Scene Investigators: Solutions to Logic & Reasoning

This is where the game starts to get… I hesitate to say ‘easier’, but in essence, we’re way less dependent on evidence for the next two rooms. This is way more dependent on making good logical leaps. I’ve found everything I can in the rooms (as far as I can tell), but this one is… there’s multiple logical lines here, but they’re all pretty tenuous. I’ll try and be thorough here.

• Coat Hook – Purse
• Table – Everything (yes, really)
• Kitchen – Sticky Notes
• Kitchen – Recipe
• Kitchen – Wine Bottle (hint: read the back)
• Item List – Medicine Bottle
• Entryway – Ronnie’s Wallet (hint: It’s all useful, but we only care about one thing.)
• Living Room – Calendar (hint: Did anything happen on the 14th?)

And then, questions:
1. How many people live in this apartment?
2. Who is Jessica’s cousin?
3. Who sat in chair #4?
4. Who was killed?
5. Who is the killer?

Question 1 is easy. There’s 5 set spots at the table, and 3 listed guests on the Kitchen Sticky Notes. 2 people live in the apartment.

Question 2 is also easy. Jessica’s cousin is referred to as “he” and is not James. Her cousin is Victor.

Question 3 requires us to identify who was sitting where. Let’s go down the list.

• Victor was sitting at Chair #1, as it’s the only chair without wine.
• Chair 2 will require some extra logic, but note that the person has an un-dirtied napkin.
• Chair 3 had a woman sitting at it – if you look at the wine glass, there is a lipstick mark on the glass.
• Chair 4 will also need that extra bit of logic.
• Chair 5 is set opposite to how everyone else was set, and went untouched. This was James’ chair – he didn’t show up.

So based on this, we don’t know the locations of Carol, Jessica, or Ronnie – but we know Chair 3 had a woman sitting there. So the victim was either Carol or Jessica.

Let’s review the Purse. The important point here is the lipstick – it “leaves no marks and no smears”. There’s also a gap wide enough for the medication. (Even if the lipstick is not actually that water resistant and COULD leave a mark, it’s the wrong color.) This purse is therefore not owned by the victim.

It isn’t impossible that Jessica could have left a purse from an earlier excursion on her own coat hook, but if that were so, we probably wouldn’t be able to examine it. The purse must therefore be Carol’s. And since it’s the wrong lipstick for the dead person…

Jessica was in Chair #3. But how do we determine which chair was Ronnie and which chair was Carol? Buckle up.

Review your item list. The Medicine Bottle is likely medicine the killer was personally prescribed, so we should assume the killer is taking the medicine alongside using it as the murder weapon. Especially considering the name on the label suggests it may be anti-seizure medication (just from the sort of pun it makes), the killer could not have avoided taking it.

The killer would thus not have drank any alcohol to avoid the severe liver damage. But we don’t have any full wineglasses… Did you check out the back of the Wine Bottle? Review that. As the winebottle states, a ‘filled’ wineglass is 1/3rd of the way full. We do only have one of those – Chair #2’s. Add in the un-dirtied napkin, and they definitely never drank anything.

That places the killer in Chair #2. If you remember the purse, there is almost EXACTLY enough room in the purse for the pill bottle. Let’s put a pin in this, suspect Carol of being the murderer, and say she sat in Chair #2 pending review.

That means the person sitting in Chair #4 was Ronnie.

Because of previous logic, we already know who died – it’s Jessica Grayson.

So now, the killer. Carol is the most suspicious. But we know next to nothing about her, even after skimming her purse. We only know she exists because of a sticky note with her name on it! So let’s give her a fair shake. Let’s establish her opportunity, her means, and her motive.

Her opportunity was given by her seating arrangement. She was directly next to Jessica’s wineglass, and could have spiked Jessica with an overdose of her Spazax when nobody was looking. Even if not an overdose, she could have caused severe liver damage by just mixing the Spazax with alcohol.

