Chapter 71: Office Politics

Luke finally got rid of all his troubles after that. He enjoyed his three-day break in peace. Nobody disturbed him again.

Since the two fake FBI agents had made them sign another non-disclosure agreement, Luke knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. must’ve taken over the issue.

With S.H.I.E.L.D.’s involvement, neither the FBI nor the police could look into him again.

If they wanted to know more, they would have to turn to S.H.I.E.L.D..

That is, if they could the FBI’s 17th Division, which didn’t have an office at all.

Thomas never asked for Luke and Selina, and they naturally didn’t drop in on him. They simply continued with their usual work.

Brock’s face twisted when he saw them.

He couldn’t disguise his anger. Or rather, he didn’t want to disguise it at all.

Pulling a long face, he threw a case file at them and had them get to work.

Luke and Selina didn’t react, as if they didn’t notice Brock’s long face.

Nobody greeted them anymore when they returned to their desks.

Obviously, everybody now knew that Brock was unhappy with them. They would rather not piss off their boss by talking to two newcomers whom they barely knew.

Luke and Selina weren’t bothered. Selina even said in a low voice, “Once again, you were right. This guy is truly… petty.”

Luke calmly browsed the file. “He’s just unlucky. His trick was exposed too easily.”

Reading the file for a moment, Luke threw it back on the desk and leaned back in his chair. “He’s smarter now. He gave us a minor case.”

Selina read the file for a moment and understood. “This is a missing person case. It won’t be unusual if we can’t find anything after a lifetime of investigation. Or rather, we may find out in the end that this woman ran away herself because of domestic abuse.”

Luke nodded. “Exactly. Let’s go. We have to work the case anyway. It’s also a chance for us to become familiar with this neighborhood. I don’t think Brock can suppress us for long.”

Since they were new here, they had to take cases from Brock.

But once they established their own connections, many cases would go to them directly.

Many detectives in the Major Crimes Division left their contacts with people who were involved in certain cases.

When those people were in trouble, they would reach out to the detectives, and the detectives would get those cases.

If the detectives could develop a network of informants, they would also be able to find and crack cases with the leads they found themselves.

And since it was the detectives who found these cases, they would usually be the ones in charge of them.

Brock could ask someone else to take care of a particular case, provided that he knew what it was about. However, he couldn’t do that all the time.

Whoever found a case was responsible for the case. This was an unspoken rule.

The rule was only broken when certain detectives couldn’t solve the cases they found, or even caused a lot of trouble while they were at it.

Luke was still new here. He wasn’t in a hurry to look for cases.

It wasn’t a bad thing to spend a few months familiarizing himself with the place.

In the next couple of days, Luke made no progress on the missing person case.

He questioned the missing woman’s neighbors and colleagues, but didn’t find anything interesting.

There was nothing suspicious about her husband, either. The case was at a dead end.

Selina was rather anxious, but Luke was relaxed.

While they were investigating the case, he had been looking for places where they could train.

Shooting practice was simple. The police station had partnered with a shooting range, and it was cheap to practice shooting there.

Luke finally found a place that had individual rooms where they could practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

It was easy to find records of places like these in the police station. However, they had to check the environment and the prices in person.

They found a martial arts club near the police station, which was owned by a middle-aged Chinese man.

Luke didn’t care about that. He simply rented a room in the club.

The club had a lot of empty rooms, so the boss didn’t refuse.

Well, Selina might have been a contributing factor, too.

A beautiful girl was much more convincing than Luke in a negotiation like this. The club owner certainly wouldn’t refuse the chance to talk to her more often.

After they struck the deal, the two of them worked the case during the day and exercised after work.

Now that she had a place to vent her anger, Selina wasn’t as wound up as before.

Every time Brock gave them a new case, he would criticize them for not working hard enough on the missing person case.

Luke had to secretly pull at Selina multiple times to stop her from fighting back.

He couldn’t care less about any of it.

Furthermore, neither Brock nor they could talk about it outside.

If Brock dared to talk like that in the bullpen, then everyone in the Major Crimes Division was garbage, since all of them had piles of cases that had remained unsolved for months, if not years.

Luke simply watched Brock’s performance, then left with the new case file when the latter was done.

But he didn’t say goodbye as courteously as before. He simply dragged Selina away.

Brock was grim, but there was nothing he could do.

Luke and Selina had Thomas behind them and had contributed to a major case. Brock didn’t have many ways to suppress them.

A few days ago, Thomas had summoned him and yelled at him, claiming that he was a pig-headed idiot.