Ch.141The Fourth Entanglement – Elegy for the Vigilantes (2)

Inspector Leonard Price was trembling. Not from fear. From anger. From uncontrollable rage.

Last time, they had fortunately caught those who were trying to sell children just before they could do so, but this time they were too late. The inspector’s hand holding his gun trembled and shook.

He called over his capable officer who had been waiting by the door… one who shared some of his thoughts and ideologies. It would be better to have two people check than just one. This might be the first time they’d have to handle something like this.

“Officer Lee, come with me. Let’s see what happened in there. Let’s open the door first.”

With the combined strength of an elf and a human, the door moved just barely enough. It opened about a hand’s width. The heavy smell of blood hit their noses.

Two hand widths, then three hand widths, and the inside became clearly visible. Officer Lee, who had handled many dirty jobs that angels couldn’t process, immediately turned around and vomited. He emptied his entire stomach.

Leonard felt a similar urge to vomit at the scene, but he felt something beyond that. A sensation of blood boiling. Ecstasy. Awe. The scene inside was nothing short of marvelous.

While Pandemonium was on the opposite side, a scene from Hell was unfolding here. The inside of the iron door was covered with dark red handprints.

The handprints that seemed to have been made last led to the floor, and from there, nail marks remained where someone had been dragged into the building. How barbaric. Leonard swallowed in excitement.

At least three or four people must have stormed in as a group. They must have all been well-trained or had spent four or five years fighting on the streets.

Their handiwork was almost artistic. They had stormed in without using guns and beaten everyone to death with pure strength, which clearly indicated they were vigilantes driven by conviction. That’s what Leonard believed.

There was one thing he had felt until now, until arresting Charles. The law wasn’t enough.

Despite the law, Officer Jonathan Pace had been a puppet of the mafia. If Rose hadn’t shot Charles dead, he would have been acquitted in the name of the law and set free.

Yes, a bullet like the one Rose had fired at Charles was needed. Rose must have acted with that in mind. He firmly believed that justice ultimately required someone willing to pull the trigger.

If that child’s actions had given him ideology, then this vigilante group’s actions gave Leonard the stimulus for action. It provided him with a raw scene like showing an adult world to a child.

After calming himself, Officer Lee properly looked inside with Leonard. Lee took out his notebook for case documentation. He spoke in bewilderment.

“Ugh, they completely demolished everything. It seems they didn’t use firearms. No smell of gunpowder… and this looks like a gun the security guard was holding, but there’s no sign it was used. Should we look further inside?”

Officer Lee pointed to a submachine gun with a bent barrel. The shoulder strap was completely broken, and it appeared to have been thrown against the wall and smashed after being taken away. Could a gun be so easily destroyed?

Normally, they would have called for backup and waited, but this time Leonard couldn’t resist. He felt like a child with a candy jar in front of him and moved inside as if entranced. He wanted to see more.

On the counter was a foul-smelling sack. Inspector Leonard opened it with trembling hands to check the contents.

They were teeth. Goblin teeth, elf teeth, human teeth—teeth from all races in this place had been forcibly pulled out and placed in the sack.

Next to it was a crudely written envelope labeled “payment for teeth.” Whether they valued each tooth at 1 cent or not, the envelope contained a clean $5 bill. They could examine the bill.

Without a handwriting sample to compare, there was no way to analyze the handwriting, and the writing looked awkward as if written with the left hand. Whoever had visited this place made no mistakes.

“Officer Lee, come in here. Do you know what we should call these guys?”

Officer Lee finally stepped in, walking on the clean parts of the carpet, and saw the contents of the sack. He flinched as if feeling nauseous again but nodded.

“We should call them the Tooth Fairies. Let’s check the other rooms. Bastards who do such things to kids deserve what they got. Filthy scum…”

Leonard shook his head at those words. It wasn’t just their fault. It shouldn’t have been.

