while looking on wouldn't change a thing.
The same was true for Old Hunter.
In the past, these tasks would all be left to the forensics team.
They would, at most, collect some traces and then focus their main energy on investigating the victim's identity, relationships, conflicts, and so on.
Yet Dean had directly taken over Holz's work. He was undoubtedly an oddball detective inspector.
Old Hunter was about to ask Robert to step outside for a smoke. His head was already lowered when suddenly, his pupils constricted. He pulled Robert back. "Hey, there seems to be something under here!"
Underneath the leaves Robert had kicked aside, the soil was a noticeably different color from its surroundings.
Even Old Hunter, slow as he could be, knew something was buried there.
His exclamation caught the attention of Dean and the others.
Dean saw the soil beneath Robert's feet and then looked at the direction the body was kneeling. His eyes lit up. "Get the tools! Dig!"
Before long, a semi-decomposed, incomplete dog carcass appeared before them.
Holz, resisting the stench, stuck his fingers into the jelly-like dog remains and rummaged around. He affirmed, "This is an Akita. Judging by the texture, I can only confirm the dog's time of death was over half a month ago. Because of the temperature, the body hasn't fully decomposed."
Dean added, "It was tortured to death. Look at some of the marks on its body. Don't they resemble the marks on Mike Smith's body?"
Old Hunter licked his somewhat chapped lips and said hesitantly, "Dean, are you suggesting that Mike Smith was tortured to death in the same way he supposedly killed that dog?"
Dean nodded. "Considering Mike Smith was forced to kneel in this direction, it's highly probable. And don't forget, he was a psychology expert. Those who study to that extent often have somewhat aberrant psychologies themselves."
What is psychology? The study of the mind. Studying this discipline often leads to unconsciously adopting its perspectives. Thus, the more deviant an individual is, often the easier it is for them to achieve distinction in this field; and the higher their achievement, the more likely they are to become deviant. They complement each other.
Harry, hearing this, said with some regret, "It's a pity Lawrence isn't here. He would have the most to say; after all, he has an ex-wife who was a psychologist."
Dean laughed. "Isn't this better? At least it protects your poor little butt."
He clapped his hands and signaled Holz to have his colleagues collect the body, the pulley assembly from the tree, and any other detectable traces. Everything was to be packed up and taken back for thorough examination.
There weren't many people in this area who owned Akitas.
Considering the killer might know Mike Smith, the basic direction for the investigation was becoming clear.