The next day, Jimmy received a call from Dolci.

"Hi, Jimmy, I've looked up the information you asked me to check. There's no record of those two people in the detention center or the police station system. It seems they didn't file a report on this side of Little Rock."

"Thanks, Dolci. I'll think of something else. Goodbye."

Jimmy was disappointed. If there were no records in Little Rock, he would have to turn to the police in the neighboring county, but he had no contacts there.

Jimmy returned to the police station and found Chief James; contacting other police stations was really the only option left.

"Chief, I need a favor. I'm looking for 2 people who have been missing for 2 months. I want to contact the nearby police stations to see if they have any report information."

Jimmy placed photocopies of the photos on the chief's desk, and Chief James picked them up and glanced at them.

"What's your relationship with them?"

"No relation, just personal reasons for needing to check their disappearance information to see if there are any records in surrounding counties."

"You better send the fax yourself, just make sure it's marked clearly."

"Okay, Chief."

Jimmy hit a wall. If the chief had contacted them personally, the other police departments would have likely given some deference and checked quickly, but now that wasn't going to happen.

Jimmy obtained the fax numbers for several county police stations from Amy, attached his business card to photocopies of the photos, wrote a message seeking information on the 2 missing persons for over 2 months, asking colleagues from any police station with information to contact him, then sent the faxes to each police station's number.

This method of direct faxing was hardly ever promptly noticed and responded to. With no other simple methods allowed, Jimmy resorted to this clumsy way, hoping other police departments would look into it out of professional solidarity.

All that was left was to wait. Jimmy could only go out on patrol; since Cage had taken leave, they had to cover a larger area. Fortunately, as long as they slacked off and waited for instructions from the dispatch center, it was fairly easy.

Cage was already aware of what Jimmy had been doing; after all, he had been at the police station for over 20 years, and this kind of county police department was very stable. It was rare for anyone to switch jobs unless there was an emergency, and the source of the news was Amy, the chief administrator of the police station.

Cage didn't contact Jimmy to make him stop, knowing he would definitely continue investigating. What mattered most now was to recover quickly and return to the station to look into the guy who seduced Nick. Middle-aged and normally calm, his anger could flare up, especially when family was involved.

Cage also made several calls. Having been in the police for so long, he had his share of informants. They couldn't do much, but helping to gather some information was still doable, as long as he could find that guy, it would be alright to owe those informants some favors.

While on patrol, Jimmy suddenly received a call from the chief.

"Hi, Jimmy, head to Pinnacle Mountain State Park. There's been an incident of a house fire there, and after the fire was extinguished, a body was discovered. The park police are asking for our aid."

"Okay, Chief."

Jimmy immediately turned on the police lights and headed to Pinnacle Mountain State Park, located in the northwestern corner of Little Rock. The park lays outside the city limits and is in Plaskey County, but because the state park has its own park police system, the county police rarely venture there.

The most common types of police officers in the park are two kinds: one is the United States National Park police, under the jurisdiction of the United States National Park Service, which is a branch of the Interior Government, primarily managing national parks, historical sites, etc., nominally covering National Parks, but actually, some state parks also have park police presence, though it's more common to see Rangers, also known as forest rangers. Pat Bright, whom Jimmy had contacted earlier, was a Park Ranger.

The second type of police is the hunting police; if the park has a variety of wildlife or rare species, hunting police typically patrol and supervise hunters, providing training and guidance to avoid accidental harm to precious animals and to arrest poachers, which are seldom seen by tourists.

Jimmy arrived at the state park and, directed by a guard, drove to a house that had burned down.

"I'm Assistant Sheriff Jimmy Yang. Who's in charge here?"

"Me, McKenzi Remy, a member of the park management committee," a middle-aged Caucasian man came over and shook hands with Jimmy.

"Hello, Mr. Remy. Please tell me about the case."

"Come with me. This is one of our ranger's duty stations, managed by Pat Bright."

"Wait, did you say Pat Bright? Caucasian, elderly, with thinning hair?"

"Yes, do you know him?"

"Hmm, we have a mutual friend. Go on."

McKenzi Remy continued, "This morning, our patrol guards noticed the fire here and called the fire department. We tried calling Pat's phone, but nobody answered.

After the fire was extinguished, we found a charred body in the toolshed next to here. He was wearing a ranger's uniform, which we could tell from the cut of the belt and the badge. We confirmed he was Ranger Pat Bright. However, he didn't die from the fire but from a gunshot to the head."

McKenzi Remy led Jimmy to a yellow body bag and unzipped the head area.

A charred head was revealed, and Jimmy glanced at the bullet hole in the head before signaling McKenzi to zip it back up.

"Call the coroner over, and let's wait for the autopsy report. Do you have any surveillance cameras around here? Any direction will do. The scene has been messed up by the firefighters and your people, so we can't collect footprints."

"The traffic camera over there is broken and hasn't been repaired. We only have infrared cameras in the forest area, but those are far from here and are mainly for monitoring fire and capturing wildlife. These recordings probably won't be of any use."

"Still, let's take a look, from last night to this morning before the fire was discovered."

McKenzi Remy took Jimmy to the management committee's office building, where all surveillance footage was ultimately collected.

The burned-out duty station was surrounded by only two cameras. Jimmy had McKenzi play the recordings at increased speed; no one was seen passing through the area. Jimmy had McKenzi leave to attend to other things while he replayed the two recordings at a slower speed, noticing that the area had few wild animals, possibly due to its proximity to Little Rock and lack of dangerous wildlife.

After replaying it twice, Jimmy finally gave up; the quality of the footage from these cameras was not particularly clear. It was difficult to make out clear images, let alone spot any people.