"Why didn't you ask the Lieutenant Colonel about his wife's old facial injuries? Are you worried they might be caused by domestic violence?"
Jiejie asked softly beside Jack, watching the two officers escort Lieutenant Colonel Barnes to pick up their daughter.
"If I was worried about that, I would have asked directly. He's a soldier, and controlling his emotions to accomplish his mission is certainly his strength, but that doesn't mean he's a good liar."
At least for now, Jack couldn't see any signs of deception from the Lieutenant Colonel. He didn't ask simply because now wasn't the right time.
The investigation had just begun, and after securing the Lieutenant Colonel and his daughter, there was no need to worry about further harm. Therefore, this case could be handled slowly; there was no need to rush the case now.
—
"This went incredibly smoothly." Upon seeing the two return, Aubrey approached with a look of excitement.
Jack was baffled by his excitement. "What's going on? Did the local police finally find the murder weapon in a trash can on a nearby block?"
"Uh," Aubrey paused. "Not really, but Alice found the administrator of that terrorist website.
Dorian Hobart, discharged from the Army in 2015. According to intelligence from the NSA, he's been working for radical organizations."
"Do you know where he is?" Jack asked.
Aubrey's expression fell, and he hesitated. "The website is registered in Algiers, with a mirror server in Silver Spring, Maryland, but Alice hasn't been able to trace the administrator's IP address.
The NSA doesn't know his whereabouts either. We're contacting other intelligence agencies, hoping to find something."
"Besides promotional purposes, that website probably also has a recruiting function, right?" Jack pulled out a chair and sat down next to Alice.
"There's an anonymous message board where you can contact the administrator." Alice opened a very simple dialog box.
As smart as she was, she had already guessed what Jack was up to: fishing.
"A sympathetic sponsor of extremism, or perhaps a patriot seeking to join the cause?"
Aubrey immediately rubbed his hands in anticipation. "How about a retired sniper who served in the Navy SEALs? I got kicked out of the military after a dispute with my superiors, so I became a 'war hyena' (mercenary)."
"'War hyena'? You?" Clay sneered mercilessly at the most elegantly dressed of the group.
Hannah's expression also showed a hint of disdain. "The only one here whose marksmanship isn't as good as yours is Alice. Are you really planning on pretending to be an elite sniper?"
Technically speaking, Aubrey's marksmanship wasn't that bad; it was just that his actual performance was a bit high.
Most of the time, his marksmanship training was at the level of an average FBI field agent, but occasionally he'd land a shot that even Clay would marvel at.
Aubrey considered himself a performer, but everyone else would chalk it up to luck.
However, since he'd volunteered to be the bait, the others didn't want to spoil his fun and quickly created a fake identity.
"Tom Clancy, electrical expert, skilled in explosives manufacturing, retired Ranger, how about that?" Jubal smiled and placed the information in front of Aubrey.
"That's fine," Aubrey pouted, somewhat reluctantly accepting the character's design.
Alice quickly drafted a letter of surrender, offering to bring her own food and become a vanguard for an extremist organization, and submitted it via the website's message board.
"Okay, now it's just a matter of waiting for news."
Jack found a comfortable seat again and adjusted his laptop in front of him. They currently had more than just this one lead.
The bullet fragments had been sent to the CSI lab in New York, and results should be available soon.
Jubal and the others were sorting through Valerie Barnes's medical records, hoping to find something. Jack was interested in investigating the old facial injury.
As usual, a married woman's death at home, excluding burglary and sexual assault, meant her husband or lover was always the primary suspect.
The
next morning, Jack had just stepped into the police station when he saw Aubrey waiting there.
Seeing him trade his high-end suit for a street-slicker look, he knew someone had taken the bait.
"Alice received a reply from Dorian Hobart and arranged to meet in two hours at a small park near Croft Hill."
Croft Hill is located in the western suburbs of Richmond, where an English-style manor house brimming with Southern American charm is a popular historical site.
"So this guy is actually there?" Jack was surprised.
The Rich Lake area where the Barnes family lived was a suburb of Richmond, and the victim, Dr. Valerie Barnes, drove into downtown Richmond every day for work. This was a bit too much of a coincidence.
Richmond is a city name that's quite common. It originally originated from a city in North Yorkshire, England. As colonists spread across North America, there are at least twenty or thirty cities with the same name in the United States.
The same situation also exists in Australia and Canada, but the most famous city in the Americas is undoubtedly the one Jack is currently in, the capital of Virginia.
Once the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War, it is dotted with monuments and statues commemorating those Southern "rebels," such as Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, the president elected by the Southern states.
Aubrey, dressed in a tight T-shirt and ripped jeans, sat unobtrusively on a park bench. His recent free meals with Jack and training with Clay had bulked him up considerably.
Jack had carefully applied a beard to him, and with the fake tattoos the girls had applied with stickers, he looked quite convincing at first glance.
"Try not to make too much noise," Jubal said, holding a newspaper as he sat at a stone table in the park a dozen meters away from Aubrey, his eyes scanning the crowd.
The morning was a beautiful, overcast summer day, the sun not too strong and the temperature just right. The park was bustling with people strolling, exercising, and enjoying family activities.
Clay and a local K9 officer, disguised as a couple, were playing with a police dog on the lawn with a Frisbee. Jack, dressed like a sissy in his fluorescent green tracksuit, was on the yoga mat teaching two beautiful women, Jiejie and Hannah, yoga.
The two girls' pretty faces and graceful figures attracted the attention of many male parents with children. Some of them kept lingering around the girls with lustful eyes, making Jack feel that this undercover operation was a bit of a loss.
(End of this chapter)