My Lovely Wife is a Forensic Doctor - Chapter 187
Chapter 187 A Brutal Murder
At the crime scene, Mu Yu saw that the victim’s hands were cut off cleanly and his palms were missing. His body had become stiff and his face was pale as if he had been lying in an ice coffin. Blood red icicles formed at the area where his palms were cut off, and the pool of blood beneath him had frozen.
“W-Where are his hands?” Mu Yu’s voice was shaking due to nervousness.
“Over there.” Rong Jian led her over to the spot where Feng Rubing was squatting at before. She saw a piece of wooden board that was about twenty to thirty centimeters in length and a few centimeters in width, which was likely a leftover material from the construction. Boards like that were seen all over the corner of a wall nearby. However, the only difference was that the board in question was deep red and some ice shards dyed red were scattered on top of it.
“Could these ice shards be…” Mu Yu had a bad feeling about the scene and her heart leaped into her throat but she did not finish her sentence. When she was about to squat down and take a better look, Rong Jian called her from the other side, “Look at this.” An evidence bag appeared in his hand.
She saw a piece of frozen flesh around one centimeter long in the bag. The bones could clearly be seen in the flesh. When she connected it to the missing hands on the victim, she immediately came to a realization. “It’s a severed finger!”
Although she was a professional forensic doctor who had dissected numerous bodies, the sight of the severed finger sent a chill down her spine.
“That’s right.” Police officer Wu Xing responded and waved the other two evidence bags in his hand. “Doctor Mu, look over here. There are a lot of severed fingers around but we haven’t confirmed if they belong to the victim. Anyway, I think that it must be his.”
Mu Yu squatted down and carefully studied the evidence in the box. The more she pored over it, the more anxious she became. She felt that the temperature around her was dropping as if she was standing in the middle of winter without clothes on.
Each evidence bag contained a finger that was cut into several pieces at uneven lengths. The longest was slightly above a centimeter and the shortest was not even half a centimeter long. There were another seven to eight bags containing similar contents in the box.
“Doctor Mu, look. This must be the severed palm.” Wu Xing placed the evidence bags back into the box and took out another bag to show her.
The bag contained a few pieces of flesh drenched in oxidized blood, looking like frozen meat that was taken out of the freezer. Due to the warm temperature in the box, there was condensation around the flesh and the ice started to melt into horrifying blood water. Mu Yu had been feeling cold before but now she started sweating in fear.
From the severed tongue and heart to the severed palm, the murder resembled the style of the vicious murderer from previous cases. It looked like the criminal was out and about again!
As this murder happened at the construction site of the almost completed Qing Tian Shopping Mall, the company would definitely be embroiled in this incident as well. One could only wonder what rumors would befall the company.
“Yu, are you alright?”
She turned around to see Qin Jinhuan and composed herself before shaking her head. Then, she looked at Rong Jian. “Chief Rong, have we identified the victim?”
Rong Jian nodded at her and said, “We’ve ID’d him—he’s a truck driver at a courier company under the Qing Tian Group. The fellow’s name is Li Jianyun, forty-five years old this year, single. He was renting with roommates at Room 305, Block 18 of The Phoenix Gardens.”
It was indeed another Qing Tian employee! Mu Yu took a sharp breath in shock and reflexively looked at Qin Jinhuan, who was frowning and appeared worried.
“How about the time of murder?” He glanced at Rong Jian with a somber expression.
“Between ten thirty last night to twelve at midnight.”
Mu Yu added a question, “Who found him?”
“It was me.” A middle-aged man in his fifties with a small build meekly stepped forth in response. “I am the worker in charge of guarding the materials. My surname is Wang and everyone calls me Wang. It’s been cold lately and stray cats will hide in this building. I’m worried that they would scratch and ruin our materials so I had to patrol each floor from time to time. When I was patrolling at the tenth floor today, I could sense that something was wrong. When I took a look, I found the dead body here and I scrambled out in fear. I gave President Chao a call and he immediately asked me to call the police. Later, I didn’t step foot in here anymore and waited for you guys at the entrance. You are probably up-to-date on the events after that.”
Mu Yu was disappointed when she did not get any clues from Wang’s explanation. Therefore, she joined Wu Xing to look for hints around the crime scene.
“Why did you sense that something was off?” Rong Jian did not notice that Mu Yu had left and continued interrogating Wang. The man pointed at the floor that seemed to be cleaned and explained, “It’s too clean here. Since we’re about to complete this project, we had initially planned to clean the trash over these few days. But the weather was too cold due to the snow and no one wanted to do the cleaning work. Plus, today is the Laba Festival and many workers applied for leave from President Chao yesterday. Since everyone had nothing much to do here on the Laba Festival anyway, the president had agreed to let them off for a few days, asking them to return after the snowstorm. That’s why no one was here to clean up the trash over the floors. It is definitely odd to see signs of cleaning on this floor.”
Rong Jian looked around him and was not surprised by the criminal’s counter-reconnaissance ability and self-preservation tactics. After all, he had dealt with a few murders by the same person. After some thought, he asked Wang, “Who stayed in this building last night?”
“It was just me. Everyone else left.”
“They left? Did they go home? Are the workers local?”
