Chapter 5
At seven in the morning, the wind atop the office building carried the bittersweet chill of autumn.
Edward stood at the edge of the rooftop, dressed in a sharp suit, his hair meticulously combed.
He gripped a fountain pen, its tip pressed against an A4 sheet, but his hand trembled violently, as if stricken with Parkinson's. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, unwaveringly fixed on a single point in the empty space ahead.
"I'm sorry..." Edward's voice was hoarse. "I let Lyndsey down... I faked my research... I molested students... I took bribes..."
The pen scratched across the paper, leaving crooked but clear words. As he wrote, Edward sobbed, tears and snot covering his face, nothing like his usual dignified self.
After finishing the last line, he suddenly looked up at the surveillance camera and gave a twisted smile.
That smile was as stiff as a puppet's mouth pulled by strings.
Then, he spread his arms and fell backward.
It took only 2.3 seconds to hit the ground from twelve stories up. A heavy thud rang out in the parking lot, sending the sparrows fluttering from the treetops.
Edward's body lay twisted at an unnatural angle, blood spreading beneath him and staining the scattered pages of his confession.
Lyndsey stood by the window of the opposite teaching building, holding a cup of coffee. The coffee was cold now. She watched the crowd gathering below and the flashing police lights, then took a slow sip.
"You manipulated his hallucinations." Night's voice drifted from behind, sounding more unreal than usual. "You made him see the students he drove to their deaths. That's skirting the rules."
"But he really did drove someone to their death," Lyndsey replied without turning. "Three years ago, a grad student in her third year was sexually assaulted by him, fell into depression, and jumped from this building.
"Her body was found with her unfinished thesis still in her hands."
She turned around. Night seemed unusually tense today, his black wings drawn in tight, as if he was afraid they might brush against something.
Lyndsey's sharp eyes caught a missing feather at the tip of his left wing. A tiny hole there was oozing black smoke.
"Are you hurt?" Lyndsey asked.
"No," Night said, turning his head to avoid her eyes. "It's just... Messing with the real world always costs something."
Lyndsey was about to press for more answers, but a sudden jolt in her mind cut her off. It wasn't a knock at the door, but a psychic tremor, as if someone was probing her thoughts.
She snapped the death note shut and shoved it to the very bottom of her backpack.
Three minutes later, two police officers knocked on her dorm room door.
"Lyndsey Duncan?" the young officer flashed his badge. "Professor Marlone died after falling from the building this morning. We'd like to ask you a few things."
Lyndsey opened the door, her face perfectly composed in shock and grief. She was dressed in an oversized white sweater, her hair down, looking completely harmless.
But where the officers couldn't see, her fingers traced the strap of her backpack, her mind racing through every possible scenario.
"Please, come in," she said, her voice trembling with emotion. "Professor Marlone... How could this be..."
The questioning lasted forty minutes. Lyndsey answered every question smoothly, tears flowing whenever needed. She talked about how Edward had "cared" for her, those late-night meetings, and the necklace someone tried to frame her with.
However, she never once mentioned the death note. When the officers asked about her whereabouts last night, she showed them her library check-in record and surveillance screenshots.
She had the perfect alibi.
After the police left, Lyndsey closed the door and slumped down to the floor, her back pressed against it. Her palms were sweaty.
Although the death note said once I wrote it, it was done, she couldn't help but feel nervous as hell when faced with all the modern forensic technology.
"Nice acting," came a voice from inside the room.
Lyndsey looked up and saw a young man with white hair sitting at her desk, absently leafing through her textbook.
It wasn't Night. Night was unreal, not human. But this guy, despite the white hair that looked way too old for his age, was real, flesh and blood. He wore a dark gray trench coat, his long fingers twirling a ballpoint pen lazily.
"Who are you?" Lyndsey asked, her fingers subtly inching toward her backpack.
"Howard Wheeler," the young man replied, snapping the book shut to reveal the cover: Criminal Psychology. "Consultant for the city police, profiler."
He looked up, his gray-blue eyes so sharp they seemed to pierce right through her. "And I'm here to let you know that when Professor Marlone died, the direction he was staring at? It was straight at this girls' dorm."
Lyndsey's breath stopped for a second.
Howard got up and slowly walked closer. He was a head taller than her, looking down at her as his gaze roamed across her face.
Lyndsey forced herself not to blink, not to back away. She tapped into the "microexpression tricks" the death note had given her. Her pupils needed to dilate by twenty percent, her shoulders should tremble just a little, and the corners of her mouth had to droop by fifteen degrees.