“But we found Shreve’s footprint by the fountain, and his handprint in blood on the marble!”
“Yes, it would seem that way, wouldn’t it?” Sherwood Greg said driving his scooter in a slow circle. “But do you know what we didn’t see? The mark of his cane!”
“We might not have seen it,” said Terra. “The driveway is loose gravel.”
Greg produced the artifact in question, its serpent head gleaming malevolently, from his bag.
“You can tell a lot about a man by the cane he uses, especially if he doesn’t have the mobility issues some of us do,” he said. “I think we can all come to the same conclusions about a man who uses a replica Lucius Malfoy walking stick.”
Then he jabbed it lightly into the gravel, where it left a series of sharp impressions; on the last jab it sunk in so deeply that he simply let it rest there. Sherwood Greg then held aloft his iPad, with snaps of the footprints as they had been discovered.
“You can check these photos for timestamps and edits,” he said, “but I think you’ll find that they were not present. And yet, when we compare this shot from earlier in the night, we see that he had the cane when he left.” Greg swiped to a photo of Shreveport looking sour as he retreated through the door. “This came off of Instagram, where the posting time confirms it was less than five minutes before the body was found.”
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 