Chapter 405

Hou Lejia, with his hands in his pockets, came to the front of the Yu Guang Village small group office. While waiting for people, he looked around at the small Yu Guang Village.

For the sake of confidentiality, they didn't contact the locals in advance; they just found people from the township police station to come along, and then called for people on the spot.

The unit of "village small group" is rarely mentioned nowadays. It is actually the former production team, usually named after a natural village, or a settlement, or a hamlet.

The village unit recognized by the state is actually the administrative village. Under one administrative village, there are multiple natural villages. In the past, the administrative village was the production brigade, and the natural village was the production team. The person in charge of the brigade was the production brigade leader, who often held considerable power.

Jiayuan Township, where Yu Guang Village is located, has 16 administrative villages under it, and more than 200, nearly 300, natural villages like Yu Guang Village. And in the area upstream of the Lishou River where bodies could potentially be dumped, there are at least three or four such townships, totaling nearly 1,000 natural villages.

Therefore, after the simplest missing person screening, the case of Unidentified Corpse 122 fell into a standstill.

Hou Lejia once thought that the deceased came from out of town. If that were the case, the hope of finding them would be even more remote.

In fact, Yu Guang Village is indeed far enough away; to get to the nearest riverbank of the Lishou River, one has to climb over a mountain. It is highly probable that the body was dumped there. Of course, this is not certain; perhaps they brought the victim to the riverside and then killed them.

"Captain Hou. This is the village head of Yu Guang Village, Zhang Xuejie." The police officer from the police station who came along brought over an old man in his fifties.

Being in his fifties is considered young in the village. Zhang Xuejie looked quite capable, but he seemed a bit flustered. When he reached Hou Lejia, he asked: "How big of a case is it?"

He saw the people who had come. The last time more than three police officers came, it was because two villages were fighting, and several people were seriously injured. This time, he saw several police cars alone.

Hou Lejia naturally wouldn't answer such a question. He saw the police officer next to him had already taken out a photo and asked Zhang Xuejie: "Do you recognize this person?"

"This is... my eyes aren't good..." Zhang Xuejie held the photo further away. Once he saw it clearly, he said: "This is Zhang Lü's wife, Li Fang, right? You found her?"

He looked at the surrounding police again and couldn't help but frown: "It's not good news?"

"Is Zhang Lü at home? Is he in the village?" Hou Lejia asked the main question first.

Zhang Xuejie thought for a moment and said: "He should be. He was there the last two days. Their family has a motorcycle; sometimes they go down the mountain

to go to the market or something, and I've ridden on it too."

"Take us to his house." Hou Lejia took the lead, and at the same time asked: "How many people are in Zhang Lü's family now? How many people live there now?"

"Just two people. His wife ran away, so it's just him and his son."

"Li Fang ran away? Why do you say she ran away?"

"She packed up her clothes and jewelry, and left her husband and son at home without caring about them. If that's not running away, what is." Zhang Xuejie said dismissively: "His son is in elementary school, and the family doesn't have much money. He studies at the central elementary school nearby. Zhang Lü doesn't want to go out to work, so he just does some farm work in the village. In the countryside nowadays, what money is there in farm work? Only us old men do it. The wife argued and argued, and then she just left."

Zhang Xuejie said it very naturally. "Is this situation common?" Hou Lejia asked. "What situation?"

"The situation of a wife running away."

"There are plenty who can't find a wife. Those who do, stay for a few years, can't go on, and then run away. Some go to the city, some find someone better; it's all like that. There are also those who take their children and run away together. That kind is no good; the husband's family will go to the wife's family to cause trouble." Zhang Xuejie sighed when talking about the current situation in the village.

When it got to this point, Hou Lejia's alarm bells were already ringing loudly.

To further confirm, Hou Lejia asked: "What does Li Fang's husband say? Did he go looking for his wife?"

"He just said she ran away. Once she's run away, there's no need to look for her. We have plenty of this kind of thing around here; what's the point of looking for her." Zhang Xuejie rambled a bit, probably having thought of something.

Hou Lejia asked a question he already knew the answer to: "Her husband said she ran away, so she ran

away. Are they divorced?"

"Probably not. Talking about divorce is asking for a beating, and it's impossible to divorce. Nowadays, the bride price for marrying a wife is so high, who would want to divorce." Zhang Xuejie paused and added: "Young couples who go out to work often divorce at the drop of a hat. Zhang Lü lives in the village, so he definitely wouldn't agree to a divorce."

"Then no one has looked for Li Fang?"

"Her cell phone couldn't be reached either. At the time, we thought she must have found a good family..." Zhang Xuejie realized the situation wasn't quite right, and his voice became quieter.

Hou Lejia continued to ask. While they were talking, the criminal police arrived at Zhang Lü's house, surrounded it, and then knocked on the door with a loud "bang, bang, bang."

Zhang Lü's house was a bare, tube-style building, four stories in total. The exterior didn't even have a single tile, and the red paint on the front door was peeling off in chunks, looking very casual.

Creak.

The mottled red-painted door was pushed open directly, and inside was a slovenly middle-aged man rubbing his eyes.

"Zhang Lü?" A criminal police officer stepped forward to ask. "What's the matter?" The man still hadn't reacted.

"Are you Zhang Lü?" While the police officer was speaking, two other colleagues had already bypassed him and blocked the door, guarding against Zhang Lü suddenly closing it and turning a proper arrest into a desperate escape.

"Yes." The middle-aged man frowned tightly, but with so many police officers in front of him, he still appeared a bit cowardly and didn't dare to speak tough.

"Is there anyone else at home?" The police officers began to enter. "No."

