The crackdown on organized crime began with the arrest of the mother-in-law.

Chapter 1011 The Corpse in the Woods

"Tell me the details of the process." Xiao Wang picked up his pen, ready to take notes.

“He packed the things in a black plastic bag and delivered them to my warehouse in the middle of the night,” Li Fengqiang wiped the sweat from his brow. “I hid the money and ledgers in a secret compartment, planning to take the money out and use it after things calmed down. I really didn’t intend to kill anyone; I was just greedy for a moment…”

The interrogation lasted two hours, during which Li Fengqiang confessed to assisting in the disposal of stolen goods. With his confession, the entire case was finally closed.

However, less than three days after this case was closed, the Criminal Investigation Division received another report.

Villagers discovered a body while picking mushrooms in the mountains.

In September, Qinglan Mountain was shrouded in mist, the damp air thick with the stench of decaying leaves and blood. Li Ming's police car screeched as it rolled over the gravel road, the tires screeching against the pavement, shattering the deathly silence of the forest. Before the car had even come to a complete stop, he pushed open the door, the hem of his black trench coat billowing in the mountain wind, revealing a gleaming pistol at his waist.

The villager who reported the incident huddled outside the police cordon, his bamboo basket overturned, a few chanterelle mushrooms scattered in the mud. Xiao Wang crouched down, his voice as gentle as possible: "Auntie, please tell me slowly, how did you find the body?" The old woman's face was deathly pale, her fingers trembling uncontrollably: "I just wanted to pick more mushrooms to sell for money, so I went a little deeper into the woods, and then..." She suddenly covered her mouth and gagged, "...the dead person's eyes were still open, and there was a rope around their neck..."

Deep in the woods, Xiao Yang and Xiao Sun were already engrossed in their investigation. Xiao Yang, wearing white latex gloves, carefully examined the deceased's clothing with tweezers. "The deceased's pockets were turned inside out; valuables must have been taken," he said, placing a mud-covered button into an evidence bag. "But this button has neat stitching; it doesn't look like it was torn off. It seems like the murderer deliberately left it." Xiao Sun, carrying a 3D scanner, rapidly scanned the body with blue light: "The rigor mortis is beginning to subside, the corneas are cloudy, and the time of death is between 12 and 24 hours ago."

Li Ming squatted beside the body, his gaze fixed on the hemp rope around the victim's neck. It was an ordinary yellow hemp rope, yet it had left deep purple marks on the victim's skin, with traces of blood still clinging to the edges. "Murder without a doubt." He reached out and brushed aside the victim's disheveled hair. "There are blunt force injuries to the head; the killer may have struck first before strangling." Before he finished speaking, Xiao Yang suddenly shouted, "Captain Lu, look at this!"

The deceased's right hand was clenched into a fist. Xiao Yang carefully pried it open with tweezers, revealing several strands of black hair under the fingernails. "Send it for testing immediately. It's probably from a struggle with the murderer." Li Ming's eyes were sharp as he turned to Xiao Sun. "What about the footprints at the scene?" Xiao Sun pulled up a scan on his tablet: "Two sets of clear shoe prints were found, one size 42 and the other size 40, both extending towards the northeast of the woods, but..." He zoomed in on the image, "The size 42 shoe print shows obvious drag marks in the middle."

At this moment, Xiao Wang strode over, his notebook filled with information: "The person who reported the case said that when she went into the mountains, she saw a black SUV at a fork in the road two kilometers away. The windows were tinted dark. But she didn't pay attention to it at the time and didn't remember the license plate number." Li Ming stood up and patted the mud off his trousers: "Contact the traffic police, retrieve the surrounding surveillance footage, and focus on investigating that black SUV." He then looked at Xiao Yang and Xiao Sun, "Complete the investigation as soon as possible, send the body for autopsy, and we must confirm the identity of the deceased in the shortest possible time."

Xiao Sun set up the 3D laser scanner, its blue-green beam weaving a fine grid around the corpse. The buzzing sound of its operation was particularly clear in the silent woods. Xiao Yang, on the other hand, knelt on the ground, holding a macro camera, and photographed the ligature marks on the deceased's neck at a 90-degree angle. Each flash of the camera captured the details of the purplish-black ligature marks on the memory card.

“Pay attention to the direction of the ligature marks.” Xiao Yang gestured to his assistant to adjust the angle of the high-intensity light. “Starting from the right side of the thyroid cartilage, it extends diagonally upwards to the left mastoid process, which is consistent with the typical anterior strangulation pattern. However, the edges are accompanied by irregular lacerations, indicating that the murderer exerted repeated force when tightening the rope.” He switched to the ultraviolet light source, and fine white crystals immediately appeared on the surface of the ligature marks. “Extracting these secretions may contain the murderer’s skin tissue or sweat residue.”

Xiao Sun operated the scanner, and a three-dimensional model of the scene was generated in real time on the screen. "The long axis of the body is at a 37-degree angle to due east, and two sets of shoe prints were found within five meters." He zoomed in on the footprints in the model. "The size 42 shoe print is 3.2 centimeters deep, and the size 40 shoe print is 2.8 centimeters deep. Based on stride analysis, the former has a stride length of 75 centimeters, and the latter 68 centimeters. It is preliminarily judged that the person who held the size 42 shoe print was between 178 and 182 centimeters tall and weighed about 80 kilograms; the person who held the size 40 shoe print was about 170 centimeters tall and weighed about 65 kilograms."

Xiao Yang slowly moved the electrostatic adsorption device across the pile of fallen leaves when suddenly the instrument beeped. "Found something!" He carefully lifted the top layer of dead leaves, revealing half a blurry palm print underneath. "Although it has been washed away by rain, some papillary lines can still be extracted. Send it for print enhancement treatment immediately." The assistant quickly took out palm print extraction tape and used the "translation and pasting method" to transfer the palm print completely into the evidence bag.

Two meters to the right of the body, Xiao Sun found a broken pine branch. He put on a headlamp and carefully examined the break: "The fracture surface is obliquely serrated, and its freshness is close to the time of death." He measured the diameter of the fracture with calipers: "2.3 centimeters. According to the lever principle, it would require an instantaneous impact force of at least 15 kilograms to cause this kind of break, which is very likely caused by the collision when the murderer dragged the body." The scattered red substances on the pine branch caught his attention: "Extracting these substances could be blood or some kind of plant sap."

Xiao Yang began examining the deceased's clothing. He used tweezers to pick up the cuff of the deceased's shirt, and under a magnifying glass, he saw tiny grayish-white particles interspersed among the fabric fibers. "Silica," he mused thoughtfully. "This is a structure unique to grasses, and considering the vegetation at the scene, it's probably Miscanthus sinensis or Impatiens balsamina. But these particles have smooth surfaces, so they don't seem to be naturally deposited; they look more like they were ground up." He divided the particle sample, sending one copy for energy dispersive spectroscopy analysis and keeping the other for later use.

Xiao Sun then studied the drag marks at the scene. He sprinkled fluorescent powder along the marks, and under ultraviolet light, the drag trail was clearly visible. "The total length of the marks is 12.7 meters, with three 90-degree turns and five pauses along the way." He measured the width of the marks, "35 centimeters wide, consistent with the characteristics of a single person dragging an adult male. At the third pause, a small amount of hair was found, 120 micrometers in diameter, with continuous medulla, preliminarily identified as human hair."