Chapter 1163: Death, Evidence, and Leverage

The man who had lost his child opened the door just a crack, held by a security chain—a steel chain about the thickness of a little finger connecting the door to the frame.

In reality, this kind of security only prevents "polite criminals," who would leave once they discovered it.

But against those who are truly vicious, they only need to ram it a few times to break it open.

Standing at the door were four guys who looked... a bit frightening. They wore suits, dark ties, and expressions that were very serious—serious enough to make one feel uneasy.

The man who had lost his child observed them carefully and shook his head. "I don't know you. What do you want?"

The guy in front, who was already balding and looked to be about thirty-seven or thirty-eight, pulled a document from his breast pocket and displayed it to the man. It was a federal prosecutor's ID.

"I am a prosecutor from the Prosecutor's Office. I want to talk to you about some details regarding your child's death."

This sentence caused the man's guard to drop significantly; a glimmer of hope even appeared on his face. "You... found her?"

From the police's perspective, their daughter was only "missing."

The police wouldn't open a case for a missing person, but the parents were certain their daughter had been murdered. She had never gone this long without contacting home or returning.

They knew their daughter might have had various problems they didn't know about, but she was still their child. Regardless of her current state—alive or dead—they wanted to find her while seeking justice.

Whether she was alive or dead, they wanted to know.

Facing the man's hopeful gaze, the guy at the door shook his head.

They should have dealt with this couple earlier, but they had contacted a reporter, which changed things. And that reporter had some ability and connections.

If not for this accident, the couple might already be with their daughter.

But it didn't matter. Now that they had obtained more support from Mr. Porter, they could ignore some risks and forcibly erase this couple, and even that reporter.

The bald guy took back his prosecutor's ID. The document was real; with the power behind him, getting a real ID was child's play.

It was just that the owner of this ID wasn't registered in the prosecutor's system. In other words, the document was real, but the person was fake.

"Are you sure you want to talk here?" The bald man looked around. "Standing outside your door?"

"My mistake!" The man who had lost his daughter immediately slapped his forehead. He closed the door, unlatched the security chain, and welcomed them inside.

"We've been busy trying to find our daughter lately, so... I'm sorry for the lack of hospitality."

He led them toward the living room and shouted, "Jenny, go make some coffee! There's a prosecutor here to talk about our daughter!"

His wife ran out from the living room, a glimmer of hope on her face too. "Has... has she come back?"

"Go make the coffee!" the husband urged again, then turned to the four men. "Let's talk in the living room."

They entered the living room, and his wife, Jenny, went to the kitchen to make coffee. To the man's surprise, the prosecutor's subordinates didn't sit down; they remained standing.

Only the prosecutor sat down.

"So now... are there only the two of you here?" the bald prosecutor asked a question that surprised the man.

He paused for a moment before nodding. "Yes, just the two of us. Since she went missing... you know, it's been a huge blow to us."

"The room is a bit messy, so I'm sorry..."

He spoke without much logic or order because the place was indeed a mess. Various things were piled together; they had no heart to tidy anything up.

The bald prosecutor nodded. He looked at one of his subordinates. "You're just going to stand there waiting for the lady to bring the coffee?"

"Go help her!"

The man who had lost his daughter immediately said they didn't need help. He was still being polite, but as he stood up, he was pressed back down by the bald prosecutor. "So much coffee!"

He paused, staring directly into the man's eyes. His gaze had a... certain indescribable quality. The man had wanted to be polite again, but for some reason, he lost all his courage. He sat back down with a dry laugh.

By now, he had begun to suspect something was wrong. His suspicion grew rapidly. His brain started to come back online, and he asked a sharp question: "Shouldn't you be talking to me about my daughter's situation?"

"Why are you so concerned about who knows about this?"

His expression turned serious. Just then, a sound of something breaking came from the kitchen. He was about to stand up to see what had happened when a muscular man standing behind the sofa lunged over and locked him in a chokehold!

He struggled in terror, but he was pinned down by the two men. His eyes bulged, his face flushed red as blood flow was restricted and pressure mounted—red as if it were about to burst!