"Where's your son?" "He went to school."

"Do you have any relatives? Arrange for someone to pick him up." Hou Lejia frowned; this was a relatively complicated situation.

Zhang Lü hesitated for a few seconds and asked: "What are you going to do?"

"We are from the Longli County Criminal Police Team. Do you know why we're looking for you?" The lead police officer, seeing Zhang Lü's cowardly appearance, suddenly asked.

Zhang Lü struggled to open his eyes, his head feeling heavy, as if it had been put into a pressure cooker. For a moment, he didn't know what to say.

He had actually rehearsed the dialogue in front of him, but the serious faces, neat uniforms, and stern voices in front of him all made it impossible for him to get any words out of his throat.

Too much time had passed—it had already been more than a year. The string that had been taut had loosened, and it wouldn't be easy to harden it again.

The induction cooker was on high heat, boiling away with a "gurgle, gurgle" sound.

The boiling soup pot was milky white, much cleaner than the water in the steel pot used for boiling bones. Every now and then, the pork intestine and tripe that flipped up were large and intact.

The induction cooker was the same model as the one in the autopsy room, bought by Wu Wu Fa Yi Ye many years ago. It hadn't broken after more than ten years of use, so he bought more for his own home, his father-in-law's home, and his parents' home, and later equipped his own office with one too.

The induction cooker was set with "idiot-proof" buttons. Press "hot pot," and the water would boil away. No matter what was being boiled inside, it would soon be boiled until it was soft and mushy.

Hou Xiaoyong added cabbage and radish to the pork intestine and tripe chicken soup pot, and then began to blanch the quick-cooking stem lettuce, seaweed sprouts, etc...

Even though Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai had things on his mind, as he ate, his whole body felt warm and quite comfortable.

The basement was still a bit cold and damp. Although there was air conditioning and such, human bones are still a bit different from boiled bones. After staying there for a long time, one would still feel stiff.

After eating a few more chopsticks of pork intestine, Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai felt half-full. He put down his chopsticks and said: "You said just now that you did three skull reconstructions. What cases are the other two?"

"The other two are both cases from Changyang City. The two people should have fallen off a cliff together, but no identity information was found." Jiang Yuan said simply, and added: "They've also been in the ice coffin for more than a year. Because the situation is similar to the case here in Longli County, and they heard that I was doing well here, they called over."

More than half of the personnel in Jiang Yuan's cold case task force were poached from Changyang City. It was about time to do two cases for them to pay the rent.

And when it comes to the number of cases, Changyang City, as the provincial capital, is absolutely the best in the province. Jiang Yuan had previously helped them clear up cold cases and such, all of which were confirmed criminal cases. This time, what was delivered to his door

needed to be studied to see if it was a criminal case.

After all, falling off a cliff could be an accidental slip, a suicide, or someone being pushed down.

It was just that the two people falling off the cliff together made the situation quite special, but one couldn't rule out the possibility of one person pulling the other down. Therefore, although there were no victims' families, Changyang City still stored the bodies in the ice coffin.

Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai wasn't interested in the cases themselves; what he cared about was skull reconstruction.

Recalling the intermediate skull reconstruction images he had just seen, Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai couldn't help but feel a bit itchy, and said: "If you don't mind, can I lend a hand?"

"That... that's fine." Jiang Yuan's answer was slightly reluctant.

Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai's age was too old; he had already passed the stage for learning magic... and skull reconstruction. Moreover, some things can be called "zero-foundation learning xx," but to say "zero-foundation learning skull reconstruction" is a bit of a stretch.

Not to mention the many prerequisite skill requirements for skull reconstruction, level 1 skull reconstruction isn't actually of much use. Producing a skull reconstruction where you can't see the victim's appearance in the photo, and only feel that the photo and the victim look a bit alike after the case is solved—what meaning does that have in practice?

As for teaching Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai level 3 or level 2 skull reconstruction, that's not just looking down on skull reconstruction; that's looking down on the sacrifices of Guihua and the criminals at all levels in Miaohe County!

"I also do skull reconstruction quite rarely and can't reach the form of being completely at ease. If you want to do it together, you have to follow my rhythm." Jiang Yuan's words were quite tactful.

Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai agreed immediately and added: "Are we doing it here in Longli County?"

Doing a Changyang City case in Longli County always felt a bit strange.

"Let's do a few cases first, then move the equipment." Jiang Yuan paused and said: "If you feel it's inconvenient..."

"There's nothing inconvenient about it. I'm quite familiar with Old Hou too. Although this person is a bit stingy, sometimes a bit silly, his thinking isn't particularly clear, and he's not particularly good at making decisions, but... when doing cases, he's obedient." Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai gave a very fair evaluation.

The crowd eating and drinking around the pork intestine and tripe chicken, especially the Longli County police officers, nodded silently. Including Hou Xiaoyong.

"Then I'll start doing it. What should I do first?" Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai wasn't hungry to begin with, and now he had no heart for eating or drinking. He didn't want to learn skull reconstruction, but gaining an in-depth understanding so that he would know what was really going on inside later was still very important.

Jiang Yuan didn't expect him to be so active, and he had underestimated the attraction of skull reconstruction to high-level forensic doctors.

After thinking for a moment, Jiang Yuan said: "Why don't you look at the photos I made before, so it's easier to follow the later parts. I might have some other things to do this afternoon, so shall we officially start tomorrow?"

"That works. Even if I don't sleep at night, I'll strive to keep up with the progress." Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai is from the older generation and has a very positive attitude toward learning.

And so...

That night, Wu Wu Fa Yi Zhai really didn't sleep.