Marvel's whitewashing cop, you want me to save the world?

Lee En raised his eyes, his gaze sliding over Matt's sunglasses.

The glasses reflected the light behind the bar, obscuring the expression on the back of the person's face.

"No." His tone remained unchanged. "I was at home last night."

He paused, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly, but it was a very small movement and could hardly be called a smile.

"Does Attorney Matt have any questions?"

Matt's lips moved, but before he could ask, Foggy interrupted quickly.

"No, no, no." Fogg waved his hand twice on the bar.

"It's just that a big case happened yesterday. If we could help out and get the case, that would be great."

He turned around and raised his voice towards Jiao hope.

"Jiaoxi, Officer Li En, this cola is on me!"

Jiaoxi was hanging a clean glass on the wine rack when she heard this, and she didn't even turn her head.

"Hmph, you still owe me money for five bottles of beer."

As she said this, she had already taken a new bottle of Coke from the refrigerator, unscrewed the cap, let some bubbles escape, and then pressed her thumb against the bottle opening.

"Payment will be here in a few days!" Foggy's laughter grew even louder as he clapped his hands twice on the bar.

Jiaoxi poured the cola into a glass, and the ice cubes made a clattering sound as they came out of the ice maker. She then pushed the glass in front of Li En.

"Thank you." Li En's fingers rested on the rim of the glass.

Fergie showed no sign of stopping, moving a little closer to Lee and resting his arms on the bar.

"Officer Li En, how about another beer? It's on me."

"Thank you, but I won't drink during work hours, and I don't like alcohol," Lee Eun replied with a smile.

Fergie's smile didn't diminish because of those words; in fact, it widened even more.

He straightened up, picked up the glass of beer that Jiao hope had just poured from the bar, and held it in mid-air.

"Looks like we've got another competent police officer in our neighborhood."

"That's wonderful. Let's work together, police and residents, to make this place even better."

He gestured with the hand holding the cup toward Lee Eun.

"Cheers."

Li En picked up the cola glass, and the rim of the glass touched the glass of the beer glass, making a crisp clinking sound.

"Cheers."

Virginia tilted his head back and took a big gulp of beer, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down twice. When he put the glass down, a layer of white foam clung to the glass.

"Newbie."

Brock's voice came from the doorway.

Li En finished the rest of the cola in the glass, and the ice cubes at the bottom of the glass clinked a few more times.

He slid off the bar stool and took his coat off the back of the stool, draping it over his arm.

"See you next time, Foggy, Matt."

He walked toward the door, and as he passed the pool table, Huck was leaning over the table, aiming at a ball near the pocket.

Huck glanced up at him, then looked down again, pushed the cue stick out, and the ball went into the pocket with a muffled sound.

Li En pushed open the bar door, and the night breeze blew in, lifting a corner of her collar.

Brock stood beside the car, a lit cigarette between his fingers.

The red glow of the cigarette butt flickered, and smoke leaked from the corner of his mouth, only to be dispersed by the wind.

"Get in." Brock put a cigarette in his mouth, opened the car door, and got into the driver's seat.

Li En opened the passenger door and got in.

The sound of a seatbelt buckling echoed in the car.

Block started the engine, and the car slid off the side of the road and into the sparse traffic.

The lights outside the car window receded one by one.

Li En leaned back in his chair, his hands in his pockets, his fingers touching the business card.

Attorney Matt.

A blind man with a more sensitive nose than an ordinary person, and calluses on his palms from years of boxing.

His posture was so upright it looked like he had practiced martial arts, and the direction of his outstretched fist was perfectly precise.

Li En turned his gaze to the car window, the streetlights slid across his face.

The car turned off from Jiaoxi Bar and drove onto Eighth Avenue.

The streetlights slid across the car roof, one beam after another, casting alternating patterns of light and shadow on the dashboard.

Block held the steering wheel with one hand and rested the other on the window sill, his fingers tapping lightly on the outside of the door.

His expression was different from before he entered the bar; the corners of his mouth were wider, his eyelids were raised, and his gaze swept across the road ahead, as if he were looking for something.

"Rookie." His voice was soft, with a hint of relaxation from just having drunk whiskey.

"You can go to Jiaoxi Bar more often when you have nothing to do, but remember, don't cause trouble."

