Animal Detective

Chapter 326 - 267: Off the Beaten Path

Shen Xin hadn’t expected his K-9 support team would actually be needed.

Speed was of the essence. Considering Fan Lei had also used disinfectant to interfere with the K-9s’ tracking, Geng Ke floored it in the police car and quickly brought Tiger Stripes and Dou Dou over.

With all three dogs on the case, there should be some results.

By the time they were ready to set out, dusk had already fallen.

But there was no helping it. They couldn’t just clock out and resume the chase at eight the next morning.

It was Fan Lei’s quilt again. Dou Dou and Odin sniffed it earnestly, but Tiger Stripes was completely half-hearted about it. He gave it a casual sniff, then stuck out his tongue and yawned.

’I’ll just follow them.’

Dou Dou and Odin would track the person, and Tiger Stripes would track the two of them. He definitely wouldn’t get lost.

Just as he let out a yawn, Tiger Stripes suddenly felt a murderous aura.

Without even looking up, Tiger Stripes knew Shen Xin was definitely glaring at him.

He immediately scurried over and started sniffing the quilt frantically.

’Annoying.’

"Hey!"

Shen Xin’s eyebrow twitched. ’Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. You’ve been cooped up at the K-9 base for too long; you’re asking for a lesson, aren’t you?’

Dou Dou let out a bark and looked at Shen Xin. She was ready.

Shen Xin glanced around.

The higher-ups like Zhang Hancheng naturally wouldn’t be coming along; they still had to coordinate the operation.

They had just confirmed Fan Lei was a suspect, and there was still a massive amount of investigative work to do.

Geng Ke, Zhao Tianxing, and Zhao Tong were coming.

All of them were bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young workhorses.

They were relying on the dogs, so there was no point in having too many people.

Ding Yuwei wanted to go too, but Shen Xin flatly refused.

’Climbing mountains and pushing through forests? Why get mixed up in that?’

"Let’s go."

At Shen Xin’s command, the three dogs immediately took off.

They started right from the dormitory entrance.

Fan Lei had been gone for over 30 hours, but the weather had been fairly cool for the past two days, so there was still hope.

High temperatures and strong sunlight would have destroyed the scent trail.

Odin, as usual, took the lead.

With his recent field experience, he was becoming more and more seasoned. Without any command from Shen Xin, he proactively widened his search area, seeking out the scent residue in the air that only they could detect.

The four men followed, using flashlights to see.

So much time had passed that the tracking was slow. Even though there was only one path up the mountain, Shen Xin didn’t disrupt Odin and the others’ rhythm.

At the end of the dead-end road was a small path leading up the mountain.

From here on out, it was pure mountain climbing.

Judging by Fan Lei’s tracks, he had followed this man-made path steadily upward.

The higher they went, the less distinct the path became.

Then, the small trees and brush started to get denser. Geng Ke walked in front, clearing a path with his collapsible baton.

By the time they climbed to a spot halfway up the mountain, all four men were starting to pant.

Zhao Tianxing leaned on a small tree and said, "This old guy really doesn’t take the beaten path, does he?"

Shen Xin nodded in agreement.

Fan Lei’s anti-tracking awareness was truly impressive.

Behind them, Zhao Tong said, "Hey... in this day and age, how much do you think it costs to hire a hitman?"

As for the bank, they’d found a payroll card in Fan Lei’s name.

The balance was 1,633.08 yuan.

The balance was oddly specific, and the transaction history was all daily expenses, along with transfer records with his wife, Yao Qian.

He worked as a handyman on a construction site, earning 180 yuan per shift, paid once every three months. Since the New Year, he’d only been given 800 yuan for living expenses.

Meanwhile, Yao Qian and Fan Shunxi’s bank cards also had no significant savings, and certainly no large transfers.

Zhang Hancheng and the others speculated that Fan Lei was probably paid in cash.

Right now, they were searching Fan Lei’s home, interrogating Yao Qian and Fan Shunxi, and investigating Hu Yueqin’s large cash withdrawals.

Geng Ke, still clearing the path, said, "I feel like a million wouldn’t even cut it."

You’ve got to be alive to spend the money, after all.

