Chapter 1035: Excavation Methods

After receiving the notification, Lu Chuan and the others immediately rushed to Nangang Village, the crime scene.

With the Spring Festival approaching, the foot traffic in Nangang Village was much heavier than usual. Many people who worked out of town had come back, especially a lot of young people, many bringing children and their wives.

All the field officers from the Beitou Town Police Station had been mobilized and came to Nangang Village to maintain order. The pond at the crime scene was surrounded by villagers from Nangang Village.

The director of the Beitou Town Police Station, Zhang Biao, was briefing Lu Chuan on the situation.

"Director Lu, we got the call to the dispatch center an hour ago. It said two people had found skeletal remains in the reservoir pond here."

It was the deputy director who had responded at the time; Zhang Biao had been in a meeting at the town government.

When he heard skeletal remains had been found, he immediately asked for leave and rushed to the scene.

After arriving, Zhang Biao lay down by the reservoir to take a look. When the report came in, he’d heard the two people had seen something reflecting light in the reservoir, thought something had fallen in, and went over out of curiosity.

When Zhang Biao went over and looked, there really was something reflective—it was teeth, rising and falling with a skull that bobbed up and down in the water.

The Criminal Investigation Team currently had no appointed team leader. As the deputy bureau chief in charge of the Criminal Investigation Team, Lu Chuan was temporarily acting as its head.

Once a homicide occurred, Wang Zhaokai, Chen Jiang, Sun Biao and the others also rushed over immediately.

Right now, the first task was to clear the remains.

"Director Lu, how do we clear it?"

After arriving at the scene, Lu Chuan and the others changed clothes and immediately did a basic cleanup around the site. They first moved down the mud-guard slabs over the reservoir and found there was quite a lot of water in it.

Besides the skull floating on top, they could also see a pair of high heels protruding from the surface.

The deceased should be a female, stuck head-down in the reservoir like an upside-down stake, feet up and head down.

And it was obvious the body had already skeletonized. The skull had probably floated up because too much time had passed and the cervical spine had broken.

"Can we salvage it?"

Chen Jiang looked at the situation inside.

There was no longer any strange smell from the reservoir now; the body must have decomposed long ago, so the stench had already dissipated.

Also, this reservoir clearly hadn’t been used for a long time, so the water inside was actually pretty clear; one could see the situation at the bottom at a glance.

The entire body had skeletonized, but faint traces of clothing could still be seen on the remains.

"We can’t just haul it up directly."

Lu Chuan shook his head. In this situation, direct salvage could damage the bones.

"Also, the posture in which the body entered the reservoir may be related to the position it was in when it was killed and put in. Right now we can’t really see what’s going on under the water. We have to be extremely careful."

Lu Chuan had been observing by the reservoir for a long time and had considered several methods.

One option was to directly haul the remains up, but the bones were likely to be fragile, and with such a long immersion time, they could be damaged during salvage.

So Lu Chuan immediately ruled that method out.

The other option was to pump the water out of the reservoir, but mechanical operations like that could easily cause the bones to shift. That would be detrimental to analyzing the posture in which the victim entered the reservoir, and thus to inferring certain information about the killer.

"Here’s what we’ll do: use the dumb method—send people down and bail the water out by hand."

In the end, Lu Chuan decided to go with the manual approach and take it slow. You must never rush a crime scene examination. Even though the remains had been soaking in the reservoir for an unknown length of time,

and even though the water now looked quite clear, in reality it was all corpse water.

Fortunately, because so many years had passed, there was no strong smell of decay.

"Director Lu, send people down..."

Sun Biao frowned.

This reservoir was fairly large and quite deep. If people went down directly and bailed water out bit by bit, it would not only take a long time, it would be extremely disgusting.

After all, what they’d be bailing out was corpse water.

Lu Chuan waved his hand.

He was in charge of the initial crime scene review and knew more about scene work than the others. In a situation like this, if they rashly used other measures and caused irreversible consequences, the case might end up unsolvable.

"I’ll go first!"

This was the moment for a deputy bureau chief to lead by example.

Lu Chuan knew that when you ask others to do something, you have to be the first to do it yourself.

In a situation like this, since Lu Chuan was requiring officers at the scene to go down and bail the water out bit by bit, he had to set an example—only if he went down first would others follow.

The reservoir held a lot of water; it wasn’t something that could be cleared in a short time. It might take several hours, or even a day or two, to get it all out. It was unrealistic for Lu Chuan to do all the work alone, so they would definitely need detectives to go down in relays.

"Director Lu, let me go first!"

Lu Chuan was now the deputy director of the High-tech Zone Public Security Bureau.

He was just the one overseeing the Criminal Investigation Team; and since there was no confirmed team leader yet, he was temporarily leading them.

If he still went down first at a time like this, Wang Zhaokai and the others, frankly, would have no face left.

After speaking, Wang Zhaokai immediately put on the crime scene suit and prepared to go down.

Lu Chuan knew Wang Zhaokai was making a statement of loyalty to him, but frankly, there was no need to go straight down like this.

"Hold on. We still don’t know how deep this reservoir is. Let’s make some preparations first."

If everyone just went down in their uniforms, those uniforms would be ruined. Besides, equipment these days was fairly complete. Even though the Criminal Investigation Team didn’t have specialized diving gear, they could buy some.

"No need to rush at the scene. It’s been this long already; we’re not going to lose anything by waiting a bit. Captain Wang, take a team to find the people who reported it and get their statements."

"Chen Jiang, you go into the village and ask around. See if Nangang Village has had any missing persons in the last couple of years."

"Sun Biao, you handle crowd control. Clear the onlookers away and send them home. No photos, no videos, nothing posted online."

"Yes!"

Since Lu Chuan had given instructions, the others naturally followed them.

Meanwhile, Lu Chuan directly called the Group.

Under Qiangsheng Group there were a few tech companies that specialized in developing underwater detection equipment, and they had some small devices suitable for this kind of situation.

What Lu Chuan wanted was to use a small detection device with a camera to first look at the situation underwater, since the conditions below were unclear.

Because the device was small and equipped with a camera,

it wouldn’t cause any significant impact or disturbance to the skeletal remains.