Chapter 28.1: Locating and Arresting
Sitting upright in bed, Liao Zhongsheng felt a cold sweat break out across his back.
She was practically an entire production line all by herself!
He had gotten up so abruptly that a draft slipped through the gap in the blankets. Startled by the chill, Liu Huizhen instinctively lifted a leg and kicked him.
“It’s the middle of the night. Why aren’t you asleep?”
“Nothing. I just remembered a case.”
Liao Zhongsheng gradually calmed down.
I’m overthinking this. It’s probably just a coincidence.
There were only so many professions related to drawing—professional painters, comic artists, art teachers, art editors, and the like. Aside from painters and teachers, most of them understood at least the basics of plate-making and printing. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to publish their work.
By that logic, plenty of people in the art industry would have the skills needed to forge banknotes. If Jiang Xia was to be suspected simply because she possessed those skills, then every artist in the country would have to be investigated.
That would be ridiculous.
By the same reasoning, forensic pathologists are experts on killing people, yet you don’t see them going around committing murder.
Well… except for Forensic Examiner Sun. He wasn’t exactly an expert.
Still, there was one thing that didn’t quite add up.
Why had Chief Wu been so nervous?
Liao Zhongsheng pondered for a while longer.
Maybe it was because Chief Wu knew how talented his apprentice was and was afraid Liao would become suspicious.
That actually seemed quite possible.
To toot his own horn a little, not every superior was as open-minded as he was. If someone else genuinely started suspecting Jiang Xia, she wouldn’t have an easy time of it.
Besides, Chief Wu wasn’t young anymore. Older people tended to avoid trouble. Even if they didn’t, how many years had it really been since those ten turbulent years ended? The army hadn’t been affected nearly as much, but the outside world was different. Refusing to go along with the crowd and getting involved with sensitive matters like this could truly cost someone their life.
Thinking of that, Liao Zhongsheng fell silent for a moment.
He let out a quiet sigh and pushed all those tangled thoughts aside.
He’d just make a note of it in the case file later.
Sleepiness washed over him once more. He yawned, lay back down, and soon drifted off to sleep.
…
The golden sun rose into a cloudless blue sky.
After parking her bicycle, Jiang Xia strolled into the Forensics Department, her shadow stretching before her. The first thing she did was glance up at the clock.
8:21 a.m. She was nine minutes early.
Excellent. At this rate, she could leave home five minutes later tomorrow.
Jiang Xia looked around the office.
Aside from Huang Xueling, no one else had arrived yet.
So everyone here was a master of clocking in at the last possible minute?
As the thought crossed her mind, her gaze dropped to the floor, where several patches of water that hadn’t yet dried caught her attention.
The puddles had been dragged into long streaks. It was obvious that someone had splashed water on the floor before sweeping to keep the dust from flying up, leaving those marks behind.
Xueling didn’t seem like the type to sweep the office.
That meant it was probably Yang Lihua.
So he’d already arrived, but he wasn’t in the office now… Jiang Xia looked around once more and noticed that two thermos flasks were missing.
Case solved. He’d gone to fetch hot water.
No sooner had she finished her deduction than she heard a voice behind her.
“Hot water coming through—make way!”
From the hallway, Yang Lihua called out as soon as he saw the office door open.
He was carrying a thermos in each hand. The mouths of the flasks were still wet, and wisps of steam drifted from them. One look was enough to tell he’d just filled them with hot water.
Jiang Xia nodded in satisfaction. Her guess had been right.
She stepped aside to let him pass.
Yang Lihua walked in, set the thermoses beside the desk, then took out some tea leaves. As he spooned tea into the cups of the department’s senior staff, he asked Jiang Xia,
“Jiang Xia, do you drink tea?”
She shook her head slightly. “I don’t.”
With how light the workload in their department was, there was no need to rely on tea to stay awake.
Yang Lihua nodded. “Then I’ll pour you a cup of plain water.”
With that, he deftly picked up Jiang Xia’s mug, filled it with hot water, and returned it to her desk.
Nice kid. Thoughtful, too.
Jiang Xia silently gave him a mental thumbs-up.
Meanwhile, Huang Xueling was still sorting through the fingerprints they’d collected the day before. She was well-liked and had easily gathered more than forty sets of prints. But now that she was staring at the stack, she felt completely overwhelmed.
“Oh no, oh no! I didn’t number any of these. Now I can’t tell which fingerprint belongs to whom. How am I supposed to compare them?”
“Hm?”
Jiang Xia walked over to her. “Have you learned fingerprint pattern classification yet?”
“Uh…”
That was a good question. Huang Xueling froze on the spot.
Well, that settled it. She needed to start from absolute scratch.
“Don’t rush,” Jiang Xia said. “You have to build your foundation step by step. Otherwise, it’s like charging the Americans with nothing but a fire poker. How are you supposed to win?”
