sinovels Chapter 21
Chapter 21
"Huh? Why is it neither cold nor hot enough here? Dad, can we move?" The cat-like round eyes looked at Byron brightly.
"Tucson is very hot, the sun is so hot, and it's so big!" Archie suddenly remembered the place where he stayed a while ago, and excitedly patted his father's generous chest.
"Then you are willing, are these good friends now? If you really move away, you can only contact by phone in the future."
"Hmm..." Little Archie hesitated for a moment with his golden-brown eyebrows furrowed like a caterpillar, and asked, "Father, can you change someone you like? Just choose someone who is willing to stay in Maine, okay?" ?”
The childish words brought back the corners of Mr. Captain's lips.He put his little chubby son on the sofa, took out the puzzle box from under the cabinet, and turned his head and replied, "Little idiot, I can't pick this by myself..."
As he spoke, he lifted the colorful box lid, picked out two pieces and held them up in front of Archie, slowly aligning the bumpy edges, and the color block patterns on the surface fit perfectly.
"Just like this, which two people can be together is destined by God"
A child has a lot of forgetfulness, and his little entanglement with the weather has long been forgotten.
Looking at my son jumping and running all day long, his weight steadily increased, and his height is better than the wind, in a blink of an eye, it was midsummer again.
Maybe it's because of the lingering influence of El Niño. This year, the east coast has had extraordinarily abundant rain, while the south has experienced protracted sun exposure and drought.
Fortunately, all the design manuscripts for Sunshine City have been delivered, and construction can only begin after the approval in autumn is over.Otherwise, Mr. Hadley may have to suffer for his life in Arizona under the bright sun.
However, Byron, who stayed in Maine to enjoy the cool breeze, had no leisure—the private collection, which he started writing twenty months ago, is still being revised.
As the actual investor of Party A, Andy's frequent novel ideas attracted Byron, who willingly continued to reconstruct the design.
At the same time, the list of new collections sent every month always grows silently, so that the layout of the exhibition hall, which was close to being finalized, needs to be adjusted again.
It stands to reason that when encountering such a difficult project, ordinary people would regret it; but Byron, who had friends by his side and climbed to the peak of art together, was content with it.
Among the colleagues in the design office, many felt sympathy for Byron, until they learned that the rich and powerful client paid thousands of salaries on a monthly basis——Mr. Hadley, he did not suffer at all.
On this day, Byron had just finished processing the work at hand, and shouted to the mail room next door: "Walley, is there anything Mr. Dana sent me?"
"Report sir, it's from Vermont State Prison, it should be what you want..." As he spoke, Waley trotted all the way, handing over two letters.
If there is no result as usual, just reply alone. Therefore, the moment he saw the second letter, Byron had an intuition: "This time, we should have found it."
Picking up the paper knife casually, Byron took out the letter paper and looked at it at a glance.
'...the name does appear on the file, but Elmore Bleich has been out of prison for almost a year, and we can't say where he is now.
After all, he is not a prisoner on parole and needs to be supervised by us.It was only a petty theft, and he was sentenced to three months, and now he is a free man...'
A bucket of ice water was poured on his face, and Byron was stroking the creased letter paper. He exhaled depressed and said to himself: "It's news, at least it proves that this guy does exist. catch him"
Using his thumb to the handle of the knife, he carefully cut open the second letter.
"It seems that the qualification of a registered architect is indeed very satisfying"
Unlike the official letter in the first letter, which was a bit perfunctory, the current paper begins with a long paragraph of polite words, specifically congratulating him on his "regularization" from an intern architect.
'...Mr. Hadley has worked several times in Maine with great success!Who doesn't know now, all over New England, the prisoners who come out of your hands can recover from their mistakes and start a new life.
The good reputation of the Shawshank Farm and the construction team has been spread to Vermont!It would be a great honor to invite you to come to us and give us some pointers...'
Seemingly worried that flattery alone would not be enough to impress him, the other party changed his pen and wrote: "In the last letter, I forgot to say that although Blake was nowhere to be found after he was released from prison, his roommate was still there. What's the matter?" You might as well come over and talk face to face...'
