Animal Detective

Chapter 127: Archives

Ji Port Gao Lin Reception Station.

In all of Ji Port, there were two reception stations, also known as city shelters.

But the one in the city center only began operating at the end of 2013.

Before that, anyone in Ji Port in need of shelter was sent to Gao Lin on the outskirts of the city.

"These are all the records for sheltered individuals from 2010 to 2014. After ’14, we switched to electronic files," said the station director, Liu Liming, pointing to several high-density shelves in front of them.

A good six shelves, stuffed full of files.

He seemed to know it was too many files and a huge amount of work, so he added an explanation, "It’s mainly because we’re short-staffed. Otherwise, we would have already digitized all these old records."

"It’s no problem. We’ll take our time," Shen Xin said with a smile.

He said it was no problem, but once Liu Liming left, Shen Xin couldn’t help but sigh.

He casually pulled out a folder. It was jam-packed with intake forms for sheltered individuals, along with subsequent records: where they were found, who brought them in, their physical condition, and finally, how their case was resolved.

A single folder could contain dozens of such files.

And a single cabinet could hold several hundred of those folders, and there were six shelves.

Shen Xin did a rough calculation. They would probably need to sift through the information of twenty to thirty thousand people.

This was mainly because Gao Lin was on the border of Ji Port and Nanjiang, and sometimes Nanjiang would send people needing shelter over as well.

Doing it all by hand, one file at a time, would be an absolutely monumental task.

After returning from Wenyuan, the branch office held another case discussion meeting regarding the Xiao Hong case.

After some discussion, everyone basically agreed with Shen Xin’s theory.

Even before the meeting, Chen Chao had come to the same analytical conclusion.

If it had been a robber disguised as a beggar trying to flag him down, the probability of Xiao Hong stopping was very low.

Once they had established a direction, it was back to the old methods: canvassing and investigation.

Trying to find a homeless man after six years was no easy task.

Sun Zhao split the team into two groups.

One group would canvass the areas near Dazhang Village, where people used to congregate, looking for any homeless men with similar physical characteristics.

The other group would search the archives of the three city shelters that had been open in 2011.

The theory was that the man might have been taken into a shelter at some point.

They pushed the timeline back a year, starting their search from 2010.

First, they would check four years of records. If they didn’t find anything, they’d keep checking all the way to the present day.

And so, Shen Xin’s group had come to Gao Lin.

"Don’t worry. The first step is always the hardest. The case has already had a huge breakthrough. Now that we have a target and a direction, things are already much easier," Ding Yuwei said, patting Shen Xin’s shoulder with optimistic encouragement.

Before, they had no direction at all, just fumbling around in the dark. Now, at least they knew the general direction and had a place to search.

There were a lot of files, but it was a finite number. Sooner or later, they’d get through them all.

They’d already waited six years, so what was a little more time?

Shen Xin gave a wry smile. "Actually, I was going to say we should ask for backup. With just the two of us, I have no idea how long this will take."

But it couldn’t be helped. The Criminal Investigation Division only had so many people, and they couldn’t throw everyone at a single cold case. There were plenty of other cases to work on.

Ding Yuwei pulled Shen Xin along, smiling. "Come on. Let’s clear a space first and then do a preliminary sort."

"We’ll sort by year and month, so we don’t mess up their archives."

"Then we’ll remove the females, then the young and the elderly. There won’t be that many left, really."

The suspect’s age had also been analyzed and speculated on during the case discussion.

Zhang Nanhai’s composite sketch gave no clear indication of age, but his personal guess was that the suspect was likely between thirty and forty years old.

This was based on the clean efficiency of the attack, and the fact that after killing Xiao Hong, the suspect had enough strength to drag him into the driver’s cabin.

Xiao Hong weighed around 155 pounds, and a dead body is dead weight.

To haul Xiao Hong into the relatively high cabin of a truck would require a good deal of strength.

Therefore, the assumption that he was a young or middle-aged adult was sound.

But to be safe, they expanded the range by ten years on both ends, screening for people between the ages of 20 and 50.

So, just as Ding Yuwei had said, they could filter out quite a few people based on age and gender.

"Let’s get to it, then."

Shen Xin sighed and moved a table with Ding Yuwei to clear an open space.

Then they started with the year 2010.

First, they arranged the files by month, then they filtered out all the records that didn’t meet the basic criteria.

