American Detective: Starting as a Rookie Cop in an American TV Show

Chapter 1463: The Secret Hidden for 20 Years
"A stupid operator misheard a letter, made a wrong record, and then the girl was asked for her name but refused to give it, and then the call was disconnected."

Sheriff Landry turned off the old-fashioned tape recorder in his hand and stared intently at Barbara.

"But Ms. Barbara Russell, oh no, you weren't surnamed by your husband at the time, so it was Ms. Ferguson, who knew who the girl was, right?"

The name you deliberately ignored, the name not recorded on the list—Cody Grayson only knew her name as Sam.

Jack spoke with sarcasm, his gaze equally unfriendly as he stared at the seemingly kind middle-aged woman before him. Sometimes, some people are more detestable than the murderer.

“Sam Groves, yes, that’s right, she was in the library with Hannah that night.” Barbara seemed to lose all her strength and could barely stand, her arm supporting her on the corner of the table trembling slightly.

Sheriff Landry put away the tape and recorder, frowning as he continued, "Who is Sam Groves? Why don't I recognize the name?"

"Sam was only 12 years old at the time, a very cute child. She lived outside of town with her mother, whose health was always not very good. Perhaps for this reason, she always wandered around the library."

At this moment, Barbara was like a walking corpse, her eyes empty and lifeless, and she answered almost every question.

"Why did you omit her name from the witness list? You weren't married to Trent yet, were you? I remember that was almost two years later."

Sheriff Landry's brow furrowed deeper and deeper; he couldn't understand her actions at all.

"Because Sam said something similar to me the very next morning; she said she saw Hannah get into a car."

"so what?"

The old sheriff slammed his fist on the table, his suddenly loud voice making Barbara shudder. Her voice trembled as she continued, “She said she thought the person in the car might be Mr. Russell.”

"And you were already in love with Trent Russell by then, weren't you? So you didn't say anything." Jack revealed the truth in one sentence.

“No, I did, I did, I said it to Sam,” Barbara cried. “I told her she was a dirty little brat who only wanted to get adults’ attention.”

She actually dared to slander the kind Mr. Russell, a true philanthropist who has made tremendous contributions to our town, the library, and the children of the town.

I told her to shut her lying, foul mouth, and cursed her with every wicked word I could think of, threatening her to shut up.

Barbara, who seemed to have aged 20 years in an instant, left the living room trembling and moved step by step into the hallway, continuing to murmur as if talking to herself, "Back then, I was blinded by love and didn't want to believe that Trent could be that kind of person."

Jie Jie was worried that Barbara might do something irrational in her current state, so she quickly stepped forward to support her arm. The others followed behind until Barbara stood at the back door leading to the courtyard.

"So you really never suspected Trent?" Jack said coldly, arms crossed.

Barbara didn't answer, but stared intently through the glass in the door at a patch of concrete in the courtyard, where a nice picnic table and two lounge chairs were set up.

"What's in the courtyard?" Jie Jie felt a chill creep into her heart. After a long while, Barbara spoke again, her eyes still fixed on the concrete ground. "It used to be a beautiful cobblestone ground. He even invited me to have lunch there. But then one day, the place was suddenly renovated, just two weeks after Hana disappeared."

Finally speaking, Jack let out a long sigh of relief and turned to Sheriff Landry, whose face was grim. "Notify the state troopers and have them send out a forensic team as quickly as possible. We also need an excavator."
-
Construction lights were set up overnight in Barbara Russell's beautiful backyard, and excavators easily broke through the concrete and then carefully dug deeper under her direction.

The old sheriff, wearing canvas gloves and holding a shovel, stood with Jack at the edge of the pit, staring intently at the ever-deepening hole.

"Stop! Stop!" Noticing the unusual color of the soil, Jack waved repeatedly to signal the excavator to stop. Once the bucket was moved away, he jumped down.

"What did you find?" Sheriff Landry handed the shovel to Jack and then leaned over the edge of the pit to look down.

After a few shovelfuls, Jack simply started digging with his hands, and soon he carefully picked up a backpack whose color was no longer discernible.

Skeletons were faintly visible beneath the backpack. Jack waved to the forensic team waiting nearby to enter, and then gently pushed off the pit wall to return to the surface.

With trembling hands, Sheriff Landry took the bag from Jack, opened it, and took out a rotten book, holding the cover up to the light.

"The Bouquet for Algernon, the one that was in the library back then."

Jie Jie, who was standing next to him, turned around and looked towards the back door of the house. Barbara had witnessed the whole thing from where she was standing. When she saw the two of them looking at her, she silently backed away and hid herself in the darkness.

"Ah!" A heart-wrenching scream came from the direction of the fence on the other side.

Cody Grayson, who was blind in one eye, appeared at the gap in the backyard that had been breached by a bulldozer and frantically pounded on the wooden fence with his fists.

It's unclear whether he was venting his pent-up grievances from years ago, feeling sorrow for the girl he had a crush on back then, or perhaps both.

Beside him stood a tall, thin figure, like a candle flickering in the wind—Hana's father, old Frey. He stumbled and tried to rush into the courtyard, but was firmly stopped by two state troopers.

"That's my daughter, that's my daughter, my sweetheart, God! Let me see her, I just want to see her."
-
Early morning, in a small town hotel.

"For a while, I actually really hoped that Hana would be the grown-up Ms. Root." Jie Jie lay in Jack's arms, her voice slightly muffled and nasal.

Jack leaned down and kissed her forehead lightly. "Because it means she escaped Russell's clutches, right?"

"Yes, although Gen avenged her long ago, the tragedy could not be reversed. I even understand why she became like this. For a child who was only 12 years old at the time, she had exhausted all the methods she could think of."

She told the adults everything, only to be met with insults and threats. She called 911, but the police were indifferent. At that time, the world seemed utterly malicious to her.

Jie Jie looked on with empathy, saying, "I can't imagine if I were in her shoes, would I become even more extreme?"

(End of this chapter)