Byron knew very well that the managers of the Vermont Prison did not care about the reformation effect of the prisoners under their rule.
On the contrary, the invisible circle of contacts behind his identity as a designer made them salivate.Only then did they graciously come forward, looking forward to taking the bus to dig gold and make a lot of money.
Taking it out from the bottom drawer, the letter paper is full of ghostly symbols in the eyes of others.
Looking at the above records of "a lot of evil, crazy and cunning, easy to boast", Byron did not count on Bletch's inmates to just hear the evidence of the murder he committed, but he thought that a few words could always be a clue.
Coincidentally, Mr. Captain didn't know that at this time, there were still people groping to the other corner of the iceberg.
"Andy, in the three years before the incident, the agency has gone through the gun purchase records in several nearby states. Those people have either never been to Portland at all, or they have been confiscated due to qualification issues... "
There was apology and helplessness in Jimmy's voice.
In November last year, the Democratic Party's President Truman was unexpectedly re-elected, and his opponent Thomas Dewey's best friends followed suit. Among them was the prosecutor who investigated the wife-killing case, Miller.
Under the overturned nest, how can there be any eggs?Miller, who finally squeezed into the House of Representatives with his "performance", is now thrown to a small border town in Texas to experience the baptism of a subtropical hurricane.
For Dufresne, this is undoubtedly a good time to restart the investigation. In fact, since last summer, the account under Peter Stephen's name has been continuously sending commission money to the detective agency.
After receiving the commission, the other party worked diligently and day and night along the records of the bullets on the spot to trace them all the way. Unfortunately, the weather did not go as expected, and so far no substantial gains have been made.
Another setback did not make Andy depressed. He calmed down and spoke calmly: "Then the time and space scope of the investigation will be further enlarged. Even if I want to investigate the west coast, I can afford to wait..."
Hearing this, the impatience in Jimmy's heart gradually stabilized, and he joked: "Indeed, if it weren't for throwing money at the auction house, Mr. Steven would have been a millionaire long ago. Naturally, he can afford it. Listen to you and continue. try to find……
Speaking of which, there is another interesting thing in the materials sent by the office... There is a guy in Cumberland who was imprisoned for holding a gun without a license. He actually confessed that he bought it from fishermen in Yarmouth Bay. Not even gifted with lying."
But the only listener of the joke didn't join in. After a while, Andy's voice came from the receiver, very serious: "Jimmy, Yarmouth Bay is just downstream of the Royal River. This may be a breakthrough."
The Royal River is the place where Andy Dufresne abandoned his gun before the incident. The Portland police salvaged it for three days and three nights, but found nothing.
The letter to the Vermont prison guard had just been written, and before it could be sealed, there was a knock on the door of the captain's office.
"Come in" Mr. Byron, who was busy with his daily affairs, sighed in his heart, really couldn't rest for a moment.
"Reporting captain, this Asian boy has been pestering us, there is really no other way but to disturb you," Trout said angrily.
In the early years, there was no such daring guy, who had no time to hide from the prison guards, how dare he take the initiative to get up, and even chase him away.
"It's true, newborn calves are not afraid of tigers." Walking to the side of the captain and standing still, Trout looked at the opposite side, a young prisoner who was about the same height as himself and looked at most fifteen or sixteen years old.
He hadn't seen an Asian for a long time, and when he looked up, he saw black hair, black eyes, yellow skin, and Byron was at a loss for words.
Picking up the cup and swallowing half a sip of coffee, Mr. Captain asked, "What's the matter?"
At the same time, he signaled Molt, who was waiting at the door, with his eyes, to find out the file of the person in front of him.
"Mr. Chief, I have [-] points, and I want to exchange them all for money, please!"
Byron didn't respond, but carefully read the records on the file. The "XHKwan" in the name column made him raise his eyebrows slightly: "Chinese? In Shawshank, what do you want money for?"
"I hope to send it... First pay back the medical expenses owed, and the rest will be given to my mother to subsidize the family, sir, please!"
