Forensic Doctor 2003: I Became a Legend on the Front Lines of Criminal Investigation

At this moment, Wang Hui and Jiang Chen drove back to the crime scene.

The small mountain village is much more lively during the day than at night.

In this era, the widespread depopulation of rural areas that would later occur had not yet taken place. The vast majority of young people in the village still made a living in their hometown or worked in nearby villages and towns.

The massive wave of urbanization has not yet swept over this remote land.

Soon, the two drove the car straight into the yard.

The back of the house was tightly cordoned off with yellow and black police tape, and a police auxiliary officer was standing guard to prevent unauthorized personnel from approaching and to avoid damage to the scene.

Wang Hui and Jiang Chen exchanged a glance, said nothing, and walked straight into the room where the deceased had lived.

The old man did not live in the main house with his son and daughter-in-law, but lived alone in a small, separate annex next to the stove.

As soon as Jiang Chen stood at the door, he looked into the room and was immediately greeted by a faint smell of urine.

Wang Hui followed closely behind and walked in, subconsciously raising his hand to cover his nose, muttering under his breath, "As expected of a bachelor's house, this smell is really strong."

Looking around, on the other side of the room near the corner, a sheep was tied to a stake with a rope and was sitting quietly.

Wang Hui stepped forward, gently patted the sheep's head, and said half-jokingly, "Look at you, you can't even speak. If you could, you could tell us everything that happened that night, and we police could save some trouble and catch the murderer sooner."

He raised his hand and patted the sheep's head again, startling the sheep, which immediately ran away a few steps.

Jiang Chen turned to look at him and said with a helpless smile, "Senior brother, what you're saying is too mystical."

"We're investigating a case, not doing metaphysics. We can't really gouge out its eyes and reconstruct what happened, can we?"

As he spoke, he took out a pair of disposable gloves from his pocket, carefully put them on, and then bent down to examine the medicines placed on the stool next to the deceased's bed.

There were more than a dozen bottles and jars of various kinds scattered on the stool.

Jiang Chen glanced at it quickly, then pointed to the bed and said to Wang Hui, "Senior brother, look, the deceased's bed is open, so he must have been lying down at the time."

"But there were no signs of a struggle inside the room, and the items were neatly arranged and not knocked over."

"This indicates that the deceased lost consciousness in a relatively quiet state, which is highly consistent with the detection of toxins in the body and is entirely consistent with the process of death by poisoning."

Wang Hui nodded and agreed, "That's right, that's definitely true."

"Look at these bottles and jars, they're already so unstable, they'd easily tip over if you touched them even slightly. If there were a fight or a scuffle, all of these things would be a complete mess by now."

After saying that, he picked up his camera and started snapping photos from various angles around the scene.

As a full-time trace photography technician in the bureau, his core job is to fix the original appearance of the scene by taking photos and completely preserve every detail of the crime scene.

The original state of the crime scene is crucial in any case.

If a case is not solved in time, the original crime scene photos from that time will be the most objective and accurate evidence when the investigation is reopened later.

Of course, this case will not become a cold case, because once the source of the drug is found, it will not be long before the real culprit is identified.

Even so, the trial stage still relies on these objective physical evidences.

Wang Hui held up his camera and took pictures for a long time before stopping, muttering to himself, "After taking so many pictures, I still haven't seen a bottle of sleeping pills."

By this time, Jiang Chen had finished checking all the medicine jars on the stool one by one, and most of them contained medications for treating late-stage lung cancer.

Medical technology in 2003 was far less advanced than it is today, and these kinds of drugs could mostly only relieve pain, alleviate symptoms, and dilate the trachea.

After a thorough inspection, he found no trace of sleeping pills.

"Not found," he said, turning to Wang Hui.

Wang Hui, however, remained relaxed and analyzed with a smile: "That actually explains things even more—the murderer brought these sleeping pills specifically for the deceased to take, which further proves that the deceased did not take them on their own."

"If there were sleeping pill bottles at the scene, it's possible the elderly person took them themselves; but now that even the bottles can't be found, how could it be a case of voluntary ingestion?"

Jiang Chen nodded repeatedly at these words: "Senior brother, what you said makes sense."

"However, we need to search more carefully. These are just the medicines we can see. There might be more medicine bottles hidden in other corners."

As he spoke, Jiang Chen looked at a small wooden cabinet beside him, with two drawers at the bottom.

He gently pulled open the drawer, which contained many medical images and pathology examination data.

Suddenly, amidst a pile of papers, two medicine bottles were found lying there.

"They're here too!"

Soon, Jiang Chen's eyes lit up. He picked up one of the bottles, which clearly had the words "Dalmatians" printed on it.

"The sleeping pills are here."

He shook the medicine bottle and found that the bottle opening had been opened, and nearly half of the pills inside were missing.

After Wang Hui finished taking photos, Jiang Chen deliberately pinched the top and bottom of the medicine bottle with his fingers.

This method preserves as many fingerprints as possible from the side of the bottle.

If a third person touches a medicine bottle, it is highly likely that they will leave fingerprints on the bottle, according to the normal way people hold it. This is done to provide key physical clues for subsequent case analysis.

Although Wang Hui is a full-time trace photography technician, he is also very skilled in fingerprint extraction. He immediately picked up the fingerprint brush, dipped it in an appropriate amount of ink powder, and gently brushed it on the bottle.

Two minutes later, four clear fingerprints appeared.

After observing carefully for a moment, Wang Hui said, "There are fingerprints on the bottle, but some overlap, so it seems they were left by the same person."

"Moreover, the shape and pattern of his fingerprints are highly similar to those of the deceased."

Are you sure?

Jiang Chen immediately turned around and asked.

This crucial clue cannot be wrong in the slightest!

If all the fingerprints on the bottle belong to the deceased, then the nature of the case may change to suicide.

Without hesitation, Wang Hui immediately turned on the camera playback function.

During the autopsy, he specifically photographed the fingerprints of the deceased's ten fingers for comparison at this moment.

He magnified the deceased's fingerprints on the camera screen and compared them one by one with the fingerprints extracted from the bottle, pinpointing the fingerprint features.

Finally, he said, "When compared, the key fingerprint anchors all match—I can say for sure."

Upon hearing this conclusion, Jiang Chen was immediately filled with doubt.

If the only fingerprints on the medicine bottle are those of the deceased, it means that no one else has ever touched the sleeping pills.

Did the deceased really commit suicide?

His previously unwavering judgment began to waver at this moment.

Five minutes later, he picked up the deceased's medical records and looked through them. He found that the most recent follow-up examination was just last week, and the doctor's instructions clearly stated: sleeping pills, two pills to be taken before bed.

Seeing this, Jiang Chen felt increasingly uneasy.

When I got the medicine bottle just now, I noticed that half of the pills were missing. How could I have taken so many in just one week?

Thinking of this, he immediately poured all the sleeping pills from the bottle onto a piece of white paper, looked up at Wang Hui and said, "Senior brother, let's count the pills."

Soon, the two of them bent over the table and carefully counted the number of pills.

Two minutes later, Jiang Chen announced the number: "I counted 32 here."

"I have 25 here," Wang Hui said immediately.

Upon hearing this, Jiang Chen's heart sank.

The two counted only 57 pills in total.

This bottle of medicine originally contained 100 pills, but a simple calculation shows that it is 43 pills short.

I was prescribed to take 14 pills a week, but where did the other 29 sleeping pills go?