If a small cut were made on his skin, blood would spray out!

He stared fixedly at the prosecutor before him. If looks could kill, but they couldn't.

He felt his life force draining away rapidly. Suffocation is a very painful way to die. His instincts had taken over his body; his struggle became more violent, but he still couldn't break free from the two men's restraint.

In the final stages of his life, his mind suddenly thought about whether these people were the ones who had killed his daughter.

Was he about to see his daughter soon? And he was still worried about his wife.

Two minutes passed. The bald prosecutor stood up, panting, and straightened his tie. He patted the muscular man's thick arm. "That's enough. Do you want to twist his head off?"

The muscular man released his arm. The man who had lost his daughter slid down the sofa onto the floor. The bald prosecutor checked his cheek; he was dead.

He then turned and walked toward the kitchen. The woman named Jenny was also lying on the floor. She had suffered the same fate; it was clear she had been strangled.

Looking at her skirt, stained by urine, the bald prosecutor frowned. He was disgusted. "Clean this up quickly."

Soon, a van arrived at the door. The two bodies were rolled up in blankets and loaded into the vehicle. In a place they didn't know, someone was filming all of this, including their faces.

As the three vehicles left, everything returned to calm, leaving only the faint smell of urine in the house, seemingly still telling the tragic story of what had happened there!

Of course, these people didn't know they were being followed.

Perhaps they were used to being arrogant, or perhaps they didn't think anyone here could harm them. They hadn't considered these possibilities at all.

On the other side, after the call between the reporter and the couple was suddenly cut off, the reporter dialed the number several times, but it remained unanswered.

As a gold-medal reporter, and investigating such a sensitive case, his mind immediately filled with various conspiracies linked to the political scene.

With the presidential frontrunner Mr. Porter involved, they definitely had to have some methods. After hanging up, the gold-medal reporter immediately called two of his friends and went to a nearby police precinct to explain the situation—

He didn't describe that the case might involve the Porter family; he just said a friend's call had been cut off and there was no answer.

He was very worried that his friend might have had an accident, and the friend lived in an old federal residential area, so he needed the police to help provide assistance if they had to break down the door.

The precinct immediately arranged for four officers to accompany them to the missing girl's home. From the outside, the whole house was intact, with no signs of broken windows or doors. Then, with the police's help, they entered the room.

The gold-medal reporter shouted the couple's names, but unfortunately, there was no response. When he approached the kitchen, he smelled a strong odor of urine and immediately went to the kitchen area.

He saw a patch of urine on the floor that was about to dry, emitting a strong, pungent odor.

This made his unease even greater. No one would urinate on their own kitchen floor like this; they clearly had more than one bathroom, and they could have gone to the toilet, but why urinate on the floor?

The knowledge the gold-medal reporter had accumulated over his many years in the industry boiled over in an instant. In a very short time—a few seconds—he made a judgment.

Someone had died here, so they had lost control of their bladder, leaving a puddle.

This also meant that the couple had been murdered.

This made his emotions tense. If the couple had been murdered, would he be next?

He immediately said to the police who had come with him, "I suspect they have been murdered."

The police officer walked over, seemingly smelling the strange odor too, and covered his mouth and nose with his hand. "Someone urinated in the sink?"

This sounded a bit funny, but it had happened more than once in the Federation, and he had seen it more than once in the cases he was responsible for.

Some people would defecate in the sink, or on the coffee table; as long as they wanted to do it, there would always be someone who would.

The reporter explained his thoughts, and the police officer became more serious. This was a residential area for light-skinned people, and they were all quality voters. If things blew up, it would be hard to explain.

He immediately ordered someone to call for backup and also had someone check the telephone lines, because the gold-medal reporter had said the line had suddenly been cut.

There was no signal here either. If it was a deliberate murder, there must be signs of human sabotage.

The facts were indeed so. Seven or eight minutes later, an officer brought back a result that made them feel "there was something to it" and a bit tricky: the telephone line had been cut with a knife.

There were clear signs of force and a cut, so the murder case was established.

