National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 728 - 671 I will stretch my left foot first

Chapter 728: Chapter 671 I will stretch my left foot first

The sewage pit on the empty ground of the crime scene was shallow, but covered quite a large area, apparently several hundred square meters.

Four sewage pits in a row, not far from each other, dotted the landscape. The depth at the center of each was between half a meter and a meter, but if the water level rose slightly more, these four pits might just converge into one large pond.

Liu Cheng stood on the bank, his gaze woodenly fixed on the distance. Even so, the pungent odor persistently drilled into his nostrils.

One wonders whether anyone has ever tried such an experiment: collecting the liquid waste produced by their household garbage, placing it in a carefully selected glass beaker, and then sitting in front of the beaker, fanning above it with their hand to force the smell into their nostrils—it was that smell!

"Criminals in Beijing these days, who knows what they’re up to? Either dumping on garbage hills or in sewers, and now we have sewage ponds. Can’t they commit crimes at clean places!" Liu Cheng complained as soon as he opened his mouth, desperate to vent the foul odor that filled him.

Standing in the waist-deep pond, a police officer, hand over hand feeling through the mud, crawled out and cast an irritated look at Liu Cheng: "Liu Da, why don’t you get into the pond? It doesn’t stink there."

"What’s the logic behind the pond not stinking?" Liu Cheng asked, amused.

The mud-covered officer replied, "It’s so slippery in there, all you can think about is the nausea; the stink doesn’t even come to mind."

Liu Cheng chuckled in embarrassment, "You guys are working hard. Once we’re done here, I’ll get the division chief Tao Lu to approve and we’ll eat and drink on public funds."

"Public funds for boxed lunches?"

"No way, it has to be at least... at minimum it should be of hotpot standard," Liu Cheng said, though he wasn’t quite sure. Division chief Tao Lu had always been stingy, and lately, he had been tighter with money than ever, especially with unplanned expenditures, practically embodying the pennilessness of someone plundered by the Ningtai people.

Liu Cheng sighed. If all else failed, there were still some funds in the squad, but if they continued splurging them, there wouldn’t be many hotpot dinners left.

"Liu, into the pond," Cui Qishan urged, having appeared at who knows when, wearing long rain boots and a protective suit.

The head of the Beijing Division squad was about the same rank as a precinct chief in a county city; both were considered the backbone of the force. It was inevitable that they’d have to be the first to wade in. Wading hand in hand through the runoff pond wasn’t just for show, to be captured by the photographer at the side.

The detective squad actually had professional technical personnel for criminal photography. In the past, this position was highly regarded due to the high cost of film and video tapes. When a color roll of Kodak film cost almost half a month’s salary of a police officer, it demanded professional photography.

Now, it was to avoid many disputes. Particularly in homicide cases, high standards were established for photography and videography, which helped solidify evidence and facilitate trials.

It was hard on some of the older police officers—new recruits came into this environment and did their work by the book. The older generation, especially those who liked shortcuts, could only complain now.

Liu Cheng and Cui Qishan waded through the pond, hand in hand.

This was the last sewage pit, spanning thirty to forty meters in length, and twenty to thirty meters in width, almost as big as a swimming pool. The deepest area was half a meter, but most places were only twenty to thirty centimeters deep. Dense unknown organic matter grew within the pond, with mud that could swallow half a lower leg.

While walking, Liu Cheng muttered, "I may have trudged through garbage mountains before, but I must say, this pond is truly revolting."

"The guys from your squad really have it tough following you around."

"It’s just bad luck. Simply bad luck."

"If you guys keep up this bad luck, you’ll become the Stench Squad," Cui Qishan gave Liu Cheng’s team a fitting name, his smile greasy like that of a middle-aged intellectual.

Liu Cheng retorted, "Are you guys the Corpse-Digging Squad?"

Cui Qishan paused, then quickly changed the subject, "Let’s hope we actually dig up a body this time, otherwise who knows how long this damned case will drag on."

As they talked, Liu Cheng pulled his foot from the mud, "Director Tao is really stingy. Couldn’t he have just pumped the water out first?"

"Do you know how much it’d cost to pump out these four ponds?" Cui Qishan grumbled.

Liu Cheng sneered; he didn’t know the exact price, but he was sure it would be exorbitant. The sewage here had to be pumped out by specialized trucks and couldn’t just be disposed of anywhere; it had to be taken to a designated spot for a fee.

