Thomas reentered the mansion from the servants’ house with much less haste than he’d shown leaving it. He didn’t want to be spotted looking like he had a real lead. He was following a map left by the killer and likely on his way to victory, so it was difficult to move slowly, to pretend he was as lost as the other two likely still were.
He entered the mansion through the east door by the patio, which was where the map indicated to start as best he could tell. After that, it actually became surprisingly easy to follow. It eventually led him back to the study where both Darrel and Emily were last seen before their murders.
Once there, Thomas paused.
Now what?
He looked down at the map one last time. His gaze again passed over the scribbles below the map:
U – weakerthan P – desaparecidos
It had to be a clue as to what was next. But what exactly did it mean?
Thomas looked around the study, searching for some kind of connection. He thought perhaps the words appeared on one of the paintings or items hanging from the walls. Next he tried looking at items on each of the four desks. When he saw the first closed laptop computer, it suddenly made sense.
Or at least he hoped it did.
Thomas sat down at the nearest desk and opened the laptop on top of it. He typed “weakerthan” into the user name field, and “desaparecidos” as the password. He clicked the log-in button.
The desktop loaded. It had worked!
A message popped up almost right away:
Would you like to restore
your last browser session?
Thomas clicked yes.
A web browser opened up and brought him to a social network site. He typed in the same user name and password he’d used to get into the computer. Again, it worked. The profile loading was Pam’s. The default picture was definitely the maid who had just been murdered in front of him.
But it wasn’t her real page. It was just another clue—he could see that right away. For one thing, her page contained no content or posts of any kind. Also, she had just one friend on the site, someone named David Bazan.
Thomas quickly looked toward the study door. He hadn’t heard or seen either of the contestants in a while. He was sure they were still way behind him. They had to be; he had the map, after all, which meant that they never would find it.
He clicked on the name David Bazan and brought up his profile. This profile had some content. Just two items:
Thomas opened the video. It was footage from some university somewhere. A professor was on a stage in front of a lecture hall. He held a glass of water over a vat filled with something emitting tons of smoke or steam. Liquid nitrogen.
The professor then poured the water into the tub: boom!
There was a huge explosion in the video as water and nitrogen sprayed everywhere. The students and professor, all wearing protective goggles and thick rubber aprons, either screamed or took a step back. Or both.
Thomas sat there and stared at the screen. Both Jaws being listed as the favorite movie and the posted video were definitely clues. But what did they mean? They didn’t really do anything to indicate who the murderer was. Thomas considered carefully what he might have missed. Then he angrily stuffed the map into his pocket and headed back toward the morgue to look for more evidence.
Just the same, despite this minor roadblock, he was still confident he was going to win.