National Forensic Doctor-Chapter 985 - 921 Difficulty LV6

"Chen Nuan is dead? Impossible!"

In the interrogation room, the victim’s husband, Jin Quan, shook his head vigorously, causing the interrogation chair to rattle loudly.

Meng Chengbiao spoke solemnly: "The body has been found, and a DNA comparison has been done with her family, as well as with the DNA we obtained from your home, both matches were confirmed."

"I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I was still in contact with her last month. It’s impossible that she’s already dead." Jin Quan looked somewhat older, one might assume he was in his late thirties if no ID was shown, his hands were calloused, he clenched his fists tightly, restraining his grief.

Unmoved, Meng Chengbiao asked, "When was the last time you contacted her?"

Jin Quan: "Uh... the 25th of last month."

Meng Chengbiao looked down to confirm the victim’s time of death, identified by Jiang Yuan as the 17th of last month; considering Jiang Yuan’s margin of error in determining time of death, according to Jin Quan’s stated timing of contact, the victim would have already been dead.

This implies that either Jin Quan is lying, or the murderer was using the victim’s phone to chat.

Meng Chengbiao remained calm, whether it was the murderer impersonating the victim, or the murderer pretending to be the victim impersonating someone, he had encountered such scenarios many times before.

Meng Chengbiao simply asked coldly, "You said you contacted Chen Nuan on the 25th last month, through what means did you contact her?"

Jin Quan answered: "WeChat."

Meng Chengbiao: "What was said?"

"We argued a bit, she said she wanted to go work overseas with friends, I told her not to go, but she wouldn’t listen, I always told her not to work abroad, but she wouldn’t listen, I told her I earn enough money, she then said we have too many debts, I said that was not the dowry money, she said it shouldn’t be counted that way..." As Jin Quan spoke of this, he went on endlessly, almost forgetting his own predicament.

Meng Chengbiao didn’t interrupt him, allowing him to vent as he took some notes on the notebook in front of him.

When Jin Quan finally finished, Meng Chengbiao asked again: "Tell me about the days before the 25th, what were you doing? Did you meet with Chen Nuan?"

"I was just working at the construction site, occasionally messaging my wife... We didn’t meet, I asked her to come and work here, but she was reluctant..." Jin Quan’s desire to talk evidently grew stronger.

In Meng Chengbiao’s view, Jin Quan, in such a state, did not quite resemble a murderer. It could only be said that, though he might not be a good husband by mainstream societal standards, the probability of him being the murderer was also not high.

Meanwhile, a police officer assisting nearby lit up Jin Quan’s phone, glanced at several passwords stuck on the back of the phone, swiftly entered them, and then opened WeChat to begin checking the chat records between Jin Quan and Chen Nuan.

The interrogation yielded results significantly related to the verification of evidence. As the saying goes, a single lie requires countless other lies to cover it up. And a series of lies is hard to conceal.

In Jin Quan’s phone, not only were his chat records, but also records of map locations, shopping records, and cell tower records, etc. If investigated thoroughly enough, almost a person’s entire day could be laid out via the phone. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm

With such evidence verification, the lies a normal person can concoct during interrogation are limited; coupled with the intimidating influence of the enforcement agency, ultimately, they mostly confess.

The same experience is also applicable to disputes between boyfriends and girlfriends; using conference recording software paired with sound collection devices like phones can trace back every spoken word, thereby determining truth or falsehood, organizing debates, which might end relationships, but at least the truth would be established.

Monitoring room.

Liu Jinghui’s expression was even more serious and expressive than Jin Quan’s.

From his personal experience, the probability of Jin Quan being the murderer was also not high.

Soon, feedback from various sources confirmed Liu Jinghui’s speculation.

"Around the 17th of last month, Jin Quan was working at the construction site. He was responsible for plastering, part of a team of six, and it’s unlikely to be short-staffed. If short, they couldn’t complete the work."

"The people on this construction site are all from the same hometown, quite familiar with each other. Those plastering work at night and rest during the day, their afternoon time is mostly spent playing cards, rarely leaving the site, making it almost impossible for them to return home."

"Chen Nuan used an identity card that belongs to her aunt, and the phone number was also acquired through that ID. She has an older brother and an older sister, therefore, she has long been unregistered..."

"As of now, it seems that Chen Nuan had been working and living in Chang Le City for a while, during which she changed her SIM card,"

The information gradually gathered formed a chain of evidence.

According to the duck test, when someone buys a ticket to a place, books a hotel in that place, has their cell phone signal appear there, orders food delivery and takes taxis there, and even has surveillance footage confirming their presence in that city at a specific time on a specific day of a specific month and year, it is highly likely that they were indeed there.

Similarly, if someone has various pieces of information proving they were not at a place, then it is highly likely they were not there.