“Based on the notes I made, start by memorizing the papillary ridges. Then move on to composite patterns, deltas, and the four basic pattern types. Learn one category at a time, then try classifying fingerprints as you go.”
Jiang Xia had nothing better to do, so she didn’t mind teaching her. She pulled out a sheet with fingerprint impressions, flipped her notebook to the page describing fingerprint ridge structures and pattern types, and repeatedly pointed back and forth between the notes and the printout.
“Take these papillary ridges, for example. They’re the most fundamental part of fingerprint identification. They’re what we primarily examine. They may look complicated, but they’re mainly composed of seven ridge forms, including arches, loops, whorls… See this print? It’s a loop, specifically an open loop…”
Everything was hardest at the beginning. If Huang Xueling had tried to teach herself, even with Jiang Xia’s notes in hand, she would have been confused for quite a while. But now that Jiang Xia had given her a starting point, the tiny section of densely packed ridges suddenly became much easier to make sense of.
Excited, Huang Xueling randomly picked up another fingerprint sheet, compared it against the examples in the notes, and soon pointed to a small section in the middle.
“I found it! This one’s a spiral whorl!”
“That’s right. That’s how you identify them.”
Jiang Xia encouraged her, “Once you’ve memorized all of them, then you can start comparing fingerprints.”
“But be careful with your eyes. Don’t stare at them for too long. It’s best to use a fingerprint magnifier—that’ll let you see the details much more clearly.”
“Mm-hmm! Thank you, Jiang Xia.”
Huang Xueling nodded so vigorously she looked like a chick pecking at grain.
Yang Lihua, who had just taken his seat, opened his book but didn’t immediately begin memorizing it. Instead, he watched Jiang Xia and Huang Xueling, unable to shake the feeling that something about the scene was strangely off.
Yang Lihua couldn’t help finding it strange.
Jiang Xia wasn’t even older than he was, so why did it feel like she was more of Huang Xueling’s mentor than Trace Examiner Li himself?
After casually giving Huang Xueling a lesson, Jiang Xia returned to her desk.
One by one, the rest of the department staff trickled in. Most arrived right on the dot, and Photographer Zhao even showed up more than ten minutes late, but no one seemed to care.
After sketching everyone in the department, Jiang Xia realized she’d made a mistake.
She should have brought a book.
Without a phone, sitting around doing nothing here was unbelievably boring.
She’d rather be back at the precinct keeping herself busy.
Perhaps it was her workaholic instincts kicking in. After sitting idle for half an hour, Jiang Xia simply couldn’t stand it anymore and began looking for something to do.
Come to think of it, the suspect portraits she’d finished drawing the day before yesterday should have been printed and distributed by now. Had there been any news?
She might as well check in with the First Investigation Squad.
As soon as the thought occurred to her, she got up, pushed open the door, and headed over.
The First Squad’s office was in a great location, directly across from the stairwell, making it easy to head downstairs while also getting good ventilation.
The door was open. There weren’t many people inside—only five. Two of them were slumped over their desks catching some sleep. Judging by their hair and clothes, it was obvious they hadn’t been home for at least three days. The other three were each busy with their own work.
Captain Tan was still in the office. Hearing someone at the door, he looked up in mild surprise.
“Jiang Xia? What brings you here?”
Jiang Xia walked in. “I did the math. The portraits should have been distributed to all the neighborhoods today, so I came to see if there was any news on the suspect.”
At her question, the other two officers who were working looked up curiously at her.
“The portraits haven’t all been delivered yet,” Tan Bingyi replied.
“Even after they’re all out, we’ll still need time to follow up on the leads. I don’t expect to hear anything before noon at the earliest. You’ll have to wait a little longer.”
“Hmm…”
Jiang Xia pondered for a moment before saying, “I’d like to wait here for a while. I don’t have anything to do at the moment. Captain Tan, is there anything I can help you with?”
Tan Bingyi fell silent for two seconds before instantly putting on an exceptionally welcoming smile.
“Yes, yes, yes! We still haven’t finished filing the paperwork for our last case. How about helping us organize it?”
Case filing referred to the work detectives had to do after closing a case: gathering all the materials—including the case’s basic information, evidence, legal documents, and investigation records—then sorting, numbering, and binding them according to case type or chronology.
The entire process was tedious, time-consuming, and earned practically no credit. It was one of those jobs everyone hated but had to do.
Jiang Xia took a deep breath.
Well, she’d been the one to offer.
Besides, it would only be this once.
She nodded.
“No problem.”
While Jiang Xia was busy organizing case files, copies of the suspect portrait were gradually delivered to police substations and neighborhood offices throughout the city.
—
Qingshi Neighborhood.
A neighborhood office worker stood beside the community bulletin board, holding a suspect portrait in one hand and a pot of paste in the other as she pasted the notice onto the wall.
After putting it up, she didn’t leave. Instead, she remained there waiting.
