National Forensic Doctor-Chapter 940 - 876 Contours (Three more - s for monthly votes!)

Chapter 940: Chapter 876 Contours (Three more Chapters for monthly votes!)

An hour later.

Captain Shi Liang of the Criminal Investigation Squad from Shiting County returned, curiously looking at Jiang Yuan on the platform, and quietly asked, "What’s going on here? Can I get a report?"

Mu Zhiyang shook his head: "Wait for King Yan to return."

Shi Liang uttered an "oh," then hesitated a bit and said, "I saw the dogs coming, and wanted to call the K-9 unit to help search for the club. Should I report to Captain Jiang?"

"That you can just tell Wang Chuanxing," said Mu Zhiyang.

"Alright." Shi Liang politely agreed, and turned to leave.

The officers who came with him stepped out the door, and said quietly, "Captain Shi, you could just shout out; even King Yan isn’t as tough as this little devil."

"Are you talking about Mu Team?" Shi Liang asked.

"Yeah. You were being a little too polite, weren’t you?"

Shi Liang pursed his lips and said, "Didn’t you see Mu Zhiyang speaking with his hands on his hips?"

"I did see that. It’s a bit disrespectful, isn’t it?"

Shi Liang glanced at the officer, "The outline of his 92 pistol is visible on him; what respect do you want from him?"

The officer was taken aback and promptly shut up. With the current environment, any police officer willing to risk writing a report to carry a gun is definitely a dangerous character.

Shi Liang went out to find Wang Chuanxing, and then led the three K-9s from Ningtai County’s Police Dog Unit to start a scent search.

Li Lizhi pulled Dazhuang along proudly at the forefront. Now the Police Dog Unit had three dogs, which, from any angle, could be considered strong and robust.

Especially since the newly arrived Er Zhuang and San Zhuang did not get car sick, being ready to work as soon as they arrived support, their combat effectiveness doubled.

"You start first, I’ll let Dazhuang rest a bit," Li Li told her subordinates before casually leading the Rottweiler to the side to take a break.

Dazhuang found a spot of clean, hard ground and flop down listlessly; its motion sickness was innate, and it hadn’t shown any signs of it during training at the K-9 base. Now that it had started working, it didn’t have the choice of where to work.

Fortunately, the Police Dog Unit had two other dogs, and Dazhuang, being a meritorious dog, slacking off a little was not a big deal.

In Tangui Village, back and forth went officers in uniform.

The village residents were quite excited; they usually were a bit bored, and after they had exhausted each other with gossip about families like the Zhangs and the Lis, they finally had something fresh to talk about—though, the death of a villager from their own was shocking, the dead had passed on, and gossip still had to accumulate.

Some younger ones who knew how to use smartphones—with a power bank attached below—started recording.

Posting segments would give them something to talk about for days.

Tang Jia, with two auxiliary police officers, had gone back and forth a few times, propagating and merely controlling the crowd but not actually stopping anyone from filming. "Enforcement under the camera" had long been clarified by the Ministry, and Tang Jia and the likes kept emphasizing and explaining, requesting that residents must not block the road, must not film close to the face of the police officers, must not interfere with the police work, and must not pull the officers for selfies, just as they had just done.

Bai Jian went back and forth coordinating.

It was actually a small-scale search operation now. The detectives from Shiting County were knocking on doors, one after another, searching for the club, even lifting each family’s firewood stack for the K-9s to sniff, or looking through it themselves.

The firewood stacks in Tangui Village were all about one or two meters tall, with a width of about one meter, and lengths often reaching two to three meters, meaning, households with a lot of stored firewood could have five to six cubic meters of it. To knock over such large stacks of firewood and rummage through them, and then restack them afterward, would require a great deal of manpower.

Most police teams leave a suspect’s residence a mess after a search; no one bothers to tidy up again. But when it comes to searches in villages, and especially when rearranging the woodpiles outside the houses, it really puts the police force’s command and intelligence to the test.

