The crackdown on organized crime began with the arrest of the mother-in-law.

Chapter 1168 The Deceased Li Chengde

Veteran detective Li Bing suddenly slammed his laptop shut, the chair legs scraping against the floor with a screeching sound that startled the pothos leaves on the windowsill. "This job is even more grueling than staking out," he said, tugging at his sweat-soaked, wrinkled collar. A musty smell of sweat mixed with the aroma of Master Kong braised beef noodles filled the air conditioning. "Last month, when we caught that car thief, at least we had a side profile from the security camera. Now, all we have is a blurry height and age; there's no other distinguishing feature." He pointed to the "Zhao Wei" entry on the screen. The man in the photo grinned, revealing a gold tooth. "Look at this one, a food delivery guy, 171cm tall, 38 years old—everything matches, but he's missing a piece of his right ear. The deceased's ear was perfectly intact, so we have to rule him out."

Suddenly, Xiao Zhou started pounding on the table like he'd been injected with adrenaline, almost making the keyboard jump. "Hey, this 'Qian Ming' looks a bit like him! 37 years old, construction worker, 173 cm tall, old injury on his right knuckles, went missing last Wednesday." He zoomed in on the photo until it filled the entire screen; the man's features were distorted by the blurry pixels, like an ugly worm. Xiao Zhou leaned forward, his nose almost touching the screen, and pointed his finger at the man's left chest. "No, he has a tattoo on his left chest. The forensic report didn't mention any tattoos on the deceased. And this guy has double eyelids, while the deceased had single eyelids and deeper eye sockets."

The excluded items piled up like a gray mountain in the system, each one like a spark that had briefly ignited a fleeting hope in everyone's eyes. Li Bing lit a cigarette in the moonlight outside the window. The lighter clicked three times before it lit, the orange flame flickering on his stubble-covered face, illuminating the weariness in his wrinkles. "I find it strange, this person has no relatives or friends? No one reported him missing for two days?" He exhaled a smoke ring, the smoke swirling in the blue light. "Even if he was a migrant worker, he must have had some fellow villagers or coworkers, right?" Xiao Zhou flipped through the deceased's clothing list, the mouse hovering over the words "gray jacket, torn left breast pocket": "Look at this jacket, faded from washing and patched, the cuffs are frayed. He doesn't seem like a high-income person; he was probably a manual laborer."

At 2:30 a.m., the information system suddenly popped up a notification box, and thirty-one suspected matching results poured out like a swarm of fish, finally stirring the deathly silence in the analysis room. Xiao Zhou's eyes lit up instantly, and most of his drowsiness vanished: "The system uses height, age, and physical labor characteristics for weighted filtering, and the matching degree is over 75%." His fingers slid quickly across the touchpad, and the photos on the screen switched one by one. "Let's go through them one by one. Better to be wrong than wrong." The first one, "Sun Hao," was a deliveryman, whose height matched but whose age was five years off; the second one, "Zhou Jian," was a chef, who had an injury to his right hand but no pocket on his left chest; the third one, "Wu Liang," was a construction worker, whose characteristics matched all the criteria, but who had been imprisoned for fraud six months ago and was still serving his sentence.

“This system is smart my ass,” Li Bing dragged the third result into the exclusion bar, the mouse cursor leaving an afterimage on the screen. “They even include inmates? Are the programmers pig-brains?” He scratched his fingernail on the “manual labor” label, then suddenly stopped. “Wait, the forensic doctor said there are calluses on his palms, probably from frequently moving things, like delivering water or gas.” Xiao Zhou’s eyes lit up, and he immediately adjusted the search criteria, adding “water delivery,” “moving,” and “delivery” to the keywords. The system’s loading progress bar crawled slowly, eventually re-filtering nine results, among which the name “Li Chengde” attracted everyone’s attention like a magnet.

“Li Chengde, 38 years old, employee of the municipal water delivery company,” Xiao Zhou read the information, his voice trembling slightly with excitement. “Height 172cm, ID photo shows he has single eyelids, habitually carries a pen in his left chest, and there are signs of wear on his pocket. He went missing after delivering water on the evening of May 20th and has not returned.” He placed Li Chengde’s ID photo and the skull reconstruction provided by the forensic doctor side by side, splitting the screen in two. The two faces had strikingly similar features: high brow bones, flat noses, and even the barely noticeable mole on the corner of their mouths was in the same place. Li Bing suddenly slapped his thigh, almost tipping the chair over: “That’s him! Look at those brow bones, the brow peaks are so prominent, and those protruding ears!”

Xiao Zhou frowned as he stared at the close-up of the hand in the photo, zooming in on the details on the screen: "The system says there's an old injury on the right index finger, but the deceased's finger was freshly severed. Also, Li Chengde disappeared on the evening of May 20th, and we estimated the time of death to be the early morning of the 21st. The timing matches, but we need to see more detailed characteristics." He pulled up Li Chengde's pre-employment medical examination report. "Blood type A, which matches the deceased's blood type; and this," he pointed to the "Special Marks" section in the personal information, "There's a black mole on his left scapula, which wasn't mentioned in the forensic report, but it might have been covered by clothing during the autopsy."

This discovery sent a jolt through his weary nerves. Xiao Zhou immediately contacted the water delivery company: "Check Li Chengde's delivery route on May 20th!" Li Bing flipped through Li Chengde's attendance records. His sign-out time on May 19th was 9:15 PM, and his work uniform was registered as "gray jacket, number 073," a color that perfectly matched the deceased's clothing. "And this," he pointed to a work accident record, "last year, while delivering water in the Dongshan residential area, he was bitten on the right index finger by a resident's dog, leaving a scar—this matches the location of the deceased's broken right index fingernail!"

Just then, the water delivery company called back: "Li Chengde's delivery slip from May 20th shows that the last order was to Wangyue Community near Dongshan Cemetery, with an agreed delivery time of 8 pm. He hasn't returned to the company to hand over the bill since then." Xiao Zhou's eyes fell on the photo of Li Chengde in his work clothes: "The gray jacket he was wearing had the company logo on the left chest, right where the deceased's pocket was torn!" Xiao Zhou suddenly realized that Li Chengde's emergency contact was his sister, Li Chunhua, and the phone number showed that the location was in the same city.

At 5:30 a.m., Xiao Zhou dialed Li Chunhua's number. The snoring on the other end suddenly stopped. "Who is it? In the middle of the night..." Li Chunhua's voice was hoarse from a hangover, mixed with the breathy sounds of yawning. When she heard the words "Li Chengde" and "corpse," she suddenly burst into tears: "My brother has been missing for two days! I thought he went to deliver water on a long-distance trip... His right index finger was bitten by a dog, and he always carries a pen and notebook in his left breast pocket. Last week he said his jacket pocket was worn out and he needed to replace it..."

The chain of confirmation closed little by little in the darkness before dawn.