Chapter 12:

She was smarter than I thought

The Untold


“Hi. I’m actually the one who wanted you to find a person the other time, Cindy.”

“Ah, yes. How can I help you?”

“I wanted to talk to you about a matter. I’m on my way right now. I’ll arrive there in 10 minutes. Could you please make some time for me? This is a very urgent matter.”

“Ah, yes. You can just come here.”

“Thank you very much. I’ll be there really soon.”

“Okay. I’ll be waiting.”

“Hi. I’m here. I wanted to talk to you about something. You remember the person you looked into for me right? You told me that it was getting a bit hard finding him, but then someone gave you a lead and you found him.”

“Yes, that’s right. The person we were looking for changed his identity, which lead to a bit of problem. Also the photo we had of him was really old. But then this lady called us and gave us all the information about him and that’s how we found him.”

“Don’t you find this suspicious? This case wasn’t public at all. I just asked you to find a person for me. Also the work you do here is mostly illegal. But some outsider found out about this and informed you voluntarily. Didn’t you look into that lady?”

“We did. The first time she called, she used a public phone and then the second time was a burner phone. So we couldn’t identify her.”

“That means the second time she called, the number was registered under some other name right? I know that you guys can hack. Can’t you find out where this number was first generated? So we could use that to find the seller and then get the information out.”

“We could do that. Actually, we ourselves know almost all the illegal phone dealers. We can get the information out. But it might take some time.”

“I only have 36 hours. I have to find more clues. I’ll pay you as much as you want. Just find the information. Also can one of you also try to track the area of where the public phone is?”

“I can track that right away.”

“That’s great. Please make it as fast as you can. I’m willing to pay any amount you ask for.”

“Okay. I’m currently looking into it. It seems a bit far from here. It’ll take 5 minutes.”

“Okay. I’ll wait.”

Haru was arrested without a warrant. So he had only 36 hours to prove his innocence. Because after that, he will officially become the culprit and everything after that needs to be done legally. So this was the last chance Cindy had to find the real truth.

“Ma’am, I‘ve found the location of the phone. Here come take a look.”

“Wait this is the phone booth near my house. Can you check the time the call was made?”

“Ah, yes. I already found that.”

“Can you hack a nearby CCTV around the time the call was made?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Actually as I live near there, I know that there is a convenient store next to the phone booth. Could you try to hack that one?”

“Yes I can. Just give me a moment.”

“Sure.”

“I hacked in. I don’t think I can keep this for too long. So I’ll just try looking at the time when the call was made and download that bit of the footage.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Here’s what I got. Take a look. It sure is a woman. The time she dialed the number and we received the call was the same. This has to be the woman who called us.”

“Wait, why does she look familiar? Wait, Miss Abe!”

“You know her? How did she know you were looking for this guy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ma’am, I also found the store the phone was bought from. I’m printing out the buyer’s information. It really was a woman and the seller has a hidden camera where he makes the transition and she was clearly caught on camera. She also seems to resemble the phone booth lady. Here’s the clip.”

“Thank you. But can you find where she went next with this phone?”

“The phone went out of reach right after the call and the sim card can’t also be found. She must have broken it.”

“I want to finally ask for another thing. Can you please track this number and tell me the most frequently visited place of this person?”

“Sure.”

“Here’s the number.”

Cindy couldn’t understand the situation she was in. Sakura Abe, the chief of the department and in charge of the kidnapping case already knew about Cindy’s past and made her find out about it too. Which means, she knows more about Cindy than could’ve anticipated. She didn’t stay silent because she was dumb, rather she was the smartest and used Cindy and kept putting more and more baits.

“I found the most visited places. Here they are.”

“Thank you very much for the hard work. I’ll have leave now as I’m in a hurry. I’ll just make the payment.”

“Thanks. Have a nice day.”

“I know two of the three places. One is the police station and the other is her home. But the third place seems suspicious. It’s suspiciously located in a rural area surrounded by nothingness and yet she goes there on daily basis? I have to find out.”

N. D. Skordilis
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