The handwriting professor moved the professional magnifying glass he used for work, rubbed his eyes, and a satisfied expression subsequently appeared on his face.
He had found the source of the handwriting.
This job was actually much easier than the previous ones.
Letters are not like pictograms; their structure is much simpler, and the writing method is fixed. Where the stroke begins, where it stops—the formation of each letter during the writing process is basically fixed.
The more someone writes, the more troublesome it becomes to identify their handwriting, unless there is some particularly personal or characteristic content.
For example, some people like to write certain characters longer, wider, or flatter, or add some calligraphic style to make the entire text passage look more beautiful.
With these personal touches, it becomes a bit easier to distinguish different handwritings.
The previous handwriting samples were all the most common kind, with no personal characteristics, as if they were written casually in people’s work and daily life, not intentionally.
The font he had selected before was very common, but also not so normal. He saw some places where the pen’s force had changed significantly, which made the analysis a bit troublesome.
But the materials he received for analysis this time were relatively much simpler.
A group of gangsters, most of whom hadn’t written much since high school. The way each of them wrote was very personalized, and each person’s personalization was different.
Some could even write a round character into a polygon or even a rectangle. This obvious personal style could be seen at a glance that it wasn’t what he was looking for.
Finally, in one of the materials, he found handwriting similar to that on the note.
In fact, the handwriting was still a bit different. Handwriting can never be exactly the same, just as there can never be two identical eggs in the world.
The same letter, the same person, the same pen, will produce two different results when written.
What the professor looked at was the trace of the pen’s force “flowing” on the paper as it began its stroke. Some subtle details that ordinary people might not notice themselves are as obvious as fireflies in the night to an expert.
To avoid making a mistake, he spent more than two days studying these two samples. Finally, he confirmed that they were written by the same person.
He recorded this evidence, kept it safe, and then made a phone call to Lance.
“Mr. Lance, I’ve found him!”
When Lance heard this, he asked softly, “Can I know his name?”
“Of course, that is your right, Mr. Lance.”
“The name he filled in on this form is… Beno.”
“I think I should show you in person how I came to these conclusions. Although handwriting analysis has been applied in the Federation’s judicial system, some people think we are just messing around, so…”
Lance did not refuse. “Come over now. I happen to want to learn a little.”
He hung up the phone and looked at the few people in the house. “Found the mole.”
“Who is it?” asked Hiram, who was playing with a dagger. He had a bit of a cold recently, sniffling and snorting.
What was even more disgusting was when he would inhale, concentrating the mucus from his trachea in his throat, and then… you think he spits it out? No, he swallows it. The first time he saw this, Lance cursed directly and even felt a little nauseous.
He asked Hiram, “Do you fucking not know how to spit?”
Hiram said stubbornly, “I do.”
Lance said again, “Very good. Then you fucking spit one out now.”
After a brief silence, he had already completed ninety percent of the steps of spitting, only needing to cough up the phlegm and then spit it out.
But then Lance saw his Adam’s apple move up and down. The people in the room were about to collapse.
He said with an innocent look, “Okay, I guess I don’t.”
Now hearing his question, Lance rolled his eyes. “You should go and rest, and by the way, learn how to spit. I’m serious.”
However, he still told Hiram who it was. “This university professor told me, it’s Beno.”
The people in the room were all a little surprised. Beno was actually quite popular.
He was able to cater to everyone, whether that person was a cadre, a captain, or an ordinary gang member.
Although Lance had always emphasized that the Lance Family was a big family, and everyone was a brother or sister in the family, as the number of people grew, there would definitely be a sense of strangeness between them, and a few people would have conflicts.
Beno was the kind of person who could quickly become friends with anyone. Even if they weren’t friends in the true sense, they could become friends on the surface.
He knew most of the people, and he also liked to chat with people everywhere during his breaks. He was one of the very active people in the family, like Alan and the others.
It was precisely because he was very active and his personality was very compatible with Alan’s that they became good friends.
Now that they knew Beno was a major suspect, the first feeling was “this is very reasonable,” because only in this way could he obtain a lot of intelligence and clues without being suspected.
Lawn scratched his neck. “Alan and the others are delivering goods today. Should we call them back?”
Lance nodded. “Call Alan back. Let Beno continue to work with the others.”
About twenty minutes later, Alan rushed back to the office. He even had some dust on him that hadn’t been cleaned off.
He had a smile on his face. After pushing the door open and seeing that there were quite a few people, he immediately greeted everyone enthusiastically, took out his cigarettes, and started to hand them out.
Lance was also given one by him. He held it in his hand. Alan lit it for him with a match, grinning. “Boss, is there something you need us to do?”