In all of 2010, the Gao Lin Reception Station had taken in 4,184 people.

They filtered out 1,742 files for females.

files for males under the age of 20.

files for middle-aged and elderly men over the age of 50.

That left a total of 810 files for individuals whose ages met the basic criteria.

"See? It’s only a little over eight hundred files. If we spend one minute on each, and we work for, say, five hours a day after accounting for trivial tasks like arranging files, we could be done in two days," Ding Yuwei said.

Shen Xin gave her a thumbs-up.

’Your math is just great,’ he thought.

The problem was, this was only for the year 2010.

"Let’s go," Shen Xin said, rolling his shoulders before sitting down to look at the files.

Every person taken in was photographed for the record, but one complication was that they were usually bathed before their picture was taken.

They might even be given a shave and a haircut.

These were all confounding factors.

So Shen Xin had to cover the lower half of each face in the photos to see if it resembled the composite sketch.

This, in turn, increased their workload.

Moreover, homeless people were highly transient. You couldn’t know when, or even if, the person was taken into a shelter, so the Li Yang Highway Section couldn’t be used as a screening criterion.

They could only go through the files one by one, checking the intake records and the registered personal belongings for any small knives, like folding knives or switchblades.

The red snakeskin bag could also be used as a screening criterion.

This was because the intake records would include a description of the individual’s condition.

Ding Yuwei had said they could get through one file a minute, but that was completely impossible.

Getting through one file in three to five minutes was already quite fast.

They had arrived at ten-thirty in the morning, had lunch at the reception station, and then immediately got back to work without a break.

They worked until just past six o’clock.

Excluding the time spent on trivial tasks like moving files, they had probably only spent three or four hours actually reviewing the documents.

Between the two of them, they had only managed to get through a little over 130 files.

If they came earlier tomorrow and worked a bit longer, they should be able to get through almost two hundred.

Even so, it would still take several days.

And more importantly, you could never be sure if you’d missed something.

Because the screening criteria weren’t numerous or detailed.

And if they missed it, all their effort would be for nothing.

Thinking about all this was enough to make one feel a sense of despair.

"It would be great if the canvassing team could find a useful lead," Shen Xin said, stretching his back as they walked out of the reception station.

Ding Yuwei rolled her neck and said, "They might not even be making as much progress as us. Their job is the real needle in a haystack."

Imagine going to Dazhang Village and asking people if they remember seeing a similar-looking homeless man nearby six years ago.

Ding Yuwei was sure that most people, not wanting to get involved, would definitely just say, "I haven’t seen anyone."

Even if someone was kind enough to try and help them remember and identify the man, all the homeless people on the street dressed more or less the same, and six years had passed. Who could remember clearly?

So the canvassing over there was the same thing: a needle in a haystack.

"Don’t say it. You’re giving me a headache," Shen Xin said, quickly waving his hand.

Ding Yuwei smiled sweetly. "Have a little faith. We posted a reward, someone happened to be driving by and saw something—the odds of that were so small, yet we still found him. Our luck is already pretty good. So maybe we really can crack this case."

"I hope you’re right," Shen Xin said with a traditional hand gesture, then motioned for Ding Yuwei to get in the car.

In the days that followed, it took the two of them a full eleven days to finish going through all four years of archives.

They found nothing.

It wasn’t just them; the canvassing team on the other side hadn’t found anything either.

Shen Xin went to Sun Zhao and once again proposed the idea of posting a reward on the branch office’s video account.

If they could find Song Shifeng that way, maybe they could find this homeless man too.

The power of the people was immense, after all.

"I’ve been considering that option as well." Sun Zhao tilted his head back in thought, then said, "How about this: let’s wait until we’ve finished screening the archives from all the reception stations. If we still have nothing, then we’ll post the reward."

The archives at the other two reception stations still hadn’t been checked.

And with the precedent of finding Song Shifeng, Sun Zhao had discovered that these online rewards were quite useful.

"Yes, Captain Sun."

Shen Xin nodded and left the office.

As he passed by Zhao Tianxing, he saw that he was writing up a case file.

There was a portrait photo on the open file.

Shen Xin’s heart suddenly skipped a beat.

’Isn’t that... what’s-his-name!’

He furrowed his brow, thinking hard, and then it suddenly came to him.

Wang Lei!

The streamer who had posted that spoof video of him and ended up getting dealt with.

’Did he get into some kind of trouble?’