SFTD -Chapter 173 A Severed Thumb (Part 3)

Zhou Hai lifted his leg and stepped into the foul-smelling garbage. Chu Menghan instinctively reached out to stop him, but her hand froze midway. She knew exactly how stubborn Zhou Hai was. In the past, she had even thought the two of them were the same kind of people.

Taking large strides, Zhou Hai walked over to the spot and lifted the black plastic bag. One corner of the bag had already been torn open—whether by rats or from being scraped and crushed among the trash was impossible to tell. From the ripped corner protruded a chunk of bright red flesh, mixed with a bone fragment about the size of a fingernail.

Carrying the bag, Zhou Hai turned to leave, but moving was difficult. His feet had sunk deep into the garbage and wouldn’t budge.

A hand wearing a blue latex glove reached toward him.

Seeing it was Chu Menghan, Zhou Hai hesitated slightly before finally grabbing her hand. With a strong pull, Chu Menghan yanked him completely out of the trash pile.

When Fengzi and Xiao Liang saw Zhou Hai’s actions, they immediately stopped what they were doing. Xu Biao knew that although Zhou Hai’s eyesight was poor, his instincts and judgment were terrifyingly sharp. Anything that made him personally retrieve it with such effort had to be important evidence.

Jumping out of the garbage pile, Xu Biao stomped his feet and hurried toward Zhou Hai, the fat on his face wobbling as he moved.

“Haizi, what did you find?”

Zhou Hai tilted his chin toward the garbage bag on the ground.

“Have people form a perimeter. I just noticed a reflection from across the river—someone seems to be recording video. Best not let footage like this leak out.”

Chu Menghan shot Wang Man a glance, and Wang Man immediately led several officers sprinting toward the opposite riverbank.

Xiao Liang and Fengzi also came over. Without needing instructions, they brought over their investigation kits and stacked the four cases together in pairs, instantly creating a barrier around Zhou Hai.

Xu Biao had already spread a huge evidence bag on the ground. Only then did Zhou Hai place the black plastic bag on top of it. Undoing the knot and opening the bag, several chunks of meat appeared before them.

Xu Biao quickly took photos while Xiao Liang sprayed reagent over the surface of the bag. Blood traces were discovered on the handles, but no fingerprints were found. Either the killer had worn gloves, or the prints had already been destroyed.

Fengzi carried the bag aside while he and Zhou Hai removed the meat pieces one by one.

The flesh had been sliced into long strips, each roughly identical in size. Every strip was about as thick as an adult’s index finger and slightly longer than one.

Bright red muscle, yellow fat layers, and skin—the tissue structures were horrifyingly intact.

The more Fengzi looked, the more numb his scalp became.

They had handled plenty of dismemberment cases before. In the foot-massage girl case, they had also found countless body parts in the sewers. But this kind of mutilation was genuinely chilling. It resembled the ancient punishment of death by a thousand cuts. What kind of hatred could drive someone to carve a person up like this?

“This dismemberment is way too thorough,” Fengzi muttered. “It’s practically like the body went through a meat grinder once.”

Xu Biao pursed his lips and walked over.

“There’s blood on the bag, but no fingerprints. Looks like gloves were used.”

Zhou Hai looked up just as Chu Menghan crouched beside them. One glance at the strips of flesh on the ground nearly made her vomit. Covering her mouth, she dry-heaved for a while before returning to squat beside Zhou Hai again.

“Sorry.”

Zhou Hai didn’t mind. For a woman to hold herself together this well after seeing such things was already impressive enough.

“There are six strips of flesh in this bag. Judging by the muscle texture and fat layers, these three are glute muscles, while the other three should be from the abdomen. As for whether they belong to the same person, there’s no way to know yet. Look at the bag Xu Biao’s holding. There’s a hole torn in the bottom, so I suspect the scalp fragment leaked out from there.”

Chu Menghan froze and pulled out the sketch she had recorded earlier.

“But the thumb was found beside the garbage bin, some distance away from the garbage truck. How could the finger end up there? Could it have been done intentionally—”

Zhou Hai raised a hand to stop her.

“The top priority right now is finding the garbage truck driver. We need to determine his route from this morning and investigate every collection point one by one. Quickly.”

Chu Menghan knew he was right. She immediately ordered an investigator to bring the garbage truck driver over.

The man was already terrified out of his mind.

First a finger had been found beside the trash bin. Then a piece of flesh had turned up at the truck’s dumping port. Now they had found an entire bag of meat. Watching the officers in forensic suits work with grim expressions, his legs were already trembling.

Chu Menghan stood before him.

“What’s your name? How long have you worked for sanitation?”

The investigator escorting the driver handed Chu Menghan a report.

“We’ve already verified his information. His name is Zhang Qiang, local resident, fifty-two years old. He’s worked for sanitation for eleven years.”

Chu Menghan waved dismissively and stared directly into the driver’s eyes.

“As far as I know, garbage collection trucks usually operate with teams of two. Why are you alone?”

The driver tugged nervously at the gloves in his hands and glanced around.

“Y-Yeah, normally it’s two or three people per truck. But it’s Spring Festival right now, and Old Liu—the guy partnered with me—went back to his hometown. I’ve been working alone these past two days. Old Liu said I could keep the wages for covering his shifts. If we officially take leave, we lose the quarterly bonus, so… we didn’t report it.”

Xu Biao stepped beside Chu Menghan.

“The management’s really that lax? No clock-ins or attendance? If someone skipped work for a whole month, nobody would even know?”

The driver hurriedly waved his hands.

“We sign in with passwords. Our fingers get injured often, so fingerprint scans aren’t convenient. Usually there’s a roll-call meeting every Monday afternoon, but because of Spring Festival, lots of people couldn’t make it back, so it was temporarily canceled.”

“Tell us the area you’re responsible for, and every single location where you collected garbage today. Don’t leave out a single stop.”

Once the topic shifted to work routes, the driver relaxed slightly. Compared to murder investigations, being caught helping someone fake attendance suddenly seemed far less terrifying.

“There’s a temporary route map in my truck. I’ll go get it.”

Chu Menghan nodded to the investigator, who accompanied the driver to the cab and returned with a laminated route map. The starting route and the order of each residential complex were clearly marked.

Pointing at the map, Chu Menghan looked at the driver.

“Explain exactly how you drove today. Don’t leave anything out.”

The driver pointed at the dashcam inside the truck.

“I followed the route exactly. I started from Zoujiawa, went through seven garbage collection points, and then arrived at Jujing Garden. The dashcam recorded everything.”

Wang Man returned with his team at that moment. Chu Menghan seemed ready to continue questioning, but Zhou Hai reached out and grabbed her arm.

“There’s no time. Take your people and start searching along the route immediately.”

Chu Menghan nodded, though she still glanced around at the scene.

Xu Biao waved his hand.

“Go already. Deputy Captain Wang’s back, which means the other side’s handled. Leave a few people here to keep screening the garbage, and have traffic police maintain order. Once we withdraw, the crowd across the river will disperse too.”

“We?”