The sun set, and the evening sun dipped below the horizon.
The veteran police dog Heizi, having run outside all day, dragged his weary body back to his kennel, quietly waiting for tonight's beef, chicken leg, and mixed vegetable stew.
He was a second-class meritorious service dog with food allowances, assisted by public security partnerships, averaging 75 yuan per meal, regardless of the weather.
Captain Hou patted Heizi's head and, dragging his own exhausted frame, returned to the office at the Criminal Police Detachment, boiled a pot of water for himself, made a bowl of instant noodles, tore open a stick of ham sausage, and devoured it ravenously.
Halfway through the meal, his cell phone rang.
"Hello?" Captain Hou frowned.
On the other end was an even-keeled female voice, "Captain Hou? This is the fingerprint station at the General Criminal Police squad. We have a result for a fingerprint collaboration inquiry from your county. I'm sending the details to you now. Please take a look..."
Captain Hou responded blankly, hung up the phone, and hurried to check the message on his police device.
After just a glance, Captain Hou dropped his noodles, strode out the door, and ordered, "Ping, get some people together, we're making an arrest."
He had the habit of leading by example. He did so as a squadron leader, and the same went for being a detachment leader.
Ping, who was called, shoved a couple more bites of noodles into his mouth, called the detectives of his team to depart, grabbed his coat, and while walking out asked, "What's the case?"
"Last year's July 15th robbery case. The provincial team sent back the fingerprint match; the guy is at Tuo Mountain Forest Farm, a forest worker there, clocked in just this morning." Captain Hou talked as he moved, "The road there is rough; take the pickup."
"Okay!" Ping acknowledged, then clicked his tongue twice, "Playing hide-and-seek right under our noses, huh? Did this forest farm just join the fingerprint network this year, or what?"
Nowadays, many industrial and mining enterprises are required to install and network biometric identification systems, typical examples include coal mines, some even to the extent of iris recognition systems.
However, Captain Hou shook his head, "The fingerprint has been in the system for a while, it was just matched today. Let's arrest him first."
The group hurried down the stairs, and Ping, who had been running around all day, started the pickup truck, exhaled a breath, and asked, "Should we bring Heizi? It might be useful to have him at the forest farm?"
Captain Hou looked towards the kennel where Heizi was chomping on a chicken leg, savoring it, and hesitated, "Let's leave him be, Heizi's exhausted, let him rest. We'll go and assess the situation first."
Ping rubbed his sore back, gave a wry laugh, and turned the ignition key.
The pickup drove up the mountain.
People climbed the mountain.
It was in the wee hours of the morning.
The sky was already bright when the suspect finally signed his name on the interrogation record.
The forest worker in his twenties, whose only insight into anti-surveillance was gleaned from movies and TV shows, lost his initial luck as reality set in, and he was led by the nose by the police for the rest of the time.
Captain Hou, who had stood watch all night, exhaled a breath of relief, with a flicker of tired optimism sparking within him.
The robbery case was one of the eight serious crimes stipulated by the Criminal Law. The so-called Major Case Unit designation comes from this. For such cases, the police department has always given utmost priority. Last year, in an effort to solve the crime, Captain Hou had worked tirelessly for days without finding any useful leads…
Now that the case had been cracked and the suspect arrested smoothly, Captain Hou, as head of the Criminal Police Detachment, felt a great sense of accomplishment.
After some thought, Captain Hou took out his cell phone and called Huang Qiangmin from the neighboring Ningtai County Criminal Police Detachment.
The phone rang thrice.
"I want to thank you, Captain Huang," Captain Hou said earnestly.
Huang Qiangmin was a bit taken aback, "Did I upset you or something?"
"No, honestly, I'm truly grateful," Captain Hou's voice carried more sincerity. He was making a thank-you call, best to not get into the usual banter.
Huang Qiangmin laughed, "Thankful for what?"
"You don't know?" Captain Hou was surprised, then inexplicably laughed. After his laughter subsided, he shared the results of the fingerprint collaboration and the arrest with Huang Qiangmin and commented, "Speaking of this case, we were pieces away. The victim reported the crime the next day, and it just so happened to rain that night, wiping away many pieces of evidence. Of course, it made the culprit let their guard down, thinking we had forgotten about the case, ha…"
This time, Huang Qiangmin fell silent.
Several seconds later, Huang Qiangmin slowly said, "So, you're saying that you've cracked a robbery case that had been unresolved for some time?"
