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

Chapter 1380 The evidence before us

"Found it, this should be the one Jack mentioned." The tall and strong Clay found some clues on the top of the cabinet in the storage room and was about to reach out to touch it.

"Wait!" Aubrey beside him quickly spoke up to stop him.

Clay stopped his hand in mid-air and looked at the guy in confusion, "I'm wearing gloves."

"I know, but traces are important, too." Aubrey said, moving a chair and standing on it.

The ceiling of the storage room was much lower than that of other rooms, and the cabinets were almost close to the ceiling. Aubrey couldn't reach them without a chair, but he had to bend over to stand on a chair.

He turned on the flashlight on his phone and took several photos of the cabinet top, then took the computer off and took a few more photos before showing it to Clay. "There is a thin layer of dust on the surface, which means it has been there for at least a week.

Judging from the dust around it, no one has touched it since it was put there.”

Although everyone in the Most Wanted Criminal Team had learned from Jack that Powell was wrongly accused, this discovery was still exciting.

Clay took a look at the little thing Aubrey handed him. Rather than being a laptop, it was more like a tablet with a physical keyboard, and it didn't even have a fan.

After he turned it on, the screen lit up immediately. It turned out that this thing had been in standby mode and the battery was almost exhausted.

Clay thought thoughtfully, "This computer was deliberately hidden here and we found it. Normally, we would find anonymous emails hidden inside and find that Powell had used an anonymous email address to send threatening emails to city council members, so we would have a motive."

"Jack is right. This is getting interesting." Aubrey turned on the purple light and shone it on the keyboard. He clicked his tongue and said, "There are no fingerprints on it. It seems that our opponents are not that smart."

Alice took the computer from Clay and rolled her eyes at her man, "Of course it's easy for us to find the problem with the answer.

Normally, when we find electronic items in a suspect's home, the first thing we do is check the documents inside. Would you think of first checking whether the fingerprints on the keyboard belong to the suspect?"

Aubrey chuckled twice and did not argue with his girlfriend because what Alice said was right. There are not so many meticulous criminal geniuses and criminal investigation experts in reality. Everyone makes mistakes, whether they are criminals or police.

After putting a transparent evidence bag on the computer, Alice frowned and glanced at the reporters peeking out the window.

"Don't worry about those guys." Jubal walked into the house with several NYPD officers, "The NYPD will cordon off the scene here. We will split into two groups. You and Aubrey will take the evidence to the CSI lab. Jack is already waiting there.

The rest of you follow me and escort Powell's wife and children to the Federal Building."
-
It's been a while since Jack visited CSI.

Ever since Mike Taylor was poached by Rossi to work for the FBI - he is now the new director of the International Department, his former deputy Stella Bonasilla has become the head of the laboratory.

This older sister with long wavy hair did not make any major reforms to the CSI New York laboratory. After all, she was originally responsible for taking care of some administrative affairs of the laboratory for Mike Taylor when he was busy. There was no need for her to make any big changes when she took office.

The laboratory had not changed much overall. Apart from a few more instruments that Jack couldn't understand but whose appearance alone made one feel they were worth a lot of money, the researchers were still the same familiar faces.

On the experimental table was a paint cannon gun that used a compressed carbon dioxide tank as the kinetic energy for firing. When the trigger was pressed, it would make a "bang" sound and then shoot out a bunch of colored paper. Next to the paint cannon gun was a pair of gloves and a semi-automatic rifle of unknown model, but it could be confirmed to be an AR series by just looking at its appearance. Several researchers were wiping trace evidence on these things with cotton swabs.

The glove was not found at the scene by the NYPD who arrived afterwards, but was taken from the hand of a scapegoat by Jack afterwards.

According to Powell who had already regained consciousness, someone from an agency prepared a firecracker gun and gloves for him and handed them to him in a private room in the hotel, asking him to set off the confetti fireworks on the second-floor terrace when the atmosphere of the banquet reached its climax.

Stella Bonasilla dropped a sulfuric acid solution of diphenylbenzidine on the filter paper and watched the filter paper slowly turn blue with a strange expression, because this was a positive sign of the "gunsmoke reaction".

In other words, the owner of the gloves provided by Jack had theoretically fired at least one shot not long ago, using a real gun that used gunpowder bullets.

"Are you saying that someone used a temporary part-time job as bait and prepared everything to lure that desperate man into the trap?" Stella took off her gloves, motioned for other researchers to continue their work, walked up to Jack and whispered.

"As you can see, the other party has carefully prepared everything, including a full set of evidence."

Jack nodded and turned to look at Alice who was checking her laptop in the next room. "I have a witness whose identity I cannot reveal for now. He was at the scene and saw everything. He can confirm that Powell is not the real murderer of Delancey."

The rooms in the laboratory are separated by large glass windows, so you can still clearly see the people working inside by standing outside or next door.

In other words, even if there is a problem with the surveillance in a room, the situation in the room can still be observed without blind spots using the surveillance cameras in the corridors and other rooms.

CSI even has a special negative pressure laboratory to handle some "highly dangerous" evidence.

Stella’s eyes widened in surprise, “But you took the risk to hide that guy, why?”

"Because he might be silenced." Jack said the disturbing words with a smiling expression.

"I let it go." Stella gave up asking further questions. Although the deceased was just a city council member, this kind of political drama of assassination in public had not happened in New York for many years.

Local media are now chasing all kinds of relevant information like crazy, which is why Jubal had to send Powell's wife and children to the federal building.

In this case, since the FBI has announced that it is in charge of the case, there is naturally no need for Stella to force herself to get involved. She can just suppress her curiosity for the time being and ask her two good friends, Jiejie and Hannah, about it later.

But she still wanted to remind Jack, "Since the other party has even considered the reaction of the gunpowder smoke left on the gloves, he is a professional. You must be careful."

"Of course." Jack thanked Sister Stella and went to meet Alice who had walked out of the next door laboratory.

"It's not just this laptop. Powell's desktop computer has also been infected with a Trojan horse. But I can't handle the follow-up tracking work. Let your expert do it."

Alice handed Jack a hard drive along with the compact laptop.

(End of this chapter)