Loneliness, everyone is lonely, and no one can transcend all this alone.

——Maya Angel

1

Captain Huang from Yuntai City said that if I don’t say it, it’s already gone, and there will be cases as soon as I say it, so I got the nickname of “Crow’s Mouth”. In fact, as my assistant, Dabao has always been hiding behind me. “Good, bad spirits” have been tried and tested in his mouth. He is the real “Crow’s Mouth”.

In fact, a few days ago, Dabao said, "Celebrating a stable Mid-Autumn Festival with my wife!" I felt a little ominous sign in my heart.

This Mid-Autumn Festival is clear and the breeze is gentle, which is an excellent weather for watching the moon. However, since the June 3rd Special Project occurred in June, no entertainment activities can arouse our interest, let alone watching the moon. This case is like a poisonous sting, piercing the heart and hurting from time to time.

I heard that a girl from a provincial TV station was hooking up with Lin Tao recently and invited Lin Tao to the TV station to watch a live version of a music variety show. In order to prevent being pushed down in this seemingly romantic traditional festival, and to use big scenes to relieve the tangled mood caused by the fruitless investigation of the "June 3rd Special Project", Lin Tao called me and Lingling, and the young couple of Dabao.

"Look, look, look," said Dabao, "How round the moon is tonight, how good the atmosphere is, it's so romantic."

"Hey? Where is the girl who wants to hook you up?" I looked at the team of dozens of people in front and said, "This side door is not open until now, when will I get in?"

Under the leadership of Lin Tao, we lined up at the side door next to the studio.

"She's busy inside." Lin Tao raised his badge and said, "Did you see, everyone is queuing here! There are so many people queuing over the main entrance."

"It's the first time I'm a VIP." Dabao also looked down at the breast.

Before he could finish his words, a row of people around him, led by a man dressed like a director, went to the studio first.

There was some commotion in the crowd.

I smiled and said to Lin Tao, "Do you think? These people are VIPs. You, you will have to endure the last letter."

"You are P!" Lin Tao gave me a blank look.

After chatting for more than half an hour, the side door opened and the crowd began to slowly surge in.

"Dingling Dingling..."

The phone ringing rang unpredictably, and Dabao's words immediately appeared in my mind.

In the crowded crowd, I struggled to take out the cell phone in my pocket, four big words: Command Center.

"Hey, hey, wait a moment." I stood on tiptoe and stopped Lin Tao and Dabao walking in front.

"I am Sun Sutong, the command center." A low-pitched male voice, "Just received a report just now, a corpse was found in a quarry in the outskirts of Longfan City. It was initially judged to be a murder."

"Uh..." A mouthful of saliva stuck in my throat.

"Did you drink during the holiday today?" Sun Sutong said.

"No." I looked at Lin Tao and Dabao in a blink of an eye. They had noticed my strangeness and began to walk back with great effort from the crowd at the entrance.

"That's good. Please rush to Xicheng now. There is a quarry at the end of Longfan Avenue." Sun Sutong said, "I have reported to Mr. Chen. Mr. Chen is still on his special project and ask me to notify you directly."

"I understand." I put away the phone and looked at the bell beside me with guilt.

The bell drooped his eyes and his eyelashes flashed: "It's okay, I'll go and see with Mrs. Bao. You guys go and drive slowly."

The gentle sadness of the bell made me feel even more guilty. I haven’t been shopping with her or had a good meal together for a long time.

Baosao looked open-minded with a "toddler" look on her face, and she held up the arm of the bell and said, "Get out quickly. Let's go, bell, they don't understand music, and it's useless to go in. It's great to listen to it."

After watching the figures of the two disappeared into the crowd, I turned around and called Chief Hu of the Forensic Department of Longfan Municipal Bureau, while handing the car key to Lin Tao.

"Chief Hu, it's a good holiday, and the criminals are giving gifts again. What's the situation in your case? Do you have any clues?" I asked while getting in the car.

Section Chief Hu said: "It's not clear yet. At least it's a murder case. The investigation work has just begun. The on-site passage is opening and we haven't seen the body."

