National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 701 - 644: The Abandoned Bloody Garment

Chapter 701: Chapter 644: The Abandoned Bloody Garment

The next day.

Jiang Yuan cooped up at home, making zongzi with the villagers.

In Jiang Village, the meat-filled zongzi are the specialty, boasting generous portions of both meat and filling, with meticulously selected rice. Overall, they’re rather tasty. Especially the newly wrapped meat zongzi, once freshly boiled, they’re truly fragrant and rich in flavor.

Compared to the northern zongzi, renowned for their light and refreshing taste, southern-style zongzi tend to pursue a more complex flavor profile. In this respect, there seems to be a reversal of characteristics between the north and the south.

Moreover, some of the elderly in the village also make plain alkali zongzi, similar in content to the pure rice zongzi of the north but with a slight salty taste and no sugar added, looking like lustrous white jade; pure with the fragrance of rice. These alkali zongzi taste the best when they’re just out of the pot, sometimes even outshining meat zongzi, but once stored, their quality drops significantly, requiring a particularly skilled hand to make.

With the same ingredients and exact same wrapping and steaming method, the zongzi made by a few grandmothers taste exceptionally sweet and aromatic, a bit magical when you think about it.

Even Jiang Yuan can only enjoy these alkali zongzi during specific times of the year. Past those days, even if the village grandmothers were willing to make them, the taste just wouldn’t be the same, and their stored counterparts couldn’t even be discussed in the same breath.

After having his fill at home, when it was time to work, Jiang Yuan and the folks from Jiang Fuzhen loaded a pickup truck full of zongzi and headed back to the criminal police brigade’s office, distributing them to the members of both the Investigations Unit and Jiang Yuan’s Accumulated Case Team.

The officers were all pleased, and Jiang Fuzhen was even happier, saying, "Your team is really great, if you want to gift something, you can actually give it away. In our village, there are so few people, and exchanging gifts among each other is no fun at all."

"Next time you have extra beef from slaughtering a cow, send some over to us," Jiang Yuan had no intention of saving for his father.

Jiang Fuzhen chuckled, "When I slaughter a cow, if you can be in Ningtai County, I’ll send some over to you."

All Jiang Yuan could do was smile; the request wasn’t demanding, but it did have its barriers.

After visiting Wu Jun’s office to greet him, Jiang Fuzhen and Wu Jun shut the door and busied themselves with their own work.

Back in his office, Jiang Yuan turned on his computer, opened WeChat and email, and casually started replying to messages from various places.

The world of criminal investigation is one family; when a detective he knew ran into a problem, they would message him for advice, and Jiang Yuan would offer a simple answer if he could.

Common issues like fingerprints, traces, or problems encountered during autopsies—solutions that would take Jiang Yuan just a few seconds might save others days of effort.

And as Jiang Yuan’s Accumulated Case Team moved across the province, cracking cases with increasing success, their smooth progress was also related to Jiang Yuan’s good relationships.

Many cases involved other areas, including the current case of the wall-building maniac, where Chen Wanjia was suspected of committing crimes in multiple locations, and police needed to investigate in various places. Knowing some local detectives in those areas could make the job much easier and more effective.

In addition, some criminal police and technicians in online groups, perhaps due to the layer of camaraderie from being in a group, spoke much nicer to each other on the internet.

Jiang Yuan particularly enjoyed speaking up in the "Qinghe Tech Sharing Group," occasionally answering questions in the group. Because of this, not only did the local technicians from Qinghe join the group, but many more from Shan Nan Province as well.

This time was no different. After replying to a few private messages, Jiang Yuan took out a few questions that had been saved in the tech sharing group and addressed them one by one.

With Jiang Yuan’s arrival, "Qinghe Tech Sharing Group," which had been somewhat quiet, instantly erupted into activity:

Li Rui: [The time has come again for a mighty display.]

Wang Yue: [With a spark of Jiang’s three-point true fire, our tough cases this year will probably all be solved.]

Usually Dispirited: [Let’s be reasonable, one case per person should suffice, don’t get greedy for multiple cases. If you want several, go find Huang Qiangmin.]

Wang Yue: [Hahahaha, that’s hilarious, he’s out of our league.]

South Conquers North Defends: [Speak respectfully. Director Huang offers one-stop solutions, whereas we share techniques.]

While reading the chat log, Jiang Yuan matched a fingerprint on the side.

After privately sending it to the original owner, the group immediately reached a climax:

Wang Yue: [Thanks to the big guy for his help, Ningtai’s Jiang Yuan, your powers are limitless!]

Jiang Yuan: [No need for thanks. The fingerprint was a bit smudged, but that’s my specialty.]

South Conquers North Defends: [Captain Jiang is renowned for image enhancement across the country.]

Jiang Yuan: [That’s because many experts skilled in image enhancement aren’t familiar with and don’t participate in our criminal investigations.]

South Conquers North Defends: [Valid point. In fact, getting more professionals involved in our criminal investigations is pretty important...]