He put the match in the ashtray and patted his chest. “I promise we can get it done quickly and well.”
Lance just looked at him with a faint smile. He was taken aback for a moment, then looked back at the other cadres on the sofa in the room. The expressions on their faces made his heart skip a beat, and a bad feeling immediately arose.
“What… happened?” He returned to the opposite side of Lance’s desk, not standing by Lance’s side.
Lance pointed to the chair next to him. “Sit down. You’ll know in a moment.”
Although the seat under him was a soft cushion, for some reason, for him, it was as if there were many steel needles, making him very uncomfortable, sitting on pins and needles.
In fact, he already had some guesses, but he was unwilling to admit the result.
While waiting, after an unknown amount of time, there was a knock on the door.
He turned sharply towards the door. A person he had never seen before walked in.
The handwriting professor didn’t know there were so many people here, but he thought… perhaps this was their style. He came to Lance’s desk a little restrained.
“We all want to see how you came to this conclusion. Is that okay?”
The handwriting professor shook his head. “Of course, I have no problem, and that is also the purpose of my coming here.”
He placed the materials on the table as he spoke. Here were two enlarged photos.
First, take a picture with the best camera to ensure that the two handwriting samples are clear, then enlarge them.
After enlarging them to a certain extent, you can clearly see some things that are usually invisible, such as the “fluidity” of the pen when writing these letters.
Everyone gathered around. The professor had already circled some places with a pen. “From these places, we can see that his downstroke and upstroke are almost exactly the same.”
“There are some changes in the writing process within the characters. Some of these changes are not obvious, but some are very obvious.”
“When writing these things, this person was careful not to let his handwriting look the same as what he usually writes, but he wasn’t too clear on how to do it, so these places will give people an uncoordinated sense of fragmentation.”
Everyone was looking at the places he was talking about. Lance was also looking, and very carefully. Alan too.
“…In the end, I came to a conclusion. The handwriting on these two materials should be from the same person.”
After saying this, the professor closed his mouth.
Lance also sat back down. The others returned to the sofa with not-so-good looks on their faces.
“Corinda, help me see the professor out!” Lance picked up the phone and had the girl outside the door come in. At the same time, he took an envelope from the drawer and placed it on the table.
“I’ve given you an extra two hundred dollars. Thank you for taking the time to do me a small favor. Maybe we’ll have a chance to cooperate in the future.”
“Of course, if you run into any trouble, you can also find me. You are my friend now.”
The professor was not embarrassed at all. He picked up the envelope with a smile. Of course, he was not foolish enough to open it immediately and then count it. He looked at Lance and bowed slightly. “It’s what I should do.” For the sake of the money, of course, he didn’t mind having such a resourceful friend.
Soon Corinda pushed open the door and stood by the door, chewing gum and looking at the professor.
The professor glanced at the things on the table and said with a smile, “I won’t take these with me, then I…”
Lance stood up and shook his hand. “Thank you again for your help. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Lance.”
He quickly left with Corinda. Lance then looked at Alan and said that name, “Beno.”
Alan’s expression had been struggling and pained all along. He clenched his fists, then quickly loosened them.
He was very upset in his heart, because he really treated Beno as a brother, but… he didn’t know, why would he be the mole?
He rubbed his face hard. “What should I do?”
Lance’s finger smoothed his eyebrows in the direction of the hair. “Your brother, you handle him.”
“Ask him something you care about, or don’t ask, it’s all fine.”
“We only want one result.”
Alan stood up. The chair was pushed by his leg and scraped against the floor. “I know. I’m going to get it done.”
Lance nodded slightly. “Be careful.”
“Alan, you treat him as your brother, but you have to ask yourself in return, does he really treat you as his brother?”
Watching his departing back with a heavy heart, Lance heard that damn sound from his trachea and throat again.
“Fuck, Hiram, fuck!”
“I have to find something for you to do. You take some men and follow Alan. If there’s an accident, make a move directly!”
No matter what, get him out of the office first. As soon as he heard that sound, Lance felt a little nauseous, a little like he wanted to throw up.
Damn it! Hiram stood up angrily and protested loudly, “This is discrimination!”
“This is blatant discrimination against people who can’t spit. I protest!”
Because his nose was a bit stuffy, his voice was quite dull, and different from his usual speech, it was all nasal.
The people around all laughed. Lawn even kicked him in the butt. “Get the hell out of here, we can’t stand it anymore!”
He patted his butt and left, cursing. He picked a few men, then got in a car and followed Alan.
