Chapter 83 - A Mole?
When Xu Binchen received the urgent call which demanded all of the members to return, his left eye twitched. Then, when he arrived at the police bureau and found only Jin Renguang, Ru Meiqi, Tang Wei and Ke Shao in there, he only looked surprised for a moment before returning to his usual coolness. "Captain," he greeted.
"You're here?" Jin Renguang grunted and took the initiative to walk into his office, Ru Meiqi trailing behind him. Xu Binchen, Tang Wei and Ke Shao looked at each other. Xu Binchen's gaze was inquiring, Ke Shao pretended not to see anything while Tang Wei looked like he had just swallowed a fly.
The five of them crowded inside Jin Renguang's office. Except for Ru Meiqi, this was the first time for the other three to enter this personal space of his, but when the door closed behind them, they didn't look around curiously and stood in attention.
Jin Renguang rapped his fingers on his mahogany table in rhythmic knocking and didn't speak for a moment. Meanwhile, Ru Meiqi miraculously pulled out a bug detector from her bag and started to scan the room. Xu Binchen's heart sank and a faint doubt appeared in his mind.
After finishing a round and no alarm came out, Ru Meiqi nodded and her expression finally eased.
Jin Renguang turned to them. "Remember, this meeting is confidential. Even if your spouse asks you for it, you have to pretend not to know anything."
Tang Wei pushed his glasses up. "Don't worry, Captain. Everyone in our unit is single."
Jin Renguang: "…" Ah yes, he forgot he led a bunch of single dogs.
"Anyway," he cleared his throat and looked at Xu Binchen. "Did anyone know that you're coming here?"
"I told Butterfly," Xu Binchen said without missing a beat. "And no one else."
Jin Renguang looked at him with a perplexed look. Then, he pondered for a while and decided not to say anything. "Well, so be it. Maybe this is for the best."
Xu Binchen's brows knitted. "Is there a spy?" He wasn't stupid. The moment he found that something wasn't right, this was the first possibility that popped up in his mind. His face darkened as black as the bottom of a pan. "In our team? What happened?"
"It's not for sure yet," Ru Meiqi answered. "For now, it's just a suspicion and we are the only ones who are aware of it. But of course, we can't exclude that possibility. That's why we are taking caution for this meeting."
Between the five of them, it was only Xu Binchen who had no idea of what had happened yet. Tang Wei explained with a green face. "I have tracked down the IP address of the website." He opened the laptop in his arms which showed a map of the area around with a red dot blinking at the building which pointed to the City A Police Bureau. "It shows that the website comes from our station. Captain, what happened? How can this happen...?"
The problem of a mole in the police station had always happened in movie blockbusters and action dramas. They didn't expect that it would actually happen in reality. This was the first time for them to face something like that and each of their faces showed loss and confusion.
Jin Renguang got a headache. It was only a single case of a mass serial killer, why did something like this pop up? What did the culprit have to do with the police? If…If all these times, they were actually in cahoots…Jin Renguang almost let out a string of curses, then what had they been doing for more than a year?!
Ru Meiqi rubbed her chin and actually was the calmest person in the room. "Comrade Tang, can you check which computer it came from? If it's the computer in the offices, then we could be certain that there's indeed a mole but if it's the computer in public area, then the possibility will expand. This website creator could have been someone who has come to the police station before and if he's shrewd and meticulous, then it wasn't impossible for him to seize a chance to use the computer for a while."
Tang Wei's eyes lit up like headlights. "Yes, yes, you're right! It could have been someone else." He would rather the culprit being someone with a high IQ rather than facing a betrayal from his comrades. "I will try to track it down but I am not sure. After all, this is Wang Chengbing's area of expertise."
Ke Shao turned to Jin Renguang who didn't give any reaction whatsoever. "…you don't trust little fatty either?"
Jin Renguang lowered his gaze, no one knew what was on his mind. "There's one thing that I can't understand no matter how hard I think about it. For all the time we spent to chase the suspect, why…every single time without fail, can he escape? He didn't leave any trace in the dumping scene, no surveillance record either, it was such a perfect crime if not for him throwing the body parts in public spaces."
The group was stunned. He was right. If the serial killer didn't haughtily dump the body part, could they have known that there's a homicide? At most, they would just treat it as a case of missing person and then, it would be taken care of by the public security bureau. Then, the case wouldn't have landed on their hands.
Jin Renguang lifted his eyes and looked at them one by one somberly. "If—by chance—there's a possibility that someone is the mole in our team, then everything will be explained." How the suspect always had been one step ahead of them, how he could successfully evade them every single time, how he didn't have to be scared of them because he had a secure protection that guaranteed his safety.
Xu Binchen's head whirled. He had always been the one with the coolest head in their team. In the face of possible betrayal from the comrades who had been working with him for years, he started to analyse. "At the beginning, we didn't have any leads to the suspect and it was the technical team who scouted through countless surveillance records and pulled out the suspect's silhouettes, enlightening us of the suspect's gender. However, after that, the suspect hasn't left anything behind anymore which we can conclude as a momentary mistake for his first crime."
"After that we chased after the victim's body parts from City S to here, leading us to the suspect's trail. Subsequently, we found Butterfly who was the only victim alive. During Butterfly's treatment in the hospital, the people who interact with her can be counted in single digits. The doctors, nurses, police officers and other patients with the maximum number of two."
The more Xu Binchen said it, the clearer his mind became as if the fog covering his mind was being swept away, giving him a wide look of reality. "The suspect came to Butterfly, but the technical team found that the surveillance record was being tampered. Then, we came across Mr.Yu Chuan whose bag was being used by the suspect."
If it was the first person who had his hands on the surveillance record…he could have erased them before the police found out. It was the same with every single dumping scene, or the tampered CCTV in the hospital, or even when they scouted for days and nights to search for the suspicious people in the Recreational Park.
Ke Shao's brain came online and he followed. "At that time, he was the one who found Mr.Yu Chuan and subsequently, we focused our investigation on him. If...If at that time we followed through with the investigation, could we have found anything else?"
Tang Wei's face turned pale. "Impossible! He—He..." Even if Tang Wei wanted to rebute, he didn't know what to say. If that was the truth, then everything would be explained. Because that person was always the first who gave them evidence. From the culprit's gender to the tampered surveillance record in the hospital as well as Mr.Yu Chuan and the incident with the IP address…
There was only one person who could do it.
Wang Chengbing.