The half-year sentence of the boy surnamed Kwan was obtained because he stole anti-inflammatory drugs worth twenty dollars and could not pay for them.
Obviously, the owner of the pharmacy didn't expect to recover his losses from the poor guy, he just wanted him to teach him a lesson.
Byron was pondering over the appropriate exchange rate, and the prisoner realized that he had missed a question, and quickly added: "Yes, Mr. Hadley, we Chinese can endure hardship, so you can leave the heaviest work to me... ...Now that there are only female relatives left in the family, I'm afraid I won't be able to support me to go out, so I implore you to make an exception and be merciful!"
As he spoke, the boy wanted to kneel down and beg, but Byron stopped him.
"There are 10 points in three weeks, it can be seen that you have worked hard enough. How about it, I will redeem it at a rate of 1:[-] in the future"
Byron turned his head and told his subordinates: "This rule applies to everyone, you go to the exchange office to post a notice."
Molt immediately nodded and said yes, and took the order to leave. He didn't say anything, but thought to himself: "The captain is really soft-hearted. This is more than double the salary set by Warden Norton..."
Inside the house, Byron personally took out sixty dollars, put it in an envelope, raised his pen and paused, and glanced at the file: "Why is there an abbreviation on it, your full name?"
"Oh, I don't have a foreign name yet. People don't want to spell it out, so I write down the first letter and count it as my name..." The young man touched the back of his head, and grinned happily at the very talkative officer in front of him.
Immediately imitating the pronunciation habits of white people, he said in a strange way: "Zh...ShangHaiKwan"
Unexpectedly, Mr. Captain on the opposite side frowned slightly, with a bit of unconcealable disappointment on his face, and murmured in a low voice: [It turns out that he can't speak Chinese well, so the name came up, which is quite interesting , it’s not at home, it’s from Shanghai…]
Even if the volume of the voice is almost inaudible, how can the young man fail to recognize that he has heard a big local accent since he was a child?
He widened his eyes, looked at the foreign officer who was speaking Beijing movies fluently, stared blankly, and blurted out the words without thinking: 【It's not Shanghai, it's Xianghai!My name is Guan Xianghai! 】
The voice fell, and the two looked at each other.
Trout, who was standing next to him, didn't understand even more. Why couldn't he understand a word in a flash?
The author has something to say:
【】Internal is Chinese
*This chapter deals with geographical names:
1. Tucson: Arizona, where the senior community developed by DW is located
2. Vermont: The neighbor on the west side of Maine, which also belongs to the New England area
3. Cumberland: A county in Maine (the county in the United States is very large, including multiple urban built-up areas, which is not the same concept as the county seat in our country). In fact, Portland is the county seat of the county
4. Yarmouth Bay: a small bay in the north of Portland
In the original book, it is mentioned that Andy threw the gun at the Pound Bridge section of the Royal River, and "there is very close to the mouth of the Royal River, the current is very fast, and the gun may have been washed into the bay."
According to the south-to-north flow of the North Atlantic warm current, the author set the location where the gun was picked up in Yarmouth Bay
*The El Niño phenomenon occurred from 1949 to 1951, so it is speculated that the precipitation in North America in the summer of 1950 was abnormal
*Two important clues to the case have come out, and Mr. Dufresne is one step closer to being cleared of his charges.
Because I want to send Andy out in advance, so don't wait for little Tommy, of course, he will have a role in the future...
*The current time point is the summer of 1950. In the 1949 election, Truman defeated his rival Dewey and was re-elected
*That's right, Andy finally gave up digging the wall. If you want to see the little angel he digs out of the wall, you can leave (please pat)...
*The new classmate Guan Xianghai is useful, please don't dislike the stupid author, let me show you my heart~
Kwan is a common spelling of the Chinese surname "Guan", but it can also be Gwann
The sound of Xi, crooked nuts is really not easy to pronounce, it is possible to become "shi" and "zhi"
You may also choose to be autistic hahaha (Chinese pinyin is really skr devil)