Animal Detective

Chapter 251 - 230: Chumming, Patience

Parking a car in the village with several people hiding secretively inside was just too conspicuous.

"The municipal bureau will cover the funding. We need to move fast. Contact them tonight so they can come and install them tomorrow."

Liu Jie was pulling out all the stops to crack this case.

Lai Yong nodded, jotted it down, and immediately started making calls to arrange everything.

It was now evening, and villagers were starting to mill about. Liu Jie didn’t linger, gesturing for them to drive away.

Until the surveillance cameras were in place, he arranged for his people to conduct surveillance in relay shifts, doing their best not to attract the villagers’ attention.

Outside the village, while the group was eating, Ding Yuwei gently nudged Shen Xin and whispered, "Why don’t we let Da Mei give it a try? Even if the video we collect can’t be used as evidence, it could at least help us confirm our suspicions about Zhou Hui and give us a direction for the investigation."

Shen Xin glanced at Liu Jie.

This idea had already occurred to Shen Xin.

First, the method itself was likely feasible.

If Da Mei wore a camera and simply settled down in Zhou Hui’s yard, he probably wouldn’t even notice.

But this raised some problems, namely whether the procedure was legal.

Although the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine didn’t apply domestically, there were still regulations against illegally obtained evidence.

The regulations were especially strict when it came to technical surveillance methods.

For example.

If a reporter managed to sneak into an illegal factory, secretly film their unlawful operations, and then call the police.

In practice, the secretly filmed video could not be used as direct evidence. A subsequent, legal investigation would be required to complete the chain of evidence, and only then could a conviction be made based on that chain.

For another example.

In a murder case, after the case is filed and a suspect is identified, can remote listening devices be used?

Such devices really existed; Shen Xin had seen them in the tech department.

If you then bugged the suspect’s residence and, in his daily conversation, he admitted to the murder, could those words be used as evidence?

That would also depend on the situation.

If it was a drug case, or a serious case like organized crime, it could be used as evidence after going through the proper, legal, and compliant approval process.

But if it was just an ordinary homicide, like manslaughter or a crime of passion, the same rules might not apply.

This is because it requires the precondition that conventional investigation methods have proven useless, and there are regulations against intruding on private premises.

And most importantly, it all came down to approval.

The leadership had to decide whether to authorize technical surveillance.

As for cases where Da Mei was deployed, she was used in a drug case, and also in the Zhang Qin case, which involved a hostage’s safety.

She was also used in Li Yihao’s case before, which involved a kidnapped child.

In other, ordinary cases, when the Songling Branch was conducting investigations, Sun Zhao didn’t just use Da Mei for help at the drop of a hat.

Of course, using a cat for surveillance was unprecedented, so its legality was difficult to define.

Shen Xin was sure that Liu Jie knew about Da Mei.

But he hadn’t brought it up, which meant he had reservations and didn’t want to use her.

Seeing him install cameras only in public areas, it was clear he wanted to build an ironclad case and avoid any procedural issues.

Ding Yuwei nodded and said no more.

That night, Shen Xin and Ding Yuwei returned to town to rest as usual.

The Songling team was responsible for the specific investigation work, so there was no need for the two of them to work overtime to help.

The next day, they regrouped with Liu Jie and the others.

There had been no activity from Zhou Hui overnight.

Early this morning, he had driven away from his house and returned to his home in town.

Observing his behavior, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

For the next two days, he did not return to Wuba Village.

As for some of the details Mao Yanru had mentioned, Ding Junbao had also completed his investigation.

Back then, Li Jing had indeed brought people to trash Mao Yanru’s shop and threatened her to stop seeing Zhou Hui.

The matter of Zhou Hui’s gambling back then was also cleared up. He had indeed lost a large sum of money, over 80,000.

It was just one month before the incident occurred.

He had borrowed it from a loan shark, and with the interest compounding, it snowballed to nearly 100,000 before Zhou Hui finally paid it off.

And he only paid it back after the incident had already occurred.

They also found out exactly where the money came from.

Because it was a large sum, the records were kept for longer. They discovered that Zhou Hui’s father-in-law had withdrawn 100,000 from the bank after the incident.

So, it was obvious that Li Jing’s family had helped him pay it back.

Peripheral investigations also confirmed this.

After paying off this debt, Zhou Hui never went to play cards or gamble again.

Some said that Li Jing kept him on a very tight leash.

So, it was reasonable to speculate that he had voluntarily confessed the gambling debt to Li Jing and asked for her help.

Therefore, the previously theorized motive held up.

While being hounded by debt collectors and counting on Li Jing to help him pay it back, he wouldn’t have dared to let her find out he was having an affair.

As for Huang Qingmei, the local police station also paid her a visit to investigate.

Zhao Peizhu was the one who went.

He said he could sense that Huang Qingmei was very nervous, but she adamantly insisted she knew nothing.

It seemed there was no hope of her turning on her own family for the sake of justice.

The surveillance cameras were installed, and they kept Zhou Hui and Li Jing under covert surveillance.

But Zhou Hui made no unusual moves.

Ding Yuwei finished canvassing the village, but she too came up with nothing.

At this point, the case had once again hit a dead end.

Zhou Hui was the suspect, but they just couldn’t find the evidence to pin it on him.

Times like these were always the most agonizing and stressful.

Liu Jie had mobilized so many people for surveillance and peripheral investigations.

But there were no results.

And you never know if persisting will yield any results.

So, do you keep going?

With so many people, the costs were mounting, and it wasn’t as if this was their only case.

In just a few days, a slew of new cases had already piled up at the Songling Branch.