wjnovel Chapter 725 Unexpectedly Involved!
Chapter 725 Unexpectedly Involved!
But how did she leave the rooftop and the villa?
The sheriff was also thinking about the same question at that moment.
"Front gate surveillance." He turned and ordered, "Turn on all entrances and exits, parking areas, and the back slope maintenance lane from six o'clock until now."
The resort quickly entered a delicate state of lockdown.
Guests were asked to remain in their rooms or common areas and were not allowed to leave at will. The previously quiet, vacation-like atmosphere in the lobby was completely gone, replaced by hushed conversations, clinking glasses, and the constant ringing of telephones—a tense, unspoken cacophony. The middle-aged couple was clearly frightened, repeatedly confirming with the front desk that "we're just here for our anniversary"; the stable master, Harold, looked calm but was even quieter than yesterday; several waiters moved back and forth with the cautiousness of someone afraid of saying the wrong thing and having it recorded.
When Ben Cardenas was called in for questioning for the second time, he was even more agitated than he had been that morning.
"I already said, I only had drinks with her last night!" He lowered his voice at the door of the small meeting room, but couldn't hide his urgency. "How am I supposed to know who she went to see this morning? Do you all think everyone who talks to her has to—"
"After you took her back to 507 last night, what time did you return to 412?" Lynn asked suddenly, standing at the other end of the corridor.
Ben's expression froze for a moment when he saw him.
"A little after eleven o'clock."
"specific."
“11:15, or 20.” Ben frowned. “I didn’t look at the stopwatch.”
"Did you go out again after that?"
"No."
"Who can prove it?"
He opened his mouth, but in the end, he could only close it in frustration. It's the hardest for someone staying in a hotel alone to have this kind of proof.
"Did she mention any 'box'?" Lynn asked again.
His eyes flickered very slightly.
This flash wasn't big, but it was enough.
“No,” he replied.
Too fast.
Lynn stared at him: "Think it through before you speak."
I said I didn't!
"Then why did you pause just now?"
“Because you’re asking as if I should know something!” Ben’s voice lowered, but became more urgent. “She did mention last night that she didn’t want anyone to see what she was wearing, but I didn’t know what it was. I just assumed it was valuable jewelry or work documents. The kind of person she is—”
"What about someone like her?"
Ben paused, as if realizing he had said too much.
"She didn't just come here to relax," he said.
That statement is correct.
"Where's her phone?" Lynn asked the sheriff.
"The technicians are still working on it," the sheriff said as he walked over from the other end. "But we have the results from the front parking camera footage first."
Everyone looked at him.
The sheriff's expression wasn't good.
“At 6:58, a gray SUV drove away from the resort from the blind spot on the east side of the parking area,” he said. “The license plate was fake. I couldn’t see the person in the driver’s seat, the passenger seat was empty, and I couldn’t see the person in the back either. But more importantly—that car didn’t come from the main gate. It’s like it was parked in that blind spot between the logistics area and the east ramp from the beginning.”
"When did you stop there?" Lynn asked.
“3:12 a.m.,” the sheriff said. “There are few people walking on that road at night, and with the trees providing cover, we didn’t notice it immediately.”
In other words, the murderer or someone involved had already hidden the car there and was waiting.
"Where can I get from the resort's logistics area?" Lynn asked Elena.
“It connects to the kitchen unloading lane, laundry room, staff staircase, and…” Elena’s expression changed slightly halfway through her sentence, “and there’s also the maintenance access to the equipment shaft on the top floor.”
Lynn's gaze darkened.
"You said yesterday that the maintenance door is usually locked."
“It’s locked.” Elena clearly realized something too. “But the maintenance shaft doesn’t lead directly to the pool platform; it’s further inside, only connecting to the equipment floor. From there, you have to go through another door to reach the rooftop lobby. That door should also be accessible—”
“Sure,” Lynn repeated.
Elena shut her mouth.
At this point, at least the outline is clear.
Violet left room 507 at 6:26 AM this morning and went to the rooftop around 6:30 AM, possibly to meet "R". Noah saw her on the fourth floor, and she proactively confirmed that there were fewer people on the rooftop. Around 6:40 AM, Gwen went upstairs and entered the water. At some point, Violet was murdered in a blind spot on the west side of the surveillance camera; the murder weapon was thin and precise. Gwen remained in the pool and did not see anyone else. There were no normal entry or exit records after the incident. Before 7:00 AM, a gray SUV that had been hidden since the early morning drove away from the blind spot on the east side of the logistics area.
