Chapter 379

The Jiang family kitchen.

Uncle Huang Qiang held a kitchen knife, *duang-duang* chopping the filling, and once finished, he piled it into a stainless steel basin.

Jiang Fujian carried an ostrich, skillfully dismantling the meat.

Jiang Yuan stood before the stove, looking like a master chef, simmering a marinade for his secret meatballs using sweet potatoes, pumpkin, chicken eggs, duck eggs, duck meat, ostrich meat, and fish meat.

Everyone was busy and bustling; only Jiang Fujian wiped his sweat with a hint of worry and said, "Jiang Yuan, if the police dogs don't eat this dog food of yours, just take it to feed the stray dogs. Don't you dare bring it home; I'm afraid it'll bloat our Doberman to death."

"It might not even be enough. There will probably be ten or twenty dogs tomorrow." Jiang Yuan stirred the meat filling to ensure it heated evenly and said, "I have to be busy for a few days in one go."

"If you make it delicious, of course it won't be enough. If you make it taste bad, no matter how much you make, it'll be hard to finish." Jiang Fujian looked at the ostrich under his knife and said with deep understanding, "The first time I handled this thing, I almost paid someone a hundred yuan just to take a bite."

Jiang Yuan chuckled, "It's fine. Dogs like things with flavor. As long as the ostrich is cleaned properly, there won't be any problems."

"Where would wild dogs even eat ostrich? They probably couldn't even beat one." Uncle Huang Qiang also seemed quite disgusted by the plucked ostrich. The thing looked like an oversized chicken, but its neck was too long and its pores were coarse; it was hard to feel any appetite looking at it, and there was even a slight sense of dread—perhaps a fear stemming from the dinosaur age.

Jiang Yuan utilized his Level 5 Dog Food skill, confidently preparing the dog food, and said casually, "Wild dogs don't get to eat beef either... Using ostrich meat is to highlight the flavor. Some of the dogs coming tomorrow often eat beef and mutton, while others often eat chicken and pork. Their perception of taste is different. Giving them ostrich meat, which none of them have eaten before, will make the novelty equivalent."

"Is the work of a forensic doctor this miscellaneous nowadays? Back when we were in the military, the main force didn't have to help out in the mess hall." Uncle Huang Qiang suddenly felt a trace of doubt while working.

Jiang Yuan then scooped up a spoonful of the meat filling from the pot and held it under Uncle Huang Qiang's nose.

Beside the national highway.

The police dogs, having smelled the scent of the dog food, were even more excited than Uncle Huang Qiang. If not for the officers holding their leashes, they would have gone up to help themselves to the buffet.

Jiang Yuan patted the heads of familiar police dogs like Dazhuang and Heizi, signaled to the handlers that they could help themselves to the dog food, and then left the team where the police dogs were located.

Soon, following an order from Xu Taining, the police dogs followed their handlers—those who needed to depart departed, those who needed to board vehicles boarded—and each headed toward their designated plots to search.

A large number of police officers also boarded vehicles and headed to their assigned plots.

Xu Taining, wearing a white shirt with the collar buttoned tightly, walked over to Jiang Yuan in two steps and smiled, "Where did you learn this technique for cooking for dogs?"

"I didn't learn it specifically, but dogs just like the food I make." Jiang Yuan responded with a smile. This counted as small talk.

"Whatever you feed a dog, they're always happy. However..." Xu Taining changed the subject and said, "I can't guarantee that this round of screening you asked me to do will make everyone happy."

"Yes, you mentioned that before," Jiang Yuan said.

... "What I said before was that it might be a waste of manpower and money, costing a huge amount, and finding nothing. What I'm saying now is to warn you: if we find nothing, we might be dragged here indefinitely." Xu Taining still had a very good impression of Jiang Yuan. Coming out for this mission, besides the 805 case and the work done by the Luyang Municipal Bureau, Xu Taining just felt that the cases Jiang Yuan worked on were relatively reliable.

At this moment, Xu Taining was also reminding Jiang Yuan, "The Luyang Municipal Bureau sought out the provincial department leaders and did receive a certain degree of support. Consider it an extra spur for us."

Jiang Yuan was stunned for a moment, then laughed, "Luyang spent so much funding and mobilized so many people; wanting a guarantee is quite reasonable."

"The logic is correct: if you can't find it, keep looking until you do. That's the current attitude of the Luyang Bureau, and we need to be mentally prepared. They only sought out the leaders right before we set off; they really put in the effort." Xu Taining was just saying that; in all his years of conducting screenings, it hadn't always gone smoothly. There were always situations where screenings yielded no results, or rather, no desired results. It was inevitable that those paying the bills and covering the expenses would be unhappy.

The Luyang Municipal Bureau had invited Xu Taining while holding their noses, but in fact, when other districts and cities invited Xu Taining, weren't they also holding their noses?

In this era, poor units have no money, and wealthy units are in a state where even a landlord's family has no surplus grain.

Squeezing and squeezing to scrape together some funding is easy, but is Xu Taining the type of person who only spends a little bit of funding?

