bioinnovel Chapter 733 One-Shot Charge Forward
Chapter 733 One-Shot Charge Forward
“He touched the calibration plate,” Lynn said.
The sheriff frowned: "But why did he run? He found something; he could hand it over even if he didn't know what it was."
“Because someone came to take it,” Gwen said.
Lynn nodded: "And it wasn't a normal questioning, it scared him. Rowan said Violet wasn't gambling on luck, she had arranged two handovers with someone. That person might not be the mastermind, they could just be the end contact. Luca sent out the first batch of breakfast items and was the first to get his hands on the 507-related recyclables. If he accidentally found something hidden in a paper mat or milk carton, he might hide it first, wanting to figure out its value before doing anything else."
The sheriff said coldly, "Then someone else smelled it before us and went to get it."
Gwen looked at the wad of wet towel: "His hands were really burned. That means he tried to take it off himself, or was forced to."
The deputy sheriff had already peered out the window and said, "There are footprints in the alley, new ones."
"Chase them," the sheriff said.
The wind howled fiercely in the logistics alley, and the stench of sourness and detergent from the garbage compression area mingled together, assaulting the nostrils. A few wall lamps flickered on and off, casting crooked shadows of the stacked plastic crates and compression drums.
The group followed the mud and watermarks, and after less than a hundred meters, they heard something hit a metal door ahead.
"Someone's there!" the deputy sheriff shouted.
Lynn rushed around the corner first.
On a small platform outside the garbage compression area, a tall, thin young man was desperately trying to pull open the outer maintenance door. However, the door was blocked halfway by a police car outside, and he couldn't open it no matter what he did. Hearing footsteps, he turned around abruptly, his face deathly pale.
He was in his early twenties, with curly hair, his cap was gone, and his right hand was wrapped in a hastily applied bandage, with a little yellowish-brown medicine seeping out from the edges of the bandage.
It's Luca.
"No, don't come any closer!" His voice changed.
The sheriff raised his hand, not in a hurry to approach: "Put your hand down and turn around slowly."
Luca leaned against the door, his breathing so rapid it looked like he was about to vomit: "I didn't kill anyone! I didn't do anything!"
"Then why are you running?" Lynn asked.
Luca's eyes darted around, first to the sheriff, then to the deputy sheriff, and finally landed on Gwen's face. As if recognizing her, his expression worsened.
“I didn’t take that thing on purpose,” he said. “I thought it was a tip that the customer had slipped into the paper mat, or something else... I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”
Gwen stared at him: "Who came looking for you?"
Luca's lips turned pale, as if he had swallowed a hard breath: "A woman. Not the one at the front desk, but... she came to the back door this afternoon looking for me. She said she was a police officer and asked if anything was missing from the 507 bus this morning."
The sheriff's expression changed immediately: "Rachel."
"Did she show you her ID?" the deputy sergeant asked.
“No, no, there was only something that looked like a badge, I didn’t see it clearly.” Luca stammered, “She said if I handed it over, I wouldn’t get anything. I said I didn’t know what she was talking about, and she glanced at my hand and said, ‘Then you’d better remember quickly, or next time you won’t burn your hand.’”
Gwen looked at his bandaged right hand: "She did this?"
Luca's face twitched, and a genuine fear surfaced in his eyes: "When I collected the cups and saucers from room 507 this morning, I noticed that the milk carton was heavier than the others, and it felt like there was a layer of plastic stuffed inside. I secretly took it to the back of the cup washing room to take a look, and it turned out that the edge of that layer was sealed with something. I heated it with a lighter, and it suddenly got very hot... I was startled, and tore off a small piece of transparent film and a small piece of hard cardboard. I didn't dare to make a sound, and I hid it in the dormitory. After that woman came in the afternoon, I was even more afraid to stay there."
The sheriff stared at him: "Where is it?"
Luca's face paled further, and his eyes began to dart around.
Lynn said coldly, "Don't tell me you want to keep it for yourself."
"I...I didn't keep it!" Luca's voice trembled with anxiety. "I stuffed the hard card into...under the third blue box outside the compression area, and hid the thin piece in my shoe insole. But when I went back to the dorm to get it, the shoe was gone!"
Gwen frowned: "Who took your shoes?"
"I don't know!" Luca was almost in tears. "When I came back, there was a box of stomach medicine on the table, and a note that said, 'Only take your hard card downstairs, otherwise you won't even be able to leave the house.' I really don't know who left it!"
The sheriff immediately looked at the deputy sheriff: "Are the dormitories sealed off?"
"It's sealed off, no one's coming in anymore—"
Lynn, however, had already thought of another possibility: "It wasn't taken later; someone had been in there before he returned to his dorm."
“The caretaker said he came back and went downstairs again,” Gwen said. “If that person had been watching him, he could have taken the shoes while he was frantically looking for his bag.”
