Chapter 28

A murder case stirred the entire police bureau.

By evening, crowds of people streamed toward the cafeteria, including officers who rarely showed up during regular hours.

Wu Fa Yi watched this scene from the window, smiling with quiet confidence, then pulled a lunch box from under his desk and said, “I knew today would be exhausting—I brought rice and eggs on purpose.”

He opened the lid for Jiang Yuan and Wang Zhong to see: inside were indeed leftover rice and raw eggs.

The three nodded in unison, walked downstairs naturally, turned a smooth corner, and headed straight to the K-9 unit for their meal.

After greeting Li Li, who was training the dogs, they slipped into the kitchen.

Through the kitchen glass, Li Li looked commanding in the training yard, her movements elegant as if filmed for a movie, refreshing to watch.

Jiang Yuan counted heads: four people—perfect for one egg. He quickly mixed the rice, then expertly heated the pan with cold oil and flipped the spoon.

Wu Fa Yi glanced at Jiang Yuan helplessly, took the remaining five eggs, heated up Da Zhuang’s pan, and while frying the eggs said, “Before your Jiang Village was demolished, conditions weren’t great either. When I was a kid, my family fried rice—never this frugal.”

Jiang Yuan thought: Uncle Seventeen had aspired to be a capitalist; though he died mid-journey, his extreme thriftiness was unmistakable.

“Send Da Zhuang an egg,” Jiang Yuan said, stirring the rice and watching Da Zhuang’s agile figure outside the window. “Li’s meals might be too… healthy.”

Though Li Li was the only officer in the K-9 unit, she was still the unit commander.

“Fine,” Wu Fa Yi agreed at once. “It’s just that Da Zhuang can’t talk—if he could, he’d be banging his paws on the captain’s desk.”

Jiang Yuan and Wang Zhong thought about it, then nodded in unison.

Soon after, the Rottweilers returned from training, slightly sweaty.

Da Zhuang wasn’t allowed inside the kitchen; he sat obediently two meters outside the door, nose twitching, face visibly excited.

Until he saw Li Li raise the big spoon.

…

For several consecutive days, the officers of the Ningtai County Bureau entered a state of mutual understanding and rest.

Arriving late, leaving early, no overtime—this lifestyle was tacitly permitted in some units during the days immediately following the murder case’s resolution.

The First and Second Detachments, directly involved in investigation, stakeouts, and arrests, were given two full days off to make up for their previous sleepless overtime.

They couldn’t afford not to give time off—if they didn’t, half the unit would collapse. The First and Second Detachments, long responsible for major cases, were mostly composed of seasoned officers from the Criminal Investigation Unit. “Seasoned officers” in grassroots bureaus meant officers over thirty-five—ages that internet giants deemed too old for overtime and dumped back into society. People this age could be treated like beasts occasionally, but prolonged beastly treatment would truly lead to collapse.

Jiang Yuan enjoyed several leisurely days before slowly returning to his normal work rhythm.

Meanwhile, the backlog of cases in the Criminal Investigation Unit seemed to be slowly stirring everyone awake.

Monday.

After the morning meeting, Wang Zhong went straight to the Forensic Office.

“Forensic Jiang, per your request and our Chief Huang’s idea, I spent the last two days combing through the archives and found a suitable case,” Wang Zhong greeted him with a case, then naturally pulled a broom from behind the door and began cleaning the office.

“Let me do it,” Jiang Yuan said, slightly embarrassed—his seniority here was the lowest.

“No need, I’ll just sweep a bit,” Wang Zhong firmly stopped him. “Let me tell you about the case. Chief Huang’s idea is to keep the benefits within the family. Your requirement is for bow-shaped patterns—ideally, one that can directly lock the suspect via fingerprint and solve the case…”

Jiang Yuan could now handle all fingerprint types, but he’d wait until the next case to mention it.

Seeing Jiang Yuan didn’t object, Wang Zhong continued: “I found a suitable case, but the difficulty might be high—take a look first.”

“Alright,” Jiang Yuan casually opened the software.

