National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 503 - 503 462 Throwing a Stone to Ask the Way

503: Chapter 462: Throwing a Stone to Ask the Way 503: Chapter 462: Throwing a Stone to Ask the Way Religious venue cases are always quite complex.

If you’re dealing with religious figures who are single-mindedly pursuing profit, it’s not so bad.

Normal investigative procedures have a chance to uncover the truth.

But when you encounter the unconventional type, especially those deeply devout, traditional investigative methods immediately face obstacles.

Liu Jinghui was observing Abbot Cheng, trying to analyze his personality and work style.

To deduce reasoning unavoidably involves face recognition analysis, or FBI-like profiling and so on.

To put it in layman’s terms, when American police can’t find any clues or break a case, they also can only rely on profiling or, in other words, reasoning to solve the case.

Liu Jinghui felt he had mastered some advanced skills.

In fact, the clearance rate for his current cases was quite impressive, which is why he’d made a name for himself province-wide.

Moreover, the cases he solved were mainly difficult ones, usually referred to him by county or city bureaus when they found themselves at an impasse.

By the time it reached him, the golden 24 hours were often past, sometimes even the rose gold 72 hours had slipped away.

If not compared with Jiang Yuan’s extraordinary backlog solving ability, Liu Jinghui’s (pseudo) backlog solving power was also commendable.

In fact, even with actual backlog of murder cases, Liu Jinghui had tackled a few.

Over the years, all provinces had been pushing to solve backlogged cases.

Although as a senior police officer there wasn’t a set quota of backlog murder cases to solve, everyone was still willing to work towards this goal.

Always thinking, occasionally solving cases, and often writing reports – that was the norm for detectives.

In Liu Jinghui’s view, the wilderness murder case in Qu’an might not be so difficult after all.

20 years ago, during times of high rural population and poor public security, investigations were indeed tough, especially during rainy seasons like this one.

Even if the killer knew nothing, Mother Nature would wash the crime scene as if it had been cleaned.

But in the current environment, the difficulty of solving wilderness cases had greatly reduced.

Firstly, with fewer people around, if you could pinpoint the number of people in a certain location during a specific timeframe, even using the most brute-force method of elimination could yield a lot of information.

The simplest approach was cell phone tracking.

Base stations in the wilderness were sparse, and with a sweep from the tech surveillance guys, it was clear which individuals had been in the vicinity during which timeframe.

Liu Jinghui was strolling through the temple, thinking and observing at the same time.

Captain Han, who had come with him, wasn’t wearing his police rank insignia and was dressed in a cotton jacket, pockets stuffed, with a smile approaching, he said, “Got any leads yet?”

“Not yet, have you found any clues?” Liu Jinghui countered.

Captain Han laughed and shook his head, “What clues could there be?

If there were any, the case would have been solved long ago.”

“You’ve investigated the temple devotees, haven’t you?”

“We’ve done a lot of questioning.

We’ve also specifically investigated those devotees who didn’t show up.

Too few clues, we can’t even figure out who died,” Captain Han spread his hands, “Once some of these devotees arrive here, they only use their chosen Buddhist name and don’t really say their real names.

It’s not something we can look up.”

“And they come and go, right?” Liu Jinghui spoke for Captain Han.

Captain Han nodded gravely, “Identifying the source of the corpse is the pressing issue right now.”

Liu Jinghui glanced at him, “So you think we’ll make a fruitless trip again?”

Visiting the crime scene was Liu Jinghui’s suggestion; to reason out the case, he needed to collect as much information as possible.

Captain Han laughed a couple of times, “To speak the truth, coming here is a waste of time; it’s been so long.

Look, their temple is starting to operate normally.

If it wasn’t for Mrs.

Li’s meat burger, I wouldn’t have come up here.”

“The meat burger is indeed delicious.” Liu Jinghui sighed, “Let’s go meet a few of the devotees.”

“I’ll call a couple of people over for the statements.” To Captain Han, all the devotees were criminal suspects, so questioning naturally required taking statements.

They hadn’t walked far when they came across a female devotee in her fifties or sixties.

She was wearing a coarse rob, her hair pinned up with a wooden stick, but because she wasn’t attractive, she kind of resembled a low-resolution character from an old Hong Kong movie.

“Excuse me…

ma’am, can I ask you a few questions?” Liu Jinghui stopped her.

“Can I not speak if I choose?” She softened her tone a bit, finding Liu Jinghui handsome.

“No, you can’t.” Liu Jinghui frowned.

“Not even if I choose to remain silent?” Her tone became teasing.

Captain Han explained, “If you don’t speak, we’ll have to suspect you’re related to the case and would have to take you back for questioning.”

“Boring.” She pouted, “Ask your questions…”

Captain Han and Liu Jinghui exchanged glances, both sensing the difficulty of dealing with the devotees.

And they were right.

The several devotees at the small temple had an outward appearance of gentleness, with an especially positive way of speaking, but were actually extremely difficult to deal with.

They were the type who on the surface seemed to offer free viewing but in reality wanted membership fees, successive charges, advertising money, and per-episode fees.

The typical kind who wanted to have, to hold, and to claim everything.

After making the rounds, Liu Jinghui returned to the room and said, “I think there are two types of devotees here.

One type lives here long-term; currently, there are three women, all over 50, very devout believers who spend half the year here, doing volunteer work and practicing their faith.”

“The second type are short-term visitors.

Those who come frequently have titles of devotees, while those who come less might only visit a few days a year.

The problem lies with the second type.”

“The first type is countable.

If someone goes missing, we could match them with a result.

The second type is more troublesome; there’s no list to match against.”

Captain Han sighed, “What I mean is, I don’t even know why these people bother coming here, such a small temple without any known miracles.”