Her means is her own medication, the Spazax from the bottle. We don’t know about any medications that Ronnie would have owned, but since this is Ronnie’s home, they likely would have been mentioned or otherwise found elsewhere. We don’t have enough information to reasonably assume this is Ronnie’s, but the empty space in Carol’s purse… That’s suspicious enough.

But a motive, though? Where will we find that?

Review her purse again. She has a match set from Celine’s Kitchen. It has some slight damage at the edges, so it’s probably been in there a while, but only one match has been used. If you review Ronnie’s receipt, he spent an hour and 10 minutes at Celine’s Kitchen with someone on the 14th (10 days before the murder), but that’s not on Jessica’s calendar. (We can tell Jessica is the one who maintains it, as Ronnie’s name is on it.)

Carol’s motive… What if Ronnie was having an affair with her, and she wanted Jessica out of the way? This lines up pretty nicely with everything we know so far.

Beyond that, there’s no real reason for Ronnie to commit a murder. The observant among you might have noticed it seems like Ronnie is potentially pressuring Jessica (who is some variant of Christian, from the cross on the wall) into an abortion (between the “Appt. with Dr. Richardson” while Ronnie was away and Ronnie’s card from a director of an abortion clinic), but that isn’t a real reason for Ronnie to commit murder. Even if he wasn’t ready for kids, he is married to Jessica, so he’s already committed to some extent. If he could spike her drink with anything, birth control or some kind of abortive would be a more likely choice, not something that’d kill her.

Most importantly… Ronnie likely wouldn’t have bothered buying her $57 of chocolates and wine for her birthday. This murder was clearly premeditated from the use of the medication, or at least a crime of opportunity rather than passion, where the killer was just waiting for the chance to do this.

Thus, with Ronnie much less likely to have killed Jessica, Carol is the most reasonable killer.

Yes, this one was rough. We only even know Carol’s name because of the sticky note on the fridge – she doesn’t come up anywhere else. And it’s not clear why the laptop is locked out, either. Maybe to imply extra martial strife or that Ronnie was hiding things from Jessica?

This is just a little odd facts power hour, but “the account is locked out” is actually a really, really weird detail.

The login screen resembles Vista (which is from 2007). First strike. Windows XP (which this should be based off) would only do a password lockout if you misentered your password 3 times, and it would lock you out for 30 minutes.

XP would also show multiple users, even if the account was locked out – meaning we would be able to see if this is a shared computer or not.

That means we’re missing a lot of information to come to the likely intended conclusion: After Jessica collapsed, Ronnie attempted to look up what he should do on the computer, but misentered his password in his panic, and locked himself out. That’s the only way this computer should have wound up locked out… except that none of this is established and this is the wrong version of Windows for this era. I’m not even 100% sure the lockout security protocol was in place for home machines in 2002!

This added like 30-45 minutes onto my first run of this because I had thought Ronnie had died (until I reviewed and noticed the lipstick on the glass). This is a very unhelpful piece of evidence, in other words…

Alright. On to Room 403.

Last one. This one is even less physical-evidence oriented than the last one. It’s a lot of reading. At least it doesn’t have too many crazy logical leaps…

• Document File List – All of the Interviews (hint: All of them are useful somehow… Except Andrew, really. He just doesn’t mention anything we don’t already know, though.)
• Guy’s Room – Laptop (hint: I’m only adding this one as a courtesy.)
• Guy’s Room – Band Application
• Girl’s Room – Laptop (hint: Pretty much every chat here is useful somehow.)
• Apartment – Cups (hint: Pretty much every chat here is useful somehow.)
• Entryway – Backpack
• Entryway – Sports Bag

Questions are:
1. Who died?
2. Who was the second to last to arrive?
3. Who is the owner of the blue sports bag?
4. Who is the killer?

Alright, right into the logic again.

