Empire of Shadows

The moment the door closed, Nate noticed Hunter picking up the phone again. It was clear he was swamped.

Nate’s heart, which had been pounding, gradually calmed down. He went to the interrogation room his office was in charge of.

The two officers conducting the interrogation immediately stood up. “Chief…”

Nate waved his hand. “Did you get anything out of him?”

The man sitting in the chair looked extremely tired. Although he had a brief respite when the police were resting, it was far from enough.

The two officers looked a bit embarrassed. They had used all the interrogation techniques they had learned from others on this man, but they hadn’t achieved any of the results they wanted.

This made them very embarrassed. It was clearly a matter of their ability.

If it had been anyone else asking, they might not have cared so much, but it was Nate, their direct superior. They didn’t know what to say.

Nate waved his hand, signaling them not to rack their brains for words to answer him.

He glanced at the file. “I’ll talk to him alone.”The two officers quickly left and closed the door.

The young man glanced at him sideways, then rolled his eyes and looked elsewhere.

Nate looked at the young man and took out a cigarette.

He could have just left a message and left, but now, he suddenly wanted to interact with this young man more, to see why that guy Bruce admired and trusted Lance so much, and by extension, had a blind trust in his people.

“Want one?” he asked.

The young man hesitated for a moment. “If I can, but don’t think you can get anything from me by giving me a cigarette.”

Nate put the lit cigarette from his own mouth into the young man’s. He took a drag, and his whole body seemed to relax a lot.

At this moment, the effect of nicotine was not just to promote the secretion of dopamine, but also included pain relief and a psychological effect.

He squinted his eyes slightly. The smoke rising from the cigarette blurred his vision, as if his gaze had lost its focus.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Nate asked. “A case this big, I hear two ordinary drunks also died. If someone pushes this from behind, you might end up on the electric chair.”

“Smuggling and selling contraband is a felony, plus a firefight and causing death.”

The young man explained with some indignation, “We didn’t kill those two drunks!”

Nate shook his head. “Who cares?”

“Do you think the judge will really listen to the defense of a gang member like you?”

“They will only listen to the prosecutor. The Hunter family, the Bay Area, including the police department, we will have the prosecutor tell the judge that you killed those two innocent drunks, and the judge will also accept this evidence.”

“You, you guys will most likely be sent to the electric chair.”

Hearing this result, the young man’s smoking motion paused noticeably, but it quickly resumed. “Whatever.”

Seeing his indifferent look, Nate became more curious. “But if you’re willing to testify against Lance, then you’ll most likely not face any of this.”

“I just came from the chief’s office. He told me that as long as you testify against Lance, your sentence will not exceed three years.”

The young man was stunned again for a moment, then smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Nate’s nose suddenly felt an itch. He rubbed it back and forth with his index finger. “Can you tell me why you’re not willing to do this?”

“Did he threaten you, or does he have some other means?”

The young man didn’t speak, remaining silent. Although he wasn’t speaking, he was also thinking.

Until the cigarette was finished.

“Thanks for the cigarette,” he said.

Nate asked again, “You still have time to change this.”

The young man pursed his lips. “Fuck you!”

After hearing this, Nate was stunned for a moment, then couldn’t help but burst out laughing. He laughed so hard that tears streamed down his face.

He also laughed so much that the young man looked at him as if he were a madman. The young man didn’t understand why Nate was so happy after being cursed at.

“Lance… asked me to give you a message.”

The young man’s expression changed. His face turned a little red, and then he said again, “Fuck you again!”

Nate raised his hand and waved it. “Hunter is willing to pay for a protection program for you. You will receive our protection, as long as you plead guilty and testify against Lance. But he is definitely not satisfied with just your confession.”

“You have to tell him that you have some evidence in your hands that can be used as criminal evidence to convict Lance.”

“But you have one condition: you will only tell Hunter, and it must be retrieved by Hunter himself.”

The young man’s eyes lit up. “You mean, to lure Hunter out of the police station?”

Nate nodded, which made the young man initially believe him, because he didn’t have any of this criminal evidence and didn’t know where to send Hunter.

He wouldn’t lose anything by pleading guilty. And if he found out it was a scam, he could totally say he was forced to do it when he appeared in court.

