Chapter 12 Chapter Four

The forensic autopsy ended at four o'clock in the afternoon. After Kitasaka Mipei thanked his assistant, he returned to his office. He slowly drank the tea made by the female clerk. He silently looked out the window. Two or three tall evergreen trees were planted in the courtyard.The sun from among the clouds shines on the earth, but the temperature is still very low. This year is a mild winter, but the cold air pressure characteristic of winter started to form yesterday. Didn't you feel cold on the road last night? Yi Neng, who has heart disease, walked out of his warm little home. When encountering such cold weather, he would shrink back, quicken his pace, and even trot unavoidably.

Kitasaka looked back into the room again, and took out a notebook from the pocket of his suit jacket hanging on the hanger. On it was written the phone number of the Murai Circulatory Internal Medicine Hospital he had heard at the Setagaya Police Station, where Yi Neng had been examined and treated when he had his first heart attack that year. He dialed the phone, explained his identity, and then said he wanted to talk to the dean. "I'm Murai." A not-so-old voice came from the receiver. "I'm Kitasaka who supervises the hospital." "Ah, I heard about Mr. from the Setagaya Police Station. I thought you'd call."

"I'm really sorry to bother you... I'm sorry. Mr. Koichi Ino had his first myocardial infarction in five years, right?" "Oh, yes. He was really lucky. Later, he often came to my place for examination, treatment, and several electrocardiograms..." "Recently?" He heard her testimony from Fujiko, but he still had to ask Ino's therapist. "In the past three years, he has been unstable and not very good. He has potential heart failure, which means that angina pectoris or myocardial infarction is very likely to occur. Due to poor heart performance, he often feels out of breath and palpitations when he exercises. .He is relatively fat, and his face and limbs are somewhat swollen."

"Has he taken his medicine?" Kitakata asked again. Fujiko didn't say anything about her husband's illness, except that "my husband took some medicine just to be careful." "Yes, digoxin 0.25 mg once a day." "It's digitalis medicine!" "Yes. So overdose can lead to accumulation in the body, and it can easily induce a heart attack." "Mr. Yi Neng won't overdose, right?" "Well...he had an accident before. That time when he came to see a doctor, he said he had finished taking the medicine, and I said why so fast? He said it wasn't three pills a day? He took it as an antihypertensive medicine. From now on, he will be very Be careful...what, is there any clue of overdose?"

"Oh, I heard from his wife that Mr. Yi Neng is taking medicine for heart disease. To be on the safe side, we did a blood test, and it turned out that the level of digitalis in the blood was higher." "How tall?" "There are 3.5 nanograms in a milliliter of blood." "Hold, it's too high!" Murai couldn't help raising his voice in surprise, "If you take it correctly, the blood can only reach 2 nanograms at most." "Is this amount saturated?" "Of course. It's almost to the point where it can cause insufficiency!"

"It's very dangerous to say that? Maybe it has something to do with his sudden death..." "Yeah, it's possible, but why does he take so much?" "But, will Mr. Yi Neng become addicted? ——If the amount of digitalis in the blood increases." "No, digitalis will not lead to addiction. And if it is overdose, nausea, vomiting, arrhythmia will appear at the beginning, and in severe cases, there will be shock symptoms similar to myocardial infarction, and then blood pressure will drop, unconsciousness, some people Death occurs three to five minutes after the onset of these symptoms."

"Three to five minutes, is it?" "Even if the digitalis is not too saturated, it's just too much, but if you add excessive drinking, nicotine in cigarettes, caffeine, and excessive exercise, it will immediately cause a heart attack. There are many such examples Woolen cloth!" "So that's the case." "But... I remember I reminded him several times!" Murai added naggingly, "I also told his wife several times that this medicine can cure diseases and kill people, and she also said She remembered..." After calling Murai, just as Kitasaka put down the phone, the phone rang.He picked up the receiver and listened, and the switchboard said it was from the Setagaya Police Department.

