25/3/13

The Elephant in the Room

As Sherlock examines his cultured bacteria in the milk I got yesterday, I'll tell you the rest.

After we settled Hathi in with Mycroft, Sherlock texted Lestrade, telling him (not asking) that we were on our way to the crime scene. He didn't seem to thrilled, but since Sherlock didn't tell him about Hathi, he allowed us to come.

On the way, Sherlock was ranting about how ridiculous this was, how Kyle was possibly schizophrenic, and blamed the elephant for almost, and I quote, "breaking my skull". This got us suspicious looks from the cabbie through the rear view mirror.

When we arrived, there were only a few police cars parked outside the front gates. The zoo had been closed down, so we were the only ones here. We found Lestrade at the elephants' habitat, but there was an understandable lack of elephants.

Lestrade reviewed the case for us. The victim, Lloyd Myers, was found with his head smashed in by another handler, Kyle Wilkins (we remained placid). He called the police when he found the body, but when they arrived, both Kyle and the suspect (Hathi) were gone.

Lestrade was obviously convinced that the elephant stepped on the victim, but he didn't say anything about it. He pointed out only one set of footprints in the dirt (confirmed to fit the victim's shoe size and style), as well as a record taken from security. He told us that in order to access the habitat, you had to scan your identification at the door. The victim was the only one to do this during the time of the murder.

Sherlock asked him about security tapes, but conveniently, they were missing. Lestrade recognized that this was unusual, but it didn't seem to bother him or Sherlock. Once again, I was left in the dark.

There were two other people in the zoo at the time, both employees. One of them heard a loud trumpet coming from the exhibit at the time of the murder, claiming that it sounded 'distressed'. Lestrade assumed that there was a sort of row between the victim and the elephant, resulting in the former's death.

Sherlock went to examine the scene as Lestrade gathered his team and prepared to leave. I stood behind him, waiting.

I saw him shooing something from his face, but he dismissed it as only a wasp.

He found a piece of rope buried in the dirt (when asked how he found it buried, he scoffed, unimpressed) and a small knife in the bushes. The police didn't investigate the scene well enough, since it was deemed an accident, but I had to admit, if it took Sherlock several minutes for Sherlock to find it, then it must have been well concealed.

Without the resources to dust for fingerprints, we left the exhibit and proceeded to find the employee who heard the noise and the third handler, who claimed that he wasn't there at the time. Sherlock asked trivial questions, that (he told me later) were to casually distract them. He took note of the boots they were each wearing-identical.

He pulled out the small knife we had found and showed it to them, asking if they carried his around with them. Both of them said no.

When we were done, we took an unexpected turn to the vending machine, where Sherlock got a bag of sweets. Surprised, I asked him why he would want to eat those. He didn't reply until we returned to the elephant habitat. "I'm confirming a theory."

He opened the bag and took a handful of the candies. Instead of stuffing his mouth, he threw them to the side of the habitat, near the bushes, then grabbed my arm and dragged us away from the area.

Within seconds, we saw black and yellow dots swarming around the sweets Sherlock had thrown. He said that wasps were attracted to sugar, and since he didn't want to get too close, he observed them from afar.

Apparently, he knew quite a bit about bees and wasps (in fact, he said that he once dreamed of being an apiarist). He also knew that elephants were inherently afraid of bees and wasps (not mice, I learned). Therefore, he said, Hathi did not cry out because he was agitated by the handler, but because there was a wasp nest not ten feet from his home.

Then that meant, I said, that something must have excited the wasps as well. Sherlock agreed. He took a picture of the crime scene with his phone and sent it to Mycroft, telling him to show it to Kyle. The message was followed by the question, "Is there anything missing?"

After a few moments, there was a response. "Hathi's toy. A big log used to hang from the tree that he would play with. The rope is missing, too."

Sherlock smiled. "This is too easy," he commented.

We asked Kyle to describe the rope and the log, and it matched the rope Sherlock had found buried in the dirt.

Sherlock then mentioned that the zoo issues the same type of boots to all of the keepers, which he noticed when he talked to the other two. There were two possibilities, he said. Either the victim was alone with Hathi, cut the rope, disposed of the log, buried the rope, and threw away his knife, resulting in a raging elephant, or there was a third party.

Since the shoes are identical, this third party could have been wearing them as well, and could have the same shoe size as the victim. If the placement was correct, it could appear that there was only one set of footprints when there were actually two.

Dammit. I think Sherlock spilled acid on the floor. I'll have to finish this tomorrow.