Just look at today's scene: the initial scope was 110 kilometers, and beyond the No. 1 and No. 2 scenes, it expanded by another 30 kilometers. It sounds light, but think about it: securing a marathon only covers 40-plus kilometers. The expenses for these extra 30 kilometers could easily shatter the brains of several leaders.

However, this was just the beginning.

Xu Taining also mobilized more than 40 pieces of engineering equipment, mainly excavators, as well as flatbed trucks and small cranes. In his words, if every person who had a suspicion about a certain place had to dig a hole themselves, there would be too few suspected locations.

Furthermore, engineering machinery is cheaper than hiring human labor to dig.

Besides that, there were more than 40 police dogs from various places, more than 800 police personnel invested in the early stages, more than 100 vehicles, various metal detectors, walkie-talkies, high-intensity flashlights, gloves, raincoats, shovels, hoes, drones... Just the supplies and equipment needed for eating and resting would give an ordinary municipal bureau a headache.

A screening of this scale, without experience, could easily waste millions.

What Jiang Yuan feared even more was the occurrence of omissions.

Based on Jiang Yuan's current experience and understanding, most cases that are difficult to solve are inseparable from initial investigative errors. A killer cannot eliminate all traces; that would only cause them to create more traces. The only thing that can truly eliminate criminal traces is the investigative side's errors. There's no need to use domestic examples; the famous O. J. Simpson murder case is one example. No matter how dream-like Simpson's legal team was, the prosecution indeed messed up. The murder case of the 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey was also difficult to investigate later because the crime scene was destroyed.

... "It's started." Forensic doctor Mei Fang watched Xu Taining board a vehicle to inspect the work, then walked over, greeted Jiang Yuan, and said, "Now I just hope that the two of us forensic doctors can be put to use quickly."

"That's true." Jiang Yuan was also a bit nervous.

This case was ultimately being pushed forward by him. Now, besides Xu Taining conducting the screening here, the people in Jiang Yuan's cold case task force were continuing to follow up on the interpersonal relationships of the first victim, Li Yuan, and the Luyang Municipal Bureau also had people investigating the manicure clues.

Everyone working together with one heart and effort now all wanted to see results.

Mei Fang looked at the grand scene before him, feeling somewhat stirred, and couldn't help but say, "As long as it's there, we will definitely be able to find it."

Jiang Yuan couldn't help but smile. When he first looked for Liu Jinghui, the scene was even bigger than this, and it still almost failed.

"I'm just afraid the perpetrator won't cooperate with us," Jiang Yuan said.

Mei Fang looked at Jiang Yuan in surprise, "I thought you were very certain before you organized the screening."

"Rationally, yes. Emotionally..." Jiang Yuan spread his hands.

"There must still be corpses buried." Liu Jinghui walked over from the other side, handed a bottle of water to Jiang Yuan and Mei Fang each, took a sip himself, and said, "The handling methods for the first and second corpses are obviously different. The second one was dismembered, which shows that the killer's criminal method is escalating. In this process, it's impossible for him to have only killed one person. If you only killed two chickens at home, would you need to change your chicken-killing mode? Upgrading and optimizing methods is to deal with a large number of identical situations."

"That makes sense." Mei Fang nodded repeatedly as he listened.

Jiang Yuan had already heard Liu Jinghui talk about similar theories, and it was because they discussed and recognized this set of theories with each other that they had the current action.

In comparison, Mei Fang had more doubts. The opportunity was rare, so he took the chance to ask, "If the killer is committing crimes along the national highway, like a truck driver, then if the corpses are beyond this 110-kilometer range, is that also possible?"

Truck drivers and prostitutes are simply the standard configuration for crime dramas. In reality, there are indeed many truck drivers who kill and prostitutes who are killed.

Liu Jinghui shook his head and said, "Our domestic truck drivers run all over the country. If they wanted to bury corpses, there's no need to bury them within Luyang City, and besides, no similar cases have been found elsewhere."

"That's also..." Mei Fang was a very good forensic doctor, but he didn't participate directly in investigations much, so he could only voice some popularized guesses.

It was Jiang Yuan who, after talking to him for a few sentences, gradually stabilized his emotions.

"Director Liu, shall we go to the front and take a look?"

Jiang Yuan pulled Liu Jinghui into the car, and they drove forward slowly.

For a length of 110 kilometers, at a speed of a little over 80, it would take nearly an hour and a half to drive the whole line. It was spectacularly daunting.

"It could only be you. Ordinary people from other units wouldn't make this kind of decision." Liu Jinghui looked out the window and clicked his tongue twice.

Jiang Yuan looked ahead and said, "It must be there. It's just a matter of how fast."

Just as he was speaking, Jiang Yuan's cell phone rang.

The two looked at each other, Jiang Yuan answered immediately and said, "I am Jiang Yuan, I've put it on speaker."

"Found a bag of corpses." On the other end of the phone was Xu Taining's voice.

"A bag? How big a bag?"

"A quarter, a third of a corpse. It looks like there's at least one leg, no clothing, packed in a snake-skin bag. The corpse is severely decomposed, nearly skeletonized." Xu Taining exhaled and said, "I think we can continue to add more manpower."

Zhiniaocun reminds you: remember to collect after reading.