In the Luo Jin City Bureau meeting room, the lights were still on.
Pang Jidong knocked on the door and entered, only to see Yi Shihuang with his apprentice, flipping through case files at the table.
"Not heading back yet?" Pang Jidong asked with a smile.
Yi Shihuang looked up, his face wrinkles flickering, "It’s too late to go back now. If I wake up the wife, I’ll get a scolding. Better to sleep in the office. Aren’t you also not going back?"
"I’m preparing to go back. My wife is more considerate," bragged Pang Jidong, then asked, "What are you busy with? Problems with case 828?"
"Then what’s the rush? You saved time during the investigative stage, so you have plenty of time to work on the case."
"Well, I’m looking at how... how this case was cracked," said Yi Shihuang, pushing the documents in front of him, "We can’t let these tech types call the shots forever, right?"
As he said this, Pang Jidong’s expression also became more serious, before saying after a while, "No matter what, fingerprints are still retrieved by us, aren’t they?"
"Now retrieving fingerprints is done by professionals specialized in crime scene investigation," Yi Shihuang glanced at Pang Jidong, "Arresting someone, though, that’s our job."
"Hm..." Pang Jidong rubbed his face, "It’s too late; I’m all muddled, my brain’s not working properly."
Yi Shihuang sighed, "Not enough brainpower is a big problem. It’s no longer the era of resilience alone."
"Young people today are not the same as us. They all have some technical knowledge, and there are more and more university graduates," Pang Jidong said, naturally taking a seat at the table. He looked through the documents before asking, "Without the tech guys, how would you tackle this case?"
"I’ve been pondering that very question tonight. First, we definitely need to look for eyewitnesses. There might not be anyone who saw anything, but perhaps someone heard something," Yi Shihuang did not directly answer, quietly flipping through the documents. After a while, he said, "As for fingerprints, we actually had Li Tong look at those. At the time, there were no matches."
"Was the suspect in the database then?"
"Old viper, just released after serving his sentence. How could he not be?"
"Li Tong is supposed to be pretty good..." As Pang Jidong spoke, he suddenly snickered like a lovable old man, "Imagine if Li Tong heard this story, do you think he’d doubt himself? He might not have slept tonight either, spending the whole time looking at that fingerprint."
"He wouldn’t," said Yi Shihuang.
Pang Jidong said in surprise, "You’re sure of that?"
"I called and asked," Yi Shihuang said, his expression as innocent as a Shar Pei dog.
Pang Jidong was stunned, "Are you rubbing salt in the wound? Do you not plan to use him again?"
"I’m about to retire anyway. But Li Tong seems to be in good spirits, at least better than us."
"He said Jiang Yuan used something called image enhancement, from Image Investigation, and it’s very advanced. He can’t replicate it, so it has nothing to do with us."
"There’s quite a lot of new stuff," Pang Jidong seemed fairly receptive. He turned his head to look at Yi Shihuang still intent on flipping through case files, and just smiled.
Technology has indeed been constantly innovating. Even without Jiang Yuan’s arrival, just in these recent years alone, who knows how many cases have been solved using cell phones.
In the past, borrowing techniques from the Technical Investigation department was quite a hassle, and was generally unnecessary for minor cases. Now with the establishment of the Cybersecurity Division, simply by scraping through WeChat records, many cases are easily solved.
As for technologies like Trace Evidence, their coverage and effectiveness in case-solving are tremendous, yet the police have traditionally been reluctant to publicize this area.
"Alright, don’t think too much about it. Not just us who solve cases, but those willing to commit them are dwindling. Professional criminals are all turning to telecommunication fraud. Without some technical knowledge, you can’t even find anyone," said Pang Jidong as he put down the case file and left for home to be with his wife.
Yi Shihuang, unperturbed, continued to study the case files intently.
He did not plan to solve every case; solving half or even a third of the remaining ones would be sufficient.
Jiang Yuan had been in the Trace Evidence Laboratory for three days.
Pollen wasn’t so easily managed, and with such a large quantity to look at, picking out each grain was truly back-breaking and neck-straining work.
Suddenly, Jiang Yuan understood the widespread problem with Legal Botany—its lack of prevalence lay right here, where hardly a few high-level botanists were willing to do this sort of work for criminal investigations. And those with inadequate expertise were of no use.
There’s no need for moral coercion either. While criminal investigation is important, so is paleontology; exploring human origins also meaningful.
For instance, if one explored an ancient tomb or a group of old buildings, at least a few research papers might come from it. If a youngster fresh out of university arrived at an academic institution, facing a ’publish or perish’ situation within five years, sweeping through an ancient tomb might at least secure one’s job. But assisting the police in solving a case might yield nothing more than a thank you.
—Unless the case was extremely important.
On the fourth day, Jiang Yuan finally called upon Pang Jidong and his Fourth Squad to head out to the location of the first case.
It was a very quiet residential area, with lush vegetation, numerous estates, and generally narrow roads, suitable for pedestrians with relatively less traffic for cars.
As they neared the place, Pang Jidong briefed, "This is considered Luo Jin’s wealthy residential area, full of villas and western-style houses, almost no high-rises. There are a few upscale hotels, then schools and small shopping districts, no big malls or office buildings, making it a rather pure residential location. It’s quite popular with Luo Jin residents, and property prices are higher here than in surrounding areas."