The Carter Lumber Mill's administration building sits on the highest point of Greycliff, on its southern slope. It's a brand-new three-story building, devoid of any signs of age.
Sheriff Brody pushed open the heavy, double mahogany door at the far end of the third floor. He didn't knock, nor wait for his secretary's permission. In his hand lay a search warrant, still damp with ink, issued by the judge thirty minutes earlier.
The air in the office was deathly still. The central air conditioning was running at full power, maintaining a comfortable 22 degrees Celsius. There wasn't a trace of the decaying leaves of the real rainforest outside; the air was thick with the expensive, artificial scents of high-end lemon wax furniture, Cuban cigars, and leather sofas.
Brody pressed a brass switch on the wall.
Six crystal spotlights embedded in the walnut ceiling instantly illuminated the space, their harsh, white light, like the shadowless lamps of an autopsy room, slamming into the luxurious eighty-square-meter room without reservation.
On the wall opposite the door hung a massive moose head specimen. Even though the animal's entrails and flesh had long been removed and filled with preservatives and cotton, the two prosthetic glass eyes still forced to reflect a cold light in the deathly silence. Below the specimen was a large desk, three meters long, carved from a single piece of century-old black walnut wood.
A few months ago, this tree stood in the forest, breathing through a network of fungi in its roots. Now, stripped of its bark, sanded smooth of all roughness, and covered with a thick layer of polyurethane varnish, it lay lifelessly here, an altar to the Carter family's power.
Brody walked behind the desk, pulled out the large, high-backed leather chair, and sat down.
The desk was impeccably clean. A silver cigar case, a black obsidian nameplate holder, and the words "Julian Carter—Chief Operating Officer" printed in gold lettering. Beside him lay a thick stack of wedding invitations, intricately patterned with lace. The top one had already been opened; the bride's name was the mayor's eldest daughter.
Everything proclaimed to outsiders an impeccable prosperity and glamour.
But this was merely an illusion. Brody's mind flashed back to the stiff, grimy hands on the autopsy table, and the overdue payment notice for $570,000 tucked into the sofa cushions of the pub.
He put on extremely thin medical latex gloves and pulled open the top drawer of his desk.
The metal slide made an incredibly smooth, soft sound. The first drawer was empty, containing only a few expensive Montblanc sterling silver pens and a strip of chewable tablets for treating acid reflux.
The second drawer. Several routine quarterly financial reports from the lumber mill, a VIP gold card for the Graycliff Golf Club, and a copy of a warning letter from the state wildlife conservation society restricting the use of heavy machinery at the edge of the redwood forest. In the lower right corner of the warning letter, Julian had drawn a violent "X" with a thick black marker, the force penetrating the paper.
Brody quickly and roughly flipped through the documents. He found nothing he was looking for. Nothing that directly proved Julian's intentions for going to the North Slope last night. For a gambler on the verge of bankruptcy and driven to desperation, the cleanliness here was unnatural.
He stood up, his eyes scanning the massive walnut table like a hunting dog.
The tabletop was at least four inches thick, but the combined depth of the three drawers below had a slight discrepancy of about two inches compared to the total height of the side panels.
Brody immediately crouched down, shining his flashlight into the dark corner at the very bottom of the desk. He extended his gloved fingers and slowly felt along the bottom of the lowest drawer. The wood was extremely smooth until his fingertips touched a barely concealed metal groove, no bigger than a pin.
He precisely inserted the tip of his folding knife into the groove, then flicked it open with a slight pull.
"Click."
A rectangular wooden board sprang open with a dull thud. It was an extremely ingenious blindfold.
Brody held his breath and pulled the board out completely.
The hidden compartment contained neither bundles of cash nor drugs. Inside lay a loaded Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, a black Beretta hunting knife, and a heavy notebook, A4 size, covered in rough black leather.
He didn't touch the gun. He held the flashlight in his mouth and took the notebook out with both hands.
The notebook was heavy, with several distinct dark red, dried mud spots on the leather surface—the color only found in the highly acidic, rusty mud deep in the North Slope.
Brody sat back in his leather chair and opened the notebook to the first page.
The initial waft wasn't the smell of ink from writing, but an extremely strong, earthy odor, a mixture of mosquito repellent, sweat, and the raw, rotten scent of coniferous forest.
This wasn't a diary for expressing the young master's emotions. It was a naked, blatant "hunting ledger," like a wild animal marking its territory.
The pages were covered with extremely rough but incredibly precise contour maps. They were miniature replicas of the entire north slope redwood forest.
The diary's timeline began three months prior. That was the month the Carter Lumber Mill's cash flow first completely collapsed.
[July 12th] The old man's heart failed. The bank's bastard refused the second mortgage extension. Not a single piece of timber for the money could be cut from the south slope. Only the north slope. That was the last piece of fat. I took a rangefinder in this afternoon and crossed the rusty barbed wire fence. Damn it, those century-old redwoods were over twelve feet in diameter! One tree could yield twenty thousand planks of top-quality timber. A preliminary estimate puts the value of just that row of trees in the valley hollow at over $800,000. Enough to fill all the holes.
Brody flipped through the pages quickly. As time went on, Julian's notes grew increasingly agitated, the handwriting becoming frantic and gruesome.
