Chapter 980: More Reasonable

“Don’t rush so much.”

When Tao Lu first heard Liu Jinghui’s remarks, he knew exactly what he was getting at—and had already thought through this issue.

He was very familiar with officers like Liu Jinghui—or rather, all blue-shirted officers were much the same. Aside from those with ulterior motives, those willing to pursue careers and solve cases were almost all of the charge-ahead type: reckless, unconcerned with consequences, and rarely considering politics.

Of course, the current system also encourages this model. As Old Ma said, police are the violent machine upholding rule; machines naturally don’t need much thinking.

But as a white-shirted officer, Tao Lu could never fight with brute force alone.

He immediately grabbed Liu Jinghui’s arm and said: “It’s not that we can’t approach the Zhang family, but as we just said, are we prepared to restart the Jianmen Academy case? The precondition for restarting it is being able to solve it—are we prepared to solve it?”

Tao Lu continued: “We’ve discussed a lot, but we have no real confidence in solving it. If that’s the case, I suggest we hold off on contacting the Zhang family for now.”

“But Zhang Xiaoya has already come,” Liu Jinghui said.

“That’s different,” Tao Lu paused, then explained: “Her learning the case’s progress is one thing; us proactively inquiring about the Zhang family to solve the case… I’m not afraid she won’t talk—I’m afraid she’ll talk too much. The volume of information might overwhelm us.”

His words sent chills down some spines and made others clench their toes.

Liu Jinghui, not Tao Lu’s subordinate, pressed on: “The case lacks leads, and those leads are likely in the Zhang family’s hands—even ones they themselves don’t know about. If we don’t contact them, we can’t solve it; and if we can’t solve it, we can’t contact them—isn’t that a dead loop?”

“Prove your mom is your mom,” Cui Qishan couldn’t help blurting out. He knew it was inappropriate, but he was desperate to show off—even shit, he wanted to prove his pile was straighter than others’.

Tao Lu shot Cui Qishan a furious glare, then said: “At the very least, we must exhaust all other options before approaching the Zhang family.”

“The previous task force only left the screening phase uncompleted,” Liu Jinghui sighed.

Seeing he wasn’t digging in his heels, Tao Lu smiled slightly and said: “One of the main items they wanted to screen back then was Wang Futing’s fingerprints. Wang Futing fled the same day, so even if they’d done the screening, they might not have found anything.”

Tao Lu continued: “But our current leads have advanced further—we have Wang Futing himself. We also know about the flying claw. If needed, couldn’t we trace along these two leads?”

All these years later, “screening” was meaningless unless it involved physical evidence like DNA, fingerprints, or gun marks. Tao Lu’s point was simply that we could allocate more resources.

Seeing Tao Lu’s clear stance, and glancing at Jiang Yuan, Liu Jinghui changed tone: “Both leads—Wang Futing and the flying claw—ultimately point to the suspect who used the flying claw. I recall Wang Futing said this man’s nickname was ‘Yaozi,’ unknown origin, introduced by a friend.”

“Which friend?” Tao Lu nodded in satisfaction as the investigation direction aligned.

“Fat Head Seven—he died the next year,” Wang Chuanxing answered without waiting for Liu Jinghui, reading from the interrogation records.

Tao Lu froze—this lead was broken again.

Liu Jinghui waved his hand: “Even if he’s dead, it doesn’t matter. He lived another year after the crime—he spoke for another year. Look into Fat Head Seven’s background: find his friends, relatives, family from back then, interview them all, see if he ever mentioned anything. How did this suspect, Yaozi, even meet Fat Head Seven?”

“Yaozi probably sold stolen goods to Fat Head Seven,” Wang Chuanxing replied again. The interrogation records were long and dense, packed with countless details—not everyone could remember them all.

“What did Fat Head Seven do?” Liu Jinghui had too much to review; some details he’d skimmed over. Now that Wang Chuanxing had read them, he used him to quickly grasp the situation.

Hundreds of boxes of case files—no one had time to read them all before deciding. The task force didn’t have time to waste. Fast, accurate information retrieval was mandatory for this line of work.

Wang Chuanxing hadn’t read everything either, but he and the cold case team had long experience—they’d divided the boxes in advance, each person assigned a few, allowing for much deeper reading.

As he flipped through his notes, Wang Chuanxing replied: “In the 90s, Fat Head Seven mainly stole from trains, and also collected stolen goods to resell to professional fences.”

Today, long-haul truck drivers are easy targets, mostly robbed of fuel—this model supports many professional thieves. But in the 90s, though truck drivers were also stolen from, they were generally tough and held higher social status—not the preferred targets for thieves.

Long-term professional thieves mainly operated as pickpockets on buses and in crowded places, or stole from trains.

Back then, many freight trains had no enclosed cars; even those with cars were useless unless guarded by armed railway police. Along the tracks, tough villagers would always climb aboard. In an era when industrial goods were generally more valuable than agricultural ones, even a chamber pot could be sold.

First, they kept what they needed; whatever extra they had, they sold to people like Fat Head Seven.

In essence, it was much like gold-gathering teams in 21st-century games.

It’s easy to imagine Fat Head Seven’s social network must have been extremely complex.

Liu Jinghui didn’t hesitate: “We must thoroughly investigate Fat Head Seven’s identity. Look into his contact history with Yaozi. How many of his old gang members from back then are still alive?”

“Four total. We’ll look into them,” Wang Chuanxing noted.

Tao Lu exhaled in relief—at last, there was a direction.

Cui Qishan now said: “If we trace Yaozi through Fat Head Seven, and Yaozi’s already been silenced, won’t all the leads vanish?”

Now not just Tao Lu, but Liu Jinghui too glared angrily at Cui Qishan.

Cui Qishan looked slightly embarrassed and muttered: “I just thought—Wang Futing fled for over a year and came back unharmed. If there really was a conspiracy, would the mastermind just wait for Wang Futing to return? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just kill Yaozi outright?”