Chapter 569

After Deputy Chief Duke left the Kodak family manor, he immediately made a phone call to Chief Bruce. “I’m out. Is this all that’s needed?”

“Yes, this is enough. You might have to make a few more trips in the next few days. Things will be over soon.”

“Okay, just let me know when.”

“I’m off to handle other things.”

The major cleanup was nearing its end, but it wasn’t completely finished. He still had a lot of work to do.

He was actually very curious, but he also knew to only ask questions he was allowed to ask and not to pry into matters that weren’t his business. That would only bring trouble upon himself.

After Chief Bruce hung up, he looked at Lance. “I don’t quite understand…”

In truth, he was also very confused. What was the point of doing this?

To threaten and intimidate Bandy with these past cases?

It didn’t seem to have any practical meaning. The one who carried them out was Stone. Even if he said Bandy had ordered him to do it, it couldn’t directly pin the blame on Bandy.

He would hire lawyers, and the lawyers would do everything they could to get him off. And for cases that were so old, much of the evidence might have already been lost.

It would be very difficult to send him to prison based on these cases.

Lance shook his head slightly. “I just want to make him panic. Fear and panic will make people lose control and the ability to think calmly. Only when he is panicked enough will he constantly make mistakes.”

“We don’t have much time!” Lance emphasized his tone. “Simply going through the procedures is too slow. We can only force him to make mistakes and then deal with him quickly.”

“Stone didn’t even graduate from high school before he started getting involved in the family’s affairs. By the time he was in his twenties, he was already in charge of some work. It’s been more than ten years. How many of the Kodak family’s criminal facts and evidence do you think he has mastered?”

“They will definitely do everything they can to get rid of Stone.”

“The more he knows, the more that gets out, the more Bandy will want to get rid of him as soon as possible.”

“Stone hasn’t fully cooperated with us without reservation yet. We need him to take another step forward, but this step cannot be pushed by us; it has to be pushed by someone else.”

“Just once is enough to push him far enough!”

Chief Bruce listened intently, analyzing, and ultimately agreed very much with Lance’s view.

After more than a decade, who knows if they’ve left any evidence behind?

And as Stone revealed more and more, maybe in some case, there was a possibility of sending oneself to prison.

They wouldn’t wait forever. The longer they waited, the more passive they would become. They had to take the initiative.

“So what should I do?”

In this “great wave,” if he didn’t do something himself, he would feel incomplete.

Without that heavy sense of historical participation, he wouldn’t have the feeling that he was also one of the creators of history.

Once a person has power and has no worries, they will think a lot and start to become a little philosophical.

This all comes from a life and work of ease. In the past, he would not have considered these things, but now he would.

“Just act according to the plan.”

That afternoon, some newspapers began to report on these old cases. The Tide Newspaper even used a very sensational headline—

One Hundred Kills in Ten Years, Revealing the Bloody and Cruel Infighting Within a Certain Family

This kind of headline was fully qualified to be on the Federal Daily. The content of the report was only a part of it, introducing the mysterious disappearance of several important managers of the Kodak family in the past.

Some of these people were their employees, some were also named Kodak and were family, but they all eventually disappeared.

The report used some vague words to narrate and speculate on the whole process. Although all the endings did not explicitly point the finger at anyone, anyone who finished reading the report could taste a special flavor from it. They were talking about the Kodak family.

Coupled with the recent series of events targeting the Kodak family, the entire Golden Port City and surrounding areas began to discuss these matters enthusiastically.

The more they discussed, the more bizarre the information that people spread became.

Even though Lance had not yet produced evidence that they had killed a hundred of their own people in ten years, in just one night, distorted rumors began to appear.

Things like “Bandy is actually not a member of the Kodak family. He is an outsider who impersonated them, and his purpose is to eliminate the Kodak family’s bloodline.”

Or “they have actually killed tens of thousands of people, but no one has ever dared to report these things.”

Although it was so absurd that it was obviously fake, people were clearly more interested in these absurd news and trusted them more.

The pressure formed by public opinion did not directly press on Bandy at first. Those mud-legged dogs outside had been talking about the Kodak family for many years. Why would he care about their discussions?

But as Chief Bruce expressed that some members of the public hoped that the federal government could give them the truth, and they hoped to reopen these investigations, and Chief Bruce also decided to reopen the investigation of these disappearance cases, and at the same time called on the whole society, if anyone knew anything, or had any evidence, they could submit it to them.

They could ensure that the person providing the evidence would not be exposed to the Kodak family’s sight, and had also set up special mailboxes and phone numbers.

The media reporters’ report of “almost every minute someone calls in, telling some news that may be related to the Kodak family’s crimes” gave people the feeling that “everyone is working together to push down the wall of the Kodak family.”

