Chapter 405: Chapter 405
"Miss, you can’t be here," A policeman said to a girl, trying to step through the boundary as well.
"Where are your parents? Who are you here with?" the policeman asked the girl again, but she smiled and pointed to the back of the crowd,
"Wait, this place is not safe. Let me get someone to escort you back to them," the officer said, turning to one of his colleagues while muttering under his breath, "What’s wrong with parents leaving their kid like that!"
"You! over there... yes! You! Make sure that she-" The officer paused, frowning slightly as the little girl had ’disappeared’ in the mere seconds that it had taken him to call the other officer.
"The little girl, who was just here?"
"There’s no one there!"
"Yh, there’s no one here at this time, idiot! But she was here just a moment ago!" He shouted and slapped the back of his colleague’s head. While the two bickered, a little girl slipped to the back of the crowd. She was as unremarkable as could be, and therefore, not many people felt it weird to have a child her age at the scene. A tree-shaped tattoo on the back of her hand was reflected as she passed under one of the large lamps set up at the scene.
She smiled, thinking, ’This is getting more interesting...’ and then she stepped into the woods just beyond the crash site.
Her eyes lingered on one of the bodies that was being zipped up in a body bag. Her eyes lingered on the man’s lifeless face a bit before she turned and left. She had no words or thoughts on this, as every single person who visited her was made ’aware’ of the repercussions. Sacrificing a bit of one’s lifespan was always dicey, but greedy humans never thought beyond what they were looking for.
’If you sacrifice ten years of your life and you only have ten years left to live... you just die!
T-Vino Island Local Police Station...
All available officers had been deployed to the scene of the accident to comb through everything there. So far, most of the people had been accounted for but two.
"What day is it today? Why are all these freak accidents happening?" A tired voice asked no one in particular. In the room, a soft, steady hum from the fluorescent lights created a gentle glow that filled the space, while two coroners attentively examined two bodies on the table.
The first body, nearly decayed, presented an eerie contradiction; though time had clearly taken its toll, there was an unsettling preservation to its state, as if some unseen force had slowed the inevitable, which did not make sense in any way but, that was the facts, and this was a dilemma that these two coroners had to unravel. The second body lay disturbingly divided in half, the jagged edges of the wound suggesting the brutal force of a blunt object. The most peculiar thing about this body was that the coroners only had the top half of it, and the lower body was missing, like the two other people from the accident scene, who had been unaccounted for.
One of the coroners straightened, rubbing the back of his neck with a sigh. "I thought I was clocking out early tonight," he muttered, his voice heavy with fatigue. It had already been a tough few days, and he had been counting on an early night, but who would have thought?
He glanced at his colleague, who was already jotting down notes on a clipboard. "But this is the Thornston family... you know, right? Even if these two do not belong to them, the fact that one of the bodies here had something to do with an accident relating to them, we must get to the bottom of it as fast as we can. So, I suggest that you call your wife to bring you a change of underwear as it’s going to be a long night!
"Yep! They are definitely not to be messed with. Let’s just finish this before anything else shows up."
The other coroner nodded, his expression grim. "You’ve got that right. The way this one’s kept?" He gestured to the first body with his pen. "It’s not natural. Something’s off. Have you ever seen anything ?"
"Nope! I hope the dental identification comes in quickly so that we can at least find out who he is... That may help a lot."
The door to the examination room creaked open, and a detective stepped inside, his coat still on, showing that he had not even removed his coat after coming into the building. His eyes darted to the bodies, then back to the coroners, his face unreadable. "What have you got for me?"
The first coroner exhaled, flipping through his notes. "Hey, Leon. Prelim findings are... odd, to say the least. Body one—significant decomposition but unusually well-preserved features for the state it’s in. Almost like it’s been treated, but there’s no evidence of embalming or any preservative chemicals."
Leon nodded just as the door pushed open again, and Evans also walked. This was the body that had been called in earlier. Unfortunately, they had not had much chance to go over anything before they were called into the accident that was making the waves.
"What of the second?" Leon asked as he rounded the table to look at the remains.
