Attending ex-girlfriend's wedding, arresting the groom's officer on the spot

"This is strange," Zhang Kai frowned. "The time of death was 15 days ago, but the digestion rate of these foods shows that they were ingested recently. The only explanation is that someone poured food into the deceased's stomach after she died."

After further analysis, Zhang Kai concluded that Li Xiaomin died 15 days ago, but the body was dumped 7 days ago. During the 8 days in between, the body was stored somewhere, and someone processed the body, and feeding the stomach with food may have been to confuse the time of death.

When Zhang Kai informed Lu Chuan of the autopsy results, Lu Chuan frowned. The case became more and more complicated. The murderer not only brutally killed Li Xiaomin, but also carefully planned all this to try to cover up the truth. The clues obtained by Yang Lin and Yang Sen at the scene investigation have not yet been clearly pointed.

The whiteboard in the conference room was covered with dense clues. Lu Chuan circled the area along the Beiyang River with a red pen, and the red light of the laser pen flickered on the map: "Now all clues point to the Beiyang River. Focus on checking the surveillance within a three-kilometer range on both sides. Wang Shuai, Zhang Hui, you will lead the team to divide into four groups and advance from upstream and downstream at the same time. No suspicious scenes can be missed."

Wang Shuai and Zhang Hui acted quickly after receiving the order. They led their team to visit each store one by one. Every time they arrived at a store, they patiently explained their purpose and carefully checked the surveillance equipment. "Boss, have you captured any unusual vehicles or people in the past half month?" This sentence became their catchphrase.

Wang Shuai pressed the pause button for the 27th time. The figure in the surveillance video of the farmhouse kitchen was just the tricycle used by the owner to purchase goods in the early morning. Zhang Hui's notebook beside him was already filled with densely packed time nodes, and a striking question mark was drawn next to the latest record - at 12:15 on December 03, the silver SUV briefly stopped at Hedi Road, but there was no water stain on the chassis of the vehicle in the picture.

"The surveillance footage of this homestay is only kept for 7 days." Zhang Hui tore off his sweat-soaked gloves and circled heavily on the registration book, "It just skipped the critical period after Li Xiaomin disappeared." The proprietress was wiping freshly picked grapes, and the dew on the grape leaves wet her apron: "The camera is always covered with bird droppings, and the old man is too lazy to wipe it." Wang Shuai squatted in the corner to check the equipment and found a thin layer of dust on the inside of the dust cover, obviously it had not been maintained for half a month.

The river surface was covered with tiny ripples, like the suppressed sighs at the analysis meeting of the Criminal Investigation Brigade. When they stepped on the fallen leaves and entered the 43rd store, the owner of the fishing tackle shop was throwing fish food into the fish tank: "I watch the surveillance every day, and my eyes are almost tired." On the screen, an old man wearing a sun hat took a walk on time at six o'clock every morning. The sparrows startled by his footsteps fluttered into blurred black dots in the screen. Zhang Hui suddenly pressed the pause button. The height of the old man's trouser legs rolled up was similar to that of a suspicious figure during the crime period, but after zooming in, it was found that it was just a plastic bag blown by the wind.

In the monitoring room of the thermal power plant, technicians called up the images of 16 cameras. Wang Shuai stared at the freight vehicles that were playing in a loop, and suddenly noticed that the tires of the coal truck on the evening of September 9 were stained with dark red mud - highly consistent with the soil test results of the body dumping site. He held his breath and watched the vehicle slowly pass by, until the rear of the car disappeared at the edge of the screen, and then he found that the car railing was welded with a striking factory logo, but the van that dumped the body had no such features. Zhang Hui overlapped the GPS track with the map, and repeatedly measured between the thermal power plant and the river bank with the tip of his pen, and finally wrote in his notebook "the route deviated by 18 kilometers."

As dusk deepened, they had a brief moment of excitement in the security room of the timber factory. The surveillance showed that at dusk on September 9, a van had deviated from the main road and entered the abandoned dock. Wang Shuai's flashlight beam swept across the corner of the screen, and the ripples on the water seemed to show signs of a heavy object entering the water. But when they rushed to the scene overnight, the river surface was as calm as a mirror, with only a few fallen leaves floating on the waves. The sonar detection of the technical department the next day confirmed that there were no abnormal objects on the bottom of the river except for the wreckage of the sunken ship.

"Maybe we should change direction." Zhang Hui rubbed his sore neck, and the sunburned skin on the back of his neck turned slightly red. On the electronic map in front of them, dozens of red dots marked the monitored points that had been checked, but they were like scattered chess pieces that could never be connected. Wang Shuai stroked the crumpled note in his pocket. It was a clue provided by the owner of the 17th convenience store - on the night of the incident, a van came to buy a whole box of mineral water, but after checking the surveillance, it was found that it was just a vehicle used by the water delivery worker to replenish the stock on a daily basis.

The fragrance of sweet-scented osmanthus wafted over the river, but it couldn't dispel the anxiety in the air. Wang Shuai looked at the dim lights on the other side of the river and put his hot phone to his ear. The message just came from the receiver: 327 vans that met the characteristics in the city have been checked, and none of them matched. At this time, Zhang Hui had already packed his survey box and walked towards the next lighted business. The crisp sound of his soles crushing dead leaves spread far and wide on the silent river bank.

Finally, a turning point came five days later.

The two were at a farmhouse called "Riverside Family". The proprietress was a little impatient at first: "People come to check every day, what can they find?" But after Wang Shuai's soft and hard persuasion, she finally agreed to open the surveillance hard drive in the backyard. The pictures on the screen began to play, and Wang Shuai and Zhang Hui stared at them intently, checking them frame by frame.

The scene at 2 a.m. caught their attention. A white van slowly drove into the surveillance range, and its headlights were particularly dazzling in the dark. The car stopped by the river, the driver's door opened, and a man wearing a hat and a mask got out of the car. He looked around vigilantly, and after confirming that no one was there, he walked to the back of the car and opened the trunk.

"Zoom in, zoom in!" Zhang Hui shouted excitedly. The picture was magnified several times, but due to the limited pixels, it was still a little blurry. The man dragged a black bag out of the trunk. The bag looked very heavy. The man dragged it to the river with great effort. He looked around and then threw the bag into the river with force, splashing a lot of water. Then, the man quickly returned to the car and drove away.

Wang Shuai immediately took out his notebook and recorded the time and vehicle characteristics: "A white van, the license plate was blocked by mud, the model was older, and the windows were covered with dark film." They thanked the proprietress and rushed to the next store without stopping.

In the subsequent investigation, they found traces of the van in the surveillance of a nearby factory. The footage showed that the van had stopped for a few minutes on the small road outside the factory an hour before the body was dumped. Wang Shuai carefully observed the footage and found that the driver's window was rolled down and a hand was stretched out of the window, as if throwing something away. (End of this chapter)