Chapter 831 Innocent Minotaur

Ah, Jack and Hannah looked at each other, what's going on? In the previous surveillance video, the intimate gestures of Catherine Sloan and Peter Hill were very obvious.

Although the American culture is indeed open, this is obviously beyond the scope of a colleague relationship. How can a male and female colleague hug each other and kiss like this? Even he doesn't... cough. At least in front of other colleagues, Jack is still very careful about the impact.

After asking Catherine's parents about the address of her real boyfriend Eli Doflinger, Jack and Hannah did not delay any longer and quickly said goodbye and left.

Some things don't need to be revealed in public. To keep a good impression of a well-behaved daughter for the sad parents is that European and American culture also avoids saying bad things about the dead, and eulogies at funerals usually only say good things.

Caldwell is equivalent to the suburbs of Forrest City, less than 20 kilometers northwest of the city center, and it is still a matter of one foot on the accelerator.

Time was a bit rushed, and Alice didn't drive the command car over. Fortunately, the billiard bar was not so remote that there was no network signal at all, so they rented it as a temporary office.

The rich man Aubrey wrote a check and sent the bar owner away who was in a hurry to go back to sleep. Five hundred dollars was enough to book that kind of small bar for more than three days. The red-necked old man who was worried that the murder would affect the business smiled so much that his mouth was almost grinning to his ears.

Of course, this money can be reimbursed afterwards, but the person who is currently in charge of the team's funds is this rich man from Wall Street. It is usually not necessary to consider too much moral risk when letting rich people manage accounts, because in theory they don't care about this little bit of money.

According to Alice's hasty investigation, Catherine's real boyfriend Eli Doflinger is the son of a local farmer. He owns a small farm in Caldwell. He is not very rich, but he is also a middle-class family.

Judging from the data alone, Eli Doflinger's age and family background are quite compatible with Katherine Sloan, of course, only in terms of her current career.

If it is true as Katherine's father said, she has not suffered a tragedy and will become a judge in the future, even if she works in such a small place, it will be a complete class leap.

Although the old Americans don't have the saying of "first sword on the shore, first kill the person you like", it seems easy to understand that Katherine hooked up with her colleagues after entering the district attorney's office, because Pete Hill's father is a judge in Little Rock.

Katherine is tall and blonde. Although she is not a great beauty, she is young and beautiful. She does have the capital to climb up.

Although it may be a bit too much to say that she is a sea king, it also greatly increases the suspicion of her Minotaur boyfriend.

To be on the safe side, Clay and Aubrey were also called over. The four met outside the small farm and entered the farm together.

"There's blood." The sharp-eyed Aubrey was the first to notice something unusual. He saw a long trail of blood following the ruts to the backyard of the farmhouse.

"Be careful."

Everyone drew their pistols and followed the trail of blood to a cabin in the backyard. A Ford F150 was parked at the door of the cabin. A blue plastic tarpaulin was spread in the pickup truck compartment. There was nothing on it, but blood was still dripping down.

An unusually tall figure in the cabin was busy with his back to the crowd. Standing far away at the door, one could smell the strong smell of blood and a strange fishy smell coming from inside.

"FBI! Eli Doflinger, put down the knife in your hand." Aubrey shouted, pointing the gun at the tall figure who seemed to be still unaware.

The boning knife in Eli Doflinger's hand fell to the ground. He turned around in panic, revealing a simple and honest face and a leather apron stained with blood.

Although the scene looked quite horrifying, Jack put away his pistol in silence, because he had already seen a wild boar with its belly ripped open on the table in the cabin.

"I have a hunting license. It's the breeding season for wild boars now. Cleaning up these bad guys will help maintain the ecological balance." Facing the other three black muzzles, Eli Doflinger hurriedly raised his hands and stammered in English with a southern accent to explain.

"Yes, that's right, and we FBI don't care about this kind of thing."

Jack covered his nose and walked into the smelly cabin and took a look. He didn't find any firearms. Judging from the wild boar corpse, this big guy seemed to be caught using a trap. There was a bloody hole on the pig's head, but it was not a gunshot wound, but a high-powered crossbow.

It's a pity that the handling method was a bit rough, and the blood was not drained away before it was dragged back. The meat doesn't taste very good.

