Phi-Fic Chapter 1084 The truck is fine, the clue goes cold.
Chapter 1084 The truck is fine, the clue goes cold.
When visiting an old worker at the sand and gravel plant, the man was squatting beside the hopper, smoking, the cigarette butt trembling violently between his calloused fingers. “That truck comes to haul sand and gravel every Tuesday,” he spat on the ground, “the driver speaks with a bit of a Northeastern accent, his voice so loud it can drown out the conveyor belt. Last Tuesday when he came, there was an old welding machine in the truck bed, he said it was needed on the construction site.” Xiao Wang immediately jotted down “Northeastern accent, carrying a welding machine” in his notebook, the sound of the pen scratching the paper startling a sparrow at his feet.
By the time they found the gas station where the truck had refueled, dusk had already fallen over the pump's display screen. The cashier flipped through the ledger, her fingernail drawing a line under the name "Li Zhiqiang": "This guy always fills up with 200 yuan worth of 92-octane gasoline, pays in cash, and never asks for a receipt." She suddenly slapped the counter. "That's right! He always goes to the convenience store when he refuels, buying the cheapest bottled water, and only the chilled kind, even in winter."
Xiao Wang retrieved the gas station's surveillance footage. In the video, the driver was unscrewing a water bottle, water dripping from between his fingers. "Zoom in on his watch," Xiao Wang suddenly interrupted. The silver watch on the screen glittered in the sunlight, with a noticeable scratch on the dial. "It's completely different from the watch on the amputated limb. This watch is digital, while the one on the limb is mechanical." Xiao Zhang placed the screenshot and the photo of the amputated limb side by side. The shapes of the watchbands were clearly different; they were not the same model at all.
When we went to investigate the auto repair shop, the owner was squatting under the truck, tightening bolts, with engine oil dripping onto his blue overalls. "This red truck has been here three times," he said, wiping the oil from his face. "The first time was to replace the brake pads, the second time was to patch the tires, and the third time was last week, when they said the hinge on the tailgate was broken and they wanted me to weld it." He pointed to the pile of scrap in the corner, "The old brake pads that were replaced are still there, with serial numbers on them."
When the technician inspected the brake pads, he found that the wear was very slight: "They've only driven 5,000 kilometers at most, which doesn't match the age of the car. They must have been replaced recently." Xiao Wang suddenly noticed the brand of the brake pads—completely different from the brand of the engine oil in the muscle tissue of the severed limb. One was the domestic "Great Wall," and the other was the imported "Shell." The composition charts on the test report looked like two parallel lines that would never intersect.
When visiting construction sites frequented by trucks, the stench of rusty steel bars was so strong it made it hard to open one's eyes. The foreman, a cigarette dangling from his lips, said, "'Qiangzi' did work here; he even helped us weld scaffolding last week." He pointed to a welding machine piled in a corner, "That's the one he brought; he said it was his." Xiao Wang lifted the dust cover from the welding machine, revealing a number clearly visible on the nameplate in the sunlight. A search record showed that the machine had been sold at a secondhand market three months prior; the buyer's registered name was "Zhang Qiang," but the ID number was fake.
The most crucial clue came from the construction site's surveillance footage. In the video, "Qiangzi" was holding a welding torch, sparks splattering onto his black work jacket, creating golden-red specks. Xiao Wang suddenly pressed the pause button: "Look at his left chest." The hole in the jacket was three centimeters higher than the one found at the material yard, and the scorch marks at the burn edges were wider, as if burned by a larger spark. "This isn't the same jacket," Xiao Zhang zoomed in on the footage, "The buttons on the one at the material yard were black plastic, this one has silver metal buttons."
On the way back to the team, the lab called. Xiao Zhang's hand tightened suddenly: "What? The DNA from the cigarette butt and the DNA from the remains failed to match? Completely mismatched?" Xiao Wang's gaze swept across the night outside the car window, the image of the red truck at the material yard gradually blurring in his mind—if the driver wasn't the murderer, why did he leave behind a bloodstained wrench? Why was his work jacket at the material yard?
At three in the morning, Xiao Wang was still reviewing the surveillance footage. When the camera cut to the ditch outside the material yard wall, he suddenly sat up straight: the moment the blue tarpaulin surfaced, a blurry black figure emerged from the hole, dragging a bulging bag in its hand. Its gait was completely different from "Qiangzi's"—it had a slight limp in its right leg, while "Qiangzi" in the surveillance footage would get stuck in its left knee when walking.
"Retrieve the salvage record of the tarpaulin," Xiao Wang's voice was bloodshot, "and see if there is any DNA on it other than the remains." The technician's reply came half an hour later: the bloodstains on the inside of the tarpaulin did indeed belong to the remains, but the fingerprints on the outside belonged to another unknown male, and there was no matching information in the database.
When the investigation into the red truck reached a deadlock, Xiao Wang went to the vehicle management office's scrap record database. In the dusty files, he found a red truck of the same model that had been scrapped in an accident five years ago; its chassis number differed from the current truck's by only the last two digits. "A counterfeit vehicle," he slammed the file on the table, dust dancing in the sunlight, "no wonder we can't find any real information."
When interviewing the last witness, the man was an old scrap collector, squatting by the roadside bundling cardboard. "That red truck, I saw it driving out of town last Thursday," he said, stuffing a pipe into his mouth. "The welding machine in the truck bed was gone, but there was a pile of broken glass, like it had been knocked off the windows." Another line was added to Xiao Wang's notebook: "Changes in the cargo in the truck bed, suspected glass replacement."
The lab's final report came out three days later: Although the oil sample from the red truck and the oil in the muscle of the limb were both Shell, they were different types; the truck used 15W-40, while the limb used 20W-50. The DNA from the skin tissue fragments in the wrench groove was completely consistent with that of the cigarette butt and belonged to the "hadron" group, but it had no connection with the limb. The stress analysis at the break in the watch chain showed that it was forcibly pried open with a tool, not that it broke naturally.
"What's the conclusion?" Li Ming's voice came from the other end of the phone, with the sound of keyboard typing in the background. Xiao Wang looked out the window towards the quarry, the searchlight still spinning tirelessly: "The red truck and the deceased are not directly related. The driver, 'Qiangzi,' may have just been used. The real murderer is someone else. As for the deceased's identity..." He flipped through the missing persons files on the table, but there was no record matching the characteristics of the remains. "It can't be confirmed yet; we have to wait for the DNA database comparison results."
On the blackboard in the dispatch room, the photo of the red truck was circled in red pen, surrounded by crossed-out clues. As Xiao Wang erased the words "Northeast accent," chalk dust rose and fell, like the unpieced truths yet to be pieced together. A breeze from the material yard drifted in through the window, ruffling the pages of the notebook, pausing at the old worker's words: "That driver always liked to hum an old Northeast song, he knew the tune pretty well..."