Ch.212Work Record #031 – Duty Log #003, Staying One Step Ahead (1)

I had the upper hand in terms of information. I could look into Fabian Diaz, and I knew the Market Keeper was coming. But I was feeling a severe shortage of manpower.

The only personnel I could use on site was myself—someone who had to work every day except weekends and who needed to search the wasteland tomorrow.

There are always limitations to what an individual freelancer can do. However, bringing my colleagues along would increase the chances of being identified. I needed a suitable alternative.

I recalled the purpose of Operation Skinwalker. The whistleblower wasn’t someone to be used, but someone to be protected. He didn’t just harbor discontent—he took action. Action deserves reward.

Perhaps… I could use my enemies instead. The simplest approach involved Fabian Diaz. If Harry was truly an Old Road fixer… he would react to that term.

First, I returned to the sheriff’s office after confirming Celine’s information and lodging with Ben. There was nothing unusual about the report. Ben didn’t mention Fabian Diaz.

I turned on my computing assistant and searched for the name Fabian Diaz on the net. It was a common name, but one search result appeared immediately. He was a private investigator. A detective.

So far, my entanglements with detectives had a fifty-fifty chance of things getting better or worse. Amusingly, both outcomes happened simultaneously. A dead detective might be different.

On my way back to the sheriff’s office, I searched with my computing assistant but couldn’t find anything more. No detective posts details of their cases on the net.

When I returned to the sheriff’s office, Harry, who had washed his hands, waved at me. He was looking at me as if I were his son. After a brief pause, he spoke.

“Hey, rookie. Is justice achieved when you act heroically and spectacularly, or when you quietly do your assigned job?”

“When you quietly do your assigned job. Seems like you want to deliver some bad news, Harry.”

“Ah, sharp as a tack, you are. Tomorrow when we go out to clear the wasteland, you stay and guard the sheriff’s office, rookie. You need to watch the prisoner in the holding cell, and just because we’re out doesn’t mean Magdalene’s Lot can take a break.”

I should be grateful that I don’t have to be dragged along on a wasteland search that will likely be fruitless. There won’t be any more wastelanders there. Even if there were, they wouldn’t be connected to the gang.

“So that’s what quietly doing your assigned job means. Yes, understood. If that’s the job assigned to me, complaining would make me the bad guy. Will I be alone?”

“No, Ben will be there too. Even though we’re short-staffed enough that we could only spare one person, we’re not going to draft white-haired Ben. Ben, please take care of the rookie tomorrow!”

Ben awkwardly nodded as if he was still uncomfortable with Harry. Ben is someone who isn’t viewed with suspicion. That means while he might side with the whistleblower, he’s unlikely to be the whistleblower himself.

It had to be someone more proactive than Ben. Instead of telling Celine Diaz to hide in a motel, I needed to find someone proactive enough to tell her everything.

“And Marcus wants to see you this evening. Remember he mentioned wanting to buy you dinner? You’re about to gain the best connections you can have in this town.”

If this town’s name, Magdalene’s Lot, had suited “Magdalene’s share” better than “drug dealer’s share,” then Marcus Cavendish might have been a good connection.

More importantly, is it okay to so openly act as Marcus Cavendish’s right-hand man? If I’d heard this from the sheriff, I would have thought it was just the town’s power structure, but hearing it from Harry was different.

I made a habit of saying the opposite of what I was thinking.

“Well… I should prepare to dress nicely. I should have a suit in my luggage. What time and where should I go?”

“Oh, right. Go to the central hydroponics tower at 7:30. When you enter, say you have an appointment with Mr. Marcus, and they’ll check and let you in. Do well, rookie.”

Is he really treating me like his son? I couldn’t tell, but I nodded with a smile. There might be a file on Fabian Diaz at the sheriff’s office. That’s tomorrow’s task.

By now, I’d grown somewhat accustomed to driving back to my house after work. The house was small but decent enough to live in… and I was glad I’d secured it properly. There were signs that someone had broken in.

The paint on the window frame was slightly peeled where someone had forced open the locked window. My luggage box showed signs of having been opened, searched, and then reorganized. They wouldn’t have found anything useful.

The communication device for secret communications with Jeff is in my head. My assassination weapon is what I’m wearing. My original identity isn’t displayed in the nationalist style.

