Animal Detective-Chapter 53: Sending a Silk Banner

A 10-yuan fast-food joint on the side of the street.

It was the start of the dinner rush, and the place was clearly doing a brisk business. With a constant stream of people coming and going, there wasn’t a single empty seat in the small restaurant.

Shen Xin was in his full five-piece police uniform. The moment he appeared, the bustling fast-food joint quieted down considerably.

More than a few people instinctively glanced over at Shen Xin.

Shen Xin was just there to buy food.

The auxiliary officer with him, Old Zhou, knew his way around. He was even on familiar terms with the lady boss. He turned his head and asked Shen Xin how many meat and vegetable dishes he wanted.

Shen Xin wasn’t picky about food, so he just ordered a random meal. Seeing how crowded the shop was, he decided to get it to-go and eat back in the squad car.

"This place is pretty good. Cheap and you get your money’s worth," Old Zhou remarked as he started digging in.

He’d been dispatched just after eight and had been running around until now, past eleven. He was genuinely getting hungry.

Shen Xin was doing okay. He ate while replaying the recent dispatch call in his mind.

At 8:40, while on patrol, he’d received a dispatch order from the call center and rushed to the street-level shops of Jinmei Garden on Xin Nan Road.

The caller was the owner of a place called Lianxin Clinic.

He usually opened at 8:30, but when he arrived today, he discovered the clinic had been vandalized.

The glass door was shattered, with only the door handle remaining intact.

Moreover, the perpetrator hadn’t just smashed the door; they’d also hurled a brick at the glass counter displaying the medications.

After responding to the call, Shen Xin found a total of three bricks at the scene.

Shen Xin had handled cases like this before with Li Dongsheng; there was a fairly standard procedure.

Register the reporting party’s information, document the damages at the scene.

The investigation typically involved asking the reporting party if they had made any enemies, followed by retrieving and reviewing footage from nearby security cameras.

In all likelihood, the culprit would be found.

Finally, it was just a matter of procedure: compensation, detention.

These were generally public order offenses, not quite rising to the level of felony intentional destruction of property.

The station handled cases like this frequently, so it was familiar territory for Shen Xin.

But this case today was particularly unlucky.

The clinic was tucked into a corner at the end of the complex’s ground-floor retail area. There was a security camera thirty meters away, but it faced the other direction, capturing only a tiny sliver of its storefront.

So if you stood outside the clinic, say, five meters away, and hurled bricks at it, the camera wouldn’t capture you.

The clinic had its own camera, but it was pointed inward and couldn’t capture the exterior either.

The footage showed that at 2:17 AM, someone had hurled three bricks at the clinic in quick succession.

Shen Xin and Old Zhou went to check the surveillance footage from nearby shops, but they came up empty there as well.

Shen Xin speculated that the suspect had crossed the road opposite the clinic, climbing over the median greenbelt.

So they rushed over to the traffic police department to pull footage from the traffic cameras on that road.

Still nothing. Around 2:17 AM, only a single truck had passed along that small road, and it hadn’t even stopped.

For now, all they could do was let the owner clean up his shop, determine his losses, and tell him they would follow up on the investigation later.

In the time it took to finish up there and drive over to get lunch, Shen Xin had been replaying the details of the scene in his mind and had come to a new conclusion.

The suspect was likely very familiar with the area.

Shen Xin mentally traced a route that would allow someone to avoid almost all of the security cameras.

One could come from the road to the south, follow the sidewalk to the intersection, turn north, continue along the sidewalk, and then cut across the greenbelt.

The clinic faced east. Throw the bricks, and then make a getaway.

Only someone intimately familiar with the surroundings would know how to use that route to evade the cameras.

As he was lost in thought, Old Zhou suddenly spoke up beside him. "Xiaoshen, you think this stuff actually works?"

He was holding a business card in his hand.

The clinic owner had pressed it into his hand.

It was crudely printed with a bold slogan: "Ancestral Formula, Restore Your Vigor."

The clinic had been open for about six months. It treated minor ailments like headaches and fevers, of course, but its main line of business was medication for men’s health.

During their interviews, the other shop owners had mentioned that the clinic’s business was fantastic. There were so many people coming to buy medicine that they often couldn’t even find parking.

People even came all the way from neighboring towns, driving dozens of kilometers to buy the medicine.

