Aren't you being a sadist?

Almost one month had passed since Ryan got the guest list from the manager and the names on the list had been cleared one after another yet they could not find any new lead. There were a total of 120 guests belonging to at least 40 factions on the night before Jean's death. So, Ryan had already expected to take a long time to comb through the list.

However, an unexpected factor was giving him headache. Lieutenant Parker had been following Ryan and Allen both openly and covertly and that had been slowing down their progress. Even so, they did not know how to deal with this stubborn senior of them. Although Ryan is his superior, he had no saying in how he spent his time off work. Should they just sue him for stalking? That did not sound right either.

Ryan was jogging on the same path he used every morning as he thought about how to get Lieutenant Parker off their tails. That was when he heard a familiar voice.

"You are my sunshine

My only sunshine

You make me happy when skies are grey"

Ryan started searching for the owner of the voice and there she was, lying on the grass by the side of the path, looking at the cloudy sky above.

"You'll never know dear, how much I love you

Please don't take my sunshine away"

"God is quite fair, don't you think so?" Vivienne looked towards Ryan thinking what he meant by his strange remark.

"He created you to be a genius, but also to be a tone-deaf," Ryan grinned as he sat down beside her.

"Did you sneak up on me to say that, Mr. Cotton Candy?"

After meeting with Vivienne for a few times, Ryan had started to realize that this woman was not as expressionless as he thought. He could clearly notice displeasure in her voice even though it was a tiny bit.

"Cotton Candy?" Ryan asked.

"Sweet and mellow. Isn't that you?" She said nonchalantly.

*cough*cough

Ryan choked on his own saliva. It was true that he was very careful about his manners and he always tried his best to be kind to others. But the Captain of City X Central Police Station should not be described as 'sweet and mellow'. No?

Ignoring Ryan's predicament, the woman took out two ice-pops from the plastic bag lying beside her.

"Vanilla or grape?"

"Uh… It's okay" Seeing that Ryan was going to refuse, she shoved one directly into his hand.

"It's to thank you for last time," she said.

Ryan remembered the assassination attempt.

"Were you waiting for me?" Ryan asked as he tore the plastic cover and started to taste the flavor. It was the vanilla one.

"Mm hmm. Sorry that it took too long to return the favor. I was quite busy. I've done what I've come here to do. Good bye then." She stood up, dusted off her pants and walked away.

Wanting to stop her before she got far away, Ryan chewed the piece of ice in his mouth as fast as he could and swallowed it resulting in a brain freeze.

"Oww oww oww oww…. Oww"

He rubbed his temples with the heels of his hands and sat down, and finding it still uncomfortable, he stood up again. Then, he sat down and repeated that sequence for a couple more times until he felt better again.

Vivienne looked back hearing his exclamation and saw him in his pitiful state.

Pfft…

It was only a stifled laughter at first. And then, she pointed at him and started to laugh heartily showing her pearly white teeth. As if that was not enough, she even added a remark.

"You look like a gorilla doing sit-ups"

Ryan glared at her.

"Damn you, woman! Aren't you being a sadist? Why are you finding pleasure in other people's pain?"

In the few times, he had seen her, this woman did not even crack a smile and the first time she laughed was because she found his reaction to pain to be amusing.

"Who told you to be so dumb to not know how to eat a popsicle?" she retorted.

"I ate it fast because I had something to ask you."

Although this woman had always been intriguing, Ryan did not use his resources to dig her past just because he was curious. However, after finding out that she could be 'doc' and related to the drug in some way, they started investigating her past. That was when they found out she was more of a genius than they thought.

She graduated from high school at 15 years of age by skipping some grades and then got her medical degree with honors from the best medical university in the state at the age of 21. She worked at the emergency department of central state hospital for 5 years until she suddenly resigned for personal reasons 5 years ago when she moved to City X. All those findings pointed that the 'doc' mentioned by Lieutenant Parker was indeed her. However, they could not find anything about her parents or her life before she was 13 years old.

What Ryan did not understand was that why would she come to a crime-city after having such a steady life. Why did she have to put her life in danger by becoming an underground doctor?

"What did you want to ask?"

Ryan was stumped because of her question. Although he stopped her by reflex, he did not actually want to creep her away by making her realize that they had been checking her records, at least not now when she had started to show her emotions to him. So, he changed his question on the spot.

"Are you always in such kind of dangerous situations?"

"Not really. Only stupid people try to harm me," she answered casually. She knew he was talking about the assassination attempt.

Not exactly knowing why, Ryan felt relief by her answer.

"That's good"

"Yeah. See you, then"

This time, Ryan did not stop her.

Allen had been coming to Ryan's apartment every 3 or 4 day to report his findings. This day was also one of those 'report days'. After finishing their work at the station, Allen followed Ryan back to his apartment.

"I didn't find anything suspicious about this gang either" Allen scratched out a name from the guest list.

While looking intently at the guest list, Allen asked a question.

"Ryan, have you ever heard about 'Moretti Cartel'?"

"Yeah. I've heard about them when I was working at Narcotics in the capital. Why?"

"I've heard a lot about them, too. Most of my career was spent at the Narcotics not like you who mainly worked at the Homicide. So, believe me when I say they are a very dangerous group"

"Oh?" Ryan became interested in what Allen was going to say.

"They aren't as famous as those drug lords of the city but that's only because they slipped out of our radars before we could detect their presence. They don't deal large amounts but they had branches in almost every city and they mostly deal drugs which are normally difficult to assess, "Allen said.

"And they are on the list." Ryan said as he frowned.

"We'll deal with them first. I'll also give Mr. Carter a heads-up," Ryan added.

Ryan had confirmed that the two gang members Parker told them about were indeed moles for Anios owner. So, they had left everything about the three gangs to the club. They were severely lacking manpower and just the two of them could not do everything anyway.

"Do you really trust them?" Allen sighed.

"What choice do we have? And also they've given their Kryptonite to us" Ryan raised the papers containing information on the VIP guests.

"Do you think they are doing that to clear off our suspicion? You should know that if they want all those suspicions to be completely gone, they wouldn't have let me walk out of the club alive that night."

Once Ryan finished talking to Allen, he called the manager to tell his moles to pay close attention to the relation between their gangs and Moretti Cartel.

They did not know at that time that pin-pointing Moretti Cartel on Allen's hunch was going to save them a lot of time.