Chapter 39: Reading the Original Report

From the police officer handling the case, Michael obtained the original incident report, the one William had filed after his residence was burglarized. It listed not only William’s address and the reason for the report, but also notes from the scene.

One had to admit, the IRS was a useful department to belong to. Michael had paid only the price of a favor, yet he had not only seen the report, he had also seen important evidence that should have been sealed away: the gold ring with the inscription.

Michael swore he had never seen that ring before, much less taken it from William’s room.

The ring was worth two or three hundred dollars at most. He had no reason to take that kind of risk for such a little sum. Yet it had not only appeared on his “territory,” it had been picked up by Young Michael, who was then arrested at the scene while trying to fence it.

That idiot did not even know the proper way to sell stolen goods. How could he possibly have stolen the ring?

So Michael became even more certain that the case was, at its core, a frame-up. He came to find William at once.

He had originally intended to have a proper talk with William, but the moment he saw the bastard, a nameless rage flared up inside him and nearly burned his reason to ash.

This was the fourth time he had fallen to the same person, and all within less than a month. It was the first time anything like this had happened in Michael’s life.

It did not just make him angry. It frightened him.

His temper and character were both rotten, but his superiors still valued him. Not because he was “bad” enough, but because he was capable. For all his flaws, when it came to work, he was absolutely a hard man to replace.

And a proud man like that had lost to a boy who had not even made a name for himself.

No, William had made a name for himself now. He simply did not know it yet. “William’s Method” had become a gray-area procedure officially acknowledged by the IRS, the Federation Police Department, the Federation FBI, the Federation Department of Homeland Security, the Federation ... and more than a dozen other departments.

It was more sophisticated than the tricks people had played before, more concealed, harder to control, faster, more damaging, and harder to stamp out.