Director Bai Jian was busy finding people to communicate with while also calling in more personnel from the county, and even hiring "volunteers" by paying the local village officials.

Several busy hours later, some good news finally came through.

"We found the murder weapon." Director Bai Jian returned to the scene with his team, only to see Jiang Yuan already sitting on the platform, busily writing and drawing on a pad.

"Oh, let’s hear it." Jiang Yuan put down the pad and looked at Bai Jian.

The expression on Director Bai’s face wasn’t overly excited as he explained plainly, "It was found in a ravine more than two kilometers from the crime scene, but still by the roadside, possibly tossed there by someone passing by."

Obviously, Director Bai disliked his own deduction.

With the murder weapon found abandoned by the side of a major road, there were too many elements suggesting that a stranger had committed the crime.

Not to mention a serial killer, the sheer notion of a stranger committing a crime in the countryside already posed a significant headache.

Nowadays, urban cases are increasingly easier to solve, with the police having access to more and more technology, particularly the use of new gadgets. These act like black magic to criminals, particularly traditional ones—who are mostly less educated and can’t understand these technologies even if you explained it to them.

However, rural cases are different. Like other basic infrastructure, rural areas lag in updating police facilities, with no significant increase in the beloved CCTV cameras for the police force. Meanwhile, traditional security measures in the countryside are weakening due to population decline and aging.

Thus, crime cases involving strangers in rural areas are, in some ways, even harder to solve.

Director Bai could only manage a tight-lipped response, "Even if the worst-case scenario happens, it is still within our expectations. It’s always an advantage to fight on a battlefield we anticipate..."

"It wasn’t a stranger who did it." Jiang Yuan could guess what Director Bai was thinking and immediately negated it with a single sentence.

Director Bai, taken aback, frowned with uncertainty, grimly said, "Captain Jiang, I’m the only one in the special case team known for being stubborn..."

Mu Zhiyang couldn’t help but find the irony amusing, apparently Director Bai was aware of his own stubbornness.

Jiang Yuan gestured dismissively and said, "My judgement is based on the footprints at the scene. Hmm... Let me give you a brief description of the crime scene, and you’ll understand."

"Hmm?"

Jiang Yuan signaled Mu Zhiyang to turn on the camera so they wouldn’t have to repeat the explanation later and continued sitting on the platform made of acrylic boards, "Firstly, the murderer was in the process of purchasing goods, which doesn’t identify the murderer, but indicates the absence of a known revenge motive. Secondly, the first scuffle between the two occurred before the payment, actually in a corner by the shelves..."

"After the scuffle, there was a brief conversation, which can be inferred to a certain extent from their standing positions here... Then, after a brief conversation, they began to fight again, with the murderer significantly increasing force, possibly getting heated. In other words, he was holding back before, which doesn’t really fit the pattern of a stranger committing the crime, but rather the escalation of a conflict between acquaintances."

"Lastly, the murderer picked up the murder weapon and struck the victim on the head. Then he strangled the victim to death with a rope from the supermarket and fled the scene."

Director Bai, surprised by the explanation, uttered, "Fleeing the scene? What about the skinning?"

Jiang Yuan picked up the pad and showed Director Bai a series of plum blossom-shaped footprints, saying, "Licked by dogs."

"Ah?"

"There were at least three dogs involved, including possibly the victim’s own dog. I deduced it from the photos. Initially, the victim’s own dog may have been licking their owner’s face, which turned ferocious after tasting blood. Then two other dogs joined in the licking, leading to what may have evolved into a fight over food," Jiang Yuan flipped through the victim’s photos while continuing,

"The lips and nose were completely gone, tongue as well; these injuries aren’t consistent with skinning. Moreover, the crude nature of them is indicative of tearing..."

"Shouldn’t there be bite marks then?"

"The skin of the face and scalp were torn off, not devoured, and the dogs weren’t particularly hungry. So after tearing off the scalp and skin, they left..." Jiang Yuan sighed as he concluded, "Hair is not easy to digest, we need to find the dogs as soon as possible to confirm this."