Chapter 100: Found the Bald White Man

At noon, in the Jacobs Federal Building.

Ryder pushed open the door to the offices of Investigation Team Five and, the moment he stepped inside, shouted at the top of his lungs:

“Everyone, I’m back!”

At the sound, the investigators of Team Five rose one after another and came over with smiles to embrace Ryder.

William thumped Ryder hard on the back.

“Welcome back, Ryder!”

“Don’t make such a fuss, William.”

Ryder gave William’s back a light pat of his own, then rolled his eyes.

“I was only gone for two days, not two years.”

William only smiled and said nothing more. Ryder looked around, did not see Rowan or Lacey, and tilted his head in question.

“Where are Rowan and Lacey?”

“They went to get a composite sketch done.”

Mona, standing nearby, handed Ryder a cup of coffee and briefly explained what had happened over the past two days. At the end, she said,

“They’ve been gone all morning. They should be back any minute now.”

“Okay.”

After hearing Mona’s account, Ryder nodded and returned to his desk, intending to wait for Rowan to come back. He had something he wanted to ask him.

Ryder did not know exactly what had happened that day. Fentanyl had been far too potent; before he could even react, his head had already begun to drift, and in the next instant he could no longer control his muscles and collapsed to the floor.

But before his consciousness was completely swallowed by darkness, he still felt Rowan leap down the stairs and rush to his side.

What happened after that, when Rowan fed him the antidote, Ryder did not feel at all.

At that moment, by Ryder’s own account, he had already “seen God with a white beard waving at him.”

When he later woke in the hospital and stared at the ceiling above his bed, he could not for a long while tell what was real and what was not.

It was only after Yvonne slapped him hard across the face that Ryder finally understood he had truly been dragged back from death and had not gone to see God after all.

As for the two SWAT officers who had gotten him into the ambulance, Ryder had gone to their homes the previous evening and thanked them most sincerely.

There was also Rowan, who had saved his life.

From what Yvonne understood, Rowan had not been the one who personally put Ryder into the ambulance.

But Ryder, who had spent years in the midst of combat and had only recently joined the FBI, had a feeling that Rowan had actually been the one who saved him.

He did not know why he had this feeling, but Ryder chose to trust his instincts, and now he very much wanted to express his gratitude to Rowan.

“Everyone! The composite sketch is ready!”

Ryder had only been seated for a few minutes when Lacey and Rowan strode in.

Lacey held several large sketches aloft and shouted,

“This is the guy we need to find next!”

“Okay!”

“No problem!”

The technicians of Team Five answered in chorus, took the sketches from Lacey, and sat down at their computers to begin hammering away at the keyboards.

“Rowan, Lacey.”

Hearing someone call his name, Rowan, who had been lost in thought with his head bowed, started slightly. When he looked up and saw Ryder, a broad grin spread across his face. He stepped forward and gave him a fierce hug.

“Welcome back, man! I can’t believe you’re already back at work today. Didn’t Augustus grant you leave for a long time?”

Lacey did not hug Ryder, that muscular brute, but she did punch his arm with a smile and then slap palms with him.

Ryder knew exactly what Lacey was like, so he did not care about the lack of a hug.

After hearing Rowan’s words, Ryder’s expression grew serious, and he was just about to say something when William suddenly shouted:

“Everyone, this Kevin probably has no prison record.

I can’t find anyone who looks like Kevin in the inmate photos from the major prisons in the New York area!”

At this point in time, facial recognition technology was still far from mature, and the number of people it could screen was very limited. Most of the people in the FBI’s database were prisoners who had been through prison.

After all, those people had their photographs taken before entering prison.

As for ordinary people, the facial recognition systems of the time were largely useless.

It was not until 2015, when the United States began rolling out facial-recognition boarding policies in airports nationwide, that the FBI’s databases gradually grew richer.

Of course, the database in question here was the criminal database. The FBI had other databases as well, but ordinary agents had no permission to access them.

“Then check the prisons in other areas.”

Hearing William, Rowan frowned and said,

“New York’s neighboring states—Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey—check them all.”

“O...kay.”

At Rowan’s words, William and the other four technical agents twitched at the corners of their mouths, but they still lowered their heads and got back to work.

Seeing William and the others busy, Rowan turned back to Ryder and tilted his head in question.

“Ryder, what were you about to say just now?”

“...Nothing.”

Seeing that everyone was occupied, Ryder swallowed back the words he had been about to say. Then he grinned and patted Rowan on the shoulder.

“I was just going to ask if you’d like to come to my place for dinner after work today.”

“Okay.”

At that, Rowan’s mouth curved upward and he immediately nodded.

There had been someone treating him to dinner last night, and tonight there would be another...

Rowan’s smile deepened as he turned his gaze toward Mona.

What if he went to her place the day after tomorrow and had a meal there too?

Mona suddenly shivered, feeling as though something ill had set its sights on her.

Time moved forward slowly. The sound of keyboards never ceased in the office area, but the agents of Team Five still failed to find the Kevin from the sketch.

Along the way, William and the others did in fact find a few people who looked very much like the man in the drawing.

But after a closer investigation, one had witnesses proving that he was with them when the bank robbery took place, while another had already been out of New York for some time and simply had neither the means nor the time to have committed the crime.

“This...” Mona picked up her coffee and took a long drink, rubbing her slightly aching fingers before turning to Rowan with a tilt of her head. “Is it possible those two women remembered Kevin’s face wrong? Or that the sketch artist drew him incorrectly?”

“It’s not impossible, but...”

Rowan stroked his chin. After pondering for a long time, he took out his phone, dialed a number, and called Norton.

“Rowan?”

The voice on the other end of the line was a little noisy. At a glance, it was clear Norton was not in the FBI building.

“Good afternoon, Norton.”

Rowan exchanged a brief greeting and, without further pleasantries, directly told the other man about the fact that they still could not find the person.

“Easy.”

After hearing Rowan’s question, Norton smiled faintly and said directly,

“You send that composite sketch over to our Organized Crime Unit right now.

As long as the sketch is accurate and the difference from the real person is not too great, I can find this man for you very quickly!”

Norton waved a hand. Their Organized Crime Unit had special connections with more than half of New York’s gangs.

They had handled this sort of manhunt many times already, so to them it was no great matter at all.

Of course, not just anyone could ask the Organized Crime Unit for help.

If they were not familiar with you, the Organized Crime Unit would not even bother to answer.

“Thank you, Norton.”

“No need to thank me!”

Norton chuckled and, after making an appointment with Rowan to go fishing together this weekend, hung up.

“I’ll go.”

After ending the call, before Rowan could say anything, Ryder picked up the sketch, gave Rowan a laugh, and strode out of Investigation Team Five.

No one knew exactly what methods the Organized Crime Unit used, but only three hours later Ryder returned to Team Five, bringing with him a sheet of paper listing the rough information of the man in the sketch:

Fletcher Walker, twenty-nine years old, lives in Queens.

After using that information to pull up everything on Fletcher, Mona looked exasperated and spread her hands.

“No wonder we couldn’t find him. Two months ago, this man was practically a choirboy!”

Hearing that, Rowan blinked.

“What do you mean?”