Police officer Chen Shu

Chapter 541 Reasoning
shore.

Julie handed Chen Shu a small pack of tissues: "Why do you think the murderer would take off someone's clothes?"

Chen Shu pulled out a few tissues to wipe his hands, threw the tissue pack to Xiao Ming who had just finished handling the body, and then took out a cigarette from his pocket to light it.

Chen Shu glanced subconsciously at Julie, who was standing to the side listening intently to him, and then put away his cigarette.

He smiled and said, "This suggests that the coat the deceased was wearing previously must have had a clear identification mark. In other words, it is highly likely that the deceased was an employee of a large company or a government official."

Xiao Ming walked over: "Brother Huang, didn't you check and say there haven't been any missing person reports recently? If this is really the case, not going to work for a few days would immediately attract the attention of the people around, right?"

Chen Shu nodded: "Your idea is good, so we can exclude government staff who are on duty immediately. After all, they can't just disappear for several days without a word. Their families might not care, but their workplaces certainly won't."

"However, it's not necessarily the same for company employees. These days, they hold back a month's salary, so if an ordinary employee suddenly disappears for a few days, the company might not necessarily put in the effort to find that person."

Xiao Ming seemed to understand but not quite: "That means we have to take the body back and investigate it slowly."

Chen Shu had an idea. He walked to the body bag, opened it, and reached inside, rummaging around for a while.

This scene startled Xiaoming: "Chen Chen Da, you...you're not...wearing your gloves!"

After a moment, Chen Shu took off the trousers from the corpse and examined them carefully, turning them over and over.

The pants were wet and covered with green algae and some unknown blackish-yellow grime. They were sticky, with small clumps here and small pieces there, like minced meat from a butcher shop in a market. Just looking at them made one's scalp tingle.

He was bare-handed and not wearing gloves! Xiao Ming involuntarily held his breath: "Chen Da, are you checking the brand of the pants? That doesn't seem to be very useful, does it? Why don't we just send the body back to the team first?"

"Shh!"

Brother Huang frowned and held up a finger to Xiao Ming, signaling him to be quiet. Then he swallowed hard and turned to look at the man who was eating his hand.

Chen Shu flipped the cloth tag from the waistband of his pants over and showed the writing on it by pinching two fingers together.

Police uniform trousers, POLECE UNIFORM.

"Zi!"

When Julie, Brother Huang, and Xiao Ming saw that it was police trousers, they all couldn't help but gasp.

Julie's heart skipped a beat, an unbelievable thought flashing through her mind, and her breathing quickened: "We just had a police officer die in Dongzhou two years ago, and it was a female officer. How could it happen again?"

Brother Huang and Xiao Ming exchanged a glance and said in unison, "Could it be a security guard?"

After saying that, the two of them immediately dismissed it in their hearts.

If the deceased was a security guard, the label inside his trousers would not have read "police uniform trousers".

So the conclusion is straightforward: the police officers were the ones who died!
Chen Shu remained calm. After examining the label, he quickly turned his trousers around and used his thumb to clean the buttons on the back of his trousers.

The small buttons, shaped like a five-pointed star and two ears of wheat, glittered in the sunlight.

He squinted and said confidently, "I felt these pants looked familiar just now. Since the front was wet, I assumed they were black and didn't realize they were actually navy blue."

As he spoke, Chen Shu rubbed the button with his thumb, as if the button were the key to solving the case.

Xiao Ming glanced at the yellowish-white dust on Chen Shu's hands: "Brother Chen, should we go back first?"

Before he could finish speaking, Julie interrupted him.

"Chen Shu, is there anything else you want to say?" Julie looked intently at him, her mind racing.

Chen Shu went through the details in his mind again, and out of professional habit, he began to review the "headless floating corpse case".

"First, the body was headless, and the coat had been deliberately removed, indicating that the murderer was afraid that the victim's identity would be traced after being discovered, so it is highly likely that it was an inside job. Second, since the murderer knew to destroy the evidence left by the body, but did not remove the police trousers with police insignia, we can rule out the possibility that the murderer was a colleague or the victim's close partner."

