Locksmith

2

By the time I was just about to come to the stairway, the sound-activated light in the doorway went out automatically due to the time being just right.

I couldn't help but shudder and hurriedly stomped the ground.

The sound-activated light came on again, and I finally got a good look at the situation in the doorway.

Inside the doorway was a fire staircase leading upstairs and downstairs.

There was nothing at all.

Suddenly, there was a click behind me.

I turned around to see that the woman had already closed the door to the room.

I let out a long breath, it seemed to be nothing more than a false alarm.

I fixed my mind and prepared to pack up my guys and leave in a hurry.

But just then, I suddenly realized.

I hadn't had a chance to give the new key to the customer in room 1404 after replacing the lock cylinder.

Really confused by what just happened.

I hurriedly knocked on the door of the woman's room.

But I knocked several times in a row, but there was no response.

I was a bit puzzled.

The woman had just closed the door.

It was impossible that she didn't hear the knocking sound!

Thinking back to the woman's abnormal reaction earlier, she might have really been frightened.

I could even imagine that the woman in the house might be standing in front of the door right now, looking at me through the cat's eye.

I had to knock on the door while explaining that I just wanted to give her the new key.

But there was still no response from inside the house.

Seeing that knocking on the door was fruitless, I had to take out my cell phone to call the woman again.

I found the woman's phone number in the call log.

The phone just dialed, I heard the other side of the cell phone ringing.

But let me how did not expect is.

Cell phone ringing, not from the house.

Rather, it came from behind me!

I immediately turned around and realized that the cell phone was ringing from the very same doorway at the top of the stairs.

How is this possible? The woman had obviously gone inside the house!

But why was the cell phone ringing at the stairs?

The ringtone continued to ring, and the clear and loud ringtone was particularly ear-splitting.

In this silent hallway is like a ghost echoing endlessly.

The sound-activated light in the doorway of the stairway also lit up again.

I once again came to the stairway, looking toward the doorway.

At this glance, my entire body was paralyzed with fear and sat on the ground.

I only saw that on the staircase steps, which had just been empty, there was actually a female corpse wearing a long white dress lying horizontally.

Most importantly, the female corpse in front of me actually had no head!

It was as if her head had been taken away after being cut off with a sharp instrument.

The blood soaked through her clothes and also stained the steps red.

And more blood was continuing to flow down the steps.

What made me shiver even more was that the cell phone was still ringing.

The cell phone that was ringing was now being held tightly in the hands of the headless female corpse on the steps.

My mind went blank at this moment.

Who was the headless woman in the stairwell?

Why did she die here?

Who had killed her?

What is even more unimaginable is that the cell phone that had called me for help in opening the lock, why would it be in the hands of this female corpse?

Could it be that the one who called me to open the lock was actually this headless corpse?

How is that possible?

Or is the woman who died in the stairwell the real owner of Room 1404?

Then who is the woman ...... who has just entered Room 1404?

All kinds of questions have come to my mind at once.

At this moment I can not care about anything, I only want to hurry to leave here.

I panicked and pressed the two elevators at the same time.

I stared at the numbers on the elevator signs.

The two elevators were going up fast.

Right now I didn't dare to go to the stairs.

Because the murderer was most likely still hiding somewhere in the stairwell.

It's definitely safer in the elevator because there's surveillance in the elevator.

The murderer should not dare to hide in the elevator.

While I was waiting for the elevator, I called the police.

I roughly described to the police on the phone what happened at the moment.

The police said they would be there as soon as possible and told me to protect myself.

Hanging up the phone, a trace of uneasiness suddenly welled up in my heart.

Because I realized that I might have been involved in a not-so-small trouble.

According to my previous speculation, if the white-clothed female corpse that died in the stairwell was the real owner of Room 1404, then the woman who had entered Room 1404 was the fake owner.

Then the woman who has entered Room 1404 is the fake owner.

In other words, the proof of identity she provided to me earlier, as well as the proof of the house's affiliation, may have been fake.

