Whodunnit?: The Final Game

Chapter Four: Rough Impact

Morgue: Only three investigators chose the morgue as their areas of choice. Maddie, Wyatt and Alex all walked into the little makeshift morgue, none of them seemed like they were gonna talk or waste time. From first glances, the body was a sigh to behold.

"Damn," Maddie sighed. "She was an old woman, she didn't deserve this." 

"No, she really didn't." Wyatt agreed. "This is just diabolical."

Alex didn't respond verbally, he just grunted and moved forward, pulling the sheet back further. He wanted to get straight to investigating. They only had a limited amount of time to look over their chosen areas, so he wanted to take full advantage.

The very first thing that stuck out to the three people in the morgue was the scent. It smelled overwhelmingly of gasoline, but initially nobody knew what the smell was exactly, aside from Maddie, her experience as a cop meant she's dealt with a couple of arson cases in the past.

She wasn't going to point the chemical scent out, though. It's still a competition, so she just got closer to the body and wafted the scent, just to be careful. It's definitely gasoline, the cop thought to herself. 

Wyatt got closer to Maddie, he also noticed her sniffing around, quite literally. He knew the smell had to be something important, but he didn't know what it was. Well, he might as well ask Maddie.

"Hey, I saw you sniffing." Wyatt said with a sheepish smile. "Do you know what the smell is?"

"Uh," Maddie was hesitant, should she tell him? "It's gasoline." Maddie said, she might as well be honest, he has a daughter who went to the other area, so maybe they'll feel obligated to help her in the future. 

"Thank you." Wyatt said. "I appreciate it."

"Look, you're gonna have to work with me since I gave you that info." Maddie whispered. "Both you and your daughter. There's three of us, assuming the format stays the same and there is three areas, we make it through this murder, and we can cover all the areas."

"I agree." Wyatt said, wanting to look after his daughter. Their best chance would be to partner up with another person.

"Okay, good. Let's get back to the investigation." Maddie said gruffly.

Alex wasn't paying attention to the side conversation. He had already noticed a clue on the body that he was investigating. On the back of Delilah's head, there was a wound. It was clearly something important, considering the circumstances of the murder. Why would the killer set someone on fire, beat them over the head and then somehow get them to fall out the window onto the ground below?

"There's a lot of wounds, isn't there?" Wyatt said from behind Alex, startling the janitor. "Why did the killer inflict so much damage on Delilah?"

"Hey, give me a warning next time, wont ya?" Alex scowled. 

"Sorry, dude." Wyatt apologized.

"It seems like the killer wants to complicate things to make the case harder to solve." Maddie offered. "But the one thing I can say, is that Delilah's burns don't seem fatal."

"Really, how so?" Alex asked.

"I got this." Wyatt said, as an emergency room physician he's dealt with burn victims in the past. "These burns aren't severe. She was probably only on fire for a small amount of time before she fell through the window. My guess would be that the impact killed her, not the fire."

"Are you sure it wasn't the head wound that killed her?" Alex asked. 

"I'd wager not." Wyatt said. "She's frail, but from looking at the head wound, it wasn't that hard of an impact."