Chapter 102 Inaccessible Video Tape
Instead of meeting with Elsa, Luke took a turn and followed a trail through the garden at the back of the villa. In the end, he found himself standing before a small gate.
The gate was shut. Luke peeped out through the iron bars and saw that the main road was only two hundred meters to the right.
He followed the wall to the right and looked around. When he stopped at the end of the wall, he noticed a surveillance camera above the door of another house across the street.
He found the caretaker named Sally again and asked her how to open the gate.
Sally said that it could be opened with a remote inside the house.
Luke nodded and said, “Please open it for me. I want to check the street out back.”
Sally pressed a button on a panel in the living room and then said, “It’s done.”
Observing the panel from behind her, Luke suddenly asked, “Is this the only way to open the back gate?”
Sally shook her head. “No, Selev also has a remote that can open the front and back
gates.”
Luke thanked her and left.
He went to the back gate again, and it was already half open.
Luke walked out and went down the road on the right. He observed the surveillance camera for a while. It was installed over the back door of the house.
He moved on and reached the main road.
Standing on the main road, he looked around, deep in thought, before he shook his head and returned to Katie’s villa.
Elsa was looking for him. She frowned and asked, “Where have you been?”
Luke replied, “I was looking for surveillance cameras to see if we might get anything from them.”
Elsa found the answer acceptable. She nodded, “Not bad. What did you find?”
Luke said, “There’s a surveillance camera over the back door of another house. We can ask for the footage.”
Elsa said, “Go and do that. Bring the tape back to the police station. I need to go back now. Boss is already asking about our progress. We’ll be screwed if we can’t crack this case.”
Luke just nodded.
The death of a popular star was definitely a troublesome case, not because stars were important, but because people tended to gossip about it.
If they couldn’t crack the case, it would significantly tarnish the police department’s reputation.
The death of the 200-pound fatty didn’t have as big an impact in comparison, and the police department wasn’t as anxious over it.
Luke left via the back gate and went over to the house with the surveillance camera. He pressed the doorbell and showed his badge.
Soon, a security guard spoke to him.
After checking Luke’s badge and hearing Luke’s request, the guard said that he had to inform the owner of the house.
Eventually… Luke didn’t get the tape.
The owner of the house refused Luke’s request for the surveillance footage without any explanation.
Luke negotiated for quite a while. The guard hesitated, but didn’t ask the owner of the house again.
Luke had to give up. When he returned to the police department, Elsa was reporting to Dustin.
Luke’s arrival caught their attention.
Both of them frowned when they heard that the owner of the house was unwilling to cooperate.
“Are you sure you were nice enough?” Elsa couldn’t help but ask.
Luke smiled bitterly. “It was a security guard who spoke to me. I think he was willing to give the footage to me, but the owner of the house told him to refuse me without meeting me at all.”
Dustin shook his head. “Elsa, go and see what’s wrong with the house. Try to get the footage. After all, there aren’t many surveillance cameras in that area. Alright, chop chop. The director is calling me again. I don’t want to give him nothing the next time he calls me.”
Luke and Elsa nodded and left.
Elsa obviously wasn’t in a good mood.
They hadn’t solved the John Doe case yet, but a star had already died again in the same spot, which was too eye-catching.
If she couldn’t solve the case, she might be demoted.
With an awful look on her face, she asked Luke to follow her and said, “You’re still too young. You have to be smart when you deal with those magnates.”
She retrieved information on the house that owned the surveillance camera. Then, her expression became even more awful.
The house belonged to Jenny Gwenis, daughter of the president of the Tiger Foundation.
Boris, the president of the Tiger Foundation, was a great player in the field of law and finance.
They were truly a rich and troublesome family.
Even though the footage wasn’t important to them, they might still be unwilling to cooperate.
Taking a deep breath, Elsa took Luke to the house again, only to be refused once more.
She didn’t even meet the owner of the house, much less acquire the footage.
Infuriated, she talked to Dustin and applied for a search warrant which would allow them to retrieve the footage.
It was mostly because word of the case had already gotten out. Katie had really become popular in the past two years.
She had always been a topic of discussion, and dying naked in her own pool like the previous John Doe made everything even more intriguing.
Under enormous pressure, the police department didn’t care about the president of the Tiger Foundation anymore. After all, they only wanted the surveillance footage, not to arrest him.
Elsa left with high expectations, but returned in frustration.
She had finally made it into the house this time, but failed to obtain the footage.
The owner of the house claimed that the surveillance camera was broken and hadn’t recorded anything.
The technicians that went with Elsa checked the surveillance system. They told her that the tape inside had been removed.
The monitor was dark because the surveillance system hadn’t been activated at all.
As to whether it had been deactivated before she arrived or if it had always been down, nobody could tell.
Elsa was scolded by Dustin again for failing to get the footage.
Dustin, on the other hand, was scolded by the director, who told him that Boris had called to protest the police’s abuse of power.
Elsa gloomily scolded Luke after she returned.
It was because nobody would have known about the surveillance camera if it wasn’t for him.
In the end, Elsa was frustrated again and again, and didn’t find any leads.
Luke didn’t complain and simply said that he would check again.
Elsa was too upset to talk to him. She simply drove her car away.
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