For ‘who died’, all we actually need is Kristy’s interview. The officer explicitly states Brian’s full name.
Brian Olson is dead.

The second to last to arrive is also easy. We just need to find someone reliable to answer the question. So let’s look to Eric’s interview.

He establishes that the first 4 at the apartment are Brian, Grace, Jack, and himself. From Kristy not having a cup, we can assume there were only 6 actual people here: Jack, Lisa, Andrew, Grace, Eric, and Brian, our victim. So the only people left to arrive are Lisa and Andrew. And Eric says explicitly Andrew is last to arrive.

So Lisa (Olson, as we know she’s Brian’s sister) is second to last to arrive.

Who owns the blue sports bag? All you need is Lisa’s Laptop and the bag itself. Reference Lisa’s private chats with everyone. We can establish from lillian87’s conversation that there’s someone who recently joined the tennis team who has a crush on Kristy, and that Kristy has brothers. (Put a pin in that one, we’ll be back to it.) csandra90 introduces the Kristy being sexually assaulted information, which we then have jester578 react very strongly to. From how Lisa calls them “cowboy”, it’s a guy, so we can reasonably assume jester578 is the one with the crush.

Reference the Grad Party groupchat. Hey, look, it’s jester578 again! He says he’s bringing drinks. Aww…

Hey, wait a minute. We know Andrew brought the drinks. We could reasonably make the jump from here that Andrew is jester578. Let’s tie that back to the bag now. Open the bag up. We can examine the drumsticks, the tennis rackets, and the pages in the back. We only really care about the rackets and the pages for this.

The rackets are basically brand new – there’s almost no visible wear on the grip, and no wear on the racket’s strings. Which does suggest these are a recent acquisition, but probably not enough on their own. Check out the notes now – skim to the last page.

Hey, that’s just straight up a love letter to Kristy. High school style. The bag contains newish tennis rackets, which we know Andrew recently joined the tennis team. We know Andrew has a crush on Kristy. This is honestly enough to tie this bag to Andrew. There’s some extra logic you could do to tie the drumsticks to Andrew instead, but I think this is the most solid path with the least amount of evidence to interact with.

Final question. Who killed him? You might have already picked up the lie if you examined everything on the evidence list carefully. I invite you to punch it in now before reading further and submit.

If you did, congrats! Easiest case file GG no re.

For anyone who didn’t notice. Jack’s interview states he “finished his drink and then left”. Meanwhile, his actual drink on the kitchen counter is mostly full. Eric’s interview (thank you, Eric, for your reliability) also states that Jack and Brian argued about something, before Brian locked himself in his room. Considering Jack is the only person who clearly lied to the police, you can point to him as the killer. The game accepts firstname inputs, so you could just stop here, but this IS supposed to be us establishing logic, not just catching a lie and jumping on it.

So let’s go back to the opportunity, means, and motive discussion we used for Room 402.

For opportunity – the keys in the door of Brian’s room are the spare keys. Lisa’s interview establishes they were in the kitchen, but disappeared by the time she arrived home. The only people who would thus have had the opportunity to steal them would be the people who were there before Lisa: Grace, Jack, Brian, and Eric. Jack remains on our radar as a suspect.

For means… If you found the shell on the floor of Brian’s room, we know a gun was used. Whoever did this likely brought a gun from home, as we don’t have any evidence pointing to a gun being kept in the house. So whoever did this premeditated this murder – we could already suspect this because they stole the keys BEFORE alcohol arrived with Andrew, but bringing a gun is proof positive.

For motive, though? We only know Jack and Brian had an argument. Jack doesn’t appear to have any surface level ties to the sexual assault allegations, and whoever did this premeditated the murder. Even if Jack just carries a gun wherever he goes, Jack would have had to steal the keys before the drunken argument.

So let’s establish a motive. Most people will assume this has to do with the only thing we knew Brian did that is murder-worthy – the sexual assault allegation. And I will admit, that’s a good place to start. So how do we tie someone to that?

