Chapter 1177: Difficulty

"I'll take another look around."

Jiang Yuan said as he returned to the crime scene to examine it once more.

Soon, Jiang Yuan was standing before the shattered glass, looking at it bit by bit in detail.

To confirm whether the supplies inside the warehouse were truly missing, the warehouse manager had brought in many people, to the point where the scene inside was full of footprints—so many that it was unusable.

The only thing preserved relatively well was this patch of broken glass.

Even though the people at this factory hadn't considered protecting the crime scene, because of the presence of the broken glass, this area was the least damaged—though it had still been damaged quite a bit, just not severely.

Based on his analysis of the footprints, Jiang Yuan quickly reached a conclusion: there were people who weren't afraid of getting their feet pricked, standing right on the broken glass! Some could even crush the glass underfoot!

As a result, the position of the broken glass had been shifted.

Thus, judging the actions and force used when smashing the glass, and even the intent behind the tools used, based on the position and size of the shards, became extremely difficult.

Liu Jinghui watched Jiang Yuan standing there for a long time, feeling that his resident "dragon" was preparing to breathe fire, so he walked over and asked, "How is it? Can you tell the perpetrator's height and weight? What kind of tool was used?"

"I can't tell." Jiang Yuan answered quite earnestly. He really wanted to be able to tell, but he had only managed to discern the enthusiasm of the onlookers and the force of the footsteps beneath him.

"What a pity." Liu Jinghui smacked his lips. "If we could filter the personnel list by height and weight, the workload would be much smaller. Even having a rough range would help."

"It's useless. The perpetrator smashed the glass several times; look at the glass shards by the window. The people who came later kicked the broken glass around too. However, the perpetrator definitely climbed in through the window—there are scuff marks on the window frame."

Since the perpetrator climbed in through the window, it ruled out the type of break-in involving keys or pretending to be an insider, which counted as a small gain.

"It seems we can't just charge in and win the day," Liu Jinghui said with regret.

"Let's go outside and take a look." Jiang Yuan had already circled the warehouse twice, so he walked out to circle the factory grounds.

The factory had stopped production for the day, but the workers hadn't been given the day off; they were wandering around the grounds in twos and threes, and some were organizing people to do odd jobs.

It was clear that the factory manager was very unwilling to stop production. But toxic chemicals were regulated; if they were lost, they had to be reported. Otherwise, he might not have reported it at all.

The factory was very small, and the factory grounds were even smaller, lacking any of the airs of a traditional large state-owned enterprise. Even the production equipment showed no signs of modernization; everywhere, there were traces of making do with what was available.

Although the factory's products included toxic compounds, given the investment, profit, and management capability, what everyone saw at this moment was the state they were able to maintain in the long term.

The factory manager was an old businessman in his 50s, the type who had been forced into business, and he didn't have strong management skills. He was barely maintaining the factory, and the money he had earned from a few opportunities in his early years had been gradually poured into the factory. After twenty-plus years, he owned a factory worth tens of millions, along with tens of millions in loans—he was considered a fairly well-off small factory owner.

His middle-level cadres included both peers who had helped him build the business and a few college graduates hired later. In that era, private factories couldn't hire legitimate university graduates; unlike now, where some workers who came to labor were college graduates, yet there were no management positions left for them.

Jiang Yuan circled the factory grounds twice, looked at the main gate, and finally just left the grounds, walking along the highway.

"Are you looking for surveillance?" Liu Jinghui knew what Jiang Yuan was thinking as soon as he saw him.

Jiang Yuan nodded and said, "The surveillance inside the factory grounds is useless. The warehouse surveillance is broken, and the factory surveillance is ancient junk; you can't see anything at night, and the placement is bad... Let's expand the scope and see."

"That's one way, but this is a connector line for national highways and expressways; there's too much traffic coming and going. How do we identify the perpetrator's vehicle..." Liu Jinghui said, raising his own hand. "The perpetrator's vehicle shouldn't have gotten on the expressway; that's too much trouble, and getting on or off the expressway requires passing through toll stations where they get photographed and recorded."

Liu Jinghui traced a line on the highway in front of him and said, "The perpetrator must have driven here, stopped to load the goods, and then turned around to return?"

Liu Jinghui's eyes lit up as he spoke. The conviction of a Dragon Knight made him seem to glow all over. "That must be it. We can look for places ahead suitable for turning around, see if there's surveillance, and then look for vehicles that turned around on the day of the incident. I think we'll find clues."

"That makes sense." Jiang Yuan nodded in agreement.

"This level of deduction is a piece of cake." Liu Jinghui recalled how he used to assign tasks to technical personnel, and he felt a strange sense of regaining his former glory.

Jiang Yuan just smiled and continued walking along the road.

There were many surveillance cameras on a single road, and yet the surveillance footage on a single road could be very sparse.

Jiang Yuan walked more than a kilometer forward and said, "That's about enough. Let's see what we can collect."

Along the way, there were quite a few places to turn around, but not every location had a camera.

But there was no time to worry about that now; only by taking the footage back could they have room for further discussion.

They were still using the Changyang Municipal Bureau's own image investigation team.

The image investigators, who had just been under Jiang Yuan's command investigating the Academician case, were now mobilized to investigate dangerous chemicals, and for a moment, they felt a bit dazed.

A small portion of the image investigators were dispatched to collect surveillance footage, while the rest began reviewing the footage already collected.

Since it was the Changyang Municipal Bureau's own case and there was a time constraint, Jiang Yuan arranged for two major teams—over forty people—to watch the footage.

Wei Shiyan, who had been left in the command room staring blankly at mathematics, hurriedly joined in, pretending to be conducting joint research while watching the footage.

Surprisingly, the task Jiang Yuan arranged didn't take long. In fact, before many of the image investigators had even gotten into the zone, surveillance footage from a repair shop 300 meters away from the incident site showed a suspicious vehicle.

"The surveillance at the repair shop entrance is mainly aimed at their own garage door, but you can see a vehicle circling and turning around in front of it."

"The vehicle drove past the company wall at 4:10 AM, but didn't turn around until 4:50 AM. This timeframe perfectly matches the time the suspect committed the crime."

"The problem is the lack of light. Not only did it fail to capture the vehicle's license plate, but we can't even make out the vehicle's features."

"Next, we will adjust our focus to determining the vehicle's information..."

The Image Investigation Team Captain quickly reported the information and began assigning tasks to himself. Being able to harvest so many clues in such a short time easily breeds confidence!

Liu Jinghui was also full of anticipation.

And then...

Time seemed to stop, and no new clues appeared.

This connector line linked the national highway and the expressway, and the vehicles coming and going were mostly from other regions and provinces. Screening them one by one was very slow, and the connector line itself had no vehicle checkpoints. For a moment, they couldn't even find a shadow of the suspicious vehicle. ===== CHAPTER 1178 =====