Chapter 91: Part-Time Patrol Officers
Luke and Selina simply bought two bikes and rode them to the police department every day, before they went on patrol in their police car.
It was a way to save money as well as to train their bodies.
Luke had truly run out of money. Most of the ten thousand bucks that he had gotten from the Carlos family had been given to Carol.
And most of his salary had gone into the new car, which had vanished.
As an experiment, he had stolen five dollars when he was in Rumford, and spent it after he returned to Houston.
But he then received a system notification which stated that his credit had been reduced by 5 for illegally obtaining someone else’s possession.
Luke immediately realized that as expected, the Super Detective System represented justice, and forbade stealing.
He had taken ten thousand bucks from the Carlos family, and had even given thousands away, but nothing had been deducted from his credit.
So, the system rule was clear.
Criminals weren’t protected by the system. Luke’s credit was fine when he killed them or plundered their possessions.
However, he couldn’t do the same to innocent people.
Luke would have to experiment more to find out what kind of criminals he could dispose of without getting punished for it, and what the boundary of criminality was.
However, credit was precious. He planned to use a dollar, or maybe two dollars, in later tests.
Otherwise, he might lose 100 credits if he stole a hundred dollars.
He didn’t test it out with Selina because they were too close; it was hard to say who owed whom money.
The safest approach was to go after drug dealers; Luke was certain that their money was free for the taking.
Also, he had lost 5 credits for stealing five dollars. What if he killed innocent people? Considering the system’s att.i.tude, Luke didn’t think that it would end too well for him.
However, Luke wasn’t in a rush to earn money.
First of all, his arm had been injured recently, and he needed to exercise it first in order to recover.
Secondly, Luke and Selina had recently gotten a pay rise. Both of them were single and didn’t need a lot of money.
Lastly, there were a lot of patrols happening in Houston at the moment, and it certainly wasn’t the best time to secretly attack drug dealers.
Tony Stark had arrived in Houston for a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p project, or something about the development of s.p.a.ce resources.
Houston was officially known as s.p.a.ce City.
This place was the center of aeronautics in America; its basketball team was simply called The Rockets.
Houston was the base for companies that specialized in s.p.a.ce technology.
As it so happened, Stark had run into a protest by a certain peace organization a few days ago. Thus, city hall had decided to clean up Houston before Stark arrived, to show that it was a friendly city.
At the very least, the prost.i.tutes and the drug dealers couldn’t be allowed to blatantly walk the streets.
Luke and Selina weren’t really patrolling. They were only waiting to deal with emergencies, such as possible gunfights or conflicts.
Detectives of the Major Crimes Division were more intimidating and powerful than regular officers.
Experienced in dealing with criminals, they could easily intimidate most people.
Actually, Brock didn’t really want to deploy them.
Such an a.s.signment would enable them to familiarize themselves with the environment and allow them to establish their own network of informants.
However, he couldn’t ignore the chief’s order and not send anyone out.
The other detectives had too many cases to deal with, and had little time for street patrol.
Thus, Brock could only give Luke’s team the a.s.signment alongside another team.
The difference was that Luke and Selina were always on patrol, while the detectives of the Major Crimes Division took turns on the other team.
It was as Luke had expected.
That morning, Luke and Selina had issued warnings to three groups of gangsters. They didn’t really care about their lives, and weren’t scared of the police.
Some of them even tried to hara.s.s the female officer.
Selina used her Brazilian jiu-jitsu to teach them a lesson without hesitation. She grabbed their limbs and put pressure on them, making the gangsters beg and cry.
Naturally, it was impossible for them to file a complaint.
They were more likely to shoot Luke and Selina than to file a complaint.
However, Luke and Selina only gave them a warning and didn’t take them down.
They weren’t with the DEA. The Major Crimes Division had no time to deal with n.o.bodies like these unless they were involved in special cases.
Those gangsters knew better than to resist. They were aware of what HPD had been up to recently.
The best they could do was curse before they hid away in even darker corners.
They were more interested in selling more drugs and earning more money than p.i.s.sing off the Major Crimes Division.
The other cases that Luke and Selina had to deal with were more light-hearted.
Someone had filed a complaint against a woman drying her clothes outside her window. A police officer had gone to talk to her, but the fat woman had simply taken out a shotgun and said that she was in no mood to talk.
The officer and the woman were caught in an impa.s.se. Eventually, Luke and Selina were called in.
Like an even fiercer tigress, Selina suppressed the tough woman so that the officer could take her in.
Of course, the woman didn’t really plan to shoot, but the officer was unwilling to take the risk.
He didn’t want to star in a news report about an officer killing a woman over something as trivial as drying clothes.
Luke also realized this, so he had stepped forward from one side to grab the shotgun.
In another case, a family was reported to have kidnapped some children.
An officer came, but the family refused to open the door.
Luke and Selina came in as reinforcements. Selina negotiated with the family in Spanish, and finally, the door was opened.
Inside the room was a Mexican woman. The children inside hadn’t been kidnapped, but were her own children.
She hadn’t opened the door because she didn’t have a green card.
Selina didn’t say anything complicated to persuade the woman. She merely told the woman that she was from the Major Crimes Division, not Immigration, and that she wasn’t here about the woman’s immigration status.
Selina also said that her parents were immigrants from Mexico, and that while she wasn’t interested in investigating the woman, the latter would definitely be sent back to Mexico if she refused to open the door.
Selina understood illegal immigrants too well. She had heard too much about that terrible life from her parents.
Eventually, after Selina talked to the officer, the woman wasn’t brought back to the police station.