“You’re lucky if you can spend an easy hour in the office each day,” Lin Wangjiu waved his hand, barely enduring it for a short while before he started complaining again, earning the title of the negative energy king of Team B.
As the police car started, everyone’s gaze fell on Yi Jiayi, as if this delicate little girl sitting in the car, going with a bunch of rough men to a crime scene to see a corpse, was such a bizarre thing.
The forensic and forensic science experts in the car also glanced at Yi Jiayi from time to time, this newly joined young female cop who was pretty and cute, but didn’t have the fierce air of someone in this line of work.
A few minutes later, Fang Zhenyue shifted his gaze from outside the car, caught everyone’s looking point, and introduced:
“This is B team’s new detective Yi Jiayi, she has a strong instinct for catching criminals, and bravely caught a murderer in the Bi Street murder case. Please take good care of her in the future.”
“Everyone calls her Eleven,” Liu Jiaming actively promoted.
“Why do they call her Eleven?” asked forensic officer Xu Junhao. Liu Jiaming was about to imitate Fang Zhenyue’s act of extending a forefinger and Yi Jiayi’s act of pushing someone else’s finger to demonstrate the number 11, but he was punched by both Fang Zhenyue and Yi Jiayi and stopped with an embarrassed smile.
“This is forensic officer Xu Junhao, Dr. Xu, whom you know…
“This is the senior lab technician of the forensic department, Chen Guangyao. We all call him Brother Da Guangming. You should call him that too…”
Unable to embarrass Fang Zhenyue and Yi Jiayi further, Liu Jiaming simply took on the role of introducer and introduced all the non-B division colleagues in the car.
Yi Jiayi called out to everyone one by one, like a child repeating phrases during New Year visits with their parents.
She was once just an administrative staff, treated by everyone as an ignorant young girl fresh out of school, to be cared for if possible. Expectations of her work capacity were lenient; as long as she did not make major mistakes, it was fine.
After all, she’s just a young girl, learning slowly.
But now it was different; she was an official detective in the Major Case Unit, essentially skipping the uniformed police phase and jumping straight to being a plainclothes officer.
Everyone was naturally skeptical of her abilities and rapid promotion. How did she manage to rise up? How could she become a criminal detective?
Yi Jiayi also felt this pressure. As she got off at the destination, she encouraged herself: regardless of whether the cat is fat or thin, a cat that catches a murderer is a good cat.
She had special abilities, and as long as she could serve justice and promote good over evil, she would be helping society; she could not falter first.
With that thought, she cast aside all her mixed feelings of awkwardness and guilt, and felt invigorated again.
Fang Zhenyue got off the bus behind her, took a few steps, looked back at her, and then returned, “It’s okay. You might be a bit scared when you first get to the scene. It’s normal. Jiaming and the others were also quite evasive at first. Just take your time to adapt and learn. Just watch from the periphery today to see how everyone works.”
“I understand, Brother Yue.” Yi Jiayi felt his kindness and responded with a spirited smile to ease his mind.
“Right. I’ve already applied for your service weapon. Just spend an hour each day practicing shooting, and passing the assessment will do.” Fang Zhenyue patted Yi Jiayi on the shoulder, then composed himself, his expression serious, and strode towards the area cordoned off by the police line.
Xu Junhao, wearing white gloves, caught up, took out a piece of hawthorn candy from his pocket, handed it to Yi Jiayi, nodded at her, and then lifted the police line and ran inside.
Yi Jiayi, holding the hawthorn candy, pinned her ID to her chest. As she walked into the police line, she was still stopped by a uniformed police officer.
She had to face the uniformed officer, pointed to her chest ID, and solemnly said, “CID Detective 7647.”
The uniformed officer took a serious look at the ID on her chest, then at her face, and stepped forward to examine her ID closely before nodding politely and saying, “Sorry, officer.”
He then stepped back and gestured for her to ‘please enter.’
By this time, the others had already gathered around the body and begun their work.
…
Yi Jiayi took a deep breath, scanned the crowd outside the police cordon, and then quickly walked towards Officer Fang and others.
Forensic scientist Chen Guangyao first led the lab technicians to inspect the scene, and the meticulous technicians did not overlook even the blood on the grass leaves—fearing that crucial evidence might be missed.
After ensuring that all nearby evidence and clues were collected, the forensic officer Xu Junhao approached the body as directed by Chen Guangyao and crouched down for examination.
The body was found on a slope south of Cherry Street Park and west of Ferry Street. However, it is not accurate to call it a body, as only body parts wrapped in a green food bag were discovered at the scene.