"Right. I personally brought the perpetrator back. Thank your forensics team for me, and I'll take you out to dinner when I have a chance," Hou Lejia said with a chuckle as he ended the call.
Clutching the phone, Huang Qiangmin shoved it hard into his pocket and turned to head up to the fourth floor, where the Criminal Science Squadron was located.
He really wanted to see just how these forensics team members, who always seemed to be complaining, had managed to clinch this case.
The forensics office.
Yan Ge, cradling a steaming cup of tea, sipped the hot liquid while critiquing the fingerprint before him, "It's too blurred; they dusted powder on leather. What were they thinking? Who does fingerprint collection this way now..."
"Yan Ge! Wang Zhong! Have you acquired some new expertise?" Huang Qiangmin scrutinized his surroundings, his eyes sharp like a stray cat's.
"Captain Huang." Both forensic technicians jumped in alarm and rose to their feet.
"What's with you two, day in and day out? Are you too idle?" Huang Qiangmin spoke with severity.
The two forensic technicians were utterly panicked. What inappropriate thing had we done? We often do these things and never get reprimanded...
Those in the Criminal Police who frequently worked with forensics were used to Huang Qiangmin's "military training" relatively infrequently, but precisely for this reason, they were all the less accustomed to his strictness.
"Matching a fingerprint is a good thing, but don't you know to report to your superiors first? Where is your organizational discipline?" Huang Qiangmin's brows furrowed, and he looked as fierce as if he were about to catch a mouse.
Both Yan Ge and Wang Zhong were confused and shook their heads together.
Yan Ge asked quietly, "What fingerprint did we match?"
This time, Huang Qiangmin was genuinely puzzled. After a moment of thought, he said, "Longli County cracked a robbery case, a backlog case, and found a suspect through fingerprint comparison. Old Hou called to express his thanks. Wasn't it done by you two?"
"No," Yan and Xiao Wang shook their heads again, with some difficulty.
"Go and ask around," Huang Qiangmin said as he decisively took a seat.
He was starting to feel like he was on the verge of solving a case, eager for results or at least to find a proper lead.
Reluctantly, Yan Ge and Wang Zhong each made their calls.
Forensic technicians often had tasks to assist in inquiries; it was a standard procedure.
Not long after, the two hung up their respective calls and returned to Huang Qiangmin.
Huang Qiangmin's expression grew stern as he looked at the two of them, their demeanor so formal that it triggered a flurry of speculations in his mind.
"The message I received..." Yan Ge cleared his throat twice, approached Huang Qiangmin, and glanced involuntarily in the direction of the forensic doctor's office, "The one who did the fingerprint comparison is probably from our team, Xiao Jiang. Jiang Yuan."
"Jiang Yuan... Which squad is he from?" For a moment, Huang Qiangmin couldn't place the person. He was the head of the Criminal Police Detachment, overseeing several Criminal Police squads, the Police Dog Squad, the Criminal Science Squad, the Anti-Drug Squad, and so on, with hundreds of officers and dogs under his command—not particularly sensitive to new faces.
"He's the new forensic doctor who just reported for duty, the really tall one," Xiao Wang said.
"Now that you mention it, I know who you're talking about." Huang Qiangmin only then matched the name to the face. It was true he had over a hundred detectives under his command, but forensic doctors were consistently few in number; moreover, Jiang Yuan's height always left a strong impression.
After figuring out who was involved, all three fell into silence again.
With their extensive experience in forensics, what baffled Yan Ge and Wang Zhong was this: it was one thing to assist another unit with fingerprint comparison, but quite another to succeed where that unit had failed.
In a nutshell, assisting with fingerprint comparison didn't necessarily mean the fingerprints were difficult to work with. It could also be due to the fact that the other unit's fingerprint database lacked coverage. Nowadays, there was no such thing as a nationwide fingerprint database. Even within each province, they only maintained fingerprint databases covering a portion of all fingerprints.
So, most forensic police officers would first search their own city's criminal fingerprint database, then, if necessary, the vehicle registration databases, identity information databases, and so on; if still fruitless, they would request assistance from the provincial office or other units.
The type of fingerprints that couldn't be matched due to database limitations was something Yan and Xiao Zhao were familiar with. But succeeding with tough fingerprints based purely on brute force was something they saw less often.
"Let's go meet him." Huang Qiangmin got up and walked out, with Yan and Xiao Wang following without hesitation.