Her purpose was to impersonate the owner.

And then borrow my hand to unlock the door and enter the house.

If that's true, then I'm in big trouble.

It's tantamount to me opening the owner's door for the thief.

What's more crucial is that the real owner is dead.

And dead in the stairwell right in front of her own house.

And on the owner's cell phone, there are still records of her calls with me.

Even if I can get away with it today, I may have my business license confiscated by the relevant authorities afterwards.

I may even be implicated in this murder case and not be able to get out of it.

Just then, however, I encountered something even more frightening.

The two elevators were not coming up.

The most crucial thing is that the number shown on the signboards of both elevators is 13.

I was on the 14th floor, but the two elevators actually stopped at the 13th floor downstairs at the same time.

And the elevators didn't seem to be coming up at all.

I could vaguely hear the elevator door downstairs making a "drip ...... drip ...... drip" sound.

Obviously, there is something blocking the elevator door from closing.

That's why the elevator kept stopping downstairs without moving.

The doors of both elevators were blocked at the same time.

This was definitely not a coincidence.

The purpose was obvious, someone didn't want me to leave by elevator.

The other party is forcing me to take the stairs!

But if I take the stairs, I might directly collide with the murderer hiding in the dark.

Just when I didn't know what to do.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang from beside me again.

I turned my head to see that it was the door to room 1404, which was slowly pushed open.

The door opened only a c***k and then stopped.

But when I looked through the door, I didn't see the woman from before.

At that moment, I saw that from the bottom of the doorway, an arm covered in blood suddenly stretched out.

The arm was resting on the threshold and was still trembling slightly.

Suddenly, I saw that b****y hand, slowly extend a finger.

The tip of the finger, happened to be pointing at me!

Immediately after that, I saw the head of the woman who had just entered Room 1404, sticking to the ground, slowly poking out from ...... the doorway.

Half of the woman's face was plastered to the floor, and her hair covered half of her eyes.

She was spitting out blood and was trying her best to crawl towards the door.

But only halfway up, her body suddenly trembled twice and stopped moving.

She ...... died!

The woman who entered room 1404 was also killed.

The key is that she was killed in the house.

At this moment, I was completely unable to hold on.

I rushed headlong into the stairwell.

I no longer cared about where the murderer would hide.

I only had one thought in my mind.

Get out of here.

......

I crossed over the bodies on the steps and stepped on the blood and rushed straight downstairs.

I even fell because the floor was so sticky and slippery.

I got up and continued to run downstairs.

I didn't have the courage to check what was going on in the elevator that was parked on the 13th floor.

I decided to run straight down the stairs to the end.

The sound of my footsteps echoed in the stairwell.

The sound-activated lights along the way came on.

I had already prepared for the worst.

If someone did appear out of nowhere.

No matter who it was, I would kick it up.

......

It only took me a minute to arrive downstairs.

Luckily, I didn't run into anyone along the way.

I actually made it out of the building alive.

Even though I was covered in blood and a mess.

But I had survived after all.

Soon I heard sirens, and then several police cars drove into the Juyuan neighborhood.

At this moment, I finally took a long breath.

I knew I was safe.

But next, I knew my troubles would follow.

The most important thing for me right now was that I had to think of a way to divest myself from this incident.

Because, I need to keep my well-paid iron job.

Soon I met up with the police.

The first to arrive were the civilian police.

During the investigation of the scene, it was found that multiple homicides were involved and the case was soon transferred to the criminal police.

The police were busy pulling up a cordon between the floors and in the neighborhood.

Not long after, and drove into a few police cars, is the criminal police arrived.

So many police cars and police came at once.

Such a big commotion naturally inevitably woke up some residents.

I saw that many floors of the surrounding buildings were lit up one after another.

I vaguely saw that many people were standing on the balconies of their homes, looking downstairs.

As the person who reported the crime and the only witness at the scene, I naturally had to go back with the police to cooperate with the investigation.