The sheriff gritted his teeth: "Take the hard card first."
The deputy sheriff and two officers immediately rushed to the third blue crate, lifted it up, and sure enough, pried out a small, hard black card, about the size of a fingernail, from the seam of the tape underneath. It was perfectly sealed and looked like some kind of transfer key.
"got it!"
Luca seemed to lose all strength and slid down the door a little: "I guess I won't die now..."
Gwen couldn't help but yell, "Is death all you think about?"
"You have no idea how they look at people!" Luca almost shouted. "That woman, and then that man—"
"What man?" Lynn asked immediately.
Luca paused, as if he had let something slip.
The sheriff said in a deep voice, "Explain yourself."
Luca's eyes reddened: "Last night, when I climbed out of my dorm window, there was a man waiting for me at the alley entrance. He didn't show his face, he was wearing a mask, and he just said, 'Don't bring thin cards, bring hard cards downstairs.' I asked him who he was, and he said, 'You saw me this morning, you just didn't remember me.'"
“The voice,” Lynn asked. “Can you tell who it is?”
Luca shook his head frantically: "It was pressed very low, I really don't know! But his hands smelled strongly of smoke, not ordinary cigarettes, like cigars."
Everyone sank down at the same time.
The pile of light gray cigarette ash mixed with darker cigar ash in front of the steps of the detached house indicated that more than one person had gone to see Raphael. Besides Ben, there was another man smoking a cigar.
Rowan?
No, when Rowan arrived at the other end of the narrow passage to meet Elena, he didn't smell strongly of smoke. Moreover, he seemed more like someone who did things personally, not someone who deliberately left behind a noticeable odor.
Gwen suddenly whispered, "Harold."
Lynn turned to look at her.
“The stable master,” Gwen said. “He smelled of cigars when he stopped Rachel over the woodline. I thought it was just his habit, but all the time he appeared was too coincidental. First, he saw me running down from the top floor this morning, and then he just happened to be able to intercept Rachel at the woodline.”
The sheriff frowned: "He helped us."
“He might also be assessing the situation,” Gwen said. “If Rachel had actually run into the scree slope, he could have chosen to stop her or let her disappear. But he stopped her because Thomas was already being held down, and Rachel escaping would have been disadvantageous for him.”
Lynn said in a deep voice, "There's one more thing. Violet said last night that he 'looks too much like a staff member,' and we've been thinking about Thomas. But someone who has been at the resort for years, knows every escape route, and isn't part of the front desk or security system can also give off that feeling."
“Moreover, the horse ranch, the logistics slope, and the outer forest line are all within Harold’s activity range,” the deputy sheriff added. “He has more convenient access to mountain paths than anyone else.”
The sheriff's face turned cold: "Find him." The intercom immediately erupted into chaos.
Where is Harold, the stable master?
"The horse farm just said they haven't seen anyone."
There are no dormitories, lounges, or staff restaurants.
Lynn looked at Luca: "Did you see him this morning?"
Luca shuddered, trying to remember: "I... when I was pushing the first cart of breakfast out, I saw someone smoking near the back door where they unload milk. His hat was pulled down low, and I didn't look up. Later that afternoon, the masked man's posture looked a bit like... but I can't be sure."
The sheriff couldn't wait any longer and turned to leave: "The horse farm."
The riding arena was even emptier at night than during the day. The wind blew through the fence, carrying a stronger smell of hay and earth than during the day, and the distant mountains and forests were a dark mass. A few arena lights were on, illuminating the empty riding arena in a cold white light. Several old yellow lamps hung from the eaves of the stables, casting a dark shadow on the wooden beams and reins.
Harold is not here.
The stable door was open, and two horses inside were pawing restlessly, as if they had just been startled by something. The desk lamp was on in the steward's office, and there was a half-smoked cigar in the ashtray. Next to it lay a maintenance ledger and a map of the forest trails surrounding the manor.
"You ran fast enough," the deputy sheriff cursed.
Lynn went inside and looked at the map of the forest on the wall.
The back of Grey Ridge Manor is against the mountain. Beyond the horse farm, there are not any open cycling paths, but several old forest roads used for maintenance. One leads to a scree slope, another to an old lookout tower, and the third cuts off to an abandoned forest ranger station next to the county road. Before the snow closes the mountain, people and vehicles can pass, but it gets extremely dark at night.
Gwen stood next to him and pointed to the northernmost line on the map: "If he wants to get rid of the car and the main road surveillance, this is the most reasonable route."
"Why?" the sheriff asked.
“Because this road leads out of the horse farm and over a shallow wetland slope, it’s difficult for cars to drive, but horses can walk,” Gwen said. “Harold just said something like, ‘You can’t outrun a horse, and you can’t outrun me.’ He said it so naturally, like the first thing he was thinking about was the horse, not the car.”