“Can’t say that…” Liu Jinghui started, but didn’t finish, switching instead to, “I need to think this through more carefully.”

Captain Han glared, “I’m telling you, speaking in such a half-told, swallowing fashion, you’re bound to be the first one to die in a detective movie, and it’s going to happen tonight.”

“It’s not that mysterious, I’ll speak once I’ve thought it through,” Liu Jinghui waved his hand and then said, “I see there are vacant rooms in the temple, we might as well stay the night and see.”

“Is that necessary?” Captain Han muttered, but still followed him to find the abbot.

He trusted Liu Jinghui somewhat, at least enough to stay with him for the night.

Jiang Yuan didn’t object either.

His willingness to come to the scene was mainly because he’d been feeling a bit bored with his cases lately.

Especially with something like Cranial Reconstruction Skill, it could be interesting but also truly tedious.

Bringing a laptop to work and rest intermittently wasn’t bad.

The scenery around the small temple was quite nice.

Although it couldn’t compare to Siningshan, it was still surrounded by green mountains and clear waters.

From afar you could see overlapping peaks, and close up, tender ravines.

Devotees had donated to build pavilions and sitting inside one of those, sipping a pot of tea while enjoying the view and staring at the laptop screen was indeed relaxing.

As for the bustling activity of Liu Jinghui and others making notes, Jiang Yuan wasn’t optimistic.

If this were a traditional detective drama, gathering all the suspects together to find contradictions through questioning would be one thing.

But the problem was that with the current situation at the temple, it was simply impossible to gather all the suspects together.

The reason traditional detective dramas adopted this method was because the investigative measures of 19th century British police were so limited.

Without fingerprints, without DNA, the most solid evidence was a confession by the culprit, hence the confession reigned supreme.

In modern times, the value of confessions has long since collapsed.

The coolest criminal investigation model is one with zero confessions, and to confront traditional detectives, the culprit only needed to use the move “I don’t remember,” which could easily defeat ninety-nine percent of them.

That included people like Liu Jinghui.

Especially when facing a group of early elderly people averaging 60 years old, with their back-and-forth responses, constant corrections, and an infinite amount of rambling…

Liu Jinghui suddenly realized the biggest difference between the lay practitioners in the temple and the ordinary people below the mountain.

That was that they really had nothing to do…

These elderly ladies could write dozens of pages for a single interrogation record, and the craziest thing was that when the detectives asked if they had anything to add, they always “did”…

“I’m exhausted,” Liu Jinghui thought to himself at 9 PM, an hour that still felt early in the city, his head was about to explode.

He lay on the bunk bed in the quad room—the standard room provided by the temple—feeling as limp as a boiled shrimp.

“Are you that tired?” Captain Han felt it was fine, except that the room was gradually filling with the pungent smell of feet.

Liu Jinghui grunted deeply, not wanting to explain, turned over, and asked, “Jiang Yuan, how’s your work going?”

“As for the cranial reconstruction, the progress is fine.

Drank two pots of tea in the afternoon, now I’m a little restless,” Jiang Yuan said.

“I should have called Meng Chengbiao over,” Liu Jinghui muttered, “His interrogation records are pretty good.”

“I can help too,” Mu Zhiyang spoke softly, having followed Jiang Yuan around all day and done nothing, he was terribly bored.

The green mountains and waters were beautiful, but after a while, they also became truly boring.

Liu Jinghui laughed out, about to speak, when suddenly he heard Captain Han shout loudly:

“Who’s there?”

Bang!

Thud thud…

A stone wrapped in a note shattered the window and rolled onto the floor.

The breaking of the window made a “bang” sound, but the sound of the stone hitting the ground was especially muffled.

The four people who had just been talking and laughing were all somewhat stunned at that instant.

Then they hear Mu Zhiyang “woo” as he jumped down from the bunk bed, yanked the door open, sprinted out with the momentum, drifted out the door, and circled around to the greenery in front of the window, only to see no one there.

“Protect the scene, preserve the footprints, nobody else come over!” Liu Jinghui immediately thought of Jiang Yuan’s footprint analysis skills.

For a moment, Liu Jinghui even had the thought: Wouldn’t it be something if this bizarre case got cracked just like that!

The other four officers staying in the neighboring room also came out to check.

Captain Han laughed with a “heh”, trying to lighten the mood, “Good thing it wasn’t a grenade they threw in.”

While speaking playfully, Captain Han also whipped out his phone and snapped a few photos immediately, then dialed the criminal investigation team’s landline to arrange for reinforcements to come up the mountain.

Most importantly, they needed forensic technicians to bring their equipment.

They had come up with only the most basic investigative kit, which was certainly not enough for the crucial piece of evidence that had just landed before them.

But Liu Jinghui couldn’t laugh, he sat up anxiously, pulled out his phone, took a few pictures of the stone on the ground, and then asked Jiang Yuan, “Can you have a look?”

“Sure,” Jiang Yuan, who was also on the upper bunk, jumped down from the other side, put on gloves, picked up some tweezers, and said, “Turn on the camera, and wear the body camera too.”

This could be key evidence and even life-threatening for the criminal, so they had to enforce the law strictly.

The stone was about the size of a Chaozhou beef meatball, with crumpled white paper around it.

Jiang Yuan laid something out on a table before unraveling it, revealing five characters on the white paper:

“The murderer Zhang Fen”

The five characters were sectioned into three parts, “The murderer,” “Zhang,” “Fen,” as if they were separately cut out from a magazine.

The handwriting was small and the cuts were very precise.

“That’s the name of one of the female lay practitioners, the 55-year-old one.” Liu Jinghui furrowed his brows: Could she really kill someone?