wjnovel Chapter 715 Committing Crimes Using Abnormal Abilities!
Chapter 715 Committing Crimes Using Abnormal Abilities!
Jason grinned: "The 'hat-mending' fish."
Lynn had already tapped twice on the city map spread out on the table: "Location of public phone booths."
Marcus reported two intersections.
Blake immediately told the technician: "Pull up all the surveillance cameras at these two points, as well as those covering a 300-meter radius around the street, inside buildings, convenience stores, and subway entrances."
The technician responded quickly.
Lynn asked, "Where is the Cicada Tail Man?"
"I was terrified in the logistics room."
"bring."
A few minutes later, a thin, pale man was brought in. He wore a cheap dark blue coat, and his fingernails had tiny cracks from years of unpacking. His hair was pressed flat against his skin, and his eyes darted around quickly when he looked at people. As soon as he came in, he looked at Lynn first, then Jason, as if picking who looked more like the kind of person who would throw him back onto the street.
“Sit down,” Lynn said.
Chanwei didn't dare to sit up too far, only half of her buttocks touching the chair: "Let me say this first, I really didn't get involved in anything, I just sold some bits and pieces of information."
“I know,” Jason said. “You don’t have the guts to get involved in big deals.”
Cicada Tail forced out an expression that wasn't quite a smile: "Thanks for looking down on me."
Lynn pushed the recorder over: "Retell that call again, don't act."
Cicada Tail nodded, licking her dry lips. "At 8:07, the public phone on that little street east of Broadway rang. I answered. It was a man on the other end, his voice sounded like he was speaking in a low voice, but not like an electronic voice changer. He asked, 'Over at Morning Bridge, were any medical supplies that shouldn't have been left there found?' I said, 'Who are you?' He paused for a second and said, 'Don't ask. Either yes, or no.'"
"What did you reply?" Lynn asked.
“I said, ‘Everyone on the street is saying there’s a hole, but nobody else knows.’ He said, ‘If someone’s passing around syringe heads or blood samples, it’s fake. Understand?’”
Jason narrowed his eyes.
Cicada Tail quickly raised her hand: "I didn't say it was you who spread the rumor! I don't know who spread it first. Anyway, he then said, 'If someone really said that, help me find out who said it first. Price is negotiable.'"
"And then?" Lynn asked.
“Then I said this kind of job is expensive. He said he’d come back from another location in fifteen minutes. He’d give me his number again.” Chanwei swallowed. “I didn’t go. I came first.”
"Do you have any particular habits with your voice?" Jason asked.
"He speaks slowly, clearly, and without swallowing words. There are one or two words that sound like he's been trained to use. When asked a question, he doesn't say 'on the scene,' but 'over there.' He doesn't say 'evidence,' but 'thing.' It's like he doesn't want to use any specific words."
Where's the background noise?
"There was a car sound, not very loud, and a very light metallic clang, like a key hitting a railing."
"Can you tell if someone is a local?"
Cicada Tail frowned and thought for a long time: "If I had to say, it doesn't sound like the tone of someone from the old streets of New York. It's more flat."
Lynn put the recorder away and asked, "Who do you usually sell abnormal device information to?"
Cicada Tail's face fell: "Detective, it's not here—"
"It's here now."
Cicada Tail hesitated for two seconds before rattling off a few nicknames, most of which sounded like middlemen and intermediaries in the underground world. Lynn raised his eyes when he heard the third one: "'Glass Teeth' is still alive?"
"Alive," Cicada Tail whispered, "but half-crippled. I offended someone recently and had two of my hands chopped off."
Jason said in a low voice, "That's quite a lifestyle."
The cicada tail dared not reply.
"Where is the callback point?" Lynn asked.
Cicada Tail reported another intersection, this time farther from the bank, next to Chelsea.
Jason glanced at his watch: "Three minutes until the next call-back."
Lynn had already stood up: "Let him go back."
Cicada Tail's face turned pale instantly: "Me?"
“You,” Lynn said.
"What if the other side notices something's off—"
“Then just be greedy as usual,” Jason said. “Isn’t this your specialty?”
Cicada Tail was almost crying: "I'm good at being greedy, but not good at dying."
Lynn looked at him and said, "You choose one today."
Chanwei's lips trembled slightly, but she finally stood up: "...I'll go back."
Blake immediately ordered two plainclothes officers to follow, and the technician also grabbed the equipment box and headed out. The temporary command area suddenly sprang into action, like a pot of water that had been simmering on low heat suddenly reaching boiling point. Helen happened to be coming out of the small conference room when she witnessed this commotion. She slowed her pace for a moment, clearly wanting to ask what had happened, but Lynn didn't even look at her. He simply told Blake, "You leave someone to keep watch inside. Jason and I are going out."
“Okay,” Blake said, “but you’d better catch him alive.”
