Private Stash

Lu Zheng stopped typing.

He quickly pulled up the surveillance screenshots he had taken when he was checking the staff inside the logistics park, zoomed in on the images and compared them repeatedly, then suddenly stood up and projected one of the screenshots onto the large screen in the conference room.

In the video, a middle-aged man wearing dark blue overalls is standing next to the security booth at the entrance of the logistics park, his face turned to the side of the monitor. Although the old scar above his left eyebrow is somewhat blurred when the image is zoomed in, the outline is still clearly visible.

"This man is named Pan Guangtian, 46 years old. He works as a forklift mechanic at another freight transfer station in the Chengdong Logistics Park, and also takes on odd jobs maintaining equipment. He and Gong Jiafu work in the same logistics park. They not only know each other, but are also fellow villagers from Qingshipu Village in Shiqiao County, and often go back to their hometown together during holidays. After Gong Jiafu was murdered yesterday, Pan Guangtian went to work as usual and showed no unusual behavior. This afternoon we also checked his interrogation records—he voluntarily told the police that he hadn't seen Gong Jiafu all day yesterday and didn't know that Gong Jiafu had switched to the night shift. Other employees in the logistics park also gave their testimonies, saying that Pan Guangtian and Gong Jiafu had a very good relationship and always sat at the same table when eating in the canteen."

"He and Gong Jiafu are from the same place. Let's dig deeper into Pan Guangtian's background—how many bank accounts does he have? Have there been any large or unusual small transfers in the past six months? Has he been involved in logistics businesses other than freight transshipment?"

Jiang Ruolan stood up and walked to the whiteboard. She picked up a marker and drew a circle next to Pan Guangtian's name. Then she drew several lines outward from the circle and labeled them "Fellow Townsmen Relationship", "Internal Information of Logistics Park", "Equipment Maintenance Technology" and "Quick Disassembly of Hard Drive in Monitoring Room".

Lu Zheng responded and turned to call the Economic Crime Investigation Team.

Zhao Rui leaned closer and whispered to Jiang Ruolan:

"Pan Guangtian and Gong Jiafu are from the same hometown and worked together at the logistics park for several years. If he killed someone, what would his motive be?"

Jiang Ruolan drew a big question mark under Pan Guangtian's name on the whiteboard.

"Two possibilities. Either it's a personal grudge—Gong Jiafu knows some secret about Pan Guangtian, and Pan Guangtian has to silence him. Or it's a conflict of interest—Gong Jiafu is involved in something, and Pan Guangtian has to help someone else get rid of him. There's no clear evidence for the first possibility at the moment. Gong Jiafu is an honest person, without any bad habits like gambling, drug use, or borrowing, and his social relationships are simple. Pan Guangtian is the same; the two don't even play mahjong, so there's no gambling debt dispute. The second possibility is more reasonable. Pan Guangtian's background and modus operandi point to him being hired to carry out this murder. The prying away of the surveillance host, the preparation of the cable ties and towels, the advance reconnaissance, and the use of a disposable phone number—these are not impulsive crimes of passion, but premeditated, organized, and planned executions. Who is his employer, what is Gong Jiafu involved in, and what exactly was recorded on the stolen surveillance hard drive—these are the key questions."

After pondering for a moment, Zhao Rui proposed a new idea:

"What if Gong Jiafu, taking advantage of his night shift at the logistics park, colluded with someone to transfer contraband? The logistics park's freight transfer station sees a large volume of goods coming and going every day. Some containers aren't even opened for inspection; they're simply left in the warehouse overnight, waiting to be transferred the next day. If a container contains smuggled goods or drugs, the forklift operator on night shift would be the ideal inside man. Gong Jiafu might be doing this for someone—opening containers, transferring goods, resealing them—and then being silenced because of a dispute over the spoils or because his employer suspected him of being unreliable. The person who contacted him using a disposable number would be the middleman responsible for this one-way communication."

Jiang Ruolan wrote the words "Contraband Transit" on the whiteboard and drew a horizontal line below it.

"Investigate all freight bills and warehouse entry/exit records for Gong Jiafu's night shifts over the past three months, focusing on those that entered at night, left in the early morning, or had unclear consignees or senders/receivers or provided false contact information. Additionally, retrieve Pan Guangtian's bank statements and mobile phone records for the past six months to see if he frequently contacted anyone other than Gong Jiafu outside of working hours. If he truly used the logistics park's internal scheduling information to provide the employer with Gong Jiafu's shift patterns, he must have had multiple non-work-related communications with the employer before the incident."

After daybreak, further progress was made in various peripheral investigations.

When Lu Zheng went to Gong Jiafu's house to take a statement from the family members, Gong's wife took out a small cloth bag wrapped in old newspapers from the bottom drawer of the bedroom wardrobe and handed it to Lu Zheng.

The cloth bag contained 20,000 yuan in cash, all brand new bills, and even the bank's binding tape was still there.

Gong's wife said she didn't know where the money came from; Gong Jiafu had never mentioned it to her. He handed over his monthly salary on time and never hid any money from his family. Twenty thousand yuan was a huge sum for them, so much so that her hands trembled when she first saw it.

Lu Zheng took the 20,000 yuan back to the Municipal Bureau and handed it over to the Technical Section.

The economic crime investigation team quickly found the withdrawal record of the money—three days ago, 20,000 yuan was withdrawn in four separate transactions from an ATM of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in the eastern part of the city.

The person who withdrew the money was not Gong Jiafu himself, but Pan Guangtian.

The surveillance footage clearly captured Pan Guangtian standing in front of the ATM withdrawing money. He didn't even try to cover himself up, as if he were just withdrawing a perfectly normal sum of money for a friend.

After withdrawing the money, he went directly to the logistics park and handed the money over to Gong Jiafu on the same day.

Meanwhile, Zhao Rui led his men to conduct a thorough search of the rented house where Pan Guangtian lived.

A black plastic bag was found under the bed, containing a set of dark work clothes and a pair of dusty rubber shoes.

A small number of dark red stains were found on the cuffs of the work uniform. A rapid on-site test showed a positive result, and the sample has been sent to the provincial department for DNA comparison.

There was also a photo tucked inside the mattress—Pan Guangtian is embracing a young woman in the background, with the entrance of the Chengdong Logistics Park in the background, and the two are smiling naturally at the camera.

Zhao Rui took the photo to the people at the logistics park for identification. They confirmed that the woman in the photo was Su Ping, a dispatcher in the logistics park's freight dispatching room. She was 32 years old, married, and her husband worked in another city.

Colleagues said that the relationship between Pan Guangtian and Su Ping was an open secret in the logistics park. The two often ate together in the cafeteria and walked together after get off work.

............