Chapter 4

I couldn't sleep all night.

I put all the evidence I had into a USB stick. I had secretly recorded three audio recordings of my colleagues talking. I screenshotted more than 40 images from the CCTV footage of my colleagues looking at the pink teddy bear next to me and arranged them chronologically.

Then, I went through the company's website, looking up old news about their events. I then found a department group photo from three years ago when we just moved into the new office building.

In the photo, a female employee named Maxine Thayer had been sitting near my current work desk. She was hugging that teddy bear.

When I took a closer look, I saw that the teddy bear's neck was clean with no stitches. But the teddy bear in the office had a ring of crooked, hand-stitched thread running around its neck. The stitches were quick and tightly packed, suggesting that whoever did it had been in a great hurry.

I checked the company database next and saw that Maxine's name had been erased from the records a long time ago.

Another piece of evidence that I included in the USB stick was a screenshot of the transfer record of the 50 thousand dollars Joel gave me last night, along with the words "Work from your desk" attached to the record.

At precisely 3:00 am that night, I brought all my evidence to the police station.

The officer on duty was Officer Sarah Quinn. She looked to be in her 30s. When she heard my account, her brow furrowed deeper and deeper. She also cataloged and archived all the evidence I brought.

Half an hour later, she came out of her office and said, "Ms. Summers, the information you provided is important, but I'm afraid that we can't classify it as a criminal case just yet.

"However, we will work with the fire department and local police to conduct an on-site investigation under the guise of checking for the source of the odor and potential safety hazards.

"If anything is confirmed to be abnormal at the scene, then we will take control of the situation at once."

At 9:00 am the next day, the fire department and local police officers arrived at Starshade Creatives. All of the company's senior executives were shaken, including the CEO, Seth Foster, Lola, Nathan, and Joel.

When Joel saw me entering the office behind Officer Quinn, the polite smile on his face froze at once. His face turned purple at first before turning pale. His legs turned to jelly, and he nearly crashed to the floor.

I didn't look at him and headed straight toward my desk. I then picked up the eight-foot teddy bear next to me.

The moment I picked it up, I smelled that strange, lingering odor clearly for the first time. It was the stench of decay mixed with a faint disinfectant smell. The smell was slowly seeping from the bear's belly.

I held the teddy bear in my arms and stood in the middle of the office, speaking clearly but just loud enough for everyone to hear.

"The stench is coming from inside this teddy bear."

Joel was the first one to rush out and stop me. "No way! This property belongs to the company! You have no right to touch it!"

Lola also tried to smooth things over. "Amelia? Is there a misunderstanding somewhere? You should just talk it out with us instead of acting rashly like this."

Nathan slowly backed toward the door, his hand resting on the door handle.

Officer Quinn stepped forward and sniffed as she crouched over. Her face turned grim at once.

"Everyone. Back off," she said, showing her police badge. "There's a high chance that this item is involved in a criminal case, and it is now being temporarily seized for inspection in accordance with the law."

Everyone fell silent at once. Even the whirring of the central air conditioning unit seemed particularly jarring now.

Everyone's eyes were now on the pink teddy bear.

The scissor blades sliced through the fabric and snipped all the haphazardly sewn threads clean. White cotton stuffing fell out and scattered all over the floor at once.

However, there was half of a transparent plastic bag peeking through the center of the white stuffing. They looked like pale bone fragments.

I covered my mouth and backed away at once.

Officer Quinn crouched down and looked at them silently. Then, she continued pulling out more stuffing from the bear, revealing two more such bags of bones inside.

She then spoke softly as though she was afraid of interrupting something.

"Three bags. Their preservation conditions are all different."

After a short pause, she said, "These remains belong to at least two people."

My legs turned to jelly, and I knocked over the chair behind me.

The teddy bear's face was still intact, and its round eyes were staring at me, its lips curled up into a smile that now looked extremely sinister.