There are actually a few ways to do this. But let’s just reference the Backpack for now. There’s an asthma/allergy attack kit, and a note about summer school. Whoever owned the backpack was not going to graduate this year (and from the writing, this is to ‘allow them to graduate with their class’, so in other words, this isn’t for someone failing their senior year of school). So let’s talk ages.

If we look to the Band Application slip, we can see that Brian, Eric, and Andrew were 18, while Jack was 17. We can also tell Lisa is at most 17, as they’re considering making her the new captain after Kristy graduates this year (making her 18). That means we have everyone but Grace accounted for. … But we KNOW Grace’s last name from her interview. She’s Grace BURNS.

The person who owns the backpack is Jack. His full name, therefore, is Jack Carter. And if you read Kristy’s interview, HER full name is Kristy Carter.

Yeah, this is all coming together. Jack is one of Kristy’s brothers we mentioned previously. And even if he was having second thoughts, he arrived with Grace, and saw Kristy leaving the apartment. We know nobody was in the apartment at that time except for Brian. … Yeah, at this point, it’s very safe to say Jack committed to his plan at this point if he didn’t already.

He stole the keys, waited until everyone was asleep, broke into Brian’s room with the spare keys, shot him once in the chest, and left. He most likely was in a daze after committing murder, resulting in him forgetting his backpack and the state of his beer cup as he left the door open and just walked out of the apartment.

The killer is Jack Carter.

Fun fact: I realized I needed to test and make 100% sure that you couldn’t just put in Jack’s first name before I posted this. Turns out you can. I just thought we needed full names for every name we could find, and this is the first case where that came back to bite me. Oh well.

Welcome to the most confusing scenario in the game! It’s not the most demanding, but it sure asks a lot of you, and doesn’t ask some of it very clearly!

Good luck!

• Corkboard – Morning/Noon Shift
• Baker’s Office – Birthday Card
• Baker’s Office – Notebook
• Baker’s Office – Long Empty Display
• Baker’s Office – Dismantled Gun
• Boltz’s Office – Journal (hint: a sneaky briefcase)
• Boltz’s Office – Planner
• Boltz’s Office – Scratch Pad
• Snyder’s Office – Gun Manual
• Snyder’s Office – Journal
• Nakamura’s Office – Gun Poster
• Nakamura’s Office – Notebook (hint: Beanbag time!)
• Nakamura’s Office – Composition Book
• Nakamura’s Office – Planner
• Interrogation Room – Broken Clock
• Interrogation Room – Planner

Alright, questions time:
1. What is in the package by the exit?
2. Was the gun the killer was using standard issue?
3. Who died by the office doorway?
4. Who was the dirty cop?
5. How many people were murdered?
6. Was Harry Baker in a reasonable state of mind, yes or no?
7. Which prisoner was in interrogation room #1?

Lots, huh? Let’s get into it.

Question 1 is pretty simple, all things considered. Check out the Birthday Card. Note the mention of Bartholomew Baker here. Then check out Baker’s notebook – the package keeps getting rejected/returned to sender.

Now, the long empty display (above the rifle). It says it was an item from “Bartholomew Baker”. So… what was it? My first personal answer was ‘Rifle’ due to it being hung with a rifle, but if you look at the holders for the rifle, they don’t really make sense when you compare them to the holders for the empty case. So… there isn’t really much else it could be other than a sword, right?

Yeah, Sword works. Or – apparently – you can even just get simpler with it. If you completely disregard the case, you can just write “Gift”. The game will accept this too.

Question 2 requires paying attention to the bullet origins. The killer appears to have stood up from the interrogation room chair, and (over the course of it) taken 10 shots. We find all casings here are 9mm. So… if it wouldn’t be a standard issue, what are the possibilities?

