wjnovel Chapter 726 This is not an ordinary storyline!
Chapter 726 This is not an ordinary storyline!
On the other side of the rooftop lounge, there is a corridor connecting to the internal equipment area.
Lynn didn't say anything more, and turned to walk out.
Gwen asked from behind, "Where are you going?"
“Find that book,” he said.
When Lynn went out, the heating in the fifth-floor corridor was on full blast, but there was still a lingering chill in the air.
The policewoman outside the door glanced at him and asked, "Where are you going?"
"Top floor."
"Sheriff, please—"
“You can call him now,” Lynn said. “And tell him that Gwen remembered the route the old lady took last night, and that the book she was carrying was strange.”
The policewoman frowned, clearly assessing whether it was worth stopping him. She ultimately stepped aside and pulled out her walkie-talkie: "Sheriff Colby, he's gone downstairs. Yes, that guy. He said he's going to the rooftop."
Lynn didn't stop and went straight into the elevator.
As the elevator ascended, he looked at his reflection in the crack in the door. The shadow was steady, but his eyes were too cold. He knew why Gwen had warned him not to become the worst version—the version who would see everyone in his way as an obstacle and dismiss every word of "procedure" as nonsense. But now he had to hold back. If he lost his composure even slightly, the sheriff would immediately exclude him from the core leads.
The elevator dinged as it opened, revealing a much emptier rooftop than it had been that morning. The police tape was still in place, some water had been drained from the pool area, and forensic personnel were meticulously inspecting the cracks along the western side of the floor. The faint smell of disinfectant mingled with the musty metallic odor, making the situation even more unpleasant.
The sheriff stood at the entrance of the glass lounge, holding a cup of coffee that had gone cold.
“You came quickly.” He glanced at Lynn. “I thought you would at least go have a smoke first.”
“I don’t smoke,” Lynn said.
"Looks like he'll smoke." The sheriff placed the paper cup on the windowsill. "Gwen remembered something."
“The old lady’s book last night was strange. Also, she probably didn’t leave through the glass door, but entered the inner corridor through a side door on the other side of the lounge.”
The sheriff, who had initially seemed somewhat dismissive, raised his eyes after listening and said, "Why didn't she say that earlier?"
“Because she didn’t remember at the time.” Lynn looked at him. “If you found a body with its neck cut open in the pool at 6:50 this morning, and could reconstruct every detail of last night to the minute a few hours later, then you should go to seminary, not be a sheriff.”
The sheriff snorted, surprisingly not angry, and simply tilted his head slightly inside: "Come with me."
The lounge wasn't large, with light-colored recliners and a few low tables by the window, through which the glaring mountain sunlight still streamed in. At the far end on the other side, there was indeed a narrow door, its color similar to the wall panels, easily missed if not carefully observed. Behind the door was a service corridor, dimly lit, with two carts of spare towels and disinfectant supplies piled against the wall.
A deputy sheriff was squatting near the door lock. When he stood up, he shook his head at them: "There are no signs of forced entry on the lock, but there is a very shallow scratch on the bottom, which doesn't look like it was made by normal opening and closing of the door."
“What does it look like?” Lynn asked.
The deputy sheriff gestured with his glove to indicate the thickness: "It's like someone stuffed a very thin film inside, and it lasted once."
“A magnetic plate or a latch gasket,” Lynn said.
The sheriff looked at him: "Your federal government teaches this too?"
“We’ll encounter a much more troublesome door than this.”
The deputy sheriff added, seemingly unconvinced, "It could just be aging."
“Maybe not.” Lynn casually moved the towel cart aside a little, his gaze sweeping over the ground and baseboard. He squatted down and pinched a small black object from the corner with two fingers. It was only the size of a fingernail, thin and soft.
"What is this?" the sheriff asked.
“The corner of a rubber door wedge.” Lynn placed it on the deputy sheriff’s evidence bag. “It was cut. Someone used it to pry open the door to prevent it from locking completely.”
The sheriff's expression finally turned serious: "Which side?"
“This is the service corridor.” Lynn glanced at the narrow door. “Someone tampered with the door last night, so we don’t need access control records this morning.”
The sheriff turned to her: "Get all the CCTV footage from last night to this morning in this corridor. Also, ask the security supervisor if anyone knows about this side door and who usually uses it."
After the deputy sheriff left, Lynn looked into the depths of the corridor.
The service corridor was narrow; a left turn at the end led to the equipment floor, while a right turn led to the staff staircase. The air carried the dry smell of bleach and residual heat from the machines. The anti-slip mats on the floor were older than those outside, a dark gray that didn't easily leave complete footprints, but along one section against the wall, very fine scratches could still be seen, as if something hard had dragged across them.