He paused for a moment and tapped his fingers twice on the steering wheel.

"Many of the regular customers there grew up in Hell's Kitchen, so the relationships are complicated."

Li En leaned back in her seat, her gaze fixed on the night outside the windshield.

He remembered the tattooed man with a headscarf in the bar, Hack.

The three men's gazes towards him changed from initial wariness to indifference.

Brock laid out the steps for him.

And those two lawyers.

Virginia's passion is like a fire, burning quickly, but it's hard to say whether there's any coal underneath.

Matt, the calluses on the blind man's palms, the precision of his handshake, the way he sat—everything about him said one thing: this man was no ordinary person.

Li En nodded.

"Have you found out anything about the masked man?"

Brock did not answer immediately.

He pulled his hand away from the car window, changed his posture, leaned back in the seat, and placed his right hand on the bottom of the steering wheel, pinching it only with his thumb and forefinger.

"Frank is offering a $200,000 reward for information leading to the masked man." There was a deeper meaning in his voice. "Hey."

The "hey" was short, with the last syllable rising slightly.

Li En turned her head and glanced at him.

Brock's eyes flickered in and out with the changing light of the streetlights, and the light in his pupils was a little brighter than before.

"Let's go back to the police station first."

Block pressed the accelerator a little harder, the car weaved through traffic twice, and turned onto a wider road.

Li En didn't ask us pointless questions like, "Can the police also receive rewards?"

There is no rule in Hell's Kitchen's rules that prohibits officers from receiving bounties.

The money came out of Frank Amick's pocket, and it's all in the same pocket as whoever's pocket it ends up in.

Brock isn't the kind of person who would turn down money.

When I got back to the police station, the lights in the corridor were still on.

The office area was much quieter than during the day, with only seven or eight people still at their desks.

Some people were sleeping on their desks, others were staring blankly at their computer screens, and the cigarette butts in the ashtrays were piled up like small mountains.

Brock did not return to his seat.

He walked straight to Cherry's table, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

The two huddled together, their voices low, occasionally uttering a word or two: bounty, clue, port.

Cherry's brows furrowed and relaxed repeatedly, her fingers drawing circles on the table.

Li En walked back to her seat and sat down.

The desk is still the same.

The computer screen was lit, and there were three stacks of files on the desktop, the top one being the case file of the masked man.

He pushed the document aside, tapped a few times on the keyboard, and opened the police station's internal file system.

I minimized the window, typed a few more times, and opened the browser.

The page was still on the tags he had last searched for.

Stark Industries' stock price chart, Osborn Corporation's drug launch.

Li En stared at the screen for a few seconds.

"Hey, Lee Eun."

The sound came down from above.

Li En raised her head.

Cherry stood by his desk, holding a stack of documents, with an expression on her face that Li En had rarely seen before.

Are you free?

Li En lifted her fingers off the keyboard and placed them on the desktop.

"Officer Cherry, I also have a case involving the search for the masked man."

Cherry didn't leave.

He moved the documents to his left hand, pulled out the chair opposite Li En's desk with his right hand, and sat down.

The chair leg scraped against the ground with a creak.

"Following that guy Brock to investigate masked men won't do you any good."

He placed the document on Li En's desk and tapped the kraft paper cover with his finger.

"This is the real case."

Li En lowered his head and looked at the stack of documents.

The kraft paper cover was blank, but the thickness of the paper underneath told him that this was no simple report.

Cherry is right.

The masked man case is a bottomless pit; even a ten-year investigation will yield no results.

The murder on West 38th Street was different.

Someone died, there are clues at the scene, and the possibility of the camera capturing something is high, so the probability of solving the case is high.

This is the kind of job anyone who wants to climb the ranks in the police force should take.

But he doesn't want to move up now.

What he wants is time.

Time was used to find the hunter, to find the other party before the other party found him.

The masked man case provided him with just that opportunity.

There are no deadlines, no superiors urging progress, and you can leisurely stroll around the streets.

You can browse at your own pace on the computer, stopping anytime to do what's truly important.

Li En opened his mouth.

Cherry's hand had already opened the folder.

The first page contains photos of the two deceased.

The skinny one and the fat one.

