Chapter 525

Chapter 525: Chapter 525

At this point, the woman nodded vigorously, seemingly in complete agreement with her own words. She added, "Why would I lie to you about this for no reason? Wouldn’t I be exposed anyway when it’s time to hand over the money?"

As she spoke, she kept a close eye on Heath Hale’s expression.

Unfortunately for her, Heath’s expression didn’t change at all. Upon hearing her answer, he nodded in feigned seriousness. "You’re right, ma’am. No one would impersonate something like this. I was overthinking it.

"However, this is our standard police procedure. After you go home, please bring the documents over as soon as possible so we can take a photo for our records. It will make it easier for us to verify and disburse the funds later."

The woman’s face stiffened. Under the gazes of everyone around her, she nodded repeatedly and muttered a few words of agreement. Then, she hastily turned around and squeezed into the nearby crowd, terrified that if she stayed there any longer, she would be caught out again.

But anyone with half a brain could tell that something was wrong with what she had just said.

Just moments ago, she had been clinging to a police officer’s arm, crying in absolute despair that all her money had been tied up. Yet now, when asked to produce the documents for a photo record, she hemmed and hawed, unable to take out a single piece of proof. Pushing all the blame onto her absent husband clearly showed she had a guilty conscience!

In other words, she was just trying to get something for nothing, hoping to exploit the chaos to score some money for herself.

Heath shot a glance at the officer beside him, signaling him to keep an eye on the woman. Initially, he had thought she was just here to join the commotion. But after hearing her highly inflammatory remarks and seeing her inability to produce any relevant evidence, Heath was certain.

The real reason she had appeared here was likely because the mastermind had noticed something was amiss and sent someone to test the waters. As for the actual people involved, they definitely wouldn’t be missing a simple deposit slip.

Sure enough, Heath’s primary suspect pulled out a deposit slip with an innocent look on his face, obediently allowing the two officers to photograph it. At first glance, there were absolutely no flaws to be found.

Heath had the officers take the photos and quietly gave them a few whispered instructions.

After Zoe Sawyer and Sean Hughes finished comforting the old lady, they signaled for Heath to leave the reception room with them. They still had a mission. They needed to trace back the past and figure out the identity of the person Cameron had mentioned—the one who came to check the accounts in the middle of the night.

They had already wasted too much time here; they needed to hurry back and get this sorted out immediately.

The trio hastily left, completely oblivious to the gloomy gaze the man in the reception room directed at their departing backs.

The man stared at the doorway for a while before turning to the young officer nearby. "Officer, now that the registration is done, can I leave?"

The others also snapped out of their daze and looked at the young officer, waiting for an answer.

Recalling Heath’s whispered instructions from earlier, the young officer didn’t even look up. As he typed away on his computer, he replied, "You’ll have to wait a bit longer. I need to record all the information here. Once everything is verified to be correct, you’ll be free to go."

The man’s heart sank. This was completely different from what Heath had just said! Could it be that the police had discovered something? No, that couldn’t be right. If they had, they wouldn’t have just left them here to wait for the results.

The man’s expression grew anxious. Finally, gritting his teeth, he took out his phone to send a message, intending to inform his boss about the current situation.

But after he hit send, the loading icon spun for over a minute until a massive red exclamation mark appeared on his screen.

The police station had jammed the cell signals!

The man’s head snapped up, his eyes locked onto the two officers sitting by the desk.

"What’s wrong? Is there a problem?" Sensing the man’s intense stare, one of the officers looked up and asked.

"Nothing. Thank you for your hard work, Officer." After a moment’s thought, the man decided to swallow his question. Forget it, it was better not to ask. This group of police wouldn’t be able to find any evidence anyway. He had absolutely nothing to worry about!

He silently reassured himself.

Meanwhile, things were progressing completely differently on Zoe’s end.

Through retrocognition, she had indeed locked onto a mysterious man who visited the branch office every night at midnight. To be safe, Zoe intentionally skipped back a few days in time, even randomly sampling a day from the previous week.

Her efforts paid off. She discovered that this mysterious man showed up punctually every single day. And every day, Cameron would stand at the door, wearing an obsequious smile as he led the man inside.

Because the mysterious man never took off his mask while outside, even if there were security cameras, they wouldn’t yield any useful clues. However, once he stepped into the office Cameron had specifically prepared for him, the man took off his mask and hat, revealing a familiar face.

Wasn’t this the very same man who had just asked if he could leave?

It seemed they had hit the nail on the head. The mastermind really had planted someone to infiltrate the police station alongside the victims to gather intelligence up close. If it hadn’t been for Zoe’s abilities, coupled with Heath noticing something off about the man and ordering the young officers to keep them from leaving, things would have taken a disastrous turn!

"What do we do next? We have no proof, and there are no security cameras in this room," Zoe said, her tone filled with frustration. "Based on the evidence we currently have, it’s not enough to expose his identity."

Heath squeezed Zoe’s hand and scanned the office. Finally, his gaze locked onto a cigarette butt lying at the foot of the desk.

If he remembered correctly, the man had been smoking that cigarette while reading the documents in his hand. He had casually tossed it, and it had fallen to the floor before getting kicked around a few times and rolling into that crevice.

That meant there was a high probability they could extract the man’s DNA from the cigarette butt, which would be enough to convict him!

Heath didn’t hesitate. He immediately called the two team members who were still standing guard at the branch office. He gave them the office address and the exact location of the cigarette butt, instructing them to bring it back and run a test on it right away.

As for the suspect’s DNA sample, since he was currently held in the reception room, obtaining one would be a piece of cake.

"Move fast. We can’t keep the other innocent civilians locked up," Heath couldn’t help but urge before hanging up.

"Understood! I’ll bring it back right now!" the team member on the other end replied quickly, followed by the sound of running footsteps.

"Zoe, you and Sean continue to trace back and see if you can—"