Although the notice clearly stated that it was a portrait of a robbery and murder suspect and included the relevant information, many people were still illiterate, so she stayed to explain it to anyone who came by.
Before long, several women returning from the market noticed her and gathered around curiously.
One of them asked,
“Comrade Zhao, what are you doing? Why are you putting up another portrait?”
“This is a suspect portrait that was distributed from higher up,” Zhao replied.
Her expression turned stern as she continued, “This man and his accomplices robbed and murdered a commune cadre on the road leading to Hongxing Commune outside the city. He’s extremely dangerous. If any of you see someone who looks like this, report it to us immediately!”
The women collectively gasped.
“That’s a murderer’s portrait?”
“Comrade Zhao just said he hasn’t been caught yet. That means he’s still somewhere around here!”
“Good heavens! We’d better not go out at night for the next few days!”
The women immediately broke into animated discussion. Although they were somewhat worried, most of them were clearly more excited by the gossip than genuinely frightened. Only one woman remained silent. She studied the portrait carefully, and the color instantly drained from her face.
Oh no… It really is Old Fourth Gao.
How had someone managed to draw his portrait?
Yang Chunhua couldn’t figure it out, but her first instinct was to hurry home and warn her family.
The more she wanted to leave, however, the harder it became to do so.
One of the younger women took another careful look at the portrait before suddenly saying,
“Hey, Aunt Chunhua, doesn’t the man in this picture look a lot like the fellow who came looking for your third son a while back?”
“Huh? Does he?”
Yang Chunhua felt sweat pouring down her back. Her lips trembled slightly as she forced herself to reply, “I don’t think they look all that alike.”
“But I’m pretty sure that’s what he looked like.”
The young woman scratched her head in confusion.
“Come to think of it, he and another young man used to come by all the time a few months ago. How come they haven’t shown up these past few days?”
“Didn’t my third son go to the neighboring city to visit his eldest aunt?”
Yang Chunhua answered stiffly, “Since he’s not here, those two naturally stopped coming around too.”
The young woman nodded in sudden understanding.
“That makes sense.”
She didn’t press the matter any further.
Yang Chunhua secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
But before she could fully relax, someone beside her suddenly asked,
“Aunt Chunhua, didn’t your third son leave on the twentieth?”
“Huh?”
Someone else let out a startled sound.
“But the notice says the robbery and murder happened on the nineteenth…”
Before she could finish, the woman standing next to her gave her arm a hard squeeze.
She immediately changed the subject.
“Oh, Aunt Chunhua, I just remembered I forgot to buy a vegetable. I’d better hurry back to the market!”
The older woman had already realized what was going on. She quickly played along.
“Right, right! My family’s waiting for me to cook lunch!”
“I need to get home too.”
In just a few exchanges, they had all found excuses to leave. They hurried away, leaving Yang Chunhua standing there alone.
Instead of making Yang Chunhua angry, the others’ sudden isolation of her felt like a reprieve from hell.
Thank goodness. They’d stopped questioning her, and they hadn’t reported her on the spot.
She could hurry home now and have someone warn her third son and the others to run!
Yang Chunhua rushed home as fast as she could. Her pace quickened with every step until she was running outright.
But she had barely gone any distance before the two women who had left early suddenly turned back.
“Comrade Zhao! We want to report something! The friend of Yang Chunhua’s son looks exactly like the man in the portrait!”
—
Municipal Public Security Bureau, First Investigation Squad Office.
*Ring, ring, ring—*
Deputy Captain Zeng Jun snatched up the phone immediately.
“Hello? First Criminal Investigation Squad speaking. Have you found someone who resembles the suspect in the portrait? All right, about how old is he? Where was he on the nineteenth? Is there any… Ah, there are eyewitnesses? Several people saw him? The whole work team saw him? Then it’s not him! Next time, report it to your local police station first and let them screen the lead before contacting us!”
From noon onward, the phones in the First Squad office rang nonstop. As soon as one call ended, another came in.
At first, everyone had been excited to answer them. But they quickly realized that many neighborhood offices, upon spotting someone who merely bore a passing resemblance to the portrait, skipped verification and preliminary investigation altogether. Instead, they bypassed the local police stations entirely and reported the leads directly to the Municipal Bureau.
It soon became a massive headache.
After hanging up yet another call, Zeng Jun, who had spent more than an hour asking the same questions over and over, grew increasingly irritated. Looking over at Jiang Xia, who was waiting nearby with a slight frown, he asked,
“Jiang Xia, are you sure this portrait of yours is any good?”
Jiang Xia hadn’t expected the citywide manhunt to turn out like this either.
They’d received well over a dozen calls. Every single caller insisted they’d found someone who looked like the portrait.
But once they dug a little deeper, not a single one of the suspects had the opportunity to have committed the crime.
Did I not draw it accurately enough?
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