Chapter 92: Patrol and Harvest
There were six children in the Mexican family. If their mother was sent back to Mexico, the children would become orphans.
Their father was also an illegal immigrant, and would be repatriated along with the mother if it happened.
However, since he wasn’t here, the children would be handed over to Child Welfare Services, which was no better than an orphanage.
The police officer preferred not to deal with the tricky issue, either. He wasn’t from Immigration, after all.
More importantly, it was Selina who proposed letting them off, so the officer wouldn’t be blamed even if anything happened later.
So, they simply gave the Mexican mother a warning and told her to stop her children from screaming.
In the end, Luke and Selina knocked on her neighbor’s door and warned the single man living there, too.
It was this very neighbor who had called the police. Cowed by Luke, he confessed the real reason.
The children next door were too noisy, and talking to their mother hadn’t helped. Infuriated, he had called the police, claiming that the mother had kidnapped the children.
Well, that wasn’t really anything new in America.
The neighbor had been reasonable enough to call the police. A more bad-tempered guy might have simply shot her.
Luke threatened to charge him with raising a false alarm if he called the police again.
If that happened, the Mexican woman might be sent back to her country, but he would be arrested, too.
The neighbor immediately lost his courage.
Luke patted his shoulder. “Actually, you can buy earphones. Once you put them on, the whole world will turn quiet. You can buy decent ones for ten bucks on Amazon. It’s much more convenient than calling the police.”
The neighbor was suspicious. “Huh? Really?”
Luke chuckled and shook his head.
The man had called the police not entirely because his neighbor was being too noisy.
It was also partly because his own life wasn’t that great, and when he was upset, he wanted to make other people miserable, too.
Of course, it was possible that the man hadn’t noticed his true motivation.
After everything was done, Luke and Selina returned to their car. Selina asked Luke curiously, “Why do I feel that you’re rather happy?”
Pondering for a moment, Luke decided to tell her the truth. “Look, these cases may be boring, but they’ve helped us to become familiar with Westside. The people we helped could become informants later. What if we have hundreds of them?”
Selina exclaimed, “They can work for us?”
Luke nodded solemnly. “Of course. Why else would I give them my contact?”
Luke was secretly satisfied. He actually got a lot more out of a morning of patrol than Brock could imagine.
That morning, he had earned 15 experience and credit points for dealing with the gangsters.
A petty task like cleaning up those gangsters gave a reward of 10 experience and credit points.
Selina had done her share, so Luke only got 15 points from the three operations.
Sorting out the woman who had hung her clothes out to dry was also worth 10 points. Since Luke had made a greater contribution that time, he got 7.
The case of the Mexican woman and her neighbor was worth 20 points in total.
Luke got 10.
He estimated that his contribution had come from giving the neighbor a warning.
Otherwise, his contribution rate would’ve been zero, because Selina had taken care of the Mexican woman on her own.
Luke had acquired 32 experience and credit points from these cases in one morning.
He was certain that he would get more than fifty by the end of the day.
If the patrol lasted a week, Luke would be able to earn 400 experience and credit points.
He had finally escaped Brock’s snare, and didn’t have to work deadend cases anymore.
If he couldn’t crack cases, he wouldn’t get any experience or credit points.
He couldn’t level up without experience, and he couldn’t buy abilities without credit.
Because of Brock’s “help,” Luke had made a fortune in experience and credit points, but he certainly wouldn’t thank Brock for it.
This also included the benefit that Luke had just explained to Selina. So, this patrol was definitely a rewarding assignment.
In the next couple of days, Luke and Selina worked hard.
Thanks to Luke’s encouragement, Selina was more active, too.
An officer who was familiar with the neighborhood would receive much more assistance than an officer who wasn’t.
After a week, Luke and Selina gave more than fifty people their contacts.
Most of them wouldn’t be of much help, but certain homeless people and bottom-level workers were useful.
Criminals might fool security cameras and police officers, but it was hard to fool the people who were on the streets every day.
To obtain information from these people, however, it was necessary to reward them.
Money wasn’t the only option, but it was without doubt the best one.
Luke didn’t really care about money, but he had to admit that he needed money at this point.
It seemed that he had to consider the drug dealers again. After all, he didn’t need to pay taxes when he “earned” money from them.
Moreover, he wouldn’t feel guilty about disposing of drug dealers; spending their money on informants was completely justifiable.
The system certainly wouldn’t stop him from doing that.
Luke even felt that the system allowed him to swallow the money of criminals precisely because the cause of justice was costly.
Most of the cases Luke and Selina encountered for the rest of the week were in a similar vein.
They ran into all kinds of weird people and conflicts.
Selina remarked that she had encountered more bizarre things in a week here than she had in her four years as an officer in Shackelford.
There were truly all kinds of freaks in the big city.
Someone caught his wife sleeping with their landlord, and beat them up.
Someone who was high called the police and claimed that he had a gun, when it was actually a hair dryer.
Someone even took off their clothes in the middle of the day and fell asleep on the streets – and it was a drunk, young woman.
On the last day of their patrol, Selina even began to speculate what she would run into that day.
The bizarre cases had broadened her horizons significantly.
Of course, they were eye-openers for Luke as well, but he had seen too many freaks on the Internet in his last life, and was thus more immune.
The experience and credit points which Luke earned from those cases weren’t as important.
His biggest prize came from a little girl.