Adam had the body now, or at least he soon would.
That should have been enough to move on Rovan Hale, but Adam still did not trust a direct approach. If he contacted the man too early and pushed too hard, then everything could turn ssy in a way Adam did not want. Rovan was not so street thug who would freeze the mont a secret was ntioned. He wore a uniform, knew procedure, and understood what people tried to do when they wanted leverage.
Adam could still contact him the sa way he had contacted Bruno and Gonda. He could stay hidden, use another copied phone, and keep the other side guessing. That part was possible. But Adam did not want to put too much weight on one trick again. He had already learned what happened when he started leaning on one exposed path too much.
He also knew sothing else.
Even with the body and the evidence from the forest, he was still not fully sure that Rovan would bend the way he wanted. Fear alone was not always enough. A man in Rovan’s position would still look for a way out, and Adam wanted more than one chain on him before that first real contact ca.
’Then get another chain,’ Adam thought.
That idea had been sitting in the back of his mind for a while already. If the body was one side of the trap, then the phone had to be the other.
The scene shifted a little later, and Adam finally found the chance he wanted.
Rovan Hale was on patrol in a public square near the market road. There were food carts on one side, two benches near a dry fountain, and enough people moving through the place that no one paid much attention to one man in uniform unless he raised his voice.
That was exactly what he was doing.
He had stopped a young woman near the side of the square. She looked scared, but not because she had done anything wrong. Adam could tell that much from one glance. Rovan was leaning toward her with the kind of confidence n like him had when they knew no one around them wanted trouble.
"You broke this rule, this rule, and this one too," Rovan said, tapping the little notebook in his hand even though he clearly was not reading from anything real. "Now tell what action I should take against you."
The woman swallowed.
"I didn’t do anything," she said.
Rovan smiled at that.
"Then show proof that you didn’t."
She stared at him like she wanted to say sothing back, but she held it in. They were in public, yet that did not help her.
After letting her stand there under the pressure for a few more seconds, Rovan took out his phone and unlocked it.
"Fine," he said. "Write your number in here. I may need to ask you more questions later."
She understood what he was doing. Adam saw it in her face at once. Fear, disgust, anger, and helplessness all crossed her eyes one after another, but she still took the phone because refusing him on the spot felt more dangerous than obeying him.
She entered the number and handed the device back.
Rovan glanced at it, satisfied, then waved her away.
"Go," he said. "And next ti be more careful."
The woman left quickly without looking back.
Rovan watched her go with a small smile.
"Best decision of my life," he muttered to himself. "Who knew becoming police would be this good?"
That was when Adam moved.
He was still in the old-man disguise. His shoulders were bent, his steps slow, and one hand held a phone of his own as if he could barely see what was on the screen. He ca in from the side, tid it with two n crossing in front of him, and bumped straight into Rovan.
Rovan jerked back at once.
"Old man, are you blind?" he snapped. "Can’t you see where you’re going?"
Adam lowered his head and played the role perfectly.
"Son, I’m sorry, I got confused," he said. Then he pushed his own phone forward a little and added, "Can you just tell which way I need to go?"
Rovan looked at him with open irritation.
"Every ti I stand sowhere in uniform, people like you show up to waste my ti," he said. "Get lost before I arrest you."
Adam let his face fall as if the words had landed heavily on him. Then he stepped back, apologized again in a weaker voice, and moved away.
Rovan did not even bother watching him for long.
By the ti Adam turned into the first side lane, the smile was already back on his face.
Two lanes later, he stopped.
"You’ll regret this badge," he said quietly.
Then he raised his hand and pasted the phone.
It appeared in front of him in the sa state he had touched it. The screen was still open. That was the weakness and the advantage of copying a phone this way. If he touched it while it was locked, the copy would be useless to him most of the ti. But if he touched it while it was open, then the copy stayed open too.
This ti, luck had stayed on his side.
Adam started checking.
The gallery ca first.
There were ordinary photos in it, useless ones, but mixed among them were others that made Adam stop. Photos of the burial site. Photos of the body before it was covered. One blurred shot from farther back. Another closer one, taken after the bullet wound had already ruined the chest.
Adam’s face hardened.
Then he checked the mail.
That part gave him even more.
There were ssages from the owner. Not by na in the way Adam wanted to keep things now, but enough to show the chain.
Paynt confirmation.
Instructions.
Questions asking whether the matter had been finished. One ssage asked for photo confirmation. Another told him to stay quiet and let the disappearance die on its own.
Adam kept going.
The bank records gave him more than he expected. Large deposits that did not fit his salary. One after another. So tied closely enough to the tiline that they might as well have been confessions.
There was more too. Not just this case.
Rovan was rotten from top to bottom. The phone held enough dirt to show that this murder was not his first dirty job. It was only the biggest one.
Adam finally leaned back against the wall and let out a slow breath.
"Yes," he said.
Now he had sothing real.
He looked down at the copied phone again, then at the ssages, the photos, and the records sitting inside it.
At last, a small smile appeared on his face.
"Now I’ll contact you."
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