Chapter 1029: Visiting

Wu Wu Junhao moved with swift, agile steps, leading his fully equipped riot police squad to knock on the doors of the cubicle offices in the office building one by one.

The industrial and economic level of Qinghe City was average. After the collapse of its former pillar, the Jianyuan Group, related enterprises had a difficult time surviving. Small companies in the city struggled even more, each one cutting staff to increase efficiency; one manifestation of this was that the office cubicles were becoming increasingly cramped.

This office building was no exception. Room after room was packed together; some small companies occupied only a few dozen square meters, relying entirely on the 5.7-meter ceiling height to divide the space into two levels. However, this made the space inside feel very oppressive.

Wu Wu Junhao and his team followed the registration records from the Industry and Commerce and Tax bureaus, asking companies one by one. The workload was not heavy; if not for the gravity of the case, they could have even inquired by phone.

However, experienced police officers all knew that while companies were registered, the people running them were always bold and had various business secrets, so lying was a common occurrence. Even if they didn't lie intentionally, many people answering the phones were uninformed, and even more didn't take police inquiries seriously. Therefore, investigative visits still required showing up in person.

Overall, this work was tedious and complex, but it couldn't be called difficult. Wu Wu Junhao still felt relaxed inside.

During the gaps in questioning, he even began to consider how to convert these steps into aerobic time and what resistance training to add or change later.

As he was calculating, a subordinate came over to report: "Captain Wu, we've finished asking everyone."

"Oh? We're at the first floor?" Wu Wu Junhao only then realized.

They had taken the elevator to the top floor and swept down level by level.

The subordinate nodded: "There are still a few shops on the first floor, but we've finished asking everyone upstairs."

"Then let's take a break, buy everyone some water, use the restroom, and then sweep the next building." Wu Wu Junhao sighed. The office buildings here had at least fifteen floors; sweeping one was quite exhausting.

The subordinate quickly went to handle it.

Wu Wu Junhao followed into a supermarket, grabbed a bottle of pulse-replenishing drink for himself, and then said to the deputy squad leader behind him: "For the next building, split into two teams. I'll sweep from the bottom up."

The deputy squad leader smiled: "Alright. You're afraid that going downstairs will hurt your knees, right?"

"Just consider it exercise." Wu Wu Junhao shook his head. Their mission volume was quite large; they definitely couldn't finish sweeping three to five buildings of this type in a day. In the first few days, they might have to sweep eight or ten. That would be over a hundred floors of height; Wu Wu Junhao felt it was better not to waste the effort.

The deputy squad leader agreed. After paying the supermarket owner, he asked: "Have any employees resigned from your shop recently, especially those who left without notice and can't be contacted?"

"Employees in our shop come and go. Recently..."

"Within 20 days or a month, has anyone resigned?" the deputy squad leader added.

"Within a month, we did have two stock clerks change." The supermarket owner answered quite seriously; with so many police officers around, he absolutely didn't want to cause trouble.

Hearing this, the term "intermittent weight-bearing" immediately popped into Wu Wu Junhao's mind. Anyone who frequented the gym knew that various types of manual labor were the natural enemies of big muscles in the gym; stock clerks in supermarkets occasionally had to exert great strength.

"What are their names? How old are they? About how tall are they?" Wu Wu Junhao only then verified age and other information.

At the beginning, they didn't mention conditions like age and height because in small supermarkets like this, hiring was often irregular, and lying about age was as common as wearing elevator shoes. Listing these conditions at the start would easily lead to incorrectly filtering people out.

Only after finding a suspicious candidate was it safer to verify with these conditions.

"Little Xu. Xu Li, I think. In his 20s, over 1.7 meters tall. Let me find the information left at the time. I kept a copy of his ID card." The supermarket owner huffed and puffed as he leaned in front of the computer to search.

"Is he from Shannan Province?" the deputy squad leader asked at the same time.

"Yes. From our Qinghe."

"Is this the person?" The deputy squad leader had already searched for Xu Li, who fit the range, on his phone.

This was a young man with a square face and short hair, looking quite spirited.

Seeing him, the supermarket owner nodded and said: "He worked as a stock clerk here for two months. He left right after getting paid, sent me a message saying he didn't want to work anymore."

The deputy squad leader frowned: "He didn't come in the day after he got his pay?"

"That's not it, he worked for two more days."

"Then he didn't ask for the wages for those two days? Do you withhold pay?" The deputy squad leader had worked in a police station and stumped the owner with just a few sentences.

The owner coughed twice, first glanced at his other employees, then said: "He said in the message to transfer the wages for those few days to his WeChat. I scolded him a couple of times, and he didn't say a word. I thought that was it."

"In other words, you didn't transfer the money for those few days to Xu Li, and he didn't ask for it later?" Wu Wu Junhao's line of thought was also clear.

The owner said "Yeah," and added: "He's thin-skinned; I couldn't chase him down to give it to him, could I?"

"He suddenly quit, and you weren't surprised?" the deputy squad leader pressed.

"Stock clerks resign often, it's normal." The owner said this first, then seeing Wu Wu Junhao and the others eager to speak, he simply continued: "Our supermarket has high sales and a lot of work. The workload for stock clerks is heavy, and the hours are long. It's normal for them to work for a month or two and then quit."

Deputy squad leader: "Low pay, heavy work, long hours?"

The owner completely gave up: "If you insist on putting it that way, I can't help it."

"After Xu Li resigned, did you call him or send any voice messages?" the deputy squad leader asked one last time.

The owner said definitively: "No. In this kind of situation, it's impossible for me to call him first. He was willing to send a message, so I just sent a message."

The deputy squad leader and Wu Wu Junhao looked at each other. From their perspective, not only was it highly likely that Xu Li was the victim, but the person who sent the message to the owner after resigning also had a high probability of being the killer.

This was equivalent to killing two birds with one stone.

Searching for the victim was originally to find information or to compare it with information from another corpse. And if the use of a mobile phone and WeChat could point directly to the killer, that would be even better.

"I'm going to make a call." Seeing that he had finished asking, Wu Wu Junhao immediately looked for Jiang Yuan on his phone.

Investigative visits didn't always yield conclusions. Being able to get results so quickly this time made Wu Wu Junhao quite excited.

Not to mention that the golden time for investigation had passed, but investigative work was always easier to solve when done faster. Only when everyone worked hard could the investigation be completed at a rapid pace. ===== CHAPTER 1030 =====