Empire of Shadows

After the governor woke up in the morning and washed up, he habitually came to the dining room and sat down.

The chef in the kitchen, after seeing him sit down, only then began to cook this morning’s breakfast.

The breakfast of a poor family is often just to fill the stomach, to prevent the family’s labor force from feeling hungry before lunch because their stomachs are empty.

But for the rich, their breakfast, lunch, dinner, any meal, is to enjoy delicious food.

Food that has just been cooked is definitely more excellent in taste, smell, and all aspects than some food that has already cooled down.

For the governor, what he had was time. He could afford to wait.

No one would, because he had arrived at his office early, praise and encourage him with ”well done,” and have him keep it up.

Nor would anyone, because he was late to his office, say to him, ”You should come earlier next time.”

So his eating was truly enjoying the food, and not just simply to fill his stomach.

In the process of waiting for breakfast, the governor, like other politicians, and most of the men in the family, would choose to read the newspaper for a while.On the small cart in front of him were more than twenty newspapers. All the newspapers that could be collected in the entire Indeno State were placed here.

It was just that the order of the placement today had made him a little surprised. ”Has the Tide not arrived?”

He asked.

Generally speaking, the Tide would be placed at the very front, and he would basically also read the Tide first.

As a governor, he had already passed the stage of needing to clearly state his own position and attitude. As a ”ruler” in the true sense, his position was the main position, and his attitude was an attitude that people, even if they did not follow, could not oppose.

So he would neither choose the newspaper that was the mouthpiece of the Socialist Party, nor would he choose the newspaper of the Liberal Party camp, but the Tide, a neutral, objective narrative newspaper.

But today it was not here, not at the very front.

His butler was standing not far from him. ”Master, I suggest you first look at the fourth page of the first newspaper.”

The governor looked back at the old butler. They had also grown up together and trusted each other very much.

The two looked at each other for a moment, for about three or four seconds, and then the butler lowered his head and looked away, so as not to be impolite.

The governor was not a person who liked to change his habits, but for the butler to do so, there must have been a reason.

”Alright, I believe you,” he picked up the first newspaper called the Defender Daily. Who the hell knew who had come up with this name? A defender?

What to defend?

Freedom?

Or democracy?

These people really fucking can’t come up with a name. At a glance, it’s from the Liberal Party camp. He didn’t have much hope for the content of this newspaper, although he didn’t know why the butler had strongly requested him to look at the fourth page.

When he had flipped to the fourth page, he had just taken a casual glance when he was attracted by the headline—

White, or Black??

The bold and enlarged headline made it look more like a front-page headline, not a fourth-page headline.

He turned back and glanced at the front-page headline of the newspaper, and already realized in his heart that there was a problem with this report.

So he patiently read on. The more he read, the more serious his expression became.

The report stated that in the past twenty years, among the forty-four highway serial killers who had been caught in Indeno State, the number of murder cases they themselves had admitted to was about 1,431.

There were also about three thousand more murder cases, which were the cases they were not willing to admit, or in the initial stage of the interrogation, they had not admitted.

But in the later stage of the interrogation, when the court was about to finally sentence them for how much they had to pay for this, they had suddenly confessed again that these three thousand plus murder cases were their doing.

The editor of the report said that before, some people had thought that these serial killers, in order to escape being sent to the gallows or the electric chair, so when they were about to be sentenced to execution, they would confess some of their own tragic cases to buy themselves more time.

In fact, it was also possible to do so in the legal procedure. As long as what was confessed was a case that the prosecution had not grasped, then the prosecution would reinvestigate and collect evidence to figure out the whole case.

Generally speaking, this could delay the execution date of a criminal by two or three months.

More than three thousand murder cases were enough for these people to drag on until they died of old age in prison.

But the reporter claimed that he had learned from some of the materials he had investigated that a part of the charges might have been considered to be their doing only after these criminals had died.

At first, no one had discovered this problem, but the reporter had begun to be curious about these cases, and he had begun to study them.

He had found some clues in some of the cases.

Just as the governor was curious about what clues he had found, and what the whole matter was, the newspaper suddenly mentioned the unit that had solved these cases.

They were all the highway patrol teams of the state police and the criminal investigation team of the state police. It seemed that there was no problem. A highway killer being caught by the highway patrol was not a problem.

The reporter, however, had looked at these matters from a very strange angle. He had just given an example, just an example!

The example he had given had made even the governor couldn’t help but read it out silently.

”...A certain police captain who was in charge of the work of a section branch had, since he was promoted to police captain, solved two cases of highway serial killers, one in... year, and one in... year.”

”The two criminals had murdered a total of more than 350 people on the highway, of which more than 60 were admitted by them personally. The rest were only determined to be their cases at the end of their lives, or even after their deaths.”

”What is interesting is that the person in charge of the investigation of these cases has always been a certain police captain himself.”

