芒種 [4] / [5]
Alexander could tell he was about to hang up, and called out.
"Wait! Just wait a goddamn minute! What the hell is up with the knife? My coworker, her blood is comingled with that of a criminal. What does that mean?"
Alexander asked, breathlessly. This was knawing at him, and he had to know. The caller paused, seemingly expecting the question, and, based on his breathing and the thinly-veiled glee emanating from his mouth as he next spoke, he seemed quite excited.
"It's the cost of doing business,"
he responded, with conviction, cutting the call.
A few seconds later, an address appeared in his text messages: 22 LaCoste Blvd.
No time to doubt now. He drove there right away with Cynthia and some auxiliary officers to help them search. The location wasn't very far, yet he'd never set foot there. Obviously, it was a small deserted building, and, behind it, the road blended into deep forest. All of them walked the road. After quite a long while, one found a weird looking white rock beside the road.
"There's a rock!" he shouted,
"And X marked on it too."
"What should we do?"
Cynthia asked with a distrustful expression.
"I think we have to dig like before,"
Alexander answered automatically.
Would it be the real clue this time? According to the caller's pattern, he would not be lying to Alexander. Moreover, it seemed there was no other choice they could make.
They took Cynthia's metal detector and a few shovels for digging. They weren’t aware of how much time had passed.
An officer screamed,
"God! Look at this.”
Something was catching on the shovel digging into the ground. Something dirty, a white object.
"It's bone."
Silence fell among them. All of them began to dig around the bone, cautiously.
It was a mummy wearing clothes, which Cynthia and Alexander noticed at once had the exact same appearance as in the video.
"This body was buried in the same manner as the others,"
Alexander told Cynthia.
"It’s been at least a year since he was buried."
She said and shrieked,
"How terrible."
Cynthia looked closely at the mummy's fingers. They were all gone. No fingers.
"They were all cut off."
They were indeed. Same method with Marcello's. But thankfully there were still teeth, and legs. Therefore it shouldn't be any problem to correctly analyze and identify the body. They retrieved the body carefully, requesting a forensic examination as soon as they arrived back in the office.