The sheriff muttered a curse under his breath, then raised his hand to press the intercom: "Block the north side forest road, the forest ranger station, the old lookout tower, and all lane entrances. Get the state police to use thermal imaging."
The deputy sheriff looked at Lynn: "Shall we go after them now?"
Lynn didn't answer, her gaze falling on the nail board in the corner of the administrator's room.
Hanging above were keys, a stable tag, and several old rein buckles. At the very bottom was an empty hook. Next to the hook was a label: Gray Rock.
"Which horse is the limestone?" Lynn asked.
A stable employee who had accompanied him immediately said, "Harold's own old horse, good for mountain roads, very steady. But it's not in its pen—"
Suddenly, a very light sound, like metal striking wood, came from outside.
Everyone turned around at the same time.
It wasn't deep inside the stables, but through the back door.
Lynn rushed out almost instantly.
Outside the back gate was a small courtyard leading to the back slope of the horse farm. The wooden gate was half-open, and the night wind made the door panel bounce gently against the wall. There were no lights in the courtyard, only a dim yellow light from under the eaves of the stables illuminating a short section of the road. There were fresh hoof prints and a drag mark on the ground, as if someone had hurriedly dragged something heavy.
Gwen crouched down and touched the wet mud around the drag mark, then looked up: "A box, or a saddlebag."
Lynn followed the drag marks and saw them end behind an abandoned feed bucket in the corner of the yard. He walked over and lifted the lid; the bucket was empty, but there was a cut-open insole at the bottom.
Everyone fell silent for a moment.
The transparent verification film should have been hidden inside the insole.
“Harold took it,” the sheriff said.
Luca, led away by the police officers, was ashen-faced: "I told you my shoes were missing..."
Lynn picked up the insole and gently ran her fingertip along the cut edge.
It wasn't cut open directly with a knife; it was more like a line was first drawn with a very thin, hot thread, and then it was torn apart.
The tool marks are exactly the same as those of today.
“He’s on Rachel’s side,” Gwen said.
“At least we can share tools,” Lynn said.
The deputy sheriff gripped his gun tightly: "He has the verification membrane but no hard card, so he can't open the module even if he comes out of the mountains."
“So he might not run away immediately.” Lynn looked up at the dark forest outside the house. “He might be waiting for an opportunity to get the hard card back, or just destroy it.”
The sheriff turned to the two state troopers who had just arrived and shouted, "Is the thermal imaging working?"
"The equipment is on the vehicle, coming right away."
A minute later, several people gathered around the mobile screen behind the state police car. The thermal imaging cut out the woodland north of the resort, with undulating layers of black, white, and gray. The main building and outbuildings looked like incandescent cubes, while the treeline was a cold, dark expanse. As the scan moved to the back slope of the horse ranch, a small, bright moving dot appeared in the image, slowly ascending along the old forest road to the north, next to another, larger thermal image.
“People and horses,” the state trooper said.
"How far is it from the old lookout tower?" the sheriff asked.
"It's less than a kilometer in a straight line, but the mountain road is difficult to travel."
Lynn stared at the direction the light was moving: "He's not going to the ranger station, he's heading towards the lookout tower."
Gwen frowned: "That place is abandoned a long time ago, what's the point of going there?"
Lynn's eyes darkened slightly: "The view is wide, the signal is intermittent, but it can be sent out from a higher position; moreover, there are old water tanks and timber warehouses under the watchtower, which can be used for short stops and burning things."
The sheriff didn't hesitate any longer: "Let's go."
Chasing someone into the mountains at night is a completely different matter from doing it during the day.
The police car could only go as far as the forest path entrance; beyond that, it was a walk. The wind whistled through the trees, carrying a damp chill. Beams of flashlight cleaved through the woods, illuminating pine needles, damp stones, crooked logs, and the occasional glint of a startled animal's eye. In the distance, the echo of horses' hooves crunching through the leaves drifted by, its direction indiscernible, yet the entire mountain seemed to amplify with each echo.
Gwen was forcibly kept at the intersection of Lin Road by the sheriff and was not allowed to go any further.
“You’ve had enough for tonight,” the sheriff said.
Gwen pursed her lips, but finally stopped, staring at Lynn: "Don't let anyone cut you with a string again."
“That’s quite a high bar,” Lynn said.
Gwen glared at him: "Then at least don't come back empty-handed."
Lynn didn't say anything more, turned around and followed the state troopers upstairs.
The forest path narrowed, becoming particularly slippery on the shallow slopes of the wetlands. Two state troopers led the way, one with a thermal imaging camera, the other familiar with the terrain. The heat sources on the screen shifted in and out of focus, indicating that the troopers were adjusting their route and not simply charging forward. (End of Chapter)