“What?” Captain Pannell stood up in shock. “Alex? Which Alex?”
The driver shook his head and said, “I don’t know. All Tanya Sachs said was that Alex Cohen is a big shot I can’t afford to mess with. If I don’t complete this task properly, Alex has a hundred ways of making me die with my body in one piece… Officer, I’ve told you everything I know.
From the beginning to the end, I was only responsible for driving. I didn’t do anything else. Tanya was the one who handled the bomb. She was the one who installed it and finally detonated her. Even the car I drove was provided by her.”
Captain Pannell knew Alex, but he did not know if the Alex Cohen that the driver mentioned was the Alex he knew. He could not read any clues from the driver’s face, and he found it rather unbelievable too.
So after a moment of contemplation, he called a subordinate over and instructed, “Compile information of all the people in this city named Tanya Sachs and Alex Cohen immediately. The more detailed, the better!”
While his subordinates were busy organizing the data, Captain Pannell did not just idle around. He took the driver’s mobile phone and first looked through Tanya’s WhatsApp profile, but he did not find her self-portrait photograph. Then, he checked her phone number but discovered that it was a burner number. It had just been activated and only used to contact the driver.
Captain Pannell tried to send a WhatsApp message to Tanya Sachs using the driver’s phone, but only then did he find that it had been blacklisted!
When he tried calling, he received a prompt saying the other party’s device was turned off.
It could be seen from this that Tanya’s plan to kill Chief Judge Whitman was carefully organized.
Before long, the subordinates had sorted out the data on ‘Tanya Sachs’. There were more than ten Tanya Sachses in the city, whose ages ranged from thirty to eighty years old.
Although Captain Pannell could have ruled out the ones who were too young or old, he did not exclude any of them to be safe, and in order for the driver to identify the Tanya Sachs, he showed the driver the photos on the ID cards of all the people named Tanya Sachs one by one.
In the end, the driver said that none of those were the Tanya Sachs he knew.
Once again, Captain Pannell could not read any clues from the driver’s face, so he did not seem to be lying. In that case, there were two possibilities. One was that the woman working with the driver was not named Tanya Sachs, and it was a fake name instead.
The second possibility was that Tanya Sachs was not from this city. However, if the search were to be extended to the whole country, the workload would be too great.
Nevertheless, he could not let go of an opportunity to collect clues. He had to arrange for manpower to handle this matter.
Soon after that, the subordinates had put together the information of all the people named ‘Alex Cohen’ in the city.
There were quite a few people with the same name, but after careful analysis, Captain Pannell found that only one met the criteria of being a ‘big shot’. In other words, if the driver was not lying, that Alex Cohen who was now in the hospital was the first behind-the-scenes suspect!
Captain Pannell did not believe that Alex was such a person, but his job did not allow him to make subjective assumptions as he could only comply with the objective facts. After a moment of contemplation, he sent a short message to the burner number that Tanya Sachs used.
“The task has been completed. Why did you blacklist me on WhatsApp? Are you backing out on the pay? I’m warning you, if you don’t pay up, I’ll throw you under the bus. At most, we’ll just go to jail together. However, you better think carefully. Your crimes are much heavier than mine!”
To get in touch with Tanya Sachs, he had no choice but to use this kind of tactic to goad her, which was not necessarily effective.
After all of this, Captain Pannell returned to the car before he said to the subordinate at the wheel, “Head to Trinity Hospital. Let me when we arrive. I’m going to take a nap…”
At that point, the sky was already bright.
Alex Cohen, who had been up all night like Captain Pannell, was still standing guard at the door of Harvey Simpson’s ward in Trinity Hospital.
Jane Simpson had already brought all of Harvey’s family over. They were all very sad, and it took a few hours before they managed to force themselves into accepting reality.
Alex already felt bad, but he felt guiltier when he saw the tears and sadness of the Simpson family. He did not know how to face the Simpson family for what happened, so he called Jane to the side and briefly explained what happened. He added, “I’m sorry, this was my fault. If I didn’t call him for that dinner, perhaps your uncle and Chief Judge Whitman wouldn’t have gotten into an accident…”
“Hey!”
Jane let out a long sigh and shook her head gently. “Uncle’s occupation is very dangerous. Every time he goes out on a mission, the people who care about him will always be worried. But that doesn’t just apply to us. Families of all police officers are like this too, isn’t it?