"Ah, I'm Sugihara. This morning really made you..." Sugihara's hearty voice came from the receiver. "Is the autopsy done?" It was originally made an appointment, and Kitakaka would call Sugihara as soon as the autopsy was finished. It seemed that Sugihara couldn't wait any longer. "Ah, it just ended." "And what was the result? Was it a heart attack or died in a car accident? Is the cause of death clear?" "Ah, this..." Kitasaka slowed down a little. "From the perspective of anatomy, it is possible to find out the cause of death, or it may not be possible to find out the cause of death. Unfortunately, this time it is the latter."

"But...died from a myocardial infarction or a car accident, there will always be different body manifestations, right?" "Yes, but generally speaking, this kind of physical manifestation refers to the appearance of the human body when the heart beats within a certain period of time after being injured. That is to say, although the body has been traumatized, the blood in the whole body is still flowing. But last night Yi Neng Mister was directly run over by a car on the head, he died in an instant, and the performance of that kind of machine did not appear." "What about the heart?"

"Symptoms of myocardial infarction. His coronary artery is already very narrow, and itching has been seen in the dissection. Therefore, myocardial infarction must have occurred, but only narrowing can cause myocardial infarction, and the degree of narrowing will definitely occur. It’s not absolute yet. Certainly some people will not get sick if their stenosis reaches 90%, while some people may get sick if their stenosis reaches 60%, and some people can also get sick when they are calm, and it doesn’t have to be violent. Exercise becomes its inducement. Therefore, the presence or absence of arterial stenosis alone cannot be the sole cause of myocardial infarction."

Then, Kitakata told Sugihara what Dr. Murai said about the increase in digitalis in Ineng's blood. "In other words, this time..." "Yi Neng's illness is enough to make him often in a state of possible illness. But it is not easy to judge based on this. That is to say, when he was run over by a car, whether he was alive or dead, or had fallen to the ground or was in the process of I can't even tell when I walk..." "Hey... We are also trying our best to find witnesses, but there is almost no one in that area at night, and it was surprisingly cold last night." "Ah, by the way, a small amount of alcohol was detected in his blood. Since it is not drunk, could it be that he drank some beer?" "Really? But Fujiko Ino said her husband didn't look drunk at all. Alcohol is bad for the heart, right?" "Of course, there are cigarettes. Didn't Mr. Yi Neng go to buy cigarettes at the time of the accident?" "Yes. The vending machine is just across the road." "Smoking is the biggest cause of heart attacks. The doctor would have dissuaded him." "Fujiko also said that she doesn't let her husband smoke...is that true?" "what?" "No, sir, we actually got another clue this afternoon." Sugihara suddenly became excited. "We went to the school run by Yi Neng to find out about the situation, and we thought it was necessary to learn about his recent health from a third party." "right." "We asked two teachers and a female office worker. They all knew that Yi Neng often took medicine, but they didn't remember him being in pain. His specific physical condition was not clear. But they also reported that Yi Neng The relationship between the couple is not very good." "yes……" "Ineng is a handsome man, but he is very stingy and stingy when it comes to money. The female clerk is a classmate of Fujiko's school, and she often hears Fujiko complaining to her. Yinon often secretly investigates what Fujiko buys, and he especially hates her Associating with other men, and sometimes getting thugs because of it, Fujiko thought of divorcing Ineng several times. But because she has no source of income and doesn't want her husband to leave the child, she has been unable to make up her mind..." "However, does Fujiko's association with men really make Yi Neng jealous? Does she have a lover?" Kitasaka suddenly remembered Fujiko's very handsome face and temperament that attracted men. "Yes! One of the teachers testified that he had seen Fujiko walking with a young man in Shibuya. It seemed to be at the end of last year." "Oh?" "What he saw was Fujiko's side face, but the man was from the back, so he couldn't see clearly. But the relationship between the two of them is not like that of ordinary people, they are more intimate. We need to thoroughly understand the relationship around Fujiko." "yes." "I heard from you just now that Yi Neng has signs of overdosing with digitalis. In this case, maybe he didn't intentionally overdo it!"