Chapter 284 - 282: A New Case Appears
Chapter 284: Chapter 282: A New Case Appears
By the time they reached the town nearest to Yanjing Village, the sky was already growing dark.
Yanjing Village was only a couple of miles away.
The temperature here was a little low. Chu Xingrou shivered the moment she stepped out of the car.
Duan Wenrui said, "Let’s grab a bite here and stay in town for the night. It’s too far to go back and forth to Chang City."
Su Miaoyi looked toward Lu Zhishen.
"You guys go ahead. I can’t eat." Lu Zhishen felt his stomach would be rejecting food for the next few days.
The words had barely left his mouth when Duan Wenrui’s phone rang. He stepped away to answer it.
"Sister Miaomiao, I feel a little nauseous, too. I don’t want to eat either," Chu Xingrou said.
The bumpy ride had made her carsick as well.
"Let’s find a convenience store and buy something. We’ll head to Yanjing Village first. You can have a snack if you get hungry," Su Miaoyi said.
"Okay."
"There’s been another murder in Yanjing Village," Duan Wenrui said, walking back over to them. "The local police are already on the scene."
All three of them looked at him.
"To the village first," Lu Zhishen said.
Everyone immediately got back in the car.
The road from town to the village was in better condition, and they arrived in no time.
They drove directly to the crime scene.
The crime scene was up on the mountain.
The car couldn’t go any further, so they had to continue on foot.
The group walked up the mountain.
The mountainside was dotted with fruit trees, with some maple trees growing alongside them.
A body was hanging from one of the maple trees.
The sky grew darker. They had to walk closer before they could make out the body.
It was a woman who looked to be in her sixties.
She was hanging from the tree by a hemp rope, cinched tight around her neck.
There were copious bloodstains on her mouth and the front of her clothes.
Su Miaoyi put on gloves, performed a preliminary examination of the body, and then had it taken down.
Duan Wenrui had brought a few officers, but not a medical examiner.
They had come to the village to inquire about the details of a case; no one had expected another murder, so they hadn’t brought a medical examiner.
The medical examiner would have to come all the way from Chang City, which would take a significant amount of time.
So Su Miaoyi conducted a preliminary external examination.
Lu Zhishen, Chu Xingrou, and officers from the branch bureau and local precinct were searching the area and questioning the villagers who were on the mountain.
A crowd of villagers had gathered a short distance away, watching.
Some were crying out in grief.
Su Miaoyi and Duan Wenrui were examining the body.
"Time of death was approximately twelve hours ago," Su Miaoyi said.
Duan Wenrui looked at her, then hurriedly jotted it down in his notes.
Su Miaoyi felt the victim’s neck, then pried open her mouth. "Her tongue is gone."
Duan Wenrui was shocked. "Just like in Gao Hui’s case?"
Su Miaoyi remained silent.
This victim’s mouth hadn’t been sewn shut.
’Can’t rule out a copycat, or that the MO is just a coincidence.’
"My preliminary judgment is that the cause of death was asphyxiation by strangulation," Su Miaoyi said. "But we’ll need a full autopsy for confirmation."
"No! You can’t do an autopsy! No autopsy!" a man suddenly cried out.
Su Miaoyi and Duan Wenrui both turned to look at him.
The man was sitting on the ground. "I don’t consent to an autopsy! I don’t consent!"
Duan Wenrui and Su Miaoyi exchanged a glance before he walked over to the man.
As he walked away, Su Miaoyi took the opportunity to examine the victim’s neck again, but she didn’t see anything unusual.
She checked other parts of the body as well, but still found nothing.
"Sister Miaomiao, look at this," Chu Xingrou called out.
Su Miaoyi walked over to the tree trunk and looked where Chu Xingrou was pointing her flashlight.
Written there in blood was the number "4".
"Four?" Lu Zhishen stared at it for a moment.
"Then where’s three?" Chu Xingrou asked.
Su Miaoyi turned her gaze to Duan Wenrui.
