Chapter 1365: The Power of Franklin Bills
The dark sewers had always been a cla.s.sic setting in horror movies.
At that moment, Luke and Selina were still walking around the suspected body dumpsite. The sounds of running water and scurrying rats added to the atmosphere.
However, neither of them felt anything.
After two minutes of silence, Luke suddenly stopped.
There was a fork in front of him.
At that point, the sewer branched off into three pa.s.sages. After standing still for a moment, Luke gestured, and the two of them took the left pa.s.sage.
The stench started to fade, and the air turned dry.
Looking at the dry sewer, Selina typed out a message via her sungla.s.ses and sent it to Luke. “This seems to be an abandoned sewer?”
Luke said, “Probably, but it’s occupied. We might be able to find a few eyewitnesses.”
Selina asked, “Homeless?”
Luke had a strange expression on his face. “Sort of.”
After walking dozens of meters, they stood in front of an iron door.
Luke glanced at the lock and fiddled with it for a moment before he unlocked it.
Luke and Selina opened the door just wide enough for them to walk in.
After taking two more corners, there was a faint yellow light on the wall not far away.
Selina took a look. “It’s a surveillance camera. Something’s not right here.”
“It probably isn’t our target. It might be an eyewitness.” Luke raised his hand to tell her to calm down.
In fact, there had been a sensor on the iron door earlier. After the door was opened, it sent out a warning signal, but they couldn’t hear it.
Selina’s grip on the gun at her waist relaxed, but she left the holster unbuckled.
They walked within range of the surveillance camera behind the light, and the lens adjusted its angle slightly.
Luke raised his head and pulled out his badge. “We need to know more about this sewer. We’ll leave after we’re done. Can we talk?”
He wore his standard business smile on his face; anyone he wasn’t familiar with would think that he was gentle and approachable.
Selina snorted and sent a message via her sungla.s.ses. “A woman?”
The smile on Luke’s face didn’t change as he simply gave her a thumbs up to indicate that she had guessed right.
A moment later, a small window opened in the iron door on the side with a light click, and a pair of eyes appeared. “What do you want to know?”
Selina raised an eyebrow.
The woman had deliberately lowered her voice, but she didn’t sound old.
Luke asked, “Are you familiar with the sewer 500 meters to the east?”
“Not very. I don’t go over there often,” the woman replied after a brief silence.
With a smile, Luke took out a bright green bill from his pocket and smoothly stuffed it into the window. “This is a tip. If there’s anything that piques my interest, I’ll give you the other half.”
When he said that, there was a tug on the bill and it was pulled inside.
Selina rolled her eyes. The power of money, especially Franklin bills, wasn’t something that a homeless person could resist, even if it was a little girl.
A moment later, a woman’s voice rang out. “I heard that quite a few tramps have gone missing. Some people have even heard the howls of evil spirits. n.o.body dares go over there now.”
Luke immediately gave her another bill. “Anything else?”
The woman fell silent again, shocked by the behavior of this super moneybags.
200 dollars for one sentence.
She had heard of the homeless getting paid for providing intelligence.
But police officers were very poor. Usually, they would give five to ten bucks for a fast food meal. They weren’t that generous.
She was a little scared, and felt that it might not be that good to take this money.
However, another voice seemed to be telling her that the young man in front of her was harmless and trustworthy.
The smile on his face, in particular, reminded her of the morning sun on the beach. It was gentle, bright and clear, but not dazzling.
After hesitating for a moment, she still chose to be honest. “As far as I know, Morey, Barack, Madeleine, and Semir all went missing. Not all at the same time; every few weeks, one of them disappeared. Most people say that they moved or died from a drug overdose, but n.o.body has seen their bodies, and there’s no news of their deaths from the police either.”
Surprised, Selina quickly sent Luke a message. “How does she know about the police side of things?”
Luke said, “We’ll see.”
Saying that, he took out two more Franklins and stuffed them into the window. “This isn’t a good place to talk. We’ll wait for you in the diner next to the parking lot along the beach at noon. We’ll be sitting next to the window on the very left when you walk in. Hm, my treat. You can eat whatever you want.”
He nodded slightly, and then turned around to leave with Selina.
Several minutes later, the door finally opened to reveal a thin figure.
Looking in the direction they left in, she hesitated.
But the four Franklins in her hand were really too powerful. She had just needed to say a few words to get them, plus she could still get a full meal after this.
If it had been a man with ulterior motives, she wouldn’t hesitate and would have refused right away.
But the man had brought a beautiful colleague with him.
To say that he had ill intentions toward her seemed a little ridiculous.
Also, Luke seemed to know what she was worried about, and had set the diner as the meeting place, which would have the most customers at noon.
Even the police wouldn’t arrest her for no reason in front of so many people.
If they truly wanted to detain her, they didn’t need to go to all this trouble. Her little iron door wouldn’t have lasted long if they had tried to break it down.
After hesitating for less than a minute, she gritted her teeth and put the 400 dollars into an iron box before she hid it in the wall and left her nest.
…
In the diner, Selina blew on her hot chocolate. “What’s so special about that girl?”
If Luke had just wanted information, just throwing out the money there would have been enough. A person like Luke, who wouldn’t get up early for anything or do more than required, wouldn’t bother to buy the girl a meal.
Luke added a lot of fresh milk to his coffee and two sugar cubes. Sipping on his drink, he nodded in satisfaction.
He liked this kind of milk that was sweet, while Jenny, who loved black coffee, would always look down on it.
In the CEO’s words, this milk tea completely suppressed the coffee’s fragrance and soul.
But for Luke, a 200-dollar cup of coffee was no different from coffee worth two bucks.
In any case, once you added milk and sugar, they were all more or less the same.
Selina nudged him unhappily. “Why are you dawdling? Tell me.”
Luke put down his coffee cup and thought for a moment before he finally said, “She’s a little special. She probably isn’t an ordinary person.”
Selina’s eyes lit up.
When Luke said she was special, he naturally wasn’t saying that she was especially beautiful or talented. He was obviously saying that she was different from a normal human being.