New Clues (Seeking Follow-up Reads on Tuesday!)

The office was wreathed in smoke.

Several people sat at the conference table, cigarettes in their hands one after another.

Even the female team leader Susan was no exception.

Brian smelled the heavy secondhand smoke, and his mood could not help turning a little irritable.

He pushed open the conference room's doors and windows for ventilation, then walked back to the whiteboard and listed out all the information currently known.

But after thinking for a long time, there was still no so-called flash of inspiration.

As for solving cases, he had heard plenty about it.

Actually doing it was his first time.

Without an obsession prompt, with his ordinary person's IQ, there really was not much he could analyze.

Suddenly, Brian thought of something!

He walked up to Susan and yanked the slim cigarette from her mouth. "Do you still remember how Li Sen evaluated the deceased Kenneth earlier?"

Susan froze, thought for a moment, then said uncertainly, "He was a decent person... knew he was secretly learning, but didn't expose him... Right, Li Sen also said he had originally considered taking Kenneth as an apprentice, but before he could bring it up, Kenneth stole his secret seasoning, and the two of them had a conflict."

"There's a problem here!"

Brian clapped his hands, drawing everyone's gaze over.

He crushed the slim cigarette in his hand, wrote the pieces of information from just now on the whiteboard, and analyzed, "Because of racial discrimination, Li Sen has a very sensitive personality. He usually uses his bad temper to disguise himself and avoid being bullied. Someone like that is often very accurate in his assessment of a person."

Ivan glanced at Brian's fingers crushing the cigarette butt and said calmly, "So?"

"Why would someone with a decent personality, who was constantly able to learn new things with Li Sen's tacit approval, suddenly want to risk angering Li Sen and steal his secret seasoning?"

Brian drew a thick underline beneath "secret seasoning":

"This thing isn't ketchup. If there's a little more or a little less, no one cares.

As a young man with ideas of his own, Kenneth should have known the consequences of being exposed.

He was still very young.

According to his previous path of growth, it was foreseeable that his future wouldn't be bad.

But he still took the risk.

What drove him to take a risk like that?"

Hearing this, the few people who had originally been unable to find a direction had light in their eyes again.

Ivan clapped his hands. "Money. He needed more money!"

Glenn said with certainty:

"A woman!

Only a woman could make a young man with ideas of his own make an impulsive decision.

Following Brian's line of thought, I suspect Kenneth already had the idea of opening a food truck before he stole the secret seasoning.

Right!"

Glenn slapped the table and stood up. "Do you still remember that box with the number written on it?"

Susan, who had been a little confused at first, saw that she could chime in on this and hurriedly said, "Of course I remember. Didn't Old Harden say that was a new kind of prostitution method, and that he went to investigate it?"

"That's right!"

"Kenneth was a young man with a proper job and simple personal connections. Why would he get in touch with people in that kind of business after opening a food truck?" A faint smile appeared on Glenn's handsome face. "There's only one reason. The woman he liked was a member of that industrial chain. Maybe Kenneth's food truck was even funded by her!"

A look of realization appeared on Ivan's and Susan's faces.

Brian, meanwhile, thought of the deceased Kenneth's obsession: to make Shaina stop sinking into the life of the streets, and let her live out this life happily.

It matched!

Everything matched!

Sure enough, three cobblers with their wits combined were as good as Zhuge Liang!

It had only been an idea he had suddenly thought of, yet after everyone added to it and refined it, it had actually formed a new line of investigation!

From Glenn's speculation, Brian had a new line of thought!

He looked at everyone. "I agree with Glenn's guess. Did any of you notice something? Kenneth's food truck business was booming. Have you calculated how much he could make in a day?"

"How much?"

Susan came from a well-off family and had no real concept of these things.

Ivan and Glenn often moved among the lower rungs of society, but they had never dealt with these inconspicuous street vendors either.

Under the three puzzled gazes, Brian wrote a number on the blackboard. "Two thousand dollars! And that's just my lowest estimate. Kenneth's daily net profit was definitely over two thousand dollars!"

"What!!!"

"Fuck, are you kidding me?"

Aside from Susan.

Ivan and Glenn both cried out in shock.

As frontline detectives investigating homicide cases, they risked their lives, yet their annual income before tax was only a little over seventy thousand dollars.

And that was because detectives in Los Angeles were paid relatively well.

Now Brian was telling them that the owner of one tiny food truck could make, in net profit, almost half a month of their salary in a single day.

Who could believe that?

Brian spread his hands.

"After I graduated high school, I looked into this kind of thing.

Generally speaking, as long as a small stand has a good location, its daily net profit is around three to four hundred dollars.

Kenneth used the sign of Chinese delicacies, and one serving of fried rice sold for seven or eight dollars.

The actual cost wouldn't be more than one dollar.

And he was the star food truck on that commercial street.

You can do the rest of the math yourselves..."

Why were most Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles at this point in time middle class, with very few poor bastards?

It wasn't because they had deep foundations to begin with.

It was because America, at this point in time.

If you were willing to work hard, there really were plenty of ways to make money.

"Fuck, if I'd known, I would've gone to sell hot dogs too. My ex-ex-ex-girlfriend really liked eating my hot dog." After Glenn finished calculating, he felt a little unbalanced.

Ivan, however, was not that interested in money.

He thought of the meaning in Brian's words. "Brian, are you saying that after Kenneth discovered his food truck was so profitable, he got bigger ideas?"

Brian nodded.

"That's human nature.

Maybe before he started this food truck, Kenneth was only thinking of saving up some money, then taking the woman he liked back to a normal life.

But he didn't expect his business to be this popular.

So Kenneth moved that schedule up.

The problem was, his food truck wasn't just selling fast food. It was also a channel for converting johns.

If you were the person behind this whole industrial chain, and then you discovered that a guy who could bring you customers not only wanted to quit, but also wanted to take away your money-printing machine.

What would you do?"

Ivan stroked his rough beard and looked appreciatively at the confident Brian. "Looks like we've found a new suspect!"

He really liked this confident side of Brian.

A man's confidence was more attractive than a handsome face.

Just as everyone was preparing to follow this new lead and assign investigation tasks.

The conference room door was pushed open.

A trendy-looking old Black man started coughing from the thick secondhand smoke. "Cough, cough. God, did you people set a fire in the conference room?"

Seeing that it was Old Harden, Susan quickly asked, "Did your investigation turn up anything?"

Old Harden rubbed his aching waist and nodded. "There's an important lead. I think it's very useful, but..."

"But what?"

Brian and the others could not help asking.

Old Harden somewhat embarrassedly pulled out a hair salon receipt for five hundred dollars, with a red lipstick mark printed on it. "Can this be reimbursed?"

To protect the safety of Los Angeles citizens.

He could endure his body being ravaged.

But not his wallet.

This was a matter of principle!

Everyone looked at Old Harden's unchanged hairstyle, and the way he kept rubbing his waist.

What kind of haircut cost five hundred dollars a pop?

Did this old bastard take them for idiots?

They would meet tomorrow afternoon at five.