Chapter 290: Surveillance Is Not All-Powerful

Something's off.

Just as Li Jun had said, Yu Dazhang also noticed this point.

If he hadn't received professional training, how could it be that for two whole days, nothing could be gotten out of him?

But this also proved that Zhou Zizhe hadn't lied.

This Fang Peng really does have a problem!

No one is perfect.

If he were an ordinary person, two days of interrogation would surely have made him spill some petty crimes.

Not opening his mouth at all—that's definitely because he has something to hide.

"His home has been searched too?" Yu Dazhang asked.

The moment he finished asking, he regretted it—such an obvious investigative angle, the detachment certainly wouldn't have overlooked it.

"How could we not check." Sure enough, Li Jun shot him an annoyed glare:

"His place really is on the first floor, but we searched it inside and out, and still didn't find any entrance like a hidden passage."

"The tech officers even brought out the shallow-layer detector—still nothing."

No wonder Captain Li looks so downcast… Yu Dazhang now also felt the case was thorny.

Fang Peng won't talk, and no secret room for hiding people can be found at his home—it's as if the trail has gone cold.

If Fang Peng keeps stonewalling, the police really don't have much recourse for the moment.

"What about his family?"

Yu Dazhang thought of another breakthrough:

"We can learn his daily routine and activity patterns from his family, then use road surveillance to track which places he frequents."

Hearing this, Li Jun picked up a file from the desk and pushed it in front of him:

"This is Fang Peng's file. Take a look yourself."

From his expression, one could tell he couldn't even be bothered to explain anymore.

Yu Dazhang picked up the file and began flipping through it quickly.

Fang Peng, male, 46 years old, native of Songhai, divorced with no children, parents deceased…

He'd only read the beginning when he understood why Li Jun was so troubled.

On the household register, Fang Peng was the only person listed.

The detachment's officers had also visited the neighbors, who all said Fang Peng usually kept to himself and they had never seen anyone else living at his place.

Indeed a tough one—now even trying to learn about him from the side was impossible.

The back of the file was an introduction to Fang Peng's cases.

On the morning of November 2, 2014, outside a branch of the Hongkou District Rural Credit Cooperative, Fang Peng used a wooden stick to knock unconscious a man who had just withdrawn money, then snatched the twenty thousand yuan the man had just taken out.

Although he wore a mask and a baseball cap during the crime, his movements were captured by surveillance.

That evening, police locked down the residential complex where he lived, and after screening, ultimately arrested Fang Peng and brought him in.

This Fang Peng doesn't seem like the sharp kind of criminal… Yu Dazhang reached that judgment immediately after reading.

This robbery case isn't complicated.

One could even say it's crude and simple.

Anyone with a normal brain wouldn't choose to commit a robbery outside a bank.

Except for those who rob cash transport vehicles at gunpoint outside banks—those are desperadoes, just charge in blindly, no need to think.

So the question arises.

How did someone like Fang Peng, who isn't very bright, manage to imprison multiple women?

Not only did he succeed, he went undiscovered for so many years.

The file shows Fang Peng started driving a taxi two years ago.

In other words, the time he imprisoned those women must be at least two years.

Has he been wronged?

Yu Dazhang felt a bit dazed—the two cases didn't look like they could have been committed by the same person no matter how he looked at them.

"Alright, go on with your work."

Li Jun pulled Fang Peng's file back, then waved Yu Dazhang off:

"Leave this case to the team. You go keep working on your cold cases—don't get distracted."

Who wanted to investigate it… Yu Dazhang shot Li Jun a glance.

Learning about this case was just to help shoulder the burden for the team; he didn't have the energy to handle so many cases.

Fine, must admit—he was very curious about this case.

Because the imprisoned women's fate is unknown, the longer it drags on, the lower their chances of survival.

"If you need me, call anytime."

After saying this, Yu Dazhang stood up and left.

Trusting one's colleagues is also a way of working, and the police force has discipline—first and foremost, do your own job well.

Back at the cold case office.

Ma Jian and Liu Miao just glanced up at him, then immersed themselves again in their case files.

Yu Dazhang also picked up a case file and began reading from the beginning.

Ru Yao, female, 21 years old, from H Province, came to Songhai to work…

Two disappearance cases and one unidentified corpse case—he'd lost count of how many times he'd read through these three cold case files.

Although more than a month had passed, he'd only read the beginning before the rest of the content came back to him.

This Ru Yao had only just arrived in Songhai when she disappeared; the story about her working was provided by her family.

According to her family, before coming to Songhai, Ru Yao had already arranged with a restaurant to work there as a waitress.

The result was that on the very day she arrived in Songhai, her family lost contact with her.

Her family got in touch with that restaurant again, and the other side said Ru Yao had never shown up — they were also waiting for her to come in for work.

After that came the police report, the case being opened, the canvassing…

People have always had one misconception.

These days, with surveillance cameras everywhere, in such an environment, a person simply cannot disappear.

But the fact is, every year large numbers of people go missing, and the number of missing people is still growing year by year.

Even though the birth rate is lower every year, the number of missing people has never decreased.

Why is that?

Because surveillance is not all-powerful.

Even though Skynet has facial-recognition capability, there are still situations where it can't make an identification.

For example, the face being obscured, the angle being off, the distance being too great…

And that's only when the cameras can capture the person at all — in areas not covered by surveillance, there's simply no way to verify anything.

Of course, a disappearance in itself does not directly constitute a criminal case.

For situations like someone leaving home for personal reasons, the police usually won't open a case.

But for an unexplained disappearance like Ru Yao's, where foul play is suspected, the police will open an investigation.

"It's been too long." Yu Dazhang sighed.

All that can be looked at now are the case file and the surveillance footage left from back then.

At the end of the footage, after Ru Yao came out of a side door of a shopping mall, she entered a surveillance blind spot.

After that, she was never seen again.

Because the foot traffic near the mall was heavy, if a violent abduction had occurred, someone would surely have noticed — so the possibility of kidnapping can basically be ruled out.

A subsequent police investigation confirmed this point as well.

If she wasn't kidnapped, then how did she disappear?

The reason this case became a cold case is precisely because it got stuck right here.

No one knows what happened to Ru Yao after she entered the surveillance blind spot.

Moreover, that area not only had people passing through, but also vehicles driving through.

Yu Dazhang had already made this inference before.

If Ru Yao got into some vehicle in that surveillance blind spot, and sat in the back seat, then even after she left that area, the cameras wouldn't capture her face.

This possibility is the closest to the truth, but also the hardest to investigate.

Every day, at minimum over a thousand vehicles pass through that area, and there's no way of knowing when exactly Ru Yao got into the car.

So there's simply no way to start an investigation.

The officers handling the case back then must have realized this too, which is why it ultimately became a cold case.

Yu Dazhang shook his head, tossed the case file onto the desk, feeling a bit irritated.

Still couldn't find a breakthrough.

Wait—

Suddenly a thought flashed through his mind, making him sit bolt upright, his eyes frighteningly bright.

What if she got into the car of her own accord?

If it wasn't abduction or kidnapping, then under what circumstances — or rather, what kind of vehicle — could make her get in willingly?

Three characters immediately popped into his mind.

Taxi!!

Damn it — I actually made the most basic mistake… Yu Dazhang flipped the case file open again.

This time, he flipped straight to the page recording Ru Yao's family background.

(End of this chapter)