Chapter 936 The first clues appear

In addition to reinforced concrete high-rise buildings in New York, the most common building is brownstone. The so-called brownstone is actually red brick, also known as flat brick or 85 brick in China. It is a must-have artifact for home, travel, murder and robbery.

Later, with the development of the economy, red bricks turned into blue bricks. Later, for the sake of environmental protection, they turned into cement bricks made of fly ash and coal slag. Red bricks and blue bricks that need to be fired with clay became less common.

If you build a house but are reluctant to plaster the walls, leaving the red brick walls exposed, it will become the brownstone-style building that has become popular around the world in modern times with the Industrial Revolution, and it will become high-end architectural art that can move countless petty bourgeoisie to tears.

For some well-known reasons, these red brick houses left over from the last century or even the century before have become the most comfortable houses to live in around New York, except for the skyscrapers.

"It looks like this Swan has a pretty good income." Jack didn't knock on the door. He just stood at the door and listened for a while. He shrugged his nose and took out the lock picking tool. "There's a body inside."

Reacher and Negley looked at each other in confusion; they didn't smell anything.

However, the big guy habitually chose to trust Jack. He stood next to him and blocked him tightly to avoid passers-by noticing and causing misunderstanding, and put his hand on the Glock 20 behind his waist.

With two "click" sounds, the upper and lower door locks were opened respectively. Jack pushed the door gently, and a strong stench of corpse came out.

Reacher and Negley, who were standing behind him, took out their pistols and walked into the house sideways. After a search, they found the body of a golden retriever in the bathroom.

"The name on the collar is 'Max'. It must have died of thirst. It drank all the water in the toilet." Jack briefly checked the dog's corpse and turned to look at the big guy.

Negli, who was standing by, said with a look of pity, "This is too painful a way to die."

"Swan would never let his dog die of thirst. If he doesn't go home, then there is only one possibility, he is dead." Reacher said with a grim face.

His words were obviously emotional, and neither Jack nor Negley would take them seriously, but it is undeniable that this is a possibility, and based on what we know so far, the possibility is quite high.

Jack didn't try to comfort or analyze, but looked around. "I checked the doors and windows leading to the backyard. There were no signs of intrusion. Judging from the placement of items in the room, Swan didn't have any plans to go far away. I will notify the CSI to come over and confirm."

After Jack finished the call, the three did not leave immediately, but waited in the driveway in front of Swan's house, because Stella had just said on the phone that their people had found important clues from the ruins in Franz's office.

"This is impossible. We have checked and there is no way we missed any important clues." Reacher felt that his dignity as a special investigator was challenged.

"CSI is the top crime lab in the country. I have worked with them many times. From a criminal investigation science perspective alone, they are the true experts."

In Jack's previous life, the CSI crime lab only existed in movies and TV dramas, but its prototype or part of its prototype actually originated from the FBI crime lab, so his bragging at this moment would not be considered as boosting other people's morale.

"Thank you for your affirmation." Stella, who had just got off the car, obviously heard Jack's praise, and her expression was inevitably a little complacent, but she couldn't help but be stunned when she saw his square chin when he turned his head.

"It's just for convenience. Let's talk in the car." Jack winked at her, gave an explanation that was not really an explanation, and then pointed to the Land Rover they drove.

Behind Stella, several technicians in protective suits had already walked into Swan's house with tool boxes.

"Do you know anything about fax machines?" Stella's first question when she got on the bus startled everyone.

Negri smiled. "Are you talking about the magical little box that makes a noise and spits out an A4 paper when a phone call comes in?"

"I like your humor." Stella smiled back at her, "The fax machine also has a built-in memory, and the newly added fax content will cyclically overwrite the previous files.

The printer in Franz's office was smashed, but the flash memory inside was intact, and our technicians recovered a few fax jobs and discovered this."

After saying that, she took out a printout, which contained an official letter, or to be more precise, a reply letter from the DHS (Department of Homeland Security).

The official letter did not contain much content, but it roughly described an arms broker named Azari Mahmoud who was suspected of providing arms and weapons to terrorist organizations.

"Does this name look familiar?" Jack handed the printout to Reacher, who nodded slightly, "The abbreviation is also 'AM'."

"What do you mean?" Seeing the two of them playing charades, Stella and Negley asked in unison.

Jack briefly explained the two files in Franz's USB drive. The abbreviations in one of the files were all pseudonyms for "AM". Now the first mystery was finally solved.

Reacher then read out the two handwritten messages at the bottom of the file, "Mahamed may be the person we are looking for. He is like a ghost and we can't find any photos of him.

It's signed 'Sanchez'!"

Negley suddenly realized, but then he had a new question, "So Sanchez and Orozco are helping Franz investigate this guy, but what does this have to do with Swan?"

"I don't know, but we will find out." Reacher frowned and answered murderously.

“OK, I’ll leave the rest to you, Jack. I’ll go check out the house.” Stella patted Jack’s shoulder before getting out of the car, letting out a heartfelt sigh.

"Wow, terrorists, international arms dealers, why do you always run into such big cases, Jack?"

Jack sighed helplessly, "I don't know, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I know too many friends who are too powerful." After he said that, he took out his mobile phone and took a photo of the document to Jubal.

"What should we do next?" Negley started the car, looked at Reacher in the passenger seat, and then looked at Jack sitting in the back, "Are you FBI ready to intervene?"

"We have been intervening." Jack rubbed his temples with a headache and quickly went over the information he had so far in his mind.

If we trace a timeline, Franz, who died first, was a private detective working for Wall Street people, while Sanchez and Orozco lived in neighboring New Jersey. They were dragged into this incident simply to help a friend, but ended up being murdered in the same tragic way.

Given that they are investigating a mysterious arms dealer working for a terrorist organization, this line at least makes sense for now, so what about Swan's death or disappearance? Did Franz ask him for help as well?

At this time, Jack's cell phone rang. It was Jiejie who called. She said that a suspicious person appeared near Franz's house again and was suspected of tracking and monitoring him.

He first called Clay and Aubrey, who had been on standby at the Federal Building, and asked them to investigate Swan's whereabouts with Danny before he spoke.

"Someone will contact DHS about Azari Mahmoud's identity, and someone will be secretly investigating Swan's whereabouts. As for the two of you, are you interested in fishing with me?"