”Speaking of a certain police captain, one has to mention another interesting thing. A certain police captain owns two villas in Red Rock City worth more than 70,000.”

”He also has shops, luxury cars, and various investments under his name. His life is very luxurious.”

”A certain police captain and his wife are both from ordinary families, and have no resume of being in business or the like.”

”The reporter, through some materials, has found that the two sharp increases in a certain police captain’s wealth had occurred before and after he had solved the two cases of highway serial killers.”

When the governor saw this, his first thought was that the wealth that these two serial killers had accumulated had been embezzled by this police captain.

He was not too concerned at this time, but just felt that this certain police captain’s actions were a bit crude, but completely understandable.

In fact, this matter itself was not so easy to do, if you wanted to return the money to the victims.

It was very difficult for the federal government to come up with a distribution plan that everyone was satisfied with, and for some of the victims’ family situations, they were not very clear, and they also needed to understand and investigate.

Sometimes the expenditure on police force is a heavy expenditure. For example, some have been found, some have not, how to divide the money?

The people in the front are satisfied, but will the people in the back be satisfied?

Some families are in a more difficult situation, and the funds that some of the victims’ families have applied for clearly exceed the amount they can have. These are all very troublesome and can easily create conflicts and problems.

So under normal circumstances, the police’s side would just default to it being public.

It’s not that it’s handed over to the government, but that the police department has its own small treasury.

He had just thought that this police captain’s eating manners were not good-looking, and that he had privately swallowed the money that should have been in the police department’s small treasury.

But next, as the angle of the report continued to go deeper, he increasingly found that something was not right.

During this period, there were also some evidence, for example, a few victims had claimed that they had been robbed by the police on the interstate highway.

There was also a large amount of evidence that could determine that the highway patrol were extorting the passing vehicles on the interstate highway. Their style of doing things was not at all like the police who were protecting justice and the safety of the people, but more like those evil gangs, bandit gangs!

In the second half, the reporter had raised a question. So many people went missing every year, missing on the interstate highway. If their disappearance was attributed to serial killers according to the frequency of these disappearances, then the highways of the Federation would be almost full of serial killers, and they simply couldn’t keep up!

Maybe in the morning, they would kill a person on a certain section of the road, and in the afternoon, they would have to drive a few hundred kilometers to another place to kill, and then rush back in the middle of the night to continue to kill.

They were the busiest people in this world. Even if the wheels of their cars were spinning with fire, they had no time to stop and rest.

But these people, were they really killed by them?

Or was it that someone else had used their identity to do these illegal things on the interstate highway, using the reputation of a serial killer to cover up their own criminal facts?

The governor was not a fucking fool. He immediately connected the two groups of completely different identities in the report.

A certain police captain, and a highway serial killer.

The report did not explicitly point out this possibility, but it gave people an infinite space for imagination. Even the governor couldn’t help but think how great the possibility of the police committing the crime was.

He put down the newspaper, and then looked at the second one. The butler bowed slightly. His attitude was already very obvious.

He picked up the newspaper and opened the page with the bookmark inserted.

The reputation of this newspaper was not very high either, but what they had written was very direct—

An Officer Claims Highway Patrol May Be Involved in Serious Criminal Offenses

It briefly introduced the recent, much-talked-about incident of blocking the road, and also directly revealed the essence of this matter.

The police had engaged in a black-on-black, which had led to the retaliation of the gang, and the conflict had escalated. The police’s side had gotten anxious and, in order to catch the person, had directly blocked the road.

The report used many uncertain words.

”Maybe,” ”probably,” ”if,” ”perhaps,” it used many such ambiguous words, but its content would still make people feel that it was real, and explosive.

At this time, the chefs had already taken away the food that had been placed in front of him and had begun to re-cook a second serving of food.

”These reports, what do they mean?” the governor put down the second newspaper and asked the butler with a serious face.

The butler always maintained an attitude of looking at a point in front of his feet. He said in a low voice, ”It’s true.”

The governor’s voice was a little off. ”What’s true?”

”The things mentioned in the report, that the police are suspected of a black-on-black, which has led to this road-blocking incident, is true.”

The governor was like he hadn’t understood!

He looked at the butler for a continuous ten or twenty seconds. His eyes also became gradually sharp, which brought a huge pressure to the butler.

But the butler still maintained his attitude. These things were true!

The governor shook his head. ”These people are too presumptuous!”

If it were really as the data given in the report, then in these years, the number of innocent people killed by the interstate highway police was far more than those done by the killers!

This is fucking... he thought of that headline.

White, or Black??

At this time, he was already a little unable to sit still. He also felt one thing, and that was that someone was pushing for these things to be exposed.

These two not-so-famous, and possibly not-so-high-selling newspapers were just their probing.