It could have been that the killer stole a revolver from Baker’s office beforehand, but the guns are a .50AE and a .45, which means they couldn’t have taken the shots. We also don’t know if other shots were taken due to the Gun Manual from Snyder’s office – if those revolvers were used, they wouldn’t have dropped their casings.

If we pay attention to Nakamura’s Composition Book, he mentions having a “fancy baby”, like the poster on the wall. If you review that, it mentions using .40 Super bullets. So every other possible gun requires more powerful ammunition than 9mm, and we can see that Harry was cleaning his (likely standard issue) gun – which has 9mm clearly etched into the side of the piece we can examine.

The killer was definitely using a standard issue pistol.

Question 3 now. Who died by the office doorway? As previously mentioned, someone was cleaning guns in Harry Baker’s office. We also wouldn’t view him as the potential murderer: as mentioned in his journal, he is leaving the evening of the 25th (the day of the shooting) and would not want to ruin that.

If we want to really confirm that Harry was in his office, we just need two things: Boltz’s journal, and the corkboard shift, as well as to pay attention to the broken clock’s time (12:35). Boltz’s journal mentions that Baker was taken off his case the previous day, and the shift mentions that Baker would only watch over the prisoners during lunchtime (13:45). As such, Harry had no cases, and wouldn’t have been participating in the interrogations. With 2 people dead in each interrogation room, and only one seat having been used outside of the interrogation rooms, that accounts for the other 3 cops in this office – so Harry is the only one who would have died there.

Question 4 – dirty cop. This one is just reading comprehension and thoroughness. If you haven’t already, read Snyder’s Journal. Since we’ve mentioned them offhand, if you’ve read through both Boltz’s Journal and Nakamura’s Composition Book at this stage, you might have noticed something strange: Snyder mentions that he’s getting charged $50 for something now, but he seems to have a lot of money. In fact, his desk is LITTERED in small-change bills. Yet, somehow, on the salary that Nakamura is struggling on, he’s supporting three kids, despite also having some kind of medical expenses?

The most suspicious mention is the sympathetic writing in the last page of Snyder’s page. Phil isn’t another cop, but one of their suspects… so what is this?

Snyder has way too much money for his situation, and appears to be trying to cozy up with a drug dealer they’ve arrested… Which makes him incredibly suspicious. Between Boltz’s personality, Nakamura’s struggling with money, and Harry intending to leave – yeah, no.

The dirty cop is Mike Snyder.

Also, if you check the vent next to the fern, surprise! He was buying cocaine! And storing it at a police station!! Why???

Okay, Question 5. How many people were murdered… We’ll need to explore how the crime went down. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough text to do that… so I’ll have to make this a two-parter.

Picking up where we left off… how many were murdered. Okay. There are 6 dead people, but that isn’t what this is asking. This one requires that we understand the scene of the crime. With how things are arranged, each room contained 1 cop and 1 prisoner, and the person sitting in the Hawaiian print chair was a cop monitoring things. Harry was cleaning his guns in his office.

From Boltz’s journal, we know that Boltz was supposed to handle questioning Carl Tristan, and Mike would be in charge of questioning Phillip Clemence, with Nakamura supporting. Let’s assume that’s when this happened, before the switch – Nakamura was in the chair. During Mike’s attempt to squeeze Phil, Nakamura – who lost his medication 9/20 (per his Notebook under the beanbag chair and his Composition Book) – lost it, took the chair next to him and blocked the Officer’s Lounge door, and then shoved a file cabinet to block the other door. After that, he pulled his gun on Mike and shot him twice. Mike may have become alert and pulled his gun in retaliation, but only managed to fire a single shot at Nakamura before collapsing. There are other casings in Interrogation Room 2, suggesting that Phil (who was not cuffed at this moment) dove for the gun and tried to defend himself. It is unclear if Nakamura had any intent to shoot him.

