Chapter 68: The Headless Case

Superintendent Kagger arrived at the scene twenty minutes later. He opened the trunk to retrieve a forensic kit, pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket, and walked into the house with Jimmy while listening to a full recap of the events.

Kagger's first priority was inspecting the doors and windows for any signs of forced entry. Next, he checked the surrounding area for footprints. Since it was established that Jimmy had entered the premises and no one else had gone in afterward, any external footprints were of paramount importance. The front door had been kicked open by Jimmy, bearing two bootprints that matched Jimmy's footwear, making them irrelevant for documentation.

Near the doorway, Kagger discovered a partial shoeprint showing only the forefoot impression. It was extremely faint, clearly indicating that the visitor had wiped their shoes outside, leaving behind only a trace amount of dust. He placed a scale next to the print, took photographs, and outlined the area with a marker.

Kagger then walked a complete circle around the perimeter of the house to determine if there were any other exit points or marks on the windows, checking whether the perpetrator might have used an alternative route to enter and exit.

Continuing his inspection from the front entrance inward, he found that the few footprints inside belonged solely to Jimmy from his entry. No further footprints were discovered deeper within the house.

Kagger checked the shoe cabinet in the foyer, finding no athletic shoes of a similar type. This made it virtually certain that the footprints at the entrance did not belong to the victim.

Moving upstairs to the bedroom, Kagger examined the head wound on the corpse and the bullet hole in the wall. He measured the diameter of the bullet hole with a tape measure and photographed the evidence. Once this was done, he took a pair of tweezers and painstakingly extracted the fragmented bullet from the wall, placing it into an evidence bag.

"Jimmy, go outside and check if Dr. Kevin has arrived."

Jimmy walked out to find that the coroner, Dr. Kevin Smith, and his assistant were already waiting at the entrance. Jimmy shook hands with Dr. Kevin and directed him straight upstairs to conduct the inspection.

After performing a preliminary examination, Dr. Kevin instructed the paramedics to come up and transport the body downstairs.

Kagger asked Jimmy to raise his hand to simulate the victim's headshot position. Once Jimmy aligned his hand with the bullet hole in the wall, Kagger walked over to the doorway and extended his own arm to recreate the shooter's stance and reconstruct the crime scene.

This method clearly relied on years of experience. Standard ballistic calculation typically required precise measurement of bullet holes, utilizing lasers or string lines to pinpoint the shooter's position and the height of the firearm.

Kagger estimated the killer's position and the height of the gun, then signaled for Jimmy to lower his hand. Turning toward the door, he sprayed fingerprint-revealing reagent onto the doorknob. The prints were dense and heavily smudged by overlapping, but a few remained relatively complete. Kagger collected these prints and placed them into an evidence bag.

He inspected the remaining rooms and found them relatively orderly, without signs of being ransacked, which further suggested that the incident was a targeted, deliberate murder.

Exiting the house with Jimmy, Kagger scanned the surroundings and instructed, "Jimmy, go ask around and see if any neighbors heard gunshots or noticed anything suspicious. Also, check which houses nearby have security cameras installed."

"Understood." Jimmy walked over to the neighboring houses and made inquiries door-to-door. A few residents did not answer, but it ultimately mattered little, as none of the surrounding people had heard gunshots or noticed any unusual individuals lingering nearby.

"Kagger, we've got a bit of a problem. None of them heard any shots. There must have been a silencer involved; otherwise, it's impossible that absolutely no one heard anything. Also, there are no security cameras around here, making it very difficult to gather footage."

"Alright, let's head back first. We can check traffic camera footage and run the fingerprints through the database for a match."

"Traffic cameras are unlikely to pinpoint the suspect. I know this area—the surrounding intersections are all minor roads with no surveillance installed."

Abandoning further patrols, Kagger and Jimmy returned directly to the police precinct. They scanned the lifted fingerprints into the computer, submitted them to the database, and awaited the results.

The coroner's office called to report that the autopsy was complete. Kagger went to retrieve the autopsy report himself, while Jimmy remained stationed in front of the computer awaiting the fingerprint match results.

The matching process finished. Jimmy picked up the printed report and glanced at it: zero matches. Out of the three fingerprints collected, not a single one yielded a hit.

The database contained the records of known offenders; individuals who had been previously arrested left fingerprint backups. If this database returned nothing, identifying the suspect was virtually impossible. They would simply have to wait until the perpetrator committed another crime and had their fingerprints entered into the system, allowing investigators to retroactively connect them to this case.

Kagger returned with the autopsy report, picking up the ballistic report from the forensics lab along the way.

"Jimmy, the reports are out. Write up an incident report and submit it. The victim has no recorded family or acquaintances; the cause of death is a gunshot wound to the head. The bullet is a nine-millimeter Parabellum pistol round, though the firearm model is unknown.

Based on the wound and the bullet hole in the wall, the suspect's height is estimated to be around one hundred and eighty centimeters. The footprint indicates some variety of athletic shoe, and the suspect's gender cannot be determined. Since local residents heard no gunshots, the use of a silencer is suspected. Given the caliber and the circulation volume of common handguns, there is a strong possibility it was a Beretta Ninety-Two F equipped with a silencer."

"Got it." Taking the reports, Jimmy sat down to draft the paperwork. Writing tasks of this nature were things he usually tried to shirk—writing as little and as concisely as possible to finish quickly. This time, however, a homicide case complicated matters: the scene investigation, evidence logs, autopsy report, ballistic report, and suspect profile meant that after compiling this mountain of work, patrol duties were out of the question, and he could head straight home early.

By the time Jimmy finished the report, night had fallen. He placed the paperwork directly on Kagger's desk, changed out of his gear, and headed home.

Jimmy's patrol car had essentially become shared precinct property; the evening shift personnel would select someone to drive it on patrol and incidentally test whether the cruiser's light bar functioned properly.

It might seem as though Kagger and Jimmy had barely done anything, simply logging a few details before shelving the case. The crux of the matter was that they lacked the manpower to pour endless energy into such dead-end investigations. America witnessed a vast number of these cases every single year, and every precinct maintained cold cases that had remained unsolved for years, decades, or even generations.

Should this case later be linked to another incident, it could be consolidated for a joint investigation and handled accordingly at that time.

One might consider this approach remarkably casual, bearing little resemblance to the relentless pursuit of justice by detectives in movies and television dramas. Yet, this was reality. The overall homicide clearance rate in the United States hovered just over fifty percent. In recent years, annual homicides in the United States fluctuated between sixteen thousand and twenty thousand. Cases like this one—lacking viable leads and ultimately shelved—were ubiquitous across the country. As a side note, China's homicide clearance rate had consistently remained above ninety-nine percent in recent years, a statistic verifiable through data published by the Ministry of Public Security.

For American law enforcement, if no one reported a crime, or if no body or other definitive markers of a homicide were discovered, it was treated as if no murder had occurred, culminating at best in an administrative closure as a routine shooting incident.