He thought for a moment, but then shook his head. “What if he’s not willing to go out?”

As a young man, he roughly knew Lance’s plan: to lure Hunter out and kill him.

No matter what the consequences of this matter would be, in short, as long as the police’s attitude changed, then Lance’s pressure would be greatly reduced.

He didn’t know too much about the grand principles or the family’s secrets. He only knew that this could help Lance, help the family, and that was enough!

So his mind quickly started working, thinking of one of the potential problems.

That is, he did as this police officer said, but Hunter himself didn’t go out, but arranged for someone else to go out. What then?

Nate sighed, not because there was a problem with this method, nor because of this young man’s thinking ability, but because when Director Bruce was talking to him, he had already told him the answer. Lance had already thought of it.

“You just have to tell him that here, there are also some of Lance’s men. If they get the evidence or know what the evidence is, Lance will immediately destroy the thing that can testify against him!”

Hearing this, the young man was completely convinced of Nate.

Indeed, everyone was racing against time, desperately trying to kill the other party.

So now a key piece of evidence had appeared, but it required him to take a little risk. Would he take it or not?

The young man didn’t know, but he believed that if this was Lance’s request, then in the end, they would definitely win.

“I understand. Tell me the location.”

After Nate finished speaking, he added another instruction. “Don’t confess right now, you know what I mean?”

The young man nodded and said, “I have to make it look real. I’ve seen Gerald act.”

Seeing Nate’s somewhat clueless and foolish look, he said with a smile, “Gerald, the future big star. You’ll know.”

“By the way, give me another cigarette. I don’t know when I’ll be able to smoke one next time.”

Nate took out his cigarette case, took one out, lit it, and handed it over. At this moment, his curiosity flared up again. “Why?”

The young man, squinting from the smoke, asked with the cigarette in his mouth, “Why what?”

“Why aren’t you afraid?”

The young man replied with a smile, “Would you sell out your family?”

“I don’t know if you would, but I wouldn’t!”

Nate was somewhat taken for granted, somewhat shocked, and somewhat emotional. “Family… huh?”

Soon the young man finished his cigarette, and Nate also left the room. Then he went to check on the other interrogation rooms.

He wrote some words on a card—”Hold on, this will be over soon!”

Whenever he entered those interrogation rooms, he would show these cards to the interrogated subjects, letting them know that Lance was not doing nothing; he was taking action!

These displays were very secretive. No one could discover them, except for those being interrogated.

All morning, “nothing was achieved.” No one confessed. Some officers even noticed some abnormalities.

These interrogated subjects suddenly became tougher. Before, they might have been a bit negative, but now, they were not negative at all. Some even cursed while being beaten. How was this situation not right?

But they didn’t know what was wrong. They could only think it was… some kind of outburst?

Around noon, a large number of reporters suddenly appeared outside the police station. They said they had received a tip that the police station was torturing suspects on a large scale, forcing them to confess and to testify against more people.

This news to reporters was like a dog seeing a fresh pile of shit. In order to grab this pile of shit, they could even fight and bite each other!

For a time, the entrance to the police station became exceptionally lively, and Hunter was also very angry.

What did this mean?

This fucking meant there was a “mole” in the police station!

If there was no mole, who could know that they were torturing these suspects?

Now this was very difficult to handle. If he said nothing and let these reporters write whatever they wanted, then City Hall, the state government, and the prosecutor’s office might intervene and investigate.

Guaranteeing the fairness of the judicial system was one of the basic conditions for appeasing the lower classes and preventing riots. Although no one really took this matter seriously, not taking it seriously and publicly not taking it seriously were not the same thing!

He had to accept an interview, but he couldn’t let things deviate from the direction. Those son-of-a-bitch reporters would definitely want to interview those suspects.

The only thing he could do now was to try to fool them for the time being.

He believed that in a few days at most, he could completely sort out this case!

Soon he had the reporters go to the conference room and accepted an interview. At the same time, he brought up some other cases, and even had some officers take off their police uniforms to play the role of criminals to show the reporters!

He talked about the seriousness of these cases and stated that it was impossible for the police station to have such things as torture, which violated the law and judicial requirements. Everything was a rumor spread by criminals.

Their purpose was to disrupt the interrogation and prevent them from grasping the truth!

(End of a Chapter)