"This is a minor detail that can be used to rule out suspects at the end, so there's no need to focus on it too much right now. Hmm, I suspect the deceased was pushed into the water or thrown into the river nine days ago, which is January 10th."

"Finally, everyone knows to wear thermal underwear in the dead of winter, yet the deceased only wore a thin pair of spring/autumn trousers over it. This makes one suspect that the deceased simply needed to wear them temporarily, so he just grabbed a pair of police trousers from the closet and put them on."

"Whether in a high-level office or at the grassroots level, whether a police officer or a leader, everyone must wear a police uniform during working hours. Given the cold weather, it's impossible to wear only trousers as usual, so I speculate that the deceased was likely a retired police officer who no longer needed to work, and..."

Chen Shu stuffed his pants back into the body bag, took the tissue Julie handed him again to wipe his hands, and took out his phone from his pocket to look at it.

Julie and the others adopted an attentive listening posture, their eyes fixed intently on him.

Xiao Ming was even a little excited. Although he knew that what Chen Shu had just said could actually be figured out by taking the body to the autopsy room at the funeral home and doing some work, and that he could learn even more.

For example, the specific time of death, the cause of death, and other details.

Then, the major criminal cases team can get a lot of information by clicking a few times on the intranet using a computer. But it's really rare to see someone like Chen Shu deduce a conclusion based on the limited clues at the scene. It's a bit like reading a detective novel in bed when you were a kid.

According to their private conversations at the Criminal Investigation Department, current crime-solving methods rely too heavily on science and technology. While these methods are simple, direct, and far more efficient than before, they've lost their former aesthetic appeal.

"Snapped."

Chen Shu clasped his hands together, drawing Xiao Ming and the others' attention back to him.

"Today is January 19th, and the nearest holiday was Police Day nine days ago. Could the deceased, a retired police officer, have been murdered during or after an important event on that day?"

“Because on-duty police officers are still police officers, no one would dare to kill them! It’s also impossible for them to have been out of sight for so long without being discovered, so this further proves that the deceased could only be a retired police officer, at least a cadre, who was invited to attend a meeting on Police Day and then killed.”

Xiao Ming and Brother Huang were stunned and turned to look at the professional.

Julie nodded and said calmly, "It's winter now, and given the extent of this decaying giant's condition, the time to death should be roughly ten days."

Xiao Ming stared wide-eyed and exclaimed, "My God! Mr. Chen, this is possible!"

Brother Huang looked at him with admiration: "Brother Chen, we both work in the police station and are in charge of maintaining public order, how come there's such a big difference between us!"

Chen Shu pointed at the two of them and joked, "That's an exaggeration. Now that the Y-database is so comprehensive, we can confirm identities simply by checking a DNA sample against the database. Why would we need to rack our brains?"

"Ahem!" Julie said coldly, ordering Xiaoming, "What are you standing there for? Hurry up and take the body back to the team!"

"Okay."

Chen Shu was taken aback, wondering why they didn't wait for the people from the river police station to come, or for the people in charge of major criminal cases to come.

It's normal for the staff at the water police station, a place where people are used to working long hours, to arrive late. But since it's their jurisdiction, we still have to give them some face. Besides, this case is most likely a murder, so we'll have to wait for the criminal investigation team to arrive.

Considering that Xiaoming was Zhu Li's subordinate, Chen Shu, in order to save face for the other party, walked closer to Zhu Li and whispered a few words in her ear.

Xiao Ming must have sensed something too, because he also stopped and waited.

Julie listened to Chen Shu with a smile, and then carefully explained for a long time.

This scene, witnessed by Xiaoming, once again shook his worldview.

Is this still the infamous Zhu Wuchang from their Criminal Investigation Department? Xiao Ming wondered.

"Xiao Ming, what are you standing there for!"

Xiao Ming turned around and quickly called Huang Ge to help carry the body bag to the police car parked on the road.

(End of this chapter)