"How did it happen?"
"She woke up early while I was still in bed, prepared my breakfast and went to read in the library upstairs. Hours later, after calling her name without any response, I climbed the stairs up and found her in her puddle of blood."
"Where is she?"
"Come with."
"I hope you haven't tampered with the crime scene?"
"No. I called you instantly and was downstairs waiting till you come. Have called all my children to inform them of their mother's death, and I am sure they were still shocked by the news."
The two police officers followed the aged man up the stairs, arrived inside the first room that served as the inhabitant's library, and were welcomed into a clean room with piles of novels everywhere.
"This is her usual seating spot whenever she came to read, what is unusual is the reason why she banged her head on the wall until she die."The dead woman is in her early sixties, and the freshness of her skin shows she had lived a luxurious life. Like the previous victims of this newly arrived death in town, she had taken her life with a sick smile on her lips.
"The blood on this spot in the wall is the place where she banged her head until her skull cracked," Zuma announced, pointed to a crimson colour on the pink-painted wall, and resumed his speech, "and I think she crawled to this place when she was under the terror of death."
"Did you have any quarrel with her?"
"No."
"Did she has any life-threatening disease?"
"Nothing of that kind?"
"Is she into drugs?"
"No. Please stop. We got married thirty-one years ago and though I can't claim she was a perfect woman because no woman is. But I assure you that I won't have believed she take her own life if someone had visited our house overnight."
"Where are you after waking up from bed."
"I went to smoke at the back of the house. Angela hates the smell of cigarettes and we agree that I should always have my morning smoking outside the house."
"When did you discover she is dead."
"A second before I put a call to your headquarters."
"And what did you do after?"
"Please stop all these questions. There are cameras inside our house that verify all my statements... Angelina killed herself, and I puked when I watched her banging her head on the wall, and smiling like someone under the bewitching of an evil spirit."
"Can we see the recording?"
"Of course. Please follow me."
They were as silent as a mouse when the figure of the deceased popped up on the television set, walked towards her usual spot, placed the cup of coffee in her hand on top of a table, and removed a novel from the lady's bag on her shoulder.
After seating down, the lady sipped the content in the cup on the table, and the satisfaction on her face suddenly become grim immediately after she opened the first page of the novel in her hand. After flipping to the second page, she curled closer to the book on the table in her front, removed the spectacle in her face, cleaned it with an impeccable white handkerchief, and promptly resumed her reading."Angela's only hobby is reading novels, and she always resumes as soon as she prepared my breakfast and her morning coffee."
"I glimpse a sudden grim look on her face some moment ago. Did you insist you didn't have any disagreement with her overnight?"
"No. Even though there is no camera in our room to verify my statement, I assure you that we slept in each other's arms and there is no single reason why she did what she did."
"Let's concentrate on the motion, please."
A second after flipping the third page, the lady stood up, gaping up at the white ceiling for a while, then wandered around the room with arms akimbo."
"Pause and zoom it closer to her face."
"Okay, officer."
"Did you notice that the scleras in her eyeballs had turned completely black?"
"It may be a glitch from the camera. The white part of my wife's eyeballs is not black."
"What is she doing?"
The woman suddenly halted in front of the wall beside the window, trembled like someone in a trance, lolled backwards and smacked her head on the wall.
"Ouch!"
"I burst out in tears when I first watched this. She was so gentle-hearted and can't even slaughter a chicken... Oh my gosh, I can't believe my wife is dead."
After smacking her head on a fixed spot on the wall, the woman wobbled and fell with a loud thud, crawled closer to the side of the wall and tried to raise herself to a standing position.
"I was in the backyard and still enjoying the puff from my cigarettes, not knowing my woman is here killing herself," the man moaned louder when the picture on the television set finally stand up after several attempts that made it impossible to try again.
"I wish she will just walk out of that room and scream for help... Believe me, I had started looking for her by now."
With her sick fixed smile, she raised her head backwards, staggered for a while, regain her stance, shakes violently and smacked her head at the same spot, then fell and lay dead immediately.
"Can you see for yourself? Tell me what is happening on this island."
"We are starting the investigation and will get back to you. Until then, please don't travel oversea without informing us."
"I'm not referring to myself, but to this island in general. Rumours are circulating, and people have started attaching all this suicide to your presence."
"I don't understand what you mean, old man."
"All this death started some weeks after you resume as the boss of this island. Don't you think you owe us some explanation?"
"I owe nobody any explanation, and if you have any evidence against me, please don't hesitate to go to court."
"Oh... No, officer Zuma. This is just fatherly advice. Please don't take it personally."
"I don't. I think we are all stressed up and need to cool our nerves. My team will be here to evacuate the dead soon. Please don't touch anything."
"Thank you, officers. I pray all this will pass away soon. I mean, I have only heard of one suicide attempt since I was born here."
"We will unravel the secret behind all this death. Have no fear."
"We all have our trust in you... Thank you. So sorry for not offering you cups of water."
"Never mind, Mr-."
"Augusto."
"Mr Augusto, we will see ourselves out."
"What did you think?"
"I'm more confused than before. But one thing is certain, whatever is making these people kill themselves is not targeting any class of people."
"You are right. It's a random death, and this is the reason why I am perplexed."
"Let's go and check the next crime scene."
"After you."
Previous Chapter
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