I Play Dungeons in the Police Station-Chapter 400 - 244: The 3/21 Mystery Case

"Yes, we guarantee to complete the task."

"Li Xiang, you go with Director Fan to prepare."

"Understood."

After leaving Li Zhongqing’s office, Li Xiang followed Fan Yonglin to his office, where they discussed the upcoming work arrangements together.

Next, they needed to form a special task force, select and allocate personnel, and arrange the office space.

Li Xiang also participated in the interviews for selecting personnel. He reviewed the files of all the transferred personnel, and upon agreement, he issued deployment orders to their respective units.

With Director Fan’s coordination, the issue of office space was resolved, and the accommodation for transferred personnel was also taken care of in passing.

All the preparations were basically completed.

A week later, all the relevant personnel had arrived. The first to arrive was Wan Shu’an, the deputy leader of the special task force, who helped Li Xiang with much of the preliminary preparation work.

For instance, the case files and related evidence had already been brought to their office, and the task force members were sorting and managing these files.

Next were Yang Ming and Li Yue. They had previously collaborated in Miaowadi, returned, and made contributions, eventually transferring to the criminal investigation unit. When Li Xiang saw their names, he naturally requested them.

When Yang Ming and Li Yue arrived and saw that Li Xiang was the group leader, they were surprised: "Captain Li, you’re here too? When did you come to the provincial department? You didn’t let us know; we brothers would have welcomed you with a feast."

"I have been here for a while now, but work was rather busy. Now that there’s an opportunity, I’ve transferred you both to the task force."

"Great, we can work together again."

By now, both had already regarded Li Xiang as their idol and were quite affectionate towards him.

This led others coming later to think the two had managed to enter the task force by flattering their way in.

Before the registration deadline, everyone was in place, so Li Xiang organized a meeting: 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Since everyone is here, let’s have a simple meet-and-greet. Those who came early might know me already, while those who came later might not. Let me introduce myself briefly: I’m Li Xiang, the leader of this task force. This is Wan Shu’an, the deputy leader. He has participated in the investigation of this case before and is quite familiar with it. Next, Wan Shu’an will introduce the basic situation of the case."

Upon being called by Li Xiang, Wan Shu’an stood up.

The personnel transferred to the task force were mostly around thirty years old, all chosen as elite and skilled officers by Li Xiang.

Only Wan Shu’an was aged forty-five, with some stubble on his face, skin darkened by years exposed to the sun, and appeared weathered by heavy police work. With a slightly hoarse voice, he said, "It’s quite shameful to say, the 3·21 mystery case has occurred 15 years ago. In the 5th and 10th years, task forces were established to prioritize solving this case. I was the leader of the second task force, but unfortunately, I couldn’t solve it in my term, and it’s become a knot in my heart. I hope that this time with the special task force, we can tackle this tough case, finally resolving this concern of mine."

Wan Shu’an first introduced the background of the case, then moved on to the main topic: "The crime scene is located in a village within the city north, where development was relatively late. Most of the houses were primarily employee dormitories. When I was investigating, the area was about to be demolished. Luckily, people hadn’t been relocated yet, allowing some information to be gathered. Now, it’s all been developed into high-rises, and the crime scene can’t be reconstructed. However, at the time of the crime, the responding officers took many photos, which I can use to reconstruct the scene."

Then Wan Shu’an pasted photos from the evidence bag concerning the crime scene onto the case analysis board one by one.

"What you see—this overgrown and deserted land—is the crime scene. The first person to discover the bones was surnamed Zhang, a retired male teacher who spent his idle time at home. Upon seeing this wasteland next door, he found it a pity for it to remain barren and wanted to cultivate it to plant some vegetables. During the process of turning over the soil, he unearthed these bones and immediately called the police."

"The police arrived quickly at the scene and excavated all the bones. Through scene investigation, the police found the bones were still clothed in a women’s T-shirt, bell-bottom pants, and shorts. Beyond this, no other valuable clues were found. The preliminary judgment of the scene was that it was a homicide."

"After the incident, the primary task was to determine the source of the corpse. As the body had already reached a skeletonized state, which takes several years, the exact time of the incident couldn’t be determined. Related on-scene evidence had also faded with time, greatly increasing the difficulty in identifying the corpse."

"At the time, the police split into two teams: one conducted an autopsy, the other investigated missing persons. The forensic autopsy revealed the deceased was a female, approximately 20 years old, with a fluctuation of 3 years, a height of about 1.63 meters. There were slash marks at the nasal root of the skull and the left temporal top suspected to be caused by a cleaver. Due to severe skeletonization, the forensic examiners couldn’t deduce the precise time of death. Fortunately, DNA biological materials from the deceased were extracted, but with no matching results."

"The key to solving the case was first to determine the time of death to narrow down the investigation range. Through interviews, it was discovered that this wasteland was not barren five years ago. At that time, an elder was cultivating it, but later, the elder passed away, and no one continued to farm it, leading it to become deserted. Thus, the police focused their investigation on all missing females from 2003 to 2008. Through scrutiny, there were 67 females with missing person reports. After checking all of them, no matches were found."

Knowing he was about to rejoin the task force, during this period, Wan Shu’an took the chance of moving the case files to reinforce his impression of the case.

He realized that Director Fan brought him back to the task force clearly due to his familiarity with the case.

However, five years had passed, and many details he couldn’t remember clearly anymore.

In the past few days, he had carefully reviewed the files, recalling the details of the case.

"For this, the police spent considerable manpower and resources, conducting village-by-village and household-by-household investigations. Females who had been working away for years without returning, or who had been out of contact for many years, were all re-registered. Meanwhile, another police team conducted extensive sweeps of the shirt and pants extracted from the scene, but no valuable clues were found. The investigation hit a stalemate, and it ultimately fizzled out due to a lack of leads."

"As criminal investigation technology advanced, this case was brought up again. Even with the powerful DNA data matching, there were no results. Repeated reviews of the case files, records, and testimonies yielded no gains. At that time, skull reconstruction technology was emerging. We invited the well-known Professor Liu Shaoming for skull reconstruction. However, due to the two wounds on the skull, the reconstruction results were somewhat skewed. Based on the reconstructed appearance, we conducted population interviews again, yielding no results."

Following Wan Shu’an’s briefing, the other task force members gained a clear understanding of the case. This case was truly a mystery due to the very few clues left for the police.

"Captain Li, this is the basic situation of the case."

"Alright, thank you for your hard work. Please take a seat."

Li Xiang motioned for Wan Shu’an to sit down first, then looked at everyone and asked, "What do you all think about this case?"

"This is simply a headless case, very difficult."

"Indeed, now that the place has been demolished, finding the people from back then to understand the situation is exceptionally difficult."

"A case from twenty years ago, all clues buried in the river of history, makes it feel like there’s nowhere to start."

Those who joined the task force were all the elite from various units, yet even they felt at a loss, not knowing where to begin with the investigation of this case.