You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

"Of course we have to pay rent."

"There aren't many vehicles in this camp that actually belong to the homeless."

"These are all scrapped cars that the local gangsters hauled back from the junkyard for a few hundred dollars, and then they rent them to us on a weekly basis, charging us forty or fifty dollars a week."

"If you don't pay, they'll just beat you up and throw you out."

"At least this is a metal shell that can keep out the wind and rain. An old man like Arthur, who is not a young man, would have died long ago if he had lived in a tent all the time."

"He just paid his rent a few days ago, and his lease isn't up yet. But since he died outside, I'll move in to avoid the rain. Otherwise, would I let those rent collectors pocket my money for the past few days?"

Lyon stared at the homeless man for a while, going over what he had just said in his mind.

It is rich in detail and has a closed-loop logic.

It's hard to fabricate something so quickly, so realistically, and without even changing one's expression. It seems this guy really didn't kill anyone; he was simply inheriting Arthur's legacy.

Lyon sighed.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a few crumpled twenty-dollar bills, and handed them over casually.

"Take it."

The homeless man's eyes lit up, and he quickly reached out to catch it, stuffing it into the pocket of his large jeans and pulling up the waistband as he did so.

"But I'm warning you, hide yourself well."

Lyon coldly reminded him, "I'm a complete stranger coming to this run-down camp to find you; there must be other eyes outside who saw me."

"Don't wait until I leave, and then someone slits your throat with broken glass because of these few banknotes."

The homeless man shuddered, immediately stuffing the money deep inside his underwear, and nodded repeatedly.

"I understand, I understand! I'll sneak out from the back to buy some food later, I promise I won't make a sound!"

"Okay. I need to look for anything that old man left behind in this car."

Lyon gestured towards the interior of the carriage. "Do you have a problem with that?"

"No! Absolutely not! Boss, do as you please!"

The homeless man was very clever and tactfully stepped aside, standing close to the door frame.

"There's nothing of value inside except a few tattered clothes and trash. Feel free to search around."

Lyon ignored him and turned to walk into the narrow, cramped interior of the RV.

The carriage was filled with a musty, sour smell, and the space was so small that it was difficult to even turn around.

Lyon put on gloves and a mask, rummaged through the single bed covered with blackened sheets, and opened several tattered plastic bags next to it.

There really wasn't anything of value.

However, Lyon found something in a plastic document bag.

He opened the file bag and poured out the scraps of paper inside.

A Boeing senior researcher's access card with a hole punched in it means his security clearance and identity have been completely revoked.

Several hefty bills from drug rehabilitation centers, overdue credit card notices, and a court-issued order for the forced auction of a house.

Besides that, there were a few old newspapers with material stress formulas and high-temperature resistance parameters written on the back. This was probably a professional habit that an old scholar could not change even after he became homeless.

Lyon looked at the tattered pieces of paper in his hand and felt a sense of heaviness and sadness.

An engineer with cutting-edge aerospace materials technology was reduced to living in a leaky, dilapidated RV in order to pay off his son's high-interest loans from a gang. He eventually left coughing in an icy rain and disappeared without a trace.

Where could he possibly find such a homeless man with no relatives or friends?

Should we borrow the police station's system to check?

Don't be ridiculous. Putting aside how dangerous this is for him, how would the police station know where a homeless person is? If they were to check the emergency rooms of major hospitals, there would be countless nameless people who couldn't afford medical treatment and were left in the corridors.

"That's fucking ridiculous."

Lyon put the documents back into the plastic bag and stuffed them inside his jacket.

If there's no sign of them, dead or alive, searching aimlessly like a headless fly won't work; it's too inefficient.

Suddenly, the image of Alex's dead fish-eyed face with dark circles under his eyes flashed into his mind.

Everyone has their own expertise. That guy is a professional corpse collector, dealing with these marginalized people who die on the streets every day.

Alex knew far more about Seattle’s underground morgue, the procedures for handling unidentified bodies, and which clinics homeless people typically went to to die before they passed away than the police did.

I'll have to ask him for a favor later, to see if I can find him.

It would be such a waste to let such a precious thing rot in the mud without any explanation.

……

Half an hour later, in an inconspicuous, dark alley in downtown Seattle.

A black refrigerated truck without any markings turned the corner and slowly came to a stop in the shadows of the alley.

Alex pushed open the car door and jumped out. He wasn't wearing a raincoat today, but the lingering weariness and dark circles under his eyes were still there.

In fact, he had just experienced a thrilling "spy war" this morning.

He secretly wrapped Old Bill's silver hard drive in a waterproof bag and, following the instructions in the email, placed it at the location where he had previously found the umbrella. Then, like a madman, he hung a red shirt on the balcony.