The other coroner chimed in, "That’s the most interesting one. It was literally ripped apart by something blunt—probably heavy and swung with force. It was clean and ribbed off in one swing! The trauma’s consistent with a violent altercation, but here’s the kicker: the wounds don’t match anything standard. It’s almost as if—"
"As if someone improvised," Leon finished, his brow furrowing
"Not quite, but I think that is the closest to explaining what we are seeing here."
Leon stared at the bodies for a moment, his jaw tightening.
His mind went back to a video footage they had seen just before coming into the coroner’s office. The main question was how Royston had ended up in the Thornston family car since none of the CCTV footage had captured him in the car from the restaurant till the accident. It was very easy to assume that he was abducted, but then the video footage from the underground car park had provided all the explanation they needed:
Leon’s eyes narrowed, and he replayed the grainy footage in his mind’s eye. The timestamp flickered in the corner of the screen in his mind, and the scene unfolded in black-and-white clarity.
’A man appeared on the screen, pacing beside a parked car. His movements were deliberate but not rushed, as though he was checking for something—or someone. He ducked a few times to avoid people and this further gave confirmation that he had not been coerced. After a few moments, he stopped, glanced over both shoulders and then, to Leon’s astonishment, began fiddling with the car’s trunk. That took mere moments.
The latch clicked open, and the trunk lid rose slowly like a yawning mouth. The man, Royston, stood still for a second, his head turning sharply to scan his surroundings again. Then, with a resolve that sent a chill down the Leona and Evans’ spine, he climbed in.
"What the—" Evans had muttered under his breath, leaning in closer.
"Who, in their right mind, would go to such lengths to get into Chairman Ian’s wife’s car?"
In all this, Royston, from the footage, didn’t hesitate. He folded his legs in with an unnerving precision, pulled the trunk lid down over himself, and disappeared from view. The latch clicked shut.
The footage ended with the car sitting eerily still, its sleek form betraying no hint of the bizarre act that had just taken place. It also showed that the driver had come to the car after this act.
Leon and Evans had replayed this several times after retrieving the footage from the restaurant, but no anomaly had been found. Royston had indeed done all that himself! However, this did not mean that it was not disturbing to watch. Each frame only deepened the sense of unease settling in Leon’s gut. Why would anyone willingly lock themselves in a car trunk?
He did not know how many times he had rewound it again and again, pausing to scrutinize Royston’s face, his posture, his every move. Nothing in his expression suggested fear or coercion. If anything, Royston’s calm demeanour suggested he was following some inexplicable plan of his own design.
Leon leaned against the nearest wall, running a hand down his face. "This doesn’t make any sense," he murmured, but even as he said it, a part of him knew this was only the beginning of something far stranger.
"A car trunk could not truncate him , so what exactly happened?!" one whispered.
".... Yep, considering that the trunk was almost intact... this is indeed strange!"
"This family doesn’t just invite trouble—they attract it like moths to a flame," Evans murmured,
"Keep working. I need your full report before sunrise." Leon demanded and turned to leave.
The two coroners exchanged uneasy glances before returning to their grim task, but before the door had fully closed behind the two detectives, their phones dinged at the same time.
"Didn’t you say that the .... I mean, I think you need to see this!"
Leon was almost at his wit’s end. There was a lot on his plate... and as the investigation of the accident had been handed to him and Evans yet again, he needed an answer to a pressing question before the Thornston family descended on him:
"If Shelby Monroe had been in the car moments before the crash, then where was she and her assistant/bodyguard?"
As he thought of this, Leon said grimly, "Just say it!"
"Dental records of the initial body show that this is Tyler Locke."
"What!!! Tyler?!!!!!"
This was too unexpected! What day was this? Why were there so many revelations? How? When? Many questions danced around in their heads, but there was no obvious answer yet!
As Leon and Evans paled out, the small TV at the back continued reporting...., and the information only vaguely resonated with them in that room
"Two people are yet to be found, and this is in the person of Shelby Monroe and her assistant, only known by Murray!"
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