National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 611 - 556 Swift Progress (Seeking Monthly Pass)

Chapter 611: Chapter 556 Swift Progress (Seeking Monthly Pass)

In front of the long maroon conference table, Director Xu Tian’s brows were tightly furrowed. Those familiar with him would instinctively stick their butts out three inches further when they saw him make this expression.

All around was deathly quiet, as though the dozen or so people in the room were all holding their breath.

"Ha-ha..."

Director Xu suddenly let out a restrained chuckle.

Then, the meeting room was filled with subdued laughter.

"What shall we do?" Director Xu asked with a laugh, turning to the chief who sat in the middle.

In front of him were the two reports that Doctor Jiang had sent over.

Two cold cases, two clear investigative directions, two sets of clues, and also the implication of double the resource investment.

Not to mention the cost of investigation itself, just the manpower for these two murder cold cases was quite a bit of pressure.

The leaders of the Luojin City Bureau were experiencing this kind of happy trouble for the first time. When had they ever been this overjoyed?

"What are everyone’s thoughts?" the chief thought it was a good opportunity for a bit of levity.

Being a criminal investigator was tough; on the rare occasions something good happened, it was truly a cause for celebration.

The faces of the few around the conference table indeed stretched with smiles as if they were getting facelifts.

"Though it cost us money, this return on investment is coming back too fast and too thrilling," the detachment captain remarked with emotion. He was very keen on keeping Doctor Jiang around.

Director Xu was nodding non-stop. Helping to establish and equip the Ningtai County lab was expensive, but solving murder cold cases would be even more challenging.

A simple logic was at play here—if some current murder cases couldn’t even be solved on time, then going back after a year or more, to tackle those that had turned cold using even more difficult methods and managing to solve them, well, the gap here couldn’t be measured in terms of miles.

After everyone had their moment of happiness, the chief then asked, "How is the screening process going? Is there any hope?"

When it came to the specifics of the cases, the smiles on everyone’s faces immediately disappeared.

Being a criminal investigator actually isn’t a very blissful job. Or rather, it is an extremely masculine task. It’s at its most joyful and exhilarating for a very short time, typically only the last few seconds. Before that, a detective needs to sweat profusely, take great risks, and withstand a tremendous amount of emotional fluctuation.

Like the chief mentioned, screening relationships of the chef from the lost and found—if there were results to show for it, that would naturally be joy-inducing. But before reaching the end, all efforts could be fruitless. And no one could tell you where the finish line was.

The detachment captain took a deep breath and said, "The screening is still in progress, and as of now... there are no results yet."

"This investigative direction... since it was proposed by Doctor Jiang, then you all should continue to work hard," the chief would normally have asked the detachment captain for his opinion first, but he went ahead with the conclusion.

He didn’t want his subordinates to simply go with the flow and change the investigative direction on their own. Now that there was another drowning case, which was also a murder cold case, if it were solved, he wouldn’t just avoid blame, he’d need to give ample praise.

But as a consequence, the lost and found chef case could be postponed indefinitely. Turning two murder cold cases into one was something the chief wasn’t willing to accept without a fight.

When it came to whether he believed in Doctor Jiang or his own subordinates, whom he had worked meticulously with for over a decade, it was obvious that the chief chose to trust in Doctor Jiang.

Even if the circle of acquaintances of the chef had already been sifted through several times, he still held firm belief in Doctor Jiang.

Now, Doctor Jiang had dealt with more murder cold cases than many would handle in their entire lives. In fact, his cases exceeded the total number of specialized task forces many would join in a lifetime. By the chief’s experience, if he didn’t trust Doctor Jiang, then whom could he trust?

Age and technique set aside, in terms of experience dealing with murder cold cases alone, Doctor Jiang was among the national elite.

For an average detective, after five or six years on the job, beginning to do miscellaneous tasks for a task force in their mid-twenties and averaging one major case solved per year was considered good performance. More likely, it was only after solving two major cases that one could barely close a case—possibly even necessitating a manhunt.

If one could keep this up until their forties, providing they could still work by then, they might solve twenty major cases, with the number of murder cold cases amongst them being uncertain.

Viewed from this perspective, the chief saw Doctor Jiang and his own subordinates as being in entirely different leagues.

The detachment captain felt obliged to get clarification from the chief, saying, "Should we adjust our investigative resources? If new cases arise, we’ll be short on manpower. So we may need to increase support."

"How many people do you need?" the chief asked.

"A hundred," the detachment captain asked for a substantial amount now that he had voiced it.

The chief grunted and bargained, "I’ll give you 10 people. Borrow some from the ranks below—however many you can get, let’s start with three months."

Nowadays, the city bureau survived by requisitioning officers from lower levels. The county bureaus were so strained by loans that they had slowly developed coping strategies. For instance, strict adherence to loan durations—if they said three months, then it was three months—and another was to ensure everything was documented in writing, only counting it if there was an official request.

The detachment captain was aware of the general shortage of manpower and sighed, "If that’s the case... alright then."

In any case, the work was initially about collecting water samples upstream. If they were short on manpower, they would just do it more slowly, which he could accept.

The chief simply grunted and suggested, "Let’s walk on two legs. As long as one case is solved, we’ll have enough manpower."

"Yes," the detachment captain could only comply.

...

Back in the office, the usual bustling scene of people coming and going was no more to be seen.

