Who Lurks in the Dark (Part 2)
Could those two be working together—could they have tampered with the car?
But every time he'd brought his car in for repairs, Marcus Shaw had treated Master Li well. He knew the man smoked Changbaishan cigarettes and had slipped him a couple of cartons. The man seemed honest—not the type to harbor malice. But then again, you could never be entirely sure.
Had he been bought off? Doing someone's dirty work for a little money?
Marcus Shaw couldn't figure it out. His temples felt like they harbored jumping fleas. He pulled out his phone and called a colleague at the station, asking them to pull up Master Li's household registration information—he planned to visit his home later.
As for the man in black, their only hope was surveillance footage.
Marcus Shaw looked up. There happened to be a camera in the upper right corner of the entrance. He asked Finn Carter, "Which room in the shop has a computer?"
Finn Carter shook his head. "There are only two rooms in the back—one's a storage room, the other's where we eat. I've never seen a computer in either."
Viktor Dunn said, "That's impossible. Even if there's no one monitoring it, there should be a server somewhere—a flat, rectangular box."
Marcus Shaw asked, "Have you ever seen one?"
Finn Carter still looked blank.
Marcus Shaw went back inside and examined the camera's position, scanning for a long time without finding any cables.
"That's strange. Could they have been plastered into the wall during renovation?"
With no cables to follow, the two men had Finn Carter lead them through the shop, searching high and low.
But after scouring every inch, they found nothing that looked like a server or even a suspicious wire.
Marcus Shaw refused to give up. He stood at the entrance again and looked up—the camera's red indicator light was blinking normally. It didn't seem deactivated.
After a moment, Marcus Shaw had Finn Carter bring a ladder and climbed up to inspect it himself.
That was when he discovered the truth.
The shop owner, wanting to scare off thieves on the cheap, had installed a highly realistic dummy camera. Two AA batteries kept the little red light blinking for months. Unless someone looked closely, who'd ever guess it was fake?
Marcus Shaw was deflated, but Viktor Dunn exclaimed in admiration: "This thing is awesome. Even if a thief wanted to cut the wires, there are no wires to find."
The two went to pull footage from other nearby cameras. At a gold shop and a bathhouse, they both found the man in black. Though the footage was from a distance, his behavior was clearly furtive—pacing back and forth, repeatedly glancing across the street.
Then, yesterday morning, he appeared again. Master Li had apparently just arrived at work when the man waved him over. The two talked at length, and the man in black slipped something into Master Li's hand. They only dispersed when a passerby approached—the man in black jogging away, Master Li glancing around as he crossed the street.
The man in black never appeared again after that. And Master Li left that afternoon and never came back.
Marcus Shaw's heart pounded as he watched—everything was aligning with his theory.
They continued tracing the man's movements through several more street-level cameras, tracking him all the way to the Nanguan District. The footage showed the man in black entering another auto repair shop.
They hurried over to ask questions. But just as they reached the entrance—there stood Master Li.
He looked guilty as a thief, giving Marcus Shaw a sheepish, embarrassed grin and trying to duck back inside. Before Marcus Shaw could even open his mouth, the man in black from the footage walked out, beaming: "Gentlemen, need some repairs?"
It turned out the man in black had been poaching a competitor's employee.
Knowing the practice was underhanded, he'd disguised himself and skulked around. He'd scouted for days, zeroed in on the skilled Master Li, and finally made his move when the morning was quiet.
Master Li had worked at the old shop for years without a raise, and his kid's tuition was burning through money, so he didn't hesitate. He and his self-delivering benefactor hit it off immediately.
It was an embarrassing matter. Master Li hadn't formally resigned—he'd just asked for leave, keeping even his apprentice in the dark, quietly packed his things, and defected to the new employer.
Naturally, the car tampering had nothing to do with either of them. Thank goodness they hadn't gone to Master Li's home to inquire—or that would have been deeply awkward.
Their lead had been cut, its tendons severed—unable to advance another half step.
The two men had come up empty. They caught a cab back.
Marcus Shaw thought: Even if it wasn't Finn Carter or his master, the tampering must have happened at the shop.
The reasoning was simple. When he wasn't working a case, his car was parked inside the station compound—under surveillance and watched by old Xu at the reception booth. No one could easily approach it, let alone tamper with it. And when he went home in the evenings, the car was locked in a private garage—giving outsiders even less opportunity.
Back at the repair shop, Marcus Shaw pressed Finn Carter again, asking him to recall any other suspicious individuals.
Finn Carter genuinely racked his brain but had no other answers.
Marcus Shaw questioned the other two mechanics as well—no leads there either.
Marcus Shaw suddenly felt a chill. The person trying to kill him was so elusive, so pervasive.
He even began to wonder whether that person was hiding in the shadows right now, secretly watching him.
He'd just pulled out his phone, about to delete the household registration information a colleague had sent, when he noticed the indicator light blinking. It was a WeChat message from Captain Reed: "Can you try being a little more mature?"
Marcus Shaw wanted to fire back but held his tongue. He played it cool in front of Viktor Dunn, but seethed inwardly, thinking that their boss was becoming more and more incomprehensible by the day.