novelaction Chapter 1165 Surveillance Video Investigation
Chapter 1165 Surveillance Video Investigation
The afternoon sunlight, with an intensity of 650 W/m², compressed the shadows in the cemetery to 0.8 times the length of a person's height. As Xiao Yang and Xiao Sun left with their investigation equipment, they took one last look at the disturbed grave; the afterglow of their investigation lights reflected a metallic sheen onto the fresh soil. Although they hadn't found the crucial, fatal clue, the fibers, shoe prints, and fingerprints scattered at the scene were like countless topological nodes pointing to the truth, waiting for the laboratory's Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, DNA sequencer, and scanning electron microscope to decode their secrets. The police car, carrying the evidence, drove away from Dongshan Cemetery. The cypress forest outside the window gradually became a blurry green band at a relative speed of 70 km/h, and the truth hidden in the morning mist and soil would finally surface after cross-verification by 12 professional tests.
While Xiao Yang and Yang Cun were conducting an expanded on-site investigation, Xiao Wang, along with a homeowner, began checking the surveillance footage at Dongshan Cemetery.
The monitoring room at Dongshan Cemetery was like an airtight iron box, with six monitors emitting a faint blue light in the dimly lit room. Xiao Wang spread the report from the complainant, Li Baoguo, on the control panel, coffee stains spreading across the words "man in black jacket." "Start investigating from midnight on May 21st, focusing on the footage near tombstone number 7 in row 3," he pointed to the rapidly changing timeline on the screen, "set the frame rate to the highest, don't miss any suspicious figures."
The surveillance footage had a resolution of only 720P, and the infrared mode at night gave the image an eerie green tint. Auxiliary police officer Xiao Zhang manipulated the mouse, switching between six screens. The shadows of cypress leaves swayed in front of the lens, like countless waving hands. "Captain Wang, look," Xiao Zhang suddenly paused the feed. The surveillance footage in the third row showed an anomaly at 2:17 AM. "There's a light spot moving here, lasting about three minutes." Zooming in revealed a blurry black shadow weaving among the tombstones, its outline resembling a crouching wolf, but its facial features were completely obscured by the infrared light's halo.
Xiao Wang asked the technical department to reduce the noise in the video. The jagged edges of the image gradually became smooth, but the details of the shadowy figure remained blurry. "Estimated height 175-180cm, wearing a dark top, with a slightly hunched left shoulder when walking," he drew the profile in his notebook, "matching the characteristics of the suspect deduced by Xiao Sun and his team." But when the camera switched to the surveillance footage at the cemetery entrance, only the lights of a motorcycle flashed by at 2:05 a.m. The license plate was completely illegible in night vision mode; only a red motorcycle could be identified.
The investigation into the clues provided by the complainant, Li Baoguo, began at the incense and candle stall. When Xiao Wang found the stall owner, Sister Liu, she was wiping the stone table, which was covered in wax, with a rag. "Last Wednesday, a man in a black jacket did buy incense and candles," she said, her apron still stained with bits of gold foil. "He was tall, a little hunched over, and bought three sticks of incense, a stack of yellow paper, and a string of firecrackers." She suddenly slapped her thigh. "Oh, right, he was wearing a silver watch on his left wrist, spoke with a slight southern accent, and asked me for directions to the path behind the mountain."
When reviewing the surveillance footage from the incense and candle stall, the image was even blurrier than that from the cemetery. At 9:14 a.m. on May 21, a man in a black jacket appeared in the frame, his hat pulled low, and a flash of silver light appeared on his left wrist as he paid. "He came in from the east entrance," Xiao Wang zoomed in on the man's gait, "his pace was 112 steps per minute, 15% faster than normal, and his right hand was always in his pocket, which matches the characteristics of carrying tools." But the surveillance only captured his back as he walked deeper into the cemetery, after which he disappeared into the blind spot of the three rows of tombstones.
Old Zhang, the cemetery keeper, lived on the edge of the surveillance camera's range, and his testimony was a jumbled mess. "I drank some alcohol on the night of May 21st," the old man said, sitting in a creaking wicker chair, tracing circles on his knees with his fingers. "I fell into a deep sleep around eleven o'clock. In the middle of the night, I thought I heard some noises coming from the back hill, and I thought it was just wild dogs fighting." He pointed to a bottle of liquor in the corner of the room. "I drank Erguotou (a type of Chinese liquor), half a jin (5ml) with peanuts, and slept like a log." Xiao Wang found a blurry shoe print on the windowsill of the shack. The size matched the size 43 shoe print in the cemetery, but the tread was covered in dust, making it impossible to extract complete features.
While investigating the clue about the "broken cypress tree" mentioned by Old Zhang, Xiao Wang led his officers in a thorough search of the cypress grove next to tombstone number 7 in row 3. The broken branch still showed fresh green at the cut, and there was a 0.5-centimeter-deep scratch on the bark, vaguely resembling the character for "debt." "It matches the scratch on the back of the tombstone," Xiao Wang said, taking a picture of the scratch. "The suspect may have had a debt dispute with the tomb's owner, Zhou Guiying." However, after checking Zhou Guiying's household registration records, the 78-year-old woman only owned an old house, had a bank account balance of less than 3,000 yuan, and had no debt records.
By 4 a.m., Xiao Wang's eyes were bloodshot. In the surveillance footage from the northwest corner of the cemetery, a dark figure scaled the wall at 3:02 a.m., moving with the agility of a wildcat. "This is the edge of a blind spot," Xiao Zhang slowed the footage to 0.5x speed. "The scaled over in just 17 seconds, and the figure stumbled upon landing, matching the location of the broken section of the wall that Xiao Yang and his team found." However, the road surveillance cameras outside the wall were broken; the municipal department said they had reported it for repairs half a month ago, causing the trail to go cold.
The investigation into the motorcycle leads has reached a stalemate. Xiao Wang retrieved traffic surveillance footage from within a five-kilometer radius of Dongshan Cemetery. Between 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM on May 21st, 12 red motorcycles passed by, but none matched the characteristics in the footage. "This motorcycle's turn signal is positioned too high," he pointed to the blurry image at the cemetery entrance, "and the exhaust pipe is particularly loud, like it's been modified." The vehicle management office's system shows that there are 328 red motorcycles of the same model in the city, but only 17 have recent modification records; checking them one by one would take at least three days.
The clue of a watch on the wrist mentioned by the complainant, Li Baoguo, caught Xiao Wang's attention in the surveillance footage. In the footage of the incense and candle stall, the watch face reflected a unique pattern the moment the man raised his wrist to look at his watch. "It looks like a Longines Master Collection," said Xiao Li, an auxiliary police officer who is quite knowledgeable about watches, "but I'm not sure if it's genuine or a counterfeit." Xiao Wang immediately contacted the luxury goods store, and was told that this model has a unique serial number on the inside of the bracelet, but it couldn't be identified in the surveillance footage and could only be recorded as a vague feature.
The investigation around Old Zhang's hut yielded some preliminary findings. In the garbage heap behind the hut, besides the Yuxi cigarette box found by Xiao Sun and his team, Xiao Wang also discovered half a sausage package with a production date of May 20th, matching the suspect's time of the crime. "DNA testing shows a match with the saliva stains on the cigarette box," the technical department reported the initial results. "It's male, blood type AB, but there's no match in the criminal record database." This narrowed the search to male smokers with blood type AB, but there are tens of thousands of people in the city who fit the description.