Tracking the Culprit by Scent

Chapter 23: Tracking by Scent

Every person possesses a unique scent, a fact Xiang Kun felt much more acutely after his sense of smell had significantly sharpened.

However, having only been awake for a few hours this evening, he was still quite unpracticed at distinguishing between various odors. Back at the crime scene, he had wondered if he could identify the perpetrator's scent and track them down.

But Xiang Kun lacked a scent source. The perpetrator had likely left shortly before he arrived, and while residual odors remained at the scene, he couldn't isolate them from the myriad of other smells—or rather, there were simply too many options to be certain.

Once the police arrived and the area became crowded, tracking became naturally more difficult.

Nevertheless, relying on his heightened hearing, Xiang Kun had overheard the officers talking and learned that the murder weapon had not yet been found.

The weapon should have been stained with the victim's blood. Judging by the scene, nothing had been found that was used to wipe the blade, so the blood on the weapon was likely still there, uncleaned, or the paper or cloth used to wipe it was still on the perpetrator's person.

A thought occurred to Xiang Kun: he wanted to see if he could track the scent of the blood to find the perpetrator or the weapon.

The direction where the victim's blood scent was strongest was, naturally, the crime scene itself.

But Xiang Kun would not return there; instead, he headed in the opposite direction.

Based on his judgment, the perpetrator could not have been gone for more than three minutes by the time he saw the victim.

Before Xiang Kun caught the scent of blood, he hadn't seen any suspicious figures, nor had he heard the sound of panicked footsteps. Clearly, the direction the perpetrator fled after the attack was not toward his side.

Excluding one path, there were two others the perpetrator could have taken. One alleyway led directly to the main road, which was bustling with activity, crowded with pedestrians even at this hour, and monitored by numerous surveillance cameras, making it easy to track someone down.

Given the perpetrator's style—not striking at the ATM entrance but tailing the victim to a secluded spot—it was unlikely they would head that way.

Thus, Xiang Kun chose the remaining path and began to patrol along it.

However, he couldn't really track the victim's blood scent, because doing so would inevitably lead him back toward the crime scene.

Xiang Kun was not discouraged; he never considered catching the perpetrator his duty or responsibility anyway. He was merely practicing his olfactory tracking abilities.

Xiang Kun imagined himself as the perpetrator, subconsciously choosing a direction at every intersection as he continued forward.

After walking a long distance, the scent of blood from the crime scene had become extremely faint. Just as Xiang Kun was about to give up, a trace of an incredibly faint, "familiar" scent, mixed among a multitude of thick, chaotic odors, reached his nose.

Xiang Kun's spirits lifted instantly. This was the scent of the victim's blood. Although it was so faint it was nearly dissipated, its source was in a different direction from the crime scene, meaning he might actually find his target.

Following the scent, Xiang Kun walked back and forth for over ten minutes until he finally determined that the source of the blood scent was inside an open dumpster.

The dumpster was clearly for the local residents' household waste. Some bags containing kitchen scraps had burst open, leaving slop and food residue everywhere. As he approached, a wave of pungent, nauseating odors assaulted him, which was even more agonizing now that his sense of smell was so heightened.

He had to maintain intense focus to keep the faint trace of the victim's blood scent locked in.

Looking at the dumpster swarming with flies, Xiang Kun couldn't help but hesitate. He had no obligation to hunt down criminals; why was he digging through trash?

But after a moment of hesitation, he still wanted to see if his target was correct—whether the item stained with the victim's blood was, in fact, the murder weapon.

Xiang Kun sighed, leaned in to shoo away the flies, and began to rummage through the trash.

Before long, Xiang Kun found an item stained with the victim's blood. It wasn't the weapon, but a pair of blood-stained cotton gloves.

Xiang Kun didn't touch them with his bare hands; he grabbed a plastic bag from the side to pinch the gloves, lifted them, and brought them to his nose. A stench mixed with various types of filth made him sneeze three times in a row.

Yet, from that foul odor, he keenly captured a trace of human scent.

It was the secretions from sweat glands, sebaceous glands, and other skin glands, trapped inside the gloves; this scent was not so easily dissipated.

As for the scent of the victim's blood, that went without saying; even without smelling it, he could see the gloves were covered in blood with his own eyes.

Xiang Kun hesitated over whether to tell Officer Chen about the location of the gloves, but in the end, he tossed them back into the dumpster. He didn't call Officer Chen, as it would be too difficult to explain how he found them.

Besides, he felt that with the police's search efforts, they would likely find this spot soon enough.

Of course, he hoped the dumpster wouldn't be cleared by sanitation workers before then.

Although he had obtained the perpetrator's scent, after circling the area a few times, Xiang Kun found nothing. In a city, both sound and scent were subject to too much interference.

The next day, Xiang Kun added Officer Chen on WeChat using the number he had been given and asked about the progress of the case.

He didn't hold much hope, knowing that police generally didn't disclose the progress of ongoing investigations to outsiders, but to his surprise, Officer Chen sent him a photo directly.

The police's efficiency was far faster than Xiang Kun had imagined. In just one night, they had already confirmed the suspect's identity!

According to Officer Chen, the suspect had just been released from prison this March and arrived in the city in April. No one expected that a few months later, he would commit such a major crime—the victim who had been stabbed the previous night had passed away in the early hours of the morning after failing to respond to emergency treatment.

The suspect's photo and information had been sent to train stations, airports, and various hotels and hostels. Later that day, the local news station would also broadcast a wanted notice. His capture was only a matter of time.

Officer Chen also instructed Xiang Kun that if he saw the suspect, he should not act impulsively but call the police or contact him directly.

In Xiang Kun's view, the suspect was essentially already destined for prison food. In this day and age, with surveillance cameras everywhere and real-name authentication required for everything, especially after committing a homicide, there was no doubt a massive amount of police resources dedicated to hunting him down.

Since that was the case, Xiang Kun didn't plan to track the suspect using the scent he had obtained. After all, this was a city of over ten million people; without a defined area, trying to find someone by scent was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

But what Xiang Kun did not expect was that before the suspect was caught, he would run into him first.