the mock investigation

[airlockedmods]

[The week at the space station has trickled by slowly. Friday morning after CECE awakens everyone with her usual cheery announcement over their PIPs it's dead quiet, the oppressive threat to their homes still lingering in the air. There's still hours to go before the deadline but will someone really have the guts to go through with it in such small quarters?

Or is the better question has someone already gone through with it?]

Comments

[airlockedmods]

[Up near the top.]

[semperperatus]

[That is interesting. Shepard closes his eyes, doing his best to memorize it - he's going to scribble this all down in a few minutes (semper peratus, semper peratus) Are there any other significant skid marks?]

[airlockedmods]

[You gonna get up close enough to the ladder to see?]

[semperperatus]

[He is, for sure]

[airlockedmods]

[A couple of the rungs also have a little bit of blood smeared on them.]

[semperperatus]

[That's--

Shepard's eyes autofocus on those rungs and he brings his face nice and close. Any fingerprints? Hair? Boot marks?]

[airlockedmods]

[Nope! We learned our lesson about g-d-mned fingerprints back in drrp It's hard to tell, but the smears are a little high up to be from boots.]

[semperperatus]

[Semperrr peratuuuuuus

He frowns, thinking for a moment. Ok, these smears...they can't be boots unless the person jumped up real high, right?
...

Ok, hang on, he has to...um, hm...ah! Are there paper towels anywhere? Wait--toilet paper!

He is going somewhere with this. Is there toilet paper or anything on a long roll on the spaceship?]

[airlockedmods]

[whhhhhy......]

[semperperatus]

[Because Shepard is going to do what he does best: kill sharks.

.....no wait that's not it, he's going to do the thing he does second best: improvise with shit. In this case his plan is to grab scissors from his first aid kit and a crap ton of toilet paper and measure out the distance between the floor and the first rung that blood appears on, using the scissors to cut the height of the rung. He's got a stupid theory and he's going to try and run with it.

Shall he?]

[airlockedmods]

[sure buddy you do you]

[semperperatus]

[/csi miami

So he does come back with a nice long trail of toilet paper. Which probably looks ridiculous to everyone watching, but he dun curr. Time to roughly measure out the length between the first rung with blood and the floor.]

[misinforms]

[..........okay no really, what????]

What... are you doing?

[semperperatus]

Measuring.

[I mean. Obviously]

[misinforms]

I mean what are you trying to measure? What are you trying to accomplish?

[She can forgive the toilet paper. Although she will judge a little. But first thing is first, she's trying to figure out what he's thinking.]

[semperperatus]

Look at these rungs. They have blood smeared on them. Considering the murder weapon that went through him is on the other side of the room, and most of the blood seems to pretty much be where that pipe is, I'm assuming that he died over there and whoever climbed this ladder was the murderer. And depending on their height...however the murder happened, this first rung where blood is on the bottom is where the murderer last could have had their hands on the ladder comfortably because their feet were able to hit the floor when they climbed down.

[Hang on, he's marking where rungs are on the toilet paper. Circling the one where the last rung with blood is, and so on. Very, very carefully.]

If we can compare the height people would rest their hands on the ladder while their feet were on the ground, that could help to narrow who could have done this.

[misinforms]

Oh!

[That's really smart.]

I see. Yes... yes. That makes perfect sense. I hadn't considered looking at it that way. Good thinking.

[Now she's quite curious about his investigation. This is absolutely a good guy to have around.]

[semperperatus]

Yeah, yeah...

[Ding. Hang on, some things are coming together in his mind mind the sharks flying out of his ears]

Yeah! Yeah, it makes sense, it has to. Especially with the zero gravity, if that's been on all night and the guy over there just turned it off--

[Thumbing towards Mr. Grumpy Evidence]

That's why the blood looks new, it doesn't clot properly in zero gravity. And...and that's why there's blood on the rungs! The murderer had to use the ladder, they had to use it as a tether in the environment in order to ground themselves to get out of the room, like on the space shuttle!

[misinforms]

Oh? Oh!

[She sees where you're going with this and she likes it.]

I wasn't aware of that fact about blood. It certainly explains a lot of things. Not that it makes this any less crazy, however it is starting to come together.

[semperperatus]

Yeah, I mean...I don't know if this'll work in the end, but if it helps, it helps.

[misinforms]

At the very least, it may be able to narrow things down. Anything we can use to help profile the murderer at this stage of the game is helpful.

[airlockedmods]

[what if the blood was just totally wiped clean off their hands by the time they got to that rung, though]

[semperperatus]

[If its super high up or super low down it probably blows his idea out, or anything like that, but for now he's going to bank on this being of some help in some way, shape or form. Semper peratus and all that, SyFy hero, gotta be insane, yolo, etc]

[airlockedmods]

[It definitely starts pretty close to the ceiling.]

[semperperatus]

[And where does it end?]