Animal Detective

Chapter 146: A Drug-Related Case

The young man kept yawning as he washed the car.

And this was in the morning.

’Either he’d stayed up all night, or his addiction was kicking in.’

"Can you hurry it up? We have places to be. And how come you’re the only one working?" Shen Xin complained.

The young man’s tone wasn’t aggressive. He told Shen Xin not to worry and explained that his boss was out, so he was the only one there.

When the car was clean, Shen Xin noticed the payment QR code on the counter. He scanned it with his phone and paid the 30 yuan.

The payment went to a personal account under the name Zhu Tianshun.

"Thanks, boss." The young man gave a slight nod of thanks and then guided the car as it backed out.

They drove out and pulled over to the side of the road, where Zhou Zhongyi and the others quickly got in.

Sun Zhao cut straight to the chase and called Jiang Wengang.

"Drugs?" Zhou Zhongyi was startled.

Shen Xin nodded.

Before long, Jiang Wengang and two others arrived.

He got into Shen Xin’s car, and his eyes lit up the moment he saw Dou Dou.

"My darling Dou Dou."

He scooped Dou Dou up in a hug.

Dou Dou happily licked his face in return.

Jiang Wengang often bribed Dou Dou with tasty treats.

"Lao Sun, was this Dou Dou’s find?" Jiang Wengang asked. Before Sun Zhao could answer, he was already gushing about how amazing Dou Dou was.

"It wasn’t."

Sun Zhao shook his head, pointed to the car wash across the street, and asked if he knew the place.

The narcotics squad doesn’t always go for a clean sweep.

The "Little Kalamis," their only purpose is to fill quotas.

The narcotics squad would rather monitor drug users, using the small fish to catch the big ones, in order to dismantle the entire trafficking network.

That’s why there are some dens they might know about but won’t rush to bust.

This was why Sun Zhao had contacted Jiang Wengang right away—he didn’t want to interfere with one of the narcotics squad’s operations.

"Zhi Su?"

Jiang Wengang shook his head slightly. "Let me ask around," he said, pulling out his phone.

Drug enforcement is a massive effort. The narcotics squads at every precinct have quotas, so they’re making arrests everywhere.

They even make cross-jurisdictional arrests, since dealers are always on the move.

So it was possible that colleagues from another district were already staking this place out.

After asking around, he came up empty.

"Could he just be a small fry? Do you have a picture? Let me see."

It was possible the young man was just a user and the car wash itself was clean.

Sun Zhao handed over his phone. He’d managed to snap a picture earlier.

Jiang Wengang studied the photo carefully. He likely forwarded it to his contacts in other district squads before shaking his head. "Never seen him."

They were always making arrests, nonstop, but they could never catch them all.

The data spoke for itself: last year, there were a total of 140,000 drug-related cases nationwide. Over 6,000 manufacturing and trafficking rings were busted, 170,000 suspects were arrested, and more than 90 tons of narcotics were seized.

And those were just the trafficking cases; that didn’t even include the addicts who were only users.

So while it might seem like it wasn’t happening around you and it wasn’t on the news, the reality was shocking.

After all, the profits were just too high.

"So what’s your play?" Jiang Wengang tossed the question back. "If you decide to make a move, we’ll happily take a piece of the credit. If not, that’s fine by us too."

Sun Zhao folded his arms and thought for a moment. "The way the body part was disposed of is unusual," he said. "Do you think this could be a case of crooks turning on each other?"

Meaning, it involved a drug deal that went south, and someone’s ear was cut off as a warning.

"That’s a possibility," Jiang Wengang said. "But like you said, the way the ear was disposed of seems a bit too simple and careless."

After a pause, Jiang Wengang suggested, "How about we run some surveillance first?"

Sun Zhao considered it for a moment, then nodded.

First, they’d conduct surveillance from the periphery, get a feel for the situation, and keep an eye on things before deciding on a course of action.

First, they ran a check on the car wash’s owner, Zhu Tianshun.

He wasn’t from the local province; he was from Changbei City in Pingzhou Province, 41 years old.

His household registration showed he was married but now divorced.

He owned a property in the first phase of the Spring Tide Home development.

As for the young man, there was no social security information on file for him, meaning it likely wasn’t being paid.

However, a check of Zhu Tianshun’s bank records showed a couple of things.

First, there were no unusual transactions. Second, on the 20th of every month, he made fixed transfers to two separate accounts.

Both were for 2,200.

