The Traveler's Bridge is located on the east side of Qinghe City.

The river here is not wide, but quite beautiful. The flat beam bridge is accessible to both vehicles and pedestrians. There are river and mountain views nearby, making it a nice place for leisure in Qinghe City.

When Liu Wenkai and others arrived, it was already 10 o'clock at night. The lit streetlights reflected on the bridge, leading to an unknown place in the rainy weather.

The distant mountains were verdant, with their height and width unclear. Only the lit lights faintly outlined the contour of the mountains.

Liu Wenkai is the captain of the second squadron of the Criminal Investigation Brigade in Ningtai County. The first and second squadrons of the Criminal Investigation Brigade in Ningtai County are responsible for solving major cases on a daily basis.

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As an experienced detective in his forties, Liu Wenkai's daily routine is to deal with various complex cases.

He drove across the Traveler's Bridge and then back again, completing the basic observation.

There were only Liu Wenkai and Zhang Enze in the car. Liu Wenkai didn't hide his thoughts and said, "Neither side is a prosperous area. If you jump down somewhere, it's very likely that no one will see it."

"But if someone pushed him down, no one would see it either," Zhang Enze said.

Liu Wenkai nodded and sighed, "If it was a homicide and then dismembered, the first scene would not be here. There are no conditions for dismemberment. After all, it's a place where people come and go, which is inconvenient."

"So, if we can find Zhou Lei in the surveillance footage from two or three days ago, we can preliminarily determine that he committed suicide," Zhang Enze summarized.

"More or less," Liu Wenkai said, holding up his fingers. "The deceased, Zhou Lei, had no name, no savings, no house, no debts, and no friends or family. He had no stable job and broke up with his girlfriend. Basically, common motives for murder such as financial gain, love, and revenge can be ruled out."

Zhang Enze's face fell as he listened, and he couldn't help but look at the rain outside the window, saying, "It's quite tragic."

Liu Wenkai responded with a muffled "Hmm," lit a cigarette, and looked to the other side, saying, "Sometimes, it's just boring to think about it."

Zhang Enze didn't say anything more until the cigarette was finished. He then opened the window slightly and threw the butt out, saying, "How do we explain the dismemberment?"

"There are boats on the river, and the propellers could have done it," Liu Wenkai said indifferently. "It's not a new thing. The boats on the Tai River crisscross back and forth. If they encounter a body, they may not report it."

"Then let's look for surveillance footage," Zhang Enze didn't mention finding a boat. If it was a homicide case, in order to maintain the integrity of the case, they would have to ask all the boats that passed through the Tai River in the past few days. However, if it was a suicide, it would be more difficult to invest a large amount of police force for a long time.

Liu Wenkai silently took out his phone, first reported to Huang Qiangming, and then drove to a nearby restaurant near the bridge to ask the owner for surveillance video.

...

Ningtai County.

The frontline news surprised Jiang Yuan, who specially returned to the funeral home, pulled out the body, and checked it again.

The broken waist of the body was relatively flat, but if you looked closely, the length of the muscle bundles was uneven and the skin flaps at the broken end could still be seen. The cutting tool was not very sharp.

Jiang Yuan's experience was not enough to accurately deduce the degree of the tool from the state of the body's fracture.

However, now according to the frontline news, the explanation of the boat paddle also makes sense.

Especially the remaining part of the vertebrae, the unevenness of the bone section indicates that there are more blunt components. This also matches the cutting mode of the boat paddle.Of course, it was impossible to determine that the oar was the only murder weapon just by analyzing the cross-section. However, forensic anthropology knowledge did not exclude the possibility of the oar being used as a dismemberment tool.

Jiang Yuan checked twice in a row before finally sighing in relief. He changed his gloves, took more photos, and then slowly cleaned up the remains.

He washed the autopsy table and the ground with water, then soaked them in bleach. The dissecting instruments used were also soaked, but for a longer period of time.

After the autopsy room was cleaned up, and Jiang Yuan washed his hands again, Wu Jun walked in with his hands behind his back and a mask on.

