Even though it was already September, the weather in Nanjiang was still sweltering.
The roads outside the logistics park were lined with trucks.
So drivers had probably arrived during the night and were still catching up on sleep.
However, those who hadn’t found a load yet were already up early.
The logistics park offices started opening around eight o’clock, and right after they opened, they might release information about shipnts that had piled up overnight.
This was a mini-rush hour for finding loads.
"Hello, sir. I’m a police officer. This is my badge."
Shen Xin held out his badge to a middle-aged driver who was brushing his teeth at the side of the road, using water from his truck’s tank spigot.
The man’s expression changed instantly.
For drivers like him, the thing they feared most on the road was a police officer flagging them down.
With the toothbrush still in his mouth, he mumbled indistinctly, asking what was wrong.
Shen Xin quickly said, "Sir, don’t be nervous. I just wanted to ask, how many years have you been driving a truck?"
The driver held up three fingers.
"Never mind then. Go on with what you were doing."
Shen Xin nodded and walked away.
’The case was from ’11, six years ago, so only veteran drivers who’d been on the road for at least that long were worth questioning.’
Shen Xin realized these drivers were quite afraid of the police, but he had no choice. If he didn’t show his badge, people really might not give him the ti of day.
He questioned the drivers of over twenty trucks in a row before he found a veteran who had been driving for eight years.
"Sir, back in ’11, were you driving in the Nanjiang area?"
Shen Xin continued to guide the interview.
First, he would ask if they drove near Nanjiang.
Xiao Hong had mainly driven in the Ningjiang and Pingzhou area, focusing on short- and dium-haul routes.
He most frequently ran the route from Songpu to Ningshan, the capital of Ningjiang Province. It was a coastal region with nurous factories of all sizes, so the demand for logistics was huge.
Then he would ask if they had been back on the road after the New Year holiday.
Shen Xin felt there was one fortunate aspect to Xiao Hong’s case: it had occurred on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month.
You might not rember sothing from six years ago very well.
But you might just rember sothing that happened during the New Year period six years ago, and the mory could be very clear.
Because it’s a significant ti marker.
If a driver only ca out to work after the Lantern Festival, then there was no need to ask any more questions.
The ideal interviewees were those who had started working right after the eighth day of the lunar new year.
Luckily, the middle-aged driver before him, a man with graying hair and deep forehead wrinkles, had already been back at work on the eighth day.
"I rember coming out to work on the sixth day of the New Year that year. I had a regular client who was in a hurry to ship a load. My wife even argued with about it, but what could I do? I have two sons, one in college and one in high school. The mont I open my eyes, all I see are bills."
The driver recalled for a mont. Just as Shen Xin had thought, his mory of events around that key holiday period was very clear.
"The fourteenth of the first lunar month?"
The middle-aged driver thought hard for a mont, then shook his head. "No, I would’ve been in Tongnan Changlin City that day. I rember because the next day was the Lantern Festival, right? My older son wanted to buy a laptop computer. I unloaded my cargo on the morning of the 14th, and at noon I even took a special taxi trip to the electronics mall in Changlin City to look at computers."
At this point, the driver suddenly asked, "Officer, are you asking about that driver who died on the national highway?"
Shen Xin was inwardly surprised, but he maintained a calm expression and asked if the man knew about it.
"Of course I know. As soon as I got back, I heard everyone talking about it. Said the guy got robbed and stabbed several tis. His guts were even spilling out."
’Xiao Hong died a violent death, but it wasn’t that grueso,’ Shen Xin thought.
Xiao Hong had died from three stab wounds.
The murder weapon was presud to be a small folding knife.
But the killer had been ruthless; one of the wounds was to the neck, severing his trachea. He had died from choking on his own blood.
Based on the evidence at the scene, it was presud that Xiao Hong was stabbed outside the truck, then placed back in the passenger seat by the killer, where he subsequently died from not receiving tily dical treatnt.
Logically, since the killer had stabbed Xiao Hong at close range, opened the truck door, and dragged his body, his blood-stained hands should have left so kind of trace.
Like fingerprints, for example.
Prints were, in fact, collected from the door handle.
Unfortunately, it was the texture of cotton-thread work gloves, which confird that the killer had been wearing a common pair of white gloves during the attack.
As for his guts spilling out, that was obviously just a wild rumor.
Unfortunately, the driver had only heard about the case; he couldn’t have been passing by and seen the cri in progress.
"Sir, if it’s convenient for you, could you help ask around among the other drivers you know who were on the road back then and know about this case? Please ask them to help recall if they noticed that truck."
Since he had started asking, he might as well be thorough.
The driver hesitated for a mont, then nodded.
