Chapter 214: Chapter 214: Ample Time to Dispose of the Body

Ding Yuwei returned from her canvassing.

Building 27 was unoccupied. Building 25 was occupied by a couple with two children.

The husband didn’t get up until after eight.

The wife woke up early at six-thirty to take the kids to school. By that time, Jiang Qi was already missing.

So they hadn’t seen anything, nor had they noticed anything last night.

Ding Yuwei also questioned the residents in the two rows of villas at the front and back of the property. They all knew the family ran a kennel, and some had even bought dogs from them.

They also knew the woman of the house was ill, but they hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

Chen Chao arranged for others to continue canvassing and had Ding Yuwei take Dou Dou to keep searching the perimeter of the residential complex.

Then, he led Shen Xin and the others onto the scene.

First, they checked the electrical room. After questioning Bai Jifei, they learned he usually left the door unlocked and used the room to store dog food and other miscellaneous items.

The electrical box was open. The main switch had now been flipped back on.

There were no signs of forced entry on the front or back doors of the villa. They probably weren’t usually locked.

The entire first floor had been converted into a kennel.

The couple occupied two rooms on the second floor, while the other two were used to house puppies.

As they entered, a large pack of Maltese dogs ran up to greet them.

Each one was more beautiful than the last.

They were free-roaming, so they ran everywhere, causing significant contamination of any potential evidence on the first floor.

They went to check the surveillance DVR.

The unit had been taken apart. The motherboard was smashed by something, and the hard drive was missing.

Chen Chao stared blankly at the DVR.

Shen Xin said, "Captain Chen, the villa has no security system, and there are no signs of forced entry. Since the perpetrator decided to destroy the DVR and take the hard drive, doesn’t shutting off the power seem a bit redundant?"

Chen Chao nodded and led Shen Xin to the second floor.

The master bedroom on the east side was where Jiang Qi stayed.

Leaning against the doorframe, Chen Chao asked, "Old Cui, find anything?"

Cui Yan was busy working with Yu Xiaoping and Tang Bin.

Cui Yan stood up and shook his head.

The bedroom was quite large. Jiang Qi slept on a hospital bed, which had no bloodstains or unusual handprints.

There were no signs of a struggle at the scene, either.

Not that she could have fought back. Jiang Qi was an ALS patient, completely immobile.

If someone wanted to abduct her, she would have had no way to resist.

Chen Chao paused for a moment. "What about the bathrooms, upstairs and downstairs?"

Cui Yan froze, immediately guessing why Chen Chao would ask that.

"Give me a minute."

Cui Yan called Yu Xiaoping over and went to the master bathroom.

There were four bathrooms in the house, plus a laundry room.

While Old Cui and his team were spraying luminol in the master bathroom, Shen Xin wandered around the room.

The bedroom’s decor was ordinary.

There was a vanity table, but no mirror.

’She probably didn’t want to see her own miserable, immobile reflection,’ Shen Xin thought.

A wedding photo of the couple hung on the wall. It seemed to have been taken at the beach, with them facing away from the ocean under a sky full of sunset clouds.

Other than that, there was nothing particularly unusual.

Just then, the master bathroom had been fully sprayed.

They drew the curtains and turned on the blacklight.

Everyone looked, but it was completely clean.

Cui Yan wasn’t bothered and moved on to the other bathrooms.

Shen Xin followed Chen Chao to check Bai Jifei’s room, where everything was also normal.

"Captain Chen, what are you thinking?"

Shen Xin picked up a photo album.

It appeared to be filled with photos from the couple’s trip around the world.

It was full of tourist snapshots from various foreign attractions.

The two looked very much like a couple. The man was charismatic, the woman beautiful. In the photos, they looked incredibly devoted to each other.

Chen Chao asked Shen Xin what he was thinking instead.

Shen Xin said, "Captain Chen, based on the current situation, I don’t believe Jiang Qi could have vanished into thin air. It’s most likely the scenario we were both thinking of."

That she was murdered by Bai Jifei and dismembered inside the villa.