The photo was taken at the scene; the two people were lying on the sidewalk in the same position as when they died.

The thinner one was lying on his side, one hand under his body, the other pointing to the sky.

The fat one was lying on its back with its limbs outstretched.

Below the photo is a summary of the autopsy report.

Li En's gaze swept over.

Cause of death: Asphyxiation.

No heart disease, no poisoning, no ligature marks, no airway obstruction.

Two adult men suffocated to death on the streets of Manhattan.

No foreign matter residue was detected on the skin surface.

There are no plastic bag fibers, towel lint, or adhesive tape.

Like two fish pulled from the water, their gills are still moving, but the water can no longer get in.

Li En's finger stopped at the edge of the page, and his brow twitched.

Cherry saw him sitting opposite her, his hands crossed on the table, without saying a word.

Li En reached out and pulled the folder in front of him, turning to the next page.

Cherry pulled her foot back: "Tell me if there's anything suspicious."

Without waiting for Li En's reply, he stood up, pushed his chair back under the table, and turned to walk back to his seat.

Li Enlian didn't even notice when Cherry left.

His gaze was fixed on the words: suffocation.

hunter.

Those two words instantly popped into my head.

He turned to the next page.

The folder contained a stack of photos, not photos from the scene, but screenshots from a webcam.

Someone compiled surveillance footage from several blocks around West 38th Street within twenty minutes before and after the incident.

They were printed out on paper and clipped one by one into a folder.

Lee Eun picked up the first one.

The image is blurry and grainy, and the light from the streetlights forms halos in the photo.

The figures on the sidewalk were compressed into dark silhouettes, their faces obscured.

He put it down and looked at the second, third, and fourth cards.

He looked at each one very quickly; he didn't need to carefully identify what he was looking for.

The seventh, the twelfth... the nineteenth.

Li En's fingers stopped.

This is a security camera located at the corner of 42nd Street near Times Square.

The top left corner of the image shows the entrance to Times Square, from which light pours in, and the pink, blue, and purple neon lights blend into a blurry mist in the photo.

The scene shows many people: some holding up their phones, some carrying shopping bags, and some standing by the roadside waiting for someone.

At the edge of the image, near the right sidewalk, a tall person is walking westward.

Only their backs were captured in the photo.

The color of the suit is indistinguishable between purple and black in the grain of the photo, but its cut and silhouette are different from those around it who are wearing loose hoodies and wrinkled jackets.

The shoulders are straight, the waist is narrow, and the hem just covers the hips.

Her hair was neatly combed, and the light from the streetlights dappled the hairspray, creating small, bright spots.

He was more than half a head taller than the people around him in the picture.

"I've found you."

Li En stared at the photo for a few seconds, then pulled it out of the folder and flipped it over to look at the back.

A number and the date the photo was taken are handwritten on the back.

Last night, at 11:40 PM.

Less than twelve minutes had passed since the two robbers died.

Cherry had somehow walked back to his table.

"Found it?" His voice wasn't loud, but his tone implied, "I knew you'd find it."

Li En looked up, flipped the photo over, and pushed it in front of Cherry.

"This person." He pointed at the photo with his index finger.

"He walked westward from the edge of the frame, very tall, dressed in a sharp suit, on the same street as the two deceased, within the time frame."

Cherry picked up the photo and looked at it closely.

"A back view, no front view."

"Your face might have been captured by another camera."

"As long as he's still in Manhattan, there will always be cameras capturing his face."

Lee En said with certainty.

Cherry put the photo down, placed her hands on the table, and looked at Li En for two seconds.

"I will retrieve the recordings from more nearby cameras."

He paused, as if thinking of something, and then continued:

"I will tell you more when I have more information."

Li En nodded.

Cherry picked up the folder, put the stack of photos back in the folder, and turned to walk back to her desk.

Li En pushed the chair back half an inch and leaned back against the chair back.

The lamp on the desk hummed overhead, its light reflecting back and forth between the screen and the desktop, illuminating the entire area in a white light.

He went over the image of the photo in his mind again.

The tall man was wearing a sharp suit and walked with his body straight, facing West 38th Street.

He unfolded the map in his mind.

Last night, the hunter encountered two robbers on West 38th Street.

The robber is dead.

After dealing with them, where did the hunter go?

……