The Mafia's Police Girl

Chaos Underground (1)

Hawthorne's POV:

~24 hours before the chaos~

"You must be the people I spoke to over the phone, correct?" asked a pudgy, bald man in an officer's uniform. I looked up from my phone to see him approaching us, his hand outstretched for a handshake. The three of us stood up to meet him halfway.

"Yes, hello sir," I said as I shook his hand firmly. "We would be happy to introduce ourselves, but can we please take this conversation elsewhere for privacy?"

"Of course, of course. Follow me please." He led us behind the reception area by scanning his I.D. badge over an identification scanner placed to the left of a door that had the words EMPLOYEES ONLY on a plaque. The door clicked open and we made our way inside to see rows and rows of cubicles as well as private rooms and offices. "My office is down this end, the last door on the left. I'll get my superior to come and meet you there in a moment, but first I would like to see some identification and documentation concerning your special request."

"Understood." I gave the officer our passports and an envelope full of documents that approved our access to all means of viable evidence pointing toward our case. The officer took them with a smile. "Thank you. I'll go ahead and have these scanned and confirmed to help quicken this process. I'll be sure to alert my superior if everything goes well on our end."

We nodded our heads, turning in the direction of the room we were to wait in. Light held the door open and we all filed inside to sit.

"How long do you think this will take, sir?" Light asked as he casually stretched his legs to lean comfortably against his seat. "To be completely honest, I thought that by the show of our badges we'd be able to bypass the waiting period."

I shook my head. "No, it doesn't always happen that way, especially since we're in a foreign country. Although back home, we are privileged to that most of the time. Also, consider the fact that our call was abrupt. I completely understand why they're taking these precautionary measures."

We sat in comfortable silence for the next ten minutes before a peppered haired, old man in the same police uniform opened the door and strutted inside. "Hello, Mr. Hawthorne, Mr. Fujiwara, and Ms. Bernadotte. I am Marco Treveño, chief of security here. I was informed by Officer Ferdinand that you wanted access to the mall's video footage?"

I gave the officer a firm handshake before returning to my seat. "Yes, that's right."

The man slid into his seat with ease, turning slightly to type something on the computer before adjusting his arms on the desk inquisitively. "I see. I've already looked through your passports and authorization documents, everything looks legit to me. But what I would like to ask is why you need this footage? I don't mean to ask this in a way that's too imposing, I ask this only to know if there's some kind of immediate danger."

"While I cannot tell you the nature of our investigation, I can assure you that no one in this mall is in immediate danger as we're speaking now. We're looking for video footage relating to this woman." I pulled out my phone, going through the message Bell sent me to pull up Lizanna's photo. "This woman was here early this morning. She's an American citizen who'd been kidnapped by an unknown group of individuals more than a week ago. Our primary goal right now is to retrieve her safely, from there we'll conduct our investigation where it matters. So, can we please see every video feed pertaining to this woman, our time is running thin."

Officer Treviño nodded his head, turning to face his computer. "I have already taken the time to download footage from every angle of the mall. Once you spot her from our cameras positioned on the outside, please do inform me so that I can collect them into a single sequence to make it easier to follow her movements throughout the mall." I simply nodded as the officer pressed a few more key buttons then turned around in his seat to power on the television screen. Color motion camera footage popped up on the screen a moment later, capturing the then empty mall.