frightfiction Chapter 1091 The Corpse in the Pond
Chapter 1091 The Corpse in the Pond
In front of a pile of discarded cement bags in the northwest corner of the material yard, Li Baotian's legs suddenly gave way, and he almost collapsed to his knees if Xiao Wang hadn't caught him in time. "I hid the rest of my clothes here," he said, his voice trembling with sobs, the scar on his right eyebrow contorted with trembling, "I deliberately left the cigarette box here, wanting you to think someone else did it... but I never expected the DNA on the cigarette butt to betray me." The half-eaten cigarette box peeking out from the crack in the cement bag perfectly matched the "Hongtashan" brand and the tobacco composition test results he had given.
When they pointed to the warehouse entrance, Li Baotian suddenly vomited violently, his stomach contents splashing onto the soil outside the police cordon. "When it was severed, his finger twitched," he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. The scratches on his wrist were clearly visible in the sunlight, with dark blue fibers still clinging to the scabs. "It curled up like this, which scared me so much I almost dropped the knife." This was completely consistent with the findings of forensic pathologist Zhang Lin: the slight flexion of the fingertips of the stump was a posture caused by a reflexive contraction of nerves at the moment of severance.
On the return trip in the police car, Li Baotian's head remained pressed against the window, raindrops slicing through the glass like his unfinished confession. "I really didn't mean to kill him," he suddenly grabbed Xiao Wang's arm, the chain digging into his wrist until it was red. "Ten years ago, he reported me for robbery, and I served eight years. After I got out, all I wanted was justice… That day at the service area, he said I'd be a convict for life, and that he'd make sure my daughter couldn't hold her head up high at school…"
Xiao Wang looked at the disability in Li Baotian's right leg—the one he'd fallen in last year while fleeing loan sharks. The shape of the steel plate on the X-ray perfectly matched the point of impact of the blurry size 44 rubber shoe print on the warehouse wall. "Where did you bury his torso?" Xiao Wang's voice was calm, yet carried an undeniable force. Li Baotian's lips trembled: "In the wasteland behind the logistics park, three kilometers from here, wrapped in a blue tarpaulin, with a cement slab on top..."
Outside the car window, Zhang Lin was bending over to examine the bloodstains under the hopper. Li Baotian suddenly pointed there and shouted, "His blood dripped from here! I wiped it with a rag, but I definitely didn't wipe it clean!" The wiping marks at the end of the bloodstains were tested, and the DNA of the remaining skin tissue fragments matched perfectly with the scratch on Li Baotian's left wrist—the flesh left when Wang Kaisheng bit him.
As the police car drove away from the gravel pit, the conveyor belt suddenly started, the roar making the car windows vibrate. Li Baotian's action of covering his ears reminded Xiao Wang of his confession that he "wanted the machine to grind the body"—this plan, along with the forensic doctor's deduction that "the severed limbs had come into contact with the gravel," formed a complete chain of evidence. In the rearview mirror, that strand of dark blue fiber still clung to the gears, trembling slightly in the wind, like an inescapable chain.
When the lights in the interrogation room came on again, Li Baotian's confession had formed a perfect closed loop with the on-site investigation and forensic identification: from the reddish-brown clay on the motorcycle to the bloodstains on the warehouse floor, from the width of the utility knife blade to the scratches on the inside of the humerus, from the double-stranded structure of the dark blue fibers to the DNA on the cigarette butt, every detail was like a piece of a puzzle, ultimately piecing together a complete picture of the crime.
As Li Baotian signed the document, the pen tip poked a hole in the paper. "My daughter's birthday is next month," he suddenly looked up, the madness in his eyes fading, leaving only emptiness, "Can you tell her... that Daddy went to work in a faraway place?" Xiao Wang didn't answer, but just looked at the old wound on his right leg—the drag mark left in the wasteland of the logistics park, strikingly similar to the escape route during the robbery ten years ago, as if fate had already drawn a closed loop on this land.
As the police car disappeared into the dust of the gravel pit, Xiao Yang was putting the last identification record into a file folder. The chalk circle beside the hopper gleamed white in the sunlight, silently echoing the forensic report's conclusion of "mechanical asphyxiation combined with acute hemorrhagic shock." The wind whipped up sand from the ground, striking the three characters "Li Baotian," as if stamping the final mark on this life devoured by hatred and greed.
Less than a week after the Li Baotian case was closed, the Criminal Investigation Detachment received another emergency call.
The warning line stretched a blurred arc in the morning mist. As Li Ming approached the pond, stepping through muddy water plants, he saw Old Li, a villager, squatting under a willow tree, retching. The silver carp in the net were still thrashing about, their scales splattering onto his mud-covered rubber boots, mingling with the dark red stains on the pond's edge. "It got caught when I was pulling in the net at 7:03," Old Li's voice trembled, his bamboo pole poking countless tiny holes in the ground. "I thought it was water plants, but when I pulled it up, I realized it was an arm, wearing a blue cloth jacket..."
Li Ming's gaze swept across the water's surface, where duckweed formed irregular circles of blank space around the body. "Xiao Yang, demarcate the central crime scene," he said, pointing to the bubble zone 1.8 meters from the shore. "Extend five meters outward from the body's location, focusing on collecting underwater footprints and suspicious items. Yang Cun, come with me to check the body's condition, and be careful to protect any floating debris." Morning dew dripped from the willow leaves, splashing onto his police uniform epaulets and spreading out dark, damp stains.
Xiao Yang had already set up his survey light, the beam piercing through the thin mist and illuminating the water's surface. "We found a binding object," he said, pointing his latex-gloved finger to the corpse's wrist, "It looks like a nylon rope about 0.8 centimeters in diameter, tied in a fisherman's knot, with wear marks on the rope end." He used a ruler to measure the height of the corpse above the water: "37 centimeters from the acromion to the water surface, most of the torso submerged, and clothing fibers spreading radially in the current."
Yang Cun squatted by the pond embankment, using a branch to push aside the floating green algae: "Within two meters of the body, there are three footprint-shaped pressure marks, 2-3 centimeters deep. The pressure from the forefoot is greater than that from the heel, which may have been caused by dragging." He suddenly pointed to the scratch marks in the mud, "There is a piece of blue fabric fiber here, with a warp and weft density of 20x20, which matches the fabric texture of the body's cuffs."
Xiao Wang helped Lao Li to a stone bench outside the cordon. The ink on the notebook had blotted out by the morning mist. "When was the last time you came here to fish?" His pen hovered over the paper. "Have you seen any strangers loitering around?" Lao Li took a big gulp of his own liquor, the sound of his Adam's apple bobbing clearly heard in the quiet pond: "I was still setting my net here yesterday evening. I didn't see any outsiders. Just Erzhu from the west end of the village. A few days ago he said he was going to bury water pipes by the pond, and he wandered around with a shovel for half a day."
"Does burying water pipes require digging such a deep pit?" Xiao Wang pointed to the new mound of soil on the pond embankment, with a few silver-white plastic ropes mixed in with the soil. "Look at these knots, don't they look a bit like the knots used to tie up corpses?" Old Li squinted at it for a long time, then suddenly slapped his thigh: "These are nylon ropes used for building greenhouses! Only Zhang the carpenter in our village has these yellow and black striped rope ends—he said last week that a roll of rope went missing."