"How is it?" Wu Jun asked with a smile.

"It's explainable," Jiang Yuan said as he brushed his hands. "Can't find the rest of the body? How should we search for it?"

"I called the cities upstream and downstream to see if they received the other half, but there's still no news. However, if it's a suicide, the body shouldn't have disappeared," Wu Jun paused before continuing. "If it really did disappear, then we need to re-examine the cause of death."

Jiang Yuan nodded slowly. Indeed, if it was a suicide and the body was broken by the oar, the first half of the body should have appeared. Especially with the recent heavy rain, the body couldn't have disappeared into thin air.

Of course, it was also possible to look at it from another angle. It was possible that the heavy rain had washed half of the body into the jurisdiction of Ningtai County, while the upper half of the body might still be in another place.

But as long as no one deliberately hid it, it should appear within a few days. The only possibility of hiding the body in this reasoning was the boat that broke the body. However, since half of the body was already lost, there seemed to be no point in hiding the upper half of the body.

"Okay, don't think about it. In my experience, some things don't happen according to reason or probability. Especially in homicide cases, no matter what you say, it's useless. Homicide itself is a rare event," Wu Jun said, pausing again. "Let's wait for two more days and see."

Everyone had to work overtime in the rain because the homicide case had to be solved within 72 hours.

Now that it was basically proven not to be a homicide case, there was no point in being in a hurry.

Jiang Yuan had done all he could do, and could only clean up the autopsy room and return to the Criminal Investigation Department.

The next day, a detective brought back the video footage from the day of the incident.

Jiang Yuan and Wu Jun went to the video office together to watch it.

The surveillance video had already been sorted out, and the technicians in the video office simply pulled out screenshots and images, easily identifying Zhou Lei in the video.

Zhou Lei was young, 170 cm tall, and weighed 130 pounds when he was alive. It could be seen that he got out of a taxi, walked slowly to the bridge, hesitated, then returned to the bridge and stopped, and finally walked step by step to the center of the bridge until he left the surveillance.

This confirmed that it was a suicide.

The news of the upper half of the body finally came the next day, but it was found by someone on a reed island several kilometers away.

Jiang Yuan and Wu Jun went together to retrieve the body.

The body had already corroded to the point where it was unbearable to look at. It was hard to imagine what it looked like just a few days ago.

This time, after a simple inspection of the body, they first opened the abdominal cavity.

The huge left and right lungs almost bounced back from the chest cavity, and the surface of the lungs still showed the indentation of the ribs.

Jiang Yuan pressed it with his finger, leaving a mark, and when he pressed it with his palm, it felt like kneading dough.

"Waterlogged emphysema of the lungs," Jiang Yuan made a simple judgment.Wu Jun nodded. This is an important feature of drowning, where the victim desperately breathes before death, causing the water, mucus, and air to turn into foam, which is then inhaled into the lungs.

Drowning usually takes more than six minutes, and is very painful and prolonged. Water-induced lung emphysema is one of the proofs.

Jiang Yuan made another incision in the lungs, and a large amount of foamy drowning liquid flowed out. Fortunately, the body had already decomposed, and the strong odor almost perfectly covered the smell of drowning liquid.

At this moment, a shiny ball rolled into Jiang Yuan's hand:

Zhou Lei's legacy - swimming (doggy paddle style) (LV4) - in the small river in the village, Zhou Lei learned to swim with his friends and became extremely skilled. He even used his swimming skills to save another friend. After entering the city, he found that his best swimming style had become the target of ridicule, so he no longer wanted to swim. In the final moments of his life, facing the rushing river, Zhou Lei could choose to struggle, but why bother? It's better to go home. Better to go see grandma.

Jiang Yuan sighed deeply.

Forensics always see things too late and can change too little. But they are no different from ordinary people. As the saying goes, the people of Qin mourned themselves first, and later generations mourned them. Later generations mourned them without reflecting on their own actions, causing them to mourn for later generations again.