Animal Detective

Chapter 288 - 244: A Business

As for how to find them, it was all too easy.

The Skynet system could trace the vehicle’s entire route.

They were here today to make a delivery.

One check was all it would take to find out where they had started from.

And then there were the phones.

Phones these days contained more and more information.

Wang Huiquan was a grunt. Who gave him his orders, the calls he had made, the messages he had sent—it was all there at a glance.

You could say his phone was a goldmine of clues and evidence.

Liu Baoqing suddenly started clapping.

"Look at that."

He pointed at Shen Xin and said to his subordinates, "Look at his insight and judgment. Now look at you lot. I’ve told you time and again: to solve a case, you have to learn to filter out the noise and focus on what’s important. All of you, learn from him."

The officers present all nodded.

Qian Zhihai smiled without saying a word.

Shen Xin was taken aback. He quickly said to the others, "Seniors, Captain Liu is just joking with me. Please don’t take him seriously."

The men quickly waved their hands in dismissal.

Their expressions, however, were a bit awkward.

The issue of where the stray cats and dogs came from was something that, just a moment ago, none of them had considered.

Seeing them just standing there, not moving, Liu Baoqing slapped the table and barked, "What are you all standing around for? Investigate! What, do you need me to teach you how?"

The people, the van, the phones—they had all the leads they needed right there.

The officers exchanged a glance and hurried out.

Liu Qing also stood up, but not to work.

He checked the time; it was just past lunch. "Xiaoshen," he said, "you guys haven’t eaten yet, have you? Why don’t we eat first? The braised pork at our branch’s cafeteria is to die for. Let’s go."

With that, he pulled the two of them off to eat.

A man who’d made it to captain, after all. To him, this was a minor case; he could afford to be patient.

And he wasn’t kidding—the New District Branch’s specially prepared braised pork was excellent.

By the time they finished eating and returned...

The interrogations of Wang Huiquan and Xu Zhicai had already yielded a breakthrough.

To be honest...

In all his time as an officer, aside from people like Zhu Tianshun who were already facing certain death, Shen Xin had never really seen anyone who could withstand an interrogation.

Shen Xin joined the crowd, watching the videos from Wang Huiquan’s phone along with everyone else.

The guy’s phone was packed with evidence.

Just like the current clip.

The location was unclear, probably near a residential complex.

It was evening, and the city lights were just starting to come on.

Wang Huiquan was in the van.

And he wasn’t alone. At that moment, he opened the van’s side window and propped up an air rifle.

He yelled, "Da Fei, let’s make a bet. Think I can hit it in one shot?"

From behind the shaky camera, a man’s voice replied, "Doubt it. It’s pretty far."

Then the camera panned to a distant spot.

It looked like a green space near the residential complex, with a fairly large lawn. Since it was evening, there were people milling about.

Wang Huiquan said, "Get a good shot of it. That Shiba Inu. Fuck, I hate that kind of dog."

The camera zoomed in, locking onto a young woman on the edge of the green space, walking a Shiba Inu.

It was dark, so the footage wasn’t very clear.

You could just make out the girl walking the Shiba, which stopped from time to time to sniff around.

The girl was looking at her phone, completely oblivious.

"I’m gonna shoot. Watch this."

Faintly, there was a soft PFFT.

Then, on screen, the Shiba Inu, which had been sniffing the base of a camphor tree, suddenly convulsed. It leaped as if its fur was standing on end and started howling madly.

"Holy shit, you actually hit it."

"Brother Quan, you’re awesome! That’s at least a hundred meters, right?"

The camera shook.

The Shiba Inu in the video nearly broke free of its leash. It was unclear where it had been hit, but after howling wildly for a moment, it collapsed to the ground, twitching.

The girl, terrified, frantically knelt to check on her dog.

Wang Huiquan’s voice came through again: "A hundred meters, at least. Damn, this gun is powerful, and accurate too. No, wait, *I’m* just a damn good shot."

The camera turned back to Wang Huiquan.

He had a smug look on his face. He gestured with the gun and said, "What do you think would happen if you shot a person with this thing?"

The other man said, "Forget it. You’d better just stick to shooting dogs. Don’t go looking for trouble."

The video ended there.

According to the video’s information, it was filmed on October 17, 2017.

And there were more videos like it.

There was one of him in the suburbs, testing the air rifle’s power on beer bottles.

From twenty meters away, a single shot could shatter a beer bottle.

There was also a video of him trying to shoot birds.

Then Shen Xin noticed that it wasn’t just the air rifle they had confiscated that appeared in the videos; there was also a camouflage one.

Clearly, he owned more than one air rifle.

And there were still other videos.

Like this next one.

Shen Xin watched it with a deep frown.

A yellow dog was locked in a cage. On its abdomen was a swollen lump the size of a honeydew melon—likely a tumor.

Wang Huiquan was filming it with his phone.

The dog was lying on its side in the cage, barely moving.

Wang Huiquan used a stick to lift the tumor as the camera zoomed in on it.

"See that? It’s crawling with maggots. A real gem."

His tone was cheerful, driven by a morbid curiosity.

Shen Xin guessed why he had called it a "gem."

This kind of stray animal "rescue" relied on exploiting people’s sympathy. Naturally, the more miserable an animal looked, the more willing kind-hearted people would be to donate.

A giant, untreated tumor, already rotting and infested with maggots—what could be more tragic than that?

This act of exploiting people’s kindness for profit simply disgusted Shen Xin.

’In a situation like this, we have to act, no question about it.’

’If this is a group operation, the others will definitely get suspicious when they can’t reach Wang Huiquan, Xu Zhicai, and Chen Fang.’