If one wants to think about this issue from a mysterious angle, the possibility of Jin Quan going there and returning secretly to commit murder or Chen Nuan sending someone with a full set of identity-proving materials to Chang Le City is not entirely impossible. However, if such a theory is proposed, stronger evidence would be needed to substantiate it.

Even for Liu Jinghui, who has seen and imagined numerous mysterious cases, based on the current evidence, he also had to conclude: "Jin Quan is likely not the murderer."

"Jin Quan’s parents also did not have the time to commit murder," Jiang Yuan analyzed following the line of personal relationships.

Liu Jinghui nodded: "We have already asked them to confirm the situation of several of Jin Quan’s close relatives and stakeholders, but as it stands, the likelihood of the male side committing the murder is not high. Although the deceased Chen Nuan had conflicts with her in-laws and did not stay at home as Jin Quan wished, she had not proposed a divorce. At this point, the in-laws should also lack sufficient motive to kill."

The purpose of searching for the source of the body is to hope to find the murderer based on the deceased’s personal relationships. In the case of Chen Nuan, the most likely murderer would be the family of Jin Quan.

With this suspect ruled out, the case suddenly returned to a state of confusion.

"What about the Chen Family?" Jiang Yuan flipped through the files.

Liu Jinghui slowly shook his head: "It’s the same situation with the Chen Family; they lack a motive for murder. As the case stands now, the most likely factors leading to Chen Nuan’s death could either be economic or emotional. If Chen Nuan chose to divorce and remarry, based on the current environment, the Chen Family could easily obtain more than two or three hundred thousand yuan in dowry money again, even if they had to return part of the previous dowry, at most only half would need to be returned. In this case, the Jin Family would suffer economically and probably emotionally too, but all these are based on the premise that Chen Nuan proposed a divorce."

Liu Jinghui gently tapped on the files in front of him, continuing: "Chen Nuan, a weak woman, would definitely need her family’s support to divorce. From what we understand in various aspects, Chen Nuan is not a very strong character. During her time living in Yuefeng Village, where the Jin Family resides, her character was quite gentle... and from the information fed back by the Chen Family, Chen Nuan did not talk about wanting a divorce, her dissatisfaction primarily stemmed from economic conditions..."

"The living conditions in the village are definitely not good." Jiang Yuan also knew this very well — before Jiang Village was demolished, it was considered a large village and overall, its living conditions were not as good as those in the Jiangcun Residential Area now.

Liu Jinghui nodded and said, "However, Chen Nuan’s own family conditions were even worse. The dowry collected by her sister when she got married was not even enough for her brother’s wedding, and they were in debt, paid off with the money from Chen Nuan’s marriage. Thus, when Chen Nuan lived at home, her living conditions were even worse than at the Jin Family’s, making her adaptation to Yuefeng Village relatively suitable."

Wang Chuanxing interjected: "From the information we’ve gathered, many people from Yuefeng Village work outside, so people generally don’t like living in the countryside, which probably also affected Chen Nuan. The young couples in Yuefeng Village usually work outside together, but the construction site where Jin Quan worked had high wages but poor conditions, not suitable for couples to work together, so they left Chen Nuan at her hometown, causing frequent conflicts between the two."

"The young lady preferred living in the city. At least, she didn’t want to live with her mother-in-law," summarized Liu Jinghui, "There were conflicts, but not deadly."

"In that case, does this mean the investigation based on personal relationships hits a dead end?" Wang Chuanxing sighed deeply: "If it’s a random killing, then it’s troublesome."

Searching for the source in a drowning case is theoretically similar to disposing of a body; both are built on the premise that the suspect would not undertake unnecessary excessive work. In some senses, a drowning case is actually a case of disposing of a body in water, but the difficulty in tracing the source increases as the body moves with the water currents.

If such a case involves a random killing, then solving it becomes extremely difficult.

Of course, any purposeless random killing is hard to solve, which is one of the reasons why encountering a serial killer requires a high level of alertness.

Jiang Yuan slightly shook his head at this moment, saying, "We indeed cannot rule out random killing, but, I think we should not consider the direction of random killing for now. How was Chen Nuan’s situation at her workplace, and what about the new relationships she established?"

The main physical evidence in Chen Nuan’s case was a body and the clothes on it, which Jiang Yuan had carefully examined. Based on what is known so far, Jiang Yuan didn’t think it possible to identify the murderer through the physical evidence.

In other words, if determined to be a random killing, the case would virtually be shelved. To solve it later on would either require the murderer to commit another crime or previous crimes that could be linked to this one, or additional evidence or witnesses to emerge; otherwise, the difficulty in solving the case would be enormous, perhaps as high as level 6.

Faced with this situation, Jiang Yuan’s approach was naturally to exhaust all other possibilities first.

If no other possibilities remained, only then would he consider the issue of level 6.