Chapter 61: The Black Colleague (Please keep reading! Add to your collection!)

Luo An tilted his head to look at Danni, noticing the seriousness etched on her delicate little face.

Before Luo An could ask anything, Danni continued crisply, “When my mom was at work, a Black coworker took her photo. It must have been that Black man who took my mom away!”

“What?”

Hearing this, Luo An looked up and exchanged glances with Ryder. He quickly pressed, “When did that happen?”

“I don’t remember.”

Danni’s lips quivered, her eyes reddening as she explained in a low voice, “That day my stomach hurt. After my mom took me to the doctor, she brought me to the supermarket. While I was playing games at a table, my mom’s Black coworker hid behind the chips and took out a black box to take a picture of her...”

Danni’s account became muddled, and Luo An couldn’t quite grasp the details of that day. But he understood her implication: a Black man had once taken a secret photo of Tamara while she was working at the checkout counter of the supermarket.

“Thank you, Danni. What you told me is very helpful.”

Seeing Danni start to cry again, Luo An hurriedly tried to comfort her, fumbling for words.

At that moment, a black car rolled to a stop by the roadside. Two middle-aged white women in uniform and a middle-aged white man in a police uniform stepped out.

“Hello, you must be Agent Luo An.”

One of the women, seeing the tiny blonde girl nestled in the fully armed Luo An’s arms with a burly, heavily armed man standing beside them, twitched at the corners of her mouth, but still reached out her hand. “I’m Anna, from the New Jersey Department of Child Protection.”

“Hello, just call me Luo An.”

He shook her hand, examined her credentials carefully, and, once satisfied, handed Danni over. He gestured to the red bungalow nearby, briefly explaining Sanderson’s circumstances and current situation.

After listening, Anna nodded solemnly. “Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of Danni and monitor Sanderson closely. Only if Sanderson overcomes his drinking and regains the ability to care for her will Danni be returned to him.”

“Thank you for your work.”

Luo An shook her hand again, exchanged a few words, and had just turned to leave when Danni suddenly called out. She pressed her little hairpin into his hand.

“Luo An, this is the hairpin my mom bought for me.”

Danni, her face tear-streaked, clung to Luo An’s hand, her delicate features filled with pleading.

“You have to catch the bad person who hurt my mom, please…”

“…I promise you, Danni.”

With a sigh, Luo An tucked the hairpin into his breast pocket in front of her, then gently patted her head and solemnly promised, “I will catch him.”

The black SUV moved forward. Luo An sat in the front passenger seat, and, glancing in the rearview mirror, saw Danni still gazing longingly back. His face darkened.

“As FBI, you’ll see a lot of things like this in the future,” Ryder said, pulling a pack of gum from somewhere. He handed Luo An a piece, popped one in his own mouth, and chewed as he spoke, “You’ll get used to it.”

Luo An said nothing. He took the gum, put it in his mouth, and, contemplating the information he’d gathered from Sanderson, fell silent for a moment, then called Mona.

“Mona, check if there are any Black employees at the Walmart in the ** district.”

There was a clatter of keyboard sounds on the other end before Mona replied, “Payroll records show two Black employees. One is fifty-six, a security guard, still on staff. The other is twenty-eight, named Yoan, a stock worker who was fired three weeks ago for theft.”

“OK.”

Luo An nodded, asked Mona to send him the address and last workplace for the second man, then hung up.

He read the address to Ryder and continued flipping through his notes. “Let’s check on Yoan first. He’s now working at a repair shop—that’s on the way to the supermarket.”

“OK.”

Ryder nodded, pressed the gas, and turned the wheel. The black SUV sped off in another direction.

—

“Yoan’s been here two weeks now, works hard, and I haven’t had anything go missing.”

The repair shop owner, an older Black man, had no objections after hearing Luo An and Ryder’s intentions. He led them to find Yoan and praised him as a good kid.

As for Yoan’s dismissal from the supermarket for theft, the owner scoffed. “Everyone else working with Yoan at that place was white. They didn’t like that he, a Black man, could move more goods and earn more than them.”

Luo An and Ryder exchanged glances, saying nothing.

“Yoan! Someone’s here for you!”

“Coming!”

A thick-lipped Black man crawled out from under a car and appeared before Luo An and Ryder.

“You—”

Before either Luo An or Ryder could speak, Yoan, seeing their gear, immediately raised his hands. “I don’t know why you’re here, but let me make one thing clear—I have no weapons on me, so please don’t let your guns go off.”

“…OK.”

Seeing how practiced he was, Luo An’s mouth twitched, but he got to the point. “Yoan, do you remember Tamara?”

“Yeah, the cashier at Walmart, I remember her.”

Yoan stood up, and Luo An continued, “She’s gone missing. Someone said you took secret photos of her before she disappeared.”

“No! Fu—!”

Yoan’s face changed. He swore, then hurriedly explained, “Bro, that must be the supermarket manager talking. I’m telling you, that’s a flat-out lie! A few weeks back, I was moving goods in the warehouse and saw two people messing around in the corner. I went over to yell at them and saw it was the manager and his wife! The next day, the manager accused me of stealing and fired me.”

“OK.”

Without giving anything away, Luo An glanced at Yoan, then moved on. “While you worked at the supermarket, did you ever notice anyone hanging around Tamara, or did anyone harass her before she disappeared?”

“Sorry, I really didn’t notice.”

Yoan wiped his oily hands on his overalls and explained, “You know, my job was moving things in the warehouse. I basically never went to the front counter, so I only knew of Tamara, but I didn’t know anything about her life or work.”