Once they got the result they wanted, perhaps the Tide would report on it next.

Even if he gave a heads-up, and the Tide did not report on these cases, then the media in other states, would they be so considerate of the overall situation?

Like a heavyweight newspaper like the Federal Post, would they report on these contents?

These are all terrible troubles!

Once public opinion begins to ferment, no matter how he behaves, this stain on him cannot be washed away.

He stood up, intending to call the lieutenant governor, because the matters of the state police had always been handled by the lieutenant governor.

However, it just so happened that the chefs were bringing the food over, so he sat back down.

He had to finish his breakfast first.

He did not ”thank” these chefs, including the butler.

In fact, sometimes some people would always fantasize about the emperor’s golden hoe. They thought that the people in the upper class would be very civilized, polite, and would say thank you when the lower class provided them with services and had completed the service.

They always imagined these upper-class people to be very beautiful, but they actually did not know that for these people, the lower class could not even be considered human!

So they would not at all express their gratitude to these people who provided them with services. This was what they should do.

The gentlemen had paid their wages and no longer owed these people anything. In addition, their status was too low, so the more upper class, the more you could feel the obvious class gap.

Although he was very anxious in his heart, the governor still maintained his demeanor. He used a very standard way of eating to cut or fork his food, but the speed was a little faster. Today he did not have so much time and thought to spend on breakfast.

After a simple meal, he left the dining table, and did not go to his office, but to his study.

Soon the lieutenant governor had answered his call. He said nothing, and as soon as he opened his mouth, it was a torrent of scolding—

”What the fuck have you been hiding from me?”

The lieutenant governor was particularly innocent on the phone. ”I don’t know what you’re trying to express. What can I hide from you?”

The governor was in a rage. ”You fucking go out and find a newspaper now, and wipe your useless eyes and have a good look!”

”If it weren’t for the fact that the newspaper had reported these things, I wouldn’t even have known that such a big thing had happened!”

”Your state police department is like a gang. They are actually doing the business of robbing and killing passing drivers on the road!”

The lieutenant governor, as if he had just learned of it, showed a huge shock and nervousness. ”My God, I really didn’t know that these things had happened. You wait for a moment. I’ll go and see if there is the newspaper you mentioned.”

Listening to the lieutenant governor’s clearly also panicked words, the governor became a little uncertain.

He was not sure if the lieutenant governor really didn’t know, or was just hiding the truth.

After a while, the lieutenant governor appeared on the phone again.

”Oh my God, I really didn’t know about these things!”

”You know me. My work is very full every day, and I also have to attend some social events every week. I simply have no time to arrange these things for them!”

”I have also been deceived, governor. I will find out the situation. I will call you back a little later!”

Listening to these words of the lieutenant governor, the governor, for a moment, also could not distinguish clearly, but in essence, he did not believe that the lieutenant governor did not know at all.

However, the most important problem now was to press this news down, and not to let it become a huge scandal during his term of office. At the same time, he also wanted to see who was behind this!

Once a scandal of this level began to be discussed within the Federation, regardless of that certain police captain, the chief of the state police, or the lieutenant governor, they would all be far more troublesome than he, this governor!

People would not go to specifically hold a certain person in a certain link accountable. They would directly hold the governor accountable, scolding him for how he had managed Indeno State, and might even make him lose a large amount of public support!

This is like a certain section of a road’s cleaning work was not done well. People would not say, ”so-and-so company, so-and-so department, so-and-so section, so-and-so group, so-and-so, can’t even sweep the floor clean, what a piece of trash.” People would not say that.

They would only say, ”so-and-so company” is a piece of trash.

After hanging up the phone, the governor sat in his chair and thought for a while before he stood up and had his butler prepare the car. He was going to his office.

He still had a lot of work to do, and was waiting for the lieutenant governor’s response, and to find out who was planning to make him lose this face!

On the other side, the lieutenant governor, after hanging up the phone, had given a call to the chief of the state police. The call was answered almost the instant it was connected.

”Come to my office.”

The chief of the state police soon arrived at the lieutenant governor’s office. The lieutenant governor looked at this subordinate who had made him very passive, and at this time he really wished he could rush over and give him a few hard slaps.

”The governor just called me. Some newspaper offices have already started to report on your broken things.”

”It’s just that the scale of the report is not very large now, but you know that once this kind of thing spreads, it will soon get out of control!”

”Once public opinion starts to discuss this matter...” he began to fall silent as he spoke.

After about a minute or two, he finally continued, ”Matthew and his men can’t be saved, and on your side, you also have to be mentally prepared.”

When the director heard this, his expression changed again and again. He understood on the surface that the lieutenant governor was saying that Matthew couldn’t be saved, but in fact, he was telling him that he couldn’t be saved.

Even if the director didn’t want to show it on his face, after trying a few times, he showed an extremely ugly expression.