The conversation took off from there as everyone chimed in on the topic.

Jiang Yuan went on to analyze two tool marks, and finally matched another fingerprint, contributing to four cases in total.

He no longer insisted on matching every fingerprint—the group requests and the ones during fingerprint campaigns were different after all. The fingerprints from the campaigns were usually key to identifying criminals, often critical ones like blood prints.

Requests for fingerprint assistance do not have that many stringent requirements, and different levels of police departments have their own judgements about the importance of a case.

For Jiang Yuan, if he could relatively easily process a fingerprint, he would attempt to do so; if it were too complicated, he wouldn’t insist. For truly important fingerprints, police departments at all levels naturally had other channels for assistance.

While sipping tea and busying himself, Jiang Yuan’s phone rang.

Jiang Yuan picked it up to see: Liu Cheng!

This captain of the criminal police brigade from the Beijing Bureau had much more time to make decisions compared to the captains of the Shannan Province. One can only say the Beijing Bureau had more rules.

Jiang Yuan took another sip of tea before pressing answer, smiling, "Liu, have you arrived in Beijing?"

"I have, I have, transportation these days is really convenient, the flight is just three hours," Liu Cheng had followed him in Changyang City, seeing through two murder cases. From Liu Cheng’s perspective, being greatly shaken was just the beginning.

Thus, in recent days, Liu Cheng had been thinking day and night about Jiang Yuan.

After exchanging pleasantries, Liu Cheng chuckled, "Jiang Yuan, are you alone in the office?"

"Ah, yes," Jiang Yuan replied.

"Director Huang is not around?" Liu Cheng probed further.

With a smile, Jiang Yuan said, "He’s not. If you have something to say, just say it."

Clearing his throat, Liu Cheng started with his prepared persuasive speech, "Hey, I was thinking, you’re young, don’t you want to try your luck in a big city? Let me tell you, just our branch..."

"Liu Da, I’m a countryside brat," Jiang Yuan interrupted.

"Even countryside brats can have ambitions," Liu Cheng retorted.

"Would your branch allow me to participate in cases in other cities?" Jiang Yuan asked, flipping the conversation on Liu Cheng.

Liu Cheng stuttered, "That... there’s always a way, and moreover, our branch has so many cases we can’t finish them all. Do you know how many people we have in our branch now? Over 4,000 on the books, and more than 3,000 off the books. A huge unit of over 7,000 people, can the support they offer you even compare with a county bureau?"

"Not going to the branch," Jiang Yuan cut off Liu Cheng’s argument.

"The city bureau rarely gets directly involved in operations..."

"Director Liu, I just like working on cases purely," Jiang Yuan emphasized with extra weight on ’purely’.

Liu Cheng was taken aback for a long while, then sighed helplessly. When it came to purity, the central powerhouse couldn’t compare.

As a second option, Liu Cheng again led with a chuckle, "Let’s not talk about that, I’ve got a case for you, you’ll definitely be interested."

"Go ahead."

"This case, it’s been over a week now, was discovered quite by chance. Oh right, does Shannan have those charity boxes for clothing donations? The big metal ones."

"There should be some in Changyang City. I think I’ve seen them in the neighborhoods there," Jiang Yuan spoke of the place where he lived.

Liu Cheng gave a grunt of acknowledgment and continued, "The clothes inside these boxes are actually recycled and sold, but that’s not the point. Let me tell you about the discovery. Our retiree auxiliary police officer, who took up this job after resigning and makes a decent income, found out—8 days ago—that among the clothes in the box, there were two pieces that were washed bloodstained garments."

"If it were someone else, they might have overlooked it, but our former auxiliary police officer had dealt with murder cases before. He could tell something was off just by the smell, and after getting some chemical reagent to test it, it was confirmed to be human blood."

"There were a total of two pieces, one top and one pair of pants, women’s clothing."

It couldn’t be helped, Jiang Yuan was genuinely interested and couldn’t help but ask, "No body was found?"

"No body was found, and moreover, there were no related case reports that day." Liu Cheng added meaningfully, "The clothes were well-preserved, a hoodie and a pair of jeans, both had signs of use, not brand new, they weren’t washed very clean, like it was done in haste."

If the hoodie had its hood up, it meant that unless the victim was attacked in the face and killed, the probability that the clothing belonged to the perpetrator was higher.

On the other hand, violent incidents involving women, especially murder cases, have a relatively low occurrence rate. The sudden appearance of a hoodie suggesting that the perpetrator might be a woman...

Jiang Yuan asked, "The clothes and the pants, how do you determine that they belong to a woman?"

"Both the clothing and the pants are from female brands’ women’s collections, this year’s new models on sale, with a feminine design, and roughly women’s sizing..."

Jiang Yuan clicked his tongue, "As expected of the Beijing Bureau..."

Liu Cheng laughed, "Ha ha, with this said, have you agreed?"

Jiang Yuan also laughed, "I’ll talk to Commissioner Huang first."