Wang Zhong pulled out a notebook, tore off a page, handed it to Jiang Yuan, and explained: “Enter via case number… It’s an arson case—over five years old. Four greenhouses in Wenshang were burned down in one go. No injuries, but property loss exceeded one million yuan—the victim was effectively bankrupted.”

“Wenshang is a poor township. One million yuan is a lot,” Wu Fa Yi frowned.

“That’s why I still remember,” Wang Zhong said. “I went with Yan Ge—we collected several fingerprints from the point of origin. None were complete. The case analysis meeting concluded it was an inside job—we visited every household in the village and the neighboring one, interviewed people, collected fingerprints—but found nothing.”

Jiang Yuan watched the case file on his computer and asked: “Since it’s a major case, weren’t the fingerprints shown to others?”

“We showed them to Shi Gang from the Provincial Fingerprint Unit,” Wang Zhong said, knowing Jiang Yuan didn’t know the people. “Shi Gang’s real name is Shi Gang—he’s fifty now, a very experienced trace evidence expert. But I suspect he didn’t spend much time on this case. Back then, the province had several big cases in a row, and this one got shelved.”

“Just a million-yuan property loss, with fragmented fingerprints—it didn’t even make the fingerprint campaign?” Wu Jun summed up.

Wang Zhong nodded.

Police resources are always limited. Even if annual budgets increase or funds are raised, ordinary cases always get bogged down by funding and resource constraints—unless they’re major cases.

Take the fingerprint campaign: how much money could it possibly cost? But even if you pulled every fingerprint expert in the province and treated them like beasts, the land they could till was still limited.

And to some extent, major cases are the biggest consumers of funds and resources—precisely because of them, ordinary cases face even tighter budgets.

Human resources are no exception.

Hearing their conversation, Jiang Yuan said uncertainly: “Even if experts didn’t examine them carefully, if they looked at them, my chance of matching them is low.”

Wang Zhong quickly said: “I have an idea.”

“Oh?”

“Experts require at least eight distinctive points to match. But if we only use six or seven, and compare only within the local villagers’ fingerprints, we might find the suspect.”

It was a makeshift solution—if the suspect was an ordinary villager, finding him and applying targeted pressure might extract a confession.

Jiang Yuan asked: “Didn’t they try this method back then?”

“We did try,” Wang Zhong said apologetically. “The fingerprints were badly damaged—few distinctive points could be extracted. Several promising ones ended up being excluded after comparison. We couldn’t pressure Shi Gang’s team at the provincial level—they wouldn’t give us a half-baked conclusion without eight points and full confirmation.”

Performing fingerprint comparison on the spot was different from formally submitting them for the fingerprint campaign—those procedures required strict compliance. An external expert couldn’t perform such special operations.

Likewise, for Jiang Yuan to perform such special operations, he’d need deeper involvement from other colleagues.

Jiang Yuan stayed silent, downloaded the original case fingerprints, and began studying them quietly.

He first marked them normally, ran several comparisons, but found no matching fingerprints—meaning the chance of a lucky find was extremely slim.

“Then we need to talk to the officer in charge of this case,” Jiang Yuan said. “If we’re only comparing six or seven points, the fingerprints can’t serve as evidence—the case still falls on him to pursue.” He paused. “And matching by six points might lead to false positives—or it might not match anyone at all.”

Hearing this, Wang Zhong’s head throbbed. “Did I just come up with a stupid idea?”

Wu Jun calmly said: “You assumed Jiang Yuan could match them.”

“Yes, yes—that’s exactly what I thought,” Wang Zhong relaxed.

Wu Jun chuckled: “You’re putting Jiang Yuan on the fire.”

“Hey, no, I didn’t mean that, I didn’t think that way…” Wang Zhong hurried to explain.

“Who was in charge of this case?” Wu Jun asked.

“Wei Qiang… Deputy Commander of Team Six, Wei Zhenguo,” Wang Zhong said.

Wu Jun said “Oh,” then: “No problem—Old Wei’s easy to deal with… easy to talk to. Let’s go chat with him.”

“Then let’s eat fried rice at the K-9 unit,” Jiang Yuan thought the Rottweilers’ place was perfect—spacious, had a kitchen, and you could pet the dogs.