"I want to ask if it has anything to do with the '63 Project'," I said.

"The possibility is not high." Chief Hu said, "The body should have been burned in this case."

"It's burning?" I said, "It's not that the criminals of the '63rd Special Project' have upgraded their methods, right?"

"Please! Don't be crowed!" The call of Section Chief Hu came from the receiver.

"I'm not a crow's mouth." I looked at Dabao, who was sitting in the back of the car with resentment, "Someone's mouth is even more powerful, let's go to the countryside to watch the scene under the Mid-Autumn Moon!"

Dabao looked hippie: "You drive your own car, can you report the fuel fee?"

The car was bumping for more than an hour, and Chief Hu pointed to a half-dug mountain in front and said, "It's in that depression."

Longfan City is the provincial capital. We all live in this not-so-large but very comfortable city. Longfan City has good public security and stable society, and few vicious murders will occur. However, this year's "June 3rd Special Project" has caused trouble in the entire Longfan City criminal police department, and all the elite police forces are on the special project. If a difficult murder occurs at this critical moment, the probability of the case being solved will be greatly reduced due to the lack of manpower.

So the police officers participating in this case frowned and looked solemn.

If I hadn't walked into this quiet valley myself, I would never have thought that there would be such a place hidden beside this bustling city. Without scenery, it would make people feel relaxed and happy.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and felt the tranquility around me. I always thought I was a person who was more adaptable to country life, hated noise and liked tranquility.

"Wow, how could there be such a place? It's really not easy to be discovered if you commit crimes here and hide corpses here!" Dabao's words destroyed the atmosphere I was enjoying completely.

This is an abandoned quarry. From the ring expressway to the national highway, then to the rural road, and after walking on the cement road in every village, you can see the entrance and exit of the quarry. The quarry is surrounded, and half of the mountain has been hollowed out, revealing the yellow mountain. Due to various reasons, the quarry was abandoned a few years ago, leaving behind a dilapidated tower and several brick houses. The center of the embrace is dug deep and rain water accumulates all year round, so it becomes a pond. The pond is surrounded by a circle of mud roads, which was later paved by the villagers with stones.

Walking into this quarry is like walking into a confined space, away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Under the Mid-Autumn Moon, I can see the figures walking by the pond.

"This place is not as you said." Chief Hu said with a smile, "Today is the festival, and now it's past nine o'clock in the evening. In normal times, this is a good place for nearby villagers to exercise."

"Fitness?" I asked.

Section Chief Hu nodded and said, "At six or seven o'clock in the evening, many villagers would come here to run around the pond and take a walk. Maybe it was because the air here was good. After eight o'clock, it was silent here, with no sound or light at all."

"It's dark, running?" I looked up at the moon. If it weren't for the bright moonlight tonight, the surroundings of the pond wouldn't be so bright.

"Well, it's mainly summer season. It's not completely dark at six or seven o'clock, and some villagers will come." Chief Hu said, "In winter, there will be no one."

"How do you know so clearly, Teacher Hu?" I asked with a smile.

"My hometown is five miles away from here." Section Chief Hu pointed at the distance.

"When was the case?" I asked.

"I received a call from the police at 6:50 p.m.," the investigator next to me answered, "It should have been the first villager who came to the pond to exercise at that time."

"Discover the body?" I stood on tiptoe and looked at the figures by the pond in the distance and the beams of the survey lights.

"No." The investigator said, "At that time, the villagers saw a wisp of smoke. They were very strange. The plants and trees grew on the broken mountains. The depression was full of stones and water. There were no plants. How could it catch fire? Several villagers approached and found that there was a flame burning. At that time, they thought that someone was burning garbage here."

"Does anyone often burn garbage here?" I asked.

The investigator nodded and pointed to the ground where we stood and said, "If you look carefully, it is easy to see black marks on these gravel roads, all of which are traces left by villagers when they burned garbage."

"What?" I asked with my eyes wide open.

