Reborn in 97, I solved a cold case at the Municipal Bureau

Chapter 372 Searching for the Head (Seeking monthly votes at the end of the month)

Zhou Yi wanted to provide crucial information, but he didn't know how to bring it up.

Although everyone present was from the Third Brigade, and he had just returned from Anyuan, there was no suspicion against him.

But he still didn't know how to explain his "precognition".

He shook his head and said, "Captain Wu, I don't have any ideas. Let's start a full-scale search centered on the first bag of body parts we found. I think the focus should be on trash cans, garbage dumps, and flower bed corners and other nooks and crannies."

Wu Yongcheng didn't notice anything unusual and nodded, saying, "Yes, Zhou Yi is right. In that case, Zhou Yi and Chen Yan, you two will follow Biaozi's arrangements. Biaozi has rich experience in organizing large-scale searches. As for the personnel deployment of the team and the allocation of grassroots police officers, you can handle it yourself."

"Xiao Qiao will stay with me. First, we'll check the list of missing persons that we've already compiled, and second, we'll work with the command center to review recent missing persons reports to see if there are any suspicious circumstances."

Wu Yongcheng clapped his hands and said, "Let's get moving immediately and find all the other body parts as soon as possible. Only by identifying the deceased can we begin the investigation."

"Yes!"

……

May 1st, 7:20 AM.

Zhou Yi stood on the bank of the Nansha River, the place where the bag of body parts was found last night.

According to the on-site investigation, the bag of body parts was not retrieved from the river by fishermen as in the previous life, but was washed ashore and stranded, where it was discovered by passersby.

This is normal; as time changes, the person who finds the bag will naturally change as well.

But the location where the body was dumped remained unchanged: the Nansha River.

Jiang Biao and Chen Yan walked along the riverbank, one to the south and one to the north, and looked around. Jiang Biao returned to his original position and said, "I plan to find a salvage team to come over, and then we will do a net-trapping operation downstream."

This operation was the same as in the previous life, but the result was still no gain.

“Brother Biao, I don’t think it’s necessary,” Zhou Yi said.

"why?"

Zhou Yi remembered that in the case files of the previous life's major case, Wu Yongcheng had put forward a view after the initial salvage operation failed.

The reason is that among the eleven locations where body parts were found, only the bag retrieved from the Nansha River was in the water; the others were in hidden corners such as garbage cans or sewers.

Wu Yongcheng believes that the first bag found should also be the first bag from which the body was disposed of.

When the murderer disposed of the body, he probably thought the bag would sink directly to the bottom, but it turned out that the bag did not sink, or it would float to the surface after sinking.

One characteristic of the Nansha River is that although the surface of the water appears calm, the current is actually quite fast.

After dumping the body in the first bag, the murderer realized that things were not as he had imagined, so he abandoned his plan to continue dumping the body in the river and instead disposed of it in the trash cans and garbage dumps by packaging it in smaller packages.

A piece of meat weighing about one pound, wrapped in a black garbage bag, was not conspicuous in the trash can.

Without scavengers, sanitation workers who regularly collect garbage will not carefully rummage through the trash; they will simply transport it back for processing.

Therefore, this point remains unchanged in this lifetime.

Moreover, the method of cutting up corpses in this life is different from that in the previous life. The individual human tissue pieces are smaller and lighter. Even if the total weight remains the same, the buoyancy will be greater when they are thrown into the water, which is why they are washed ashore and stranded.

Zhou Yi explained this logic to Jiang Biao, saying that dumping the body into the river might have been a mistake by the murderer, and suggested that manpower be focused on searching the trash cans.

Jiang Biao thought it made a lot of sense and immediately adopted it.

Subsequently, a large number of police officers from the Criminal Investigation Division arrived one after another, and Jiang Biao began to expand the search outward from the location where the body parts were found.

At the same time, all local police stations in Nanming District were notified to organize police forces to conduct a thorough search within their respective jurisdictions, and the police stations were required to keep the search and targets strictly confidential.

Only then did Zhou Yi realize that the only job he had "participated" in in his previous life was arranged by Jiang Biao.

"Why don't you two each lead a team, and we divide up the areas?" Jiang Biao said.

Chen Yan nodded.

But Zhou Yi shook his head. "Brother Biao, I haven't been working for long and I don't have much experience in searching. I'm afraid I can't lead the team. Maybe I can take a look by myself and find something."

Zhou Yi's original intention was that it would be easier for him to act alone and find other body parts, especially in a certain sewer in Daguan Street.

In my previous life, Lu Xiaoshuang's head was there.

If nothing unexpected happens, the other body parts will be found gradually during the normal large-scale search today and tomorrow, and he doesn't need to interfere.

Only the deceased's head was discovered because the sewer was clogged.

