Not the Best Start Chapter 10

Blake Pang followed Ethan Shen into his office with an empty Coke can in his hand, and only then did he see a trash can next to the door of his office. Blake Pang then vaguely realized that Ethan Shen meant to allow him to follow. While thinking that this person's way of expression was really too bizarre and obscure, he looked around the place where Ethan Shen entered. Ethan Shen's office is where the forensic doctor identifies the body. There is a square table next to the operating table, with a piece of glass on it and a map under the glass. There are many lines drawn on the glass with colored pens. The pile of colored lines and the map under the glass seem to connect many things, but they are also extremely messy.

Blake Pang's eyes stayed on it for a while, and he saw Ethan Shen uncapping a new pen and drawing on it. Blake Pang walked closer, and seeing that Ethan Shen didn't react, he generously cast his eyes on the table. Blake Pang looked at it for a long time before he reluctantly realized that this picture was related to Wu Busheng's cross-provincial drug case.

The blue lines on the map marked several complex railways, the red lines marked the rivers, and there were countless colored lines of varying thicknesses that were wildly entangled with the characters.

Blake Pang looked for a long time before he raised his head, and suddenly he was met with a pair of dark eyes. Blake Pang's entire soul seemed to be sucked away.

Ethan Shen said, "Wu Busheng changed 36 transportation routes to get the drugs here."

Blake Pang opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He took a deep breath and felt oxygen enter his lungs. His dizzy vision made him temporarily leave Ethan Shen's eyes. "W-what?"

Ethan Shen stared at him, his palms pressed on the table, and said, "Something is missing. I have been looking for it, but I can't find it."

Blake Pang was speechless for a moment and didn't know how to respond.

"He's in prison, but he's been outside." Ethan Shen finally stopped looking at Blake Pang and focused his gaze back on the table. He whispered, "I'm going in."

A week later, Blake Pang received the news that Ethan Shen was imprisoned. The information about Ethan Shen was officially handed over to Blake Pang. Blake Pang was shocked when he heard that Ethan Shen was in trouble. His colleagues looked at him with envy or strangeness. Monitoring a prisoner was the easiest job for them. Ethan Shen would be put in a special prison, and Blake Pang only needed to review the situation every year. This review cycle could even be extended to three years.

Blake Pang went to the trial. The whole trial process was one-sided. Ethan Shen was isolated and helpless, with only one witness who could defend him. He was accused of using hypnosis to control the victim to commit suicide at a certain time. The other party's evidence was too sufficient, and Ethan Shen's defense lawyer did not put up too much resistance. Everything seemed to be arranged, and Ethan Shen was convicted in just three hours.

After Blake Pang came out of the court and returned to the headquarters, several colleagues kept looking at him. Li Mo was the first person in the department to get to know him at that time. He even prepared a banquet for Blake Pang as a welcome for him to join the company and to congratulate him for being the first to take over a good job.

Blake Pang asked Li Mo at the banquet: "Will the court consider that Ethan Shen is a special person... someone with special abilities?"

"Of course not," Li Mo glanced at him and said, "Generally, cases of people like this will not be tried in public, but there are exceptions. If the crime they committed is true, in order to guide public opinion or under pressure from the defendant, we will still allow the case to be made public."

Blake Pang paused and said, "So all their evidence of 'abnormal' abilities cannot actually achieve their goal?"

"Yeah, unless someone from our department showed up at that time."

Blake Pang's hand stopped immediately. Li Mo noticed this, he filled Blake Pang's glass and said, "I felt Ethan Shen was unreliable when he first joined the police force. He has never committed any crime, and I don't know how many people he has deceived. Now he has finally been exposed, to be honest, I feel relieved. These people are all destabilizing factors in society. Even if they are beneficial to society, the benefits are very limited. We still have to spend manpower and energy to supervise them. It would be great if they could be sent to prison - well, I mean those who are guilty."

Blake Pang knew that even without adding the last sentence, Li Mo's meaning had been fully expressed.

"Don't feel burdened. Ninety-five percent of the people we are monitoring now have criminal records. They have a greater influence on society than ordinary people. If we don't pay attention, they will cause great damage and turmoil. Ethan Shen is not an ordinary person. He has a great influence on the police in the police station. The police force he was in before had to rely on him to handle all cases. Isn't this weakening the police force's ability to do things. And no one knows what his ability is. This has always been a time bomb. Look, it's been exposed now. Ethan Shen is a murderer. Those fools were deceived by him and kept using the murderer as an assistant to solve the case. Of course, it was like divine help."

Blake Pang didn't say anything, just took a sip of wine. He recalled a week ago when Ethan Shen stood beside the reflective table, looked at the messy picture, and said, "He's in jail, but he's always on the outside... I'm going in." Ethan Shen foresaw his fate.

Until eight years after rescuing Ethan Shen, Blake Pang kept wondering whether this was something he had deduced or something he "saw".

"If... I had come out to testify and prove his ability, would he have lost the lawsuit?" Blake Pang couldn't help but ask Li Mo in a low voice at the end of the banquet. He acted very casually, as if he was just chatting after getting drunk.