Inside were just inexpensive clothes and things like my police academy certificate. So it didn’t matter, but… I needed to use this as an opportunity.

I took out a suit from the closet. It wasn’t overly formal, more of a casual suit, but… Jeff said this would suit me better.

It was indeed the most appropriate choice for this situation among what I had. I put on the navy jacket that didn’t even have bulletproof fibers, and before leaving the house, I scanned the surroundings.

There was a listening device. I removed the bug attached under the dining table and held the small device to my lips. I don’t know what they wanted to hear, but they’ll hear something Marcus Cavendish would like.

“You could have just called to ask what I want for dinner, Mr. Marcus. It seems you left something at my house, so I’ll bring it along. See you at the appointed time.”

The listening device soon disconnected, but I put it in my pocket and drove to the hydroponics tower in the center of Magdalene’s Lot. I could hear whispering from the parking lot.

Ignoring it, I entered through the main entrance, placed the listening device on the reception desk, and spoke. I tried to sound relaxed. This needed to look like a young man’s bravado.

“I’m here for a 7:30 appointment with Mr. Marcus. And I also brought something someone left at my house… I think it belongs to the Old Road.”

Had I ever disliked this kind of pressure? Definitely not. In fact, I could enjoy the fact that no matter how much pressure was applied, I felt none of it.

The receptionist rolled her eyes slightly and opened the elevator door. I picked up the listening device again and walked through the lobby like I was walking through Belwether’s lobby, then entered the elevator. It headed for the top floor.

Around the middle, the elevator passed through the dome covering the town. Seen from above, Magdalene’s Lot was… rather empty. They had claimed as much space as possible but hadn’t filled it.

It’s a town like Marcus Cavendish’s plan. Spaces resemble people. They always have. The elevator reached the top floor, and Marcus was waiting for me in a fairly well-decorated chairman’s office.

Not only was it neatly decorated, but there was also a thick carpet on the floor. The carpet was thick enough to hide a small listening device, and its color was a plain dark shade.

I approached his desk and put down the listening device, which made him burst into hearty laughter. He naturally pulled it toward him with his finger, put it in his pocket, and then spoke.

“How did you notice? I mean, first of all, how did you even realize someone had entered?”

I wondered briefly how to answer without seeming like someone trying to curry favor with a corporate executive, but decided to just pretend to be ambitious.

“Unlike Detroit, this is a place where you can open windows for ventilation, so as soon as I got home, I tried to open the window, but the frame was scratched. You forgot what you gave me.”

“Ah, damn. Right. My mistake for using idiots who break in through windows when I’ve created a place with clean flowing air. So, how did you find the bug?”

“I don’t fold my T-shirts that way. There were signs of an intruder, and my luggage box had been touched but nothing was taken, so they must have been looking for something. Since they’d been active once…”

“They’d be passive the next time. You swept under furniture where it wouldn’t be noticeable. This is why I like people from bad neighborhoods. They’re… how should I put it? Hardened. You know what I mean?”

What a ridiculous notion. Unfortunate environments don’t make people stronger. They make them weak, irresponsible, and avoidant. That’s why people who develop abilities despite misfortune are praised.

What makes people strong is a sense of purpose. A person who can’t think beyond tomorrow’s meal will only become capable enough to secure tomorrow’s meal. Misfortune binds people to that level.

Prosperity allows people to see beyond that. I can demonstrate this efficiency because I had a prosperous childhood. Since I decided that was the case, no one could comment otherwise.

“I know what you mean. Having experienced a lot means not falling for these little tricks.”

“Right. Good. Although you came as a rookie to the sheriff’s office, from my perspective… I think you could do greater things on the Old Road than at the sheriff’s office. What do you think?”

A blatant recruitment offer. Should I tell him he has good taste for eyeing someone that Belwether’s chairman had his eye on? I didn’t want to say nice things to Marcus Cavendish.

Kind words were for people like Amaya Hope or Celine Diaz, all those ordinary people, not for drug dealers. I decided to politely decline for now. I couldn’t give up the opportunity to search the sheriff’s office tomorrow.

“I’ll have to decline. If I wanted to be an ordinary company employee in my new hometown, I wouldn’t have entered the police academy to leave Detroit.”