The so-called signs of a break-in were fabricated by him.

"Or, he lied about the time of Jiang Qi’s disappearance."

On the same wavelength, Chen Chao said, "Before the sixth day of the lunar new year."

Shen Xin nodded. The property management’s surveillance footage and the access control records had all disappeared from that same day.

’If there’s nothing fishy about this, I’ll eat my hat.’

So there was another possibility: Jiang Qi didn’t disappear today, but sometime before the sixth.

Bai Jifei might have moved the body out, managed to erase the surveillance footage, and then waited a few days before faking a break-in and filing a report.

Jiang Qi was immobile and couldn’t go out. Who would know when she actually disappeared?

Chen Chao smiled. "He might be able to delete the complex’s internal surveillance, but he can’t erase the traffic cameras outside."

As he spoke, he took out his phone and called Zhao Tianxing at the precinct, telling him to pull the surveillance footage from the perimeter of the complex.

While he was at it, he also had him run a full background check on both Bai Jifei and Jiang Qi.

Just then, Cui Yan’s shout came from downstairs.

"Old Chen, get down here!"

Shen Xin and Chen Chao hurried downstairs.

It was the first-floor guest bathroom.

The curtains were drawn. Cui Yan shut the door.

Inside the pitch-black bathroom, under the blacklight, the floor lit up with a chemical glow.

Shen Xin drew in a sharp breath.

’So we really were right!’

Chen Chao’s expression changed as well.

The reaction covered the entire bathroom floor and even the wall tiles. This was clearly more than just bleeding gums from brushing teeth.

Cui Yan put his hands on his hips and let out a soft sigh.

’Another big job!’

Chen Chao understood completely and patted his shoulder. "Tough work ahead."

The two of them stepped out of the bathroom.

Chen Chao waved to Zhou Zhongyi, telling him to take Bai Jifei back to the precinct for now.

There was no rush to interrogate him.

They needed to gather some key evidence here first; the interrogation could wait.

On the kitchen floor nearby, an adult bloodhound lay, obediently watching everyone work.

It was probably one of Loki’s parents, the breeding bloodhound Bai Jifei had imported.

Shen Xin beckoned to it.

It was very friendly. After a brief hesitation, it ran over and gently licked Shen Xin’s hand.

"Captain Chen, what about the bones? Did he take them out to dispose of them? Or did he grind them up with the flesh and flush them down the drain?"

Dismembering a body is no easy task.

Just like Zhu Tianshun from that previous case, who huffed and puffed his way through it for ages.

"Could it be..."

Shen Xin looked at the room full of dogs.

Chen Chao understood instantly and also drew a sharp breath. "Don’t say it. Just... don’t."

He cupped his chin in thought. "Could it be that Bai Jifei had already killed and dismembered Jiang Qi before the sixth?"

"The flesh... he slowly fed it to these dogs. As for the bones, he found a way to take them out and dispose of them."

"Or maybe he just ground everything up, bones and all, and fed it all to the dogs."

"Is it possible that the reason he waited a few days to file the report was to give him time to feed them slowly, to let the dogs digest everything?"

After all, a body is over a hundred pounds.

Shen Xin didn’t speak, a chill running down his spine.

With dozens of dogs, they could really devour over a hundred pounds of flesh in just a few days.

And once it passed through a dog’s stomach, there’d be nothing left to find.

At that moment, Sun Jingyi ran in from outside, saying he’d found signs of digging on the backyard lawn.

They hurried to the backyard.

Both the front and back yards were about a hundred square meters. The front yard was landscaped with a deck made of treated wood, while the backyard was simpler, just a lawn.

It was probably designed for the dogs’ daily activities.

"Over here."

Sun Jingyi led the two of them to a corner of the lawn. "Captain Chen, look. This patch of sod seems to have been lifted and then pressed back down."

If you looked closely, you could see it was slightly different from the surrounding grass.

Chen Chao lifted the turf, glanced at the damp earth beneath, and ordered in a low voice, "Dig!"