Lynn followed the trail.
The sheriff followed behind: "You think that book is still here?"
“If she really uses it as a shell or to hide things, she might not take it with her when she runs away,” Lynn said. “Taking it away is risky; leaving it in the familiar internal passageway is safer.”
"That is, if she has the opportunity to come back and get it."
"The premise is that she never intended to go far in the first place."
The two walked to a small platform in front of the equipment room. To the left was the ventilation room, and to the right was a cleaning room that was half-open. Inside the door were buckets, cleaning agents, spare vacuum cleaners, and a folding poolside maintenance cart. Lynn stopped, his gaze falling on the large, dark blue trash can at the very back.
A young forensic scientist was looking down and rummaging through things when he looked up and saw them: "I've already looked here. It's mainly used gloves and disposable cleaning cloths."
"Where's the book?" Lynn asked.
"No."
Lynn didn't speak, but looked directly at the narrow gap behind the trash can, right next to the wall.
The area was half-blocked by the maintenance vehicle, making it very dark; it would be easy to miss unless someone deliberately bent down to look. He reached out and dragged the vehicle a few inches out, the wheels making a dull thud as they rolled over the ground. Sure enough, behind the vehicle, in that narrow gap only half an arm's width wide, was a rectangular object.
Lynn pulled it out with his gloves.
It is a book.
The dark green hardcover with slightly worn gold foil stamping reads "The Varieties of Religious Experience." The edges are worn just right, like an old book that an older person might casually pick up and flip through.
The sheriff muttered under his breath, "There really is."
Lynn placed the book on the workbench beside him, not flipping through it immediately, but first examining the spine and edges. The pages had a slightly unnatural neatness on three sides, as if they had been recut. He pressed his fingertip on the cover, and felt a hollow bounce from the bottom of the cover.
"Don't touch it." The forensic examiner immediately came over.
“I’m not prepared to open the evidence for you.” Lynn withdrew his hand. “But this isn’t a normal book.” Before putting it into the transparent bag, the forensic examiner couldn’t help but shine a light on it from the side. As soon as the light shone in, the difference in thickness between the pages was immediately exposed—the middle was clearly hollowed out, like a shell.
The sheriff stared at the thing for two seconds, then turned to Lynn: "Your sister is right."
"She's usually right."
"That sounds like something an older brother would say, not like something an agent would say."
"I'm working with both my identities today."
The sheriff's lips twitched, as if he wanted to laugh but was too lazy to. He gestured for someone to take the book away for fingerprinting and trace evidence, then looked at Lynn: "Do you still think that 'Ruth Mason' was just scouting?"
“I think she was testing the route last night to make sure Gwen would show up here in the early morning as she said.”
The sheriff looked up: "You think she'd been eyeing Gwen since last night?"
“She stayed here too long last night,” Lynn said. “Not the kind of long stay a guest would have, like ‘I’m just here to look around.’ She was keeping track of who would come, who would linger, and who would say anything unnecessary. She heard Gwen say she would be back this morning.”
"So she conveniently put your sister in the police station."
“It wasn’t just a casual thing.” Lynn looked down the service corridor. “It was more like they just picked her out of the blue.”
The sheriff paused for a moment, reached for the cold coffee, took a sip, frowned, and put it down: "I'm starting to dislike this place."
You shouldn't have liked it this morning.
Just then, the deputy sheriff strode back with a tablet in hand: "Found it."
“What?” the sheriff asked.
“Between 10:40 and 11:30 last night, the internal security camera in the lounge captured the old lady looking towards this side door twice. At 10:58, she got up, with a book tucked under her arm, and walked from the innermost part of the glass lounge—then the image was blocked by potted plants for two seconds. Two seconds later, she was no longer in the outer lounge.”
"Did you hear the door open or close?" Lynn asked.
“The audio is poor, but the glass door didn’t make a sound.” The deputy sheriff swiped the screen. “Also, earlier, at 9:12 last night, she came out from the staff staircase, not from the elevator lobby or the glass door.”
The sheriff's face darkened: "She was already using the service lane last night."
Lynn asked, "What about this morning?"
The deputy sheriff then recounted a few more scenes: "At 6:28 AM, the old security camera outside the equipment room captured a figure wearing a hat and a dark coat, with a slender build, coming up the stairs carrying a long, narrow bag. The image was too blurry to make out the face. At 6:31 AM, there was a half-second reflection on the camera at the end of the corridor, as if a side door had been pushed open and then quickly closed. At 6:33 AM, no one else came out. At 6:56 AM, it was the same figure again, coming down the staff stairs, this time wearing a lighter-colored coat."