The investigator said: "Several villagers who were exercising together reported that the fire had begun to weaken slowly and was almost extinguished. One villager said that the object in the flame seemed to be a human form, and there would be no ghosts or gods in this valley, right? Another villager laughed at him for being superstitious. The two made a bet, so they worked together to put out the fire, and found that the one that was burning was one person."

"It should be said to be a corpse." Dabao curled his lips, and Lin Tao leaned against Dabao.

"Yes, a corpse." The investigator scratched his head.

"Is the nature of the case determined?" I asked with a chance, "It's not self-immolation or something?"

The investigator shook his head and said he didn't know. I, Dabao and Lin Tao, carried the investigation box and walked towards the center.

Ashes were piled on the soft mud in the area without stones next to the pond. Because the villagers used clothes to dip the fire, the ashes were thrown everywhere. In the center of the ashes, a human-shaped object was curled up.

The reason for saying this is that from the first glance, it is impossible to tell that this must be an individual. The surface of the corpse has been completely carbonized and appears to be carbon black. Especially the head and face are severely burned, and some places have been exposed to the skull.

"The body is in the shape of a fist. Does it indicate that this is a case of burning to death during life?" Lin Tao often learns some forensic terms with us.

I shook my head and said, "The essence is wrong. In the case of burning death, we can see that the deceased showed a swaying fist-like posture because the muscles of the human body contracted after encountering high temperatures. The limbs curled up in the direction of the joints, and the legs, elbows and wrists curled up, which looked like they were boxing, so it was called a swaying fist-like posture."

"Oh, yes, yes, yes," Lin Tao said, "I heard you have said that project supervision case in Longfan City last time. So, the fight fist is not a life reaction, right?"

I said: "We just talked about the principle of producing a Doufen-like body, which is that muscles contract after encountering high temperatures. Then the muscles of the corpse after death will contract when encountering high temperatures, so they will also develop Doufen-like body. The Doufen-like body is a sign of the corpse at the fire scene, and it has nothing to do with burning the corpse before death or burning the corpse after death."

"Yes," said Dabao. "To determine whether to burn death before death or burn a body after death depends on the condition in the respiratory tract and the content of carbohydrolbin in the blood."

"So, judging whether it is before or after death, it depends on your forensic anatomy." Lin Tao said.

"Not necessarily." I stared at the pile of ashes and shook my head.

"What's wrong?" Lin Tao asked, arching his waist, staring at the ashes in my eyes.

I said: "First of all, I think the current condition of the corpse cannot be considered a squat shape in a strict sense, but a curled shape. That is to say, before being burned into a squat shape, he should have already shown a curled shape that is more contracting than a squat shape. High temperature causes muscle contracture and will not curl the limbs to the maximum functional position of the joint."

I saw that the technician had taken photos and fixed them, so I pulled the body and said, "Look, the thighs of the body were almost curled up to the chest, and it was absolutely impossible for fire to form."

"You mean, the body was burned in a curled state?" Lin Tao looked at me.

I nodded and opened the body bag while working with Dabao to carry the body into the bag. The body was very light, not because the deceased was weak, but because the high temperature caused the water in the body, and the weight of the body would be greatly reduced.

"That's not sure, this is a murder case." Lin Tao asked, holding his cheek.

I didn't say anything, picked up a bag of evidence, swept the ashes together layer by layer, and put them into the bag of evidence.

"These ashes are treasures at the fire scene. Many physical evidences were found in this physical evidence bag." Dabao's words came to an abrupt end because the three of us saw something at the same time.

After I cleaned up part of the ashes, two black, long, and regular objects with edges were exposed. After I asked the technician to take a photo and fix it, I carefully pulled the two objects out of the ashes. I could feel that this should be a metal object, the lighter alloy.

"What is this?" Dabao glared, "What about metal, hey, this is not a tool for crime, right?"

"Yes." Lin Tao leaned closer and said, "Is the tool for committing crime so easy to find?"

2

I looked up and down, left and right at the two metal objects, put them in the bag of physical evidence, and smiled and said, "It's very light and cannot be used as a tool for crime. However, I can basically be sure that this is a case of killing and burning people."
To be continued...