Chapter 905: Suspect Characteristics

When Lu Chuan left the autopsy room, it was already past three in the morning.

Even though it was very late, the entire Criminal Investigation Team was still brightly lit, everyone was still busy, especially the support staff for Song Mingguang’s and Wang Song’s teams, who had a huge amount of work on their hands.

The scope of people being screened on Wang Song’s side had expanded again, the cross-checking task was heavier, everyone was busy with no moment to rest.

The situation on Song Mingguang’s side was a bit better; they had already narrowed it down to two people and were currently conducting targeted investigations.

Song Mingguang’s investigative style is very steady. Normally, if he finds someone suspicious, or someone falls into the range of interest, he will first do a background probe on that person and won’t rush in blindly to question or visit.

Lu Chuan couldn’t rest either.

The partial fingerprint brought back from the crime scene had not yet been examined and analyzed by Lu Chuan.

In addition, Lu Chuan still had to reconstruct and calculate some of the details from the scene.

Although no footprints of the suspect were found at the scene, Lu Chuan still made a rough inference about the suspect’s characteristics through other means.

Trace evidence analysis was still ongoing, but there was no way results would come out tonight; the earliest would be tomorrow afternoon.

The case was moving forward, and everyone was busy.

In the office, Li Donglin was holding a case file, the desk covered with documents.

As the head of the Major Crimes Unit, Li Donglin often doesn’t need to personally take part in the specific tasks of the case.

But the direction of every investigation in the major crimes unit is ultimately finalized by him before it’s confirmed.

So deciding which direction to invest more energy in, which direction should be treated as the key to solving the case, is a major test for Li Donglin.

Especially when the Major Crimes Unit has just begun to get involved in a case and no effective clues have formed yet, making any judgment at all is extremely difficult for Li Donglin.

This is also why Li Donglin pays particular attention to the clues coming from Lu Chuan’s side.

Because crime scene investigators provide technical parameters, not logical reasoning.

Compared with Song Mingguang and Wang Song, who reason from the faint traces of the case, Lu Chuan is the one who, based on concrete conditions at the scene, gives solid, practical suggestions.

And Li Donglin himself came up through the ranks as a crime scene investigator in the fingerprint post, so he has even more faith in and conviction about the directional clues that the crime scene can provide for solving a case.

"The heart? The finger!"

The victim’s left ring finger had been severed, and it had not been found at the scene or in the ashes in the stove pit. That is to say, the killer should have taken this section of finger away.

But why would the killer do that?

There must be some reason he took the ring finger, and that reason is highly important.

This is also a key basis for Li Donglin’s judgment that the suspect should be someone familiar to Wang Jingya.

In the vast majority of situations, killing has a motive; killing for no reason and no purpose is something lunatics do.

Yet the killer handled the scene extremely cleanly, the methods highly concealed, with a strong anti-detection consciousness. Clearly this person is no lunatic.

Li Donglin had just looked up quite a bit of information online about ring fingers.

The left ring finger and the right ring finger are actually different.

Among the five fingers, the ring finger is the weakest in strength, and relatively speaking, the least flexible.

The left ring finger is generally the finger on which a wedding ring is worn, so it’s also called the ring finger.

Besides, the left ring finger is closest to the heart, so it’s also known as the "love finger."

The blood in the ring finger is blood from the tip of the heart.

There are also some scientific research reports about ring finger length.

The length of each finger is not fixed; usually the middle finger is the longest, and the thumb and little finger are generally of equal length.

Comparing the lengths of the ring finger and index finger, it’s commonly believed that people whose ring finger is longer than their index finger are more competitive in society.

Of course, this is not an absolute concept, just an empirical judgment based on relative data.

The killer cut off Wang Jingya’s left ring finger and removed it from the scene; this must carry a meaning he considers particularly important.

Just like in some earlier serial homicide cases where the killer liked to murder women wearing red dresses.

Of course, this case should not be a serial homicide; no reports of other victims have been found so far.

And then there’s the heart—the suspect dug out the heart with his bare hands. What was that for?

Time flew by, and it was soon the morning of the second day.

Working through the night, Lu Chuan had achieved some results, but nothing decisive had yet emerged.

The partial fingerprint had already been examined and analyzed, but just as Lu Chuan had expected, the system did not match it to any target individual.

After all, the fingerprint was too damaged. Even with Lu Chuan doing his utmost, he was only able to mark out two characteristic points.

In theory, no characteristic point on any fingerprint is ever exactly the same as another.

That is to say, theoretically, even with a single characteristic point one ought to be able to match a fingerprint.

But the automated comparison system cannot be used to make determinations that way.

If Lu Chuan were to compare them manually, taking the fingerprints one by one, it is indeed possible he could find the person.

The problem is that there are tens of thousands of fingerprints in the system; Lu Chuan can’t compare them one by one.

And from the similar fingerprints returned by the system, Lu Chuan had manually checked through three to four hundred of them batch by batch, working until morning without a successful match.

But that doesn’t mean this fingerprint is meaningless.

As long as there is a defined range of suspects, after collecting fingerprints from all of them, Lu Chuan can manually compare each print.

In that case, it may be possible to directly lock onto the suspect’s identity.

This is the power of modern fingerprint forensics and DNA verification.

If there are no such clues found at the scene, then the suspect can only be identified through reasoning and investigation.

But if such clues do exist, it’s a different story.

No matter how unlikely it seems that the suspect would appear at the scene, or how well he has concealed himself.

Once fingerprints or DNA are matched, he can’t run.

Criminal Investigation Team cafeteria.

Lu Chuan and Song Mingguang were having breakfast together.

"Old Song, how are things going on your side?"

Song Mingguang took a sip of soy milk. "We’ve got a bit of a lead."

"We locked onto two people yesterday and are still investigating, but specific results probably won’t come out until this afternoon."

Lu Chuan hadn’t expected Song Mingguang to have target individuals this quickly.

Thinking of this, he offered a suggestion: "Yesterday, when I went to the crime scene for a second crime scene investigation, I discovered some things. The suspect’s height is roughly between one meter sixty-five and one meter seventy."

Hmm?

Song Mingguang froze for a moment. "Really?"