By the time I arrived at the police station, it was almost four in the morning.

In the interrogation room, the ones who took my statement were two young criminal police officers at first.

They asked me about my personal information and occupation, as well as the details of the whole thing at that time.

They asked very detailed questions, and I responded to all of them.

I could sense that they were planning to find a breakthrough in this case from me.

About half an hour later, a middle-aged criminal police officer with a beard entered the interrogation room.

I had seen him before at the scene, his surname was Cai, and I heard them all address him as Team Cai, the captain of the criminal police team.

When Team Cai came in, he directly picked up the transcript from the table and read it.

Then he picked up my ID card and asked me the first question.

"Your name is Wang Bo and you are a locksmith?"

I nodded my head repeatedly, "Yes, there is my locksmith business license and public security record certificate on the table."

Team Cai once again stared at me for a while and suddenly said:

"Your ID card is about to expire."

I was stunned at this and hurriedly said:

"Yes, there are still two months to expire, is ready to take the time to do a new one."

Cai team put down the ID card and asked me:

"As you said, you received a call for help to open the lock, and then went to the 14th floor of Building No. 4 of the Juyuan District?" "Yes, before opening the lock, I was very surprised.

"Yes, before I unlocked the door, I verified the customer's identification and the customer's affiliation with the house according to the regulations." I said, pointing to the desk.

I pointed to the locksmith registration form on the table.

Then I asked uneasily, "Comrade police officer, have the identities of the two female victims been confirmed?"

Hearing my words, the three policemen in front of me were silent.

They turned their gazes to me at the same time.

After a long time, Team Cai mentioned:

"The two female victims? Why are you asking that?"

I explained:

"I just want to know which one is the real owner of Room 1404, and I want to know whether I have opened the wrong locks for someone or not."

"I'm sorry, it's not convenient to disclose for the time being."

Team Cai replied to me with such a cold sentence.

Then he continued to stare at me and asked:

"From your professional point of view, what is the problem with the lock of Room 1404? Why can't it open?"

I said calmly:

"Due to the aging of the lock cylinder, as you know, a lock has a service life, after a long time, the lock cylinder will be aging, and the probability of malfunction will increase."

Team Cai nodded, then took out a lock cylinder from his pocket.

"This lock cylinder was found from your toolkit, after verification, it is the old lock cylinder that you changed from the door lock of room 1404, after the technical department's colleague identification, this lock cylinder is still good."

After listening to my slight hesitation, then a little embarrassed to say:

"Old locks, occasionally lock cylinder jamming, even if it is not completely broken, we will recommend customers to change a new one, one to avoid recurrence of failure, and secondly, I can also earn a little bit of money to change the locks."

"Really?"

Team Cai once again pulled out something from his pocket.

"Do you recognize this? This is something we picked up at the scene."

When I saw the item in Team Cai's hand, I instantly felt a wave of inexplicable nervousness.

It was half a toothpick!

I immediately pretended to have a blank look on my face.

Without waiting for me to speak, Team Cai pulled out another cell phone from his pocket.

"Forget it, I'm not going to beat around the bush with you, take a look at this again."

Team Cai finished and placed the cell phone in front of me.

On the screen of the cell phone, a video was playing.

The video was playing:

A man in locksmith overalls, squatting in front of a door, sneaking something into the lock hole.

It was clear from the video that the door number above the door displayed the number: 1404.

The most critical thing is that the back of the overalls is also printed with 4 big words: Lao Wang open locks.

There was actually someone, who filmed me tampering with the customer's door lock beforehand.

The weirdest thing is that the video's footage, presented a slightly distorted zoomed-in panoramic image.

It was obviously taken through the cat's eye on the door of the room.

Judging from the angle of the shot, it could only have been taken through the cat's eye of Room 1403, which is across the street from Room 1404.

In other words, during the day, when I was tampering with the lock on the door of Room 1404.

The owner of Room 1403 across the street captured the video through the cat's eye.