National Forensic Doctor-Chapter 950 - 886: Just Take a Look

Jiang Yuan’s Accumulated Case Team.

Amidst the dense clatter of keyboards, people were constantly bustling about. The incessant ringing and hanging up of phones made the place as lively as a financial company.

However, this place doesn’t trade in money, only prison terms!

Meng Chengbiao entered the room with a smug expression, just in time to hear an officer at the door speaking on the phone:

"Liu, I called you because we’re close, and the criminal is a relative of yours, also surnamed Liu, a homicide fugitive. If caught, he’s looking at at least 20 years..."

"Right, right, right, murder, not accidental death. This guy is a thug who got into a conflict with someone; the next night he waited by the road and stabbed the person, then ran off to Guangyue for over a decade. He’s somewhat established himself now, got himself an ID card and all. If it weren’t for someone here wanting to earn merit, you wouldn’t have had the chance, you know. A criminal starting at 20 years, send me two people, each for nine months!"

"Three months won’t do, what’s the use of a temp transfer for three months? We’re not lacking hands; three months would just end up as us training people for you. You should be paying us for that, get it? How about this, one person for eight months, another for half a year, but you have to choose officers with more than three years on the force, we don’t want fresh recruits, train them yourself."

Meng Chengbiao could tell from the expression of the officer on the phone that the negotiation was going smoothly. And how could it not? Capturing a fugitive linked to a homicide is headline news in small places. In comparison, lending officers to higher-level units is an all-the-time affair, like in a provincial capital city like Changyang, where the provincial and municipal bureaus constantly have hundreds of officers on loan, having become the norm. And it’s no exception for the lower-level units; everybody is in a state of rampant borrowing.

And the better-performing, more assertive lower-level units, in fact, lend fewer officers to higher-ups. After all the ins and outs, they actually come out ahead.

"Team Meng, did it go well?" Tang Jia greeted Meng Chengbiao as he came in.

"Smoothly," Meng Chengbiao said with a smile. "Wang Lin just handed over a case involving the theft of cultural relics done by one of her ex-boyfriends. There’s also a gang dealing in cultural relics that seems to have been trading in bronze wares and Buddha heads. In addition, there’s a theft case involving Fan Yuxin with a huge amount of money involved. Other cases involve fraud and assault, adding at least a few more years to the prison terms."

"Alright, I’ll make a note of it. Where are the main sites involved in the relic case?" Tang Jia opened her computer and started typing efficiently.

"West Shaanxi Region."

"Got it..."

"Do we have the names and ID numbers of the personnel involved?"

"Yes." During the interrogation, Meng Chengbiao had already pulled up all the relevant information about the suspects in the police system using their names or previously used phone numbers.

Tang Jia recorded them one by one, and then more officers came in to report.

Meng Chengbiao went to report to Jiang Yuan and Huang Qiangmin next.

Both of them were in front of two rows of screens, with Jiang Yuan sitting in the back row of what looked like a lecture hall, watching both rows of screens and directing the comparison of fingerprints, footprints, and other traces.

This setup had been recently revised by Jiang Yuan, basically imitating the work structure of the Anti-Drug Brigade, but without the high-end equipment and facilities of a command center, a lower-cost alternative.

"Commissioner Huang, Captain Jiang," Meng Chengbiao hurried to report when he arrived.

Huang Qiangmin waved from a distance: "Old Meng’s back, how did it go?"

"On average, one and a half major merits per person," Meng Chengbiao said with a chuckle, then added, "and on average, an increase of one life sentence per person."

Huang Qiangmin laughed heartily: "This in-and-out feels a bit like banking."

"Not at all, not at all, banks just hand out 30 years like nothing," Meng Chengbiao said, laughing along.

Huang Qiangmin tapped him with his hand and laughed again: "No rush, dig deeper, see if you can find more."

"Yes," Meng Chengbiao replied crisply.

This round of interrogation saw Meng Chengbiao and others fully utilizing their capabilities.

Wang Lin and her group worked as a team, and because their means of committing crimes were very covert, they maintained operations for quite a long time. Therefore, not only did they know a lot about their own group, but they also knew a considerable amount about other collaborators.

With such a prime opportunity for merit, how could Wang Lin and her group resist!

However, earning merits isn’t the same as doing business, even significant merits only allow for one reduction in sentence per life imprisonment. A reduction is like a demotion, where an immediate death penalty could become a death penalty with a reprieve, a reprieve into a life sentence, a life sentence into 20 years, but no matter how many significant merits, to get a double reduction, only the Supreme Court can approve, and under normal circumstances, that’s as far as it goes.

As for most of the members of Wang Lin’s gang, after being arrested for their merits, it is foreseeable that they know a lot about Wang Lin and the others.

They can probably see and think of all these possibilities, but they just can’t resist.

Some will refuse to confess, refuse to earn merit, but that does nothing to the overall situation, just gives themselves aggravating factors, and in this group that starts with a baseline of 20 years, any aggravating factor could be deadly.

"Are all registered?" Huang Qiangmin wanted to ensure the case was concluded before considering the benefits.

This case was not simple to investigate, to say the least, involving over ten homicide cases, including murders, accidental deaths, possibly assisted suicides, and incitements to murder, and each case had to be investigated and proof gathered to be compiled into separate case files for prosecution.

If the Ningtai County Bureau were to handle this alone... the Ningtai County Bureau’s capability was indeed sufficient, but for the next half year, they would be immersed in these homicide cases.

And there was still a string of connected cases. To handle these, they still had to arrest people, gather evidence, and each case required extensive reports...

Huang Qiangmin definitely wouldn’t allow Jiang Yuan’s Accumulated Case Team to get stuck in these "minor cases," so his role was to hire the workforce.

As for the staffing that Jiang Yuan’s Accumulated Case Team had just acquired, it could also be used later to attract top temporary personnel.

"This case should be almost done," Jiang Yuan said again after checking the workflow on the computer. "The Accumulated Case Team will gradually step back too, we’re moving on to new cases."

"No problem." Huang Qiangmin hadn’t yet arranged for manpower, but he wasn’t worried and readily took charge for Jiang Yuan’s assignments.

After making a few quick calls, Huang Qiangmin turned back to Jiang Yuan: "If this case wraps up here, the Changyang Traffic Police Brigade actually has a case, do you want to take a look?"

"Sure," Jiang Yuan wasn’t picky.

Huang Qiangmin sent a few photos to Jiang Yuan’s phone, saying, "I’ll get the case files from them later. This is the main evidence they have at the moment."

The photos showed darkness, upon closer inspection, they appeared to be taken by a nighttime surveillance camera.

Huang Qiangmin explained, "This is a hit-and-run motorcycle. Currently, the victim is still in critical condition, the family is in poor financial shape, even the Traffic Police Brigade has organized a donation drive. It’s of utmost importance to find the driver responsible."

As he said this, Huang Qiangmin seemed somewhat guilty, "Their camera had just aged, producing poor quality photos, it looks like there are just shades of color... will this work?"

Jiang Yuan: "I don’t know, let’s start with image enhancement processing and see."