National Forensic Doctor-Chapter 982 - 918: The Bell Tolls

"Heard there’s a case that’s hit a dead end?" Huang Qiangmin rushed over as soon as he heard Liu Jinghui had arrived.

"The second body from last time, that female corpse, we still haven’t confirmed the source of the body." Jiang Yuan stood up from behind the computer, stretched his back and continued, "This case is rather troublesome. The body’s decay wasn’t too severe, and after creating the sketch, it turns out the facial recognition came up with nothing. In this scenario, even Skull Restoration Skill is useless."

When Jiang Yuan dares to form the Taihe Working Group, Skull Restoration Skill is a major trump card. Theoretically, as long as the skull is intact, Jiang Yuan can reconstruct the deceased’s probable face before death through Skull Restoration Skill. With the widespread application of facial recognition technology in the country, the difficulty in determining the origin of a body is perhaps only one percent that of a regular police department.

Forensic sketching at LV6 is an additional enhancement to Skull Restoration Skill. The applicability of Skull Restoration Skill is stronger; it’s fine as long as the head remains, regardless of whether the body is decayed or not, and being reduced to a skeleton actually makes it easier. The advantage of forensic sketching is speed; unlike Skull Restoration Skill, which can take weeks of work, a quick few strokes can produce a sketch in ten minutes to an hour. Moreover, the accuracy of these sketches is higher than that of Skull Restoration Skill, and they have a higher success rate when applied to facial recognition."

However, right at the start of theTaihe Working Group, there was a body that couldn’t be recognized, which was somewhat unexpected for Jiang Yuan.

By contrast, Huang Qiangmin felt it was normal, and chuckled, "It’s very common for facial recognition to fail; if you use a drawn sketch instead of a photo, of course the computer won’t recognize it."

Jiang Yuan’s forensic sketching LV6 has been around for a while, but it’s not been used much, which Huang Qiangmin also just barely understood.

Jiang Yuan shook his head firmly and said, "My forensic sketching is well-practiced, almost at the level of footprint identification. It shouldn’t be unrecognizable."

While speaking, Jiang Yuan casually picked up a digital tablet and with a few swift strokes, sketched Huang Qiangmin’s current appearance. It wasn’t lifelike, akin to the feel of an ID photo, but with complete facial features—nose, eyes, ears—neatly captured.

Huang Qiangmin looked on, speechlessly, before then responding with seriousness.

Having been a criminal investigator for 30 years, he had seen countless ID photos and knew exactly what features to look for at a glance.

Similar in type were criminal photographs, taken by photographers who specialized in capturing criminals and deceased persons. In the era before digital cameras, each photo had to perfectly capture facial features, which required special practice. As for whether the photos looked good or not—before beautifying effects were allowed on ID photos, how many truly looked good?

The Jiang Yuan-drawn Huang Qiangmin certainly wasn’t handsome, but that was because Huang Qiangmin himself wasn’t handsome either. However, this photo, if used on a wanted poster, would be absolutely problem-free.

This is to say, Jiang Yuan’s sketching skills were indeed top-notch.

Just like Liu Jinghui, Huang Qiangmin quickly updated his understanding of Jiang Yuan’s skills and gradually frowned, "Even with this level of detail, you couldn’t get a match?"

Then, Jiang Yuan reported his analysis and decisions made with Liu Jinghui. Huang Qiangmin was now the Commissioner and while he still held the position of captain of the criminal police, he seldom interfered with criminal cases. Officially, he left the different teams to their autonomous problem-solving, but in reality, he had given maximum authority to Jiang Yuan.

Otherwise, if the Ningtai County Bureau were to appoint a new captain of the criminal police, they would have to go through a period of adjustment with Jiang Yuan. The key issue is that Jiang Yuan might not be willing to work in tandem with a newcomer, and for such a small county bureau, keeping someone as significant as Jiang Yuan was not easy. At least after Chief Chai left, the higher-ups had adopted a more laissez-faire approach.

"I basically agree with your judgment. Do you have enough people for home visits? Do you need support from other squads?" This was also the main reason Huang Qiangmin came to understand the situation.

"We have Captain Wu’s first squad helping out, so for now, it’s manageable," Jiang Yuan answered.

Huang Qiangmin nodded, then said, "I will reorganize the personnel. This kind of visitation can easily expand."

In reality, it would expand. If the visitation went well initially, the case might be solved quickly, but if it didn’t go well in the beginning, and if no suspect or evidence was found where it was most likely, the area of visitation would have to be extended. This part can be understood as drawing a circle: as the radius increases, the area of the circle expands exponentially.

Jiang Yuan nodded, feeling a bit frustrated.

After all, he was still a technician, even his shoulder patch was the grey one used by technical police officers. That was his forte. As for home visitation, that was more a traditional skill of detectives—the so-called proof of investigative ability through the calluses on their feet.

"If there’s no breakthrough in the short term, we might have to deploy two squads," Jiang Yuan paused, then continued, "I shouldn’t have much to do in the next couple of days. If there’s no progress on this drowning case, I can assist other squads with their cases. Let me know which squad needs help."

