Animal Detective-Chapter 78: Parrot

Inside the conference room.

Lv Youwei finished listening to Ding Yuwei’s report.

She was clear and organized, and since she had done the specific categorization herself, she had been asked to present it.

Ultimately, five cases were selected and placed into a category for those with significant complaints from the victims’ families.

"Shi Yanhua."

After listening to everything, Lv Youwei murmured Shi Yanhua’s name and fell into deep thought.

After a moment, he turned to Wang Xihai beside him and asked, "Has Shi Yanhua been by recently?"

Clearly, he was no stranger to Shi Yanhua’s situation.

Wang Xihai sighed. "How could she not have been? She was just here the month before last. Same old story. It took a lot of effort to persuade her to leave."

Lv Youwei nodded. "The first step is always the hardest. Let’s test the waters with one case. This one it is."

He made the final decision on the spot, confirming the reopening of the Liu Laibin case.

Sun Zhao had no objections.

But once he was back in the main office, he couldn’t help but start complaining.

In reality, it didn’t matter which case it was.

Any cold case that had been on the shelf for so many years without a resolution was there for a reason: there wasn’t enough to go on to solve it.

So it wasn’t a matter of difficulty; they were all going to be tough to investigate.

Chen Chao said, "Since Director Lv wants to investigate, then let’s reopen it. If we put in some more work, maybe we’ll find something."

He was just saying that for the sake of it.

Over the years, everything that could be done on these cold cases had already been done.

Since there had been no progress in past years, it wasn’t as if a new lead would magically appear just because Lv Youwei ordered the investigation reopened.

But the boss had spoken, so it had to be done.

Chen Chao and Sun Zhao discussed it in the office for a while before coming out to announce the decision.

Zhao Tianxing would be in charge, with Shen Xin and Ding Yuwei assisting, to reopen and investigate the case.

At lunch in the cafeteria, the three of them sat at a table together.

Zhao Tianxing, who had previously been ranting that marriage was a man’s grave, was now animatedly pushing his portion of braised pork toward Ding Yuwei, trying to cozy up to her.

Ding Yuwei impassively pushed it back, respectfully declining his advance.

Zhao Tianxing didn’t seem to mind. He sighed and said, "Shen Xin, don’t look so glum. This is a cold case. Do you really think Captain Sun and the others expect us to actually solve it?"

"Of course not!"

"You have to understand, some cases just don’t have the conditions to be solved anymore. Reopening it now is purely to give the higher-ups an answer."

"So, we’ll just go through the motions, redo all the necessary investigations, and that’ll be that."

Shen Xin didn’t say anything.

Beside him, however, Ding Yuwei hesitated for a moment before retorting, "I don’t see it that way. To us, this might just be another ordinary case, but for the victim, it’s a monumental tragedy. Their family was destroyed because of it."

"It’s been four years, and Shi Yanhua has been following this case the whole time. That means she’s never given up, so we can’t let the victim’s family down."

Zhao Tianxing scoffed.

"Ah, Yuwei, you still don’t know the inside story."

"You think that Shi Yanhua is doing all this just because she was madly in love with Liu Laibin and wants to get justice for him?"

"No, she’s doing it for the money!"

"This Shi Yanhua met Liu Laibin at a bathhouse. They were lovers at first. Then, Shi Yanhua faked a pregnancy to get him to marry her."

"She married Liu Laibin purely for his money."

"After Liu Laibin died, she lost her source of income and quickly squandered what was left of his estate. That’s why she’s been coming to the station to cause trouble."

"She’s just trying to get us to catch the killer so she can get the money back. And you know what? She even claimed that since we haven’t found the killer, our station is also responsible."

"She thinks our station should compensate her for the two-million-plus yuan. Just listen to that. What kind of logic is that?"

Ding Yuwei was taken aback and fell silent.

This was the first time Shen Xin had heard this either. He thought for a moment and asked, "Brother Xing, so what’s Shi Yanhua’s situation now?"

According to Zhao Tianxing, Shi Yanhua had ulterior motives.

But no matter what, she was still the victim’s family. The crime had occurred and remained unsolved; she deserved some kind of resolution.

Even if she didn’t care.

Zhao Tianxing pursed his lips. "She’s back to her old trade. Giving massages at a bathhouse."

"She and Liu Laibin also have a daughter, about seven or eight years old. When she came to the station at the beginning of the year, I saw her. It was freezing cold, and the girl was just wearing a school uniform, a single layer of clothing. Shi Yanhua forced her to kneel and hold up a banner. She was shivering so hard her face turned purple."