The cost of committing a crime these days is very high.

"A million?" Zhao Tianxing scoffed. "More like several times that. What can you even do with a million? You can’t even buy a house. To take a life for that? It’s not worth it."

Shen Xin nodded, deeply agreeing.

It was true. In this day and age, a million yuan wouldn’t last you very long.

As the four of them were chatting, Odin, up ahead, suddenly sneezed and stopped in his tracks.

Behind him, Dou Dou sneezed as well.

Tiger Stripes let out a bark and immediately ran back to them.

Shen Xin quickened his pace to see what was going on.

Odin and Dou Dou were a little agitated.

’The scent is wrong.’

Odin sneezed again.

Shen Xin shone his flashlight around but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

But the scent was wrong?

Shen Xin pointed the beam at the ground and suddenly noticed some white powder on the decaying leaves.

He must have sprinkled a lot of it; it was quite obvious.

Shen Xin pinched some of it, rubbed it between his fingers, and gave it a sniff. His nose tingled, and he sneezed too.

"Damn, it’s pepper."

Shen Xin shone his flashlight forward. In the beam, he could see a sparse trail of sprinkled powder ahead.

"It really is."

Zhao Tianxing leaned in for a sniff and said in surprise, "This old guy is something else. Last time it was 84 Disinfectant, and now he’s moved on to pepper."

Shen Xin restrained Odin and the other dogs, frowning as he looked at the desolate mountain forest.

Last time, Fan Lei had used 84 Disinfectant, a pungent smell, to mask his own scent.

He had poured out entire bottles of it back then, leaving a residue, which was how Shen Xin had smelled it.

But this was even more extreme. Sprinkling pepper as he walked not only masked his own scent but also interfered with the K-9s.

"Zhao Tong, you watch Odin and the others."

Shen Xin ordered, then bent over and followed the trail of pepper upward.

The dogs couldn’t track anymore, but the pepper had been sprinkled in handfuls, so a person could still follow the trail.

However, after about ten meters, the pepper trail vanished.

Obviously, Fan Lei wasn’t stupid enough to sprinkle pepper the entire way. He must have done it in intermittent sections.

This way, even with people and dogs searching together, it would be incredibly difficult to determine his direction.

Zhao Tianxing said angrily, "This old guy is really something else."

He really knew how to make things difficult.

Shen Xin had Zhao Tong bring Odin and the others over, and they tried to pick up the trail again, starting from the spot where the pepper ended.

Odin and the others sniffed all around, wandering for a bit, but found nothing.

Using pepper as interference wasn’t just about masking his own scent; the irritant also agitated the dogs’ nasal mucous membranes, impairing their sense of smell.

Their sense of smell was tens of thousands of times more powerful than a human’s, but it was also very sensitive.

Shen Xin tried expanding the search radius in several directions, and the other men also went to look for more traces of pepper.

They did find more traces of pepper, but it was impossible to follow them continuously.

Frustrated, Shen Xin had no choice but to use his radio to explain the situation to Zhang Hancheng.

On the other end, Zhang Hancheng sighed softly and told Shen Xin to return the way they came.

The four men headed back down the mountain.

Back at the station, Zhang Hancheng had indeed already started arranging for a large-scale review of all surveillance footage near Shitang Mountain.

Even though it was less than two days of footage, it was by no means an easy task.

Shen Xin temporarily returned to the New District Branch to help review the footage.

Yao Qian and Fan Shunxi were brought back to the branch, where Liu Baoqing led a team to interrogate them.

Shen Xin went over to take a look.

Yao Qian was weather-beaten, with long, graying hair, and looked much older than her age.

Regarding Fan Lei’s situation, she just kept repeating one thing over and over: she didn’t know.

It was the same with Fan Shunxi.

He wasn’t particularly tall, had chemically straightened hair, an earring, and was dressed in a punk style.

He’d been in and out of the station multiple times and showed no fear. His attitude was arrogant; he even slammed the table at the interrogating officers, yelling that if Fan Lei killed someone, they should go find Fan Lei. "What are you looking for me for?"

He also muttered curses about his father.

It was obvious the father and son did not have a good relationship.

