Phi-Fic Chapter 960 The Corpse in the Cellar of Beihong Village
Chapter 960 The Corpse in the Cellar of Beihong Village
In early autumn, Beihong Village was shrouded in sweltering humidity. The corn leaves drooped listlessly, and the cicadas' chirping exploded in the afternoon air. As Lu Chuan's police boots trod across the sun-baked dirt road at the village entrance, he could see the makeshift police tape swaying in the wind in the distance. Several villagers were peering over the tape, their faces filled with fear and curiosity.
"Captain Lu!" Xiao Sun poked his head out of the cellar entrance, a layer of white mist obscuring his protective mask. "The body is very well preserved; the preliminary assessment is that it's adipocere." He handed over a powerful flashlight, the beam cleaving through the thick darkness of the cellar to illuminate the milky-yellow body in the corner. Lu Chuan climbed down the rusty iron ladder, the stench of decay mixed with the stench of death assaulting his nostrils, causing him to hold his breath.
The cellar floor was covered with a half-foot layer of coal ash. The body lay curled up on its side, its clothes long since rotted into shreds. Lu Chuan crouched down, slowly moving his flashlight across the corpse's surface. The waxy sheen of adipocere gleamed eerily under the beam of light; the victim's skin was uneven, as if coated with a layer of translucent wax. "More than two years have passed since death." Zhang Lin's voice came from behind. The forensic doctor, wearing latex gloves, was carefully examining the body. "Adipocere requires a specific temperature and humidity environment; the coal ash, isolating the body from air, accelerated this process."
Lu Chuan's gaze was suddenly drawn to the object clutched tightly in the deceased's right hand. It was a leather wallet, its surface covered in mold, but the ID card inside was perfectly preserved. He gently removed the ID card with tweezers; under the bright light, the three characters "Li Qingmin" were clearly visible, and the address field showed he was from Yunhe County in a neighboring city. "Notify the Yunhe County police to assist in the investigation," Lu Chuan said, placing the ID card into an evidence bag, "focusing on checking Li Qingmin's missing person records."
The investigation began on a sweltering evening. When Lu Chuan and Xiao Wang knocked on the door of the first villager's house, the large yellow dog in the yard barked wildly and lunged at the fence. "We really don't know what happened!" said the homeowner, Aunt Zhao, wiping her sweat, her eyes darting around. "The cellar hasn't been opened for over ten years, who would have thought..." Her words were interrupted by the sudden sound of a television inside the house; the news was reporting on this bizarre case of a hidden corpse.
The small shop at the west end of the village became an information hub. Several old men squatted by the wall, smoking their pipes. Amidst the swirling smoke, Lu Chuan offered one: "Uncle, whose cellar used to be?" An old man wearing a straw hat puffed on his pipe: "It originally belonged to Old Chen's family, but it was abandoned after his son went to work in the city. Speaking of strange things..." He lowered his voice, "Three years ago, on a rainy night, I saw a black car parked near the cellar, its headlights flashing, but by the time I got there with my umbrella, the car was long gone."
In front of Old Chen's dilapidated courtyard gate, Lu Chuan encountered Chen Defa, who had just returned from the fields. Upon hearing about the cellar, the dark-skinned man dropped his hoe with a clatter: "I sold that cellar to Wang Laosan at the east end of the village three years ago, and I've had the money for three years..." He suddenly covered his mouth, his eyes widening in horror, "Officer, I have nothing to do with this!"
As night fell, Lu Chuan's notebook was filled with densely packed clues. But upon closer examination, very little useful information remained: the mysteriously vanished black sedan, the cellar that changed hands multiple times, the missing informants... The only certainty was that Li Qingmin's identity was gradually becoming clearer. News came from the Yunhe County police that Li Qingmin had indeed disappeared three years ago. At that time, his building materials company experienced a cash flow crisis, and he had borrowed large sums of money from multiple people before his disappearance.
Lu Chuan stood at the cellar entrance, gazing at the twinkling stars in the sky. A few withered leaves rustled in the evening breeze, their sound particularly clear in the quiet village. The beam of his flashlight swept across the cellar again, revealing several blurry footprints on the coal ash. He crouched down and examined them closely with a magnifying glass—the footprints were clearly recent, completely different from the shoe size provided by the villager who discovered the body.
"A discreet crime scene investigation needs to be conducted carefully. Although a considerable amount of time has passed, let's see if we can discover any details. The murderer may have left some valuable clues when disposing of the body. Let's try to make some discoveries."
Li Ming made arrangements for the criminal police officers conducting the investigation.
The cellar was brightly lit by searchlights, the stark white light illuminating the mottled walls and uneven ground in minute detail. The air was still filled with the nauseating smell of adipocere mixed with coal ash.
Xiao Sun put on goggles and latex gloves, took out a multi-band light source from the exploration kit. This professional equipment can reveal traces that are difficult to detect with the naked eye through light of different wavelengths. "Let's start with the ground," he said to Xiao Yang beside him. He then squatted down, adjusted the multi-band light source to blue light mode, and slowly swept it across the coal ash layer at the bottom of the cellar.
Under the blue light, fine reflective particles shimmered on the surface of the coal ash. Xiao Sun carefully picked up a few with tweezers and placed them in the evidence bag. "These might be fibers or other trace evidence; we need to take them back for scanning electron microscopy," he explained as he took notes. However, when they tried to find complete footprints, they discovered that the coal ash layer had been trampled and messed up by villagers and early investigators who had already discovered bodies. The few remaining, blurry imprints were insufficient to extract any useful information.
Next, the two men turned their attention to the cellar walls. Xiao Sun took out fluorescent luminol reagent, a chemical commonly used in criminal investigations to detect bloodstains. Even if bloodstains have been cleaned up, any trace residue will fluoresce in the dark upon contact with luminol. Xiao Yang turned off all the lights, plunging the cellar into complete darkness. Xiao Sun, holding a spray bottle, slowly sprayed luminol reagent along the walls, watching intently for any changes. However, several minutes passed, and the walls remained completely black, showing no expected fluorescence. This meant that there was likely no struggle or bleeding, or that the bloodstains had been thoroughly cleaned up.
“Try the electrostatic adsorption device,” Xiao Yang suggested. He took out the electrostatic adsorption device, a type of equipment used to extract dust fingerprints and footprints. He laid the special adsorption membrane flat on the ground, and after turning on the device, the powerful electrostatic field began to work, attempting to adsorb the dust on the ground onto the membrane, thereby revealing potential traces. However, due to the long time that had passed, and the fact that the coal ash layer was too thick and loose, only a blurry gray shadow appeared on the adsorption membrane, and no valuable traces could be discerned.
Xiao Sun then took out a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, a device capable of quickly analyzing the elemental composition of substances. He pointed the instrument's probe at the coal ash and walls surrounding the body, attempting to find any special substances through elemental analysis, such as metallic elements that might remain on the murder weapon, or special chemical substances left behind by the murderer.