Based on rigor mortis, the time of death for the female corpse was approximately 12-16 hours ago. At this time, under normal circumstances, no one would have reported someone missing yet. So Dean didn’t ask Daisy to check for missing persons reports in the precinct. Instead, he took Harry and Robert along the garbage truck’s route to conduct a search.
Most of this route consisted of apartment buildings. These types of apartments featured fixed garbage chutes on their exteriors, allowing residents to dispose of trash directly from inside their units without needing to go out. This design also simplified the search for Dean’s team.
Before long, the trio had investigated three city blocks.
On their way to the fourth block, Harry, covering his nose from the stench, complained, "FK, someone actually threw pet excrement down the garbage chute! It’s disgusting!"
Robert’s face also turned a shade green. It was currently uncertain whether the female corpse had any external wounds before ending up in the trash bin. In addition to checking for traces inside the garbage containers, they also had to stick their heads into the garbage chutes to look for any obvious compression marks, bloodstains, and the like, to rule out the possibility that the woman had been thrown directly into the chute from a building hallway. As rookies, such tasks naturally fell to them.
Just moments before, Harry had stuck his head into a garbage chute when a red bag came sliding down, hitting him squarely in the face. It was a fresh bag of dog poop...
Dean chuckled. "Harry, once we crack this case, I’ll be sure to detail your sacrifice in the report, ensuring everyone appreciates the contributions you’ve made."
"NO!" Harry rolled his eyes. "I’d rather forgo any extra credit than have anyone speak of this incident!"
As they spoke, the three of them arrived outside a student apartment complex near a campus.
Harry raised an eyebrow. He lived nearby and was well-versed in the local goings-on. "This is the garbage truck’s fourth pickup point—student apartments for some subpar community college. I’ve heard their private lives are pretty messy. Wonder if we’ll find anything interesting in their trash."
Robert rolled his eyes. "Harry, sometimes I seriously wonder if you were a male poodle in a past life. I just hope you don’t get smacked in the face again by a few ’little umbrellas full of essence’ anytime soon."
"Stop your blabbering!" Dean cut their banter short, pointing to a wide, U-shaped alley ahead. "Let’s make this quick. We still have seven or eight more garbage spots to check, and I sure don’t want to be rushing around in the rain later."
They quickened their pace. The dumpster, a hefty blue container, measured a good four meters long, two meters wide, and about one point six meters high. It collected refuse from the garbage chutes of two adjacent apartment buildings.
Before the other two could climb in, Dean glanced inside and stopped them. "Someone’s been in here recently!"
The two apartment buildings generated a substantial amount of household waste. Though just over a night had passed, a thick layer of trash had already accumulated inside the container. However, some areas within showed distinct cone-shaped depressions. Normally, trash settles under gravity, forming a loose, uneven layer. Compression, on the other hand, indicated that the trash had been compacted by a heavy weight. The indentations consistent with a cone shape matched human feet.
After a brief explanation, Dean added, "If a homeless person had gone in to carefully search for useful items, the trash would be piled higher around the edges with less in the middle—that’s their search pattern. Also, the trash bags wouldn’t be this intact. The current state suggests the person who entered was searching purposefully, and perhaps not for something large and obvious, like a body. If they were, they might not have needed to rummage through *all* this trash and disturb it so much."
These conjectures, a product of his ’Trace Tracking’ and ’Psychological Deduction’ abilities, naturally sprang to Dean’s mind as he observed the state of the trash bin.
Harry gave Dean a bewildered look. "Sorry, Dean, what you said was a bit convoluted. I don’t quite get it."
Robert nodded. "I didn’t catch your meaning either."
"Alright, let me put it plainly," Dean said. "Someone has already examined the traces in this trash bin before us. Haven’t you noticed that the condition of this bin is very similar to how we left the other three after searching them?"
The two then nodded. Got it!
Harry glanced around, his eyes lighting up with realization. "I remember now! There’s a ’sugar baby training base’ around here. A nasty incident involving a rotating spike just happened there—the victim was supposedly a Chinese girl. Patrol officers came to investigate, and I even chatted with them when I got off shift."
Robert mused, "So it seems some colleagues from the precinct already checked for traces here before we did. But what’s this ’sugar baby training base’ about?"
Robert, usually so stoic, now looked at Harry with an unmistakably curious, gossip-hungry expression. It seemed Harry’s influence was beginning to rub off on him.
Harry gave a sly, knowing smirk. "Plenty of female students here. They use their ’future nurse’ or ’future caregiver’ personas online to find wealthy sugar daddies to bankroll their lavish and promiscuous college lifestyles. If you’re interested, I can send you links to a few private community sites later. Lots of college girls there ’waiting for adoption’."
Dean rolled his eyes. "You two can chat about that after work. Harry, get in the dumpster now and check for any unusual traces. Robert, call the precinct and ask if they’ve received any reports concerning this school."