Chapter 466: Murder?
Chapter 466: Murder?
The night passed by swiftly. Chester, as usual, ate a bunch of fast food and fell asleep under the influence of alcohol. When he opened his eyes again, it was already the next morning.
Looking at the time on the phone, Chester was so anxious that he did not even have time to wash his face. He grabbed his overalls and rushed toward the door of his house.
It was only ten minutes before work.
Riding in his tattered pickup, Chester rushed to the construction site in a hurry, only to find that the construction site was full of police cars, blocking the main traffic route.
Getting out of the car, Chester immediately walked toward his post, but when he reached the police cars, he was stopped. The policeman in charge of crowd control motioned for him to stop.
“Hey, buddy, don’t you see that the police are working on a case here? If you want to go there, it looks like you have to take a detour.”
The police officer stopped Chester and notified him.
“Man, what happened inside?”
Chester asked immediately, while constantly looking inside.
“This matter has nothing to do with you. Please take a detour.”
The officer did not explain and only urged him on.
Chester grunted in assent. He still could not help poking his head in, only to see that not far away, the foreman who usually managed him was busy rushing about, following a man in a suit while explaining something. At the same time, there was an ingratiating look on his face.
Although it was the first time that Chester was seeing that man in the suit, he knew from the employee roster that this man was the person in charge of dozens of nearby warehouses.
The position of this person was probably that of a manager and his superior would be the general manager of the entire Los Angeles warehouse area. Nonetheless, these positions were unattainable to Chester.
However, these thoughts only flashed by in his mind because something more interesting happened before his eyes — three or four police cars had blocked the passage. Moreover, outside the door of the warehouse where Chester had personally unloaded the goods yesterday, was a web of yellow warning tapes. Only a few police officers who were in charge of inspecting the scene came in and out with their cameras.
Seeing this scene, Chester immediately understood something. He gloated at the sight of his sweating foreman, wondering maliciously what error was made by his superior.
However, just then, the foreman suddenly turned his head and saw Chester. Chester only saw the other man’s eyes lit up and then he waved his hand quickly. “Hey, Chester, come here quickly. What are you doing gaping over there?”
Chester reluctantly gestured to the foreman as he looked at the policeman. At that, the policeman was willing to let him in.
Chester felt a little uncomfortable. He crossed the barrier of police cars and walked toward the foreman. When he reached the man, he was about to speak when the foreman said eagerly, “Chester, you seemed to be the last to leave yesterday night. Did you see Leon before you left?”
“Leon?”
Chester was stunned and a thought suddenly flashed in his mind. Could it be that this big hoo-hah was related to Leon?
Thinking of this, he did not know why he felt a pang of guilt, like a kid who did something wrong, so he quickly said half-heartedly, “I didn’t see him. It was already 6:30 when I finished unloading the last batch of goods. Leon should be inside the warehouse at the time, and I didn’t see him.”
“Are you telling the truth?”
At this moment, the man in the suit and leather shoes suddenly spoke and asked in an inquiring tone, “Did you not see Leon before you left last night?”
Chester shook his head quickly and at the same time, looked at the man blankly.
“Oh, right, I forgot to make the introductions. This is Mr. Connor, the person in charge of our team.”
The foreman quickly explained, “Chester, if you have any clues, you must share them, do you understand?”
“Got it.”
Chester nodded and then asked a little awkwardly, “What happened to Leon? Could it be that he...”
“Leon is dead.”
Before he could complete the question, the foreman said with some regret, “Joseph discovered him this morning. He found that the goods in Warehouse 9 weren’t moved all night, so he ran in to look for Leon, only to find that Leon was dead...”
“How did he die?”
Chester’s heart sank and he asked, downcast.
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
Before the foreman answered, Connor spoke first, cutting off the conversation between the two. He then looked at the foreman, “I’ll leave things here to you. The police said that Warehouse 9 needs to be cordoned off temporarily. In that case, make sure everyone avoids this warehouse and goes to work in other warehouses. When Joseph comes back after giving his statement, let him start work immediately.”