’That seems a little low for a salary.’

’A normal car wash employee should make at least three or four thousand, plus commission.’

The information for the two accounts showed one belonged to Tao Yufei—the household registration confirmed he was the young man from the car wash.

The local precinct had no record of him being arrested for drug use.

He was a local, only 20 years old. He had dropped out of middle school, his parents were divorced, and his home address was in Yanguo Lane, just east of the Spring Tide Home development.

The other recipient was Huang Jiaming, also young at just 21, from the neighboring area of Yanling.

His registration showed his parents were divorced, his father had passed away from an illness, and he lived at home with only his grandfather.

Meanwhile, they also investigated the surrounding surveillance footage.

But the nearby public cameras weren’t aimed in the direction of the car wash, and the ones further away were too blurry to make anything out.

None of the cameras from nearby shops were pointed that way either.

He must have thrown the container away after the garbage cans were emptied for the night. By then, it was already dark. A distant camera did indeed capture footage of Tao Yufei carrying something and throwing it in the trash.

It was a white bag, but the footage wasn’t clear enough.

Fearing a possible dismemberment, Sun Zhao also had his team take samples from the nearby sewers for investigation.

’It’s possible the murder happened at the car wash, and the body was dismembered and flushed down the drain into the sewer system.’

Completely dismembering a body is no easy task.

But analyzing the sewer samples would take time. It wasn’t as simple as spraying some luminol and instantly finding blood in the wastewater.

This was the city sewer system; someone could have washed an injury, a woman could be on her period—the wastewater was bound to be mixed with human blood.

What they could do was get the victim’s DNA and then analyze, compare, and trace it back to the source.

And right now, they didn’t even know who the victim was.

Around noon, Tao Yufei went to a distant Sha County eatery for lunch.

The owner, Zhu Tianshun, was still nowhere to be seen.

As the team huddled in their car eating takeout, Li Jiahui was enthusiastically discussing K9 training techniques with Shen Xin.

Shen Xin gave noncommittal replies, his mind preoccupied with the preliminary findings of the investigation.

’The employee’s background check... Zhao Tianxing also visited the local clinics and hospitals, but found no cases of anyone being treated for an ear injury.’

’There are three people connected to the shop,’ he thought. ’Tao Yufei is fine. So if someone is injured or dead, it has to be either Zhu Tianshun or Huang Jiaming.’

Shen Xin held up a hand, cutting Li Jiahui off. He turned to Sun Zhao. "Captain Sun, since Dou Dou was able to track the scent to the car wash, maybe we can try to have her keep tracking from there."

"Look, let’s assume the worst-case scenario: someone was murdered. The body would have to be disposed of. The whole ear-in-a-container thing is just too bizarre, so let’s ignore it for a moment."

"Let’s think about how a body is normally disposed of. One way is dismemberment, using the car wash’s drainage system to flush the pieces into the sewer. But that would make a lot of noise and take a ton of effort."

"The other way is to simply transport the body out and dump it somewhere far away, or bury it."

"And since there haven’t been any reports of a body being found, doesn’t that make burial the more likely scenario?"

"Let’s assume this is the primary crime scene and use Dou Dou to keep tracking from here."

The roadside environment was complex, full of dust and car exhaust, but Dou Dou had a field-proven track record of tracking a man for 30 kilometers. Shen Xin felt it was worth a shot.

Sun Zhao put down his food container and exchanged a look with Chen Chao, who had just arrived.

"We’re just waiting around anyway. Might as well give it a shot, right?" Chen Chao said.

All it meant was letting Dou Dou have another go. Whether it worked or not was another question.

Sun Zhao nodded.

Without another word, Shen Xin immediately led Dou Dou over and gave her careful instructions.

He told her to find the owner of the ear, explaining that the person wasn’t in the car wash and that she needed to keep searching to see what she could find.

Dou Dou seemed to understand and immediately ran toward the car wash.

Chen Chao watched from a distance, unable to resist saying to Sun Zhao, "See? I told you it’s handy having a K9."

Just tracking the scent to the car wash so quickly saved them a ton of time.

Sun Zhao smiled and nodded, feeling even more reluctant to give Dou Dou to Jiang Wengang.

Just as they were watching, Dou Dou seemed to pick up on something.

She began pacing back and forth between the trash can and the car wash, sniffing here and there.

After circling several times, she must have found something, as she took off heading east along Chunhua Second Road.

Shen Xin’s eyes lit up, and he quickly followed.