sjar Chapter 1098: Meeting Held to Analyze the Case
Chapter 1098: Meeting Held to Analyze the Case
“Everyone’s here,” Li Ming said, placing the enamel mug on the table. Tea stains spread across the “Pond Corpse Case” file. “Starting with Xiao Yang, what new discoveries have been made at the scene?”
Xiao Yang lifted the projector screen, and a panoramic view of the pond instantly filled the entire wall. "The gray-black fibers extracted from the site, analyzed by infrared spectroscopy, are the rubber components of a 'Giti 228' tire," he said, pointing his laser pointer at the tire tracks in the lower left corner of the image. "They perfectly match the tire model of Chen Miao's taxi. The drag marks are 45 centimeters wide, and the spacing matches the distance from the taxi's trunk to the ground. There are also traces of gasoline on the grass at the edges, and the composition is consistent with the 92-octane gasoline recorded in Chen Miao's refueling log."
The scene shifts to a close-up under the willow tree: "Although the paint chips match the composition of Li Jianjun's truck, the wear layer analysis shows it's an old scratch from three years ago." Xiao Yang pulls up a 3D comparison image, "What's truly valuable is this—the size 42 shoe print by the pond. The forefoot pattern matches the tread pattern of Chen Miao's taxi's pedals, and the angle of the triangular notch on the heel perfectly matches the wear marks on the accelerator pedal inside the car, as if left by the driver during an emergency stop."
Zhang Lin's autopsy report gleamed white under the light, like pulp. "The time of death is confirmed as between 11 PM and 2 AM on July 12th," he circled a micrograph of the stomach contents in red pen. "The starch granules in the leek dumpling residue showed a 60% disintegration rate, consistent with death 2-3 hours after ingestion, and matching the timeline of Chen Miao's refueling records." He suddenly raised his voice, "The old fracture of the left ring finger was comminuted, and the healing pattern is completely consistent with Chen Miao's 2019 traffic accident medical record. This is irrefutable evidence of identity."
"What was the fatal injury?" Li Ming's fingertips tapped on the words "mechanical asphyxia combined with drowning," water droplets from the enamel cup dripping onto the paper, blurring the diagnosis of "subperiosteal hemorrhage of the hyoid bone." Zhang Lin pushed up his glasses: "The bleeding area in the neck muscles is 3x2 cm, consistent with strangulation, but the degree of asphyxia did not reach the lethal dose. The final cause of death is drowning—the diatoms in the lungs matched the pond silt with a 99.8% match, and the fragments of aquatic plants found in the trachea had fresh bite marks, indicating that there were still vital signs when the person fell into the water."
Xiao Wang opened Sun Laosi's investigation notebook; the edges of the pages were frayed. "Sun Laosi's disappearance and Chen Miao's disappearance overlapped in time," he said, pointing to a surveillance screenshot from July 12th. "At 10:23 PM that night, someone saw Sun Laosi at the gas station, and Chen Miao's taxi was refueling at 10:15 PM. The two may have been at the gas station around the same time." He paused, then pulled up the call logs. "Sun Laosi's phone made a call at 10:40 PM from an anonymous number; the cell tower location was near the pond."
"Is there any evidence that Sun Laosi rode in Chen Miao's car?" Li Ming pressed, his gaze falling on the photo on the black backpack on the corner of the table—this was the one Xiao Wang found in Sun Laosi's woodshed; the fibers stuck to the zipper matched the composition of the floor mats on the back seat of Chen Miao's taxi. Xiao Wang nodded: "The receipt in the backpack shows that at 9:50 pm on July 12th, Sun Laosi bought a pancake at the train station in a neighboring city, and Chen Miao's last order location was also at the train station; the timing matches."
Xiao Zhou rubbed his red eyes and spread Chen Miao's GPS track map on the table. "This red route is the driving record from the evening of July 12th," he said, circling the track with a marker. "After refueling at 10:15, the vehicle did not return to the city along the usual route, but instead turned onto a country road leading to the pond. It stalled at 10:30, 1.8 kilometers from the pond, and then lost signal." He pulled up a screenshot from the gas station's surveillance camera. "In the footage, there was a person wearing a dark hoodie sitting in the passenger seat of Chen Miao's taxi. I couldn't see their face clearly, but their build was similar to Sun Laosi's."
“The key is where this taxi went,” Xiao Yang suddenly interjected, pointing a laser pointer at the photo of the tire tracks. “The wheel track at the pond is 1.3 meters, which matches the parameters of Chen Miao’s taxi, but the wear on the tire treads shows that the vehicle had been driven on a muddy road for a long time, and may have been hidden by the murderer in a nearby abandoned brick kiln.” He added, “We found the same gray-black fibers in the cracks of the brick kiln door, which are exactly the same as the fibers in the floor mats on the back seat of the taxi.”
Zhang Lin's autopsy report provided a new breakthrough: "The DNA typing of skin tissue fragments found under the deceased's fingernails indicated male genitalia, with three matching loci in Sun Laosi's gene sequence. Although this did not meet the same identification criteria, it suggests that the two had close contact." He adjusted his glasses. "More importantly, there was a blurry fingerprint on Chen Miao's shirt collar, which, after enhancement processing, matched some features of the fingerprint extracted from the edge of Sun Laosi's kang (heated brick bed).
Suddenly, a thick line appeared on Xiao Wang's notebook: "If Sun Laosi got into Chen Miao's car, why would the two of them be at the pond?" He pulled up Li Jianjun's testimony, "Li Jianjun said that Sun Laosi owed usurious loans, and the lender was nicknamed 'Scarface,' who often hung around the brick kiln, and Chen Miao's taxi company boss happened to have business dealings with 'Scarface.'"
“That’s how it all connects,” Li Ming traced the network of relationships on the table with his finger. “Chen Miao took Sun Laosi’s job and may have overheard his dispute with loan sharks or witnessed ‘Scarface’ forcing him to pay back the money. To silence him, the murderer first strangled Chen Miao, then dragged him into the pond to drown him, and then hid the taxi. Sun Laosi may have been silenced or fled to avoid punishment.”
Xiao Zhou suddenly remembered something: "Chen Miao's dashcam! Although the vehicle is missing, the memory card may have been discarded by the murderer. We need to expand the search area, especially the bushes and drainage ditches around the pond." He pulled up Chen Miao's litigation materials, "He is suing the company for overdue fuel subsidies. The boss once threatened to 'make him unable to drive.' It cannot be ruled out that the company killed him to prevent the lawsuit."
"Proceed in two directions simultaneously," Li Ming tapped the table, his voice echoing in the conference room. "Xiao Yang, lead the technical team to search the abandoned brick kiln, making sure to find the taxi and the dashcam; Xiao Wang, focus on investigating 'Scarface's' social connections and find out his whereabouts on July 12; Xiao Zhou, continue to delve into Chen Miao's dispute with the company, retrieve the call records from the past three months, and look for suspicious contacts; I'll go meet with Chen Miao's ex-wife to see if he's mentioned anything unusual."
Suddenly, sunlight pierced through the clouds and shone on Chen Miao's photograph. The smoke in the meeting room gradually dissipated, and the clues in front of everyone began to connect with keywords such as "taxi," "loan shark," and "abandoned brick kiln." While sorting through the photos from the scene, Xiao Yang noticed a blurry metallic reflection at the end of the drag marks by the pond—upon magnification, it appeared to be a taxi seatbelt buckle with a dark blue thread wrapped around it, perfectly matching the thread on Sun Laosi's backpack.