Chapter 176 - 176 168 Look at the Case

176: Chapter 168 Look at the Case 176: Chapter 168 Look at the Case A tall criminal investigator tiptoed in through the back door. The Qinghe Bureau’s small lecture hall was only one and a half stories high, and to access the back door, one had to use a dedicated fire escape, which was not a popular route under normal circumstances. But today, to sneak in during a lecture without the embarrassment of doing so in front of everyone, quite a few people had chosen to take the back door. There were probably more than twenty such people. All in all, that was nearly the manpower of an entire squad. If that many people were sneaking in illegally, it would take the effort of a whole battalion to apprehend them. At this moment, the one sneaking in through the back door was Chen Wenming, the leader of the Qinghe Bureau’s Forensic Science Division’s Trace Examination Group. He too had been unable to resist coming over after receiving Cao Keyang’s text message. Qinghe Bureau itself did not handle cases; the affiliated Criminal Police Brigade was mostly involved in guiding local police teams, compiling various indicators and statistics from all over, setting various work requirements, serving the grassroots, and issuing orders from the higher-ups. In such an environment, the role of criminal science units stood out even more. For instance, what was supposed to be Qinghe Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Squad was transformed into the more specialized Criminal Science Division, which also saw the elevation of the Trace Examination Group. Some county bureaus that couldn’t handle or were inadequate in technical examinations would send their cases to the county Criminal Science Center. Take Ningtai County, for instance, which lacked its Document Examination Unit and had weak capabilities in tool mark examinations and virtually no capability in firearms trace examinations. The same was true for footprints examinations; at least in the past, Ningtai County would send its footprints cases to the Qinghe Bureau as well. Chen Wenming was the Qinghe Bureau’s footprint examiner and a renowned expert on footprints within the province. The footprint cold case mishandled in terms of height was by the footprint expert Chen Wenming. And naturally, Chen Wenming too had heard about this matter. It had caused him to subconsciously avoid Jiang Yuan’s training class. Only after hearing about Jiang Yuan’s “real-world” fingerprinting story did Chen Wenming run over to observe. He was a well-known footprint expert in the city bureau, but as a trace examiner, he was also skilled in fingerprint analysis. In fact, Chen Wenming’s fingerprint work was quite good; he merely lacked a little something to participate in the provincial fingerprint contests. For this reason, Chen Wenming always felt that Jiang Yuan’s “real combat class” was slightly too sensational. Chen Wenming craned his neck to look down and saw that Jiang Yuan was staring at the screen and did not even glance his way. There were approximately 170–180 seats in the small lecture hall, but at that moment, about 50–60 people were seated. Almost half of them did not need to attend the training class. Chen Wenming pursed his lips, then found Cao Keyang from his group and fumbled his way toward him. After a class break, Cao Keyang had moved back to a middle seat. Still, his gaze was somewhat lost, and his mood remained a bit sour; he was too emo to pay attention to Jiang Yuan anymore. “How’s it going?” Chen Wenming sat down next to Cao Keyang and asked in a low voice. Cao Keyang chuckled and replied, “They’re now marking the fifth feature point.” “So that means four markings have been made and none matched?” Chen Wenming laughed. Making four feature point markings wasn’t excessive. Generally, if a fingerprint collected at a crime scene did not match, the examiners would mark it three or four times, even four or five times, before giving up. If it were a critical homicide case, marking it a dozen or even twenty times would be considered normal. The frequency of markings for cold cases was even higher. Most trace examiners attempted fingerprint identification through trial and error. That was the most standard procedure. However, psychologically speaking, if marking four times still did not yield a match, the chances of a match thereafter seemed low. But then Cao Keyang defended Jiang Yuan, saying, “Because it is a difficult fingerprint, marking it four times and getting a match in the previous class wasn’t exactly normal.” “Under normal circumstances, one wouldn’t even conduct fingerprint comparisons on the spot like this.” Chen Wenming frowned. “Fingerprint comparison itself is somewhat random.” Cao Keyang immediately nodded: “Right, that’s what I think too.” “Not getting a match in fingerprint comparison is the usual thing. If there’s no corresponding fingerprint in the database, no matter how well you mark it, what can you do?” Chen Wenming sighed. “Exactly,” Cao Keyang agreed. “This kind of live fingerprint comparison can easily create a false impression among everyone, as if fingerprint identification results come in just minutes.” Chen Wenming sighed again, then thought to himself that if it were not for the recent footprint issue, he would have taken the opportunity to address it properly. However, precisely because Jiang Yuan had recently challenged and overturned Chen Wenming’s own footprint identifications, leading to the solving of a homicide, Chen Wenming felt it was not his place to lecture Jiang Yuan now. To do so now would appear as if he lacked the magnanimity to accommodate others. Chen Wenming watched the screen, his expression a mixture of regret and pity, tinged with a sense of helplessness and fatigue. Young people can easily stray in the midst of glory and applause. This in itself wasn’t a big deal—people grow by experiencing certain things... “This time, it didn’t match either,” came Jiang Yuan’s voice from the podium. Chen Wenming’s lips twitched involuntarily. It was as expected. No matter how skilled the fingerprint expert, the likelihood of matching fingerprints was always not high. This was evident from the ever-growing database of suspects’ fingerprints. If matching fingerprints was that easy, the database would have been empty long ago. Nowadays, even