The disturbed patch of turf was about the size of an 80-centimeter paving stone.

Shen Xin scanned the surroundings.

Bai Jifei’s house had a solid wall, likely built specifically to keep the dogs from running out.

He had noticed earlier that the other, unoccupied villas had iron fences for walls.

A solid wall also offered better privacy.

There was greenery and trees between each villa. If someone were digging here, they likely wouldn’t be visible from Building 25.

Bai Jifei had already been taken away.

After borrowing shovels from property management, Shen Xin and Sun Jingyi started digging.

Just then, Ding Yuwei returned with Dou Dou.

She reported that they had searched the entire complex, both inside and around the perimeter, but hadn’t found any trace of Jiang Qi’s scent.

If Jiang Qi had disappeared before the sixth, several days would have already passed. It had also rained lightly in the interim, so it was normal that no scent could be found.

Chen Chao brought Ding Yuwei over and had Dou Dou sniff the bloodstains in the bathroom to see if it could find anything.

With a whole pack of dogs in the house, Dou Dou was a little scared.

After they herded all the other dogs upstairs and shut them in a room, Dou Dou finally entered the bathroom and sniffed the bloodstains.

Once she got a clear scent, she searched the house, went outside, wandered around, and finally ended up back at the spot where Shen Xin was digging.

Ding Yuwei had already seen the blood evidence that covered the bathroom floor. She held Dou Dou’s leash and stood silently to the side.

The guy buried it pretty deep.

Shen Xin and Sun Jingyi huffed and puffed as they dug for a good while. They were nearly a meter down when their shovels hit something hard.

Plastic wrap was visible amidst the dirt.

Chen Chao quickly called Cui Yan over.

Cui Yan took over, carefully clearing away the surrounding dirt and pulling out a bundle.

It was wrapped in plastic.

Unwrapping it revealed an axe, a hacksaw, a hammer, and a Boning Knife.

Without a doubt, these were the dismemberment tools.

Cui Yan picked up the Boning Knife, sniffed it carefully, and said, "It seems to have been soaked in a high-concentration bleach or something similar."

"And look, he deliberately chose tools without wooden parts."

He picked up the axe. Its handle wasn’t wood but plastic, which would prevent blood from seeping in and leaving a trace.

He took the tools inside, sprayed them with reagent, and under the blacklight, there was no reaction at all.

Yu Xiaoping frowned. "They’re cleaned too well. They look brand new."

Cui Yan nodded. After a moment’s thought, he said, "Captain Chen, I think this guy has strong counter-surveillance awareness. If he was conscious enough to clean the murder weapons, it’s unlikely he’d leave a bloody mess at the dismemberment site."

A thought struck Chen Chao, and he frowned. "Are you saying he intentionally contaminated the scene?"

Shen Xin understood as well and immediately glanced at Dou Dou nearby.

Cui Yan said, "I suspect it’s a possibility. Given enough time, he could have cleaned the scene thoroughly, used a strong oxidizing agent to destroy the DNA, and then completely contaminated the site with other blood."

"Dog blood, for example."

He had a house full of them, after all. A ready supply.

Doing so would be the most effective way to cover up all traces of the dismemberment.

As for having enough time...

That wasn’t an issue either. After all, Shen Xin and Chen Chao suspected Jiang Qi might have been killed before the sixth.

She couldn’t leave the house, and Bai Jifei could also stay home. Inside the undisturbed villa, he would have had several whole days to dispose of the body.

Chen Chao said, "It doesn’t matter. The suspects we’ve dealt with in the past always thought they had cleaned up perfectly, but in the end, we always found the evidence to convict them."

It’s almost impossible to completely eliminate every single trace.

Shen Xin thought so, too.

As things stood, the case seemed quite clear.

Bai Jifei had murdered Jiang Qi and then found a way to dispose of her body.

Then he faked his wife’s disappearance and filed a false report to evade investigation.

It’s just that...

’I can’t help but feel that this case is being solved a little too easily.’