Chapter 31

She rummaged through the bag again and found some pieces of meat under the head, which felt a bit heavy in her hand.

She shone a flashlight on it; the concentration of the blood wasn't very deep. It seemed that some dirty water had accidentally gotten into the bag, causing the blood to change color.

But she wasn't a forensic expert and couldn't tell which parts of the victim's body these pieces of meat came from. She carefully and meticulously placed them in dust-free bags and put them in the evidence box.

They were searching below; while she was handling the evidence above.

They were so engrossed in their work that they didn't realize it was already 4 a.m.

Robert finally brought them up from below, and the first thing they did was take off their stinky gear.

"The only usable part now is this head. The rest of the bodies are all skeletons. Even the fingerprints and DNA that could be used have disappeared with the decomposition of the bodies. Damn it!" Charles cursed in frustration.

Zoey carefully examined the other black plastic bags they had brought up with a UV flashlight.

Unexpectedly, she found a few blurred fingerprints at the seal of one of the black plastic bags.

"See that?" she said smugly, raising an eyebrow at Charles.

Charles, along with Alexander and the others, had their fatigue replaced by excitement in their eyes. "Looks like Lawrence won't get away this time! Let's see what he has to say now!"

Dennis stretched his arms and legs. Besides Robert, he was the oldest in the team, and his stamina wasn't as good as the younger ones. He had fought all night and was sore all over. He said, "Lawrence probably didn't expect us to trace it here! But he really racked his brains, because he actually brought the bodies to this place! No one would come to a sewer like this; he's really something else."

Charles said, "He did something bad; of course, he had to think about how not to get caught."

"Yeah, every criminal is cunning. None of them will confess without solid evidence," Dennis glanced at Robert, "Officer Davis, how many more sewers are there in this area? Are we still searching?"

"We've found the stuff, why worry about Lawrence not confessing? If we keep searching like this, it'll never end. Let's go back to the station. These pieces of evidence are enough to make Lawrence tell the truth!" Robert led the men to load the heavy toolboxes and evidence boxes back into the car.

As Zoey couldn't drive, she naturally sat in the back, yawned, and fell asleep.

She even didn't know what time they got back to the station.

Zoey was woken up by someone knocking on the car window. "Zoey, wake up, there's a meeting."

Zoey responded, gave a big yawn, and groggily got up from the back seat.

She looked at the sky but couldn't tell if it was morning or noon.

She followed Charles, who had called her, into the station.

Robert and the others were all lazily sitting in their seats; everyone looking tired.

Robert had printed several copies of the documents sent over by the forensic and technical departments and just threw them on the table.

They each took a copy and started flipping through it.

Robert said, "According to the forensic results, two fingerprints were found on that car, one belonging to Lawrence and the other to Brian."

"What about the bloodstains?" Zoey asked.

Robert said, "They matched Aria and Lily. Now we just need to wait for the autopsy report, then this will be closed!"

Robert looked at everyone with a satisfied smile.

All the effort over this period hadn't been in vain and they felt very content. Everyone had been running around to give the victims' families an answer as soon as possible.

"Great, my eyes were about to go blind from watching the surveillance footage, but it was worth it!" Charles said, tired but a bit happy.

Once this case was closed, they could take a few days off!

Robert said, "Alright, let's rest for now. I'll notify you when there's news!"

"Got it, Officer Davis!"

Following Robert's instructions, they each went to the rest area to catch up on sleep.

By around 6 p.m, the autopsy report came out.

At this time, everyone all woke up and returned to the station.

The forensic expert had pieced together three incomplete female bodies. Besides the marks found on the neck bones and the unnatural fractures of the hyoid and thyroid cartilage, most of the bones had no other marks except for the cut marks where they were severed. So the forensic expert preliminarily determined that the three victims died of mechanical asphyxia; based on the marks, they believed the victims were strangled with a rope.

Only Aria's remaining soft tissue showed severe damage to the vocal cords, covered with marks, suspected to be caused by a blade.

As for the fractures, the killer used common dismemberment methods, disarticulating at the joints. The bone damage was severe, with characteristics of heavy chopping, cleanly severed in one blow. It was preliminarily determined to be done with an axe-like tool. However, this didn't match the characteristics of the shattered kneecaps, so the forensic expert believed the victim's kneecaps were broken before death.

Zoey saw these reports and unconsciously clenched her fists.

What kind of cruel treatment did those victims endure? Even if she had guessed, she couldn't face these bloody pieces of evidence.

Lawrence had imprisoned them and then dismembered them.

She could even see how desperate the victims were in their final moments as they begged Lawrence not to kill them.

Alexander sat across from Zoey and could capture her emotions immediately.

He comforted her, "They will be punished! The law never favors the wicked!"

Zoey looked at him for a second, then returned her gaze to the report in her hand.

Two valid fingerprints were detected on garbage bag No. 1, both belonging to Lawrence.

Four valid fingerprints were detected on garbage bag No. 2, all belonging to Lawrence.

Brian was the one who disposed of the bodies, but the fingerprints detected were Lawrence's.

"No way," Dennis said after reading the report, feeling a headache. "Lawrence is definitely involved, but we only have that car as evidence against Brian. But that car has long been scrapped, how do we prove the owner is Brian?"

"But we found his fingerprints," Charles said.

"What good are fingerprints? He can just say he lent the car to Lawrence, and the bloodstains found in the car were well hidden, so he can claim he didn't know."

"Damn it!" Charles felt that the case wouldn't be solved anytime soon after Dennis's analysis.