moderately intelligent criminals knew how to cover their fingerprints. Gone were the days, three or four decades ago, when bloody fingerprints were found everywhere. Of course, as villains grow clever, the techniques to catch them evolve as well, and the technology to lift fingerprints has also been improving. Techniques such as extracting fingerprints from plastic or fabric have now become very sophisticated. However, the fingerprints extracted from these places all have subpar conditions. To match these fingerprints, the difficulty had increased by countless times. Therefore, no matter from which angle one analyzes it, Chen Wenming did not consider “practical” lectures a viable option. At this moment, Jiang Yuan’s voice came through again, “Let’s mark the characteristic points one more time.” Chen Wenming then adjusted his seat, preparing to watch carefully. Then, he heard Jiang Yuan say, “When marking characteristic points, especially when doing so multiple times, we need to learn from our previous markings. So, what have we learned from earlier markings of characteristic points?” Chen Wenming was startled, a sense of astonishment arising within him: Can one really think like this? Jiang Yuan continued in a lecturing tone, “Everyone look at the markings of characteristic points I made previously. It’s easy to see that this middle part has been marked in multiple rounds of markings because the conditions here are relatively good, making it easier to find characteristic points, right?” Some people in the audience nodded in agreement. Jiang Yuan went on, “If it’s an ordinary fingerprint, there’s no issue with our previous pattern of marking. It needs to be marked well. But now that we have marked several times without a match, I think we need to reconsider the range of characteristic points we mark.” Jiang Yuan drew a circle on the fingerprint with his mouse and said, “These characteristic points inside have been marked by us multiple times before, and the fingerprints they matched also had average conditions. So this time, we won’t mark the characteristic points in the circle.” “It’s a bit difficult this way, the difficulty increases by quite a bit, but in my understanding, increasing difficulty is actually a prerequisite for matching fingerprints. The harder the fingerprints in the database are to match, the easier it is to find a match.” The logic Jiang Yuan set forth did not much affect the new forensic investigators. Half of the people here usually focus on collecting fingerprints and have never matched one from the database. Now talking about increasing the difficulty to make it easier to find matches, as well as the underlying implications, is somewhat beyond their comprehension. Chen Wenming was quick to catch on. Although his fingerprint expertise was not high, his proficiency in footprint analysis was indeed top-tier in the province. And in his daily work, Chen Wenming had already discovered this principle. The footprints involved in cold cases, especially in major crimes, the simpler and more routine they were, the harder it was to find a match. When you think about it, if such footprints were easy to match, the previous forensic investigators wouldn’t have left them until now. It turns out that the more challenging the footprints are to analyze, the easier they are to match. Especially footprints beyond the range of most people, once you find the right approach, the odds of matching increase dramatically. In a way, it’s akin to introducing a new technology. Using new technology to thwart criminals thus leading to an “easier to match” scenario. Chen Wenming nodded slightly to himself. It’s no wonder he is the one who once miraculously outperformed me in a footprint analysis. He truly can summarize a thing or two. As for the specific ability... “This time it’s quite challenging, so I’ll do the marking first. The method used is also quite special, not very referential...” Jiang Yuan’s voice was slightly relaxed as he spoke and operated at the same time. Chen Wenming watched intently for a while and indeed found it to be a very special method—one he had never seen before. Chen Wenming pondered. His level of forensic investigation was different from the others’, and he naturally did not belong to the group that Jiang Yuan referred to as finding the difficulty too high. However, before Chen Wenming could figure it out, Jiang Yuan had already marked more than a dozen characteristic points in a row. “Let’s run it again and take a look.” After Jiang Yuan completed the marking, he threw it into the software and even had time to take a sip of tea. Chen Wenming frowned and saw that twenty similar fingerprints popped up. Jiang Yuan still looked at them with incredible speed. After scanning more than a dozen fingerprints in succession, it didn’t take much time. Chen Wenming was getting impatient. This style of lecturing was entirely unappealing. He looked back and unexpectedly discovered that a group of people who usually didn’t participate earnestly in the training were watching with utmost concentration. As thoughts churned in Chen Wenming’s mind, when had forensic examination become something to gawk at? Even if it captured everyone’s attention for now, how could it be sustainable? “Matched.” The tapping of Jiang Yuan’s spacebar had somehow stopped. Chen Wenming quickly looked up. Jiang Yuan then said, “This fingerprint is linked to another cold case. Yes, these two fingerprints should be confirmed as the same, and then we can proceed with jointly handling the cases.” Joining cases implies the possibility of bringing forth more clues. For the investigation of the cases, it is, after all, beneficial. Then, Jiang Yuan began to fill out the identification report for the confirmed match. Police officers below were already shouting: “Check out the case.” “Make a phone call.” Jiang Yuan’s face also revealed a smile, and he waved his hand from the podium, saying, “No rush to make calls.” After completing the identification report, he opened the case files. One was a burglary, the other a robbery. Chen Wenming’s eyelids twitched involuntarily. These two cases were indeed quite significant. Jiang Yuan also looked carefully for a while before suggesting, “Since both cases are pretty serious, let’s switch our approach.” So, Jiang Yuan brought out Photoshop.