This is no longer like an ordinary murder in a mountain villa; it's more like a setup with entrances, exits, and evacuation routes pre-arranged.
Gwen, on the other hand, was precisely placed in the worst position—the only person present, the only access control recorder, and the only one most likely to be pushed out.
Lynn was temporarily blocked from entering when local police began inspecting the equipment wells and staff access routes.
It wasn't that the sheriff was deliberately making things difficult; it was simply a procedural matter that prevented a family member from freely entering and exiting every key evidence-gathering point. Lynn was fully aware of this, so she didn't force her way in but instead went to check the monitoring room.
The monitoring room wasn't large, but it had quite a few screens. Two feeds from the rooftop pool were displayed on a timeline: one showing the eastern entrance area and most of the pool surface, and the other showing the glass lounge and the area near the access control. The western blind spot was like a dead corner at the edge of the frame; anyone who stayed close to the row of pillars and potted plants on the west side could briefly avoid the main line of sight.
However, the problem remains—avoiding the rooftop surveillance does not mean avoiding the entrance and exit surveillance of the entire building.
Unless that person isn't going to be a customer at all.
"Are there any blind spots in the surveillance cameras at the employee entrance?" Lynn asked the security supervisor.
"Yes, but not many," the security supervisor admitted. "Especially between the laundry room and the equipment floor, there are two sections that are difficult to capture fully from the old angles."
“From last night to this morning, who had the authority to use those passageways?”
"Employees, management, maintenance outsourcing—but there's no outsourcing team here these past two days."
"List".
The security supervisor took a deep breath, probably realizing that it was no longer time to cover up the management loopholes at the resort, and quickly pulled up the list of on-duty staff and management personnel.
As Lynn looked around, he asked, "Has the equipment floor on the top floor been inspected recently?"
"The temperature control system was inspected last week," the security supervisor said. "It was routine maintenance."
"Who did it?"
"Only two people from the local cooperative repair company have come up here. It's recorded here."
Lynn glanced at the two names but didn't stop immediately.
It wasn't a name he recognized, nor was there anything particularly striking about it. But he remembered it.
Around 1 p.m., 507's phone finally turned on.
When the technician printed out the communications from the past week and the text messages from last night and this morning, the sheriff, Lynn, and the deputy sheriff were all there. Most of the content was clean, as if it had been deliberately washed; the contacts were either invalid numbers or disposable numbers, and the chat logs were severely damaged. But two things remained.
The first message was posted at 10:43 PM last night; it was an unsigned message.
"Tomorrow morning at 6:30, top floor. Come alone. Don't bring all your belongings."
The second message was sent by Violet herself at 6:19 this morning:
"I'll only bring half. I'll decide on the other half after I confirm it."
The recipient is also a temporary number.
The sheriff looked at the paper and muttered a curse under his breath.
Now even the question of whether she was simply going for a morning swim is no longer relevant. She's making a deal, or testing out her potential trading partner.
“Where’s the box?” Lynn said.
“507 was not found,” the deputy sheriff replied.
“So she really did take it to the rooftop,” Lynn said. “And now the box is gone.”
This means the killer wasn't just after her, but also to take something. Violet went to the meeting with the item, was killed, and the item disappeared. Gwen happened to be at the scene around that time, thus becoming a natural shield.
The sheriff had clearly figured this out as well, and his expression was slightly better than when he first met Gwen that morning. But only slightly.
“This shows she was involved in the deal, but it doesn’t mean it can absolve your sister,” he said. “In court, a jury might not like the idea that ‘there was an unseen third party in the enclosed rooftop.’”
“Then let’s find a third person,” Lynn said.
The sheriff looked at him for a long time before saying, "I'm starting to understand why your sister told you not to become the worst version of your brother and detective."
Lynn didn't respond to that.
Because he himself knows that he is now only one layer of patience away from the "worst version".
At 3 p.m., the results finally came from the equipment well.
On an old maintenance staircase between the staff passage and the equipment floor, fresh scratches and extremely fine black fibers were found. The lock cylinder of the small inner door leading from the equipment floor to the rooftop lobbies showed signs of being technically opened; the movement was very subtle, unlike forced entry, and more likely someone used appropriate tools to open and then re-open it in a very short time. More importantly, in a stone crevices near the floor drain in a blind spot of the surveillance cameras on the west side of the rooftop, forensic evidence extracted a tiny amount of metal shavings and very faint traces of high-temperature friction.
