Free Web NovelChapter 228: Chapter 225 How is this such a coincidence?_1
Mr. Zhao and Mr. Yang opened the passage and waved at Zhou Ning from the second floor.
"I’ll go up and take a look too," Zhou Ning said.
Xu Dayuan finished chatting with Mr. Liu, put on shoe covers, gloves, and a mask, and joined them.
The metal handrail of the stairs had been removed, leaving bare steps covered in thick dust with visible footprints, nearly all marked with signage, indicating that evidence collection was complete. They went directly to the second floor via the investigation mats.
The structure of this small two-story building was common in the Qindao area, with three rooms on the first floor—two small side rooms and the largest living room in the center, with a bathroom and kitchen on the north side. Upstairs were three south-facing bedrooms side by side.
The two arrived at the room at the far end of the east side and upon entry, they could hear the continuous clicking sound. Inside, in the northeast corner, lay a corpse.
There were obvious stab wounds and blunt force trauma on the head, chest, abdomen, and legs, the face completely collapsed, and multiple fingers on both hands had varying degrees of breakage and defensive injuries, as did the arms.
Blood was everywhere on the walls and floor—splatters, cast-offs, drops, smears, all forms of bloodstain patterns were present.
The abdomen of the deceased was bloated, with signs of putrefaction such as marbling and blisters, and parts of the skin and muscle on the forearm had sloughed off.
Mr. Zhao and Yang Xuetong stood up; Yang Xuetong had collected samples of pooled blood and blood drops from the scene, while Mr. Zhao checked the photos again to ensure nothing was overlooked before nodding to Zhou Ning.
"A set of women’s clothing was found at the scene, folded neatly and placed on two bricks on the southwest side. A large cardboard box was lying south of and under the body, and underneath the box, I found a baseball cap, which should be white but is now soaked with blood. As for the judgment, I’ll leave that to you after you see it."
Zhou Ning nodded. It seemed that with more cases under his belt, Mr. Zhao’s abilities improved rapidly. Not only was he composed and calm, but he also executed his work with considerable thoroughness.
"I’ll take a look at the body," Zhou Ning said.
Zhou Ning crouched down close to look over the body from head to toe and also carefully examined the area around the pool of blood. When he looked up, he noticed that the ceiling also had many bloodstains.
Thankfully, it wasn’t summer, or flies would be swarming the scene, complicating matters vastly beyond a mere giant’s observation. Holding up his cellphone flashlight, he illuminated the dead person’s nostrils, mouth, and temples.
Of course, Zhou Ning also unfolded the deceased’s clothes, after which he finally stood up.
"The deceased’s hair color is chestnut-brown, but there is about one centimeter of white hair near the roots, sporadically scattered. Both hands have defensive wounds, and the neck has a cut that damaged the trachea and carotid artery, but it didn’t sever them.
A cursory look at the head, chest, abdomen, and thighs reveals about seven or eight stab wounds, with those on the thigh inflicted after the victim had fallen, as evidenced by marks left by the weapon on the floor tiles below.
The face was smashed with an irregular blunt object, likely a brick. The killer’s blows were powerful and filled with hatred, disfiguring the victim’s face, suggesting that the perpetrator knew the victim well.
Preliminary estimates place the victim’s age between 35-45. The hair was dyed a month ago, likely a gradient chestnut-brown at a salon. The clothing was removed voluntarily, with no signs of tearing; it’s unlikely that we’ll find traces of the killer on them. freewebnσvel.cѳm
The victim was between 165-168 cm tall, wore size L clothing, and was not frail. The tips of the fingers were cut off, and the teeth were smashed, occurring after the face had already been destroyed.
I suspect that the victim’s teeth were distinctive, and the killer, knowing the victim, tried to prevent the body from being identified by disfiguring the face, cutting off fingertip pads, and smashing the face."
Zhou Ning squatted down again, and Yang Xuetong had already approached, handing over the tweezers without being asked.
Prying open the lower jaw of the deceased, Yang Xuetong silently took over as Zhou Ning looked again inside the mouth. Raising an eyebrow, he picked out a broken tooth and stood up.
"Tetracycline teeth!"
Everyone drew closer as Zhou Ning held up the tooth, showing a grey-yellow color and significantly smaller than a normal tooth. ƒreewebɳovel.com
Xu Dayuan nodded; at his age, he was familiar with tetracycline teeth.
"As a child, I saw tetracycline teeth quite often. They are indeed rare now, but they can be used as an identifying feature. Come on, give me a rough estimate of the time of death and hurry up with the autopsy. Don’t you also have a bunch of leaders from Huining Province waiting?"
Zhou Ning looked up at Xu Dayuan. How many tasks was he assigning him in one breath?
Not even a production team’s donkey got worked like this.
He took a deep breath and sighed in resignation.
"Given the state of the body, it’s not easy to determine the time of death; it can only be approximate. After all, it’s winter now, and the degree of decay, showing just marbling, suggests the time of death to be about a month ago, as the temperature has only risen in the past week.
However, in the stack of clothes belonging to the victim, there are no heavy coats or down jackets, just a wool skirt, thin fleece tights, and short boots. This makes me think the victim met someone here during the day, close to noon, since that’s the warmest time outdoors when the sun shines.
The victim likely left personal belongings in the car, or rather, they didn’t plan to stay long, so they didn’t wear a coat. But this analysis conflicts with the neatly folded stack of clothes," Zhou Ning said.
