Chapter 100: Following the Clues

Boom!

A door was violently kicked open. Armed SWAT officers stormed into the living room and then into the bedroom. Five minutes later, Xiao Yu entered the home of suspect Yang Zhichao.

His sharp gaze fell on the somewhat messy bed in the bedroom, noticing the disheveled sheets.

With the keen sense of a  Monarch Butterfly’s nose, Xiao Yu deduced that the suspect had slept in this bed three or four days ago. And there was another person—a woman. 

When he caught the scent of that woman, Xiao Yu’s expression suddenly changed.

Yu Hongmei!

Who was she?

She was the best friend of Ma Hexuan’s girlfriend, Shen Qi. She was the same woman who had been tortured, brutally murdered, and dumped in the wilderness two days ago.

Xiao Yu’s mind raced as one clue after another surfaced.

Shortly after Ma Hexuan was imprisoned, his girlfriend Shen Qi was threatened by Yu Hongmei, who took a portable hard drive containing some software.

A few days later, suspect Yang Zhichao was imprisoned and sought out Ma Hexuan.

Subsequently, Lu Jia approached Ma Hexuan, leading to the prison break. After the escape, Yu Hongmei was brutally murdered.

It turned out that Yu Hongmei not only knew suspect Yang Zhichao but was close enough to sleep with him.

Furthermore…

Xiao Yu’s expression kept changing. 

The scent in Yang Zhichao’s room was very familiar. He had smelled it at the scene where Yu Hongmei was murdered.

Was suspect Yang Zhichao present when Yu Hongmei was killed?

Watching a woman he had slept with die in front of him?

Or perhaps…

A cold, bone-chilling gleam flashed in Xiao Yu’s eyes. He quickly calmed down, his thoughts clear and logical. He began to reason again.

Was everyone’s objective the portable hard drive?

If they had obtained it, why did they still need to find Ma Hexuan?

Could it be a password?

The portable hard drive was encrypted, and they couldn’t access it? In desperation, suspect Yang Zhichao entered the detention center to get close to Ma Hexuan?

The detention center surveillance showed that they went to the restroom twice. The first time Ma Hexuan came out, he was very angry. The second time he came out, he was terrified.

Threats? Did they want to get the hard drive’s password from Ma Hexuan? 

Ma Hexuan didn’t reveal it, so Yang Zhichao approached Lu Jia?

How did Yang Zhichao persuade Lu Jia to help him?

Bribery? Threats?

Then Lu Jia got close to Ma Hexuan.

Why break out of prison?

Three months wasn’t a long sentence. Couldn’t they wait for Ma Hexuan to be released?

Xiao Yu squinted his eyes.

What happened in between that forced them to plan this murderous escape? Couldn’t they wait just three months?

However, the time Yang Zhichao left his house coincided with the prison break.

Could he run?

There was no surveillance outside the detention center, no surveillance in the mountainous area. But his residence was in the city, which was full of surveillance cameras.

Wherever Yang Zhichao had been, there would be some trace of him.

‘As long as we follow the trail, how can you escape?’

***

City Surveillance Monitoring Hall.

It wasn’t as Xiao Yu imagined, with countless people monitoring a vast array of surveillance screens. There were only five or six technicians maintaining the entire city’s surveillance system.

Now, in this era of technological and intelligent advancements, there was no need for a large workforce to watch the monitors. The intelligent system, programmed to specific tasks, did its job well.

For example, if a vehicle violates traffic regulations on the road, the intelligent surveillance could automatically capture it. However, intelligence was not infallible and could easily make mistakes.

For instance, if a driver had bird droppings on their windshield, the intelligent surveillance might mistakenly capture this and think the driver was smoking while driving, leading to points being deducted.

Or, if a bird flew in front of a car and blocked the license plate while the intelligent surveillance was checking for violations, it might mistakenly think the car was unregistered because the plate was obscured.

Therefore, some technicians were still needed for maintenance. 

For instance, to find a specific person, the police needed to provide an image, which was then input into the intelligent surveillance system. The system could then conduct a comprehensive citywide scan based on the suspect’s last known location and appearance.

Even so, it was impossible to achieve completely accurate searches, and there could be significant errors.

As the technicians used the surveillance system to search for the suspect Yang Zhichao, Xiao Yu’s eyes were also glued to the monitors.

Three days ago, at 9:23 AM, the suspect Yang Zhichao and the victim Yu Hongmei walked out of the house as intimately as a couple. Strangely, despite owning a car, Yang Zhichao didn’t drive. Instead, the two of them took a bus.

At 9:46 AM, Yang Zhichao and Yu Hongmei were seen entering a mall. Surveillance footage from the mall showed them shopping. 

At 11:21 AM, they left the mall and ate at a nearby fast food restaurant. 

At 12:31 PM, they returned to the mall for more shopping. 

At 2:15 PM, they took an internal mall elevator down to the underground parking lot.

Xiao Yu’s mouth curled up slightly.

They left without driving but ended up in the mall’s underground parking lot?

Had they already prepared a car there? Or was there a car waiting for them in the parking lot?

Footage from the mall’s underground parking lot was retrieved.

At 2:17 PM, after finishing their shopping, Yang Zhichao and Yu Hongmei were seen walking in the parking lot until they got into a cargo truck and drove out of the underground parking lot.

Xiao Yu, “???”

He was a bit confused.

Why a cargo truck? That didn’t make any sense.

Imagine the scene of two fashionably dressed people, after shopping and buying a bunch of things, getting into a cargo truck. Then, they left in a large cargo truck.

Does this scene make sense?

Traffic surveillance footage was retrieved, showing the route taken by the cargo truck.

They left the city.

Xiao Yu was stunned.

That couldn’t be right.

The prison break happened later that night. According to the autopsy of the deceased Yu Hongmei, the time of death was around midnight. This meant that Yang Zhichao and Yu Hongmei had returned to Bincheng.

How did they come back?

There were no records of the cargo truck returning to the city. Could someone have picked them up outside the city?

Was the cargo truck just a diversion?

The police quickly found the cargo truck. It was parked in a remote area 30 kilometers outside Bincheng.

When Xiao Yu arrived at the scene and saw the open truck door and a large iron plate, he smirked.

A car hidden inside the cargo truck like in “Mission Impossible”?

So, they drove another car back to the city? Was this car the one that picked up the two escaped convicts?

The police analyzed the tire tracks left by the vehicle.

The suspects abandoned the cargo truck and drove an off-road vehicle back to the city. Traffic surveillance records showed the off-road vehicles returning to the city during that time period and the drivers of those vehicles. But there was no sign of Yang Zhichao and Yu Hongmei.

Did they switch drivers?

Xiao Yu sneered and issued an order.

“Check all off-road vehicles that returned to the city during that time period and their travel records.”