Animal Detective

Chapter 148: Poor Quality

Du Xin Kai arrived with his men.

He stopped at the doorway and took a deep breath, then looked at Sun Zhao beside him.

"This is a big one."

He felt like crying, but no tears would come.

Sun Zhao patted his shoulder and gave him a sympathetic look.

Meanwhile, Ding Yuwei was coordinating with Zhang Jian to arrest Tao Yufei directly.

Shen Xin noticed Li Jiahui.

She was holding Dou Dou’s leash, standing just outside the door. Her face was a little pale, and her body was trembling uncontrollably.

Shen Xin went to the car to get a bottle of water and handed it to her.

"Are you okay?"

Li Jiahui said thanks, then shook her head.

"Is it really bad in there?" she asked, hesitating for a moment but unable to contain her curiosity.

Shen Xin asked, "Aren’t you studying medicine?"

Li Jiahui gave a wry smile. "I’m studying medicine, but veterinary medicine. The most we do is dissect animals. It’s not the same as dealing with people at all."

Shen Xin nodded and took Dou Dou’s leash. "Why don’t you head back for now? We don’t know how long this is going to take."

That was exactly what Li Jiahui was thinking. She was about to leave, but then she turned back, took out her phone, and said, "You ran off last time before we could even talk. Let’s add each other on WeChat. We can chat more in the future."

Shen Xin took out his phone, and they added each other by scanning their QR codes.

"Do you like cycling?"

Her WeChat name was "Picking Up Dreams in the Faint Light," and her profile picture was a bicycle, what looked like a Merida road bike.

Li Jiahui was taken aback for a moment, then asked, "You like cycling too?"

Shen Xin nodded. "I used to. Haven’t had time since I started working."

Li Jiahui said she understood, adding that she was also too busy after starting her job and rarely got to go out for a ride.

"We should go for a night ride sometime when we’re free." Li Jiahui waved and left.

Just then, Chen Chao came out with Zhu Tianshun.

"He’s not saying a word," Chen Chao said.

Sun Zhao snorted. At this point, what difference did it make whether he talked or not?

"Take him back to the station."

He waved his hand dismissively.

Then he told Shen Xin to take Dou Dou and head back as well.

"Dou Dou did a great job today. You’re getting extra food when we get back," Sun Zhao said with a grin, patting Dou Dou’s head.

The case came in at ten in the morning. Four hours later, at two in the afternoon, they had the suspect in custody. It was a testament to their incredible speed.

Dou Dou’s contribution to this was significant.

Dou Dou must have understood the promise of extra food, because he let out a bark.

Shen Xin drove back to the branch station.

"Brother Xing, if you’re going to puke, give me a heads-up. If you do it in the car, we’ll both have to clean it," Shen Xin said, looking in the rearview mirror.

Zhao Tianxing kept his lips pressed tight, tense and silent.

As soon as they got back to the branch station, he bolted into the dormitory shower and told Shen Xin to grab him some clothes.

He also tossed out the clothes he was wearing.

"Throw them away for me. As far away as possible."

Shen Xin picked them up carefully and teased, "Brother Xing, you can’t just throw these out. There might be tissue residue on them. Could be used as evidence."

"Shen Xin, you bastard! You’re doing this on purpose to gross me out..."

Before Zhao Tianxing could finish his sentence from inside the shower, he started throwing up again.

Luckily, it didn’t splash on his face. If it had, Zhao Tianxing probably wouldn’t have been able to eat for half a month.

After getting rid of her jacket, Ding Yuwei also returned with Zhou Zhongyi and the others, bringing Tao Yufei with them.

"I heard it was a total mess over at your scene?" Ding Yuwei leaned in, sniffed at Shen Xin, and made a face.

She insisted on dragging Shen Xin to her office, where she rummaged for a bottle of perfume and spritzed him with it.

"You wear perfume?"

Shen Xin had never smelled perfume on Ding Yuwei before.

Ding Yuwei was speechless for a moment. "I’m a woman. A woman! Isn’t it normal for me to have perfume?"

’I wasn’t saying you weren’t a woman,’ Shen Xin thought.

In the interrogation room, Lv Youwei had arrived after hearing the news.

"Good job this time. You solved the case quickly." He started with a compliment.

Solving a case in four hours was definitely lightning fast.

Sun Zhao smiled. "It was all thanks to Dou Dou. Having a police dog is really useful."

