Novice Forensic Doctor

Chapter 278: Chapter 275 Blood Pool Under the Floor_1

Mr. Zhao didn’t say much and quickly went downstairs, while Zhou Ning helped Liu Yongxin crawl down from inside the attic.

Once downstairs, Mr. Zhao had already run back, gasping for breath.

"I asked, the small two-story building in front of the Xu family’s house was built in 2000. The couple lived downstairs, and the daughter and son’s rooms were upstairs."

The three of them went up to the second floor. There were two rooms upstairs, with the one in the middle obviously being a guest room. Zhou Ning walked into the western room where a large photo hung on the wall showing a family of three looking very happy. The child was around two or three years old, sturdy and strong.

At a glance, Zhou Ning recognized that this woman was Xu Dan. He looked around at the room’s furnishings: a wardrobe, dressing table, bed, desk, and bookcase. All these pieces of furniture were made of pine wood, their color having turned to a light brown. Such furniture turning this particular color indicated it had been around for quite a while.

As for the floor, it was the old-fashioned type made of pine wood, with some areas having large gaps, appearing as if they had cracked after drying. Zhou Ning opened the investigation box, found the Luminol reagent, and began to carefully spray it onto the cracks in the floor.

Of course, he didn’t overlook the corners and the baseboards, and he sprayed almost everywhere except under the furniture. Then, Zhou Ning got up and drew the curtains, darkening the room.

A glow was particularly noticeable from within the gaps of the floorboards near the bed.

Zhou Ning was delighted and shouted outside the door,

"Come here!"

Liu Yongxin and Zhao Xinli quickly ran to the doorway and, seeing the blue-green glow on the ground, they turned their intense gaze towards Zhou Ning.

"Did you find blood traces?"

Zhou Ning nodded.

"Around the year 2000, pine wood floors were popular due to their low cost and being eco-friendly. However, the drawback is that they can have significant gaps when they dry out. No matter how clean the surface is, blood traces can remain in the gaps, and I guess there will be even more underneath the boards. Help me move the bed out."

Mr. Zhao walked happily to the window, pulled open the curtains, opened the window, and shouted below, ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

"Bring a few people up here to move some stuff."

Shortly after, the movers shifted the bed out and directly placed it in the neighboring guest room. Under the bed, Mr. Zhao had already sprayed the Luminol reagent, and indeed, the reaction was even stronger there.

Mr. Zhao was excited.

"Does this mean we can ask Director Xu to arrest Xu Dan now?"

"Tell the fingerprint collection team to stop," Zhou Ning shook his head and moved to the bed that had been shifted out from Xu Dan’s room next door. He lifted the bedsheets and saw a bloodstain on the mattress underneath. He had noticed it when they were moving the bed. Using a blade, he cut it out and stuffed it into an evidence bag for Mr. Zhao, then said,

"Let’s discuss it when the evidence is conclusive. However, call Director Xu and tell him to ask the neighbors if Xu Dan had any close friends or classmates who might have run away from home ten years ago." freewebnovel.cσ๓

"Run away from home?"

Liu Yongxin gave Mr. Zhao a kick and glared at him.

"Haven’t you been talking too much nonsense lately? Just do what you’re told. If there’s no matching DNA in the missing persons database, then it means the family doesn’t think the person is dead. Analyzing this way, doesn’t it leave us with running away from home as the only option? Of course, there’s also the possibility of eloping, but that’s rare at this age."

Realizing this, Mr. Zhao hurriedly dialed Xu Dayuan’s phone and carefully relayed all the findings here, as well as Zhou Ning’s words, to Xu Dayuan.

After hanging up and returning to the room, Mr. Zhao walked over to Zhou Ning’s side with his hands on his hips.

"Director Xu said since we suspect there may be more blood traces underneath, we should tear up the floorboards."

Zhou Ning stood up. Indeed, even though they had detected the fluorescent reaction here, actual extraction would be tricky. The best option was to remove the floorboards.

