National Forensic Doctor-Chapter 995 - 931: Time to Splurge

Miao Ruixiang arrived quickly in Chang Le City, carrying a backpack full of notebooks and driving a Jin A-license Elantra.

After reporting, Miao Ruixiang was led to a corner building in the Criminal Police Brigade.

"Oh, you have a dedicated forensic building too?" Miao Ruixiang envied a little, at least it saves travel if not going to the funeral home, and the takeout would taste better.

The leading criminal policeman shook his head, "Director temporarily arranged a room for you, currently, it can only be used to store bones and the like."

"Ah, temporarily arranged for storing remains?" Miao Ruixiang was surprised, "Is it always like this here in Chang Le?"

"How could that be, it’s just for the convenience of Captain Jiang."

"Is that so?"

"Can’t possibly make Jiang Yuan go to the funeral home every day," said the leading criminal policeman naturally.

While nodding, Miao Ruixiang screamed inwardly, thinking: This treatment is too good, too unfair, when can I have such treatment?

The smell of the bodies is quite strong, making it difficult for those unaccustomed to use the room where the bodies were stored for a long time, including psychological factors. Therefore, even policemen who aren’t squeamish about bodies, prefer not to have autopsy rooms in the same building.

Hence, forensic doctors who want a convenient autopsy room need to have a forensic building within the city area at the very least.

This is evidently a very high requirement. Miao Ruixiang, who now sometimes goes to crime scenes, albeit under the guidance of Master Wu Jun, still ends up in the basement of the funeral home, laboriously working there and afterwards eating the less than satisfactory meals — if anyone thinks school cafeteria food is bad, they definitely lack a point of comparison!

"You can take this elevator directly upstairs," the leading criminal policeman guided Miao Ruixiang to the elevator.

Miao Ruixiang: "There’s an elevator?"

Criminal Policeman: "Can’t realistically expect Captain Jiang to carry the bodies himself."

Miao Ruixiang: "You people in Chang Le really know how to take care of things."

Criminal Policeman sighed, "Our Director Lang wishes that every penny not spent could yield the value of a dollar."

After entering the elevator, Miao Ruixiang then realized, this signified huge expectations for Jiang Yuan and even himself. Just didn’t know, if such expectations weren’t met, what Director Lang would do...

Thinking so, Miao Ruixiang couldn’t help but smile.

Ding.

The elevator doors opened to reveal a large glass window on the side of the elevator corridor, scattering the meticulous sunlight inside.

Across the large glass, there was a room with double doors, the temporarily arranged autopsy room.

Such a sunlit autopsy room was something Miao Ruixiang had never seen before.

Miao Ruixiang, stepping into the sunlight, saw Jiang Yuan studying a femur bone at a long table, not far from a pile of white bones where two technicians in lab coats were busy, and across them stood Qinghe City Bureau’s forensic doctor Wang Lan, evidently also reinforced here.

"Reporting," Miao Ruixiang called out from the doorway.

"Come in." It was Wang Lan who spoke. Seeing it was Miao Ruixiang, she smiled again and said, "Jiang Yuan, your junior has arrived."

"Ruixiang," Jiang Yuan looked up with a smile, "Was the journey smooth?"

"Pretty good, just a few hours’ drive..."

"This corpse’s skull, I’ll leave it to you to perform the Skull Restoration Skill." Jiang Yuan had already examined the skull, but personally, he didn’t want to do the restoration, so he passed it to Miao Ruixiang as a practice opportunity.

Miao Ruixiang quickly agreed, cradling the skull in his hands and carefully moved to the side, murmuring, "There’s some damage."

"Many bones are damaged, otherwise why would Jiang Yuan call us here." Wang Lan, being a forensic doctor from Qinghe City Bureau and supporting the whole city, usually came when a confirmed case emerged in a county and the local forensic doctor wasn’t strong enough, was too busy, or just as an added precaution. However, having to leave the city was rare, and Wang Lan took it very seriously.

We cannot lose face in Chang Le City.

Miao Ruixiang looked at his own skull with a grave expression. The Skull Restoration Skill was already difficult enough, and it had to be performed on a damaged skull, which really seemed to exceed his control.

Wang Lan noticed his hesitation and said calmly, "Just start working on it. If you can’t do it, just ask Jiang Yuan for help. Having a senior brother of your level and not using him, you’d have to make an appointment in Beijing when he gets older."

Miao Ruixiang chuckled twice, feeling truly fortunate to have such a senior brother.