Originally Xu Dayuan hoped to get some clarity from Zhou Ning, but although he received some information, the explanations only confused him further.
Meeting someone in such a desolate place, wearing such thin clothing, and a month ago would have been around New Year’s—the coldest days in the Qindao area.
With the cold wind blowing fiercely, and the highest daytime temperature only reaching 7-8 degrees Celsius, how could someone strip bare and fold their clothes neatly in such cold?
"Indeed, all of this is a bit inexplicable. If it were summer, it could be understood, but it’s not impossible the victim was coerced. Anyway, proceed with the autopsy quickly and then restore the victim’s face, so at least we can identify them and move on with the investigation."
Zhou Ning raised his hand and then continued:
"There’s another thing, the scene was too clean. There were no blood footprints, which should be present given the injuries consistent with resistance, stabbing, and slashing. There were only pools of blood on the floor, but no footprints from the victim or the murderer."
Xu Dayuan furrowed his brow once more. Great, another mystery. He knew Zhou Ning was saying this out loud for him to hear, so he didn’t chime in.
Mr. Zhao let out a sigh.
"First day back at work after the holiday, and they’re not cutting us any slack, huh? Starting off with a slam dunk—does this even leave us a chance to live? Oh right, isn’t Mr. Xia and the others busy receiving those leaders? What about the facial reconstruction?"
Zhou Ning shook his head and waved his hand at Xu Dayuan.
"Leader, have someone come to move the body."
...
An hour later.
The body was laid out on the autopsy table, surrounded by at least twenty people in white lab coats, any one of whom seemed more authoritative than both Mr. Pang and Mr. Peng. Mr. Zhao looked towards Zhou Ning.
He noticed that Zhou Ning seemed unaffected, still with his head slightly bowed, eyes fixed on the body. As the spiral X-ray finished scanning, a real-time image had already appeared on the large screen hanging opposite the autopsy table.
Mr. Zhao couldn’t hide his envy; he clutched his camera tightly, following Zhou Ning’s finger, and pressed the shutter from time to time.
After viewing the images, Xia Momo seemed somewhat stunned.
Those surrounding them each let out a sharp intake of breath, and some even blurted out a profanity.
"Hiss, damn, isn’t this shattered to pieces?"
Zhou Ning saw Xia Momo’s worried glance. He paused for a moment, discarding those messy thoughts, and walked straight over to look at the bone analysis results from the scan.
The particularly small fragments could not be identified, so, according to the imaging technology analysis, the victim’s facial bones were in 112 pieces. This almost challenged the computational capacity of the software, as the most fragments they had dealt with before were 79 pieces from a female victim whose face was smashed with a wrench in the New Year’s Day well-dumping case.
Back then, Xia Momo had struggled with several attempts before finally completing the task. Afterwards, they had upgraded the system to solve the remaining issues.
"No worries, let’s give it a try. If it doesn’t work, we’ll find another way."
"Alright, let’s give it a shot."
Such words calmed Xia Momo down. She grabbed the mouse and directly scanned all the collected bone fragment information, then started the reassembly. Everyone in the autopsy room remained silent, all eyes glued to the big screen.
The repair did not happen in a flash but went through multiple attempts. Watching the fragments tremble and jitter, Zhou Ning knew they were calculating the correct positions.
But after only about twenty seconds, Zhou Ning began to lose faith. Just as he started to think they might fail this time, the computer before him beeped twice.
To the right of the screen, an assembled skull image appeared. It was just this one step, but the onlookers had already begun to applaud in astonishment.
However, Xia Momo didn’t stop her actions and glanced at Zhou Ning.
"Can you tell me the victim’s age, height, weight, and hair color?"
"Age is estimated between 35-45 years old, height 167 centimeters, weight around 120 pounds, hair color chestnut brown."
Zhou Ning spoke calmly, and as he did, the onlookers kept glancing at the autopsy table, seemingly comparing it with Zhou Ning’s judgement.
That feeling made Zhou Ning quite uncomfortable.
It felt more like a performance assessment where one had to meet the standard to receive a certificate of completion. He bowed his head slightly, wishing for Xia Momo to hurry up with the facial reconstruction so that they could proceed with the search.
A moment later, Xia Momo produced several composite images, naturally differentiated by age.
Seeing such a miraculous operation, Mr. Liu was astounded. The composite images looked very much like real photos, in contrast to the traditional concept of electronic portraits, impressing even Doctor Lu, who willingly answered questions without showing impatience, as he was excellent at mingling and unfazed by awkward conversations.
Xia Momo proceeded with the household search. In fact, there wasn’t much difference between the four images, only some variation in the apparent ages.
Shortly, the search engine came to a halt, displaying relevant information behind it.
Fang Wenjie, female, divorced, born January 22, 1974, from Tongshan District, Qindao Area. Residential address: 22-4-1201, Shangliu Jiayuan, No. 123 Fuyuan Road, Beizhai Street, Tongshan District.
Beneath the household registration information, the woman had a clean record, no parents or children, just her own details. However, upon seeing her place of employment, Zhou Ning’s brow furrowed, and Mr. Zhao drew in a sharp breath.
What a coincidence?
"Ludong Guanghai Pharmaceutical Group?"
Sensing Mr. Zhao’s surprise in his voice, Liu Yongxin glanced at Zhou Ning, then asked with curiosity:
"What’s the matter, is there something wrong with Ludong Guanghai Pharmaceuticals?"