He had a group chat with so old-tir drivers and asked about the case.
He also found a few phone numbers and made so calls to ask.
But unfortunately, even those who knew about the case had only heard it ntioned by others.
Back then, because a driver had been robbed, the logistics companies would have definitely notified their drivers to be on guard.
Combined with Sun Zhao’s large-scale canvassing and investigation, many drivers must have known about the incident.
"Thanks, sir."
Shen Xin didn’t expect to find a useful lead on the very first day, right off the bat.
Shen Xin had also prepared a notebook to record the driver’s license plate number, so he wouldn’t accidentally question him again.
He also left the driver his contact information.
These drivers often got together and chatted. Since he had asked about it, there was no doubt they would discuss it.
Then they would go on to talk to other people about it.
It was like a chain reaction—one person tells ten, ten tell a hundred. Maybe soone would be able to provide a clue.
Of course, this was just Shen Xin’s wishful thinking.
When Sun Zhao and his team had conducted their canvass back then, right after the cri occurred, mories were much clearer. The sa chain-reaction effect would have happened then, and if they hadn’t found anything, the probability of finding sothing now was even lower.
He went on to question more drivers.
Just then, Ding Yuwei called and asked where he was.
When working a case out in the field, you definitely had to be in a two-person team.
Soon, Ding Yuwei arrived, dressed in plainclothes.
"Where are Black Panther and Tiger Stripes?" Ding Yuwei asked curiously.
"I let them out."
Shen Xin had arrived a little after seven in the morning.
He had deliberately staggered the tis, releasing Black Panther and then Tiger Stripes to go find Da i.
Ding Yuwei hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, and since Shen Xin had co so early, he hadn’t had a chance to eat either.
The two of them went back near the entrance to the logistics park, where there were plenty of breakfast stalls.
They ordered two stear baskets of buns and two bowls of congee. As he ate, Shen Xin pulled out his phone to check the paths of the three animals.
"Whoa, Da i ran this far?"
Shen Xin was startled.
He now saw that Da i’s latest location showed she was a full eight kiloters away in a straight line.
He had released Da i at eight o’clock last night, aning it had been twelve hours.
Da i clearly hadn’t been idle all night; she had been constantly on the move.
Thank goodness for the GPS tracker; he didn’t have to worry about losing her.
Shen Xin then pulled up the GPS tracks for Black Panther and Tiger Stripes.
They had only been gone for a little over an hour.
Black Panther had set out first.
Shen Xin found that Black Panther’s path almost perfectly coincided with Da i’s.
Da i didn’t travel in a straight line; she would wander all over and even scale walls.
And this, in fact, presented a difficulty.
Because an animal of Black Panther’s size would have a hard ti scaling walls.
So he would lose the trail. Then, Shen Xin noticed, he would start searching all around in a wide radius, and slowly, he would find his way back to Da i’s path.
In Shen Xin’s eyes, this tracking ability was clearly up to snuff.
It ant that after losing the trail, he would think and then expand his search area.
But Da i’s range of activity was too vast, and she was clearly the type to not take the beaten path. So Black Panther was often stuck circling in one place, expanding his search radius, only slowly managing to find the correct route again.
But overall, he was tracking Da i.
Then he pulled up Tiger Stripes’s data.
Tiger Stripes had set off a little later.
When he set out, Shen Xin had given him a firm command, even threatening to punish him if he didn’t find Da i.
He seed to have understood.
But his path was completely different from Black Panther’s.
At the very beginning, their paths coincided.
The guy’s nose was plenty sharp.
But very quickly, after about five hundred ters, he deviated from Da i’s path of movent.
And it didn’t look like he had lost the trail; the deviation seed intentional.
His current location was in the nearby Dongtou Village, where he had been loitering for a while now.
"What’s Tiger Stripes doing over there?" Ding Yuwei asked curiously.
Shen Xin rolled his eyes, speechless.
"Don’t even need to think about it. He’s definitely off fooling around. Or, in other words, he’s run off."
After Shen Xin brought the stray back, he not only kept him in a cage but also specifically told Black Panther to keep an eye on him.
As a result, when he was let out to stretch his legs the next day, he tried to sneak away and was stopped by Black Panther.
He was used to being a stray; he was still wild.
As he spoke, Shen Xin pulled up the feed from Tiger Stripes’ cara.
The cara was pointed forward, seemingly at a residential house, and the view was shaking constantly in a back-and-forth rhythm.
In a brief flash, the cara also captured a view beneath Tiger Stripes... where there was a white dog.
In an instant, Ding Yuwei blushed.
Shen Xin was also overco with embarrassnt.
’Damn it! I told you to work, and you fucking ran off to pick up a bitch!’
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