[August 4th] Went in again today. With Hank. Those useless lumberjacks could scare a few crows. The problem wasn't the steep terrain, but the ruins of the old commune right in the middle of the valley. The greenhouse that bastard woman called Rowan built there was perfectly positioned at the entrance to the logging trail. Ownership of that land was a mess in the 1970s; even the county annals couldn't pinpoint its exact location. But as long as she was there, those rabid dogs from the Environmental Protection Agency wouldn't allow bulldozers in.
Brody's fingertips paused slightly on the paper. He looked at the handwriting and felt an icy chill.
In the laws of nature, when a fox dies, mushrooms sprout—it's flesh turning into nutrients, a plunder without malicious intent. But in the laws of human society, when Julian sees that vibrant, century-old forest, all he thinks about are cutting machines, money, and clearing obstacles. He sees this absolute sanctuary that nurtured Rowan for fifteen years merely as a pile of wood preventing him from maintaining his wealthy class dignity.
[September 18th] It must be cleared out. She must be driven away. Today I brought two hunting rifles in. I saw her. She stood behind that rotten log, like a stinking wildcat. I tried to give her five hundred dollars in cash to get lost. Not only did she not take it, but she also looked at me with an extremely disgusting, pig-like gaze. Nobody dares to look at me like that. Tonight I burned a small section of her perimeter fence. A warning.
There is no sympathy between the lines, only a deep-seated, offended arrogance. A wealthy young man who had never left his small town treated Graycliff as his personal palace. He would never tolerate such an unruly and uncontrollable outcast existing on the edge of his territory.
Brody flipped directly to the last few pages of the notebook. The paper was unusually rough, severely wrinkled from extensive rain soaking.
The timeline was early October, a few days before the incident.
[October 9th] Ten days left. The bank's final deadline. The old man called me a complete spendthrift on the phone yesterday. Not only did she not leave, but she also placed three bloodstained black duck skulls on the hood of my Jeep! That was intimidation! That wretched bitch who survives on dead, rotten leaves dared to threaten me.
Brody turned to the next page. This was the last page filled with writing.
The date in the bottom right corner was glaringly marked: October 13th.
Noon on the day of the incident. This was just hours before Julian appeared at the "Rusty Saw" tavern and ordered that expensive steak.
The handwriting on this page was extremely forceful. The ballpoint pen almost tore through the rough parchment, creating deep physical grooves. Every letter carried an extremely violent murderous intent and destructive desire. The ink bled on the paper like twisted black veins.
Heavy rain. It's been raining heavily for a week. This shitty weather won't even keep the town sheriff out. I can't afford to delay any longer. If I don't pay the wedding venue fee by tomorrow, that bitch girlfriend's politician father will skin me alive.
Tonight. I'm going to completely eliminate that crazy bitch blocking my way.
I'll take that Remington pump-action shotgun. There's no need for reasoning. The heavy rain will wash away all footprints and traces of resistance. I'll shove her into that long-abandoned blind mine, or just throw her into the swamp. This is a primeval forest. The death of a wild man with no household registration, no relatives, doesn't even require a complete missing person report.
That two-million-dollar forest will forever belong to the Carter family.
The diary ends abruptly here.
Behind it is a vast, terrifying blank. It's as if the recorder has plunged headlong into a bottomless abyss.
Brody sat in his empty, luxurious office, slowly closing the earthy-smelling ledger. He felt as if a large, cold stone had been shoved into his chest, making even breathing extremely difficult.
The motive was completely locked.
In a typical murder case, finding such a conclusive "premeditated murder diary" would essentially solve half the case. But in this case, an extremely absurd and ironic reversal occurred.
Julian, armed with a gun, brimming with murderous intent, attempting to stage a perfect rainy night to dispose of the body and seize the land, did not become the murderer.
He became a corpse, smashed to pieces at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft, his face contorted in a maniacal laugh from inhaling countless tiny fungal spores. Nature needed neither a Remington shotgun nor a bank demand. It simply used a handful of invisible plant dust to effortlessly choke this greedy human.
"Sheriff?"
Fast footsteps echoed in the hallway outside. Officer Falkin pushed open the door halfway, a black walkie-talkie in his hand, his face grim in the pale hallway light. "Sheriff. The search team just approached the greenhouse on the north slope. They've run into trouble."
Brody stood up, stuffed the crucial leather diary into a transparent, sterile evidence bag, sealed it, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his waterproof overcoat.
"She resisted arrest?" Brody's voice was cold and hard.
"No…no." Fakin swallowed hard, his voice trembling. "There's no one in the greenhouse. But the search dogs only sniffed outside the greenhouse door for less than two minutes before they started foaming at the mouth and are now convulsing on the ground. It's full of poison, deadly poisonous plants hidden everywhere. Hank, the team leader, said…it's not a place for the living."
Brody strode out of the office, not even closing the door. The expensive lemon wax scent belonging to the Carter family was completely left behind.
"Notify the county department, get gas masks and heavy lighting equipment." Brody holstered his revolver as he walked. "That woman is on her own turf. That's her territory. If we don't dig her out, the whole town will burn the forest down out of fear."
The rain outside intensified. A vast network of water enveloped Graycliff Town.
An invasion driven by extreme greed had ultimately evolved into a primitive defense of nature. Furthermore, the law must now side with the murdered plunderers and judge that absolute savagery that should not exist in human society.
The net has been cast, but no one knows who is truly trapped within it.