At this point, Harry heard the gunshots and moved with his revolvers. He was unable to open the door, but he pushed it open a crack and stuck a revolver through in order to take shots. There should be 5 shots taken at the doorway from the position behind the desk in Interrogation Room #2. These shots result in the 3 bulletholes in the wall under the Detective’s Office plaque – we can tell due to the bullet angles – and the fourth hole, in the door itself. The two bullets in the wall beyond the doorway have a much sharper angle, suggesting those came from Nakamura after Harry tried to enter the room with the revolver.

Based on the hole in the door and Nakamura blocking it with a file cabinet, the only person who could have landed the fatal shot was Phil. We can also trace 4 of Harry’s shots. Harry first shot the wall of Interrogation Room #2, based on the bullet type and huge shatter pattern, causing debris to hit Phil in the neck. Based on the slow bleed pattern, it’s more likely Phil was incapacitated and bled out a large quantity of blood before his heart stopped. The second spatter of blood is also layered OVER the black tape, suggesting it was a bloodspatter made when the body was moved. (e: Nevermind, this game is buggy about texture layering sometimes.) It’s most likely Phil’s throat was damaged due to the debris.

The other 3 bullets from Harry we can find are in the wall next to the hole in the window (likely around where Nakamura’s head was), and in the broken clock… and a bloody bullet next to the fax machine in front of Room #1 – Harry is the only person who would have had the opportunity to injure Nakamura, causing the blood trail. The blood spatter here is Nakamura removing the bullet from his leg, also.

From here, the scene plays out pretty simply: when Nakamura approaches the door to Interrogation Room #1, he is approached by Boltz, whose gun is broken and thus he is unarmed. Nakamura shoots him in the head. He then collapses against the wall under the clock, and shoots himself.

Hey, wait a minute, that’s 5 fatalities. What about the sixth body?

That one – Carl’s body – if we look at, does not appear to have been shot at all. If you look at the pose he fell in, he appears to be clutching his chest. At the time of death, he was also drinking a coffee, it looks like. Carl seems to have independently had a heart attack.

So… what’s the total, here? Murder is, in this context, “the killing of one human being by another”. So in this killcount:

• Nakamura killed Mike.
• Harry killed Phil.
• Phil killed Harry.
• Nakamura killed Boltz.
• Nakamura killed himself.
• Carl died of a heart attack.

The answer is thus 4 – Nakamura’s suicide is not murder, and a heart attack is not murder.

Now that we’ve laid this all out, we can easily answer the rest of the questions.

Question 6 was just: Was Harry in a reasonable state of mind? Boltz’s notebook mentioned that Harry was over his alcohol bender as of the 20th, so he wasn’t drinking at the moment, but it does also establish he’s been odd/subdued. Harry’s notebook also establishes that he needs to be clean, presumably to meet his son Kyle. So he wasn’t under anything mind-altering at the time of the crime.

He heard gunshots, moved to investigate, and never took a fatal shot except on the person with the loaded gun pointed at him, Nakamura. Phil’s death (even though he was responsible) appears to be entirely accidental. Yes, Harry was behaving reasonably.

Finally, last question. Which prisoner was in Interrogation Room #1? We actually established this earlier, on accident. The guy who died of a heart attack, Carl Tristan, was in Room 1. So that’s the answer.

Technically, if this was post-switch, it could have been the other way around – but Mike was to “join” Boltz, which would normally suggest that they’d be in the room together. Setting that aside, the switch was to happen at 12:45, and the clock was broken at 12:35pm. “Wait, but the slow clock!” you might be saying, if you remember Boltz’s Scratch Pad.

It’s not that. The time of investigation is 11:56pm. Y’know how Boltz’s pad mentions it might be a bad battery? Check out the clock in the main room. It’s stopped at 8:45, which is around when they appear to take a break for donuts.

We can assume Boltz asked Harry to look into it, and Harry removed the battery at that time. That establishes that the shot clock was not running slow, and so Mike hadn’t switched rooms yet, so everything works here.

