Rise of the Darkness Tycoon

Chapter 30- Elemental Poison

Bruce glanced at Calvin, then at Morris, clearly asking if he should be here, but the sergeant just nodded silently.

Not wanting to waste any more time, the detective immediately opened the folder in front of him and began speaking.

“We interrogated both drivers and examined the trailer and the van, and we were able to determine the origin of both of them, as well as the destination of the trailer, among other things.”

He pushed forward a picture of the van and continued, “That van had been reported stolen by the company that owned it several days prior.

The one who was driving it on Thursday was a former employee who had been fired several months ago after multiple drunk-driving charges. He knew very little about what was happening behind the scenes. According to him, he’d simply received instructions in a package delivered to his house, along with money and the firearm he was found with.

His instructions were to wait at that specific intersection and crash into that trailer when it passed.

We were able to confirm some of this with traffic cam footage that showed he’d been waiting there beforehand.”

“And what was special about that trailer that he was told to crash into?” Ashley asked.

At this question, Bruce exhaled softly before responding in a grim tone.

“That trailer, from what we discovered from its driver, was involved in an Illegal Elemental Beast Fighting and Trading Operation and was heading to deliver a shipment to that organisation.”

Calvin wasn’t the slightest bit surprised by the reveal, having already figured out that much all the way back at the scene on Thursday.

The elemental beast trading part wasn’t part of his original deduction, but it still didn’t surprise him to hear it.

“We questioned the trailer driver and were able to confirm where he picked up the trailer, as well as his destination, and have sent out officers to scout the two locations,” Bruce continued.

“The trailer driver was found with injuries unrelated to the crash, and we were able to conclude that he’d already been attacked before reaching that intersection, which explains his agitation at the time and how he failed to notice the van until it was too late.”

When Bruce said this, Ashley yawned lightly again, then said, “So that shipment was targeted, huh?”

The detective nodded in response, and then Morris spoke.

“We’re in the process of organising a raid on the location of the trailer’s destination.”

Hearing this, Calvin quietly shook his head.

“You’d likely find very little to nothing,” he said. “It has been several days, and the organisation definitely already knows that the trailer never arrived.

That accident was in the news, so they know the elemental beasts are dead, and the trailer was impounded, with its driver arrested. If they have the manpower and resources to run an entire fighting ring, then they’ve likely already abandoned their base and cleaned up after themselves.”

He pointed out several major flaws with his statement, and Morris nodded in agreement with all of them.

Unlike Bruce, who hadn’t been there on Thursday and hadn’t seen Calvin after the incident, he knew Calvin wasn’t just some random young elementalist with connections to the former governor’s daughter.

“You raise an important point, but there’s a high chance that a raid might find a lot.”

“How?” Calvin asked.

“If the organisation believes that the trailer driver never got the chance to reveal anything meaningful,” Morris responded.

The moment he said that, Calvin narrowed his eyes slightly.

“You mean to say that the trailer driver has been silenced?”

Not surprised that Calvin reached that conclusion, Morris shook his head.

“Almost.”

He looked at Bruce, who quickly flipped through the folder in front of them and pulled out what looked like a medical report.

“Right after the incident on Thursday, the EMA agents and I prioritised questioning the trailer driver immediately. We interrogated them while I had someone file the case in, and we extracted all the information we could that day,” Morris explained.

“However, we hadn’t yet filed the interrogation records and had only just logged the case, and in the time that I took to introduce Detective Bruce to the agents and show them the trailer so they could examine it for any evidence that could help us, the trailer driver collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.

He is currently in critical condition, and the doctors have little hope given the fact that volatile elemental poison was found in his system.”

Unlike elementalists who had energy circuits to channel elemental energy through their bodies, non-elementalists weren’t equipped with such facilities. A non-elementalist being infused with elemental energy was almost always a death sentence, and if the concentration and potency were high, death could come within minutes.

The trailer driver had been poisoned with something enhanced through elemental energy.

At this reveal, Ashley, who had been silent the entire time with a half-sleepy expression as if she was barely listening, immediately frowned.

The fact that the organisation had managed to reach the driver despite him being in police custody and attempted to eliminate him dramatically raised the stakes, as it proved the organisation had significant reach, including people capable of operating inside or around government systems.

For Calvin, on the other hand, this was also of little surprise.

“For an illegal elemental beast fighting and trading operation to exist inside the state for any meaningful length of time means they obviously have someone powerful backing them. Government, police and EMA connections are all possible.”

Hearing Calvin point out the corruption angle of the situation made Morris exhale softly. He glanced at the door of the room, then fiddled with a remote in his pocket, and immediately the small red light of the camera above the door went out.

Leaning in closer, he lowered his voice and spoke.

“Truth be told, we’ve already caught the attention of those…powerful backers.”

“Elaborate,” Ashley said, sitting up in her chair.

“On Saturday, right after I returned from checking on the trailer driver in the hospital, a captain approached me about the case.

He asked about the investigation and suggested I transfer the case to another team, wanting me to move over to handle a different case instead.”

Calvin scoffed lightly when he heard this, shaking his head but saying nothing as he let the man continue.

“I became suspicious, and to discourage his interference, I had to reveal Lady Ashley’s involvement in the matter. I told him the Simon family is personally monitoring the case, and that the former governor is expecting results, and that any reassignment requests should be reported to him.

The captain was surprised when I said this, and though he didn’t believe me at first, he had no choice after seeing my bodycam footage from Thursday.

He immediately dropped the matter and hasn’t brought it up again since then.”

“Yeah, that guy is suspicious as hell,” Ashley said instantly. “It’s like he’s begging us to suspect him.”

The moment she spoke, she pulled out her phone and began scrolling through it.

“I’m telling my dad immediately. That captain has to be investigated, and the team he suggested to replace you guys with too.”

Her fingers moved quickly across the keyboard as she typed everything in her messages app.

Calvin agreed with her decision, as while the captain suddenly caring about this specific investigation seemed normal, suggesting a transfer was suspicious, given the circumstances.

There might be a link between that captain and the organisation, or whoever had told him to take the investigation away from Morris’ team.

“Give me all the details,” Ashley said as she continued typing.

“The captain’s name, the sergeant in charge of the other team, and the detectives involved. If it’s a joint team with EMA agents attached, I want their names too.”

At her demand, Bruce flipped through the files in front of him and pulled out a paper with all the details she asked for printed on it, showing they had come prepared for this.

Ashley nodded with satisfaction, raising her phone to take a picture of the paper before sending everything to her father.

She dropped her phone on the table, about to speak, when the screen lit up with a response, surprising Calvin.

‘That’s fast.’

Even more surprising was that Ashley didn’t look at the messages that kept coming in, instead focusing on speaking to Morris.

“Before you guys raid the place, how about we scout the location?”

Hearing this, Morris raised an eyebrow in confusion.

“Huh? We’ve already sent out scouts. Detective Bruce mentioned that earlier, didn’t he?”

Indeed, Bruce had said that officers had been sent to scout both the origin and destination of the trailer.

“We haven’t been able to get enough reports to understand the layouts of the places well enough to conduct a raid, but once we have that information, the raid will be carried out as fast as possible, provided there’s no interference from the captain.”

Ashley shook her head at Morris’ words.

“I already know you’ve sent scouts there. I’m talking about us scouting the location,” she said, pointing to herself.

Morris and Bruce stared at her with confused expressions, while Calvin just facepalmed.

“Ashley,” he called out.

“Yeah?”

“Please don’t tell me you want to go there yourself,” Calvin said, holding onto a bit of hope.

However, Ashley’s response violently kicked that hope to the curb.

“That’s what I’ve been saying all this while.”