National Forensic Doctor

Chapter 1355: Chapter 1281: Tracking

50-year-old production manager Li Wanzhong has a standalone two-bedroom, one-living room house in the rubber garden. Divorced, with two children who do not recognize him, his daily hobby is reading, which very much fits the Western template for a serial killer.

Ni Cha and others hurriedly arrived at Li Wanzhong’s house, their expressions hard to decipher.

Liu Jinghui looked at each person, showing some investigatory interest.

From a detective’s perspective, Li Wanzhong’s suicide is certainly not a perfect ending, but with the series of murders solved, the overall strategy has been achieved. So, most detectives are relatively happy, except for Ni Cha and others who have their own targets and cannot be said to be pleased.

It seems that Ni Cha is under considerable pressure at Dama Police Station.

Liu Jinghui silently made this judgment, then pulled the translator to Ni Cha’s side and said to the translator, "Tell him that effort always brings rewards."

The translator did as instructed.

"Hmm, naturally because our investigation progress was close to catching him, he committed suicide," Ni Cha assumed he understood Liu Jinghui’s meaning and nodded in agreement.

No matter how the killer was caught, whether alive or dead, just say whether they were captured.

Liu Jinghui said, "The culprit is not him."

The translator, who had been present throughout, was startled before translating, "Not him?"

"Not him. Translate it," Liu Jinghui glanced over.

Translators need to be part of your own team; these third-party contractors never quite work as well, almost as if they have their own mouths.

Ni Cha listened to the translator and furrowed his brows: "Was he silenced?"

"Or used as a scapegoat perhaps," Liu Jinghui finished speaking and warned the officers in front, "Do not move the body, let Jiang Yuan survey the scene. This is now an ongoing case."

Ni Cha hurriedly followed with orders, still frowning, clearly missing Liu Jinghui’s mood.

A few people together left the room, standing at the doorway as the wind blew in, bringing the unique odor of the rubber garden.

Liu Jinghui took a deep breath and looked around.

The buildings in the residential area were mostly wooden structures, some sturdy timbers possibly coming from decades or centuries ago, giving a somewhat rugged aesthetic, just like this series of murders.

The residential area lies close to the edge of the rubber garden. Beyond a large area of low buildings, a dirt road leads to the main road.

He’s Rubber Garden is located in the Capital Circle. The advantage is that cities are not far away, but the disadvantage is high land prices, with generally smaller garden areas.

Accordingly, the personnel are also more complex than in remote areas.

Ni Cha handed a cigarette to Liu Jinghui and the translator, and the three smoked a couple of puffs in the Southeast Asian heat, Ni Cha asked, "Is the killer within the remaining three, or is there someone else?"

"There are multiple killers," Liu Jinghui smoked carefully, his gaze hazy, "Because Li Wanzhong committed suicide, whether forced or murdered and disguised as suicide requires two or more people. A single person would be too dangerous and poorly arranged."

Ni Cha listened to the translator and nodded in agreement: "Li Wanzhong was physically strong, and without a family, it is indeed difficult for one person to achieve this."

If there is only one killer, purely relying on intimidation is certainly not enough to make the victim surrender or even commit suicide. It must be two or more people to have this possibility. Of course, the more likely scenario is strangling, then staging it as suicide.

"Have the employees of the rubber garden been restricted in their movements?" Liu Jinghui confirmed again.

Ni Cha nodded: "But the residential area used to be freely walkable, after all, there are 23 people. I just ordered them to return to their own rooms."

"Let the police count the number of people," Liu Jinghui reminded.

"Sure," Ni Cha made a phone call. noveldrama

At this moment, Jiang Yuan walked out of the room and continued on his way.

"So quickly?" Ni Cha and others hurriedly followed, like family members of a patient seeing the surgeon emerge.

"The victim was strangled, first strangled, then disguised as hanging, the time of death is about 30 minutes to one hour," Jiang Yuan did not need to explain to the on-scene police how to discern, quickly finished speaking and continued in Indonesian, "After the murderer killed, they probably escaped directly. Send a few people to follow me, let’s see if we can track any footprints."

"Outdoor footprints?" Ni Cha was a bit puzzled.

"I see many places are dirt roads, let’s take a look," Jiang Yuan was in no rush for an autopsy, presumably, the body was not in a hurry either.

While speaking, Jiang Yuan went down the wooden steps, first looking around, then decisively moving forward along the direction of the stairs.

After walking about twenty to thirty meters, Jiang Yuan found three distinct partial footprints on the ground.

The footprints were only one-quarter to one-third the size of normal ones, because when a normal person walks, the contact points are just that, compared to Western-style footprints, these fragmentary marks are useless; seeing them immediately is impossible.

Domestically, there has been much inheritance of the master Ma Yulin’s footprint identification, originally from the grasslands, he paid attention to footprints from a young age to find sheep and horses. His footprint identification is based on tracking step patterns, focusing not on individual footprint situations but on the relationship between two or more footprints.

The tracking in the rubber garden is different from grassland tracking, but the principle is similar.

Jiang Yuan added a temporary +1 skill to footprint identification, and with LV4 footprint identification continued tracking without much difficulty.

Following Ma Yulin, domestic experts cannot reach a full level in step tracking anymore.

Especially in big cities, the more infrastructure becomes perfected, the harder and more developed the ground gets, limiting the scope of step tracking, naturally shifting focus and energy to step identification.

Even Jiang Yuan, running after a suspect, this was his first time.

Jiang Yuan signaled the people next to him to take photos. Then shaking his shoulders, he waved his hand and started chasing.

Mu Zhiyang chased while putting a bulletproof vest on Jiang Yuan, Wen Ming and others followed behind, directly placing the vest outside.

In this way, the gradually expanding pursuers were becoming fully armed, somewhat implying a full gear setup.

Ni Cha and others saw this, their hearts tense, not knowing what might happen next.

Footprints appeared intermittently.

Jiang Yuan always found the right direction.

At first, Ni Cha thought Jiang Yuan was following the direction of the foot’s tip, but later realized it wasn’t.

He judged whether it was based on the overall direction of the footprints but found that wasn’t the case either...

Before Ni Cha could figure it out, Jiang Yuan and others were already standing before a forest.

Compared to the forest where bodies were abandoned, this forest was only a secondary forest, previously felled, just living conditions here were so good that the woods grew dense again in a short time.

"He went into the woods," Jiang Yuan stated, then began checking the map on the pad brought by Wang Chuanxing.

Ni Cha frowned and whispered to Zhong Renlong, "If God Jiang wants to go into the woods, the difficulty is too great, you’d better advise."

"Sure," Zhong Renlong agreed readily. They, the locals, knew too well how challenging these woods were.

At this moment, Jiang Yuan looked up, said, "The murderer is about 1.7 meters tall, weighs 120 pounds, carrying about 20 pounds of equipment. Looking at the route, there seems no necessity for him to go into the woods here. It’s easier to cut through the wire mesh to the main road with a pair of pliers."

"If we hadn’t pursued, this forest would return to its original state in at most two days, even more concealed than wire mesh," Zhong Renlong said.

"If it’s just to get to roadways, wouldn’t you have to park roadside and wait for hours?" Jiang Yuan spoke, glanced at the ground’s footprints again, then looked at the PAD’s map, pointing with his hand, "What’s this farm?"