Free Web NovelChapter 242: Chapter 245: New Discovery from the Surveillance
"What did you find?" Felix Preston asked urgently.
Kevin Collins patted his shoulder reassuringly. "Calm down. Let’s go upstairs and talk."
In the reception room upstairs, Jackson Shaw and Mason Shaw had just sat down.
The father and son had been in a meeting at their company when they got a sudden call from Kevin Collins. He told them the special task force had found something new in the surveillance footage. As soon as they heard, they dropped everything, walking out of the half-finished meeting and rushing straight to the police station.
"Collins, I told you not to call Felix."
When Jackson Shaw saw Felix Preston walk in, his expression immediately turned reproachful. "Felix was up all night and day. He barely got a chance to catch a few minutes of sleep in his room. Why on earth did you have to wake him?"
"Uncle Collins didn’t call me." Felix Preston sat down next to Jackson Shaw and explained on Kevin Collins’s behalf, "I came to the police station on my own. I just happened to run into Uncle Collins at the entrance, so we came up together."
"...Ah." Jackson Shaw paused, instantly embarrassed. "Oh, is that so."
"You and your assumptions." Kevin Collins was so used to it he was past the point of getting angry. "Shaw, you’ve wrongly accused me yet again."
"Hey," Jackson Shaw waved his hand, embarrassed. "I know the drill. When Charlotte is back, I’ll treat you."
Mason Shaw asked, "The all-beef feast again?"
Jackson Shaw replied, "Does your Uncle Collins like anything else?"
"Hey, let’s put that aside for now." Kevin Collins had someone pull up the surveillance video and project it onto the screen. "First, let’s take a look at the footage our task force experts have put together."
There were six video clips in total. Four of them tracked the suspect vehicle, while the remaining two showed a private car leaving its house on two separate occasions.
Neither Jackson Shaw nor Mason Shaw understood what the clips were supposed to mean. Kevin Collins shifted his gaze, giving Felix Preston a meaningful look.
"Felix, was there a reason you came to the station today?"
Felix Preston’s expression was taut, a deep chill in his normally gentle eyes.
"I believe my reason for being here is the same as what Uncle Collins is about to say."
"What?" Jackson and Mason Shaw were still lost.
Kevin Collins smiled. "Go on."
Felix Preston raised his right hand and pointed his index finger at the private car on the projection screen.
"There’s something wrong with this car."
Kevin Collins asked, "What’s wrong with it?"
Felix Preston said, "If I’m not mistaken, the car that took Charlotte wasn’t the one with the cloned plates. It was this one—the seemingly normal private car."
"What?!" The Shaw father and son were simultaneously stunned.
Kevin Collins stared intently at Felix Preston, his eyes filled with clear admiration.
"Exactly. This private car is the real kidnapper’s vehicle." Kevin Collins pushed his chair back and stood, walking over to the projection screen. He pointed at the car with the cloned plates. "This car was just a decoy, a diversion the culprit deliberately used to mislead us. Charlotte was never in this car. From start to finish, she was in the private car driving ahead of it."
"How can that be?" The color drained from Jackson Shaw’s face.
Kevin Collins said, "Watch the video."
"The car with the cloned plates in the video drove out of the alley and headed toward Norbane. But it never got on the Norbane expressway. Instead, it made a U-turn at the entrance, circled most of Aethelburg, and then went straight home."
"The driver of the cloned-plate car was apprehended at his own home. Neither the car nor the driver ever left Aethelburg, and they had no contact with any other vehicles or people. So, we can be certain Charlotte was never in his car."
"Then what’s the story with the private car?" Mason Shaw asked, frowning.
Kevin Collins pointed to the timestamp on the surveillance video. "Look here."
"This private car left the house twice last night. The first time was at 7:45 PM, when it followed the car with the cloned plates out of the alley. The second time was at 11:23 PM, when it left on its own from the backyard."
"Taken individually, these two departure times might not seem strange. But when you look at the car’s route on each trip, you can see something is off."
The three men across the long table held their breath, hanging on his every word.
Kevin Collins continued, "The first time the private car went out, the driver was supposedly going to a convenience store. But what’s odd is, he didn’t go to the one closest to his house. Instead, he detoured to a store three kilometers away just to buy cigarettes."
"After buying the cigarettes, he drove straight back. He didn’t take the car out again until 11:23 PM."
"This time, he drove to a repair shop in the suburbs. He was in the shop for about an hour before reappearing on camera. He then got home at 2:12 AM."
"’Reappearing on camera?’" Felix Preston’s sharp ears caught the phrase, and he immediately understood the implication. "Does that mean the car was out of camera range once it entered the repair shop?"
"Correct." Kevin Collins confirmed his suspicion. "It’s a privately-owned repair shop in a rather remote location, so there are no surveillance cameras nearby."
"The video trail only goes as far as the street intersection by the repair shop; we can’t see inside the shop itself. Therefore, our officers can’t yet determine if the car was carrying... something it shouldn’t have been, or if it made contact with any other suspicious vehicles while it was there."
"Uncle Collins, what’s your plan now?" The clue was right there, and Felix Preston wasn’t about to let it go.
Kevin Collins said, "The task force has identified the owner of the car. But, unluckily for us, he took a flight to Crestfall this morning."
"’Unluckily?’" The word made Mason Shaw laugh sardonically. "The task force barely has time to suspect him before he hops on a plane to Crestfall. That’s a bit too ’unlucky,’ don’t you think?"
Kevin Collins said, "It’s precisely because it’s too much of a coincidence that the task force decided to issue an assistance request. Our people have already contacted the Crestfall police, and they will give us their full cooperation in apprehending him."
"But I’m afraid that even if you catch him, you won’t get any useful information out of him." Felix Preston suddenly threw a bucket of cold water on their hopes.
"What do you mean?" Jackson Shaw’s face paled.
Felix Preston looked at Kevin Collins, his voice turning cool. "There’s no surveillance near the repair shop. We can’t see which cars went in during that suspicious time frame, and we can’t see how many cars left. As long as the owner stonewalls and insists he has nothing to do with this, we won’t be able to get anything out of him."