The faint metallic smell that Gwen detected was not an illusion.
Someone did indeed use some kind of precision metal tool there.
With this storyline emerging, the pressure on Gwen finally eased a bit.
At least for now, no one can force the case to fall into the simple categories of "impulsive murder" or "poolside argument." But another, more troublesome aspect has surfaced—this case was not a spur-of-the-moment decision from the beginning. Someone had familiarized themselves with the villa's structure beforehand, knew the equipment access routes, the blind spots in the rooftop surveillance, knew the quietest time of day in the early morning, and even knew how to place the only person who could take the blame in the most conspicuous position.
When Gwen heard these new discoveries in the fifth-floor meeting room, she first let out a long sigh of relief, but her first words were: "So this wasn't a random coincidence."
“No,” Lynn said.
"She was invited to the rooftop, I just happened to be there—"
Gwen stopped halfway through her sentence.
It's not "just right".
She looked up at Lynn, the color draining from her face.
“...Do you think they know I’m going?” she said softly.
The room fell silent for a second.
Lynn did not deny it immediately.
Because he had just thought of this as well, and he had thought of it earlier and more profoundly than she had.
Last night, Gwen said on the rooftop, "I'll be back tomorrow morning." Although her voice wasn't loud, she wasn't the only one on the platform. Violet was there, and so was the old lady reading a book. If someone overheard that, and was already planning a deal or a cover-up on the rooftop the next day, then including Gwen in the plan would be almost perfectly natural.
A female tourist from out of town went up to the rooftop alone early in the morning. She loved swimming and had no friends with her.
She is practically the perfect suspect.
Gwen looked at his expression and understood.
"Damn it." She cursed under her breath, her voice soft but firm. "That look she gave me last night wasn't just a casual glance. She was memorizing me."
Lynn nodded.
Gwen leaned back in her chair, her fingers holding the thermos turning slightly white.
"So I didn't just happen to be passing by," she said. "I was chosen."
The moment those words were spoken, the lingering sense of "accidental involvement" in the room completely dissipated.
The case is no longer just about "who killed Violet on the enclosed rooftop," but has become about "who pre-selected Gwen in the manor as a convenient cover."
This suddenly made things more private and more dangerous.
Lynn stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the back slope of the estate and the treeline through the blinds. Greyridge Estate was still beautiful during the day, almost too beautiful. The wind rustled the treetops gently, and the lake in the distance looked like a quiet sheet of metal. Anyone looking from the outside would only think that this was a place suitable for a vacation, horseback riding, daydreaming, and for gradually leaving behind the things brought from the city.
But now, he can already sense the crack hidden beneath that beautiful layer.
Some people arrived early, some were waiting here, and some used a precise deal and murder to put Gwen right in the line of fire. Worse still, that person is most likely not far away, or at least had been right under their noses until last night.
"Lynn," Gwen called out to him from behind.
He turned around.
Gwen's complexion was still not good, but her eyes were slowly hardening. She was always like this; her true panic only lasted a short time before turning into a sharper clarity.
"Do you remember what book the old lady reading last night was holding?" she asked.
"how."
“I just suddenly remembered,” Gwen said. “The book’s cover and binding look like an old hardcover edition, but the way she turned the pages is wrong.”
Lynn looked at her.
"What's the meaning."
“It’s like she’s not even looking at the content,” Gwen said. “It’s more like she’s looking at something stuck in the book. Also, she’s not turning the pages enough. She’s been sitting by the pool for so long and hasn’t even touched the pages.”
Lynn's mind flashed to the excessively clean room 608.
A woman posing as an old lady, seemingly reading quietly on the rooftop, might actually be observing, waiting, or confirming someone's location. That book might not be a book at all, but rather a concealment or a medium of communication. If Violet's appointment was with "R," and "R" is indeed Ruth Mason, then her presence on the rooftop last night might not have been a coincidence, but rather a pre-arranged reconnaissance trip.
“There’s another detail,” Gwen said. “When she left last night, she didn’t go straight through the glass door.”
"you sure?"
“I can’t say 100%,” Gwen frowned, “but I remember I had just surfaced from the water, and the light blew on me from that angle. I thought she was still in the corner, but when I looked again, she was gone, and the glass door hadn’t clicked. At the time, I just pretended I hadn’t noticed. Now that I think about it, she probably went to the side door on the other side of the lounge.” (End of Chapter)