Including Bandy himself, he also became very anxious. It was really impossible for him to remember every single silencing, nor could he guarantee that every silencing was clean.

Some things that were not originally done by them, but were framed on them by rumor-mongers, he himself could not distinguish them all. He had never even heard of some of them.

And it was precisely for this reason that he became more and more uneasy.

You can not care about the malice of one or two people, but when the malice of a hundred thousand, a million people converges into a sea, no one can withstand it.

Besides this matter, there was another thing that made him feel very bad, and that was that Stone was really not dead, and was with Lance’s men.

Someone saw him, sitting in a car. Then the family members began to search for information about him everywhere, and they really found it.

They found that Stone was currently living in a villa in the New Bay Area. That place was right next to the Empire District, almost attached to Lance’s territory.

Letting him live there was definitely also Lance’s arrangement and decision. Besides hiding him, it was also convenient to manage him.

Bandy didn’t tell Gorry about these things. He was afraid that Gorry would be distracted and directly have someone deal with Stone.

He had already said enough that he shouldn’t have. He should shut his mouth!

These few days, Stone had been confined to this villa. Lance didn’t even stop him from contacting the outside world, as long as Lance’s men were watching him when he made a phone call.

But even so, he had not contacted the outside world, because he now did not know how to face those people from the past, and to face his family.

He had sold out a lot of information to Lance. He felt that he could not be blamed for this. After all, he had already died twice.

But to say that he didn’t feel any guilt or embarrassment at all was actually wrong.

He was very guilty. He would sometimes hate himself for not having the courage to choose suicide. In fact, if he wanted to commit suicide now, he could totally do it.

But he just didn’t have the courage to do so. He didn’t know how to describe his current feelings.

Sometimes he would even think that if everyone who knew him died, perhaps he could get real release.

But he would quickly deny these thoughts himself. He felt that he was going crazy.

In just a short while, he began to daze off, and then came back to his senses, his attention returning to the newspaper.

The newspaper mentioned that the federal government held a relatively professional expert discussion meeting. After discussion, the experts believed that the core reason for the current economic recession was the unreasonable distribution of social resources.

A large amount of funds were stored in the accounts of those rich people and did not participate in social circulation, so people had no money in their pockets. In order to improve their ability to resist risks, they could only continue to save money.

This led to the money becoming, in a sense, waste paper after one or two simple circulations.

Without consumption, the efficiency of stores decreased. Factories could not get the final payment and could not pay wages to workers.

And the workers who could not get wages or could not get their full wages were even less willing to spend money randomly, which formed a terrible vicious circle.

The experts have always believed that this society is very rich, but it is only because the funds cannot circulate that the current recession has been caused.

For example, those rich people, the big capitalists.

They are willing to spend money and like to spend money, but they ultimately only occupy a very small minority of the whole society.

Their consumption simply cannot drive the economy of the whole country. Only when all ordinary people consume together can it be done.

To solve this problem is very simple: readjust the resource allocation method to let the capitalists release some profits and make the people richer.

When people have money, they will have the desire to consume. Goods and wealth will begin to circulate in all links, and everyone will get a part of the benefits because of the circulation of wealth. This is a healthy way of operation.

However, it is basically impossible to persuade the capitalists to raise wages for the workers by this method.

They would rather go bankrupt together than return the value generated by the workers’ labor to them.

Looking at these reports, Stone felt very bored. He didn’t understand these things. He had never had to worry about money since he was born.

He flipped back a few pages. There was no interesting content. He threw the newspaper on the coffee table and then walked to the window.

The sun was bright outside the window, a scene of vitality. He suddenly had an urge to go out for a walk, but the urge was ultimately just an urge, because he knew that Lance would not allow it.

He stood by the window, his mind wandering again. Suddenly, he heard a “thump,” and then a second, a third.

A white, layered crack about the size of an egg suddenly appeared on the floor-to-ceiling window in front of him, and then a second, a third.

It was the mark left by a bullet!

He reacted, looking at the more and more marks on the glass wall. He cursed and fled into the room.

When he realized that if it weren’t for those bulletproof glass, he might be dead now, he couldn’t help but tremble.

Lance had killed him twice, giving him an indescribable deep, bone-deep, and soul-deep fear and trepidation of death!

He sat in the room, locked the door, and picked up the phone, but the phone line had been cut.

He could only pray, pray that the people Lance had arranged to come over would be of some use.

Outside the house, a rifleman had a grim face and was about to put away his weapon. He didn’t understand how afraid of death the owner of that house was, to the extent that he had used all bulletproof glass, which had caused the failure of this silencing plan.

The person behind him came over. “No need to put it away. We’ll storm in.”

The rifleman looked at him sideways, as if asking “are you sure?” The other party nodded. “Bandy has requested that we deal with Stone as soon as possible. He can’t be allowed to talk anymore.”