Li Mo looked at him for a long time, then said: "Yes, because our department has a special status, if it was you, the lawsuit would not be able to be fought." Li Mo patted Blake Pang's shoulder and said: "Don't think about it, what's the benefit of you standing up? Do you have evidence to prove that Ethan Shen is not a murderer? Don't underestimate him, although he is young, he has more than a hundred ways to kill people." Li Mo knocked his head, "Forget it, just go in, it's not a loss for you. It takes a hundred times more effort for a person like him to get out than to go in, so don't worry."

After returning, Blake Pang looked up a lot of information in this regard. He had a lot of free time to look up how to deal with people like Ethan Shen. However, there was no precedent for a person who was imprisoned and then released. These people with special abilities usually committed crimes before being discovered, and those who were unlucky had been in prison, and then were discovered and registered by this special department, and monitored by department personnel. Once they committed another crime and entered prison, they would never be able to leave. No matter how small the crime they committed was.

There are many cases like Ethan Shen, where the offenders were discovered and monitored before committing crimes, and then committed crimes and were imprisoned during the monitoring process and have never been released.

But what makes Ethan Shen special is that he used to be a forensic doctor with the police force and helped solve many major cases. The person who sued him also had a lot to do with the cases he had solved.

Blake Pang kept thinking that Ethan Shen's current crime was murder. After the charges were confirmed, his crime would become killing several people. If the charges were not confirmed, he would be the main contributor to solving many cases. On one side was heaven and on the other was hell, Ethan Shen was walking on that line.

Blake Pang kept recalling the first and second times he met Ethan Shen. He recalled the Coke can Ethan Shen was holding and the table covered with lines. Perhaps it was because Ethan Shen was the first person he took over alone that he cared so much about him.

Blake Pang went to visit Ethan Shen in prison half a month later. Before that, he went to meet with Fan Tingye, the former special police officer who supervised Ethan Shen. Fan Tingye had been transferred to the Criminal Division. After knowing Blake Pang's purpose, he handed a stack of handwritten paper reports to Blake Pang.

"These are the things I have recorded and kept privately while monitoring Ethan Shen for three years. They contain some of my speculations. You can take a look at them."

Blake Pang flipped through two pages. Starting from the first day, the records of every day were very detailed and careful.

"I tried my best to describe the facts in the most unbiased way," Fan Tingye rubbed his knuckles and was silent for a while, "To be honest, I am not sure whether Ethan Shen is innocent or not. Although I am his person in charge, I have no judgment ability." Blake Pang nodded silently. As he continued to get to know Ethan Shen more deeply, he had already felt the helplessness. Ethan Shen was a person who was hard to figure out. The brief meeting and conversation between Blake Pang and him, except for letting Blake Pang know that Ethan Shen was a weirdo who was tracking down Wu Busheng, did not let him get more information about him.

Fan Tingye was silent for a while, then whispered: "He sent me a message for help not long ago."

Blake Pang was stunned for a moment.

Fan Tingye didn't look at Blake Pang, and said to himself: "He is very capable. I didn't expose myself, but he knew there was someone like me, and even sent me a distress signal before he went to prison. He also sent some messages to other people he had worked with. All I know is that he didn't want to go in."

"Then you..." Blake Pang looked at Fan Tingye. Fan Tingye looked at his crisscrossed fingers: "I can't be sure whether he has committed a crime or not. I have been tracking and investigating him for three years, but I have no idea about his behavior and philosophy. If he really killed more than a dozen people, I can't say for sure that he is guilty. Because it is difficult to collect evidence for such personnel matters. You know."

Blake Pang hummed and frowned deeply.

"I didn't respond to him. I applied for a transfer probably for the same reason." Fan Tingye closed his eyes and said, "He was only eighteen years old."

Fan Tingye has been following Ethan Shen for three years. He was targeted by him shortly after Ethan Shen joined the police force at the age of fifteen. Fan Tingye's thick record book contains almost every case handled by Ethan Shen and his daily schedule. However, he is still not sure whether he can testify in court. Ethan Shen's contribution is too great, and at the same time, once his ability is proved to be a tool for crime, he will be the biggest criminal today. Fan Tingye couldn't make a choice, perhaps to escape, he applied for a transfer.

Fan Tingye ignored Ethan Shen's call for help, he knew he had deserted the battlefield.

Blake Pang took the thick notebook home and spent a week studying it. He found the people Ethan Shen had the closest contact with and called or visited them one by one. But what surprised him was that most of these people were not the ones Ethan Shen asked for help, or they received help but did not acknowledge it.

Although Ethan Shen's social circle is small, he knows many high-ranking people, but none of them can help him leave the prison. What surprised Blake Pang was that Jordan Wang, who was far away in another province, received Ethan Shen's signal for help.

What is his method of selection? Jordan Wang and Ethan Shen’s friendship may not be as good as Blake Pang’s, so why did he choose Jordan Wang?

