Chapter 377: Those Who Run with the Fatty Are No Ordinary Folk

Yu Dazhang was actually joking with him.

Even if the expenses ultimately exceeded the standard, he would not let his colleagues from the provincial department pay out of their own pockets.

However, making this joke had one benefit: it could greatly improve work efficiency.

Staying an extra day in Yangcheng meant spending an extra day on accommodation; given the salary standards of criminal police, staying in a four-star hotel was indeed somewhat luxurious.

So the officers from the provincial department naturally hoped to finish their work in Yangcheng a bit earlier.

After checking into the rooms, the officers returned to their respective rooms.

Yu Dazhang then gathered his own team together.

Qi Fang also came to his room shortly after.

"Everyone is here. To save time, let's hold a coordination meeting tonight."

Yu Dazhang looked at the several people sitting opposite him and said in a heavy, solemn voice:

"The main points are information sharing and formulating the next action plan."

There is one thing star-rated hotels have that small inns cannot match: soundproofing.

Here, one does not need to speak cautiously; unless someone deliberately eavesdrops, the sound from the next room simply cannot be heard.

"You two explain the situation here first," Yu Dazhang said to Ma Jian and Liu Miao:

"Be as detailed as possible."

The one reporting this time was Liu Miao; in terms of handling cases, he was more meticulous.

Starting from the illegal black cars at the very beginning, Liu Miao spent about ten minutes recounting the situation they had discovered over these days.

He concluded finally:

"We have figured out the pattern; the other party must be mixed in with those soliciting customers, because only then do they have an opportunity."

After listening to his account, everyone in the room fell into deep thought.

Yu Dazhang was somewhat better off, since Ma Jian had reported to him before, and what Liu Miao said was almost exactly the same.

It was just that in some details, Liu Miao's account was more detailed.

Illegal activities similar to black cars and ticket scalpers have already formed gangs here; outsiders simply cannot infiltrate them.

Yes, ticket scalpers also have gangs.

Nationwide, the police dismantle several such gangs every year, yet new gangs still emerge.

As long as there is profit to be made, someone will always take a desperate risk.

Unless one finds a way to completely sever this chain of interest.

Those who solicit customers for inns are not so united, because the profits are not that large.

They mainly rely on commissions given by the inns to earn income; in reality, they are not much different from ordinary workers.

Blending in among them is obviously the most suitable option; it is not only covert but also allows them to select targets autonomously.

"Has the other party not shown their face once these past days?" Yu Dazhang asked, staring at the two of them.

He was now beginning to suspect whether Zhang Chao and the others had already withdrawn the people.

Otherwise, this crime efficiency is far too low.

If not a single person has been caught in so many days, where did all those cheap laborers in N Province come from?

"Yes."

When the two spoke of this, they both lowered their heads involuntarily, looking ashamed.

But soon Liu Miao raised his head and added:

"We not only failed to discover any suspects, we didn't even find a single intellectually disabled person."

"It is truly strange; with such a huge flow of people at the train station, we haven't seen a single person with intellectual disabilities in so many days."

This was the main reason... Yu Dazhang felt Liu Miao had hit the nail on the head.

"If a person with low intelligence stood in front of you, could you tell?" he asked.

"I suppose I could." Liu Miao was somewhat stunned by this question; he hesitated for a moment before answering:

"Someone with the appearance of Fang Peng, for instance, would be obvious at a glance."

Yu Dazhang shook his head in disappointment and said in a heavy, solemn voice:

"But Fang Peng is actually a person of normal intelligence."

Upon hearing this, everyone turned to look at Yu Dazhang.

Unconsciously, the same thought arose in everyone's minds: one cannot judge a person by their appearance.

During those days they lay in wait in the industrial district of Yancheng, they knew for certain that there were intellectually disabled people working in those factories, yet they could not identify them by their appearance.

Unless the case was particularly obvious, it was truly very difficult to tell.

The room fell silent again; Yu Dazhang took out a pack of He Tianxia, opened it, and tossed it onto the bed.

Within a short while, the room was filled with a strong smell of tobacco.

"They must have a method for identification."

Lu Zhongxin exhaled a puff of smoke and said with a heavy, solemn expression:

"Since appearance alone cannot distinguish them, the next step is conversation and physical contact."

Upon hearing this, everyone nodded in agreement.

Liu Miao immediately interjected:

"At the train station, the only ones who can strike up a conversation with strangers without arousing suspicion are those soliciting customers."

"They can observe the other party's reactions and manner of speaking during the conversation to perform identification."

That makes sense... Hearing his words, Yu Dazhang couldn't help but recall the intellectually disabled people he had encountered in Yancheng.

Those people shared a common characteristic in their speech: a small vocabulary and a habit of using repetitive, wordy sentences.

In their speech, they often use simple short sentences with frequent grammatical errors, and have difficulty getting to the point.

Some of them have slurred pronunciation, slow speech, and abnormal intonation.

To sum it up: muddled logic, weak comprehension and reaction ability.

Talking with them, you can basically hear their speech defects and problems within two sentences.

"So, they didn't actually keep their heads hidden." Lu Zhongxin said in a deep voice:

"It's that when they dragged people away, you didn't notice."

"I can't really blame you for that either — the train station has so many people every day, and you don't know whether the ones being taken away are mentally disabled or not."

Even though he was making excuses for Ma Jian and Liu Miao, the two still felt somewhat self-reproachful, and a flash of apology glinted in their eyes.

Yu Dazhang, on the other hand, simply skipped past the topic:

"Next, let's all think together about how to find them."

The most direct method was to grab all the people soliciting passengers at the train station, then interrogate them one by one.

But this method couldn't distinguish which ones were the real criminals.

If the other party insisted they were just soliciting passengers, and really were doing that job, the police really wouldn't be able to do anything about them.

ID cards don't mark who is a suspect.

"Now we have enough people on hand, we can send more people to observe at the train station."

The speaker was Ma Jian — when he saw Yu Dazhang had brought so many people over, he had already thought of this method.

"That method won't work." Yu Dazhang shook his head and rejected it:

"Disguised investigation doesn't work just because you have more people, and at a fixed location, suddenly adding manpower will also increase the risk of exposure."

There was one more point he didn't mention.

To identify the suspects, you had to listen up close to their conversations with strangers.

But once you got close, it was bound to arouse the other party's suspicion.

If they were spotted by the other party, they would immediately retreat.

And once they ran, finding them again would undoubtedly be even harder.

Then everyone began offering their own views, one after another.

In the room, only Qi Fang had not spoken the entire time.

It wasn't that he didn't want to speak, but that he had no chance.

He discovered that not a single one of these people from Songhai was a pushover.

From the way they spoke, you could tell each of these people had clear logic and quick minds.

They also got straight to the heart of any problem, without the slightest dragging of feet.

What surprised him most was that the two people who had been secretly investigating at Yangcheng train station had actually also come from Songhai.

In other words, they were a group of five handling a case across provinces.

With only this many people, they had even split into two groups.

What kind of nerve did it take to arrange things this way!

But precisely because of this arrangement, it saved the task force a great deal of time.

Without the earlier covert observation, there would be no further deduction now.

Qi Fang unconsciously opened his mouth, staring blankly at these colleagues from Songhai as they discussed the case.

He Tianxia had already smoked two cigarettes — why was he feeling a bit embarrassed now?

(End of chapter)