Sergeant Doakes was awake...
The whole world was talking about the new vigilante who cruelly murdered a billionaire businessman.
Now that Larry was where he wanted to be, he needed time to plan his next murder, so using the excuse of investigating privately for Jack, he took a few days off work.
Larry needed time to think and, of course, to learn more about James Doakes' condition, which was bothering him greatly.
…
Four days after the first appearance
As soon as he entered the office, Max ran over with a smile and gave him a hug directly, as if somehow he had missed him. "Boss, it's rare for you to take days off in this job, where did you go?"
Larry shook his head; there was no need for the curious to meddle in his personal life, but for this, he had some answers. "I didn't go anywhere, I was at home resting and reading."
Jane approached with a smile while holding a tray with hot coffees. "Do you like reading?"
"I thought that after reading so many reports at work you'd be exhausted from reading, letters outside of work are tiring for me." Max blurted out and moved closer to Larry with a smile.
"Of course I get tired, but it's good for the mind to read something out of the ordinary." Larry took a coffee from the tray Jane was holding and, as they approached the desks, asked: "Have you made up your mind?"
"Huh?" Jane, with her quite charming smile, looked at Larry and then said: "They told me that working with you is lighter, I think I'll be fine for a while."
"Well, then get ready to lose your mind." Larry didn't insist anymore on trying to get Jane off his team; after all, there were more important things to worry about.
For example, the course of the investigation involving him and what the police had discovered so far.
He hadn't left any traces, but there was always that internal doubt about what could happen if, for some reason, human error crept into his work.
"Do you know anything about the judge's case?" Jane moved a little closer, seeking an answer.
"Nothing beyond what we heard in the meeting, but since it's not our case we should stay away from anything that might connect us to it." Larry, like any other agent, wanted to stay far from that case.
Being close to something as sensitive as that investigation team was something no one wanted.
"We have a visitor!" Jane, before asking anything else, looked at a man in a suit approaching.
"Hello, I'm from central command. Is forensic doctor Luk from the special investigation group here?"
Max, who was standing handing over some reports, turned and shouted: "Boss, they're looking for you."
Larry raised his hand and said: "Here, I'm Larry Luk."
The man in the suit who approached said bluntly: "We discovered that workers have recovered suspicious human bones from the sewer on the pedestrian street of the new district avenue. Jack offered his help so you could draw your own conclusions."
Jane became interested in the case, so she waited for Larry's response.
"All right, send me everything."
"We'll send the address by email later."
"Sounds good…"
Larry turned to Jane and asked: "Are you ready?"
"Yes!" Jane was excited to know her first case was near.
"Max, what do we have?"
"Bones, lots of them, they were found in a sewer which means we might be in front of a pit," Max said, thinking of the possibilities.
"All right, a pit, which meant we might be after very specific targets." Larry thought of numerous possibilities since it was not common to find such things in the country.
That led them to a limited search list.
"Any idea?"
Jane thought a bit and said: "If we investigate the surroundings, we'll discover who left those bones there. We might be looking at something more elaborate."
"Well thought."
…
Half an hour later, Larry drove to his destination.
This pedestrian street in the new district was very important to the city because its expansion meant a massive, very elaborate increase.
The imposing arch had an exotic and unique style.
On both sides of the street, there were all kinds of specialty food shops, as well as shops of foreign origin. The decoration, clothing, and flavor made people feel like they were walking through the streets of a city where foreigners gathered.
At the entrance of the pedestrian street, the police had discreetly cordoned off the area.
After telling Jane to go ahead, he approached with his team to start their work. "Jane, tell us the situation."
"What they told me was that a few days ago, the shopkeepers of this pedestrian street complained about the terrible smell from the sewer and were hoping the city council would take care of it. Yesterday afternoon, workers from the Municipal Engineering Management Office came to clean it."
Jane, after saying that, looked at the person who alerted the authorities.
"Today, while cleaning it 200 meters east of this entrance, we found many sticky floating objects, similar to lard, and the dredging equipment was blocked."
"The workers went down and began cleaning it manually, extracting some bones from the pipe. They looked like human bones, so we reported it to the police and here are the bones."
Following the direction of the finger of a man named Diego, Larry saw a basket next to the sewer inspection opening, which contained large and small bones.
Larry approached and found they were covered in slime and grease. Max brought a large bucket of water and simply rinsed them.
Only then could he see their original appearance.
Larry picked up a humerus, a femur, a human molar, and some fragments of ribs.
There were numerous knife marks on the femur and humerus. It seemed the knife had been used to cut the bones, but it had not gone all the way through and had only cut several grooves.
Touching it, he discovered that the edges of the grooves were very sharp. The fact that the bones had turned directly into white bones indicated they had either decomposed for a long time or the muscle tissue had been manually removed.
The cut grooves indicated the deceased might have been dismembered and the flesh extracted and thrown into the sewer.
However, this is a commercial street with a high population density. Even if we knew it was a dismemberment case, it's very difficult to find evidence.
Larry lifted the humerus and looked at Jane, who was standing beside him waiting. "The report was correct, these are human bones."
"All right, we'll take it from here."