Now, bonus question: Something’s just laying around that shouldn’t be where it is. What is it?

If you answered Nakamura’s medicine on his desk, you’d be right. He lost it on 9/20, after all. Why is it here?

What if I pointed out that Nakamura says, “[Mike]’s been cruel in some stuff recently too, keeps making jokes about issues that the others still haven’t clued in on.”, dated 9/24? And his medicine was stolen 9/20 out of his car?

I think Mike stole Nakamura’s medication to screw with him, which is also how he became aware of Nakamura’s condition. He made veiled threats about exposing him as jokes to play off to try and make Nakamura settle down and stop fighting him. And he left it on Nakamura’s desk when they were heading in to speak with the perp, perhaps after realizing Nakamura was starting to become genuinely a bit deranged.

Kinda think if anyone here deserved any of this, it would definitely be Mike.

If you aced everything on your own merits (or mine), congratulations! Here’s the final case, where you are now at an ALL TIME LOW for evidence, and the reason for things being here actually matters a lot!

• Audio File List – All of it. Read or listen, all of it.
• Entryway – Briefcase
• Entryway – Phone
• Entryway – Sticky Notes
• Living Room – Opened Letter
• Living Room – Last Will & Testament
• Living Room – Business Card
• Guest Room (White) – Phone
• Guest Room (Green) – Postcard & Ring

Questions:

1. Among the total money to be distributed to the children, how much % was each son supposed to receive?
2. How many people were killed in the mansion?
3. For each murder, who killed who?

Let’s get into it.

First question demands we learn everything there is to know about these guys. The Last Will & Testament establishes the base numbers for everyone, but we’ll get back to them. The Opened Letter is what we need here.

To dramatically simplify what it says, if they are:
Unemployed: -1
Any Job: +1
Governmental Job: +1 (additional)
Middle Management Position: +1 (additional)
C Suite (Chief) Position: +2 (additional)

Then, if they are:
Single: +0
Divorced: -1
Married: +1
Have a Son: +1 (additional)

Highest point total gains +15%, the next two gain +10%, and the final only gets +5%.

So let’s reference the eulogy. Ellis was the first to go, and offered very little useful information on his employment or relationships. Roger was next, and we again get very little useful information out of him. Glenn approaches, he thanks Glenn, and then Glenn takes over.

Glenn is where we start getting actual information. “Roger is now a successful chef”, and “I am a lawyer for the state”. Glenn also mentions “Our own growing families”, so we can assume he has a family to some degree. Finally, Roman comes up.

Roman declares that he founded his own company, Roman Estate Co. That places him as the CEO or otherwise of the company. He also mentions his wife experiencing childbirth, so he’s basically at the forefront of the race here. Current standing is:

Ellis, with no info, is +0.
Roger, with a chef job, is +1, possibly +2 if middle management
Glenn, with a governmental job: is +2, possibly +3
Roman, as the CEO of his own company with a wife, is at minimum +4. If he has a son, +5.

We actually only need to determine who ranks best and worst in this race… so at this stage, we really only need to determine a few things.

Roger’s job can’t compete with the C-Suite bonus, so unless he is middle management, married, and has a son, he can’t actually beat Roman. Unless Ellis is better than him, we can set Roman aside for now.

Glenn, with a governmental job, is the only one in a position to potentially beat Roman then – if Roman has no sons and Glenn is married with sons, then Glenn wins.

Ellis must be reviewed to see if he’s got a shot at the races, here. For that, let’s look at the Guest Room (Green)’s ring and postcard. The postcard is to a “Hun”, a woman who does not share the name Hughes. And it mentions that “this time, I won’t have to worry about constantly having to look for a job”. And, of course, the ring next to the postcard establishes this as Ellis’s room, which suggests this is written by Ellis. … At best, Ellis might be currently employed, and just happened to experience poverty before… But he’s definitely not currently married. Ellis maxes out at 1, but is most likely -1 from being unemployed.

