CHAPTER 471: CHAPTER 283_1

"Human Hunt":

In 1998, a woman filed a police report. Her husband had lost contact after going out. The woman’s husband was an unemployed drifter. Such incidents were not uncommon. However, the woman and her husband had a very good relationship. He would always contact her beforehand if he wasn’t going to return, but this time, he had been missing for three days without any word. She suspected her husband had met with an accident.

After receiving the report, the local detectives began their investigation. That’s when they discovered that, within the Las Vegas jurisdiction, a considerable number of homeless people and unemployed drifters had disappeared over a period of time. Since most homeless people and drifters had weak social ties and did not draw public attention, the police had not previously noticed these disappearances.

Upon investigation, it was found that over twenty people had gone missing within a month. They were predominantly male, aged between 20 and 40, with weak social ties. These individuals subsisted on begging, social aid, robbery, and extortion—a group of ’little mice’ with no money, jobs, or societal presence.

Because of this, it was difficult for the police to proceed with the investigation using personal relationships or tracking movement patterns. Normally, the disappearance of such individuals would not garner social attention or put pressure on the Las Vegas police, and investigations would most likely be halted. However, the detective in charge suspected this was a case of organ trafficking.

Many people were unaware that the illegal organ transplant industry in the United States was quite sizable. For safety, medical groups in desperate need of organs, in addition to regular human donations, had cross-border channels to airfreight freshly harvested organs from places like neighboring Mexico.

As long as it did not attract international media attention, the vast interest groups involved had no reason to investigate these medical institutions. Only shady, small-scale workshops would collaborate with gangs to target illegal immigrants, drifters, and the like within the Federation. The client base for these small workshops often consisted of wealthy foreigners. In some countries, it is tough to get treatment even with money, and it’s challenging to obtain enough US dollars through legal channels for an organ transplant in the United States. Thus, they resorted to intermediaries to access these small workshops.

If this were the case, then these small workshops often lacked significant backing. Cracking them would not only be free of danger but also a great achievement. Thus, the detective responsible for the missing persons cases began to invest a great deal of effort into the case.

Due to the lack of clues, this detective could only employ the most rudimentary method: bribing several unemployed drifters and fitting them with tracking devices to serve as bait. This process was time-consuming but effective.

「Half a month later.」

One of the baits lost contact. Using the tracker, the detective and his partner went to a national park in the tourist district. This was the last trace of them left in this world.

The disappearance of over twenty people, along with detectives losing contact during an investigation, was no small matter. This case, which would not normally have attracted the FBI’s attention, eventually caught their eye.

Based on the last known location, the FBI agents assigned to the case arrived at the national park. Using specially trained K-9 units, they eventually unearthed the bodies of the missing persons from deep underground in the park. The corpses bore various marks of torture inflicted by cold weapons: knives, arrows, axes, and other unidentifiable blunt instruments. These were the causes of death for all the victims.

The medical examiner also found remnants of electronic devices inside some of the bodies. After examination, these remnants were likely from implantable tracking devices. Such technology and devices were quite mature in 1998, yet implanting them in humans, as opposed to attaching them to objects, had different requirements and was only accessible to high-end organizations.

The bodies of the two Las Vegas detectives investigating the case were also found here. However, their cause of death differed from that of the other missing persons; the unlucky duo had died from gunshot wounds.

One had several torn bruises on his back, and the fatal wound was a gunshot to the head. It seemed someone had ambushed him from behind, firing unexpectedly. However, the attacker failed to neutralize him immediately because he wore a bulletproof vest, which only caused impact injuries. The detective was ultimately killed in a face-to-face confrontation.

The other detective had died even more tragically. Bullets had been fired into his back, tearing through his bulletproof vest. They exploded inside his body, creating a wound larger than a palm in his pelvic area and simultaneously shattering his cervical vertebrae, leading to his death from excessive blood loss. This process must have been agonizing.

Although the medical examiner found no remaining bullets in this detective’s body, only a sniper rifle could cause a bullet to tear through a bulletproof vest and then create such an explosive wound inside a person. This detective was likely shot from behind by a hidden sniper while trying to escape after his partner was attacked and shot in the head.

An ambushing gunman, a second gunman with a sniper rifle, fatal injuries from cold weapons, human body trackers... This was not merely a case of organ trafficking, but a systematic, organized hunt for people!

The case file report was nearing its end at this point. Dean gave it one last look. The report concluded with a perfunctory line: "During the investigation, too few clues were found. After over two months, no further traces of the case were discovered..."