Apart from the newly established Taihe Working Group, there were no other high-profile cases locally in Ningtai. Saying that the doors weren’t closed at night might be an exaggeration, but apart from spontaneous incidents and crimes of passion, high-quality, premeditated crimes, and professional criminals were very rare.

Under these circumstances, several detective teams were chasing after old cases. Jiang Yuan had cleared murder cold cases up to 30 years back, but among the ’big eight’ serious crimes, there were still many old cases for the other seven types. Some of them involved grievous injuries, sexual assault, arson, explosions, and were quite severe, worth tracing. It was just that they were also more difficult to solve.

With Jiang Yuan bearing the role of a resource support, he used to work more on significant cases outside of town, and when he occasionally returned, he couldn’t just pick cases at will. This time was no different; surely there was a squad out there hot on a case, needing technical help from Jiang Yuan.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long before Liu Wenkai showed up.

"Heard you’re switching shifts here?" Liu Wenkai arrived with two people, bringing notebooks and case files, and cheerfully approached.

"What?" Jiang Yuan didn’t understand at all.

"Commissioner Huang means, ringing your bell doesn’t cost you now, just compensate for more time later," Liu Wenkai said seriously, adding, "It’s said that this isn’t illegal."

"Did I say that?" Huang Qiangmin walked in.

Liu Wenkai hurriedly said, "The not illegal part, that was just my wild guess!"

Huang Qiangmin: "Is the key point whether it’s illegal or not?"

"If it’s not illegal, how can it not be key?" Liu Wenkai retorted.

Huang Qiangmin gave up: "Let’s talk about the case."

"Oh, on our side, there’s an unsolved robbery case. The incident took place 12 years ago when a suspect robbed the owner of a fruit supermarket during closing time, taking more than 7,000 yuan in sales and several packs of expensive cigarettes before fleeing on a bicycle. The owner reported the crime, and the police conducted a quite detailed investigation..." Liu Wenkai rushed over, so as he introduced the case details, he laid out photos, quickly covering the table.

The police at Ningtai County Bureau were very proficient in how to utilize Jiang Yuan, mainly just that there were no available time slots.

Knowing that he could use Jiang Yuan for two days, Liu Wenkai naturally brought over all the equipment he could.

Jiang Yuan just looked at each photo one by one.

With the drowning case still in the interview phase, he had no leads for the moment. As for the current unsolved robbery, the previous special investigation team conducted a thorough inquiry, but the criminal also prepared very meticulously. From the few surveillance photos, one could see that the criminal used a hat, sunglasses, a mask, a scarf, and gloves, not exposing any part of themself.

The investigators also guessed that the suspect might have tattoos on their body, and they investigated a large number of ex-convicts.

Jiang Yuan pondered, thinking from his perspective, there was nothing wrong with the previous investigators’ approach. The criminal was very professional during the robbery, not only fully equipped but also with a clear escape route. The robbery was also swift and efficient; wielding a baton and a blade, he smashed the supermarket’s counter in a couple of swings, threatened the owner to hand over money while helping himself to the cigarettes.

The entire process couldn’t be said to be seamless but having experience in crime was certain. This kind of skill is very practical and can’t be practiced in advance to get the right feel.

"How about it, any ideas? Do you need our cooperation with anything?" Liu Wenkai was very proactive. Even though it’s their own technician, since Commissioner Huang said time needs to be compensated, Liu Wenkai naturally didn’t want to waste a minute.

After thinking for a while, Jiang Yuan said, "We can only try one thing at a time. From the approaches you’ve taken, I think we can start from the traces of tools."

He often chose his investigative plan from his technical skillset. Of course, that’s how technicians think; facing the same issue, someone good at Java uses Java, one proficient in C uses C, and someone good at passing the buck prepares the buck in advance. It’s all the same principle.

Following the tool trace approach, Jiang Yuan used the traces left at the scene to sketch the shape of the baton and knife used by the suspect.

With the sketches made, he then searched for them in the tool trace database.

With this search, several photos of the tools or tools involved in the case appeared on the screen.

Jiang Yuan compared them one by one but had only flipped through a few when he noticed that the front end of the baton in one photo was somewhat distinctive.

On a closer look, it turned out to be from a case that had already been closed, a brawl case. During the clash, one party used a baton while the other used a chair, resulting in both parties getting a beating...

"Bring these two individuals in for questioning," Jiang Yuan called up the information from the brawl case and looked at the height and age of the individuals involved, feeling even more certain.

Liu Wenkai then received two printed sheets and looked at the time, still a bit surprised: "That came out so fast?"

"Lucky, the first method I tried gave results," Jiang Yuan said as he waved Wang Chuanxing over, "I remember, the drowning victim had multiple antemortem injuries, likely from a violent beating."

"Can that be traced to a specific tool?" Wang Chuanxing was listening nearby and immediately drew a parallel.

Jiang Yuan shook his head, "The beating was probably done with hands, but after being hit, she might have bought some anti-inflammatory or pain relief medication. It’s possible she didn’t necessarily go to a major hospital; a nearby clinic could also be a possibility."

"A female who had been beaten within a month, the clinic staff should have a deep impression," Liu Jinghui had been brooding in thought, now suddenly sat up straight.