Chapter 136: The Arrest Operation and the Emergency Call

Chapter 136: Chapter 136: The Arrest Operation and the Emergency Call

Zoe Sawyer was scribbling away at her report while casually joining the conversation.

The next second, Heath Hale rapped Zoe Sawyer on the head with his finger. "That’s not allowed! I’ve told you before. Did you forget?

When you’re done with your report, find your notes from that lecture and copy them out three times!"

Zoe Sawyer rubbed her head and pouted, a bit defiant. ’Of course I remember! It just slipped out!’

’Using hypnosis during interrogations is forbidden, but so are exhaustion tactics like sleep deprivation.’

’But didn’t Evan Keller use those exact tactics on Anne Dawson? And he was a natural at it, too!’

Zoe Sawyer’s expression must have been too obvious, because everyone in the room could tell what she was thinking.

Evan Keller looked like he wanted to say something but held back. The truth was, as long as it didn’t cross the line into excessive physical punishment, such exhaustion tactics were tacitly approved. No one would ever call it out. It was a standard way to wear down a suspect.

These tactics were used even more frequently on heinous criminals like drug traffickers.

After all, these people had professional training. To get any information out of them, you first had to break their will. It was the only way to get the answers you needed quickly and effectively.

But the hypnosis Zoe Sawyer mentioned was another matter entirely.

"Alright, no time to chat. We have other things to handle. Get back to your homework," Heath Hale said, tapping the report Zoe Sawyer was less than a third of the way through, silently urging her to hurry up.

As for the others, they dove into more pressing matters.

"Something was off about Anne Dawson’s expression. I have a reasonable suspicion that the supermarket is just a front.

We need to focus our attention on the area surrounding it," Heath Hale said, pulling up the surveillance feeds from near the supermarket.

No one else objected.

Soon, everyone in the office—except for Zoe Sawyer, who was scrambling to finish her report, and Beau, who was studying—was engrossed in a review of the surveillance footage covering a wide radius around the supermarket.

The workload was immense. Everyone was prepared to pull an all-nighter if necessary, determined to find anything out of the ordinary, their eyes glued to the surveillance monitors.

But fate was on their side.

In less than an hour, Vivian Dunn spotted something strange.

She immediately paused the video, rewound it, and called everyone else over to take a look.

On the screen, an older man in perfectly ordinary clothes sat quietly on a bench, his eyes glued to the bags of customers leaving the supermarket.

At the same time, he was also keeping an eye on a small convenience store about fifty meters away.

Whenever a customer came out holding a drink, he would raise his phone to take a picture, tap the screen a few times, and then go back to his routine.

Just sitting there, watching his surroundings, and occasionally snapping a photo to send off.

Occasionally, he would get into arguments with young passersby, his face flushing red as they bickered.

But even in the middle of all that, if he saw someone emerge with groceries, he would pause the argument, take a photo, send it, put his phone away, and then resume bickering.

If Vivian Dunn hadn’t sensed something was off and paused to watch, they might have missed this detail entirely.

"Mark this guy. The rest of you, see if this pattern is happening anywhere else," Heath Hale ordered decisively, having Evan Keller and the others check how widespread this behavior was.

Now that they had a clear target, Evan Keller and the others worked much faster.

In less than an hour, they had found similar suspicious activity across dozens of camera feeds.

Each lookout was responsible for monitoring two or three nearby shops, and almost every single one was an elderly person in their sixties or seventies.

’Do they think an old person loitering around is inconspicuous?’

While Officer Lee created a digital log of the instances, the others ramped up their review of the footage.

Heath Hale’s expression suddenly turned grim as a thought struck him. "You don’t think they have people posted all over Varden, do you?"

"No way..." Evan Keller started to argue, but when he saw Officer Lee’s thick file of reports, he held his tongue.

Since the suspicion had taken root, Evan Keller and the others requested surveillance footage from several more districts.

They pulled in other officers from the precinct to help review all the videos from start to finish.

The next day, when Zoe Sawyer arrived yawning and holding Beau’s hand, she found the office filled with people sprawled out asleep.

A thick stack of paper sat on the desk by the door. Before he’d turned in, Officer Lee had printed out all the information on the suspects they’d identified, making it easy for the team to review.

The desk opposite was laden with bags of soy milk and steamed buns, ready for them when they woke up.

The only ones still awake and watching the monitors were Heath Hale, Barry Quinn, and Monkey.

The three of them had undergone more rigorous and brutal training, so pulling an all-nighter was manageable.

Sean Hughes and Vivian Dunn had claimed the sofa, their faces etched with fatigue and heavy bags under their eyes as they caught up on sleep.

The moment Zoe Sawyer and Beau walked in, Heath Hale looked up and motioned for them to be quiet.

It wasn’t until noon that the officers who had been passed out around the room slowly began to stir.

There was no time to talk to Zoe Sawyer. The moment they were awake, Evan Keller and Sean Hughes wolfed down a couple of buns, grabbed the printouts, and headed out with their team members.

Before long, both teams had returned, each with a group of elderly people in tow.

Since the precinct didn’t have enough interrogation rooms, they had them wait in the main lobby under the watch of other officers.

Meanwhile, Evan Keller and Sean Hughes each took one of them into an interrogation room.

"Their stories are all more or less the same," Evan Keller said, summarizing the files. "They all say some young man approached them, claiming he was opening a new shop but didn’t have time to do market research. He offered them a part-time job to just take photos for him on a regular basis.

Judging from their statements, they’re likely clueless about Anne Dawson’s activities."

A job that paid daily, just for taking a few pictures? How could these older folks not jump at the chance?

They were bound to work hard to keep their part-time gig.

Zoe Sawyer was about to ask if Anne Dawson even had that kind of money to pay all these men every day.

But then she reconsidered. ’When is a drug dealer ever short on cash?’

"So what do we do with these men now? Won’t letting them go tip off our real targets?" Zoe Sawyer asked.

Evan Keller shook his head. They had to solve the case before they could let anyone go.

They also needed to give them a stern lecture about what kind of part-time jobs to accept and which to avoid.

Just then, the office phone rang.

As soon as it was answered, the voice of the dispatcher came through the line.

"We’ve just received a report. A man says his wife has gone crazy. He claims she killed her lover and is now trying to kill him.

He’s requesting immediate backup."