The Owls gathered in Data’s room and waited patiently while he and Fahd hooked the laptop up to
Data’s digital camera. Data used the mouse to race through the photographs he had taken since the team left Tamarack for the long bus ride to Salt Lake City: shots of the players sleeping, shots of various sites along the way, a great photo of Nish sound asleep with a sagging top hat of shaving cream on his head, shots of their arrival, the mountains, the hotel, the rinks, and then photos of the tour of Park City the Owls had taken with Ebenezer Durk.
Travis waited patiently as Data flicked through the shots of the old buildings and the small underground jail, then began racing through a series of photographs of the snowfall and the walk around to the stables behind Main Street.
Data stopped, backed up, and settled on a photo of the stables with the icicles hanging from their eaves reaching nearly to the ground. Travis shivered just remembering that astonishingly cold day.
Data used the mouse to zoom in on the icicles, the long swords of ice glistening deep blue in the sun.
It was a lovely photo, a postcard.
“There’s your murder weapon,” Data said.
“Where?” Nish asked.
“Right in front of your eyes.”
“He was killed with a laptop?” Nish said, his eyes widening.
Data sighed deeply. Fahd giggled and then bit back the giggle.
“The perfect murder weapon,” Data said. “An icicle. The only murder weapon known that is guaranteed to melt away and never be seen again.”
Travis held his tongue in the turmoil that followed. The Owls excitedly talked about how ingenious it was to use an icicle to stab someone. The murder weapon could be laid right on top of the body and by the time the police arrived it would have turned into a puddle from the warmth of the body alone. A little longer under the right conditions, and the murder weapon might vanish entirely – evaporated into thin air.
“Brilliant,” Jesse said.
“But wouldn’t it break?” asked Liz.
“Not if the stab was straight on,” said Data. “An icicle would work if it was long enough and thick enough.”
These icicles were both long enough and thick. Fahd kept zooming in and out on them, his teammates leaning behind him now and shivering – even though the room was perfectly warm.
“They found his body by the lake, though,” said Simon. “The storm didn’t hit there, did it? Wasn’t it just here, in the mountains?”
“I think he was killed right here and taken to that gravel pit,” said Data. “That way the police would never figure out how they’d killed him.”
“But …,” said Sam, her pause capturing the attention of all the Owls, “but if that’s what happened … who killed him?”
“That’s the next part of the mystery,” said Data, “and we don’t have a clue.”
Travis cleared his throat. He knew he was blushing, almost afraid to say what he knew had to be said.
“Maybe …,” he began, waiting while the others turned to listen, “maybe we do have a clue.”