They weren’t.
As soon as they arrived at forensic science class the next day, they heard Ricky talking about how the mascot had been burned twenty-five years earlier.
“How did he find out?” Hannah asked Ben and Corey. “He definitely wasn’t at the library when we were there. I would’ve heard him. Listen to that loud voice.”
Ricky was telling a couple of kids that the earlier crime was exactly like the one they were investigating.
“Maybe he got there after we left,” Corey offered.
“Dude,” Ryan was saying to Ricky. “How’d you find out about this stuff?”
Ricky smiled proudly. “My dad. He knew all about it. At dinner I remembered we were supposed to research whether there’d been any similar crimes, so I brought it up. And he told me about the time twenty-five years ago when the costume got burned. He was in school then, so he remembered the whole thing.”
“That’s your research?” Ryan asked. “Asking your dad at dinner?”
“What research did you do?” Ricky accused.
Ryan shrugged. It was obvious he hadn’t done any research at all.
“We only talked about it at the end of dinner, and then he had to go to work,” Ricky said. His dad worked a night shift at a bakery. “I’ll bet he knows tons more about it. Our team is definitely going to win. Right, partner?”
Ricky punched Charlie’s arm. Charlie managed to smile and nod before he walked away, rubbing his arm.
Other kids in the class surrounded Ricky, pumping him for information about the incident that had occurred twenty-five years before. Apparently, none of them had come up with any similar crimes in their research.
Ricky spotted Club CSI standing together, watching him. “Hey, Club See Us Lose!” he called across the room. “Don’t you want to hear about my killer research?”
“No, thanks,” Hannah replied. “We did our own.”
As they sat down, Corey said, “Well, at least it sounds as though he didn’t learn anything we didn’t already know.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, “but I’ve got a feeling Ricky and Charlie might provide some tough competition.”
“But a little competition is good, remember?” Corey reminded them.
Miss Hodges brought the class to order. “Hello, class. I hope you all read the section in our textbook about fire forensics. It may prove useful today.”
Jennifer asked, “We’re going to examine the mascot costume, right?”
Miss Hodges smiled, nodding. “Yes, the costume and the note. First we’ll examine them together as a group, and then each team will have some time alone with the evidence to do their own examinations.”
She walked across the room to open the door to her small office. “Okay,” she said. “We’re ready.” She turned back to the class and said, “I’ve got a special assistant today: Principal Inverno.”
The principal came out of Miss Hodges’s office, carrying the garbage bag. “Good morning!” he said cheerfully.
“I needed someone to supervise your individual sessions with the evidence, so Principal Inverno very kindly agreed to help,” Miss Hodges explained.
“Happy to do it,” Principal Inverno said. “After all, I’m the one who brought you this smelly mess in the first place.”
Without thinking, some of the students sat up straighter in their seats. They weren’t used to having the principal of the school in their classroom.
“All right,” Miss Hodges said as she pulled the burned costume out of the black garbage bag. “Let’s begin our examination of Rocky the Ram.”
She laid the costume out on a table. “Gather around,” she said, inviting them up for a closer look.
The students got up and gathered around the table. At first the costume just looked like a blackened mess. But as they stared at it, they started to make out some of its features—the hooves, the fur, and the horns on the oversize head.
“Maybe one of us should put it on,” Ryan said, daring to make a joke with the principal right there.
“Are you volunteering?” Principal Inverno asked. The students laughed.
“Normally I don’t allow you to use your phones during class,” Miss Hodges said. “But I encourage you to take pictures, just as real CSI investigators would.”
The students whipped out their phones and started to click away. They jostled for good positions, trying to snap photos from the best angles.
“Please don’t touch the evidence,” Miss Hodges said. “You’ll be able to during your team’s individual examination, but for now, just use your eyes. You might want to take notes.”
Several students got out their notebooks and started writing.
“Anyone notice anything they’d like to share with the class?” Miss Hodges asked.
But since they were all competing with one another, everyone kept their thoughts to themselves. No one wanted to give anything good away to the other teams.
“It’s definitely been burned,” Ricky said.
A couple of kids laughed, but Miss Hodges said, “Actually, that’s an important observation. Just because it was found at the site of a bonfire doesn’t prove that it was thrown on the bonfire while it was still burning.”
“I smell that it’d been burned,” Ryan said. “I don’t need to see it.”
“But it might smell burned just from being in the ashes,” Charlie pointed out. “That doesn’t prove it’d been burned.”
Charlie standing up to Ryan? He was getting bolder every day.
“Very good, Charlie,” Miss Hodges said. “We can’t always trust just one of our senses. We need confirmation from as many senses as possible. Smell, sight, touch . . .”
“Taste?” Charlie said, smiling. Now Charlie was making jokes. The world had turned upside down.
Miss Hodges smiled back. “Only if we have a volunteer.” The class laughed.
“All right,” she said. “I think that’s long enough for our group examination. Principal Inverno?”
The principal put the costume back into the bag and then carried it into the little office. Meanwhile, Miss Hodges laid out some ground rules.
“Each team will have a brief period of time alone with the costume and the note, supervised by Principal Inverno. You may touch the costume. You may even take small samples, but it’s important that you leave enough for the other teams. If, for example, there’s a section of fur with a stain on it, you may collect a few hairs, but leave plenty for the others. Club CSI, you’re up first.”
Ricky looked disappointed to not be first. “Remember, leave plenty of evidence for us!” he called out.
“You got it,” Corey said as he followed Hannah and Ben into the office. They closed the door behind them.
Inside, Principal Inverno had laid the costume on Miss Hodges’s desk. Ben noticed immediately that the desk had been cleared off and covered with a plastic tarp. “Ah, Club CSI,” the principal said. “Rocky’s all yours.” He stood in the corner of the office with his arms folded across his chest.
At first it felt a little weird being crammed into the small office with the principal and the smoky-smelling costume. But once they started concentrating on their examination, Club CSI almost forgot the principal was there.
Hannah began by taking more pictures with her cell phone. She thoroughly covered the costume, recording every inch. Halfway through, Ben and Corey turned the costume over so she could get the other side.
“Let’s check the inside, too,” Ben said. They couldn’t turn the costume inside out, but they did manage to peer inside it. They didn’t find anything unusual.
“I don’t see any stains on the fur,” Corey said. “Just scorch and burn marks.”
“We’ll gather a few hairs from different parts of the costume,” Hannah said. They put the hairs in plastic bags to examine later.
“The head doesn’t seem as badly burned,” Corey noticed. All three of them examined the head more closely. It looked squished down. The frame inside the head was flattened.
“What’s this?” Ben said, leaning over the head to peer at it closely. Hannah and Corey looked too.
“Looks like little pieces of glass,” Hannah observed.
“And pebbles,” Corey added.
“There’s also dirt and possibly some oil,” Ben said. “Let’s get some close-ups and some samples.”
Hannah took close-up photos of the ram’s head. Ben carefully plucked out a few samples of the materials they’d found stuck in the head and then put them in plastic bags.
The note that the custodians had found pinned to the tree was lying on a small side table. Club CSI studied it carefully and took pictures.
“It’s definitely handwritten,” Hannah remarked. “But the handwriting is very neat and clear.”
“Looks as though whoever wrote it used an ordinary marker,” Corey said. “There’s nothing weird looking about the ink.”
Principal Inverno looked at his watch. “Okay, time’s up,” he said. “Let’s get the next team in here.”