“The body was discovered by sanitation worker Lin Po this morning. Onlookers mentioned that they had seen the bag on the grass earlier and thought it was just trash, so they walked away after a quick glance. After asking several people, the earliest sighting was around 8 AM by someone delivering goods to an office building cafeteria. This person was quite certain about what they saw.”
“Another early riser walking their dog also saw it. Their dog barked at the bag, but the person, thinking it was trash, just pulled the dog away. This was around 8:30 AM.”
This was reported by a uniformed police officer who was among the first to arrive at the sealed-off scene to Fang Zhenyue.
“Okay, Gary, you and this colleague go take some statements, and get contact information from the citizens who provided leads,” Fang Zhenyue instructed as he looked down carefully examining the body parts and the green eco-friendly bag that the forensic science team was collecting.
While searching for evidence, Chen Guangyao walked down the grassy slope, occasionally crouching to call over a lab technician to gather evidence.
As he walked, he suddenly stood up, turned his head to Fang Zhenyue and said, “Sir Fang, there are more body parts over here.”
Fang Zhenyue quickly followed him, looking down to see a pile of rocks on the undeveloped slope below, with sparse weeds.
Hanging on the rocks were bloodstains and unidentified objects, and further down was a large, opened black trash bag hidden by tall grass and scattered body parts.
“It looks like the body was dumped from the slope above. The green food bag got caught higher up while the larger bag fell and rolled down here,” Chen Guangyao said, then waved to call the lab technicians over.
This significantly expanded the area that needed to be searched and evidenced.
Chen Guangyao wiped his sweat, glanced at the increasingly scorching sun, and lost all desire to sigh.
In this weather, searching and collecting evidence is too difficult. The longer it takes, the greater the risk of evidence contamination.
He took a deep breath, suppressing his frustration, and crouched beside the bloodstains, concentrating hard to make sure he didn’t miss any details.
Yi Jiayi walked on the periphery of the staff, too hesitant to get too close, afraid that her inexperience might cause more trouble.
Liu Jiaming was making a record beside the police car for Lin Po, the first sanitation worker to open the body bag. Uniformed police guarded the police line, occasionally having to persuade overly curious onlookers who were almost bursting in.
Uncle Jiu followed the forensic officer Xu Junhao, noting down everything he said and occasionally gathering some scene clues to organize and report to Fang Zhenyue.
The rising temperature and intense sunlight filled the air with a strange smell of sweat and unidentified odors, causing the uniformed police around to gradually show signs of disgust, and the curious onlookers were dispersed by the smell.
Yet, Yi Jiayi didn’t flee. She didn’t feel disgust or fear upon seeing the body because the next moment she was drawn into a flow of imagery, completely preoccupied without time to care about any bad smells or disgust.
The uniformed police, seeing Yi Jiayi standing near the body parts without any vomiting reaction, actually showed a hint of respect: To be a detective, one must really have some capabilities.
Despite not looking formidable, she might be quite strong inside.”
—
Yi Jiayi did not witness the complete murder scene this time.
She saw the female victim, naked, lying in a dim, dirty, and crowded environment, with the murderer strangling her neck, continually applying force.
The victim struggled, but only managed to weakly kick her legs and feebly wave her arms a few times. It was clear that her vitality had already been greatly diminished before her neck was choked.
The footage was brief.
Yi Jiayi saw the murderer’s hands and sleeves, his shoulders, and face obscured in darkness.
It is uncertain if it was because the body was incomplete, thus the mental imagery she perceived was also incomplete.
Regaining her composure, Yi Jiayi looked around; she needed to see more parts of the body to corroborate her deductions.
Thus, when everyone thought Yi Jiayi would stay far away, or be scared into a physiological reaction, she bypassed the first discovered body part and ran towards more body parts found by Chen Guangyao.
After Liu Jiaming completed the statement recording, he saw the young policewoman frowning and striding down the slope.
What is meant by “heading toward the tiger mountain,” Yi Jiayi was doing just that.
He briefly instructed Mrs. Lin, then covered his mouth and nose with his arm and followed down the slope.
The forensic officer had examined the first discovered body part, ordered the subordinates to collect and preserve the body, and also moved towards the bottom of the slope.
“… The piece just now preliminarily identified as the right shoulder blade area, this piece is the left forearm… this is the right lower leg… this piece… cannot be identified yet…”
As Xu Junhao inspected and collected the body parts one by one, the expressions of everyone grew more solemn.
Thanks for the chapters!