72: Chapter 71 Better to Return 72: Chapter 71 Better to Return Traveler’s Bridge is on the eastern side of Qinghe City.
The river here is not wide, but it is quite picturesque, and the straight beam bridge accommodates both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
With both river and mountain views nearby, it is a nice recreational spot within Qinghe City.
By the time Liu Wenkai and the others arrived, it was already 10 p.m.
The street lights lit up the bridge surface, which in the rainy weather seemed to lead to an unknown destination.
The distant mountains were lush but their heights were indiscernible, as were their ridges and valleys, only the lights faintly outlining some contours of the mountains.
Liu Wenkai was the captain of the Ningtai County Criminal Police Brigade Second Squadron, and both the First and Second Squadrons of the Ningtai County Criminal Police Detachment are responsible for solving major cases on a daily basis.
As a seasoned detective captain in his forties, Liu Wenkai’s daily routine revolved around various complex cases.
He drove over the Traveler’s Bridge and then drove back, having completed a basic observation.
With only Liu Wenkai and Zhang Enze in the car, Liu Wenkai did not bother to conceal his thoughts, “Neither side is a bustling area.
It’s quite possible that someone could jump off without being seen.”
“The same applies if someone were pushed,” added Zhang Enze.
Liu Wenkai nodded, then sighed, “If it were homicide followed by dismemberment, then this wouldn’t be the primary crime scene.
It lacks the conditions for dismemberment.
After all, it’s a place with people coming and going, not convenient.”
“So, if we can find Zhou Lei on the CCTV from two or three days ago, we can preliminarily conclude that he committed suicide,” Zhang Enze reasoned.
“Pretty much,” said Liu Wenkai, counting on his fingers, “The deceased, Zhou Lei, was penniless, had no savings, no house, no debts, and as it seems now, no friends or relatives, no stable job, and his girlfriend had also broken up with him.
That basically eliminates the common motives for murder such as money, passion, or revenge.”
Zhang Enze’s cheeks sank as he listened and unwittingly looked out at the rain, commenting, “That’s pretty tragic.”
Liu Wenkai quietly grunted in agreement, and with a flick lit up a cigarette, turning to look the other way, “Sometimes I think it’s pretty meaningless.”
Zhang Enze fell silent, and it wasn’t until the cigarette was finished that he cracked open the window a bit, flicked the cigarette butt out, and then asked, “How do we explain the dismemberment?”
“There are boats on the river with propellers,” Liu Wenkai said wearily, “It’s nothing new, ships on the Tai River shuttle back and forth through several rivers.
If they come across a body, they might not report it.”
“Then let’s go check the surveillance footage,” said Zhang Enze, not bothering to discuss searching for the ships.
If it were a murder case, for the sake of the integrity of the investigation, they would normally ask every boat that had passed through the Tai River in the past few days, but if it were a suicide, this would just be an unnatural death case.
To then invest a large amount of police effort over a long period would not be so easy.
Without a word, Liu Wenkai took out his phone, made a report to Huang Qiangmin, then, braving the rain, drove to a restaurant near the bridgehead to ask the owner for the surveillance video.
With the news from the front line relayed back, Jiang Yuan was quite surprised and specifically went back to the morgue, pulling out the corpse to re-examine it.
The waist section of the body, where it was broken, was relatively smooth overall, but upon closer inspection, the muscle bundles varied in length, and skin flaps on the broken edges indicated that the cutting object was not very sharp.
Jiang Yuan’s lack of experience meant he could not directly and accurately deduce the tool from the state of the body’s fractures.
However, now with the information from the front line in mind, the explanation involving a boat propeller did make sense.
Especially the remaining vertebrae, where the unevenness of the bone breakage suggested a higher level of blunt force.
This was also consistent with the cutting pattern of a boat propeller.
Of course, just by analyzing the fractures, it was impossible to determine that the boat propeller was the sole weapon.
But the knowledge of forensic anthropology also would not rule out the possibility that a propeller was used to dismember the body.
Jiang Yuan examined the body twice in a row, finally letting out a breath.
He changed his gloves and took another set of photographs, then slowly cleaned up the remains.
He washed the autopsy table and the floor with water, then soaked them in bleach.