Marcus Cavendish looked at me with an expression as if he felt a thrill from my words. He laughed heartily again.

“Yes, that’s it. That’s what I’m talking about. The Old Road truly needs someone like you, Matthew. Someone who can follow their own path without being swayed by simple notions of good and bad, money and compensation. Alright. I’ll give up. For now.”

Considering there wouldn’t be a next time, being persistent rather than clean would have been better in this case. I took out my phone from my jacket’s inner pocket, dropping a small listening device along the inside of my jacket.

I placed the phone on the desk and spoke to him. With the boldness he desired, I watched the listening device disappear into the similarly colored carpet. The connection was clean.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like you to tell the people you assigned to bug and break in that they can stop now, right in front of me. So I can eat dinner in peace.”

Marcus put his hand to the side of his head to turn on his computing assistant. Thinking I was a pure person, he just pretended to turn it on and then spoke. His heartiness was an affectation.

“Matthew Collins, that is… Matt Collins, surveillance duty is terminated effective immediately. He’s our man. He’s on our side. Understand? If he’s not on our side, he’s someone we want on our side. Got it?”

“Got it. Now… I’m curious about the dinner menu.”

In a few days, I’ll break in with a cleaner technique and plant another listening device in a harder-to-find place. It was just a matter of using their tactics against them. Information advantage is always sweet.

Marcus Cavendish has beliefs, but he’s too weak to make sacrifices for those beliefs. So he often takes shortcuts. Yet he wants to appear as someone who pushes through adversity.

This is the difference between him and Mr. Gunter. Mr. Gunter truly built Belwether amid the chaos after the war, but Marcus Cavendish’s empire is built on lies, not concrete.

Not everyone who can make animal sounds instead of human speech is ideal. In fact… it’s hard to say if even one of them has an ideal human image.

Mr. Gunter might just be a person still living in that war era, and such people’s straightforwardness might simply be dogmatism and stubbornness.

Before doubting others, I should doubt myself first. That’s how I avoid being lenient only to myself. Marcus Cavendish’s hypocrisy must be temporarily ignored.

“Dinner menu, what would you like to eat? Don’t forget, you’re now in the tallest hydroponics tower in West Virginia. You can eat whatever you want. As long as it’s vegetarian.”

Raising livestock requires far more resources than growing plants hydroponically. Marcus believed he could tempt me by serving food made with real ingredients.

He didn’t know that the true identity of this Detroit-born deputy sheriff was a corporate executive freelancer who could take a lover out for real steak, not cultured meat, for lunch if desired.

I decided not to show it. I opted for a modest dinner of cultured meat steak with asparagus and mushroom sauce. I ate it in a manner closer to forcing it down.

There was nothing more to gain from dinner with Marcus Cavendish. He wanted to show me luxury, and to me, this wasn’t luxury.

With nothing gained but a full stomach and one listening point, I came down to the parking lot and got in my car to go home… when someone was standing in front of my car. Blonde hair and tanned skin.

It was Celine Diaz. The ex-military woman looking for her brother. She looked at me, glanced at the hydroponics tower behind me, and then said with slightly surprised eyes.

“So, Matt, right? Did you just…”

“Come out of the Old Road’s hydroponics tower? Yes. There’s still staff at the reception if you want to go in.”

“No, no. I’d like to, but… there’s no way. Can you, like, come and go there as you please?”

I thought Ben had said he’d give information about Fabian Diaz in a few days, but she was already moving on her own. I opened the car door and gestured with my chin.

“Get in for now. This isn’t a good place to wander around. Especially at this time. And no, I can’t just meet Mr. Marcus whenever I want.”

She got in my car quite readily. It was because she had a gun at her waist, and I didn’t have a gun right now. Guns give people confidence.

“Then how did you get in? I told you, my brother’s connection was cut off here, and I wanted to meet someone from the Old Road. But when I tried to contact them, they just made excuses and postponed.”

The chances of Fabian Diaz being alive are low. But wandering around with Celine to find Fabian Diaz seemed like a good way to reveal myself to the whistleblower.

So I decided to help her and look together. I made a small advancement in Operation Skinwalker with a few words.

“If you’re suspicious of the Old Road, it’s not an unfounded suspicion. Today, Old Road people broke into my house too. They even installed listening devices. There’s definitely something going on.”