Chapter 360: Confirming the Scapegoat’s Identity, Next Target… Queen’s Casino

At this moment.

Although An Quan hadn’t said anything yet, Su Ming’s professional instincts immediately kicked in, and he narrowed his eyes.

Because the man in the surveillance footage was indeed highly suspicious, noticeably different from an ordinary sanitation worker.

First, there was his hair. While it seemed to have been styled temporarily, the slightly curled ends clearly indicated it had been permed or dyed professionally.

Would a municipal sanitation worker, whose job involves hauling around all kinds of trash, really go out of his way to maintain such a hairstyle?

The answer was obvious.

Sure, there might be rare exceptions—people who care about their appearance even while sorting garbage—but in criminal investigation, such low-probability anomalies are typically ruled out.

Second, the man was wearing filthy gloves while driving, without bothering to take them off.

That, without a doubt, was even more unusual and suspicious.

After all, while waste collection trucks in the United States are quite advanced and can handle most types of garbage, there are always special cases that require manual handling with gloves.

Especially in a bustling area like Manhattan, it’s not uncommon to find discarded items of considerable value among the trash.

A seasoned sanitation worker wouldn’t overlook such things.

To retrieve these items, they’d have to dig through piles of garbage, and gloves would be essential for protection.

Over time, those gloves would inevitably become caked with grime.

But since the garbage trucks are provided by the city and workers often drive them themselves, they usually take off their gloves while driving to keep things a bit cleaner.

Under normal circumstances, sanitation workers would remove their gloves before getting behind the wheel.

But this man in the surveillance footage kept his filthy gloves on while driving.

This suggested that, in his mind, he never expected to drive that garbage truck again.

Finally, there was the look in his eyes.

Even though he was wearing a mask, his eyes were filled with disgust, coldness, and a kind of viciousness that didn’t belong on the face of someone who had worked in sanitation for years.

As mentioned earlier, Manhattan is part of New York’s wealthy district. The trash discarded here might contain expensive or rare items.

To work as a garbage collector in this area, one would typically need seniority or connections to be assigned here.

But if someone had those kinds of connections, why would they choose to be a garbage collector?

So most likely, workers assigned to this area had been in the job for quite some time.

Which made the expression in this man’s eyes all the more abnormal.

Think about it.

If someone had been collecting garbage for years, why would they still show such visible disgust—especially that kind of cold, vicious glare?

After so many years, they would’ve long become numb to the job. That kind of expression simply didn’t belong on a sanitation worker.

After quickly sorting through the details in his mind, Su Ming narrowed his eyes and asked aloud.

“This footage shows the garbage truck leaving, right? Based on my assessment, this man is most likely the fugitive J.”

“If I’m not mistaken, there’s a sizable blind spot in the rear area that would’ve allowed J to switch identities.”

“Pull up the footage from when the garbage truck first arrived. I need to confirm who was present, so we can identify the killer who silenced the witnesses.”

Hearing this, An Quan couldn’t help but feel a renewed sense of awe, despite having worked alongside Su Ming for some time now.

He had needed two separate video comparisons just to confirm the personnel switch. Yet Su Ming had made a near-instant judgment with a single glance, identifying the man driving the garbage truck as the likely killer.

This was what An Quan admired most about Su Ming.

Despite his young age, Su Ming had an uncanny ability to catch details in surveillance footage and assess people from all walks of life with a level of maturity that far exceeded his years.

It was hard to fathom how someone so young could have such a deep understanding of social dynamics—something usually gained only through years of frontline criminal investigation.

As a pure tech nerd who wasn’t great with people, An Quan had always held Su Ming in high regard.

While he was silently marveling, his hands didn’t stop moving. He immediately rewound the footage to when the garbage truck first arrived.

On screen, a green garbage truck appeared at the back entrance, approaching slowly as it prepared to stop and load.

The surveillance footage clearly showed that the driver wasn’t wearing gloves while holding the steering wheel. His eyes showed no sharpness or hostility, only the numbness of someone performing repetitive labor.

As for his hairstyle, while it looked similar at a glance, a closer look revealed that the ends of his hair lacked any signs of perming or dye.

Then, as the truck turned slightly to begin the loading process, the cab quickly moved out of the camera’s view and into the blind spot.

Due to the truck’s size, it was impossible to see whether anyone was standing at the bar’s rear entrance or if the sanitation worker had been killed during this time.

At that moment, Su Ming had already pieced together the general sequence of events. He turned to Bai Yu beside him and asked,

“Xiao Bai.”

“Those eleven dead bodies found in Knight Bar—have you checked the internal system for their exact causes of death?”

Upon hearing the question, Bai Yu, who had been compiling all the clues uncovered by the New York Police Department over the past few days, responded without hesitation.

“Just found it.”

“All eleven victims were poisoned, without exception.”

“But there’s a difference. The one whose identity hasn’t been confirmed died from a drug injected into the muscle. The other ten, according to the autopsy reports, died from inhaling toxic gas.”

“That matches the scene, where there were no signs of struggle.”

“But it’s worth noting that these autopsy reports were uploaded just three hours ago. The NYPD’s forensic team must’ve worked overtime to get the results out this fast.”

As Bai Yu finished speaking, Su Ming tapped the table lightly and said without hesitation,

“The person who killed those eleven people is most likely our target, J.”

“Using toxic gas to eliminate them while they were unguarded was undoubtedly an effective method.”

“And that sanitation worker is most likely the unidentified corpse.”

He paused for a couple of seconds, then narrowed his eyes and continued.

“Identify the sanitation worker and run a DNA comparison with the unknown corpse. We need to confirm the victim’s identity.”

“Keep watching the footage. Track the garbage truck’s route, and also keep an eye on the other suspicious location—Queen’s Casino.”

“J’s Knight Bar has been destroyed, and K has no assets in the United States. That means Q’s Queen’s Casino must now become our focus…”