The autopsy instruments used had to be soaked as well, just for a longer period of time.
Only after tidying up the autopsy room did Jiang Yuan wash his hands again.
It was then that Wu Jun, hands behind his back and wearing a mask, casually strolled in.
“How is it?” Wu Jun asked cheerfully.
“Makes sense,” Jiang Yuan said, washing his hands.
He then asked, “Can’t find the rest of the body?
How should we look for it?”
“I’ve called the counties and cities upstream and downstream to ask if they’ve received the other half, but no news yet.
However, if it was a suicide, the body shouldn’t have gone missing,” Wu Jun paused before adding, “If it really is gone, then we’ll have to reconsider the cause of death.”
Jiang Yuan slowly nodded.
Indeed, if it was a suicide, and the body was severed by a boat propeller, the upper half of the body should have turned up.
Especially with the recent heavy rains, the body couldn’t just vanish into thin air.
Of course, it was also possible that the heavy rains had swept half of the body into the jurisdiction of Ningtai County, while the upper half might be elsewhere.
But as long as no one was deliberately hiding it, it should appear within a few days—in this line of reasoning, the only ones who might hide the body were the vessels that had mutilated it.
However, with half of the body already lost, hiding the upper half seemed rather pointless.
“Alright, stop thinking about it.
In my experience, some things just don’t happen according to logic or probability.
Especially with murder cases, your logic, your odds, they’re all useless.
Murder itself is an improbability,” Wu Jun continued after a pause, “Let’s wait another couple of days and see.”
Everyone had worked overtime in the rain before because a murder case needed to be cracked urgently, trying to capitalize on the golden 72 hours.
Now that it’s almost proven not to be a murder case, there’s really no point in rushing anymore.
Jiang Yuan did what he could and could only clean up the autopsy room and return to the Criminal Police Detachment.
The next day, some detectives brought back the video from the day of the incident.
Jiang Yuan went with Wu Jun to the video office to watch it.
The surveillance video had been sorted; the technicians in the video office simply pulled up screenshots and footage, which easily identified Zhou Lei in the video.
The young, 170 cm tall, 130-pound Zhou Lei alive.
He could be seen exiting a taxi, slowly walking to the bridge edge, lingering, returning to the edge, then step by step moving towards the center of the bridge until he was out of surveillance.
Thus, the suicide was essentially confirmed.
Another day passed before news of the upper half of the body finally came; it was discovered on a reed island several kilometers away.
Jiang Yuan and Wu Jun went to retrieve the body together.
The condition of the body, already so decomposed it was unbearable to look at, made it hard to imagine what it had been like just a few days earlier.
This time, after a simple external examination, they first opened the chest cavity.
The huge left and right lungs seemed to rebound, puffing up from the chest cavity, with indentations from the ribs still visible on their surface.
Jiang Yuan pressed with his finger, leaving a mark, and then pressed with his palm, feeling as though he was kneading dough.
“Aquatic Emphysema,” Jiang Yuan stated simply.
This was an important sign of drowning, caused by the desperate breathing before death, making the drowning fluid, mucus, and air turn into foam, which ultimately gets inhaled into the alveoli.
The time of drowning usually exceeds 6 minutes, a process both painful and protracted, with aquatic emphysema being one of the proofs.
Jiang Yuan made another cut in the lung, and watched as a large amount of foamy drowning fluid gushed out.
Thankfully, the body was already so decayed that the stench was overpowering, almost perfectly masking the odor of the fluid.
At that moment, a shiny orb rolled into Jiang Yuan’s hand:
Zhou Lei’s legacy—Swimming (Doggy Paddle) (LV4)—In the village’s little river, Zhou Lei learned to swim with his friends and became particularly good at it.
He even used his swimming skills to save another friend.
After moving to the city, he found that his best swimming technique became a target of ridicule, so he stopped wanting to swim.
And in the last moments of his life, faced with the turbulent river, Zhou Lei could have chosen to struggle, but why bother?
Why not go to see grandma.
Jiang Yuan let out a deep sigh.
Forensic doctors always see too late, can change too little.
Yet, like ordinary people, they find no time to mourn for themselves, as later people mourn them; those later mourners don’t take heed, thereby dooming yet others to mourn as well.