Alan didn’t notice that he was being followed. His mind was full of the fact that his good brother was a mole. He was very hurt right now.
His mind was a mess the whole way. When he arrived at the work site, Beno even greeted him on his own initiative.
“What did the Boss want you for? Is there a new mission?”
Before, Alan might have thought this was his enthusiasm and attitude towards work. But now, after he had accepted the fact that Beno was a mole, this became like a probing, a prying.
He shook his head. “Come over here. I need to talk to you,” he stood outside the warehouse.
Beno looked back at the people working in the warehouse. He had no choice but to put down what he was holding and walk towards Alan.
These past two days, he had secretly gone to Lukar’s house. Lukar’s wife had gone back to her parents’ house. She was afraid of that house. She would subconsciously think of Lukar and start to be afraid, so it was very easy for Beno to break in by knocking on the door.
He had searched many places in Lukar’s house, but he hadn’t found any information about his undercover status.
He suspected it might be at the Bureau of Hazardous Materials. He had been considering how to sneak in these past two days.
If he couldn’t confirm it himself, it would always be a hidden danger, a ticking time bomb. He wiped his hands on a rag, took out a cigarette, and walked over, putting one in his mouth. “Want one?”
Alan took it and lit it with his own match. This made Beno a little surprised, because most of the time, he was the one who lit the cigarettes.
“Something on your mind?” he asked.
Alan nodded. At this moment, Hiram’s car was diagonally across the street.
But both of them had things on their minds at this moment and didn’t notice them.
“Lance said there’s still a mole in our family. I’ve been thinking about this. Who do you think it is?” he looked at Beno.
Beno’s heart tightened, but a smile appeared on his face. He shook his head and said, “I don’t know. I don’t dare to guess randomly about this kind of thing.”
Alan said again, “Actually, it doesn’t matter who it is. He should come forward.”
“Lukar is already dead. If this person can come forward, maybe he can get Lance’s forgiveness.”
Beno’s expression did not change. He took a deep drag of his cigarette. “Who knows?”
The two were silent for a while. Neither of them spoke again.
Suddenly, Alan asked a question, “Is there anything you want to say to me?”
Beno’s unease became stronger. He smiled and shook his head. “Say what?”
“I’m not… that kind of person!” he smiled and patted his butt, then said again, “I’m going to work. They all think that joining a gang must be very crazy and you don’t have to work, but they must not know that you actually have to work when you join a gang!”
Looking at his seemingly carefree back, Alan silently sighed. “You’re the mole, Beno.”
Beno’s steps faltered and he stopped. He slowly turned around, his expression changing many times in the process. When he faced Alan, it had become the look he should have shown the most.
Confusion, bewilderment, and some anger.
“You’re saying I’m a mole?” His face was full of a natural expression, disbelief, and that anger. “Fuck, Alan, how much credit have I earned for the family, just like you? That time at the bar, I went in with you guys and took a great risk!”
“And… those other times, I was always at the front. Can you say that everyone was just cooperating with my performance?”
His neck began to turn red, and his voice grew louder. The people working in the warehouse all stopped and looked towards them. “Anyone can say I’m a mole, but you can’t, Alan. You’re my fucking brother!”
Alan looked at him sadly. “If you admit it now, I’ll go and plead with Lance for you immediately. I’m begging you, tell the truth, I’m fucking begging you!”
His voice also grew louder. Beno had a look of disappointment. “You actually don’t believe me!”
“On what grounds are they saying I’m a mole?”
“Do they have evidence?”
His heart was pounding wildly at this moment. Alan was silent for a few seconds. “The note you wrote to Lukar is in Lance’s hands.”
At this moment, Beno’s blood instantly ran cold. He pursed his lips. “A piece of paper. No one can prove who wrote it. It could have been written by someone else. On what grounds are you saying I wrote it?”
Actually, at this moment, Alan also felt it. He was panicking.
“It really is you?”
Just as Beno was still considering how to deal with this situation, he suddenly saw Alan’s hand go into his clothes and then quickly raise it.
This was clearly a motion of drawing a gun. His whole body was startled. He pushed away Alan’s just-raised hand with one hand, and at the same time, grabbed Alan’s neck with the other.
But then, he was stunned.
Because Alan didn’t have a pistol in his hand. He had just made a pistol gesture with his hand. And with that came his face full of disbelief.
“It really is you!”
Feeling that he had completely messed up, Beno pushed Alan away and rushed outside, his heart pounding wildly.
Hiram, who was smoking, took the cigarette out of his mouth and threw it on the ground. The car, with its engine still running, floored the accelerator and charged towards Beno.
(End of chapter)