Chapter 461: Remember This Car!

Chapter 461: Remember This Car!

Li Ruobing leaned back against the headboard and settled the open laptop on her lap.

She pulled up the surveillance footage.

“Now what?” she asked, turning to Wu Chen.

Wu Chen had sat up too. Close beside her, he tilted his head toward the screen and smiled. “Drag the progress bar to just before the truck left the parking lot. It left at around 7:15 p.m.”

Li Ruobing moved the slider, but her brows drew together slightly, and she looked back at him. “Why? We don’t need to watch any of what comes before?”

The footage tracking the truck covered a span of nine hours.

Starting at 7:15 last night meant skipping more than seven hours of it entirely.

True, the truck had spent most of those seven-plus hours inside the parking lot.

But there was also the footage of the truck on the road around noon yesterday, when it had driven to the lot.

“You don’t need it. I can just tell you,” Wu Chen said.

“Can you… explain it clearly?” Li Ruobing didn’t seem to follow. She still hoped that whatever he had seen or noticed, he could point out to her directly.

“Fine… Go back to noon yesterday. Find any shot of the truck passing through an intersection,” Wu Chen said.

Li Ruobing turned back to the laptop and dragged the slider back.

At 11:49 a.m. yesterday, the heavy truck had passed through the intersection of Nanjiao Second Road and Chuanmin Avenue in the southern outskirts of Dongpu District. Li Ruobing let it play for a moment, then paused.

The image showed a man in a gray top at the wheel. He wore a baseball cap and sunglasses. The passenger seat was empty.

The sunglasses were large enough to cover half his face.

A heavy truck’s windshield sat fairly upright, so unless the truck was driving into the sun at a particular angle, it didn’t throw much glare on traffic cameras.

The man inside could be vaguely made out.

“Remember this image.” Wu Chen glanced at the screen. The windshield happened to be free of glare, and the driver was visible.

Li Ruobing studied it carefully. She had no idea what exactly he wanted her to remember, so she took out her phone and snapped a photo of the screen.

“Now move to after 7:15 p.m. Find a shot of the truck passing an intersection after it left the lot,” Wu Chen said.

She did as he said.

At 7:18 p.m., not long after leaving the parking lot, the truck passed through a small intersection and was caught by a traffic camera.

No sunlight, only streetlights. No glare. The driver was visible.

“Compare the drivers. What’s different?” Wu Chen asked.

Phone in hand, Li Ruobing looked back and forth between the photo she’d just taken and the frame paused on the laptop.

“This… the driver isn’t wearing sunglasses, because it’s night, but he’s got a baseball cap and a mask… He’s wearing gloves, too.” Her eyes moved between the two again and again, and she spoke slowly.

“What else?” Wu Chen asked, smiling.

“What else…” She kept looking from one to the other but couldn’t really see anything.

“Looks like you really aren’t cut out for detective work.” Wu Chen laughed. “His posture is different.”

“His posture?!” Li Ruobing froze.

How many ways could a person possibly sit while driving? How different could it be?

She looked at the screen again, then at her phone, comparing.

It was an incredibly fine detail!

“The seat in a heavy truck like this adjusts forward and back, up and down,” Wu Chen explained. “Say two people of different heights drive the same truck, one after the other…

“If the second one adjusts the seat, then however he changes the height or position, the difference in body proportions will still make him look different on camera.

“If he doesn’t adjust it, then because they’re different heights, he’ll sit visibly higher or lower…

“So unless the two have exactly the same build and height, adjusted or not, there’s always going to be some visible difference.”

A heavy truck’s windshield was especially broad, which meant the cameras caught more of the driver’s body, too.

Li Ruobing compared the two images carefully for a good ten seconds. At last she saw it. There did seem to be a difference. The second man sat a little farther back.

“You mean they switched drivers?” she asked, turning to him.

“Right!” Wu Chen nodded.

Li Ruobing looked between the laptop and her phone again and murmured, “But the clothes are the same…”

“So do you think the real truck driver is still alive? Think anyone will find him?” Wu Chen asked with a smile.

Li Ruobing went still for a second, and then it clicked!