“It’s our fault too, Officer Lee. This city has always been this dark. We wear these badges and carry guns, yet we’ve done nothing to scrape off even a bit of that black paint. What can one person do alone except get shot in an alley? This was done by at least three people. Let’s become people like that.”

Officer Lee still had some doubts. He questioned whether, having become a police officer, he should strive as one, but the scene here was undeniably giving him a thrill.

Everyone dreams of strength. The hope that if he became a vigilante, he too could demolish places like this den of evil was appealing. So Officer Lee nodded.

“I’ll do it. Working as police, we can know more, so we can do more than those masked people roaming the streets.”

“That’s right. That’s exactly it. We’ll be on a different level from those guys. Let’s investigate this scene first and then go back. The ones who did this aren’t just street vigilantes.”

Inspector Leonard and Officer Lee examined the brothel like explorers perusing ancient ruins for knowledge. The vigilantes’ anger had spared neither customers nor prostitutes.

They had thoroughly destroyed everything as if everyone who allowed these children to be here was an accomplice. After examining three rooms on the left, Officer Lee summarized briefly.

“So, the perpetrators appear to have used blunt weapons like hammers. The broken doorknobs and the marks left on the bodies show evidence of being struck with round-sectioned blunt objects. Why hammers specifically? I mean, they could have used bladed weapons… Ah, this is a different mark. Seems like one of them was carrying something like a crowbar.”

Inspector Leonard made a somewhat rational deduction. Their reason was too innocent compared to the irrationality of the world.

“Crowbar and hammer… all tools. Could they be construction workers? What do you think? Those items are easily obtained from such places. Union men would be used to fighting too.”

“That makes sense. And it seems to have been a very planned attack. The customers are dead inside the rooms, and the prostitutes appear to have been caught and killed while trying to escape, which means they must have entered one person per room. They seem to have assigned rooms, broken the locks with tools, and attacked.”

Leonard felt ecstatic again. He didn’t particularly like unions either, but that didn’t matter now. He saw people who were so organized, so planned yet destructive, so full of power.

He thought he could gladly sell his soul to gain such power. He didn’t say it out loud. He was just lucky. If he had spoken, someone might have turned their attention to him.

They had stomped with military boots on those who were indulging in pleasure here and struck their faces with iron fists. They had passed judgment. The vigilantes’ activities were nothing short of marvelous.

“Not vigilantes but military-level. Very well organized. How long do you think it would take us to reach this level?”

“I’m not sure, but quite a while, wouldn’t it? Still, it makes me happy to know there are people in New York who are out there fighting for justice like this.”

They continued investigating the brothel. Now they went to the right side of the building, where the smaller rooms were in no different state than those on the left. Finally, they opened the door to the largest room.

Officer Lee rushed outside the brothel to dry heave, while Leonard stared blankly inside like a pagan beholding an idol. He couldn’t even blink, and his mouth wouldn’t close.

The children must have been here. No matter how many people did this, they must have all entered here together. It was clear. How on earth is that stuck to the ceiling? How is that on the wall…?

Leonard trembled. He felt a vicarious fulfillment of desire. He felt the satisfaction of an obsessive, unpleasant, fanatical emotion that all traitors and evildoers must be killed.

He was someone who attended the God-President’s church once a week and on New Year’s and the God-President’s birthday, but this was the first time he had a religious experience.

His whole body felt ventilated. Betrayal, betrayal! The betrayal that made him shiver! The fear, dread, madness, and hesitation he had felt toward Charles were blown away in this moment like a gust of wind!

He thought only those who believed in the naive concept of law would call this corruption. For Leonard, this moment was acceptance. He felt like he had seen a vision and received a revelation!

Leonard’s trembling hand grabbed the shoulder of Officer Lee, who had returned after dry heaving. At this moment, his madness was cured. Or perhaps it had worsened until he believed himself to be normal.

“What did the mistress of Pandemonium say? Those vigilantes…”

“She said they left a ledger. Could that ledger be…”

Inspector Leonard walked in and pointed to a safe that had been completely torn out from the corner of the large room. He pointed to marks where the safe had been forcibly broken open with a crowbar.

