Day 2 - Police Station

The desk sergeant grunts. "Hired by the family you say? Well, I suppose I could ask the Inspector then. Wait here." The man leaves the desk and walks through one of the two doors flanking his desk. He comes back a few minutes later. "All right, you've got about 10 minutes. Through the door, second door on your right." The desk sergeant sits down heavily in his chair and almost immediately forgets you are there.

Stepping through the doors you see a large open area with wooden desks aligned in two rows, each with a filing cabinet, trash bin, and coatrack. Frosted-glass doors flank both sides of this room with gold lettering for the higher-ranking officers. Doors in the back of the room lead to the bathrooms and locker rooms. On the second door on the right you see the words "Inspector Joe Edwards" stenciled on the glass. The door is half open.

Joe Edwards is typing something up on a heavy cream-colored Smith-Corona typewriter. He looks up as your approach catches his eye and the clacking of the keys stop. "Come in. I'll only be another minute." He resumes typing. The man is not handsome, he has a gentle voice but a hard stare, and angular face, and a receding hairline. After everyone is seated a few moments he finishes his report and slides the typewriter off to a side. "The desk sergeant said you're investigating the murders in the Memphis house. Hired by family no less. That must be the daughter Ingrid, then. Strange that my superiors told us to close the case quickly only for you to show up and start digging it back up. So, what's the story?

"Can't say that they did. They only made it to the first room. Apparently it is Memphis' prop room where he keeps his stage equipment. I can't imagine those would be worth anything except to other magicians. That is--was--one of the most baffling parts of the case. But one man's trash is another man's treasure, right? Who knows what caught there eye?"

He stares at the reporter for a moment. "Off the record--because the case is officially closed--I don't think those three boys killed themselves. Professional thieves, family no less, turning on each other before they even stole anything valuable? Not a chance. And that's not to mention how it would even be possible in their conditions. One was pinned halfway up a wall by five swords; took two guys to take him down. Another was hanged six feet up in the air by a rope through the rafters which are twelve feet up. The third had both hands and feet chopped off. We discovered a prop called the "wrist chopper" covered in blood nearby. Clearly the murder weapon. But who did what? The stabbed man didn't do that himself, nor did the amputated guy. The hanged man could have done it but no way to hoist himself up that high. Coroner also said he died from a broken neck and not asphyxiation, so he either climbed up to the rafter and jumped down or he managed to pull the rope so hard he launched up six feet and broke his own neck. No, Miss Nakane, I don't think the report is the full story. But the truth is, I don't know what the story could be. Every way I look at it, it doesn't make sense. So if there is no...reasonable conclusion, than any conclusion will do, see? A case closed quickly and sloppily is better than one not closed at all, in the view of my superiors."

The Inspector shakes his head. "No, none. And the boys weren't wearing gloves. I had a word with the boys' regular employer, Orson Vaughan. He said the boys didn't work with anyone else, and no one saw them with anyone else recently. So, Miss Nakane, your fourth suspect is a person who could kill three men in brutal ways without suffering a scratch, smart enough to leave no evidence, and invisible enough to go unnoticed by the boys' closest associates. I don't envy you the task of finding him," Edwards smiles without humor.

"As a consultant. As the case is officially closed I can't spend any work hours on it, but I may have some free time to look over anything you find. As for the murder weapon, once the case was closed the property was returned to Mr. Memphis' estate. I don't know what good that will do you, unless you have a forensics lab in your purse that is better than the Boston PD."

"Maybe the props have to be real enough to trick the audience members who participate." He opens a desk drawer and hands over his card. "My card. Good luck to you as well."