Chapter 257: For Some Other Reason?
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The sun was blazing like a ball of fire and it burned one’s heart. There were bean-sized beads of sweat on Zhao Yu’s forehead, and he seemed a little impatient. He drank a whole bottle of water, but he still felt thirsty. He was in one of the alleys in the old city with Lan Bo to check on the car that the robbers had abandoned.
Though there were single-story houses in both the old city area and the General Temple area, this place was close to the city center, and most were Qinshan’s first residents. Many developers had laid eyes on this piece of land, but due to multiple reasons, they failed to demolish the buildings. In the long term, it affected the image of the city. So this place has been a headache for the government.
The place where the robbers had left the car was somewhere open yet remote. There was a public toilet right next to it. The toilet had an overwhelming stench and it was full of flies.
The car was an old Nissan. It seemed pretty worn. The car itself was not very spacious. To fit five robbers in there would be fairly tight. According to the police investigation, the car was stolen and was reported missing two nights before. Obviously, the car was stolen to commit the crime.
The Forensic Department found many fingerprints in the car, but it was hard to confirm that they were left by the robbers. On the surveillance video, all five of the robbers were wearing gloves. So the possibility of leaving a fingerprint was not high. Besides, the robbers had left their camouflage uniforms and masks in the car. Colleagues from forensic department were delighted to see the masks as they might be able to find skin and DNA on it.
When they opened the car trunk, they saw the weapons that the robbers had used were all there. But what was surprising was the guns were all fake! They couldn’t even be considered BB guns!
Tsk tsk… The police detectives were amazed and admired the robbers’ courage in using fake guns to con the people in the bank.
Zhao Yu did not know why he felt agitated looking at all this. He was not sure whether he was too tired or if there was another reason making him unable to focus and think. He felt that the robbery case was unusual, and that there were many unexplainable facets. For instance, if he was the robber, running further after committing the crime would make more sense. Why would they come here? This place was almost next to the bank that they had robbed. They would not even need one minute to get away if they drove.
What were those people thinking? Was there somewhere that they could hide? Or were they like Li Dan from the Lost Hand Case, and they actually lived here? Maybe robbers weren’t far away?
"No way, no way, it’s impossible!" Zhao Yu and Lan Bo were sharing their thoughts, but Lan Bo quickly denied his line of thinking. "Bro, you didn’t know, but before we came here, the police brought the police dogs to track them down! But I heard the smell was gone, so the police dog stopped at busy areas! In other words, the robbers ran away separately, and are definitely not here!"
"Oh, I see…" Zhao Yu thought.
"These clothes," Lan Bo pointed at the clothes in the car and said, "the robbers wore these when they were in the bank. Now that they left them here, it means they changed into other clothes.
"Yu, look around. There are no surveillance cameras. They changed here and became different people. If they changed into normal clothes and walked out of here, we wouldn’t even recognize them on the surveillance videos!"
"Oh…m*therfucker!" Zhao Yu spat. "It seems that these b*stards ran through this quite a few times. They were definitely well prepared!"
"But," Lan Bo continued, "if we were to find the surveillance video at every intersection and look into them, I think we can find them! Firstly, it was lunch hour, so there would be many people that left the old city area. There should be results if we interrogate people one-by-one. Secondly, no matter how they disguised themselves, after taking so many things, they must have had a backpack. So, we should be able to find out…"
Although Zhao Yu nodded repeatedly, he felt something was missing. "Is it because…my two-hundred thousand was there?" he wondered. The safety deposit boxes in the bank contained personal items. As of now, no one knew what the robbers had taken.
"If they weren’t even tempted by the two-hundred thousand dollar old notes, what would they take? What if they didn’t rob anything, but only made the place messy? Maybe they robbed the bank not for money, but for some other reason?" Zhao Yu thought to himself.
Suddenly, Zhao Yu recalled that he had gotten a "Kun-Gen" hexagram. It seemed that his money was safe, meaning the "Gen" hexagram caused no trouble. But what about "Kun" hexagram? Was it referring to the bank robbery? Or was it referring to the vacuum sealed corpse in the safety deposit box?
…
The occurrence of such a big robbery shocked all whole of Qinshan and attracted a lot of attention. Qinshan had always been safe and peaceful, hardly any serious crimes like a bank robbery ever occured. The leaders gave top priority to this case. They increased the security level of the city and put up checkpoints at each intersection to interrogate suspicious people. Regardless of any measures taken by the authorities of the surrounding area, the main task of solving the case fell upon Rongyang Branch.
The whole afternoon, the policemen from Rongyang Branch were completely occupied, and everyone was running all over to investigate. They were pushed to their limit and looked stress out.
Until it was dark outside, the detectives worked on the investigation before returning to Rongyang Branch. They had no time to rest and immediately held an emergency meeting to analyse the case.
As the bureau chief, Tang Zhaolong was shocked and did not know how to deal with the situation! Firstly, he had been transferred from a provincial branch and had never seen such big case before, so he was panicking and running around like a headless chicken. Secondly, he had experienced some paranormal activity the day before in the office, which still bothered him. When had he ever come across something so terrifying? Under watchful eyes, there was something that threw a cup at him and even slapped his head. That feeling was scary!
Luckily, he got assistance from Bureau Chief Luan, who was experienced. Bureau Chief Luan brought him to see the higher-ups and the stockholders of the bank. She dealt with the matter calmly and saved Tang Zhaolong’s *ss. Because of that, Bureau Chief Luan was the one delegating tasks during the case analysis meeting while Tang Zhaolong nodded repeatedly and only wrapped up the meeting with a few words of encouragement. After the leaders left, the analysis meeting kicked off properly.
The meeting was headed by Team Lead Miao Ying. This marked the first time Miao Ying was in charge of a case in Rongyang Branch, but she had been well trained for this position for years. She seemed pretty confident and comfortable. Under her lead, detectives started to add more information to the whiteboard that they usually used for case analysis.
It was about six hours after the crime. Although there was no news regarding the suspect, there was more information coming in. First off, regarding the bank, they came up with a list of suspects. These people were familiar with internal management and seemed pretty suspicious. But there was no proof for anybody on the list. Further investigation was needed.
Besides, the policemen who had searched around the old city did not find any suspicious people, but they brought some of the surveillance videos back for review. At the same time, some of the police detectives hypothesized about the robbers’ possible movements according to the surveillance video. In the end, forensic department made an announcement as well. Through DNA analysis, they found the identity of the vacuum sealed corpse!