Chapter 1271: Predicament and External Help

On the other hand, the commissioner who was about to step down suddenly seemed to be “fully devoted” to his work.

He sent his “sympathies” and “kindly” asked Dustin to solve the case as soon as possible.

Listening to the man’s tone, Dustin felt that “as soon as possible” probably meant “today.”

Until now, the Detective Bureau hadn’t received any assistance. Instead, they were beset with all sorts of pressure.

What was even more outrageous was that the commissioner, the Chief of Police, and the Director of the Investigation Bureau, who was Dustin’s immediate superior, all demanded that the Detective Bureau share their information.

The commissioner wanted him to give the FBI the green light, the Chief of Police wanted him to cooperate with Homeland Security, and the Director of HQ’s Investigation Bureau wanted him to help the anti-terrorist unit in the same department.

Without doubt, the call from Simon made Dustin and the Detective Bureau the best scapegoats.

If they didn’t solve the case this time, Dustin and the detectives would have to take responsibility.

Dustin didn’t care.

He hadn’t been afraid of going to the 66th Precinct to eat dirt; would he hold up an investigation just because he was worried about his position?

He gave them whatever information they wanted.

He and the Detective Bureau might not get much credit once the case was solved, but at least they wouldn’t have to take the blame.

Simon hadn’t told him about the earlier explosions; the FBI and Homeland Security’s negligence was to be blamed for that.

He could only hope that John and Luke, this “magical” pair of temp partners, would be able to do something extraordinary again.

His two subordinates were very experienced in dealing with terrorists.

Other people were too busy calculating the gains to think about it.

One of these temp partners whom Dustin had pinned his hopes on was currently surrounded by a group of muscular African-American men with fists the size of sandbags and knives.

The other person was busy saving people at the third subway station in Brooklyn.

It wasn’t that Luke didn’t care about the case; it was just that he hadn’t locked onto a target yet.

Simon had never shown his face at all, so Luke didn’t need Sharp Nose for now.

Simon had only made one call. If Luke wanted to find a suspect in any database, he had to first have corresponding information on the person.

Unlike for fingerprints or DNA, NYPD’s current voiceprint database was very small; that was pretty much the case for other police departments in America.

When Luke obtained the voice recording, Little Snail hadn’t been able to find a matching voice pattern.

It was even harder to track the phone signal. Nobody knew that the first call would be to Dustin, so nobody had been prepared.

When Luke investigated later, he only found that the man had been in the southwest part of Manhattan, which just so happened to be where NYPD HQ was.

But this was also one of the most populated areas in Manhattan. On Wall Street not far from HQ, tens of thousands of people worked in high-rise buildings that were hundreds of meters tall.

Without a target to lock onto, it was useless for Luke to go over.

On the other hand, his clone was almost done, and he sent Tony a message to ask the tycoon to get relevant leads from the authorities as soon as possible.

At the same time, the multifaceted system didn’t stop searching for suspicious information on the Internet, while Little Snail did its best to look for suspicious targets on various surveillance cameras.

These two programs were much more efficient at finding leads than Luke relying on manpower.

At the very least, this wouldn’t change before Simon was exposed.

But before Luke got any good news from Little Snail and the multifaceted system, bad news came first.

The multifaceted system showed him some short videos and images, and Luke couldn’t help but worry about John.

In less than half an hour, John’s head had already been smashed open.

His receding hairline couldn’t block the image of the large amount of blood on the side of his head, which was a little scary.

The arm of the tall black man who was walking with him was also stained with blood. He was clearly injured.

Luke found the man familiar.

Little Snail quickly found information on the black man: He was the boss of Zeus Appliances, and his name was Zeus Carver.

The moment he saw the name of the appliance store, Luke remembered: Wasn’t this the secondhand store he had bought electronic parts from when he first came to New York?

The reason he remembered this Zeus Carver was probably because Luke had looked at him for a while, and this Zeus with the horn-rimmed glasses had said that Luke was racist.

Then, he insincerely rounded up the 100 dollars’ worth of parts Luke had bought and charged him 200 dollars.

How did he end up with John? Luke found that odd. After looking at the other intelligence, he got a rough idea.

John had been standing in the Clinton area wearing the “I hate XX” sign, and had almost been killed by a bunch of hot-tempered young men.

Suddenly, heroic Zeus had saved the baldie, and he flagged down a cab before the two of them took off.

Now, these two…

Luke saw Dustin’s notification, which said that the two had returned to the police department.

Was Simon going to act again? As he wondered, Luke sped up.

They had to catch Simon this time.

Simon had killed at least a hundred people in the subway station massacre. He deserved to die.

Also, with such a huge ruckus, there had to be a lot of people under his command who were helping to cover things up, or there would be some leads by now. These people deserved to die.

Sure enough, Simon called again.

Little Snail immediately started tracking him.

However, the other party was too experienced, and kept the call very short, even though John deliberately taunted him to stall for time.

Simon gave John a new “game” mission.

No matter how good Luke’s technology was, he wasn’t faster than the enemy. He picked up his pace.

Right up until Simon hung up, Luke could only trace the phone signal to the area around HQ. Plus, the other party was using an old-fashioned prepaid phone.

There was no doubt that this guy was watching HQ.

When he thought of the tall buildings around HQ, Luke could only smile bitterly.

Too bad HQ was in a busy area. Anyone could carry out surveillance on the side, and the tens of thousands of people around were the best cover.

After John received the new game instructions, he could only set off.

This time, Simon also had the secondhand appliance store owner, “zealous citizen” Zeus, play the game with John.

Luke couldn’t do anything as he watched the two guys leave in a hurry. However, he was now more confident about catching Simon.

As someone who stressed safety first, Luke knew very well that the police weren’t afraid of the other party playing tricks in this situation. What they were most afraid of was that the other party would stop playing.

The more Simon acted out, the more clues he would give them.

Besides, there might be clues NYPD couldn’t pick up on, but which Luke could.

Given how much data there was, it wouldn’t be strange if there were several abnormalities in a row.

As long as the other party was just a little careless, Little Snail and the multifaceted system’s big data analysis would be able to teach the other party a lesson.