The police staff had been sent out by the detachment captain in droves, including deputy captains and others, who were now leading teams to other provinces.

There are always some people who run off to work far away, and inquiring about these people is also indispensable. Leaving after the crime inherently counts as a suspicious item.

"Captain Wang." The leader of the second squadron came to report, saying, "We have found something."

"Speak." The squad leader immediately perked up. It had been so many days that the ordeal was making him eat two extra bowls of rice each day.

"When our team’s Qi Pao was questioning a former coworker of the victim, he noticed that the person’s emotions were unusual. After detailed questioning, the former coworker admitted that he had been in a romantic relationship with the victim."

The squad leader was taken aback: "The female cook?"

"Male cook..."

"That... oh..." The squad leader nodded his head, as he was well-experienced and his mind immediately began to associate: "Was their relationship not public?"

"Right."

"This is a new development, meaning the victim was a homosexual, and the closeted kind at that. What about his boyfriend? Is he on our list?"

The leader of the second squadron said, "He is, but he wasn’t heavily questioned. He was marked as a ’C’."

"Change that to an ’A’, send someone to question him," the squad leader said, rubbing his hands together, a spark returning to his eyes.

If there was no new information on the cook case from Sea Bottom Skimming, he was almost ready to change the direction of the investigation.

...

Jiang Yuan, leading the fourth squadron headed by Pang Jidong, proceeded upriver.

Yesterday, he mainly did two things.

The first was to determine as many algae species as accurately as possible. Different algae have different living conditions. To put it more professionally, they thrive in varied aquatic environments. Some parts can be distinguished through satellite imagery, but others require on-site judgment. The complication is that many algae are invisible. The environment might be suitable for their survival, but the proportions might not match, and this requires water sampling and testing.

The second thing Jiang Yuan did was to make a more accurate deduction of the post-mortem submersion time, meaning how long the body had been in the water.

This is a peculiarity with drowned bodies. After a body has been submerged, the reproduction of insects and other microorganisms is affected, so death time estimates based on necrophagous insects become unreliable. Consequently, the overall determination of the time of death becomes much harder. However, there are many methods to assess the time spent in the water.

For instance, in freshwater, a body submerged for a week will show "gloving" and "stocking" skin slippage, which is the comprehensive detachment of skin from the hands and feet...

Once the post-mortem submersion time is established and combined with hydrological data, it’s possible to roughly determine the section of the river where the body entered the water. However, the accuracy of this is much lower, with many assumptions involved. So when reaching the respective areas, it has to be cross-checked with the first task.

The car stopped.

Jiang Yuan got out and surveyed the distance before observing the riverbank for a while. He then pointed to a spot, and someone stepped forward to throw a bottle and collect a sample every few meters to gather enough samples before loading them into the car.

Jiang Yuan continued to walk and point.

Algae distributions can still differ even in rivers of this moderate size with broadly similar living environments.

Pang Jidong and his subordinates, carrying boxes of small brown bottles, walked and threw, collecting several boxes and then hurriedly transporting them back.

The laboratory was already well-prepared, with even new centrifuges purchased. The time-consuming part of the nine-step method is centrifuging. In fact, a single diatom requires three centrifugations to be viewable under a microscope, a rather tough task.

After walking approximately three to four kilometers along the left bank and then returning along a similar distance, even without Jiang Yuan personally taking samples, the intensity of the work was extremely exhausting.

Fortunately, sampling for algae species in the laboratory is a well-established technique, not requiring Jiang Yuan’s direct operation. After going back for some sleep, the next day... he continued with centrifugation and sampling...

From the second day on, Jiang Yuan had to start identifying the algae samples.

This was a task he alone could do; others wanted to help but couldn’t, and all they could do was watch.

So, in the yard of the Luojin City Criminal Police Detachment, only the fourth squadron remained, wandering around like lost souls.

The squad leader, looking out from his office, suppressed the urge to drag these people out to work.

While other teams were nearly overwhelmed with tasks, the fourth squadron still had individuals with time to kick around the grass. If it were before, it wouldn’t have mattered, but now, with new findings and leads in the Sea Bottom Skimming chef case, it was a time when more hands were needed.

The squad leader thought about this and then left his office, unconsciously gravitating towards the laboratory—no particular reason, just to greet Jiang Yuan, see if he liked his current working environment, and find out when he intended to need more personnel...

Upon reaching the laboratory, the squad leader sat in the reception room, waiting. The operating room inside required decontamination, making it a hassle to enter, and the squad leader couldn’t be bothered to go over.

He himself was also getting ready to ponder what to say when they met.

As he was thinking this, he saw Jiang Yuan coming out from inside.

"Doctor Jiang." The squad leader felt inexplicably guilty and quickly stood up.

Jiang Yuan was a bit surprised to see the squad leader here, but upon encountering him, said, "I was just about to report to you. The point where the body entered the water has been identified upstream at Fulin Town. We have checked the local missing persons and confirmed the victim’s identity. He was a local resident who lived at home with his parents and sibling in a self-built house. There’s an issue with his family; they reported him missing too late. At the very least, they know something."

The squad leader nodded continuously as he listened.

This situation could be referred to as having major suspicions.

"By the way, did you come here for something?" asked Jiang Yuan as he took off his lab coat.

The squad leader took it from him, hung it up neatly, and said with a smile, "Nothing in particular, just checking to see if you needed any help with anything."