Chapter 639
Reaching a Stalemate
Chapter 639 Reaching a Stalemate
The lights at the Binjiang Road Police Station in Anning County are the color of old-fashioned fluorescent lights, white with a thin layer of blue, shining on the blue plastic chairs and benches.
The air was filled with the mixed smell of instant noodles and printer toner.
The work of the police station mostly involves trivial matters: a young couple fighting, an old lady's cat going missing, strangers getting into an argument...
Busy and ordinary, yet full of life.
But today, the Binjiang Road Police Station has encountered a major case!
The director, who was off duty, and the deputy director, who was on annual leave, all rushed over without stopping.
The Guo family sat in an office, handling every detail of the matter.
The deputy director and the director exchanged a glance, their eyes filled with undisguised excitement.
They weren't doing it out of a desire for advancement; they simply wanted to bring glory to their country.
The deputy director picked up the landline and dialed a short number: "Old Liu, take two men and go to the county square. There's a guy named Charlie who's doing beverage promotions. His warehouse is on the back street of the farmers' market. Check the goods in his warehouse."
The person on the other end of the phone responded.
The deputy director dialed a second number, this time a longer one, a number from a different region.
"Is this Shanghai? This is the Anning County Police Station in Liaoyang. We need your assistance with a situation."
The next morning, two unmarked vehicles were parked in front of a row of temporary warehouses on the back street of the Anning County Farmers Market.
When Lao Liu and his men opened the door to Charlie's warehouse, numbered B-07, sunlight streamed in from below the roller shutter, illuminating the neatly stacked cardboard boxes.
Old Liu takes this mission very seriously.
He didn't touch the cardboard boxes, but instead had the accompanying technicians draw one bottle from each of the different batches of boxes, a total of twelve bottles. They were then numbered, sealed, and signed, with the red indicator light on the body camera throughout the process.
As he was leaving the warehouse, Lao Liu thought for a moment, then called his wife and asked her to line up for drinks. He also borrowed four or five bottles from the neighbors.
At the same time, a police station in Shanghai received a sketch portrait from a police station in Anning County.
Technicians use the Xinbao app to convert the sketches into 3D images, and then use the Tianyan system to search and track them.
"Boss, Shanghai has a huge flow of people. It will take at least five days to find the woman's whereabouts."
"Okay, let's search our household registration system first. Fortunately, we entered the images and fingerprints uniformly before the New Year, which will save us a lot of work."
"Okay." With Teacher Xinbao added to the new household registration system, the efficiency is off the charts.
In less than ten minutes, the woman's comparison with the household registration system was completed.
"Report: No information found for this woman."
Those are outsiders...
The director ordered takeout for the technicians: "This concerns national security, so let's pay attention. Once we confirm it's a case, we can hand it over to the security bureau."
Three days later, the test results came out.
The twelve bottles of beverages, each with its ingredient spectrum printed on an A4 sheet of paper, stacked up to be half a finger thick.
The levels of sugar, citric acid, vitamin C, beta-carotene, and flavoring all meet national standards, with no trace levels exceeding the limits.
After comparison and identification by cultural heritage protection departments and religious research institutes, the symbol was confirmed to be a variant of the Sanskrit seed syllable in Buddhism.
The Siddham script form of the Sanskrit word "bija" is often used in Chinese Esoteric Buddhist scriptures to represent "seed," meaning the seed of Buddhahood, the seed of mind, or the seed of enlightenment.
The symbol itself has no meaning beyond the realm of religion. As for the middle-aged woman, the Shanghai police retrieved public surveillance footage from the area around the City God Temple and the school, obtaining seven valid clips.
The people in the picture are dressed simply and act calmly. From entering the frame to leaving the frame, all their actions unfold normally in the public eye.
Due to the varying progress of the national household registration intelligent system, it will take several more days to determine the woman's identity.
The results from both sides were placed on the deputy director's desk, along with the test reports, surveillance screenshots, and the appraisal opinion from the Institute of Religious Studies, all packed into a manila envelope.
The sealing string of the file folder was wrapped around the round buckle, but it wasn't tied tightly yet.
The results of this inspection were like a bucket of cold water, extinguishing the enthusiasm of everyone at the police station.
Everyone felt extremely disheartened.
They couldn't find any problems!
This shouldn't be the result.
Old Liu smoked one cigarette after another. His work experience told him that there weren't that many coincidences in the world. If there were too many coincidences, it must have been deliberately arranged!
But the drinks are fine, the candy is fine, the symbols are fine, the identity is fine, so what could be the problem?
More importantly, what about the motivation?
Everything has a purpose. What is their purpose in giving things away for free?
Could it be that someone is hiding among the crowd, taking the opportunity to pass on a message?
But isn't the cost of doing this too high? What important news could warrant such a grand mobilization?
Everyone frowned, looking extremely worried.
Criminal Investigation Captain: "Where's the candy wrapper that the child mentioned?"
"We tested it too. It's just ordinary candy wrapper. The printing ink meets food contact material standards. The foreign letters on it are the company's trademark and address; there's no hidden information."
The deputy director leaned back in his chair.
Outside the window, sunlight shines on the old locust tree in the police station courtyard, and the locust blossoms sway gently in the wind.
In the courtyard, a policeman was wiping the windshield of a police car. The rag was drawing circles on the glass, making the sunlight blurry and swirling.
The work has reached a stalemate, and all the evidence points to the same conclusion: there is no problem.
Charlie is an American businessman who runs a legitimate beverage business, and the middle-aged woman is an ordinary Buddhist who drew a symbol on the sycamore tree that is an ancient religious script.
The candy she handed out was just candy, and the drinks Charlie promoted were just drinks.
Every reason the Guo family gave for calling the police was logically explained, and every link in the chain was perfectly connected.
The deputy director puffed on his cigarette; he had risen through the ranks from the front lines.
His intuition told him that there was definitely something wrong with these two.
Unfortunately, we live in a society governed by the rule of law. Otherwise, if they arrested these two and used some methods, even the most stubborn mouths could be pried open.
He sighed, tightened the sealing string on the file folder, tied a knot on the round buckle, picked up a pen, wrote the date and number on the front of the file folder, and added a line of small print in the remarks column: "No abnormalities found yet, continue to observe."
Guo Lidong and his family have been following the matter closely since reporting it to the police.
It's been almost a week, and Charlie is still handing out free drinks in the square, seemingly without any unusual activity.
"What's going on? Is he really alright?" Guo Lidong came to queue up again after get off work.
When Charlie saw him, he smiled and said, "Is Lele Goo delicious?"
Guo Lidong's heart tightened, but he said without changing his expression, "Yes, my son drank it all."