Chapter 359 One on Vacation, the Other on Duty
Selina nodded listlessly and dropped her head on her desk with a thump after Luke left.
When Elizabeth heard the noise, she came over and patted Selina on the shoulder. “The boss asked me to look into it yesterday. The one I chose is only for two weeks, and the previous officer has already been there for almost that long, so it’s just a few more days. Hang in there.”
What could Selina say? This was clearly to help keep Luke out of trouble, and she wasn’t the one who had pissed off Dylan, so she certainly didn’t have to go.
After consoling her, Elizabeth put a stack of case files on her desk, her face full of sympathy. “This is your assignment for now. The boss told me to tell you that you won’t be on field duty for now.”
Selina was going to knock her head on the wall in despair.
It turned out she was too naive, after all. Elsa was protecting her as well.
It was just that Luke had been sent out, while she was stuck in the office. Wasn’t it going to be boring as hell?
Looking at her, Elizabeth couldn’t help but say in a low voice, “You can come in to work late and leave early; you’re not on field duty anyway, so a couple of hours less don’t really matter.”
What could Selina say? Even someone as diligent as Elizabeth was telling her to take it easy. She could only languish away in the office now. “Thanks, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Let me know if you need any information on tough cases.”
Selina nodded.
While Selina returned to the life of a desk job officer after so long, Luke went home to pack and prepare a huge amount of food for Selina.
To make sure that she didn’t finish all of it in one go, Luke made sure to divide the food into various lunch boxes that could be heated up separately.
After everything was done, it was only noon. Not in a hurry to set off, he called Selina. “Come back for lunch.”
Selina came home and wolfed everything down, then lay unmoving on the couch as she listened to Luke’s reminders.
Mainly, he had to tell her about the security measures at home.
He was the one who usually took care of it since he slept late and woke up early.
Luke had no enemies on the surface, but after being a police detective for a while, who knew if he would run into a psycho or a vindictive man one day, so safety was everything.
After all the nagging, Selina finally asked, “Do you have your own protective measures?”
Luke was caught by surprise. “What?” Selina said, “You’re only eighteen years and nine months old. Those students are still your peers. Students now… hehe, you know.”
Luke was lost for words. “… This is an official department activity. If I do something, nobody will keep me on.”
Selina snorted. “Fine, my bad. I just hope that when you come back, you don’t have a pocket full of slips of paper with phone numbers on them.”
Luke’s expression was inscrutable. “Alright, I’ll remember.”
Selina asked, “Wait, what will you remember?”
“The slips of paper…” Looking at Selina’s face, Luke finally finished the sentence, “…I won’t bring them home.”
Selina didn’t know what to say.
She went back to work at half past one. Luke told her to take their police car, while he took a secondhand Ford.
With his countless modifications, the police car was much safer and sturdier, and more suitable for Selina.
Luke was going on a vacation, and didn’t need that much protection.
If anyone wanted to take action against him while he was out, they would be more than welcome.
He also brought a huge pile of items that might be of use, like a sleeping bag, tent, a field lamp, and some tools.
He would just need to go through the motions with the students’ training, and the main school activity was camping. The previous officer would also have already gone through the safety training and things that the students needed to know.
He couldn’t waste all the free time he would have on his hands.
Apart from doing handicraft work, he could also go through the information he had on the gangs in Los Angeles, and figure out his next target.
He hadn’t been very active at night in recent months. He always locked onto a target beforehand, then waited for the right moment to get rid of them.
He didn’t touch small fry who didn’t deserve death; his targets were confirmed hardcore gangsters.
These were people with verified criminal records in Los Angeles.
As for lesser gangsters, there would definitely be some informants or even undercover police officers among them, and Luke would be in trouble if he accidentally killed them.
Even if they just went missing, it would draw the FBI or DEA’s attention.
Both the FBI and DEA had planted a lot of undercover agents in various gangs, but few of these agents were part of the leadership, nor would they have local criminal histories.
Generally speaking, undercover agents often assumed the identities of criminals from other states, and the local gangsters wouldn’t be familiar with them; it would be too easy to be found out if they pretended to be local criminals.
Thanks to Luke’s caution, he hadn’t killed the wrong person yet.
Why was he certain of this? Because daddy system had never deducted credit points for him killing a wrong person yet.
After more than two hours, Luke finally packed up all the stuff he needed.
Looking at L.A.’s clear sky, he sighed. “It’s still better here.”
His night operations once or twice a week could give him a tremendous amount of experience and credit points, along with whatever he earned from working on cases daily; it was absolutely better than some forest park.
Unfortunately, Dustin and Elsa were clearly determined to keep him away from the Elsworth family, so this vacation was unavoidable.
Luke drove southeast down Route 405.It only took him an hour to cover the eighty kilometers since there wasn’t any traffic.
When he was twenty kilometers away from the campsite, he happened upon a young hitchhiker.
She was a girl named Annie Lester. She was about 1.6 meters tall and had curly black hair. There were also cute freckles on her cheeks that were slightly red.
After Luke picked her up, they chatted casually Annie had graduated from high school half a year ago, and a relative had gotten her a recommendation to work at a campsite to make food for twenty children and five workers.
Confused, Luke asked, “The campsite at Crystal Cove State Park? The one occupied by No. 37 School?” No. 37 School had more people than that.
Annie shook her head. “No, it seems it’s a new campsite. It’s kind of small and remote.”
As she spoke, Annie searched the super big bag she was carrying for a moment, then took out a map. After looking at it for a while, she finally nodded before she pointed to a location on the map and said, “It’s around here.”
Luke glanced at the map and thought for a moment. “That’s about twenty kilometers to the northeast of No. 37 School’s campsite. There’s a country road on the map that leads to the site. I’ll ask around No. 37 School’s campsite first. If there aren’t any cars around, I can take you there.”