"Let's see if he cooperates." Jason had already pulled his coat up.
The rain outside wasn't heavy, but it was fine and drizzling, making a soft sound as it fell on the police car roof and the police tape. As soon as they came out, reporters surrounded them again, bombarding them with a jumble of questions: "Have the detectives confirmed that the crime was committed using unusual abilities?" "Is there a sketch of the suspect?" "Is there any involvement of bank customer identity theft?" Lynn didn't even turn his head, simply walked through the gap in the police tape, got into the car, and closed the door.
As soon as the car started, the wipers swept across the windshield, cutting the street scene into streaks of gray and white. Cicada Tail sat in the car in front, wrapped in a spare raincoat, and looked through the rear window like a rat about to be thrown to the dogs.
Jason put one earphone in and hung the other around his neck: "There are four entrances/exits, two alleys, and a subway entrance over there. Which one are you betting on?"
“The alley,” Lynn said.
"I think so too. People who ask this kind of question using a public phone won't stand under the eaves of a convenience store and wait."
"And he may not even come in person."
Jason tilted his head: "You think it's a message relay?"
“Maybe,” Lynn said, “but his statement just now, ‘If anyone is passing around syringe heads or blood samples, it’s fake,’ didn’t sound like a normal messenger.”
"It's more like a correction."
“Yes.” Lynn’s eyes didn’t leave the car in front. “It’s like he knows what might actually be left at the scene, and he also knows what he would never leave.”
Jason paused for two seconds: "So it's not the bank's rat."
"It may not be, but it's more like being closer to the execution end."
"For example, 'tailor'?"
"Or someone to clean up after them."
Two minutes later, the convoy turned onto a relatively narrow street in Chelsea. Here, old brick buildings and newly renovated shops were crammed together, and after a rain, garbage bags and coffee cups stuck to the drains. The call-back point was a phone booth outside a half-closed laundromat, behind which led to a narrow alley just wide enough for two people to walk side by side, with two damp, black green garbage bins piled up at the entrance.
Chanwei's hands were trembling as he got out of the car. Jason pressed his shoulder and said in a low voice, "Just answer the call, pretend to be impatient, name your price, and ask him what he wants to know. Drag it out for another twenty seconds."
Cicada Tail grimaced: "Twenty seconds is enough for me to die three times over."
"Don't worry," Jason said, "I won't die today."
"Your attempt at comforting me is scarier than no comfort at all." Lynn clipped a small earpiece onto his ear and put on her own headphones. "Go."
Cicada Tail took a breath, tightened her raincoat, and walked towards the phone booth.
A delivery truck slowly drove past the street corner, its wheels splashing through puddles. A woman walking her dog by the roadside held an umbrella, seemingly oblivious to the puddles. Two plainclothes officers had already entered the opposite building and the other end of the alley, respectively, to wait. The screens in the vehicles were connected to the signals from nearby cameras, which were simultaneously operating from several angles.
The phone rang right on time.
Cicada Tail was clearly startled. It looked around and answered the phone: "Hello."
A male voice, muffled by the sound of rain and line noise, immediately came through the earphones. It was flat, cold, and unhurried: "You're too slow to reply."
Chanwei sneered as planned: "If you want to buy information, I'll see if you're worth the trip."
"Has anyone mentioned needles, blood, or labels?"
“Someone has made an offer,” Chanwei said. “You should make an offer first.”
There was a pause on the other end: "Who brought that up?"
"You go first."
"Stop beating around the bush," the man said in a flat voice. "This is your chance to save your life, not to raise the price."
Cicada Tail's face stiffened, clearly genuinely frightened, but she still managed to maintain her composure and said, "If you want to buy, follow the rules. I've heard more than one thing. Some say the vault cave is unclean, some say medical supplies were left behind—"
"Which floor is the person talking?" the other end suddenly interrupted.
Cicada Tail paused for a moment, clearly realizing that the way the question was phrased was inappropriate.
"You ask quite detailed questions." He forced a smile. "You seem to be from the scene."
The person on the other end didn't respond to that question, but instead asked, "Is it inside the building or on the street?"
Lynn looked up and made a gesture towards Jason.
Jason whispered into the microphone, "It's not the banking side. He's concerned about the information dissemination level."
The person on the other end of the phone spoke again: "Speak."
Cicada Tail swallowed hard: "It started on the street. I can't reach it from inside the building."
"Who got up first on the street?"
"That will cost extra."
There was a very light breath, as if he were laughing, but there was no laughter at all: "You're not worth that much, cicada tail."
The cicada's tail turned white instantly: "You recognize me?"
“I know a lot of people who will die a very light death,” the voice on the other end said. “Last time, who sent it first?”
Lynn whispered into the earpiece, "Drag it out."