"Shi Yanhua definitely doesn’t take good care of her. With a woman like that... Shen Xin, you’ve worked at a local police station, you should know the type."

Shen Xin nodded.

Indeed.

The local police stations regularly raided those kinds of places. The prostitutes they brought in were all cut from the same cloth.

To be honest, for a woman who hangs around in those kinds of places, who could really emerge from the mud unstained?

After a moment’s thought, Shen Xin picked up the untouched chicken leg from his tray and placed it on Zhao Tianxing’s. "Brother Xing, we’re both new to the criminal investigation team. We don’t have the experience of an old veteran like you. How should we investigate this case? Why don’t you point us in the right direction?"

The order was to reopen the investigation, but as for how to actually do it, Shen Xin felt it was best to get Zhao Tianxing’s opinion.

He’d handled cases before and had experience.

"What direction is there to point?" 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Zhao Tianxing grinned, passed the chicken leg over to Ding Yuwei, and said, "If you ask me, we should just go over the information in the case file one more time. It’d be great if we find something. If not, we submit it as is."

"This case was handled by Old Qin. He retired the year before last. I know him."

"He was extremely meticulous with his cases. He definitely checked every possible lead. There’s no way he missed anything. If he couldn’t find anything then, it’s even less likely we’ll find something four years later."

Shen Xin nodded. He understood.

He meant they should just go through the motions.

Ding Yuwei didn’t eat the chicken leg. She put it back on Shen Xin’s tray, raising an eyebrow as if she wanted to say something, but in the end, she kept quiet.

After lunch, Zhao Tianxing went back to the office to rest, but Ding Yuwei pulled Shen Xin aside into the archives’ storeroom.

They had finished reviewing the cold cases, but Lao Lin never said they had to give up the storeroom.

Ding Yuwei had cleaned it up so well that it had basically become their own little office.

"Shen Xin, I’ve looked over the case file carefully. I have some thoughts."

She motioned for Shen Xin to sit, even poured him a glass of water, and then said, "The file mentions that before founding his company, Liu Laibin didn’t have a steady job. He was classified as a ’social idler’—the kind who just drifts around."

"But his company was registered with one million in capital. Where did that money come from?"

Shen Xin took a sip of water. "It’s in the records. Officer Qin also asked Shi Yanhua. She said that about ten years ago, Liu Laibin went to the Southern region to do business and made his first pot of gold reselling mobile phones."

Ding Yuwei nodded; she had seen that part too. "That’s what she said, but it was never verified. My theory is, what if the money he used to start the company was from a questionable source? Maybe he made some enemies who were waiting for a chance at revenge."

"Think about it. Since this Sun Kai had already scammed him out of a two-million-yuan bridge loan, why would he then kill him and steal 340,000 in cash?"

"Logically, it doesn’t make sense. Fraud and murder are completely different types of crime. Liu Laibin was stabbed seven times. And while he had defensive wounds, it’s hard to say there wasn’t a personal grudge involved."

Shen Xin nodded slightly.

He’d already scammed two million. To risk a murder charge for a mere 340,000 was indeed unreasonable.

However, the case file showed that Qin Chuanwang had also noticed this point and tried to investigate Liu Laibin’s past social connections.

But his parents had died young, and he wasn’t close with his few remaining relatives, so the investigation didn’t turn up any useful information.

The startup capital for his company, just as Shi Yanhua had said, came from when he went to the Southern region to do business. When he returned, he was already successful and had made a fortune.

When his relatives asked him about it, he wouldn’t say.

Now, with so much time having passed, trying to investigate his social connections from back then would be incredibly difficult.

Shen Xin looked up at the ceiling.

In contrast to Ding Yuwei’s speculation, Shen Xin had actually noticed something else.

This Liu Laibin, he kept a parrot in his office.

Back then, regulations weren’t as strict.

He had paid someone to pull some strings and get him a wild King Kong Parrot.

The case file mentioned it, and the crime scene photos even showed the parrot’s perch.

But the file had no record of where the parrot was now.

Shen Xin couldn’t help but wonder.

’This is a King Kong Parrot. Its lifespan is comparable to a human’s, and its intelligence is extremely high.’

’The crucial thing is, it can talk.’

’If the parrot was there when Sun Kai killed Liu Laibin, could it have witnessed the crime?’

’With my ability, could I get some important clues about Sun Kai from this parrot?’