Luke: “NYPD.”
This was something that he had to declare. Although he had switched the order and pointed his gun at the man’s head first, he still declared his identity in the end.
The middle-aged man was clearly stunned. “NYPD?”
Luke asked, “Tell me, who’s inside?”
The middle-aged man suddenly yelled, “DEA! We’re DEA agents. My badge is in my chest pocket. You can take a look.”
Unit 6B suddenly fell silent. Luke frowned, his gun still pressed to the back of the man’s head. He loosened his grip on the man’s neck and searched his chest for a badge.
With just a glance, he knew that it was real.
But whether these “DEA agents” were real or fake remained to be seen.
It would be even more troublesome if they were genuine agents.
Sensing the grip on his neck relax, the middle-aged man immediately said, “We’re on a secret arrest mission. I’m Blaise Bolton. My colleague is inside.”
His voice was still very loud.
Luke narrowed his eyes and vaguely understood what was going on.
Someone in the room finally said, “We’re from the DEA. Who’s outside, Blaise?”
Blaise quickly said, “It’s a police officer from NYPD.”
While he was speaking, Luke had already put his gun away and retreated to the stairs.
He didn’t trust these DEA agents at all.
Finally, a man stuck his head out of the door and looked outside.
After confirming that Blaise was the only one at the door, he craned his neck and looked at Luke. “Dude, what are you doing? It’s not good to point a gun at a colleague.”
Luke smiled, unperturbed. “I’m sorry, but I received a notice of an intense gunfight here. You didn’t show me your badges.”
Even so, he still had his gun aimed at the door of 6B.
The man’s expression clearly didn’t look too good.
Luke could also see the panic on the man’s face. Someone behind him was quietly telling him what to do.
Activity picked up in the room again.
After he spoke, Luke walked a little further down the stairs so that most of his body was covered.
He then took out his phone and called HQ’s information center.
Luke gave his identity and police officer number, then explained the situation. HQ said that the patrol officers would arrive in five minutes at most.
There was a lot of activity in the room, and Luke’s sharp hearing and brain synapses were constantly picking up information from the sporadic bits of conversation.
“What about this bag?”
“Malky, bring it out later. If they notice it, tell them that it’s illegal drugs we seized.”
“And here? How are you going to explain the kid’s body?”
“Figure it out yourself.”
“Huh?”
…
Five minutes later, two patrol cars arrived.
Luke showed the four NYPD patrol officers his badge and told them what was going on before he led them to 6B.
The patrol officers stood on either side with their guns in hand and shouted, “NYPD, listen up. Put down your weapons and show us your IDs. Otherwise, we have reasonable grounds for treating you as suspects.”
After a brief silence, four people finally walked out.
They weren’t holding guns, but only because they had put them back into their holsters. Each person had a DEA badge on them.
On the badge was an eagle in an octagon with its wings spread. It was clearly different from the NYPD badge.
A patrol officer checked their badges one by one and nodded at Luke.
Luke wasn’t surprised.
These DEA agents were real, but as for what they were doing here, only they themselves knew.
Luke more or less knew, but there were some accusations that couldn’t be made without solid evidence.
As the patrol officers spoke to the DEA agents, Luke walked into the room.
There was a body of a short and fat man lying near the door, but the six bullet holes in his back and the long trail of blood he left from crawling over the floor were very strange.
Avoiding all the blood, Luke took two steps forward. At the end of the hallway, on the right, a young girl had also been shot in the back.
Luke silently took two steps forward and looked into the bathroom on the right.
A woman was soaking in a bathtub with headphones on. There was a huge hole in her chest, and the water in the bathtub had turned red with blood. There was also a huge red stain on the ground.
Luke sneered inwardly. Why would a woman who was listening to music in a bathtub need to be shot in the chest? Even SWAT wasn’t that rough with terrorists.
After a few glances, he took a few steps forward, and another body appeared at a fork in the hallway.
Luke’s face darkened.
It was a little boy who was at most four or five years old. At that moment, he was already dead.
Except for the man at the door, the three people who had died here were unarmed women and children.
Were these DEA agents crazy? This was New York, not Juarez, Mexico. How could they kill people here?
Pausing for a moment to determine the direction from which the boy had been flung out, Luke entered another room.
It was a complete mess. There were bullet holes everywhere; these didn’t come from just one gun.
This should be the source of the intense gunfight that had been reported to the police.
There was the body of a man in a floral shirt at the door. His scent indicated that he had a fair amount of contact with the DEA – this was probably their man.
There were five victims in the apartment.
The man who died at the door was probably the owner, and the woman in the bathtub was his wife, while the young girl and boy were their kids.
Scanning the room, Luke’s gaze fell on a photo.
It was a photo of the dead girl and the boy, but a figure had been cut out from another photo and stuck in-between them.
It was a twelve-year-old girl.
As Luke observed the room, a middle-aged man in a beige suit looked at him with a smile. “Detective, this is our case.”
Luke looked at him, and this time, he didn’t even put on a polite smile. He simply said, “Two minors have died here. Was the DEA handling this case like a terrorist attack or a massacre?”
The man’s expression changed. “What do you think drug dealers are? Devout believers, just praying in church every day? They’ll take out their guns and kill you at any moment.”
Pointing at the body of the man in the floral shirt at the door, he yelled, “One of my men just died, and you’re already making sarcastic remarks? Oh, right, see this? That fatty even ruined my new suit!” He then gestured at his left shoulder.
He had indeed been shot.
However, Luke could tell that the man had only been grazed by one or two bullets. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to move his left arm.
He nodded. “As long as you’re happy.” He then turned around and left.