The ledger came from here. It was a record of those who used this room. The Tooth Fairies who had given him this revelation now gave him a mission. No, not a mission. A mission is something forced.

This was a calling.

The thought wrapped around his mind that all his wandering until now had been for this calling. More precisely, his defense mechanism of avoiding responsibility was working so hard it was smoking.

He knew but ignored the fact that killing everyone named in the ledger with his gun had nothing to do with Officer Jonathan Pace being a puppet of the mafia.

He pretended to admire Rose’s actions but was actually jealous. He envied how she had shot and killed his friend, who was no different from an evil mastermind, with a single gunshot. That was what he had wanted to achieve.

Madness was like gravity. It took a long time before falling, but once you started falling, it accelerated, and accelerated more, only getting faster until you hit the ground.

You might believe you can fly for a moment, but in the end, you’ll just end up face-planting on the pavement. Of course, falling people often forgot this fact.

They returned to Pandemonium. When the madam showed some wariness at seeing the inspector return with shoes soaked in blood and an expression like someone high on drugs, that expression didn’t last long.

Leonard could now hide his expression and actions. He spoke again like a trustworthy police officer.

“I apologize. What we saw inside was quite horrific… I’ll request backup, so please make sure your staff and the girls don’t go in there. And I believe I heard there was some evidence…”

The madam, now thinking Leonard had just been momentarily stunned, handed over an old ledger. The inspector had hoped to find bloody fingerprints on the ledger, but it was clean.

He needed to know more. He had to follow this somehow. Inspector Leonard spoke in a whisper, trying to feign kindness.

“So, you said someone who followed the children threw this ledger and left… Did you see what kind of person it was?”

The madam gave him the lie she had prepared. It was a lie meant to naturally divert the police’s attention, but it had the opposite effect.

“Well, you know, it’s dark outside and our establishment is bright, so I couldn’t see the face clearly. There was just one person who came in with the ledger… They were big. Not human.”

There was one person who came in with the ledger. At that moment, Leonard realized that the madam of Pandemonium had vaguely noticed more than one but was trying to downplay the situation. Or at least he believed he realized this.

What he had seen inside that brothel was confirmed as not a lie. He had not properly discovered anything and had attached speculation, pulling in something that wasn’t even evidence and believing it to be evidence.

Leonard drew a composite sketch. More of an imaginary picture than a sketch. If they were bigger than humans and had that kind of strength, he imagined orcs. He imagined the race that elves always admired yet despised.

He didn’t realize he was getting further and further away from the people who had actually done this. A group of four orc vigilantes was already forming in his mind, and he had no intention of accepting anything else.

The case was somehow quietly concluded. The only reason was the lack of evidence. Leonard had stolen the ledger. He shared it with the vigilante police who followed him, and they began to track down the names that had been covered with ink one by one.

Everyone whose name was written in here would die. The fact that the names were erased with ink suggested they were all real names. They began to trace the names one by one by placing paper underneath.

The ledger was thick. It was a terrible thing. Not knowing how long such things had been repeated, the vigilante police’s hatred only grew.

A few days after the massacre in the red-light district remained an unsolved case, an ordinary elf company employee—not exactly respected but a normal family man—was shot dead at his front door.

Three days later, a goblin chauffeur who was parking his car in front of a secret dance party venue in the early morning was shot dead after getting out of the car. There was no reason for him to go out on the road.

It didn’t end there. Three days later, an executive of a food company was shot dead with his car pulled over on the outskirts of New York. He even had a lawyer with him, but the lawyer couldn’t even raise a shield.

It was a serial killing. Such acts weren’t everyday occurrences in this city, but they were at least familiar enough to accept. Many tried to find what common ground these people who died in the same way shared, but no one really figured it out.

Two days after the food company executive died, a corrupt police officer who had been taking money from the mafia was found hanged in his home. He hadn’t hanged himself.