Alex, don’t blame yourself. We have no means of blaming you either. If we had to blame someone, then it would be the perpetrators of the bombing. Now, we only have two wishes. The first is for Uncle to get better soon, and the second is to bring those villains to justice as soon as possible!”
“As the saying goes, good things will happen to good people. I believe that Captain Simpson will get better, and as for those villains, they’ll definitely be caught. Jane, please convey my apologies to your aunt for me. Captain Simpson is a great person and he has helped me a lot, yet he ended up in an accident when he was helping me.”
“I will. Don’t worry, Alex. Aunt isn’t someone who doesn’t have sense. She won’t blame a faultless man.”
“No! Jane, I’m not trying to avoid responsibility, nor am I afraid of being scolded by you. Even if none of you blame me, I still feel guilty…”
Alex talked to Jane for a while, confessing the issue that was weighing down his heart, and his heavy heart was slightly relieved.
As they were chatting, Big Ken ran over with Miles Zimmerman.
Seeing that Jane was there, Miles hesitated for a few seconds before saying to Alex, “Can I borrow you for a talk?”
Jane hurriedly interjected, “Are the results for my uncle’s examination out? I need to know!”
Alex thought about it before he nodded. “Deputy Director Zimmerman, let’s just talk here.”
“Very well.” Miles nodded. “I just talked to Captain Simpson’s attending doctor. The test results are out and it confirmed that Captain Simpson’s situation does indeed look very bleak.
If the blood in his brain isn’t removed as soon as possible, he may never wake up, hence the surgery must be done immediately, but… There are some things that are better left unsaid, but you’re not outsiders, so I’ll just come clean.
Since craniocerebral surgery isn’t the hospital’s specialty, I recommend that he be transferred to another hospital, preferably to Military Hospital to maximize the success rate of the operation. As far as craniocerebral surgery is concerned, the medical level of Military hospital is unmatched in this city and even the province. Of course, this is only my personal advice. It doesn’t represent the Trinity Hospital’s standpoint.”
“Thank you!” Jane understood Miles’s good intentions and said sincerely, “Thank you for telling us the truth. In that case, we’ll have to trouble Deputy Director Zimmerman to assist us in transferring Uncle…”
“However, there’s a problem. Since we did not notify them in advance, even if he is transferred now, Military Hospital might not be able to arrange an immediate surgery for Captain Simpson.
You should communicate with Military Hospital first and discuss the surgery before transferring him. Otherwise, you’d have to wait in vain even after you get there.”
“But… I don’t have any contacts in Military Hospital.”
“I do!”
Alex interjected timely. He had already thought of transferring Harvey Simpson to Military Hospital yesterday.
Now that Miles had also made this suggestion, there was no need for him to hesitate any longer.
He immediately pulled out his phone and called Director Denver of Military Hospital.
Director Denver was willing to help Alex, but he was not the head of the craniocerebral surgery department. He said that he would talk to the relevant leaders first and get back to Alex when there was an outcome.
Surgeries were usually arranged in advance, and emergency arrangements would either involve cutting the queue or require the doctors to work overtime. Either way, the first thing that had to be done was to consult the relevant leaders and doctors. They would not rush to make hasty guarantees to outsiders.
With that, Alex hung up the phone. He then planned to go out and buy some food back for Jane and the others, but Captain Pannell was suddenly here. Noticing that Captain Pannell’s expression seemed off, Alex quickly cut to the chase after greeting him. “Captain Pannell, is something wrong?”
Captain Pannell’s expression was dark. “Come with me!”
“Alright!”
Without hesitation, Alex followed Captain Pannell to a small conference room.
Jane and Harvey Simpson’s family also followed.
Captain Pannell waited for everyone to be seated before saying to Alex, “When you briefed me on what happened last night, you mentioned that you used Captain Simpson’s connections to get Chief Judge Whitman’s help to collect a debt?”
Alex paused for a moment. “Ah… I guess you could say that.”
“Did Chief Judge Whitman refuse?”
“He agreed. After all, I made a reasonable and legitimate claim, but Chief Judge Whitman has to act impartially, so he would need to confirm the authenticity of the IOU I provided first.”
“Oh…”
Captain Pannell pondered for a moment before he stood up all of a sudden. “Alex Cohen, you’re under investigation, you must come with me!”
“Huh?”
Alex was stunned again.
After all, being put under investigation and cooperating with an investigation were different concepts…