“You mean the truck was stolen! Or hijacked! They killed the real driver and hid him somewhere, and the killer put on his clothes?” she asked, turning to him.

“That’s the safest way to do it.” Wu Chen nodded. “Go to a public lot full of trucks, pick a suitable one at random, find some way to lure the driver somewhere deserted, jump him and subdue him, take the keys, change into his clothes…

“After Mao Rusong’s crash, the first person anyone would trace is the truck driver… If he’s vanished, the trail goes cold.

“Random crimes against strangers, with no money, no love affair, and no grudge involved, have always been the hardest cases to crack.

“Unless there’s an eyewitness, or the lot’s own cameras caught something, no one will ever work it out!”

Li Ruobing finally understood why he had skipped those first seven-plus hours.

The man driving before that was the truck’s real driver. He might already be dead. He wasn’t the killer, so there was no point studying him.

And whatever had happened inside the lot was beyond the reach of the traffic cameras outside, so naturally he had skipped all of that too.

“Take the video to just before 7:15 last night.”

“Then back another hour.”

“Play it at ten times speed!”

Between 6:15 and 7:15 p.m. the night before, a fair number of vehicles had passed in and out of the public lot’s gate.

Plenty of trucks, along with sedans, vans, and the like.

All ordinary vehicles. Luxury cars didn’t come to park in a place like that.

Entering the lot meant slowing and stopping while the camera automatically read and logged the plate, then waiting for the barrier to lift.

Leaving meant not only waiting for the barrier but paying the fee as well. So even at ten times speed, in theory, they couldn’t miss a single vehicle going in or out.

Every one of them was bound to be caught by the traffic camera outside the gate.

“Stop!” Wu Chen said suddenly.

Eyes on the screen, Li Ruobing hit the space bar.

The video paused.

6:43 p.m. yesterday.

On screen, a battered old white Santana was about to pull into the lot.

“Remember this car,” Wu Chen said. Li Ruobing took a photo with her phone.

They played on.

Still at ten times speed.

At around 7:10, the white Santana, which had gone in less than half an hour earlier, left the lot again.

At 7:15, the truck left.

Since the compilation tracked the truck, everything that followed showed it passing through intersections and monitored stretches of road.

At 7:35, the truck turned onto Tongjiang Avenue, where trucks were banned outright.

Pause!

“See this black sedan at the roadside? Remember it.” Wu Chen pointed at the screen. Li Ruobing took a photo and resumed playback.

At 7:41, the truck pulled over and parked illegally.

At 7:44, a gray van pulled over on the opposite side of the street. No one got out.

“Remember this gray van.”

At 7:46, after five minutes at the curb, the truck set off again.

At 7:48, passing through the Tianshui South Road intersection, it ran the red light and slammed into the Rolls-Royce.

Li Ruobing dragged the slider and switched straight to the footage of Mao Rusong’s convoy after it left the restaurant.

At 7:25 last night, the convoy appeared on Dongpu Second Avenue. Traffic was heavy, with cars ahead, behind, and on both sides.

Click!

Wu Chen paused the video and pointed.

“Remember this black sedan. This one, diagonally behind Mao Rusong’s convoy.”

Photo. Play.

At 7:28, the convoy turned off Dongpu Second Avenue onto Xinlan Avenue in Dongpu. The black sedan carried straight on, while a red sedan parked at the curb on Xinlan Avenue started up and fell in behind the convoy.

“Remember this red sedan.”

At 7:34, the convoy turned onto Shihua Avenue.

“Remember this gray MPV.”

At 7:40, the convoy turned onto Tianshui North Road.

“Remember this black SUV.”

At 7:48, as the convoy passed through the intersection of Tianshui South Road and Tongjiang Avenue, the Rolls-Royce was hit.

“That’s it!” Wu Chen paused the video again, looking as though the whole thing had been neatly wrapped up.

Li Ruobing looked at him. She had expected him to ask her to compare something else, but the more she watched, the more lost she got.

It was as though he had picked cars at random from the streets full of traffic along the routes of the truck and the convoy and simply told her to remember them!

“And?” she asked.