National Forensic Doctor-Chapter 1108 - 1039: The Headless Case

"You say there’s no case, and suddenly there are two at once. Are they both confirmed to be murder cases?"

Upon hearing that both mutilated bodies were discovered in Qinghe City, Huang Qiangmin immediately came over to check.

Inside the autopsy room of Building 9, one autopsy table held a headless skeletal corpse stripped of flesh, while the other table only held five severed fingers.

Jiang Yuan was injecting the five fingers and nodded in response: "The headless corpse is definitely a murder case. As for the five fingers, further research is needed."

These fingers were in a wrinkled state. Due to dehydration, the surfaces of the fingers were shriveled, which meant directly taking fingerprints would result in too many creases, making them unusable. The solution was simple: injecting glycerin or air into them.

That’s precisely what Jiang Yuan was doing—holding the severed fingers, inserting the needle diagonally from the side of the finger aimed toward the paper. It felt oddly similar to injecting marinade into chicken wings.

Huang Qiangmin frowned while observing and asked, "What’s our plan now?"

"I think we should prioritize the headless case. We can do some preliminary investigation on the five fingers for now."

"Oh?"

Jiang Yuan responded, "I had Wang Chuanxing look into cases from the past two weeks—no reports of malicious crimes involving severed hands. These five fingers were cut from the left hand of a corpse without any signs of life, which means there could be an arm or corpse missing, but it’s not necessarily a murder case. It might just be a simple case of body abandonment."

"Did you check with hospitals and schools?" Huang Qiangmin immediately followed up.

"We did. They said there’s no missing bodies or anything like that." Wang Chuanxing replied.

Incidents like these aren’t rare for the police to encounter. While not common, they aren’t entirely unexpected either. Some situations don’t classify as formal murder cases but stem from negligence when disposing of bodies or body parts for various reasons.

The latter is relatively frequent, especially with body parts like fingers, arms, or legs. While not happening all the time, cases of this nature appear now and then.

Those who dispose of bodies can range from doctors and medical students to university staff or janitors, and often even bereaved family members. In areas rife with superstitious practices, some people steal corpses for ritual purposes, while others discard fingers after completing such rituals in a careless manner.

Huang Qiangmin nodded slowly: "Indeed, if it were a murder, it wouldn’t make sense to dump five fingers on the roadside. That area is a residential zone—definitely not an ideal spot for body disposal."

"Almost got eaten by a stray dog," Wang Lan chimed in, recalling how she transported the fingers in a lunchbox.

"So if anyone wanted to destroy evidence, getting a dog would’ve been a better choice." Huang Qiangmin shook his head. "Dumping fingers in a residential area—it’s just not logical. Tossing them in the wilderness would’ve been a better option for concealment."

"Digging a hole and burying them works too," Mu Zhiyang suggested.

"But the key lies in locating other parts of the corpse. If it’s only fingers, it’s more likely abandonment than a murder case." Huang Qiangmin’s thought process quickly fell into place. He chuckled, thinking: "It reminds me of a case I encountered years ago—the hand of a factory worker got severed. The guy suffered badly but went for surgery later and insisted on keeping the severed hand. Back then, regulations weren’t tight, so the doctor handed it over."

Huang Qiangmin elaborated like a veteran detective sharing an old anecdote: "The guy brought the hand home but didn’t know what to do with it. Ultimately, he soaked it in sorghum liquor. Later, he moved houses, couldn’t take it along, poured out the liquor, and dumped the hand into the trash pile. A cat dug it out later..."

Filled with nostalgia, Huang recalled: "We couldn’t find the guy at first because he had moved away. Back then, rapid response units weren’t a thing—officers just walked to the scene. By the time we arrived, the trash pile was swarmed with people. Rumors spread about soaking a human hand in liquor to cure rheumatism..."

Wang Lan wanted to laugh but held back: "Must’ve been stressful for you."

"Of course." Huang Qiangmin grimaced. "Without surveillance cameras then, we couldn’t even determine who dumped the severed hand. Plus, the hand had been severed for ages, and the hospital kept no records. Misleading leads wasted a lot of manpower back then."

"How was the case solved?"

"The guy who dumped the hand surrendered after hearing the commotion." Huang spread his palms. "We wasted four or five days for nothing. That’s why I agree with prioritizing the headless corpse case."

Jiang Yuan nodded. "However, fingerprints from crispy, shriveled fingers are still tricky to extract. I might need more time to match them. Let me finish fingerprinting these five fingers first."

Even though the finger case wasn’t urgent, Jiang still took advantage of their relative freshness to extract fingerprints.

Once the fingerprints were retrieved, a match would be ideal. If not, they could just be stored in the database for future identification. Five fingers alone provided very limited information.

Soon, Jiang Yuan injected each of the five fingers, took their fingerprints, labeled them, and uploaded them into the database for processing.

Twenty candidate fingerprints quickly appeared in the right column.

Jiang Yuan sat upright and examined each one.

By the fourth fingerprint, Jiang Yuan instinctively grabbed the mouse, zoomed in, and began a close comparison.

Because the fingerprints came from dehydrated shriveled fingers, they exhibited slight distortions compared to prints from intact fingers—this introduced some inaccuracies.

But this wasn’t much of an issue.

Less reliable fingerprints with fewer identifiable points tended to amplify such distortions. Efforts were made to avoid misidentification.

The fingerprints from the shriveled fingers were complete, and the database match was also complete. This ensured dozens of identifiable points, so minimal comparison confirmed the match.

Not to mention, the other four fingers served as additional verification.

However, when Jiang Yuan opened information pertaining to the finger’s owner, he was slightly surprised.

"No death record," Jiang Yuan frowned and clicked on the individual’s profile: "Twenty days ago, there’s a record of booking a hotel room."

This didn’t seem like a case of routine body disposal.

The lighthearted mood Huang Qiangmin briefly felt vanished almost immediately.

"Who is the victim?" freewebnσvel.cѳm

"Unemployed," Jiang Yuan replied while gesturing for Wang Chuanxing to dig deeper.

With the current police systems, searching for a specific person was a fairly straightforward process. E-commerce platforms were long ago tied to real-name verification, often containing multiple residential addresses for individuals. Delivery apps, ride-hailing apps, ticket booking systems, and payment platforms meticulously recorded user information.

By comparison, social media platforms required a bit more effort due to larger data volumes and expansive conversation histories. Reading every chat log was unrealistic—key terms were typically used to filter relevant data.

Such data mining tasks could be exceptionally technical, but for Jiang Yuan’s current needs, a Level 0.8 helper like Wang Chuanxing sufficed.

Soon, Wang Chuanxing raised his gaze from the laptop:

"Kou Yu. Male. 32 years old. Unemployed. Owns two apartments and a car, all registered in Changyang City. His primary income comes from rental properties—both units are currently rented out, providing him about 15,000 yuan monthly. He himself rents a small apartment near Changyang City’s airport for 3,000 yuan a month. The profit margin is around 12,000 yuan."

Scanning the screen further, Wang continued: "No steady girlfriend. He has two active WeChat accounts, chatting simultaneously with dozens of people. Frequently makes long WeChat calls. Also appears to have a passion for cycling—regular outdoor trips and tours..."