novelaction Chapter 1072 Silver-gray minivan
Chapter 1072 Silver-gray minivan
There was a slight deformation in the barbed wire at the top of the wall, as if someone had climbed over it. Xiao Yang stood on tiptoe and touched a strand of black thread hanging on the barbed wire. "It matches the color of the hoodie Old Li mentioned." He had a sudden thought, but after testing, he found that it was made of the most common polyester material, and at least a hundred clothing stores in the city were selling the same fabric.
They didn't even spare the surrounding trash cans. Xiao Sun lifted the lids of each foul-smelling can, while Xiao Yang stirred inside with a long pole. When the pole hit something hard, the two exchanged a glance, then together pulled it out. It was just a rusty tin box, completely empty except for a few cockroaches crawling out in panic.
As the sun set, the evidence bags in the investigation kit were filled with 37 items, each labeled with a number and location. Xiao Yang sat on the toolbox, removed his gas mask, revealing a stubble-covered chin. He flipped through the densely packed records in his notebook: oil stains, wall fibers, hammer dust, plastic fragments… None of them formed a valid chain of evidence.
Xiao Sun uploaded the last photo to the computer. It was a panoramic view of the inside of the compressor, pitch black, and nothing could be seen. "A whole day wasted." He gave a bitter laugh, rubbing his swollen eyes. "There's nothing here except a few useless fibers."
Xiao Yang gazed at the darkening sky, the distant city lights contrasting sharply with the filth and chaos here. He remembered Li Ming's instructions, glanced at the investigation records in his hand, and suddenly felt utterly powerless. Such a meticulous investigation, using every method imaginable, yet they hadn't found a single decent clue.
"Let's call it a day." Xiao Yang stood up, his voice filled with undisguised exhaustion. Xiao Sun nodded and began packing up the tools. The soft clinking of the evidence bags seemed to signal the end of this futile investigation.
When the two walked out of the cleaning station, Li Ming's car was still parked on the side of the road. Seeing their empty expressions, Li Ming didn't ask any questions, but simply handed them two bottles of water: "Thank you for your hard work." Xiao Yang took the water, the coolness of the bottle passing through his palm, but it couldn't extinguish the dejection in his heart.
The car drove on the road in silence. The night view outside the window flashed by, like the missed clues, impossible to grasp again. Xiao Yang looked out the window, knowing in his heart that this case was probably much more difficult than he had imagined. All they could do was go back and organize these fragmented pieces of information, waiting for the next investigation, or perhaps a chance breakthrough. But he also knew that such waiting was often long and agonizing.
While Li Ming arranged for Xiao Yang and Xiao Sun to conduct further investigations, he also arranged for Xiao Wang to investigate the situation of the silver-gray van.
As Xiao Wang pinned the surveillance screenshot of the silver-gray minivan to the whiteboard, rain streamed down the window, leaving blurry streaks where the license plate of the vehicle with the character "冀" (Ji) should be. The screenshot showed a noticeable dent in the left rear bumper of the minivan, resembling a gaping mouth, perfectly matching the description given by Lao Li. "Start by checking surveillance footage within a five-kilometer radius of the cleaning station," he said, slamming his mug heavily on the table, coffee stains splattering next to the note "left leg limp," "Focus on finding the same model with dark tinted rear windows and muddy license plates."
The team members immediately split up, and the monitoring room's screen wall was quickly divided into countless small squares. Xiao Zhang was responsible for checking the gas station's surveillance footage, his fingers flying across the keyboard: "Team Leader Wang, at 3:15 AM, a car of the same model was refueling at the Huancheng Road gas station. The driver was wearing a black hoodie, and his left hand was always in his pocket while paying, so his face couldn't be seen." He zoomed in on the image, and a long, black, rectangular object was vaguely visible in the back seat, covered by a tarpaulin.
Xiao Wang asked the technical department to enhance the image. The metal corner peeking out from the edge of the canvas made him squint: "It looks like a crowbar." But when they followed the refueling records to find the vehicle owner's information, they discovered that it was registered to a building materials company that had already been deregistered, and the contact number was invalid. "It's very likely a cloned vehicle." Xiao Wang drew a big question mark on the whiteboard, his pen tip poking at the words "limping."
While tracing the van's route, the trail suddenly went cold at a scrap yard on the outskirts of the city. Surveillance footage showed it turning into an alley piled high with scrap metal and never coming out again. When Xiao Wang and his team ventured into the alley, the smell of rust mixed with the scent of rain hit them. The scrap yard owner, an old man missing a front tooth, said with a cigarette dangling from his lips, "A silver-gray van came by last Wednesday, taking away half a load of old steel pipes. The driver was wearing a mask, and his voice was muffled."
"Is his rear bumper dented?" Xiao Wang pressed. The old man spat out his cigarette butt and rubbed it on the sole of his shoe. "It looks like it, on the left. He said he hit a wall while backing up and even asked me if I had any putty to fix it." This detail perfectly matched Lao Li's description. Xiao Wang's heart sank, and he waved for his team to search the scrap yard.
Sure enough, a silver-gray minivan was hidden in the scrap heap. The license plate had been pried off, and a piece of red paint was stuck in the dent of the left rear bumper. When the door was opened, a musty smell mixed with engine oil wafted out. There was a black rubber rod on the passenger seat, with dark red stains on its surface. "Number 052, suspected murder weapon." Xiao Wang covered it with an evidence bag, a glimmer of hope rising in his heart.
But when the test results came out, everyone was disappointed. The marks on the rubber baton were rust, not blood; the mud on the driver's side floor mat had a completely different composition from that around the cleaning station; more importantly, the fingerprints on the steering wheel and door handles, after comparison, belonged to the scrap yard owner – he admitted that he had bought the abandoned car cheaply and hadn't had time to deal with it yet.
"What about that long, black object?" Xiao Wang asked, still unwilling to give up, staring at the scrap yard's delivery slip. The old man flipped through the ledger for a while, pointing to the record "Old steel pipes, 12 pieces," and said, "The driver said he was going to build a chicken coop and even haggled over the price for a long time." The team members found the cut steel pipe in a corner of the scrap yard; the cut was brand new, and the rust on it matched that on the van.
Just then, another team reported that a second silver-gray van had been spotted in the surveillance footage of a nearby residential area. This van's bumper was intact, but the rear window was covered in the same dark tint. The driver clearly had a limp when he got out, his left leg noticeably weaker. "Check this vehicle's registration information!" Xiao Wang's voice held a barely perceptible excitement.
The car owner, Zhao Qiang, is a construction worker who had his left leg amputated three years ago due to a work injury and was fitted with a prosthesis. When the team members found him, he was laying flooring in a new house, and his prosthesis made a "thump-thump" sound as it hit the tiles. "Last Wednesday I was working in the west of the city," he said, pointing to the location records on his phone, "I lent the van to my cousin to haul construction waste. He said the rear window tint was too dark and he had already torn it off."