“Understood.”
The foreman replied.
After that, Connor glanced at Chester again. Chester quickly lowered his head, then saw that the other man had immediately turned around and left the scene completely.
“Phew...”
When the person in charge had left, Chester saw the foreman secretly breathed a sigh of relief, after which the foreman waved his hand and said to Chester, “You also heard Mr. Connor’s words. For now, don’t move the goods in Warehouse 9. You can go to work in Warehouse 12.”
“Okay.”
Chester agreed and left without further questions.
When he climbed onto the crane in Warehouse 12, his mind was still dizzy. Maybe it was because he did not sleep well last night or the news of Leon’s death in the morning. In short, Chester’s work all day seemed to take place in a haze. He just mechanically unloaded the goods brought by the trucks.
A day’s work was not leisurely at all. Chester only rested for an hour during lunch and then worked the rest of the entire day. When the last truck had cleared all the goods and left, it was evening again before he realized it.
Chester was accustomed to this kind of busyness. He kept his head empty of thoughts and finished his work. When he climbed down from the crane, he realized that there were no police officers in front of the road outside Warehouse 9. The warehouse door was locked, with just the remaining strips of yellow warning tape still surrounding the door.
After a day’s investigation, the group of policemen had also got off work.
Chester shrugged. He walked toward where he had parked, but when he walked past the door of Warehouse 9, his heart suddenly leaped.
He had the key to Warehouse 9.
At this moment, Chester’s breathing became a little short. He did not know why he was so excited. Maybe it was the instinct for risk that was suppressed in his bones for too long?
His life had been repetitive for too long. So long that he was even used to it, but when an opportunity for exploration and adventure was placed in front of him, he discovered how tempting and enthralling this opportunity was to him...
Now that the police were off work and almost all the other workers were off work too, no one would know if he visited the crime scene. Besides, he would just go in and take a look to see what happened. What was the problem?
Chester took a deep breath. He only felt the blood in his body boiling. When was the last time he felt this way? It must be back when he was young, right? Time had worn down his mind and smoothed out everything. Now he was resurrected!
He struggled with this decision thousands of times in his heart. In short, when Chester came back to his senses, he was already standing dazedly and inexplicably in front of the door of Warehouse 9. Then he touched his pocket, he felt the key to Warehouse 9.
“Just take a look, one look will do...”
Chester reassured himself in a low voice. Then, he no longer hesitated as he stepped across the obstructing tapes. After that, he took out the key and inserted it into the employee door by the main gate of Warehouse 9.
“Click!”
With a crisp sound, the employee door suddenly opened, revealing the dark interior space.
A familiar smell of damp and musty humid greeted him.
Chester had long been acquainted with this smell. He looked at the sky but saw that the sun in the west had sunk halfway into the mountain. Obviously, it was getting late. In that case, Chester decided to just look inside and leave without delay.
Thinking of this, Chester walked into the already dim warehouse and looked down the rows of goods on either side.
In the gloom, the rows of goods were like ghostly shadows in the night, dreamlike and illusory. Only when the setting sun shone in through the few windows in the warehouse and landed upon the goods, a special light was formed.
The interlacing of light and darkness created a unique mysterious atmosphere, which further intensified the illusion of adventure for Chester.
“Patter, patter, patter...”
Chester walked step by step. His footsteps echoing in the silent warehouse, but he did not see anything even when he had walked into more than half the depth of the warehouse.
Leon’s corpse would not be there, but there should be something left at the scene of the corpse, such as... The outline of the corpse’s posture when the person died and the yellow cards placed next to various suspicious traces, and so on.
Did he go the wrong way?
Chester wore a puzzled look. He thought about it and suddenly recalled the place where Leon had brought him to before he got off work last night. It was a corner of the warehouse with a lot of steel pillars. Could it be the place where Leon had died?
