National Forensic Doctor -
Chapter 1019 - 955: Dawn
Chapter 1019: Chapter 955: Dawn
In the following days, they were spent boringly in the investigation of the case.
Each team conducted their investigations according to the established goals, Liu Jinghui redid the timetables for several key individuals, and Jiang Yuan started receiving more and more trace evidence reports, which he found very compelling.
Using trace evidence in investigation is a rather luxurious matter, as the general criminal investigation teams only resort to it in major cases on key pieces of evidence. It’s not that they can’t afford the 500 yuan, but rather that DNA has a better cost-performance ratio.
Unlike DNA evidence, even if conclusions about trace evidence are drawn, they can only indicate that certain substances were present at a certain place and time; there’s still a considerable distance to go before solving the case.
By contrast, if someone’s DNA is found at the crime scene, there must be an explanation.
"How’s it going?" Liu Jinghui, having tired from writing and drawing, sat down next to Jiang Yuan and casually grabbed a pack of Zhonghua cigarettes off his desk.
Seeing this, Jiang Yuan chuckled, turned around to get a cigar humidor, opened it, handed one to Liu Jinghui, took one himself, and began to cut it as he spoke: "The results from the trace evidence analysis have come out in large numbers, but specifically speaking, further analysis may still be needed."
"Cigars, huh... This will take about an hour to smoke." Liu Jinghui didn’t continue the previous topic; instead, he focused on cutting his cigar, contemplating.
"About that. It’s a good time to rest and refresh our minds," Jiang Yuandao replied.
"I don’t even know how to smoke; it’s a waste."
"Same here. It was bought by my old man; I just keep it for fun, it’s not a waste. They’re just agricultural products from Cuba, and initially, they were gifted by cattle traders when my dad was purchasing cattle," Jiang Yuan said casually as he lit his cigar.
The smoke from a cigar is ten times that of a cigarette, and requires constant puffing. When smoked indoors, even if the ventilation fan is working at full capacity, it doesn’t take long to shroud a conference room in a misty, ethereal haze.
After smoking for a while, Jiang Yuan and Liu Jinghui created the equivalent of a smoke-filled discussion involving 20 detectives. At this moment, the two men looked at each other in the meeting room and suddenly felt the urge to discuss.
Generally speaking, when a meeting goes on for this long, it’s like being slightly tipsy from drinking; you can start talking about business. Otherwise, continuing would be bad for everyone’s health.
"Want me to help you analyze it?" Liu Jinghui took a puff of his cigar, let the smoke swirl twice in his mouth, and then exhaled. His claim of not knowing how to smoke cigars was obviously just a casual remark; an expert from the provincial department would be expected to know how to smoke in order to help the tobacco department combat crime.
"Let’s look at it together." Jiang Yuan pushed a box of reports in front of himself forward.
A single trace analysis report consists of only two thin pieces of paper, but hundreds of such reports stacked up amount to quite a lot, resembling a pile of homework gathered by underachieving students. You know most of it is useless, but you still have to force yourself to read through, spending time to find potentially useful information within a mountain of irrelevant content.
"Did you take samples from many points on the windows and door locks?" Liu Jinghui didn’t understand the scientific implications of "reading" an analysis report, but he had his own way of reading, which was reading Jiang Yuan.
Jiang Yuan took a sip of tea and with a grunt, said: "The indoor environment is complicated, and all we have are leftover evidence, mainly involving clothes, bed sheets, and such items, so I didn’t see anything with the samples I took. As for the windows and door locks... The murderer must have had a way to enter, right?"
"What if the suspect entered by opening the door, or was tricked into opening it?" Liu Jinghui suggested.
"If tricked into opening the door, the son wouldn’t have been hidden." Jiang Yuan had naturally considered this as well.
"That’s a good point," Liu Jinghui chuckled, then became serious, "But what if the daughter was the one who opened the door and then had a conflict with the person who entered, leading the mother to hide the son before going out to help her daughter, resulting in both of them being forced into the bedroom and killed? Wouldn’t such a hypothesis better explain why the son was hidden and not the daughter?"
The smoke in the meeting room grew thicker.
Liu Jinghui had had such suspicions, which is why he asked to re-investigate the daughter’s social connections; lacking any conclusions, he had not pulled this investigative thread again. Now that Jiang Yuan mentioned it, Liu Jinghui naturally wanted to add this possibility to the mix.
Jiang Yuan listened and slowly nodded, considering the speculation viable.
"Of course. There are many reasons why the son might have been hidden but not the daughter," Liu Jinghui added, "It might also be because the daughter is too big. There are only two places in the bedroom where one could hide, in the wardrobe or under the bed. An 8-year-old boy could be concealed in the wardrobe with clothes piled on top, but the daughter, given her height and build, could only hide under the bed, which doesn’t have much cover. Hence, it could be that the daughter was hidden but discovered and pulled out."
Liu Jinghui’s reasoning was clear and directional, causing Jiang Yuan to nod in agreement; it was indeed a possibility.
"I get quite excited when discussing these things," Liu Jinghui realized he’d steered off-topic and laughed, turning his head, "You mentioned the method of entry earlier, which immediately made me think of the elements of a locked-room murder mystery. Hmm, what did you find on the door lock and windows?"
"Nickel, copper, chromium, carbon, iron..." Jiang Yuan presented the conclusions of trace evidence collected from several points on the door lock to Liu Jinghui.
"What does that imply?"
"How to put it," Jiang Yuan hesitated for a moment, then said, "From the perspective of trace evidence, this conclusion actually cannot provide a decisive result. But from the perspective of investigative analysis... although the presence of these metal elements is common, the fact that so many were found on the first attempt..."
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