The Blacklist

Chapter 373 Alibi Maker

On the second Wednesday, probably to help Elizabeth who had just taken office, Reddington provided another blacklist case which was somewhat interesting but not difficult, but very unique!

In recent years, in the District of Columbia and Maryland, some cases that could have been convicted were overturned due to eyewitness testimony - the eyewitnesses insisted that they saw the suspect appear at other locations and had an alibi, and after investigation, the police confirmed that the eyewitnesses had no interest in the suspect.

Reddington believes that the alibis in these cases were artificially fabricated, and the mastermind is a mysterious figure nicknamed "The Alibi Maker" in the underworld. He allegedly charges a high fee, but it's worth it.

After telling Elizabeth about the case and what he knew, Reddington went to the eighth floor. He felt that only Carrie could help him with another important matter.
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Carrie looked at Reddington with an anxious look, but felt strange and asked, "Old Reddington, you are here to provide Elizabeth with clues to the new case, why are you here?"

"Something happened and I need your help." Reddington said, "Lee, do you remember the postman Anthony whom I took in? It was because of him that I started a safe house business."

"Remember," Carrie said, "Use the information Anthony got from the post office, and illegally rent out the owner's house while the owner is away on a business trip or traveling, and make some dirty money!"

"Yes, it's this Anthony!" Reddington didn't bother to respond to his teasing, "Just last night, he came to me and said that he got into trouble..."

Seeing that he stopped here, Kerry asked in confusion: "Go on, what's the point of saying halfway?"

Reddington wiped his bald head and said angrily: "I regret it now! I regret not listening to your warning and not controlling this guy well, so now he has caused me a lot of trouble!

"This guy has made a lot of money from my safe house business, but he is still greedy. He actually used his position to steal a package from a local drug cartel..."

Kerry frowned, feeling unhappy, and asked, "He stole the drugs? How did he deal with them?"

"He sold it secretly." Reddington knew why Carrie was angry and didn't dare to hide it.

"And then?" Carrie asked seriously.

"The package belongs to Big Willy, the leader of an underground drug trafficking group in Washington. He found Anthony..." Reddington said, "In order to save his own life, this guy pinned the blame on another drug trafficking gang leader! Then, he knew he couldn't keep it secret, so he came to me for help!"

Carrie was so angry that she laughed. She looked at Reddington and said, "Old Ray, why did you come to me? Do you want me to help you protect this stupid Anthony? Or do you want to use the power of CTU to eliminate these two gangs of drug dealers and help you fight the drug trafficking network?" "Of course not!" Reddington immediately waved his hand and said, "Drug trafficking is not in my business, and I will not get involved in it! However, these drug dealers are all desperados, and I'm worried that they will suddenly attack Anthony and me..."

Hearing this, Kerry's expression softened and he asked, "So what do you want to do?"
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On the SER side, Elizabeth attached great importance to the information provided by Reddington, and arranged for Alam and Nawabi to search the national crime database, with the focus naturally on similar cases that matched Reddington's description.

By noon, Alam and Nawabi had found a total of four similar cases, all of which were cases that seemed to be manipulated by the "alibi", but there was no real evidence. There was no relationship between the eyewitnesses and the suspects, no unusual property coming in or out, and no clues of hired murder!

Elizabeth is no longer the rookie she was back then. She immediately thought of other ways and took the agents to find eyewitnesses in these cases to collect evidence again. She didn't believe that the suspect's alibi was so perfect!
During the investigation, Elizabeth and Denby were in a team. When they were questioning witnesses of the recent case, they learned that the suspect had withdrawn cash from a street ATM, so they immediately asked Alam to retrieve the surveillance video from the bank ATM.

In the video, the suspect was wearing sunglasses and a ski cap, and the facial recognition system confirmed that this person was the suspect. However, Alam discovered that the facial recognition software in common use today will determine that it is the person himself as long as there is 81% similarity. Although this is within an acceptable range considering the error rate, everyone always feels that something is wrong!
Elizabeth personally went upstairs to invite Abby, the technical director of SLR, to recheck the facial recognition results.

Gothic girl Abby likes to challenge authority, especially in the field of software. After watching the working process of facial recognition software, she felt that it was very inaccurate, so she immediately started to modify and recompile the software.

More than two hours later, the post office released a new version of facial recognition software, which re-analyzed the ATM surveillance video...

After more than ten minutes of identification, the new software concluded: Although the suspect used camouflage, there were subtle differences in his skin texture, blood vessel patterns, eye distance, nostrils and lip high points, and he was judged to be a person wearing makeup, not the real person!
The detectives were overjoyed, as they had finally caught the "abolished" person!
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Reddington took Anthony to meet with the leader of the drug cartel, Big Willy, hoping to make things clear and avoid unnecessary conflicts...but it was too late - Big Willy was an impatient man, and had led his men to ambush the leader of another group of drug dealers yesterday, and cut him into pieces!

As Reddington cursed inwardly, dense gunfire rang out outside the chocolate factory where they had agreed to meet - a hostile drug gang had come to seek revenge!

The troublemaker Anthony was so scared that he almost peed his pants. He really didn't expect that the matter would get to this extent. If he had known, he would never dare to steal those drugs even if he died. But it was too late to say anything now!

Felix and several of his men drew their pistols to protect Reddington, but Big Willy's eyes were full of ferocity. He waved his pistol and shouted at his brothers to hold on and fight back... After shouting for a while, he saw Reddington being protected behind him and said unhappily, "Red Devil, is this a trap you set?"

"Of course not." Reddington shook his head, "Although I don't mind killing you, I won't put myself in danger! Well, you should know who is outside!"

"Well, that's right!" Big Willy nodded in agreement, "Of course it's the damn Nash Group outside!"

(End of this chapter)