A true miracle drug; everyone who used it raved about it.

So, seeing Old Zhou’s interest, the enterprising owner had insisted on giving him a business card.

He’d tried to give one to Shen Xin as well, but Shen Xin had sternly refused.

’At my age, I have absolutely no need for it, thank you very much.’

"You actually believe this stuff?" Shen Xin retorted, snapping out of his thoughts with a wry smile.

Old Zhou had to be around 41 this year, a man in his middle age.

Besides, the work of an auxiliary officer was hard and exhausting. He’d been at it for over a decade, so it was understandable if his stamina was flagging.

Old Zhou sensed something off about Shen Xin’s gaze and said, trying to cover his embarrassment, "I’m just curious, that’s all. It’s not like I can’t perform, you know."

"I get it."

Shen Xin gave a knowing smile. ’What man would ever have the guts to admit he can’t perform?’

"Just be sure you think it through. It’s pretty expensive."

Shen Xin had seen the pricing. The medicine came in pill form, supposedly made with an "ancient method" by decocting a dozen or so precious medicinal ingredients. One course of treatment cost 2,399.

The medicine was divided into two types. One was a black pill for long-term consumption, with 30 pills per course, meant to build up one’s core vitality.

This was paired with a small red pill, with 15 pills provided per course.

This one was to be taken an hour before "the activity" to prevent the loss of one’s vital essence during the process.

Drugs like this existed in a regulatory gray area. They were basically the medicinal equivalent of those little ads plastered on telephone poles—almost always a scam.

Old Zhou, however, seemed genuinely interested. He muttered, "It’s a little pricey, yeah, but if it works, it’d be worth it."

And it wasn’t just hearsay from the neighboring shop owners.

The two of them had been investigating at the clinic for a long time, and in just that one morning, they’d already seen three different customers come in to make a purchase.

One of them, a guy who drove a Mercedes, bought three full courses of treatment at once.

In a single morning, sales had already surpassed ten thousand yuan.

If the cost of goods was even half of that, the owner’s profit from one morning was already more than Old Zhou’s entire monthly salary.

This, in turn, seemed to prove that the medicine might actually be effective—a true miracle drug.

Shen Xin chuckled and offered a reminder, "You’d be better off just getting more exercise."

Old Zhou said he’d like to, but as an auxiliary officer, he never had the time.

Shen Xin was about to say something else when he suddenly got a call.

It was Song Liang.

"Xiaoshen, hurry up and get over to the sub-bureau. The Political Division is looking for you," Song Liang said, his voice urgent.

"The Political Division?"

Shen Xin was taken aback.

The Political Division was primarily in charge of publicity, but it also handled personnel management and police affairs for the entire bureau.

In short, they managed all core personnel matters: appointments and dismissals, promotions, performance reviews, and awards.

"Song Suo, is this good news or bad news?" Shen Xin asked cautiously.

A summons from the Political Division could be good news, but more often than not, it was bad.

Song Liang laughed. "What kind of question is that? Don’t you know what you did? It’s good news. Great news! Someone sent a silk banner for you."

He then added with a sigh, "Someone clearly gave them a tip. They sent the banner straight to the sub-bureau’s Political Division."

It was like sending a banner for a doctor—the best way to do it was to send it straight to the medical ethics office. For a rank-and-file officer, the best move was always to send a banner directly to the Political Division of their superior’s department.

If you give it to the individual, it doesn’t do much good beyond a post on social media.

But sending it to their superiors, especially the Political Division in charge of publicity, had a completely different effect.

For one thing, an internal commendation was practically guaranteed. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Plus, it puts your name on the leadership’s radar, which is far more useful than any number of social media posts.

"Holy crap, Song Suo... It couldn’t be Uncle Wu, could it?" A thought struck Shen Xin, and he blurted it out.

Of all the recent cases he had handled, the person most likely to send a banner was Wu Zhicun.

’The key is, why did he send it to the sub-bureau?’

’They say it’s good to send it to the sub-bureau’s Political Division, but the problem is, the case *was* a sub-bureau case!’

’Sending a banner to the sub-bureau seems like it’s helping me...’

’...but what about Chen Chao and Sun Zhao from the sub-bureau? How does this make them look?’

’They were the lead officers on the case!’