A Seven Minute Mystery: The Case of the Frozen Suspect
Here is another Seven Minute Mystery. These are quick mystery scenarios designed to exercise your cranium juices. No Google. No Internet search. No Wikipedia. Just you and your cranium. Give yourself only seven minutes to read each one and solve it. The answer will be in a future post.
Time waits for no one . . . the clock is ticking . . .
When the bitter cold that had frozen most of the Tahoo River practically all winter began to pass, a small boy noticed something red just below the surface.
It turned out to be a scarf – wrapped around the neck of a man. The body was further clothed in thick-soled shoes, two sweaters, rough trousers, work gloves, and a brown stocking cap.
Bud Kobs, missing since the previous November, had come to shore encased in a tomb of ice.
Kobs had been wanted in the slaying of Otis Ware. Art Byrnes, a Partner with Ware and Kobs in a junkyard by the river, had witnessed the killing.
On the morning of November 23, while the men were moving a pile of pipes, Kobs and Ware fell to arguing, Byrnes had told the coroner’s jury.
In a fit of rage, Byrnes said, Kobs had seized a three-foot length of cast iron pipe and hit Ware on the head. Tossing the pipe away, Kobs had dashed for the frozen river.
He got halfway across, Byrnes said, and fell through the ice.
“Kobs couldn’t swim,” Sheriff Matt Simon told Dr. Wells the day after the body was found. “He must have banged his head on the ice and never regained consciousness. The autopsy showed a severe contusion on the base of the skull”.
“Kobs had a criminal record,” concluded Sheriff Simon. “We matched his fingerprints against those on the pipe last November. He’s the murderer, all right. Case closed!”
“Case nearly closed,” corrected Wells.
QUESTION: Why is the case not closed? What is it that Wells finds disconcerting and unsettling?