Jiang Biao misunderstood, thinking that Zhou Yi was still bothered by the joke in the previous office, and said with a smile, "Zhou Yi, I was really just joking this morning."

Zhou Yi knew he had misunderstood, so he quickly said, "Brother Biao, don't misunderstand. I'm not that petty. I just really don't have experience. Don't affect everyone. After all, everyone in the team is my senior."

"Okay, then you can do whatever you want. If you hadn't told me, I would have forgotten that you haven't even been working for a year yet."

……

Half an hour later, Zhou Yi stood at the intersection of Daguan Street. This street was considered a well-known restaurant street in the area, with old-fashioned restaurants of the small, unassuming type on both sides.

The area usually has a high volume of foot traffic. After the victim's head was discovered, the police checked and questioned all the shops on the street, focusing on whether they found any suspicious individuals.

Because a deceased person's head isn't like a piece of meat in a garbage bag, so inconspicuous.

Unfortunately, not only did they find nothing of value, but there were even instances of them deliberately misleading the police.

The reason is simple: they want to use the police to intimidate or even punish people they have grudges against.

The key point is that this kind of situation is not uncommon. The most outrageous case is that a waitress confidently reported her boss to the police, saying that he killed someone in the kitchen and even took the dead person's head out and threw it away.

The investigators were taken aback and immediately took the restaurant owner into custody. A large number of police officers then cordoned off the restaurant and conducted a large-scale on-site investigation, but found nothing.

During the final interrogation, the waitress finally admitted to lying, saying she harbored resentment towards her boss.

The reason for her hatred was absurd: she secretly took two chicken legs to give to her son, but the boss found out and said a few words to her, which made her hate him.

But the truth is that although the boss criticized her at the time, he still let her take the chicken leg away.

What's even more absurd is that this happened more than a year ago.

The boss had long forgotten that he had even given the woman a raise during that time.

But the woman held a grudge and never forgot it.

After learning the truth, the police wanted to hold the woman legally responsible, but she felt that the police must have been bribed by her boss and were deliberately trying to harm her.

There are countless similar cases.

One can only sigh helplessly, realizing that human nature is indeed a very complex thing.

Besides the lack of eyewitnesses who spotted suspicious individuals, another issue concerns the manhole covers used for sewage discharge.

At the time, the police investigated the structure of all the sewers in and around Da Guan Street and found that these sewers were not originally intended for sewage disposal, but for drainage.

No one knows when it started discharging sewage.

All I know is that many shops on Daguan Street dump their kitchen waste directly into the nearby sewer inlets to save time.

This is not an isolated case, but rather it has become an unwritten rule that every household does.

This has resulted in most of the manhole covers near Daguan Street being half-open, in order to make it easier for them to dump garbage.

This caused great difficulties for the investigation.

Moving a body from a manhole cover would normally be a rather conspicuous act.

But the result was that people would just throw the dead person's head in when they passed by, almost without stopping.

Anyway, a lot of sewage will be dumped in later and flushed away.

If it weren't for the blockage and backflow repair request, we don't know when the deceased's head would have been found.

Zhou Yi stood at the entrance of Daguan Street. Although it was morning, there were quite a few people on the street.

Because those restaurants all operate on the principle of making as much money as possible, there are breakfast stalls at their entrances selling everything from steamed buns and fried dough sticks to pancakes.

The reason why Daguan Street has such good business and so many restaurants is because there is a large old residential area nearby, inhabited by a large number of locals.

There is a population, which means there will be consumption, but at the same time, it is also easier for some people to take advantage of the situation.

After standing there, Zhou Yi realized that it seemed unrealistic for him to find the victim's head in the sewer by himself alone.

In my previous life, my head was discovered because it had clogged the pipes along with other filth, but this happened four days after the first bag of body parts was found.

If all the body parts were disposed of by the murderer within the same time period, then the victim's head is probably still floating somewhere in the sewers, and even if you wanted to find it, you probably wouldn't know where to start.

This place is eight kilometers away from where the first bag of body parts was found, and four to five kilometers away from Hongda. There is no reason for me to ask relevant departments to conduct a large-scale search in the name of the police.

We have to come up with a solution.

Zhou Yi bought breakfast at a shop near the intersection. While eating, he chatted with the owner and complained that when he came over, he found that the manhole cover in front of him smelled terrible. Why doesn't anyone do anything about it?

The boss said it must be someone else breaking the rules again, littering and dumping things haphazardly. He said it with such righteous indignation, giving the impression that he was a very law-abiding person.

"Boss, which department is in charge of the sewers here?" Zhou Yi asked casually.

"Hey, nobody cares. This area is all old town, nobody cares about it anymore."

"Nobody's in charge? What if it gets blocked?"

"Go to the management office, we pay management fees every year," the boss said matter-of-factly. "The management office can then hire a professional sewer cleaner."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Yi immediately had an idea.

(End of this chapter)