The rifleman re-set up his bolt-action rifle. “I’ll provide fire support.”

He hadn’t finished speaking when he saw several cars crash through the gate of the villa on the other side and rush in.

Close-range firefight began immediately. Gunshots were everywhere, and he also provided support from time to time.

The fierce gunshots echoed through the entire New Bay Area in a very short time. What they had not expected was that this itself was a trap.

Soon, a large number of police officers surrounded the vicinity and began to advance layer by layer. All those who resisted were killed.

Lance had said that it didn’t matter whether these minor characters were alive or dead.

It was too late for the rifleman and the person next to him to escape. After a stalemate for a few minutes, the two finally chose to put down their weapons.

The lowest-level family members, for the stability of the family, for the orders of their superiors, fought with all their might to try and kill Stone.

And the true beneficiaries of the family behind them, however, had unhesitatingly put down their weapons.

This world has always been like this. The ones who are not afraid of death are always the small soldiers, while the generals are often the ones who sit at the winner’s table as prisoners of war, enjoying a sumptuous dinner!

Ten minutes later, the door to the room where Stone was hiding was knocked on. His body trembled slightly.

Since the gunshots stopped, he didn’t know what had happened outside. The unknown knock on the door disturbed his tense nerves.

He looked at the door uneasily.

But then, Lance’s voice from outside the door made him let out a heavy sigh of relief.

He had never been so… fond of a person he should have hated.

And it wasn’t just fondness. Lance’s voice also brought a sense of security. He just walked to the door and opened the complicated door.

Lance was standing outside the door.

“Are you injured?”

Stone shook his head. “The bulletproof glass helped me block the bullets.”

He now recalled the fear when several “bullet flowers” suddenly appeared on the glass wall in front of him. They really hadn’t planned to let him live!

Lance looked him up and down, then had him follow him downstairs. “We’ve already caught these people. Maybe you know them?”

“Want to take a look?”

Stone was silent for a moment, then silently followed Lance downstairs.

As soon as he went downstairs, he saw two people standing in the living room.

He didn’t know one of them, probably not a powerful character, but he knew the other person. It was his cousin.

His cousin also noticed Stone standing behind Lance, and he was also the target of this operation.

When the two met, one had a look of hatred, and the other had a calm expression that showed no emotion.

Stone followed Lance into the living room. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass window, he saw that there were still many police officers cleaning up the scene outside.

There were many corpses in the yard, and someone was wiping the bloodstains on the glass wall with a cloth.

Originally, it was just a little, but the more they wiped, the more there was, but it also became more transparent.

Originally, Stone wanted to ask things like “why did you want to kill me,” but he quickly gave up.

Why else?

The fact that he was still alive was the biggest reason!

“It seems you know each other,” Lance said with a smile, sitting on the sofa.

Stone stood by the sofa, looking like Lance’s subordinate. He nodded slightly. “My cousin.”

“Fuck!”

“Don’t call me cousin. I fucking feel disgusted!”

His cousin shouted loudly, seeming to have some courage. He looked very resentful of Stone and even said things like “I don’t have a cousin like you. The moment you were caught, you should have died immediately…”.

Stone’s face kept changing, with guilt, dissatisfaction, and a trace of indescribable disgust.

In fact, Lance could understand his current mood, probably something like “you are not me, do you know how I’ve been through this period of time.”

In order to let them, the cousins, have a better communication, Lance glanced at the gang member behind the rifleman.

The young man took out a steel cable connected by two deer antlers. While the rifleman was not paying attention, he tightly wrapped it around his neck.

While pulling hard, he also lifted it up.

Under the shocked and terrified gaze of Stone’s cousin, his face quickly began to turn red.

At first, he could still treat this matter relatively rationally. He tried to insert his fingers between his neck and the noose, so as to exert force to let himself breathe.

But as he couldn’t do this, his reason, under the strong effect of the desire to live, began to dissipate.

He struggled frantically, tearing at the noose around his neck with both hands. His neck was scratched and bloody.

His face, flushed and bluish, was slightly tilted. He looked at Stone’s cousin with a pair of pleading eyes, expressing his desire to live.

He kept struggling, struggling in vain. In the end, his face had become somewhat bluish-purple, and his eyeballs were also bulging out. He kept hitting the person behind him, but in the end, his movements lost their strength.

With fear of death in his eyes, a longing to live, a resentment towards Stone’s cousin for not saving him, and many other emotions, he died.

Until his death, he was still looking at Stone’s cousin.

The room was very quiet. There were even police officers here, but the police officers did not bother to care about the murder that was happening right under their noses.

Lance looked at Stone’s cousin. “Do you want to prove that you are more courageous than your cousin?”

(End of a Chapter)