Cicada Tail's fingers were taut and white, but she forced a smile and said, "I need to confirm who you are first. Why don't you give me a mark? Are you asking this information to clean up the mess for last night, or—"
A very faint static noise suddenly came through the phone, not like a broken line, but more like someone else approaching on the other end.
The next second, a male voice said in a low voice, "Let's go."
The call was disconnected.
“East Alley!” Lynn said almost simultaneously.
In the surveillance footage at the top left of the screen, deep in the narrow alley behind the phone booth, a figure in a dark gray rain jacket had just taken a half-step back from the shadow of the fire escape, moving extremely quickly. The camera only captured a fleeting moment of his lower body—his center of gravity clearly shifted slightly when his left leg landed.
“That’s him.” Jason pushed open the car door.
Lynn had already gotten out of the car and rushed out.
Rain stung his face, and his shoes smacked against the wet brick pavement. The figure turned and ran into the depths of the alley without looking back. The movement wasn't exaggerated, but it was unusually fast and steady. Although his left leg was slightly uneven, his speed was by no means slow. His shoulders were pulled low, like an animal that knew every nook and cranny of the city.
"Federal law enforcement! Stop!" shouted the plainclothes officers from behind.
The other party showed no sign of stopping.
The plainclothes officer who had been blocking the way at the other end of the alley had just rushed out when the man pressed his hand against the wall. Instead of scaling the wall, he seemed to use that pressure to glide along its edge. It wasn't disappearing, but the movement looked extremely awkward, as if the eye and body's perception of gravity had suddenly gone astray. The plainclothes officer missed his target, his shoulder slamming hard against the brick wall.
"Damn it!" someone cursed from the other end.
“Mole!” Jason shouted.
The other person didn't turn back, but abruptly turned into another, narrower service passage. When Lynn followed, he only saw a metal door that should have been locked sway slightly, as if someone had just forced their way through. The old lock on the door was still there, but there was a very thin gray line between the door frame and the wall.
"Left!" Lynn raised his hand and shot down the surveillance camera above the door, not to cover it up, but to warn the plainclothes officers chasing behind him not to just stare at the screen.
They passed through the iron gate, only to find themselves in a narrow alleyway under repair in an old building, as narrow as a diagonal cut through an abandoned manhole. A wave of dampness, the smell of rust, and old dust rushed towards them. The man's footsteps were light, only occasionally tapping at a corner ahead, as if deliberately letting his pursuers hear.
Jason shouted from behind, "He's leading us inside!"
"know."
The man in front suddenly swerved and darted past a half-closed iron fence. When Lynn rushed closer, he only had time to catch a glimpse of the corner of his sleeve, where there were fine, light-colored pink marks on the dark gray work clothes.
The next second, the ground beneath my feet suddenly loosened.
It wasn't a collapse, but rather the feeling of being firmly planted on solid ground, yet for a fleeting moment, like stepping into a crevice in an elevator shaft. Lynn instinctively lurched to the right, bracing himself against the wall, and immediately heard Jason's low curse behind him: "Watch out! He's altered this weight distribution!"
“It’s not about changing it.” Lynn looked at the very faint layer of mineral dust at his feet. “It’s about making you misjudge your balance.”
Jason caught up, panting as he looked ahead: "Damn, this is really annoying."
A very faint metallic scraping sound suddenly came from ahead.
Lynn suddenly raised his hand: "Lie down!"
The two men simultaneously pressed against the wall. The next second, an old metal conduit that should have been fixed to the wall was suddenly pushed out from the inside, sweeping across the aisle. If the plainclothes officer had been in front, this blow would have been enough to break his neck. The conduit hit the opposite wall, sparks and ash scattering everywhere, and the cold metallic smell in the air became even stronger.
Jason gritted his teeth: "He's not just good at clearing paths, he also knows how to use old structures to hurt people."
“Because he’s most familiar with buildings,” Lynn said.
After saying that, he raised his gun and fired a shot at the edge of a damp, peeling ceiling panel in the upper left corner.
The bullet didn't hit anyone, but struck a nearly invisible connection point of an old support structure. As the support broke, a large amount of old soundproofing panels and dust crashed down, followed by a short, muffled groan from ahead.
"You hit it?" Jason exclaimed with delight.
"No. It was forced to stop."
They rushed forward, rounded the last bend, and suddenly the space opened up to an abandoned loading and unloading platform behind an old building. Rain slanted in from the edge of the half-open roof, and the ground was covered with puddles and oil stains. The figure had already reached the edge of the platform, next to which was a white-gray repair truck. The side of the truck was half-covered by mud, and the rear license plate was obscured by mud, with only the last two digits, "7" and "K," visible.
There's someone in the driver's seat.
Lynn immediately spotted a black-gloved hand reaching out through the car window to push open the door.
"The second one!" Jason shouted. (End of Chapter)