Morning all, busy day today so let’s just jump right in. Timers set for fifteen minutes and let’s see what we see.
Wasn’t planning on a mysterious murder but I think I will keep this for outlining at a later date. With murder mysteries they always require a bit more thought in figuring out the clues and when to let everyone else know them. But this could be a fun start.
Wednesday, March 18th: He clutched the ribbon.
He clutched the ribbon. It was clenched tightly in his fist, the ends protruding from wither side. It was a bright sunshine yellow and danced in the breeze that kicked up. It was the only movement. Even the dead man’s clothes didn’t shift about. Just the ribbon.
Alister stared at the body splayed out across the ground. The dancing ribbon somehow matched the bright green of the new spring grass he was lying on. Nothing else matched. The suit the man was wearing was far more formal than the surroundings. The material was a dark color as was the shirt and tie. Currently it was all water logged so it seemed darker than it was. The man was soaked. Even his pail and waxy skin had beads of water on it. His hair, dark wet and plastered to the ground beneath him. Here and there little green grass blades stuck up through the wet strands.
As Alister studied the body several things occurred to him. The first was that despite the soaking of every part of him, the ribbon was dry. When he squatted down and peered at the ribbon he clutched he could see there were damp bits ear where it was clutched. It was transfer from the skin and the moisture stained the silk of the ribbon. The rest of the ribbon showed no sign of contact with water.
He straightened and frowned. It was possible the breeze dried the ribbon and the reason it showed no staining was due to it being dunked in it’s entirely, the staining only occurring with the contact from the hand, but he somehow didn’t think so.
‘For one thing,’ he thought. ‘There is still water beaded on his skin.’
If the breeze dried the ribbon it would have taken those beads of water away. He could see them moving across the skin, pushed slightly by the wind and was certain in time they would be pushed away, but for now they stood. He doubted the body had been here long enough to have the ribbon dry.
‘Which means he was wet and grabbed a dry ribbon.’
This led to another conundrum. There was no place he could see near by where a ribbon would be placed. There were no parties or decorations near by. There weren’t any trees a yellow ribbon of remembrance could have been tied around. It was just a long slope of evenly cut grass in every direction.
‘No water either,’ Alister thought.
There was no lake or pond, no hose. ‘It hasn’t rained in a week.’
He also couldn’t imagine where a man in a suit would be going. He looked towards the horizon. Perhaps there was a building or a parking lot just out of sight. He looked around, eyes scanning each of the horizons. He saw the parking lot where he parked. His car lined up with the vehicles from the CSI units. An ambulance was waiting next to them, waiting until he was done studying the scene to take the body away. There were no other cars in the lot. If this man in his suit came to this park on his own he didn’t arrive there.
‘Unless he was dropped off.’
Alister looked at the man’s shoes. While as soaked as the rest of him, they were shiny, polished. He moved around so he could look at the soles. They were new, not even a smudge of dirt or grass on them. While his own shoes weren’t new, and currently covered with crime scene shoe covers, he could see the bits of grass and dirt on them from where he trudged over. The others were the same.
Ten til Midnight 