"Let’s call the village committee people up here to serve as witnesses, then you take photos. Have someone find a hammer and start prying up from where my foot is right now."

Mr. Zhao hurried to make arrangements, while Liu Yongxin glanced at the spot on the floor where the fluorescent traces had been found.

"If the murderer is Xu Dan, how could she, alone, have killed and dismembered someone and hidden the body in that attic? How old was Xu Dan ten years ago?"

Zhou Ning looked at Xu Dan’s age in his notebook. If it was ten years ago, Xu Dan would have been 18. He paused for a moment.

"Ten years ago, Xu Dan was 18 years old; she took the college entrance examination that year. The victim was also 18-20 years old. Could it have been her classmate?"

Liu Yongxin also came over, finding the analysis increasingly plausible.

"Let me think; when I came over yesterday, I was smoking downstairs, and I heard some villagers chatting. It seems like both Xu Qing and Xu Dan were promising. Both went to Rudong No.1 Middle School. One got a high score and got into Hua Normal University, and the other got into Lu Finance and Economics University.

However, when Xu Dan was in school, she seemed to be a bit of a concern. The teacher had called in her parents, apparently for early romance. I didn’t hear the specific name clearly, but it seemed they mentioned the third of the Chen family from Qianti Village."

Before he had finished speaking, a few police officers and people from the village committee walked in.

Mr. Zhao took people to dismantle the floorboards, while Zhou Ning and Liu Yongxin dragged a person from the village committee to the doorway of the adjacent room.

"I need to consult with you about something. The year Da Man’er from the Xu Family took the college entrance exam, was she in a relationship? Did her family know?"

Two people from the village committee arrived, one man clearly looked like the village head, while the woman seemed to hold a position like the head of the women’s league. They glanced at each other, and after a moment of silence, the woman lifted her head and said:

"After Da Man’er from the Xu Family finished her exams, there was a banquet at their house, and I remember a few young people came over, saying they were her classmates. One of the parents even came along, and someone recognized him. Later on, I heard people say that he was the village head from Qianti Village, surnamed Chen, called Chen Zhonghe. His third son, Chen Ningyu, and Xu Dan were classmates."

Zhou Ning looked at Mr. Zhao, who understood that Zhou Ning wanted him to call Director Xu. He turned and quickly dialed the number.

Shortly after, Mr. Zhao returned and nodded toward Zhou Ning.

"Director Xu will be over shortly."

Zhou Ning didn’t say anything more and packed up the police terminal he was holding. He had just searched for Chen Ningyu’s identity information, and indeed there was such a person. However, his ID card was an older version, and the photo was too blurry to see clearly; one could only make out that he had a crew cut and regular features. The details were too vague to compare.

He turned to go upstairs, and Mr. Zhao said a few words to the people from the village committee before hurrying upstairs. By that time, part of the upstairs floor had already been lifted, revealing two bloodstains about ten centimeters in diameter. Mr. Zhao leaned over to take a closer look.

"Bloodstains have already been found. I’ll take samples first, and then I’ll look for tools to lift up the whole floorboard."

The people also nodded in agreement, brought crowbars and forthrightly lifted all the floorboards under the bed, cleared the broken pieces on the ground, and the bloodstains below were completely exposed.

A large expanse of bloodstain traces had already fully permeated the cement floor. Mr. Zhao approached and directly dug out a piece of cement soaked with bloodstains. He also took many samples from the surrounding area and then stood up with a piece of floorboard in his arms.

He wiped away the sawdust from the top and handed it to Zhou Ning for inspection.

"Here’s a mark that looks like it was left by an axe. The murderer must have killed and dismembered the victim right here. They probably put something on the ground to catch the blood but this one axe cut still left a mark on the floorboard."