Thinking of this, Chester stopped immediately, then turned around, and walked toward the junction in the pathways between the cargos.
This time, Chester finally guessed correctly. He found what he was looking for not far away from where they had both stood yesterday — a silhouette of a corpse outlined by a white line and three yellow markers next to it that indicated certain positions.
Here was where Chester died.
When he saw all this, Chester took another deep breath and tamped down his pounding heart. He took out his phone and switched on the flashlight mode so that he could see all the details on the ground as clearly as possible.
As he looked to where the beam from the mobile phone shone, Chester was mystified. From where he stood, the white outline on the ground resembled Leon’s figure. Leon was lying on the ground when he had died. His limbs stretched out straight and his entire body laid out on the ground in the shape of the letter “A”.
Nonetheless, the one rather peculiar thing was that the neck of this human-shaped white silhouette seemed a little unusually long...
It was as if the silhouette was drawn by elementary school students who could not draw simple strokes. The white lines composing the figure were very proportional, whether in terms of arms or legs, but when it came to the part above the shoulders, it was a little weird. There, the neck was much longer than the average person’s, and it was slightly curved, just like the neck of a duck. It looked very disharmonious.
Chester was a little puzzled. He would swear on his mother’s grave that Leon did not have such a long neck. If his neck was so long, he would have applied for the Guinness World Records long ago, instead of doing the same kind of work from five to nine as Chester did.
In that case, was it because the policeman in charge of drawing the line had a wobbly hand or was the deceased not Leon, but someone else?
Chester scratched his head, thinking uncertainly.
However, just as he scratched his head with the hand holding the phone, the light from the phone suddenly shone into the corner of a pile of goods on the side. In that corner, a figure flashed past!
“!”
Chester broke out in a cold sweat suddenly. He quickly held the phone steady and shone it into the corner. He only relaxed when he could see what the figure was.
It turned out to be a false alarm...
That figure was nothing but an angel statue.
The statue seemed to have been carved from marble, portraying a vivid, lifelike angel figure. It had soft curly hair that was tightly cropped to the head and there was a circular headband on the top of the head.
The arms and fingers of the statue were very realistic and fleshed out, and the body was draped in folds of gauze that angels were often dressed in. The most conspicuous part was the pair of wings that were folded, as soft as feathers...
The only shame was that the angel’s hands tightly covered her face, making it difficult to see her holy eyes and face.
As he walked to the statue, Chester patted his chest and heaved a sigh of relief.
“Huh...”
Even so, Chester’s mind flickered suddenly and he faintly remembered that when he met Leon yesterday, Leon seemed to have been observing a relief sculpture? Plus, upon that relief, there seemed to be a few such angels covering their eyes?
Thinking of this, Chester immediately turned around and walked into the depths of the warehouse based on his memory of yesterday. He wanted to find the mural painted on the steel beam from yesterday.
Soon, he came to the place where Leon had brought him before.
There were steel beams placed together everywhere. Dozens of them were stacked together, occupying his field of vision. While Chester raised his head and looked at one of the steel beams —
Sure enough, on this steel beam, three angels were covering their eyes, standing or squatting. This was the same as the sculpture he saw before in terms of style and shape.
‘Hold on...’
Chester, who was about to heave a sigh of relief, suddenly froze. He frowned, feeling that something was wrong because, in his memory, there should be four angels on the mural, two of them squatting on the ground, and the other two standing.
Nevertheless, now, there were only two squatting angels and one standing angel.
Did he remember it wrongly?
Chester turned his head with some doubts and looked in the direction from which he had come. At this time, the sky was getting darker and there was only gloom from where he had arrived.
However, the reason Chester looked there was not that it was dark, but that he suddenly had a baffling idea. Could it be that the angel sculpture he saw just now was the one missing from the mural?
Did the angel come out of the mural?