“No. What I meant was that they had left the site. The locals went home and the migrant workers either went around visiting relatives or having fun. I’m single and not interested in any form of entertainment. President Chao also gave me triple the normal pay so I decided to stay.” When Wang saw the change in Rong Jian’s eyes, he suddenly realized that he might have become a suspect. Terrified, he waved his hands and clarified, “I didn’t kill anyone! Although I knew him and played poker with him before, there was no fight between us. No bad blood whatsoever! Even if there was something, I wouldn’t dare to kill a person. I don’t have the guts for it.”
Chao Chenyu reprimanded him in a low voice, “Chief Rong never accused you of the murder. Why are you acting suspiciously?”
Wang was even more mortified at the president’s words. “I’m not acting suspiciously! I really didn’t kill anyone! It was so cold last night and I went to bed at six in the evening. I slept all the way until six the next morning.”
Rong Jian gestured at Chao Chenyu to stay quiet as he continued questioning Wang, “Which floor were you on?”
“The second floor.”
“Did you hear any abnormal movements around here last night?”
“No!” Wang was on the verge of tears. “I shut the door and windows tightly due to the cold weather. I am also a sound sleeper and could not register any movements out there when I was sleeping. If you really wanted to get something out of me, I would say that I only heard the sound of the howling winds. Officer, I have told you everything I know. I have nothing to do with this case. Please investigate fairly!”
“Don’t worry. I just wanted to understand the situation from you.” When Rong Jian saw Wang trembling from head to toe, he knew that he could not get anything more from the worker. After comforting Wang, Rong Jian allowed him to leave.
“Is this the work of the same criminal from the two vicious homicides earlier?” Qin Jinhuan stared at Rong Jian, who shook his head in response. “I can’t be sure about that. We can only know after Yu brings those severed fingers back to the lab for inspection.”
After that, he could not help but let out a long sigh because he knew very well that he only said that to comfort Qin Jinhuan. From his analysis of the crime scene, the murder shared a similar nature to the two cases before. The murderer first knocked out the victim before tying him up and putting tape across the victim’s mouth. When the victim regained consciousness, his hands were cut off brutally by the criminal, causing him to die from hemorrhaging. The vicious nature of the murder and the calmness of the criminal were indeed terrifying.
“There are surveillance cameras on the first floor,” Qin Jinhuan reminded everyone.
“I’ve informed Chief Rong about it.” Chao Chenyu hurriedly replied, “I’ve sent someone to retrieve the footage and I think they will deliver it soon.”
While they were chatting, a man with spectacles ran over to Chao Chenyu and handed him a USB flash drive, which he immediately presented to Rong Jian. “Chief Rong, this is the footage you wanted.”
“Thanks.” Rong jian stored the USB flash drive away carefully and looked over at Mu Yu. He saw that she was busy looking around for any suspicious items at the crime scene with Wu Xing. After that, he asked Qin Jinhuan, “Li Jianyun was the driver of a courier company under the Qing Tian Group. How would a driver like him travel all the way to the construction site of the Qing Tian shopping mall? Did you use the fleet from the courier company to deliver construction materials?”
When Chao Chenyu saw the look from Qin Jinhuan, he immediately replied, “No. We have our own fleet to deliver the materials. Our company and the courier company are separate entities under the Qing Tian Group. We normally don’t work together.”
Rong Jina then questioned, “If so, how would the victim know Wang?”
“That’s because the victim was Miao’s roommate; Miao is the truck driver at our site. Some of the workers here love to play poker, which is a hobby of Li Jianyun. He would come here to play a few rounds with the workers when he was free. That’s why he was very close to our workers,” Chao Chenyu’s assistant, Xiang En, interjected to provide the context.
Mu Yu who was searching for evidence and eavesdropping at the same time froze when she heard the mention of poker. She instantly spun around to face Rong Jian and called out to him, “Chief Rong.”
Rong Jian understood her thoughts and nodded at her. Then, he addressed Qin Jinhuan, “I need to get a full view of Li Jianyun’s work relationships and his financial situation.”
“Sure.” Qin Jinhuan immediately made a call to Wen Zeyu. When he was on the phone, Rong Jian stopped talking to him and started strolling around the tenth floor.
Half an hour later, Mu Yu and Wu Xing brought the collected evidence back to the city bureau. By that time, the main roads in the city center had been reopened for traffic. As for Rong Jian, he hurried to Li Jianyun’s residence to meet up with his colleagues who had headed there before him to collect clues.
When Mu Yu was busy working in the bureau, Qin Jinhuan visited her and brought along lunch, which reminded her that she had not had lunch nor brushed her teeth.
“I’m not hungry. You should eat.” She did not bother to take a look at the dishes. It was not because she was not hungry, but she had merely lost her appetite after seeing those severed fingers and flesh.
“Brush your teeth and eat something.” Qin Jinhuan laid out the food on her table and forced her out of the lab to hand her the toothbrush and toothpaste. However, the moment she took a glance at the braised meat in the lunch box, she felt nauseous and started puking on the spot.
“Are you really pregnant?” Qin Jinhuan hugged her in excitement.
“Pregnant? No, you’ve misunderstood.” It took her a long time to compose herself. While wiping her mouth with a napkin, she explained, “The sight of the braised meat reminded me of…”
“Doctor Mu! Take a look at this!” Wu Xing suddenly yelled in the lab and cut off her sentence.