Reborn Cat Sheriff

Chapter 28 Little Kitten
Lin Ge hid in a tree not far away, quietly watching the police officers below grumbling.

Despite their complaints, not a single police officer actually chose to refuse or find an excuse to leave.

After seeing the bloodstains by the roadside, everyone agreed with Team Leader Wu's assessment that the rotten orange grove was where the criminals buried evidence. Therefore, it was only natural to uncover all the secrets hidden within.

As for the harsh environment, like a mountain of knives and a sea of ​​fire?
As a police officer, you may be unwilling, but you still have to go when you need to.

Several policemen rolled up their sleeves and tried to move a few steps toward the edge of the ditch. The ground around the edge of the ditch was still solid soil, and there weren't many rotten oranges on it. It was walkable, but the smell was extremely unpleasant.

One of them, who was holding a camera, used a telephoto lens to search inside the ditch. After taking a picture, he turned back to Wu Chun and reported that he had indeed found footprints that looked fairly clear and had not been filled in, indicating that someone had walked on them.

This basically confirms it.

Even the island farmers who deal with rotten oranges every year don't go deep into the rotten pit. They usually just dump the oranges at the edge, letting them rot into a liquid and flow into the pit on their own.

Wu Chun and Nie Guoqiang exchanged a glance and shook their heads in unison.

Both men understood each other's meaning. Wu Chun helplessly pointed at Nie Guoqiang and turned to go to a quiet place to make a phone call. Nie Guoqiang, on the other hand, asked Li Yiduo to deploy the drone to see if they could find more valuable clues at closer range.

The drone took off, making the police officers in the task force look on with envy.

Ignoring the sophistication of the drones and the search formation of four taking off at once, just looking at the control panel display in front of Li Yiduo, one could tell that these things were definitely not cheap, and certainly not public property that the police station could afford or dare to buy.

In other words, this young man was actually someone who had brought his own funding to the job, and he was only an auxiliary police officer!
The Zhanghe Police Station is truly corrupt!

Everyone shook their heads.

With this tool around, the young auxiliary police officer probably didn't need to go down into the ditch, and he escaped a disaster.

Lin Ge curiously approached Li Yiduo, his eyes fixed on the ultra-high-definition screen displaying a scene so disgusting it was almost nauseating. The clarity of the image was so striking that the fuzzy mold on the orange peel and the countless tiny insects clinging to the rotten oranges were clearly visible, sending chills down his spine. Lin Ge wondered what the person who chose this spot as a dumping ground for rotten fruit was thinking. Couldn't they at least choose a location with sufficient sunlight? While this pit was deep and sheltered from the wind, preventing the odor from spreading, it also lacked sunlight, causing the decomposition rate of the discarded material to lag behind the rate of disposal, accumulating more and more over time.

"Ugh... The person who made this should at least spend a few days in jail this time, and be fined until it hurts!"

Li Yiduo couldn't help but gag, turning his head to look at the sky to ease the spasming muscles in his throat.

'Snapped! '

Suddenly, Lin Ge slapped Li Yiduo's hand, which was operating the drone, nearly causing it to crash out of control.

"Mimi, stop messing around, eh..."

Just as Li Yiduo was about to stop it, he suddenly noticed something unusual on the screen.

In the scene he almost missed, something was struggling, causing the surrounding mud to ripple and shake.

Li Yiduo quickly adjusted the drone to return, flying back to the vicinity of the abnormal scene.

This time he could finally see clearly; it was a tiny cat's head, deeply embedded in the mud. Its head was covered in all sorts of grime, so much so that Li Yiduo hadn't noticed it at first. If Lin Ge hadn't had such good eyesight, he probably would have missed it entirely.

"Chief, we've made a discovery!"

Li Yiduo quickly called out to Nie Guoqiang, and at the same time controlled another drone to observe from another angle.

This time, I could finally see clearly that the slightly undulating, still-living thing was indeed a cat. It lay on its side in the mud, with only a small part of its body and half of its face showing. If it weren't for the occasional twitch, I would have almost thought it was dead.

"There are still... alive?"

Nie Guoqiang had mentally prepared himself, assuming that the prisoners had killed all the fighting cats. Seeing that some cats had actually survived, he was overjoyed.

Although it's just a cat that can't speak... as long as it's alive, it can provide enough clues and enough evidence. Even what this cat has eaten and used can lead to more clues if we can trace its origins.