"Alright, let’s get to work. Jiang Yuan brought us here to press on the work," Wang Lan waved her hand and turned back to compare the bones.

Her and the other two forensic doctors’ main task was to categorize the bones washed out from the fish pond—the corpse was missing some bones, like two ribs, some toe bones and so on. It wouldn’t have been surprising, except there were also some other animal bones in the fish pond, including bones of pigs, sheep, and some chicken and duck bones.

Jiang Yuan guessed that these bones might have come from diseased pigs and sheep. A detailed analysis and some tests on these bones could perhaps confirm this, but it was not necessary. Before a breakthrough in a high-cost homicide case, it was impossible for the team to spend energy on such minor details.

Primarily, the bones of pigs and sheep could mislead the forensic doctors’ judgement, and Jiang Yuan still preferred to recover all the victim’s body for a comprehensive judgement.

For this, they had no choice but to bother Wang Lan and others to squat here and slowly sift through these large bones.

Besides, to utilize Forensic Anthropology in investigating cases, it is necessary to prepare samples of the bones, just like ordinary forensic autopsies require samples of internal organs and muscles.

These are beneficial to the investigation and necessary for subsequent re-examinations, but they are all quite tedious. Jiang Yuan had to do them himself in the past, but now he could choose to let others do them.

Moreover, focusing on Forensic Anthropology can also help progress the case.

As the pinnacle of forensic techniques, Forensic Anthropology is quite challenging and burdensome to apply. Generally, those forensic doctors who are considered skilled in Forensic Anthropology are likely only at the beginner or intermediate level of level 2, similar to Image Enhancement techniques, both being technically demanding and resulting in relatively low absolute expertise among specialists.

Therefore, only strong police departments are really able to apply Forensic Anthropology in criminal cases. Most smaller local departments, when encountering a skeletonized body, their first reaction is to frown.

In cases like Chang Le City, the police department saw the difficulty from the start and decided not to try finding the origin of the corpse through Forensic Anthropology, focusing instead on the deceased’s personal belongings, which is the most common approach used by police teams.

It must be said that sometimes, this approach really works well.

Even Jiang Yuan, if he could ascertain the origin of the corpse through the deceased’s personal items, he wouldn’t bother with the large bones.

"How’s it going?" Lang Heng barged in eagerly.

"No findings for the time being," Jiang Yuan wrote a few strokes in his notebook and sighed.

"Not a single discovery?" Lang Heng immediately showed a disappointed expression with a bit of regret. After all, his own forensic doctors were much cheaper.

Jiang Yuan shrugged, "The environment in the fish pond is quite complex. It’s still difficult to determine the cause of death..."

"But all we have now is the body..." Lang Heng couldn’t help but look at his own forensic doctors.

The younger forensic doctor Xue Weihua said, "Director Lang, what Captain Jiang said about not having findings is different from our standard."

"What do you mean?" Lang Heng was puzzled.

"Captain Jiang, tell Director Lang about the current analysis results so he doesn’t worry himself to death," whispered Xue Weihua.

"I don’t recommend proceeding with an investigation based on the current results. We still need the traditional route, which requires ample forces; we may as well wait another day until some data reports come out, then we can do more analysis," Jiang Yuan spoke their course of action and unfolded the notebook in front of him again, "The victim, a male, 38 years old, height 173 cm, weight about 80 kg. He had previously suffered a severe lateral impact, with rib fractures and ankle bone fractures. He liked to eat sunflower seeds..."

Lang Heng’s expression faded from intense to mild, then mild to intense, flushing as he looked at his own forensic doctors: "All this and you don’t report?"

"Captain Jiang said he could deduce further..." The two forensic doctors from Chang Le City also felt helpless.

Lang Heng laughed, "No need, Captain Jiang, with your current conclusions, I could deploy several hundred people and most likely get a result."

"Sharpening the axe will not delay the chopping of firewood; let’s wait another day, I’ll refine it a bit more. Later, we may even find some more bones and narrow down the scope further," Jiang Yuan spoke realistically. Deploying a team of hundreds wouldn’t be adequately organized in just one day.

Lang Heng, unable to wait, hurriedly said, "It’s alright, you continue refining, I’ll lead the team out to start investigating..."

"Deploying hundreds of people, it’s going to cost quite a bit," Jiang Yuan was somewhat surprised.

Lang Heng hesitated for two seconds, then gritted his teeth, "Save where we should, spend where we must, let’s not wait anymore!"