Detective Agency of the Bizarre
Chapter 510 - 510 Twenty-nine

510: Twenty-nine.

The Missing Half 510: Twenty-nine.

The Missing Half A stilted cabin stood at the foot of the mountains, by the coast.

A police cordon surrounded the area, and the ground around the hut was littered with chaotic footprints and the sound of the tide.

“Huff…

this is the place,” Richa gasped as he tugged at his collar, out of breath.

“If you’d arrived any later…

the bodies would have almost been eaten by those damn rats…

the rats.”

As a police officer, his physical condition was worrisome.

“What was this place originally for?”

Lu Li gazed toward the secluded mountains not far away, where some birds were circling in the air.

“It was a lookout cabin, hey you guys!

You’re running too far!”

Richa suddenly shouted toward the shore, and several children ran back giggling.

He shook his head helplessly and told Lu Li, “There used to be wild beasts that would run into town from the mountains, so a few lookout cabins were built at the base of the mountains for easy alerting in case of trouble.

Later, the beasts got smarter and didn’t dare to venture into town anymore, so the lookout cabins were abandoned.

This place then became a shelter for homeless vagrants.”

He led Lu Li toward the police line, explaining, “One of the victims was a vagrant.

He must have lived here for a while until he was killed a week ago.”

Lifting the police tape to enter, Richa looked around at the base of the wooden stairs.

Not seeing any new footprints, he went straight up to open the cabin door.

Squeak—

The sound, far more jarring than the creak of the stairs, grated on the nerves and then stopped abruptly.

The swollen wooden door, damp from the moisture, was roughly pushed open by Richa with great effort.

Lu Li stood at the foot of the stairs observing the surroundings.

There was nothing noteworthy except for a small overturned wooden boat on the beach not far away.

Richa looked back at him, and Lu Li stepped up into the cabin.

The cabin was small, as it appeared from outside.

After fitting in a desk, a bed, and a cabinet, there was barely enough space left for one person to move around freely.

There was a burnt mark near the door, and just above the desk was a window, facing the beach where the tide surged in.

“We discovered this vicious incident a week later, meaning two days ago when we found the cabin, the person inside had already been dead for a week.”

Richa stood by the door, likewise not disturbing the crime scene, and continued, “It all started when a townsman came to the police.

His father had gone hunting in the Falling Leaves Mountain Range and hadn’t returned for a week.

Our search team, formed together with the townspeople, combed the whole mountain but couldn’t find him.

However, an officer passing this cabin smelt a strong decay outside the door.

We broke in and found three bodies.”

Richa pointed in succession to the side of the bed, the burn mark on the floor, and the half-closed wardrobe: “The murderer, the postman, the missing hunter who was a victim for a week, and that vagrant.”

The sea breeze had dispersed the once-prevailing smells of decay and dampness from the room, and at least Lu Li couldn’t smell anything.

“The scene was horrendous, the hunter’s charred body was on the cabin floor, with a torch stuffed into his mouth, the kind that was poked into the chest cavity.

We also found remnants of unfinished burning ropes around, and there were signs of struggle on the body, indicating that the victim was set on fire while restrained.”

[“I set the hunter on fire, and he was happily smiling.”]

Lu Li silently compared the crime scene described by Richa with the contents of the diary.

Richa continued while looking through the report, “At the time, a gaunt body was sitting by the side of the bed, the murderer, the postman.

His legs were pinned to the floor with a harpoon.”

[The bed is dozing off, and so am I, so is the hunter.

I climbed onto the bed, but the bed pushed me off.]

[Shadows flit about recklessly, I speared one with a harpoon, and it became obedient.]

“The eyes had been gouged out and stuffed into the clock.

The time of death was close to when the burned bodies were found.

However, it definitely happened after the hunter was burned to death.”

[Someone knocked on the door, the clock came back.

I told it to hurry on, or the day wouldn’t break.

It wanted my eyes, I gave them, and it tricked me.]

“Due to the continuous heavy rain after the rainy season started, the cabin became damp and moldy, especially since a week had already passed, which was detrimental to our evidence collection.

After a thorough search of the scene, we found a new body in a wardrobe in the corner of the room.

It was the vagrant.” Richa paused slightly, his tone carrying a deeper meaning: “He was wearing a sweater, you know what I mean.”

[The sweater is peeping from the wardrobe, it’s knitting another sweater, I can’t fit in it, it’s meant for other sweaters.]

“The body had been dead for some time and was in a state of giant observation, making it impossible to determine its specific appearance.

At the time, we could only identify the gender and the brown sweater on the upper body.

Residents said they had seen the vagrant wearing this sweater, and indeed, no one else in town had gone missing, so we concluded that this guy was the vagrant.”

“Having spoken about the victim, let’s talk about the murderer, the postman,” Richa said, pointing towards the bed where a puddle of dark brown bloodstains remained.

“He worked at the post office.

The killer’s father and neighbors told us his son had always seemed normal until a few days before the incident.

That’s when the postman found a diary in a seaside cabin.

Yes, this cabin and that diary.”

“The killer’s father recalled that on the night his son read the diary, he suddenly started having hallucinations, saying he heard whispers.

His father didn’t pay much attention at the time because the room had poor sound insulation.

It might have been voices from the neighbor or the radio.

His mental state then took a rapid downturn, frequently talking to himself and claiming to hear the sound of the waves and low whispers.

Then, the next day, the murderer disappeared.”

“Because the murderer worked at the post office and often left early, not returning for several days, his father wasn’t too worried.

Until we knocked on his door.”

The case came to a halt, with no progress whatsoever.

On the surface, it looked like a person had gone mad and killed a hunter and a vagrant.

But the police didn’t think so and suspected that the case might be related to a cult or something peculiar.

They contacted Lady Merlin from the Spiritual House and reported the matter to the United Organization of Exorcists.

“My colleague, who went mad after reading the diary, noticed something odd,” Richa said as he handed the report to Lu Li.

“In the last line.”

Lu Li looked at the last part of the report where there was a trace of a marker, and at its end, a deeply colored dot as if the officer who wrote it was puzzled.

[Strange, why didn’t the suspect have giant observation.]

“The following are photos taken and autopsy results,” Richa said.

Lu Li turned to the appendix on the last page, which contained photos from the crime scene, photos of the suspect, and autopsy data.

Due to the case’s involvement with something bizarre, the Police Station took great care with it, the photographs and the forensic evidence were the proof.

After silently going through it, Lu Li handed the report back to Richa and looked around the cramped cabin again.

“Where are the Blood-Colored Tentacles?”

Anna asked.

Lu Li frowned slightly and shook his head.

The Blood-Colored Tentacles are absent from the roof, yet not within the wooden cabin in sight.