When Fan Lei went to prison, it was in ’04. He was 37 at the time.

Fan Shunxi was born when Fan Lei was 27, which meant he was already a ten-year-old kid when his father went away.

He was old enough to understand what was happening.

Judging by their reactions alone, it seemed they didn’t know what Fan Lei had done.

Kong Lingzhi also discussed this point with Zhang Hancheng.

It was plausible that Fan Lei had done this secretly. After all, it was murder; it would be normal not to tell his family.

And besides his brother Fan Jun’s family, Fan Lei had no other relatives.

They had also questioned Fan Jun.

He worked in a factory and, in his own words, hadn’t contacted Fan Lei in the last six months, except for during the New Year.

As for the police looking for Fan Lei, he wanted nothing to do with it and didn’t ask any questions.

"Let’s just find the man first," Kong Lingzhi said in a low voice.

The most important thing now was still finding him.

In a single day, with surveillance cameras everywhere, could the man have grown wings and flown away?

Zhang Hancheng nodded slightly without speaking.

The information coming back from all channels was rather strange.

Take public transportation, for example.

In 2012, the whole country implemented a real-name system. Last year, they started piloting facial recognition for station entry. Even with a fake ID, you couldn’t get into a station.

This was true for trains and planes, and for long-distance buses as well.

So even if Fan Lei wanted to escape, his options were limited.

But the most critical point was that he had vanished without a trace after leaving his dormitory yesterday.

In the large conference room.

Shen Xin was glued to a computer screen, scanning through road surveillance footage at 2x speed.

Considering Fan Lei might have changed his clothes, the key was his handbag.

It was an old-fashioned, very common type of gray-blue handbag that few people probably carried anymore.

After finishing a segment of footage, Shen Xin stretched.

It was already past two in the morning.

Ding Yuwei brought over a cup of instant noodles, saying she’d added some extras.

He opened it and saw not only a sausage and a soy-braised egg but also some of the beef jerky meant for Tiger Stripes and the others.

Shen Xin said thanks, and while eating, he clicked on footage from another angle and continued watching.

After a couple of bites, Shen Xin said, "Where do you think he hid the money?"

He killed two people. That has to be at least a few million, right?

A few million in cash is heavy. You couldn’t even fit it all in one suitcase.

If Fan Lei was on the run, he’d have to take the cash with him, right?

How could he cross mountains carrying that much cash?

Unless the cash was already stashed somewhere else.

Ding Yuwei shook her head, keeping her eyes glued to the footage.

The entire New District Branch, plus officers from surrounding substations and reinforcements from other branches...

The task force had organized several dozen people just to watch the footage.

The scope covered all road surveillance cameras around Shitang Mountain.

Shitang Mountain was actually on the edge of Li Lake. It was part of a chain of several mountains running north to south, stretching seven or eight kilometers long and one or two kilometers wide—a small mountain range, really.

With so many people organized, they were still efficient.

After finishing his assigned portion, Shen Xin couldn’t fight it anymore and dozed off for a bit before Ding Yuwei nudged him awake.

He checked the time; it was already past five in the morning.

Looking around, he saw Zhang Hancheng, Liu Baoqing, and the others huddled together, tensely discussing something.

Shen Xin asked what was wrong.

Ding Yuwei said, "They’ve finished reviewing the surveillance footage. They didn’t find Fan Lei."

Shen Xin was stunned.

’That’s strange. With so many cameras, even if one area has a blind spot, the next one will have a camera. With such wide coverage, they should have definitely spotted him if he passed through.’

Ding Yuwei continued, "Right now, Zhang Zhi and the others are discussing whether to keep reviewing the footage. It’s possible Fan Lei found a blind spot and left in a taxi, which is why we didn’t see him."

He could have crossed the mountain, hailed a cab on a stretch of road with no cameras, and sat in the back seat. The cameras wouldn’t have caught him, and they’d have no idea where he went.

"Then Captain Liu also brought up another idea—that Fan Lei might be hiding on the mountain and never came down at all."

Shen Xin frowned. ’Hiding on the mountain?’

’How many days could he hide there? What would he do for food and water?’