John
Lily, May, Dylan, and I went to the crime scene, which was the hallway.
"How do we want to look?" May asked.
"I say we split up," I said, "and we search the entire hallway. Then later we share what we found."
"Sounds good," Dylan said.
"All right. Let's get going."
Dylan and I started at the end of the hallway, where we saw a statue. It looked like a medieval warrior.
"What's it holding?" I asked Dylan.
"It looks kind of like a crossbow."
"Could it be functional?"
"It could certainly be made functional."
I walked up and got a closer look at the crossbow. I felt the rope to pull back the arrow, I felt the body of it, which was wood painted the color of the statue. This was a fully working crossbow.
"Yep, it's definitely real," I told Dylan.
"So then how did the killer get it to go off if they weren't here to shoot it?"
"Unless they were up here."
"No, everyone was downstairs except for Alex."
"Maybe it'll make more sense if we look around more." I walked along the wall, tapping my knuckle on it. In one spot, the wall sounded hollow. "Woah, Dylan! Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"This-" I tapped the wall again.
"Oh, yeah. That sounds like an unreasonably hollow wall."
"Should we try breaking it? There could be something important in there."
"Dude, no! You could be arrested for breaking that!"
"We're in the middle of a potential mass murder. I don't think I'm going to get arrested." I punched the wall once, twice, and the third time it caved in. "Wow."
"What'd you find?"
"It's a bunch of wires," I said with a bored look on my face.
"What's it lead to?"
"I don't know." I started tapping on the wall where the edge of the hole was. I kept tapping for a while and eventually it led back to the statue.
"So," Dylan said, "somehow something activates these wires," he gestured to the big hole in the wall, "then that somehow triggered the crossbow, which shot Alex. But I don't think that killed her. If she was walking out of her room when she was shot, it would have had to be a very powerful crossbow to kill her at that distance unless she was shot in the heart. But we all saw that the arrow wasn't embedded very far into her and that it was more in the stomach area than the heart. Ugh, nothing makes sense."
"Don't give up yet. We don't have all the information now, but we'll get it."
Lily
We found next to nothing.
All we did find was the piece of arrow Dan ripped out of Alex when he first saw her.
"There's something weird about this arrow," May told me.
"What's that?"
"It's just a stick. You don't buy this kind of arrow at a hunting shop. You get it from your backyard."
I was kind of questioning her knowing all of this.
"So?"
"So this was a homemade arrow. It could've been poisoned a thousand different ways. The arrow might not be the cause of death."
Now this was getting suspicious.
"How do you know all of this?" I asked her.
"I hunted a lot in my spare time."
THAT certainly didn't make her sound like a killer.
It seemed like John and Dylan had more information than us, but soon it wouldn't matter. After more searching to no find, our time was up.
Dan
Bella, Taylor, and I chose the last known whereabouts, which was Alex's bedroom. I wouldn't have been able to deal with seeing her dead body in the morgue.
"Where do we start?" Taylor asked.
"I have no ide- wait." I heard a weird quiet 'whoosh' noise outside when I shifted my weight when I was standing at the door. I picked my foot and I realized I was standing on a tripwire. I put my foot down again and heard the same noise. "Are you guys hearing that?" I asked.
"Yeah," Bella said, "it sounds like its coming from the hallway."
"Should we check it out?" Taylor asked.
"No," I said, "we have to stay in here."
"But it could be important!"
"Hey, guys!" Bella snapped her fingers to try to get our attention."I found a letter on Alex's bedside table!"
We walked over. It read-
'Like dominos, this murder will be a ripple effect. One of you will die, and you may not be happy with the results.'
Subtle.
"Did you get anything like this?" I asked Taylor.
"No, I didn't get anything."
"Huh."
We tried to digest what we found, but it just wasn't making any sense.
"Maybe it'll make more sense later when we have all the information." I tried to optimistic, but if everyone found the equivalent of what we found, everyone was going to be massively screwed.