"Quickly save it! Even if it can't be saved, let the forensic doctor examine it while it's still alive before it dies!"

At this moment, Nie Guoqiang appeared extremely cold.

Lin Ge shuddered, but did not refute Nie Guoqiang's attitude. In the face of a drug case, the life or death of a cat was indeed insignificant. Moreover, the cat's miserable state was ultimately caused by the criminals, and had nothing to do with the police.

"How can we save them?!"

Zhang Yong and the officers from Zhanghe Police Station were at a loss. Without knowing the extent of the danger in the pit, sending someone down to rescue the cat was absolutely unrealistic. "How about using a cat lasso? Make a ring and throw it over. If we're lucky, we can tie it and pull it out. It's only about ten meters away anyway. We can just try again and again; we'll eventually get a chance to lasso it."

Zhang Ke suggested that he had seen some videos of people using ropes to rescue stray cats.

"That guy's already trapped inside, how could the rope possibly have gotten around him?"

Nie Guoqiang looked carefully at the screen and did not adopt Zhang Ke's suggestion. Looking around, he pointed to a tree across the way and said, "If we take a rope through this hole and move it to the top of this cat's head, do you think it will climb out?"

"It might work?"

"I don't think it will work. The cat looks like it's too weak to struggle."

"Then let's tie the rope tighter, and who will move across along it?"

"The protective masks haven't arrived yet, and we don't know if the oxygen inside is up to standard. Who will be responsible if something happens?"

"Do we have a rope that long?"

The police officers discussed among themselves, but couldn't come up with a good solution for the time being.

Wu Chun listened for a while, discussed it with Nie Guoqiang, and then decided to give it a try first.

The marine police boat was not short of ropes, and soon a fast-running auxiliary policeman carried over a heavy and sturdy hemp rope that was about two fingers thick.

The idle policemen were divided into two teams, with a few standing on each side of the pit. They shouted a command and pulled a little, which tauted the rope.

Then Wu Chun and Nie Guoqiang each controlled one end of the rope, adjusting everyone's positions until they quickly moved the rope to above the cat's head. The rope would even occasionally slap against the cat's body as it swayed.

The cat, which had already been startled by the surrounding noise, now noticed the rope above its head.

To everyone's surprise, the cat had no intention of climbing the rope. Whether it was out of strength, injured, or scared, it simply played dead and remained motionless, letting the rope above its head swing back and forth.

"Is this a stress response?"

Cat lover Zhang Ke made a judgment, then hesitated and said, "It's also possible that it was abused in the past, so it's wary of people and sees us all as bad people."

"Damn, what do we do now?"

Zhang Yong's palms were red from being rubbed raw by the hemp rope. Keeping the thick rope, which was dozens of meters long, taut was hard work.

"Tie the rope to the tree, leave it above its head, and then leave it to fate?"

Zhang Ke stretched his arms and said reluctantly, "Anyway, according to the task force, the equipment has been approved and is just waiting to be shipped over. I think even if it's late, we should be able to start operations tomorrow, right?"

"Then let's wait and see if this cat can hold out until tomorrow?"

Zhang Yong was somewhat conflicted.

Is this cat really that important?

Hu Zhengping was not in a good mood. He felt uncomfortable with the surrounding environment, the smell, and the great effort he had to put in for a dirty cat.

"Very important!"

Li Yiduo suddenly spoke, still operating the drone to observe the cat's condition.

Seeing everyone looking over, Li Yiduo said with a serious expression, "We've been thinking about where the criminals hid the drugs. Even if they were on the run, they couldn't possibly have taken the drugs with them! Highways, railways, airplanes—it would be easy to find those things! Besides, we act very quickly; they didn't have time to prepare and find other safe locations! So... the drugs are most likely still somewhere on the island."

"But neither Beibei nor Mimi could smell it!"

Nie Guoqiang frowned and interrupted.

"That's because... the drugs are in the quagmire, and they might even be inside the cat's stomach! Those people are probably gambling! Gambling that even if we find the cat's body, we'll only do a simple treatment and won't perform an autopsy!"

Li Yiduo adjusted his glasses. "As long as we don't find evidence of drugs, we can't arrest them for drug trafficking. As for gambling-related charges, they mean nothing to them! Detention? Probation? Probation? Three to five years? Even if we're lucky and don't completely search this cesspool... as long as the drug packaging is durable enough, they can still retrieve it and put it back on the market..."

(End of this chapter)