Murong was starting to admire Ye Fei.
Ye Fei waved his hand, "It's not a big deal."
He was about to bend over to pick up the shell casings, but Zhang Shuaipeng came over and said loudly, "This is important evidence. In order to protect the crime scene, unauthorized civilians should leave immediately."
"Captain Zhang, he’s helping solve the case," Murong hurriedly explained.
"Murong, does the criminal investigation team really need some boy to help solve this case? You're a part of the criminal investigation team - don't forget that."
Zhang Shuaipeng coldly said, "Show him out quickly and do not hinder our work."
Zhang Shuaipeng carefully picked up the shell casings, then drove out Murong and Ye Fei.
The door hadn’t even closed behind them before Zhang Shuaipeng was calling his boss to brag, "Director Zhou, I have found where the shooter fired from. Hah hah, well, we've found a major clue and we should be able to solve this case quickly. Thank youyou’re your concern, I promise to complete the task."
Seeing her credit robbed by Zhang Shuaipeng, Murong was so angry she kicked a cardboard crate lying around in the corridor with enough force that her shoe flew off her foot. She had to hop over on one foot to put it back on.
"Humph! We didn’t find a clue and we let those guys steal my credit," Murong grumbled.
"It’s only a few shell casings. The shooter left the shell casings behind because he was not afraid to be found by tracing this clue. Perhaps the shell casings were meant to lead us to a dead end."
Ye Fei smiled nonchalantly.
"What should we do now?" Murong looked to Ye Fei. She didn’t have any ideas.
Ye Fei thought for a while and said: "Interrogate the witnesses. However, since the shooter let them live, they certainly did not see anything important."
At that time, the two people who were attacked were being taken out on stretchers by a medical team. Neither one of them had any injuries, but they were in shock. Their eyes were erratic.
Murong walked over and asked a few words, before dejectedly returning. "Ye Fei, you are really clever. You were right, they said they couldn't clearly see the shooter. They could only see that it was a man in a hat, probably 1.8 meter tall."
"That's enough; let's go," Ye Fei lightly said.
"Where are we going?" Murong was puzzled.
Ye Fei glanced at Murong."To catch the shooter."
"We have no clue where to look, yet you say we're going to catch the shooter? Am I missing something?"
Murong couldn't believe her ears. Even if Ye Fei was extremely clever, he would have to know more information before he could catch the assasin.
The only description available was a man 1.8 meters tall wearing a cap. How could they find they the shooter based off of that information?
"Let's go to the nearest store and get their surveillance footage," Ye Fei said.
Murong didn’t have a better idea. "All right."
A member of the criminal investigation team had already made a copy of the surveillance footage from the neighborhood and Murong volunteered to take the surveillance copies back to the police station.
In the screening room of the police station, Murong turned on the computer and began watching the 100 hours of footage.
Close to the Ya Lai Group was a bustling commercial zone. Many of the shops were equipped with cameras, which would have been impossible for the shooter to avoid.
In other words, the shooter's figure had to be in the surveillance video.
The problem was that there was no need for the shooter to hide, because there were thousands of people walking up and down the street all the time.
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It was an impossible task to single him out from the crowd.
"Turn it on." Ye Fei looked confident.
Murong glanced at Ye Fei and turned on the projector.
The large screen showed the footage from the time of the shooting to half an hour afterward.
With surveillance footage from a hundred different businesses, even if they sat and watched day and night, it would still take them over four days to go through it all.
"It’s too slow; can you speed it up?" Ye Fei suddenly said.
"Of course." Murong increased the speed by half. The pedestrians on the screen started walking a little faster.
"Speed it up more."
"OK..."
Because the security camera footage quality was not very good, Murong already felt her eyes tire as she tried to keep up with the double speed.
"Still too slow. Just set it to the maximum speed," said Ye Fei.
"Ah? You think it’s still too slow?" Murong was surprised, "The highest is thirty-six times normal speed. Any more than that and the video quality will be too low to see anything clearly."
"Well, use the max speed anyway ." Ye Fei lightly said.
Murong increased the playback speed 36 times, and the silhouettes of the people in the street turned into blurry lines. Her eyes started to tear up a little as she struggled to make out any details.
However, Ye Fei just narrowed his eyes and watched carefully.
"36 times normal speed… Can you even see anything? Are you kidding me?"
Murong yawned and looked away from the screen. She secretly looked at Ye Fei. The mysterious Ye Fei was a lot more interesting than the blurry surveillance footage.
At thirty-six times the normal speed, it only took Ye Fei less than three hours to watch all one hundred hours of security footage.
By that time, Murong had fallen asleep on the desk, softly snoring.
"Murong."
Ye Fei suddenly slapped the table.
"Ah? Is dinner ready?" Murong jerked awake with some drool on her, but soon saw Ye Fei's smiling face.
"Well, I am hungry." Ye Fei's stomach was already growling.
"Let's go. I’ll buy you dinner, but you should know in advance – we’re going for Lanzhou noodles." Murong glanced at her flat purse.
"Lanzhou noodles. My favorite," Ye Fei smiled. During his mission abroad, he just ate compressed biscuits, canned food, dry food… that kind of tasteless stuff. It was a luxury to eat noodles, let alone Lanzhou noodles.
"But… we need to catch the shooter first." Ye Fei pointed to the screen, "Rewind to fifteen minutes and fifty seconds."
"You mean you found the shooter?" Murong was shocked.
"Not yet, but soon." Ye Fei had Murong rewind to an earlier timestamp and then slow down the footage. He carefully observed for a while. "Stop. I have confirmed it is him."
The footage froze. Ye Fei walked over and used a pen to draw a circle on the screen. There was a man inside.
Murong nervously zoomed in. That particular footage came from a decent camera, so the man’s features could still be more or less made out.
He was about 30 years old, about 1.8 meter tall, with tan skin. There was a huge bag on his back, but no cap.
To be honest, Murong couldn't see any particular difference between him and the other pedestrians on the street.
She looked at Ye Fei in amazement, "How do you know he's the assasin? Did you decide he was a bad man based on your female intuition?"
Ye Fei gave her an arrogant look, "You really believe you and I are the same?"