"Bang!" A loud crash, a chair in Michael's hand shattered. His partner hurriedly stood between him and the "informant," trying to calm Michael down as much as possible.
Today's operation was a complete failure. Neither Lynch, who was making a delivery on a temporary raid, nor the other team searching his temporary residence found anything unusual.
They didn't find the at least five thousand dollars in change the informant mentioned, not even a single dollar bill, whether on Lynch himself or in that room.
The failure of the operation meant that Michael would lose face in front of his colleagues. The internal hierarchy and job relationships within the Federal Tax Bureau made this special department highly competitive beyond outsiders' imagination.
Everyone wanted to become a "Special Agent," not an "Investigator." Michael had a good chance of being promoted.
But if this failed operation alarmed Lynch and Fox, causing subsequent plans to fail, he would become a laughing stock and shouldn't expect a promotion for at least two or three years.
Most people, when encountering problems and troubles, tend to push the responsibility onto others. Michael blamed this failure on the unreliable information provided by the informant.
So he called the informant to this room and, in a rage and roar, lifted a chair and smashed it hard on his back.
"Do you know how much I've lost because of your erroneous information?" he shouted, struggling to free himself from his partner's restraint, pointing at the informant who looked quite pained on the table.
The informant was a lead source. The main intelligence channels in Sabin City and other cities were controlled by some professional intelligence-gathering agencies and lead sources.
Newsboys would tell the lead sources about different things they discovered, which was another part of the job between lead sources and newsboys.
They might not necessarily give newsboys any rewards, no money, no incentives, yet the newsboys still obeyed to exchange for a harsh human favor.
Some smart investigators and agents had similar informants, and a lead source didn't serve only one client.
Everyone came to trade information not for justice or morality but for money. There's no need to pretentiously hold themselves up as high and noble.
There were people like Michael, but not many. Venting anger on the informant was a very foolish move.
The lead source's facial muscles twisted in agony from being hit hard on the back by the chair. His eyes shone with a spark of hatred, which quickly turned docile.
He had leverage in Michael's hands. He had messed around with a young girl earlier, and something happened later, which Michael happened to discover.
Michael took the girl away and also left some evidence, like his confession recording and the crime account with his own handwriting and fingerprints.
"I didn't lie. The kid in my hand gave him nearly fifteen hundred dollars in change. I swear I didn't lie!" he defended himself, praying that this terrifying ordeal would soon be over.
He seemed to forget that once there was also a girl praying the same way, but she didn't get the results she hoped for.
Michael pushed aside his partner, walked to the table, grabbed the lead source's hair, and punched him. His partner stood by without further interfering.
As long as Michael didn't use objects, he wouldn't intervene too much. At least getting beaten with bare hands wouldn't kill, but using objects could. His actions were merely a preventive measure against accidents, not really to stop Michael's violent behavior.
Of course, if it ended up causing a death, it wasn't unsolvable, just a bit more troublesome with a lot of things to arrange.
Sabin City was a small city. Whether it was the investigative bureau or the tax bureau, they were familiar with the court's people. They wouldn't go all out on sentencing a promising government employee over someone on the grey boundary.
There was a good chance of being acquitted on the spot. After all, some minor accidents during the pursuit of fugitives were acceptable to people.
One punch, two punches, three punches...
After a series of punches, swelling and some deformation of the lead source's cheeks, Michael finally lowered his fists.
He flicked his hands, picked up the water glass from the table, and poured cold water onto the lead source's head.
The water dripped down the hair one strand at a time, clearing his somewhat fuzzy conscious immediately. The intense pain and numbness from the partial loss of sensation intertwined, leaving him... somewhat at a loss.
The pain was strong, but he couldn't pinpoint exactly where it hurt.
"Arrange your people, deliver five thousand dollars in change this afternoon, and we'll catch it on the spot!" Michael quickly came up with a plan and glanced back at his partner, who nodded slightly in agreement with his plan.
From a judicial perspective, this could be considered an act of "inducing crime" itself illegal, and any actions or evidence collected from the suspect during this process would not be legally valid.
But after all, this was a small city where everyone knew each other. There was no need to make each other look bad for things that wouldn't get out in the open.
For frontline investigation officers sometimes, slightly manipulating the evidence chain to let criminals get captured successfully was a normal behavior and long since become customary.
He pulled the lead source's hair again, pulling it back to make him raise his silly face swollen on one side to look at him, "Do you understand?"
The lead source's evasive gaze dissipated much of the anger and unnamed emotions in Michael's heart. He was still that Michael that was hard to "refuse," not that guy who suddenly became timid and retreated.
"Yes... I understand..."
Michael let go, the wet hair dropping some water stains onto his palm, and he wiped them on the lead source's clothes back and forth. Then he pat the swollen face, walked away with a hint of satisfaction in response to the lead source's scream.
The room returned to calm. The lead source's eyes flickered briefly with resentment, hatred, madness, and gradually turned docile again.
He slowly stood up, and as soon as he straightened his back, a heart-piercing pain forced him to hunch his upper body. He picked up his hat and put it on his head. After pausing for a minute or two, he left the room.
On the other side, Lynch returned to his temporary residence from the laundromat. Seeing the mess in his room, his first reaction was to call the police.
Yes, to call the police. He didn't just silently pretend that nothing happened, although he knew what occurred here.
The police arrived soon, looked around and quickly made their judgment. Lynch mentioned that he lost five hundred dollars, suggesting it was clearly a case of a break-in robbery with a sizeable amount.
As for how this could be solved, that would depend on Lynch's luck. According to the cop, no one knew who broke in. There were no witnesses nearby so unless the perpetrator continued and got caught, it would be hard to recover Lynch's loss.
That basically meant this case was over.
Just as the cops were about to leave, Lynch suddenly added some clues, "Officer..."
The officer at the door, who was jotting down notes, shifted his attention from his colleague back to Lynch, "Yes?"
"I remembered I also lost a gold ring. It was a gift I intended for my girlfriend, inscribed inside with 'My Beloved Catherine'..." He sighed in regret, "I should have kept it on me!"
The officer felt even more sympathetic towards this young man. He wrote down this detail at the bottom of his notes and consoled, "That's an important clue. If that guy tries to get rid of it soon, we might catch him."
"Is there anything else you want to add?"
Lynch shook his head, "No, nothing else. Thank you for coming, sir."
The officer put away his pen, got his clipboard ready, tipped his cap, "Well, await our good news, young man!"