Roger – if we look at the business card in the living room – is a sous chef. That would place him as the second in command of his kitchen, which would be middle management. Roger is thus +2, more than enough to beat Ellis unless we become aware of a divorce.

Glenn starts at +2, but we need to review his family status to see if he beats Roman. For that, his briefcase is needed. See his planner inside it. “Call Valerie when home. Won’t be good to see Ruby.” His home is not where he would go to see Valerie or Ruby, who we can assume (based on crossed out information) is the woman he had Ruby with, and his daughter.

Glenn is clearly divorced, and does not have a male child. He’s at +1. Ouch.

Roman is now only able to be tied by Roger, and that’s only if Roger is married with a son while Roman doesn’t have a son. Aaand see the sticky notes next to the phone in the entryway. “Roman’s son is allergic to nuts.”

Welp. Roman wins! Payouts are now:
Ellis – 17% + 5% for coming in dead last. So 22%.
Roger – 16% + 10% for being neither the worst nor best. So 26%.
Glenn – 14% + 10% for being neither the worst nor best. So 24%.
Roman – 13% + 15% for coming in first. So 28%.

Let’s move on.
Question 2; how many people were killed in the mansion? There are a few reasonable ways to reach this conclusion, but the simplest is the following:

The bloodstain in the entryway is critical amounts of blood loss. If anyone bleeds that much blood, they will almost definitely die without help. Let’s say that’s death #1, from the streak-marks – that’s like a body being dragged out, and NOT on a stretcher.

Now, the white outline in the Guest Room (White). That’s death #2. Easy. There don’t appear to be any other signs of a struggle anywhere else. So that should be it – 2 deaths.

Question 3, then, becomes a question with 4 names attached. Who killed who?

Let’s first look at the Guest Room (White) body. The lack of blood is what’s important. The broken vase, damage to the wall, fallen pillows, and statue falling over are signs of the struggle that occurred. Whoever was killed here was attacked in the doorway, slammed into the wall (likely their head), and then – still fighting – dragged into the bedroom and finished off. Whoever did this had a lot of strength, far more than whoever they fought.

Of the four jobs, the one with the most brute strength SHOULD be Ellis. There’s some corroborating evidence here, but between a chef, a lawyer, and a CEO – Ellis could have reasonably overpowered any of them. But who died?

Review the Butler Questioning. You’d normally take this as confirmation just that they were all in the house, but remember: this also establishes that the butler wouldn’t be coming back for a while. Furthermore, with the funeral over, these guys should be gearing up to leave. This is another case where things remaining here after the fact is actually suspect in its own case.

The phones, specifically. We can’t pin down the owner of one of them, but the other one appears to be Ellis, from the fact the other 3 phone numbers that seem to be relevant aren’t just typing in all lowercase. So if we assume the entryway phone is Ellis’s, and also make note of the ring still being here, the second victim should be Ellis.

Now. Ellis was texting a collaborator. If the gift bags are representative of the kids who were here who haven’t left yet, this confirms Roman is the collaborator (as this confirms Roger can’t be the collaborator Ellis is texting). Roman collaborated, and thus probably wouldn’t have killed or been killed by Ellis.

So who died, Glenn or Roger? Well. Ellis was fed up with the killed person for what they said. But Roger barely managed to say anything. So… Glenn, then. We can also intuit this from Glenn’s briefcase with his pendant of Ruby’s being left behind.

So who killed Ellis? Well. We saw that Roger and Glenn had a good rapport. And it looks like a crime of passion, from the gun that was knocked down in the hunting room. Most likely, Roger heard Ellis kill Glenn, confronted him with the gun, and shot and killed him. Supporting evidence is the singular missing coat – Roman wouldn’t want to bring his kids near the area, and probably left a different way. So with Glenn and Ellis dead, the only person who would have killed Ellis and dragged him away would be Roger.

And that’s it. Congrats – you’re done with the game!