Duan Wenrui was in the middle of questioning the man.
The man was the victim’s husband.
It wasn’t uncommon for family members to object to an autopsy. After a sudden tragedy, even with the desire to catch the killer, they couldn’t bear the thought of their loved one being dissected.
After getting the gist of the situation, Duan Wenrui had other officers handle the detailed questioning.
"Captain Duan." Su Miaoyi called out to him, gesturing for him to look at the number on the tree.
Duan Wenrui was stunned once more. "The same killer from the case three years ago?"
"It’s too early to say," Lu Zhishen said.
"Four? Then where’s three?" Duan Wenrui was also puzzled. "There haven’t been any murders in this village in the last three years."
"What about other villages? Or a wider search area?" Su Miaoyi suggested.
Duan Wenrui fell silent for a moment. "I’ll have to check on that. But if there was a case related to a ’3’, it should have been filed. The case from three years ago was a huge deal; the investigation was extensive."
This implied that if the cases were indeed connected by numbers, the case for "3" had likely occurred but had not yet been discovered.
This thought occurred to Su Miaoyi. "Have there been any missing persons reports in the last few years?"
"The branch bureau hasn’t received any missing persons reports from this town." Duan Wenrui called over an officer from the local precinct to confirm.
"There was one person who went missing who was never found," the precinct officer said. "It’s been over a year."
"Pull up the file for me," Duan Wenrui said.
"Okay."
Su Miaoyi returned to the body and examined the victim’s back.
People dressed lightly this time of year. She shone her flashlight down the collar to get a look at the victim’s back.
Then she scanned the surroundings once more.
All around were tangled branches and weeds.
A small pool of blood lay on the ground beneath where the body had been hanging.
There was a number on the tree.
Beyond that, there were no other significant findings.
They were in the process of collecting footprint evidence.
The ground had been trampled by many people walking back and forth.
The ground was covered in weeds, many of which had been flattened.
Lifting any clear prints would be extremely difficult.
"Who found the body?" Su Miaoyi asked.
No one answered.
Meanwhile, Duan Wenrui had gathered more information. "It was him," he said.
Su Miaoyi looked toward the man sitting on the ground.
The victim’s husband.
"His name is Tian Wu, he’s sixty," Duan Wenrui said. "The victim is Wan Shuang, fifty-eight."
"Wan Shuang went up the mountain to work in the morning, and Tian Wu left for his job at a construction site. Both of them left home before dawn."
"That early?" Su Miaoyi asked.
"The temperatures here are lower in the morning and evening," Duan Wenrui explained. "Once the sun is up, it gets too hot this time of year. So, everyone comes up the mountain to work early, while it’s still cool."
Su Miaoyi nodded.
Duan Wenrui continued, "Tian Wu got home a little after 5:00 p.m. and called Wan Shuang when he realized she wasn’t there. His calls went unanswered. He waited at home until after 6:00, and when she still hadn’t returned, he went to ask around at the homes of a few neighbors she often visited."
"They all said Wan Shuang hadn’t visited them today. Tian Wu started to worry. He went to the village committee and had them make an announcement for her over the public address system, telling her to come home, but she still didn’t return. So Tian Wu went up the mountain to look for her. Worried, some other villagers followed him up the mountain shortly after to help with the search."
"According to the villagers, by the time they got up the mountain, Tian Wu was so terrified he was just sitting on the ground, completely speechless."
Su Miaoyi glanced at Tian Wu.
He was still sitting on the ground, his expression vacant.
"A villager made the call. We and the local precinct arrived at about the same time." Duan Wenrui looked around. "A lot of villagers showed up. Initially, someone wanted to take the body down, but another person said to preserve the scene, so they called the police first. But the scene is hardly preserved—it’s covered in footprints."
Su Miaoyi was silent for a moment. "I just took a look at the livor mortis," she said. "The body was moved post-mortem. We’ll need the autopsy for a definitive cause of death, but it may not be asphyxiation by strangulation."