Blake Pang called Jordan Wang, who immediately replied: "I went to the court. The verdict of this case is indeed a bit bizarre."

"How to say?"

"If Ethan Shen is proven to have used hypnosis to control the victim to his death, then all previous cases will need to be overturned and reopened. The court only sentenced Ethan Shen and did not overturn the previous criminals. This is the strangest thing. Of course, they have their explanations, but Ethan Shen was charged with more than ten murders. It is impossible that every criminal caught in each case has other reasons and still cannot be re-sentenced, right?"

Blake Pang nodded and said, "This is also what I think is the most bizarre part."

"There's something wrong with Ethan Shen's lawyer. Although I'm not an expert in this area, I'm a policeman after all. Did Ethan Shen hire his own lawyer?"

Blake Pang was startled, and as if he had been reminded, he held the phone between his ear and shoulder, and began typing to search for the lawyer's information.

"The internal documents say he hired the lawyer himself. This lawyer...has a pretty good track record."

"That's weird. Why would he fight a lawsuit that he's bound to lose? I heard that he found the witnesses. There's more than one witness involved in Ethan Shen's case. I know he has many witnesses. Why is there only one witness with autism willing to testify in court?"

Blake Pang frowned and said "hmm", then started to look up the lawyer's information himself.

"There is one more thing. It's probably my intuition after working for so many years. Is Wu Luanxu's evidence really flawless? After I took over Wu Busheng's case, this person has also paid a lot of attention to it. I always feel that there is something wrong here. Is it because Ethan Shen is a special person, so he must be put in the 'cage' no matter what?"

Blake Pang sighed silently. They both knew that Jordan Wang was right. This was the biggest problem.

"I want to find out which cage he is in. If he is innocent, I will get him out."

"Okay, just tell me what you want to do, and I'll help you if I can."

At that time, Blake Pang vaguely realized why Ethan Shen chose Jordan Wang. At that time, Blake Pang and Jordan Wang were not very familiar with each other, and Jordan Wang and Ethan Shen were more distant, but Jordan Wang agreed immediately. Jordan Wang was one of the model representatives of the national police, and Blake Pang did not doubt what he said. And how did Ethan Shen determine the candidate? Was it because of his extraordinary observation? Then Blake Pang himself... was he also one of the people he chose?

A week later, Blake Pang went to the prison where Ethan Shen was. He dressed up as a lawyer instead of Ethan Shen's special police chief. It was not the first time for Blake Pang to go to that kind of prison, but it was the first time he saw a prison with such strict management. All the walls were made of metal, which could reflect anything in the room. There were no partitions in the room, and cameras were installed in every corner, like a huge closed iron box.

Blake Pang was sitting in the waiting room, waiting, when he saw two prison guards coming over, putting a mask and earmuffs on him, and then leading him to walk a long way before finally reaching the visiting room.

Blake Pang sat down again, took off his eye mask and earmuffs, and saw the dark wall in front of him. There was a hook on the wall, and on the hook was a pair of headphones. Blake Pang put on the headphones and heard a third party's voice: "You can start now. Your conversation will be monitored and recorded throughout."

Blake Pang said calmly: "Hello, Ethan Shen."

After a long while, a hoarse voice finally sounded: "Hello, officer."

Blake Pang seemed to sense Fan Tingye's surprise. He had never revealed his identity to Ethan Shen, and in this prison, prisoners could not know whether they would have a meeting, with whom, at what time and place before the meeting. Ethan Shen and Blake Pang could not even see each other, and even their voices were changed. But Ethan Shen guessed Blake Pang's identity at the first time.

Blake Pang deliberately lowered his voice and said, "I'm not a police officer. I'm your new lawyer. My name is Wang Hui."

The man on the other side paused and said, "Thank the officer next to me for me."

This time, Blake Pang was sure that Ethan Shen knew who he was, and that Ethan Shen knew what he meant. If Ethan Shen had no other special abilities, then this person was really too smart. And Fan Tingye's report also clearly told him that Ethan Shen only had the ability to predict bad luck.

"I would like to check with you about the status of your case for my records."

Blake Pang didn't hear a response, so he knew that he had acquiesced. So he began to ask questions one by one according to the notes he had taken in advance. Ethan Shen was only allowed to answer, not to ask questions. Once he opened his mouth to say something irrelevant to the answer, a third party voice would stop Ethan Shen and remind Blake Pang that leading questions could not appear three times.

Blake Pang used it three times.

"I am innocent." Ethan Shen's last words were not weak at all. His hoarse voice, accompanied by the sound of electricity, reached Blake Pang's ears. Blake Pang couldn't see his face, but he felt his heart shrink. The image of Ethan Shen sitting on a plastic chair holding a can of Coke emerged from his mind.

When Blake Pang left the prison, his palms felt cold. He clenched his fists and put the notebook into his handbag for the prison guard to check.

As soon as he got back to the car, he called Jordan Wang.

"I went to see Ethan Shen."

"I decided to save him."

"He is innocent."