At that moment, a flurry of rapid footsteps came from downstairs, and Zhou Ning and Mr. Zhao hurriedly turned around. Sure enough, Xu Dayuan had arrived. Seeing the disarrayed room and the bloodstains on the ground, his eyes lit up. He stepped forward to enter but was stopped by Liu Yongxin, with Zhang Sannian also craning his neck to look over.

"Don’t come in here, let’s go to the next room to talk. Only the three bedrooms on the second floor of the Xu Family are covered with pine wood flooring. This type of flooring is not very hard and has a high moisture content, which makes it prone to crack easily. The blood likely flowed into the cracks and seeped down. Otherwise, it truly wouldn’t be easy to leave traces."

Zhang Sannian came over, his face full of excitement.

"I’ll have someone bring back the brother and sister from the Xu Family for questioning by the Criminal Police Brigade right away."

Xu Dayuan waved his hand. It was clear that Zhou Ning had called him over for another discovery, especially since on the phone, they also mentioned a village head from Qianti Village.

"Hold on, let’s get Zhou Xiaozhou to come out and discuss the situation first."

Mr. Zhao proceeded to clean up the scene and take photographs, while Zhou Ning had already come out. He knew Xu Dayuan was eager, especially after finding some clues; he was impatient.

Even before entering the next room, on the corridor, Xu Dayuan already asked:

"Zhou Xiaozhou, hurry up and tell us about the results of your investigation here!"

Zhou Ning shared the findings from the attic and the scene, not leaving out the fact that Xu Dan was missing three fingerprints, making comparisons impossible.

"That’s the situation. The room belongs to Xu Dan, and there are photos of Xu Dan’s family of three on the wall. Moreover, according to the village committee members, Xu Dan did very well on her college entrance exams in 2002 and had a scholar’s banquet at home. Chen Ningyu from Qianti Village might have been romantically involved with Xu Dan.

I think Xu Dan could have been keeping an eye on our movements here. Even if we question Xu Dan now, we don’t have much evidence. We can first investigate this Chen Ningyu of the Chen Family. Additionally, I need someone to send the murder weapon and the woven bag that wrapped it for examination.

If a young woman is the murderer, she might have been injured during the process of dismembering the body. We need to take a chance on luck, because at this scene, we simply can’t find incontrovertible traces left by the murderer. Even if Xu Dan is the murderer, we can’t prove it."

Xu Dayuan nodded; he absolutely trusted Zhou Ning’s judgment.

"I’ll have Liu Yufei keep an eye on Xu Dan and stay out of sight for now, but she can be taken into custody at any moment. Mr. Zhao, stay back to handle the follow-up work and find someone to send the evidence for examination. You mentioned that Xu Dan was missing the entry of three fingerprints. This could be related. Zhou Xiaozhou and Mr. Liu, come with me to Qianti Village.

Collect the samples that need collecting. If the DNA match is successful, we can confirm the identity of the deceased. However, how could the family not know to look for their child who’s been missing for so many years?"

Zhou Ning didn’t respond, as he also couldn’t explain it. After all, these were all speculations, and things had to be confirmed after meeting the Chen Family.

...

A few minutes later, the group arrived at Qianti Village with guidance from the members of the Renjiazhuang Village committee. The police cars drove directly to the Qianti Village committee.

As they disembarked, many villagers gathered around, as the arrival of so many police cars piqued their curiosity, though no one dared to approach and inquire.

Mr. Bai was quick to act; he entered and shortly afterward brought out an elderly man with gray hair. The old man held reading glasses in one hand, his face full of confusion and fear.

Zhou Ning squinted his eyes, focusing on the elder. That’s right, it was fear. His lips were slightly trembling. In theory, Mr. Bai had only inquired about who the village head was, without revealing the purpose of their visit. Why such a reaction from the elder? Could it be...

Xu Dayuan stepped forward to shake hands, and the old man extended his hand with a smile.

"May I ask who you are?"

"You’re the village head Chen, right? I’m Xu Dayuan from the Qindao Criminal Police Brigade. I’d like to discuss a matter with you. Are you available right now?"