"...I'm not surprised at all that Wallace is willing to rescue stray dogs. Oh, you have a phone call, I noticed it." The proprietress didn't need to be reminded at all. She saw the vibrating phone in Kirk's hand at a glance and interrupted the topic very smartly.
Kirk smiled but did not answer the call immediately. Instead, he said, "I am grateful, too. We need more kind people like you."
"Anyway, thank you so much for sharing this with me. I think I should come by another time and express my gratitude in person."
After another brief greeting and expression of gratitude, Kirk waved goodbye to the landlady, turned around and left as she looked at him with a smile on her face. He did not answer the phone until he had distanced himself and returned to his car.
"Good morning, Detective Roger-Murtaugh."
“Ahem.”
There was a violent coughing sound coming from the other end of the receiver. Before I could even open my mouth, I could smell the thick smell of cigarette smoke through the phone.
Familiar patterns, familiar scenes, in one second one can recall what Kirk saw when he went to the Special Investigations Division to look for Adrian.
Different time, different place, but same picture.
"Roger Murdoch? What? Are you implying that you are Martin Riggs?" Adrian caught the key words immediately and retorted without hesitation.
Roger Murdoch and Martin Riggs, the two protagonists of the classic movie "Lethal Weapon" released in 1987, are police partners working in Los Angeles.
The combination of one black and one white, although they are not the earliest screen police duo, there is no doubt that in the context of lone heroes being popular in Hollywood, this movie presented a new way of opening up with the partnership, and later opened a golden age of dual protagonists.
Among them, it is worth mentioning that this is the first work that really made Australian actor Mel Gibbson famous in Hollywood. In the movie, he played the role of Martin Riggs.
Kirk was a little surprised. "I thought you didn't like movies, Detective."
"Ahem!" Adrian rolled his eyes, "You think you are Mel Gibson."
The violent coughing sound could cause a vibration storm in Kirk's eardrums even through the phone, as if his lungs were going to be coughed out in the next second.
Kirk's mouth curled up slightly, and he said jokingly, "Detective, take care of yourself. We are too old to die young."
"Get out... cough... cough... get out!" Adrian coughed violently again, "I'm not interested in dying young, so don't take me with you."
Kirk chuckled.
It just so happened that he was going to talk to Adrian about Wallace.
But how should we approach it?
Should he start by talking about his surveillance, or Wallace's strange behavior, or his recent investigation?
However, these are still not definite evidence, but a feeling, an experience, an intuition, and the goose bumps hidden under the skin sound the alarm.
How should I express it so that Adrian can understand that subtle and complex feeling?
How should he express it so that Adrian could realize that Wallace was hidden in a fog, seemingly unrelated to the whole case but inextricably linked to it?
But I didn't expect that -
"I have discovered something."
Adrian didn't waste any time and threw out a heavy pound directly.
"To be precise, we have made a discovery."
"Actually, I didn't have to tell you. Stephen said I shouldn't tell you."
"I agree with at least one thing Stephen said. This is my case, the NYPD's case. It has nothing to do with you. You are just a civilian. We should not involve you. This is not good."
"But I think you should know about this. You would like to know. After all, we were able to investigate until now because of the evidence you found, the yellow ribbon, which connected everything together."
"You should rest a little easier now that we have identified the prime suspect."
"You can always trust the NYPD."
This simple sentence stirred up a storm in Kirk's mind, and his attention was instantly focused -
The main suspect?
This also means that they have indeed achieved a breakthrough, perhaps direct evidence, which is obviously more reliable than a vague guess.
It seems that last night, not only Kirk was busy all night long and experienced an ups and downs night; Adrian and Stephen were not idle either. They also worked overtime to investigate, but made a breakthrough from another aspect, which could even be said to be actually tense.
Kirk also jumped for joy, but he did not interrupt Adrian.
Adrian coughed again and continued.
"Stephen and I launched a series of investigations into the senator's team, starting with their alibis and cross-referencing their whereabouts."
"Compared to the homeless, their every move during the past period was recorded in the book. It didn't take much effort to establish the timeline. You know, what did we dig up?"
From his voice, one could sense the excitement and joy that Adrian was trying his best to suppress but still couldn't control. Even though he kept coughing he couldn't control the words that kept pouring out, and he blurted out the whole story in a split second.
Moreover, without keeping anyone in suspense, after a brief pause, Adrian directly gave the answer.
An unexpected but reasonable name.
"Thomas-O'Conner."
Senate assistant?
Prior to this, Adrian had communicated with the senator's team several times, and it was clear that this assistant appeared more frequently than the senator himself.
Adrian called the assistant "assistant" on the left and "lackey" on the right, swearing and full of disdain and contempt. Although he only mentioned the assistant 's name twice, Kirk still remembered it and immediately matched the name with the role. However, he didn't expect that it would appear again in such a context.
"He, do you still remember him? That lackey."
"We checked his alibi, and you know what? We found a treasure mine."
"February 27th, March 9th, March 17th, and March 21st. He has no alibis for any of these four dates."
The above four time points are the dates of death of the four victims inferred by forensic doctors.
"Also, on March 1, the senator's team held a meeting and he attended. But the senator needed a document, so he left the meeting room to get it. He was gone for three hours. I don't know if he went to Boston to get the document, but there was something fishy about those three hours."
"On March 14, he accompanied the senator to a cocktail party, during which he went to the bathroom for a while because he had eaten something bad. No one remembers how long he disappeared. Although he accompanied the senator after the cocktail party, no one could prove the gap in between."
"Wait, what's the other time? Anyway, there's no evidence to support the alibi for that time either."
"boom!"
"That is to say, he had no alibis for any of the seven murders."
The clues were connected again.