More police arrived. Through inquiries in the community and of the surrounding residents, they learned that several vehicles had appeared here in the afternoon, and there was a moving company that seemed to have moved something away, though some said they hadn't seen anything.

＿￠〇

The gold-medal reporter's mood was a bit bad. He didn't return to his residence but took his friends to one of his safe houses.

He also had safe houses.

Actually, calling them safe houses is more like calling them small, infrequently visited houses. He had bought them, and they were stocked with canned goods, weapons, and ammunition.

As a gold-medal reporter, wanting to become famous is nothing more than following a few paths: reporting everything that can sting people's hearts. Only in this way can one quickly gain people's attention, and it's clear he's a person who likes risk.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have continued to follow up after knowing this case was related to a presidential candidate.

So he needed to prepare a temporary residence for himself to avoid being attacked by one of the parties in his reports.

As he approached his safe house, he let his friends leave. He wouldn't tell anyone where that house was; this was a protective measure for himself.

Next, he needed to consider how to get this out—

Only by getting it out could he survive. If he treated this as a secret or a bargaining chip in his hand, he would only have a dead end!

His choice saved his life. If he had returned home at this time, he would have discovered the uninvited guests and his impending fate, the same as that couple.

Caution and care allowed him to survive.

Meanwhile, the bald prosecutor had brought the two bodies to the place they used to dispose of them.

After all... they weren't professional gangsters, so they mainly relied on finding a remote place to bury them.

Especially in the suburbs.

The suburbs of this era were far from as safe as they would be later; various wild animals would make anyone who boasted about camping in the wild regret it.

They drove slowly to their designated spot and began to dig.

It took twenty minutes for them to dig a deep pit, then they threw the two bodies in and refilled it with dirt.

If gangsters knew about this, they would mock them for being very unprofessional, because burying them, no matter where, carries the possibility of being discovered.

Even if the probability is small, there is still a possibility of being discovered.

In the past, a case like this happened in the Federation: several hunters were hunting coyotes and raided a coyote den, where they found human remains.

They reported it to the police, thinking someone had died in the wild, but later, police investigations revealed that the coyotes had found a newly dug pit.

They had dug it up and dragged the bodies out. Later, because of this discovery, the police solved the case.

But if it were handled by gangsters, they would only send the bodies to a pet shop, ensuring not a single trace could be found.

After all, prosecutors had no precedent for looking for evidence in dog feces, and even if they did, the dog's stomach acid would render the evidence worthless!

After handling the bodies, the men left, panting and carrying their shovels. Half an hour after they left, another group of people arrived. They came to the burial site, took photos, filmed, and dug up several bodies, including the girl's, and some remains that were unknown.

After doing this, they put the bodies back and slowly left.

Just as Senator Cleveland had told Lanse, they needed a controllable president, not to bring down a president and replace him with another uncontrollable one.

With such a huge scandal, Mr. Porter, or President Porter, would pose no threat to them.

That evening, Lanse learned the whole story and then called Senator Cleveland to explain it.

"We now have evidence proving that this matter is directly related to Mr. Porter Jr., and he even went to Mr. Porter's office that night."

"We have relevant proof that can indirectly prove these events were not isolated."

Senator Cleveland was very happy and pleased to hear this!

"I knew it! You never disappoint me with the things I ask you to do!"

"Well done, Lanse. This is a huge help. We were just considering how to keep Porter in check after he takes office. With this help from you, we have bargaining chips to negotiate with them!"

He thought for a moment. "Get ready, make multiple copies of the evidence and keep them safe, then bring me some of the less important evidence, for example..."

He thought about it. "Photos of those killers meeting with his son or being together."

As for the couple and their daughter?

Nobody cared.

(End of chapter)

"I knew it, you never disappoint when it comes to things I ask you to do!"

"Well done, Lanse. This is a huge help to us. We were just considering how to keep the Potter family in check after they take office, and with your help, we now have bargaining chips to negotiate with them!"

He thought for a while. "Get ready, make several copies of the evidence and keep them safe, then hand over some of the less important evidence to me, for example..."

He thought about it. "Photos of those killers meeting with his son, or being together."

As for that couple and their daughter?

No one cares.

(End of chapter)