Chapter 707: The Search Plan, Part 2

“We believe he might have gotten married. He met a woman he liked, but three years later, she abandoned him. This act enraged him again, so he chose to resume his crimes.”

“Shen, it’s already October. We believe he will strike again this year, or perhaps he already has and we just don’t know it yet.”

Shen Xin gave him a thumbs-up.

‘His explanation made it all clear. I can even picture the kind of person he is now.’

But thinking about it more deeply, he felt all their speculation was a load of nonsense.

‘The targets are all women, so of course he must hate women.’

‘There’s no specific target group, which must mean it’s symbolic—just pure hatred of women.’

‘And serial killers, well, they usually have problems with their childhood environment.’

‘Who becomes a serial killer when they come from a harmonious family with loving parents?’

‘So, his parents divorced, and his mother might have developed psychological issues because of it, leading her to abuse her child.’

‘As for the other speculations—that he has a car, a fixed location, is competent at his job, and has no trouble communicating—to put it bluntly, those are just simple summaries reverse-engineered from the results.’

‘Thinking about it this way, it’s no wonder there aren’t any so-called criminal profilers in China.’

‘Regular police work in China involves the same kind of speculative analysis.’

Philips was clearly a perceptive man. He took one look at the change in Shen Xin’s expression and guessed what he was thinking, saying with a smile, “Shen, you’re not wrong. Our criminal profiling is really just a summary of experience.”

After all, they had started researching this in the late seventies. They analyzed a huge number of criminals, summarized their commonalities, and combined that with psychological theory to form this methodology.

Philips turned and glanced at Griffin, then lowered his voice. “Honestly, it’s nothing that special. Just like you guys, we rely on experience to solve cases.”

“In fact, I’m actually more envious of you. You have surveillance cameras everywhere. That stuff is the true bane of crime, more effective than Sherlock Holmes.”

The phrase “nowhere to hide under surveillance” was no joke.

For a senior BAU agent to say something like that struck Shen Xin as quite amusing.

But it also showed he was a pragmatic and intelligent man.

Shen Xin smiled and nodded. At least he now had a preliminary impression of the suspect.

Just then, York walked over and sat down across from him. “Shen Xin, you’re a smart man. You’ve handled many cases, even major ones. You should understand that while our investigation methods and environments may differ somewhat…”

“…no one here is an idiot. We’ve done everything we possibly can on this case. Now, it’s up to you to work your magic.”

Griffin sat down as well.

The quiet team leader actually spoke up, saying in Chinese, “Officer Shen, if you have any ideas or requests, please don’t hesitate to speak up.”

His accent was heavy, but he was understandable.

‘This just goes to show that these guys really are elites. They pick up languages like it’s child’s play.’

‘Then, just as York said…’

‘They might not have China’s mobilization capabilities or grassroots management, and they might have issues with jurisdictional squabbles between states, people slacking off, inadequate quality of local police forces, and so on.’

‘But they are elites. In over a decade of investigation, they have genuinely exhausted every possible avenue.’

‘Besides, many cutting-edge forensic techniques were invented in the United States. There’s no problem with their technical capabilities.’

‘So I can’t really treat them like idiots.’

Shen Xin only came to this clearer realization after interacting with the group.

‘They didn’t invite me here to boss them around, brainstorm with them, or set the direction for their investigation.’

‘They came for my unique ‘magic’.’

With that in mind, Shen Xin said, “First, there’s one thing I need to do. Mark the crime scenes for all cases and the victims’ movement trajectories on a map. Then, expand that by ten kilometers to define a perimeter.”

York’s eyes lit up, and he immediately shot Griffin a look.

Griffin wasted no time, pulling out his phone to make a call.

He was calling headquarters.

‘Probably just like in the TV shows, they have a computer genius like Garcia at HQ who can provide them with intelligence support at any time.’

Meanwhile, Philips also got busy right away.

He turned on the projector and prepared a map.

They must have done all this before, because a high-definition map was projected onto the screen very quickly.

Following Shen Xin’s request, they marked the locations of all 16 incidents—15 victims plus one survivor—on the map.

Then, using the map’s scale, they expanded the area and drew a perimeter.

“Connect them. Just draw lines to mark out the entire area,” Shen Xin said, pointing at the screen.

Philips’s fingers flew across the keyboard as he drew and annotated the map on the spot.

Spanning four states, with the farthest points possibly being hundreds of kilometers apart, and factoring in the victims’ movements, the resulting area was enormous.

Shen Xin asked, and sure enough, the software calculated that the area defined by his request was a full 227,000 square kilometers.

The so-called Great Basin in the west was only 500,000 square kilometers.

In other words, the suspect’s range of activity covered nearly half of it.

Shen Xin continued with his requests, asking Philips to color-code and tier the areas according to the chronological order of the cases.

“From ’02 to last year is a total of 16 years. Let’s just use a five-year standard to divide it into three tiers. The more recent, the higher the tier. Last year’s case is especially important.”

The older the case, the lower the value of searching that area.

After the final calculation, the Tier 1 area, covering the last six years, came out to 33,000 square kilometers.

That was less than a third of the total, because he went quiet for three years in the middle, meaning fewer cases fell into that time frame.

But the area was still astonishingly large, nearly eight times the size of Nanjiang.

A smart man anticipates the next step. Philips even went ahead and marked the road network, topography, and towns on the map.

After all this was done, everyone looked at Shen Xin, wanting to know how he planned to conduct the search.

An area measured in the tens of thousands of square kilometers—if they had to search it with manpower alone, the resources required would be astronomical.

Shen Xin said, “I brought 100 police dogs and 50 police birds. I also brought the equipment and corresponding control software to command them all remotely.”

“My plan is to form 50 teams, each with two police dogs and one police bird. Then we’ll divide the designated area and assign each team a sector to search.”

“Secondly, and this is a crucial point, we are looking for a specific wolf-dog, not tracking a scent source.”

“In terms of pure running, you don’t even need an athletic breed like a greyhound. Any ordinary dog, if given enough food and water, should have no problem covering several dozen kilometers in a day.”

“But if they were tracking a scent, their range would be very limited. They’d be exhausted after just one or two kilometers.”

“Which means, with two dogs operating separately and a Raven with excellent vision providing high-altitude reconnaissance and guidance, I think that combination should have no problem searching about five hundred square kilometers a day.”

Five hundred square kilometers is an area of 20 by 25 kilometers.

With Ravens in the sky and police dogs on the ground—and since they aren’t tracking a scent but looking for a Groenendael Dog, a rather distinctive-looking animal—the process should be quite fast.

“With 50 teams, we can search 25,000 square kilometers a day. For 227,000 square kilometers, that’s nine days.”

“We also have to account for the wolf-dog’s movements back and forth, or overlapping areas, so the final time required could easily be two or three times that.”

“In other words, I believe one month should be enough to search the entire area.”

Shen Xin pointed at the screen, looked at York and the others, and asked them for their thoughts.

This was his plan.

‘I thought about it before I came anyway. This was always going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. There was no way to find the target easily in just a few days.’

‘Fifty teams, one month… that feels about right.’

York and the others exchanged a look, unable to hide the shock in their eyes.

In any case, this was a search method they had definitely never considered before.

The key thing was, the efficiency was a bit terrifying.

Over two hundred thousand square kilometers… searched in one month. Just the thought of it was intimidating.