Of course, a more convenient method would be to find a couple of pumps and unceremoniously create a pond on the spot, but such an act would not only ruin the crime scene but also be against regulations, making it difficult to publicly justify and likely to draw complaints from nearby residents.

"But in the end, it still has to be pumped," Liu Cheng said. "If we find something, we pump; if we find nothing, we still pump."

"Now that we’ve found something, we can apply for special funding from the division, right?" said Cui Qishan, who could understand the detachment leader’s perspective since he himself hoped to become one in the future.

"It’s not so easy to find things. Do you have any idea how much we’ve had to dig through at the landfill? We could have built a house with all that, and we still haven’t found a thing."

Cui Qishan chuckled, "It’s not that hard. Finding a body is just about keeping on trying. Sometimes you step out with your left foot and you just might stumble upon..."

Cui Qishan paused for a moment, twisted his left foot a couple of times, then reached down and pulled out a piece of bone from beneath.

"Does this look like human bone?" Cui Qishan asked Liu Cheng, who was next to him.

Liu Cheng stared at the large bone, nodded silently, and then spent a good while looking at Cui Qishan’s left foot.

...

The suction truck was humming as it worked.

A group of criminal technicians surrounded the perimeter of the sewage pond, meticulously searching further inside. This time’s examination was much more detailed; many buckets of silt were being dredged up and sifted through.

Tao Lu stood next to Liu Jinghui and Jiang Yuan, looking out over the work from a distance and felt much calmer.

"Although we might have one more body, it should provide us with quite a few useful clues. Hopefully, we can make a breakthrough this time," Tao Lu said with a chuckle. "Director Liu’s plan is quite meticulous."

Liu Jinghui smiled. To be honest, he had seldom left the province before, with his fame circulating only within Shannan Province, nowhere near Tao Lu’s level.

However, deduction doesn’t rely on fame. As long as you use the correct methods and utilize the evidence properly, you can come to the correct conclusion.

"There’s likely more than just one additional body," Liu Jinghui predicted, a touch of pride in his voice.

Tao Lu wasn’t surprised but asked, "What’s the reason?"

"If there was only one additional body, the killer could have simply buried them all. There’s no need to leave one separated."

Tao Lu nodded in agreement, "That’s right, that makes sense."

"If there’s one more body, that makes ten in total," Huang Qiangmin appeared from the other end, speaking with a calm and assertive voice as if he were in his own turf.

Tao Lu chuckled awkwardly, "Just right."

"Mm," Huang Qiangmin noncommittally responded with a crisp nod, his lips curling up at exactly a 22.22-degree angle, discreetly hiding his pearly whites behind his lips.

"Victim number five is a female. We haven’t collected all her bones yet, but we have about eighty percent. For now, it seems her time of death predates victims one, two, and three," Jiang Yuan analyzed on-site, though he didn’t give a specific time of death.

The condition of the bones was complex this time, so his previous comparison was in relative terms. He listed the sequence of death times of the bodies affected by similar environmental conditions in the same area, rather than their precise times of death.

Contemplating, Tao Lu asked, "This body is soaked in water now. What about victims one, two, and three? Have they also been submerged for an extended period?"

"There’s no evidence of long-term immersion. Short-term is... much harder to determine." Jiang Yuan said, then added, "In the case of a body exposed to the elements, being rained on or briefly submerged in water is unpredictable."

Bodies that have been lying for two to three years are mainly dated using forensic entomology, and insects don’t care about water levels to that extent. They’re accustomed to it; some even prefer to lay their eggs in such moist environments.

"What we can be sure of is that victims one, two, and three have all been moved postmortem. This suggests the killer has made multiple trips here," Liu Jinghui’s words made Tao Lu’s eyes light up.

"Go into detail," Tao Lu said.

"The person who frequented this spot over two to three years ago is most likely male, and I think we can narrow it down to that," Liu Jinghui concluded, then continued, "I believe we should first consider their work, and then their personal life. Also, the fact that the perpetrator managed to collect every bone of three people into the graves indicates meticulousness and attention to detail, or perhaps, he didn’t dispose of the bodies haphazardly."

Reminded by Liu Jinghui’s words, Jiang Yuan nodded and said, "The skeletons are intact, with no missing bones, which shows at least they weren’t simply discarded in the open. Otherwise, stray dogs, cats, or birds, like crows, could have damaged the remains."

"The bodies were discarded, but not completely?" Liu Jinghui pondered deeply upon receiving confirmation, trying to imagine what sort of environment that could be.