Book 1: Chapter 4.3

Book 1: Chapter 4.3

Tilarna did not object. She fell silent, and seemed to be willing to wait there. Matoba walked through the front entrance of the building and stepped into the elevator, heading back up to Room 603. The main hallway was crowded with people. The residents of the apartment gathered around the entrance to Room 603, whispering worriedly.

Move out of the way, this is the police.

Splitting apart the crowd, Matoba walked into the room.

The room was still heavily scarred from the gunfight that had taken place within it. The dead body of the Colombian, Alvarez, lay sprawled out on the living room floor. In the bedroom was a half-open Boston bag, with various pieces of clothing scattered around it. It seemed that he had been planning to run away, and had been caught in the middle of his packing.

He examined Alvarezs body. He found a wallet and a set of keys.

However, he did not find a cell phone.

Matoba searched through the bedroom for a landline phone, but there were none to be found. Even the phone in the living room had seemingly disappeared. Someone had come in and forcibly removed them, ripping out the phone lines in the process.

Damn it.

He had been tricked. Without the phone, he wouldnt be able to recover any of Alvarezs calls. Right as they had left the room to chase after the assassin, someone had come into the room to get rid of anything that could be used as evidence. It was a pretty bold move.

The suspect must have manipulated the assassin into fighting back and running away as a diversion. Their goal was to get Matoba and Tilarna to leave the room.

Of course, they would still be able to recover his call history by consulting the phone company. However, he could only do that by order of the court, and the process would take a while. The enemy would use that time to finish destroying all other evidence. But without the recordings, Matoba would have no idea what kind of people Alvarez had been talking with, and what they had been talking about.

Matoba returned to the main hallway and asked around to see if anyone had seen a suspicious man enter the room. No one had seen anything of the sort. But Matoba did not give up, stubbornly searching every corner of Alvarezs room for any possible evidence. He found nothing. He had no choice but to wait for the forensics unit to arrive, but he wasnt expecting them to find anything.

Their enemy was clever.

Up until now, Matoba had assumed that this entire case had been caused by gang drug trafficking. He thought that it had resulted from a war over the highest quality drugs that happened to escalate into something bigger.

However, he now realized that there was much more to it.

Oh, is that so? How impressive. You really know a lot of things, dont you?

Matoba ignored Tilarna as she glared at him angrily.

So, I will only include the basic details in the report. Id like to talk about this directly.

Thats fine. However, be very careful. As I expected, theres much more to this case than just gang conflict.

Understood Lets go.

Cutting off the call, Matoba stepped on the accelerator.

Where are we going? Tilarna asked. Her clothes had already returned to normal. The armor that she had been wearing was nowhere to be seen.

From place to place. First, we need to make sure that ONeil didnt snitch. Then, well confront every last one of Alvarezs acquaintances. Well start with his brothers, and then well ask the owner of the boat that he used to transport the fairy through the gate.

So hes a smuggler, right? Do you have any idea who he may be?

What department do I work in?

The Special Vice Squad.

Theres your answer.

The Special Vice Squad mainly dealt with the smuggling and trafficking of drugs, weapons and other illegal items. They were involved in countless undercover operations, and had accumulated tons of information on smugglers, many of which they still kept a close eye on.

After the smuggler, probably his girl. But I dont even know if he has one.

You think thats gonna get you anywhere?

Well see. Were gonna have to take this one step at a time.