"The old lady is gone, and a skinny man came out instead," the sheriff said.
“Or maybe the old lady was just naturally thin,” Lynn said.
The sheriff looked up at him.
Lynn didn't explain further, only saying, "608 has been checked. It's not on the surface of the room, it's the drain, the trash, behind the bathroom mirror, and inside the mattress."
"The forensic evidence is being dismantled," the deputy sergeant replied.
"Tell them to focus on finding wig fibers, latex, skin glue, age spot pigments, and makeup removers."
The deputy sheriff paused for a moment, then looked at the sheriff. The sheriff simply said, "Do as he says."
Lynn walked to the end of the corridor and pushed open the door to the equipment room.
It was hotter inside than in the corridor; the thermostat and filtration pump hummed softly, like a breath pressed against the wall. Thick pipes ran along the ceiling, and a diagram of the pool's water circulation system was pasted on a metal cabinet door. A middle-aged maintenance worker in overalls was talking to a forensic examiner; seeing them enter, he instinctively took off his hat.
“This is Alvin,” the sheriff said. “He’s been the one operating the equipment room all day.”
Alvin nodded: "Sheriff."
Lynn's gaze fell on the pool water circulation diagram: "At what time should the strong flow switch be performed at the west return water inlet?"
Alvin was taken aback: "What?"
"The constant temperature pool doesn't circulate at the same rate all the time. There's a stronger flush in the early morning to prevent sediment buildup in the stagnant water areas overnight." Lynn looked at the diagram. "What time?"
Alvin then realized he hadn't asked casually, and walked over, placing his finger on the drawing: "It automatically cuts once a day at 6:55, lasting for three minutes. The backflow in the northwest corner will be a little stronger than usual because that area is prone to accumulating fallen leaves and small debris."
Lynn's eyes darkened.
The sheriff immediately understood: "The body wasn't where Gwen had seen it."
Alvin was a little confused: "I don't know anything about the body—"
“Gwen came up at 6:40 this morning and didn’t see anyone until 6:57,” Lynn said. “If the body was originally stuck in the backwater dead zone in the northwest corner, or was fixed by something, the position would loosen when the strong current started at 6:55.”
The forensic personnel had already turned to look at the photos that had just been taken near the western pipeline entrance.
The sheriff asked Alvin, "Is there anywhere in the northwest corner where someone can be trapped?"
Alvin hesitated for a moment: "Normally, no, but there's a decorative backwater groove behind that pillar. The water surface reflects so much light that you can't see the bottom. A little further in, there's a maintenance grille—it's not for people to see, it's for the equipment workers to clear debris from the side."
“Take us to see it.”
The group quickly returned to the northwest corner of the pool. With the water level lowered, more white porcelain and gray stone were exposed at the edge of the shallow western section. Alvin crouched behind a decorative stone pillar and parted a semi-hidden metal grille: "This is it. Behind the grille is a backwater buffer zone; normal people wouldn't look into it."
Lynn crouched down and pressed the edge of the grille through his gloves. A small section of thin black thread was wrapped around the corner below the grille, so thin it was almost invisible. He didn't pull it directly, but simply turned his head and called to the forensic pathologist, "Here."
The forensic examiner bent down and looked at it for two seconds, his breathing becoming lighter: "This is not an ordinary line."
The sheriff crouched down as well: "Like fishing line?"
“Stronger than fishing line,” Lynn said. “And heat resistant. You can see the edges are slightly curled from being rubbed by the heat.”
The forensic investigator had already used tweezers to pick up the section of wire and then looked under the grille: "There are scratches here, like thin metal scraped across the grille."
As Lynn looked at that spot, a picture instantly formed in his mind.
Around 6:30, someone entered the western blind spot through the service passage and met with Violet. The negotiations broke down, or perhaps the deal was a trap. The killer struck Violet in the back of the neck with an extremely fine cutting tool, rendering her incapacitated instantly. Instead of letting the body float directly in an open area, the killer used some kind of thin thread to briefly secure her to the edge of the northwest corner buffer ditch, allowing the body to be hidden by the water and shadow. At 6:55, the thread was repeatedly tightened; when it broke or loosened, the body was carried out by the current and slid towards the shallow water. Gwen happened to be walking this way at that moment and saw the scene that had been "newly discovered."
In this way, the timing, the line of sight, and Gwen's failure to notice immediately all make sense. (End of Chapter)