Wild boars are not native to North America. Today's wild populations are formed by escaped domestic pigs that have re-entered the wild. After proper treatment, the taste is not as bad as some people say. In many restaurants in southern states, you can find "delicacies" such as wild boar burgers on the menu.

As for the so-called saying that wild animals are prone to carrying germs, sorry, the rednecks in the south don't care about these.

The wild boars in the United States are rampant simply because there are no natural enemies and the land is vast and sparsely populated, plus the hunting cost is too high. People who are not rich and have free time really don't have to provoke these thick-skinned things for the sake of stuttering. Isn't industrially produced beef delicious?

"So, what's going on?" Seeing that everyone put away their guns, the honest-looking big man asked in a muffled voice.

Jack checked his whole body and found no weapons. He patted his shoulder to signal him to put his hands down. "We need to know where you were at three o'clock this morning."

Eli Doflinger took off the blood-stained leather apron and threw it aside, still looking confused. "Of course, I went hunting."

"Going hunting in the middle of the night?" Aubrey frowned.

"Of course, it will take at least three hours to get there. I have to get up at 1 o'clock to prepare so that I can arrive before sunrise."

Eli Doflinger just looks honest, which does not mean that he is really stupid. Considering that the four FBI agents in front of him looked like they were facing a great enemy, he immediately had an ominous premonition.

"Please, can you tell me what happened?"

Hannah, a Texas girl, naturally felt at home with the southern accent here, and she couldn't help but speak with her lovely Texas accent, "I'm sorry, man, but we have to tell you that Katherine Sloan was murdered last night."

"What happened to her?" Eli Doflinger subconsciously took a half step forward, and when he saw Aubrey's right hand on his pistol with a nervous face, he had to stop.

"Don't be impulsive, big guy, we know you two are in love, so we came to your door." Clay also took a step forward to block him, raising his hand to signal him not to act rashly.

Eli Doflinger's eyes were full of tears. "Yes, we have been together for four years. I don't understand what happened. How could she do that? Kate is a good girl. How could anyone bear to do that?"

"Why do you think we came to their house? Maybe you found out about her and Pete Hill's little affair and got furious and went to them with a gun."

"Wait, wait." Aubrey was interrupted by Eli Doflinger before he finished speaking. "Are you saying Kate cheated on me?"

——

"I'll leave this to you." Jack glared at Aubrey, who looked innocent, and turned his head helplessly to look at Eli Doflinger, who was squatting on the ground and crying. The big guy was crying like a 200-pound child at the moment, and no matter how he persuaded him, it didn't work.

Anyway, the suspicion of Catherine Sloan, the Tauren boyfriend, was temporarily ruled out. Although it was unclear whether his sadness and crying was due to his girlfriend's death or because he was more NRT, his first reaction did not seem to be fake.

Moreover, he did not go hunting wild boars alone. There were several other hunters with him. A little investigation would confirm his alibi.

It was sunset when everyone returned to the billiard bar. Jubal and Jiejie also returned here. The bar was piled with files.

Jack put the dinner he bought on the small table, picked up a file and flipped through it. He found that it was a case about the illegal sale of privately brewed liquor.

The Americans have very strict control over alcohol. Not to mention that people can only drink at the age of 21, the tax is also levied directly from the production link.

So although the "Prohibition" has been over for nearly a hundred years, private brewing is still a very profitable business, especially in these remote central and southern states. He flipped through a few more files and found that almost all of them were about this case.

"I'm going to vomit if I see these cases of illegal alcohol sales." Jubal, who is already "allergic" to alcohol, said that he really couldn't stand it.

"When we went to the prosecutor's office, prosecutor Skip Hardy was sorting out all the felony records in the past five years. He believed that the murderer who killed his three assistants must be among them."

Jiejie also looked like she had lost all hope. How many vicious cases can there be in such a small place in a year? It's not that the people are simple and the crime rate is low, but the reporting rate is too low.

The biggest advantage of a vast land and sparse population is that even if someone is killed accidentally, you can drive a pickup truck or an off-road vehicle to throw the body into the wilderness, and the family of the deceased will at most report it as missing.

The priority of missing cases is usually the lowest. It is a thankless task and a waste of time. The sheriff has no time to deal with this. Wouldn't it be better to catch a few bootleggers? Usually, that means a lot of cash in the account.

So in this pile of files, more than 90% are so-called "felonies", occasionally mixed with a few arson and sexual assault lawsuits, which is really a headache.