Putting everything else aside, just at the beginning, if it hadn’t been for Dou Dou, who knows how long it would have taken to trace the ear from the garbage station.

Lv Youwei turned to find Shen Xin, clapped him on the shoulder, and instructed, "Give Dou Dou some extra food. That’s an order from me."

Shen Xin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he nodded.

Only then did Lv Youwei look into the interrogation room.

Zhu Tianshun had been cleaned up a bit, so at least he didn’t look so terrifying anymore.

He was sniffling, looking like his addiction was kicking in.

"Is he a drug user?" Lv Youwei asked with a frown.

Sun Zhao nodded.

They had found a bag of methamphetamine and related paraphernalia at Tao Yufei’s house.

The guy was clearly getting high while he worked.

"What about the car wash? And his home? Have they been searched?" Lv Youwei pressed.

It couldn’t be as simple as just one bag.

Sun Zhao said, "Old Jiang has taken a team to check."

Lv Youwei asked no more questions and looked toward the interrogation room.

Inside, Chen Chao was slamming the table, demanding to know why Zhu Tianshun had murdered Huang Jiaming.

Meanwhile, Tao Yufei hadn’t even made it to the branch station yet; he had already confessed in the police car that the victim was indeed Huang Jiaming.

"Give me a cigarette." Zhu Tianshun tilted his head and waggled his finger with a devil-may-care attitude.

Chen Chao hesitated for a moment, then went over and gave him a cigarette.

After taking a few hard drags, Zhu Tianshun leaned back and said, "You all saw it, so why are you asking me? By the way, how did you know Xiaohuang was dead? I just killed him last night."

His words made Chen Chao frown slightly. "Weren’t you the one who disposed of the body?"

"Disposed of the body?"

Zhu Tianshun looked confused.

"The ear," Chen Chao prompted. "A sanitation worker reported finding a human ear in a lunchbox in a trash can. Surveillance footage shows Tao Yufei was the one who threw it away."

"HOLY SHIT!"

Zhu Tianshun slammed the table. "So that’s why I couldn’t find that damn ear no matter how long I looked! Are you telling me Tao Yufei threw it out like trash?"

"No, wait."

Zhu Tianshun shook his head again, then tilted his head back to think. "I think it was me. After I cut off the kid’s ear, I just tossed it on the table. Did it happen to land in the lunchbox?"

"Damn it. Huang Jiaming is dead and gone, and he still managed to screw me over."

He grumbled and cursed.

Chen Chao’s expression was odd. He asked Zhu Tianshun to explain the details.

In the observation room, Shen Xin and the others had similarly strange expressions.

"So, you’re saying this guy cut off Huang Jiaming’s ear, accidentally tossed it into a lunchbox on the table, and then spent ages looking for it? It wasn’t an intentional disposal of evidence," Zhao Tianxing muttered, having finished his shower.

Shen Xin secretly shook his head.

’This is just bizarre.’

If it hadn’t been for that ear, Zhu Tianshun would have killed Huang Jiaming, dismembered the body, boiled the parts, and dumped them in the ditch out back. The fish probably would have eaten everything in a few days.

And Huang Jiaming was from Yanling, all alone in Nanjiang. If no one had reported him missing, he could have been gone for ten days or half a month before anyone noticed.

In the interrogation room, Zhu Tianshun didn’t hold back.

Caught in the act of dismembering a body, he knew he was toast. With nothing left to lose, he explained why he had killed Huang Jiaming.

"I gave him a big bag of drugs to deliver for me. But the buyer refused it, saying the quality was bad—too much starch mixed in."

"Fuck that. I gave him the best stuff I had."

"It was obvious that punk Huang Jiaming was screwing me over. I’d caught him with sticky fingers before, secretly skimming my stuff. But this time he got bold. That was a big 50-gram bag! He must have pocketed at least half of it."

"How could I let him get away with that?"

Zhu Tianshun snorted coldly and gestured for Chen Chao to give him another cigarette.

Lighting it up, he thought for a moment and continued, "After I killed the kid, I thought about it more carefully. Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t have been that stupid. But if it wasn’t him, then it must have been that bastard Tao Yufei. So if you guys hadn’t caught me, once I was done there, I was planning to kill Tao Yufei too."

"That kid’s got sticky fingers too."

He said it viciously, sending a chill down the spine of everyone present.

If they hadn’t caught him so quickly, there might have been two lives lost.