Chapter 144: Plenty of Cases to Go Around

Monday.

Ningtai County was raining.

Abundant rain poured from south to north, from east to west, turning the window into a sea of water.

Wu Jun leaned against the windowsill, silently smoking a Yuxi cigarette, and said slowly: "If someone dies today, we're in trouble."

Jiang Yuan looked up from his computer screen and said: "That's not likely."

"Don't talk about luck," Wu Jun waved his hand. "Talk about luck, and luck just shows up. Back in the day, we had a case just like this..."

Wu Jun then told Jiang Yuan an old story.

Jiang Yuan silently watched the training materials on the screen.

His understanding of fingerprint identification was constantly improving.

But criminal science and technology differed from ordinary science or technology in one key way: it required heavy external support.

Probably because police never valued lone operations, and no one ever considered developing a technology that would let a single officer operate independently.

On the contrary, criminal science and technology almost always required teamwork, even the cooperation of an entire system.

For fingerprint technology, no matter how skilled Jiang Yuan was, he still relied on the fingerprint database.

And that fingerprint database was built up bit by bit.

From Jiang Yuan's perspective, what now limited the further development of fingerprint technology was the construction of the database and the entry and annotation of new fingerprints.

This, too, required the cooperation of the entire police system.

In criminal science and technology, this usually manifested as various kinds of training.

Explanations of the latest techniques, promotion of newer methods, application of more mature technologies...

The police system might be the most training-obsessed unit in the country, yet its grassroots strength remained weak.

And entering fingerprints wasn't just a matter of working long hours—it required finer work arrangements and the dissemination of better methods.

At present, the system wouldn't provide such managerial skills.

Jiang Yuan tried learning them himself.

Bang.

Wei Zhenguo burst in from outside.

"Someone dead?"

Jiang Yuan and Wu Jun both turned their heads and shouted in unison.

Wei Zhenguo glanced nervously behind him, thought carefully, then said: "No... no one's dead, I think."

"Oh... I thought so, good thing..." Wu Jun exhaled, put out his cigarette, and hurried back to his seat, his hand resting silently on the Guan Yu statue.

Jiang Yuan looked at Wei Zhenguo and smiled: "Comrade Wei, what's up?"

"Oh, Li Suigong's back, with the suspect from the fraud case," Wei Zhenguo panted, smiling. "They've delivered him to the case center."

Jiang Yuan glanced outside in surprise: "At this hour? Did they stay up all night to catch him?"

"More than that—they chased him for three days. I just found out: when the checkpoint in Qisheng province triggered an alarm, Li Suigong immediately led his team out. One-way distance: 1, 00 kilometers. Round trip: 2, 00 kilometers. They even lay in wait for a full day." Wei Zhenguo shook his head in admiration. "Economic crime investigation isn't easy."

"Let's go take a look," Jiang Yuan stood up quickly.

Inside the case center, Li Suigong and another officer were filling out forms, while a colleague nearby lay sprawled on the sofa, fast asleep.

The case center wasn't crowded, but people kept glancing over; Li Suigong pretended not to notice.

"Comrade Li," Jiang Yuan greeted quickly.

"Brother Jiang," Li Suigong immediately grabbed Jiang Yuan's hand—he had gone to Qisheng because of Jiang Yuan, and now that he was back, he wanted to make a good impression.

"Don't be so formal. I heard you brought back the suspect?"

Li Suigong nodded heavily, then added awkwardly: "We followed the person's trail, but turns out he'd already transferred the money. The recovered funds might be under 300, 00."

He knew full well the money couldn't be fully recovered. And while 800, 00 seemed like a fortune to ordinary people, financial channels weren't designed for them. So from the start, Li Suigong hadn't cared about the money's whereabouts.

Only after catching the suspect did he check—and sure enough, only slightly over 200, 00 remained.

The rest had been squandered by the suspect or transferred elsewhere.

But based on Li Suigong's experience, fraudsters like this would rather go to prison than return the money.

Jiang Yuan didn't demand perfection; he gripped Li Suigong's hand and said: "Solving the case is what matters. The rest is beyond our control. You've worked too hard—three or four days, 2, 00 kilometers round trip. You pushed yourselves too hard."

"No problem, mainly the driver's exhausted," Li Suigong laughed.

Jiang Yuan now learned the Economic Crime Unit had hired drivers. Clearly, it was a well-funded team.

Wei Zhenguo glanced at Jiang Yuan's wide-eyed look and pulled him aside. "Comrade Li, go ahead and finish your work—we'll wait till later."

"Got it," Li Suigong turned back to his forms.

Nowadays, solving cases required strict procedures; one mistake and you'd be stuck filling out forms till death.

Wei Zhenguo whispered to Jiang Yuan: "Nowadays, well-funded police units all prefer drivers—no need for auxiliary police slots, they can drive, carry things, very practical."

"So auxiliary police slots are insufficient too?"

"When has personnel quota ever been enough?" Wei Zhenguo chuckled.

Jiang Yuan also sent messages to his father and Jiang Yushan.

Their calls came right away.

Jiang Yuan stepped out of the office area to make the call easier.

He didn't know much himself, and some of it was deeply unfavorable to the victim.

But for Jiang Yushan, hearing the suspect had been caught was enough to make him very happy.

Noon.

Jiang Yuan was still hesitating whether to treat Li Suigong to lunch or let him sleep first, then treat Da Zhuang, when the system interface suddenly popped up:

Task completed: Find the person

Task description: A qualified forensic expert can locate a person (alive or dead) through various details.

Reward: Footprint Identification (Lv3)

Jiang Yuan immediately knew: the suspect had confessed.

Under China's system, once there was a confession and some physical evidence, the defendant could only plead for a lighter sentence during trial—escape from punishment was nearly impossible.

As he thought this, Li Suigong's call came in.

"The suspect has been detained. After we organize the documents, we'll move quickly to file charges. Restitution might take a bit longer," Li Suigong explained to Jiang Yuan.

Jiang Yuan thanked him again, ended the call, and felt how exhausting it was to help others.

Turning back, Jiang Yuan carefully read the description of Lv3 Footprint Identification.

The most notable feature of footprint identification was its extremely high extraction rate.

Almost every crime scene yielded footprint impressions.

In comparison, fingerprint and DNA technology, though more mature and reliable for matching, had far lower extraction rates under current crime conditions: fingerprints were recovered in less than 15% of cases, DNA even less.

When no DNA or fingerprints could be collected, footprints might be the only recourse.

Jiang Yuan casually mixed ash into a puddle, stepped into it, twisted his foot, then stepped onto the other side, observing the print left behind.

Indeed, a flood of information surged into his mind.

Without hesitation, Jiang Yuan stood and walked to the adjacent trace evidence office, opened the door, and asked: "Brother Wang, got any footprint cases? Let me work on one?"

Footprints also fell under trace evidence work.

Wang Zhong was stunned, then stunned again. "What do you mean, 'footprint case'?"

"I've been studying footprint analysis lately. Wanted a case to practice on as homework," Jiang Yuan said humbly.

Wang Zhong's spirits instantly lifted!

A few months ago, Brother Jiang had said the same thing about fingerprints—and then he cracked case after case...

"Yes yes yes, plenty, wait a sec."