Police officer Chen Shu

Chapter 117 Wanwang Hotel
At 3:00 AM, on Shangqiao Road, at the Wanwang Hotel.

Chen Shu and Zhu Chaoran, dressed in police uniforms, entered the hotel and went straight to the front desk. If all went as expected, the staff member should be sleeping on a makeshift bed under the front desk, just like Xiao Wang, the dispatcher from the station.

It's not easy for any of them.

"Boom boom boom!"

Chen Shu tapped the front desk a few times.

A young woman lying under the front desk opened her lazy eyes, scratched her messy hair, stretched, yawned, and sat up from her cot in one go.

She wiped her eyes as she said, "The rooms are full today. There are no rooms available."

Chen Shu coughed twice: "I'm a police officer from Zhongshan Police Station. I'm here to check the surveillance footage."

The woman, seasoned by experience in hotels, remained unfazed, merely tilting her head back and slightly opening her eyes to squint: "Oh, okay."

She walked out from behind the front desk, led the group to a small room next door, and pointed to a computer on the table: "Password: 123456."

After saying that, he dragged his feet toward the front desk, showing no interest whatsoever in the police investigation. It was unclear whether he was used to it or just wanted to go back and get some more sleep.

Chen Shu sat down in front of the computer with practiced ease, turned on the main computer for monitoring the video, and began to review the surveillance footage according to the time provided by Liu Wanying.

Liu Wanying was already quite drunk when the incident occurred and couldn't remember the exact time, so Chen Shu could only start from the time she checked in, select the elevator surveillance footage, and watch it on high speed.

Zhu Chaoran initially squatted to the side, frowning as he watched for a long time. However, being naturally restless, he couldn't stand the loneliness and made an excuse to slip out of the small room.

The two most basic skills for police officers in handling cases are checking call records and reviewing surveillance footage.

While some techniques or skills may be used to review surveillance footage, these can only partially narrow down the scope. Ultimately, it still comes down to human eyes. If one person can't review it all, then several people should review it; if something isn't clear after one viewing, then it should be reviewed multiple times.

Watching videos isn't like watching a movie, where you can skip around. Some cases are so complex that you have to slow them down frame by frame and watch them carefully, keeping your eyes peeled.

A three-hour surveillance video recording of a crime can, under bad circumstances, take the police up to six hours to process. Furthermore, surveillance footage is often multi-faceted and multi-angled; for a single case, it might require reviewing all the nearby cameras, which doubles the time required.

The workload is enormous.

Therefore, larger police stations will set up a video investigation team specifically responsible for reviewing videos, in order to cooperate with public security police in combating illegal and criminal activities.

This case is relatively simple. It only happened in an elevator, so Chen Shu just needs to wait.

Half an hour later, a woman appeared in the video, completely naked except for a white bath towel. She entered from the sixth floor and exited from the second floor.

When Chen Shu was giving his statement, he was curious about what kind of woman would dare to run around in public wearing only a bathrobe.

He wiped his nose and continued watching.

Half an hour later, a middle-aged man entered the elevator from the first floor. When the elevator reached the second floor, Liu Wanying, still wrapped in a white bath towel, stepped into the elevator.

Chen Shu wasn't interested in what Liu Wanying had been doing on the second floor for the past half hour. He shifted his position, sat up straight, and knew the main event was about to begin.

In the video, Liu Wanying, upon entering the elevator, first nodded and smiled at the middle-aged man.

The two chatted face-to-face for a while. The surveillance camera could only record video, not audio. Chen Shu didn't know what they said; he could only judge their emotional state from the visuals.

The two appeared to be exchanging pleasantries.

Liu Wanying's movements were surprisingly, somewhat alluring?

The elevator soon stopped on the fifth floor. Liu Wanying's room was on the sixth floor, so the middle-aged man must have booked a room on the fifth floor.

The man walked to the middle of the elevator and the hallway, blocking the elevator door to prevent it from closing. He then turned around and waved repeatedly at Liu Wanying. Liu Wanying waved her hand in refusal, but still had a smile on her face. After a brief standoff, the man suddenly pounced on Liu Wanying, grabbed her neck with one hand and her waist with the other, and pulled her out of the elevator.

In just four or five seconds, the two figures disappeared from the surveillance video, and the elevator doors slowly closed, leaving the elevator empty.

During this process, Chen Shu saw that when Liu Wanying was being dragged away, she clearly grabbed the elevator door to resist being pulled by the middle-aged man.

He paused the video and watched the last moment Liu Wanying was pulled out of the elevator, her hands tightly gripping the elevator door. He made a decision.

They reviewed the surveillance footage from the fifth-floor corridor of the hotel for another half hour, confirmed the room where the middle-aged man had stayed, and took a photo of it, saving it to their phone.

Chen Shu took out his work USB drive and copied all the hotel surveillance videos from the previous night, including those from the elevator, each floor, and the lobby.

Stepping out of the small room, I saw Zhu Chaoran's massive body leaning over the hotel reception desk, peering inside.

Chen Shu walked up quietly, and the conversation between the two naturally reached his ears.

"Fatty, let me tell you."

Fatty? You've become so familiar with him in such a short time?

Chen Shu was surprised by Zhu Chaoran's flirting skills and secretly harbored the idea of ​​promoting them. For example, female bartenders in bars, female internet cafe managers, and female receptionists in hotels are all blatant sources of social information and the starting point for solving cases.

"Being a front desk clerk requires skill. When customers come in late at night, all lovey-dovey, I only sell them the most expensive suites, and tell them the others are all booked. I sell them every time! Every month when I calculate my commission, I always get the highest!"

Zhu Chaoran squeezed out his left hand and scratched his butt: "Impressive, you're really smart. Can you tell me why?"

"Hmph, isn't it because he's eager to do 'that'?"

The next topic was not suitable for children. Chen Shu coughed a few times and stepped forward to push Zhu Chaoran aside.

He took out his phone, pointed to the photo on the screen of a middle-aged man entering the room, and politely asked, "Young lady, what room is this on the fifth floor?"

The receptionist glanced at her phone and said coldly, "508."

"Could you please retrieve the occupancy and visitor information for this room?"

Chen Shu obtained the hotel's personnel information and compared it with the personnel information he had obtained from the police station's internal network before leaving the hotel.

Absolutely correct!

Xu Long, from Province X, is 47 years old.

You are the one!

Chen Shu took out his police mobile phone, entered Xu Long's ID card information, and pressed confirm.

Oh, he works at Connor Corporation, and his position is manager.

Chen Shu smiled coldly to himself, thinking, "It's all settled."

He pulled Zhu Chaoran, who looked reluctant to leave, and hurriedly walked out of the hotel. Suddenly, he felt dizzy, as if he hadn't slept for three days, and his eyelids felt as heavy as a ton of bricks.

Chen Shu rubbed his forehead and took a few breaths. He looked up at the horizon, where a sliver of light gradually appeared from the east.

Oh, it's dawn.

(End of this chapter)