Free A Thorn Among the Lilies by Michael Hiebert

damn door.”
    â€œJust as you do, a gelatinous cube comes into view. It’s coming down the hallway from the direction you was headed.”
    â€œOkay, I get into the room and close the door.” Gelatinous cubes are like the garbage collectors of dungeons. They are like Jell-O and they take up the entire hall as they squish their way through caverns, picking up whatever they can. They aren’t very pleasant.
    â€œAll right, you successfully outwitted the cube, which since they have no brains isn’t such a feat. You are in a very old bedroom. There is dust covering everything and it smells very old. The room is about twelve feet across and maybe ten deep. It is dark because the only light is through some slits in the ceiling letting the sun leak down inside. There is a bed, a chest of drawers, and a very old and ornate chest at the end of the bed. The chest has a padlock on it as big as your fist.”
    â€œOooh,” Dewey said. “We like chests. I strike it with my sword.”
    I rolled a ten-sided die. “The padlock doesn’t open, but you make a tremendous clang.”
    Dewey looked at me. “How sturdy is that door coming into this room? Is it locked?”
    â€œYou left it unlocked,” I said, and rolled an eight-sided die.

C HAPTER 10
    T he forensics reports from Mobile and the ballistics report from Satsuma came into the Alvin Police Station at near on exactly the same time. Leah sat at her desk and decided to pull the information from Mobile out first. It was in a large manila envelope and contained only a thin, two-page document that she laid in front of her on the table.
    Outside, an Eastern meadowlark flew by just as a few drops of rain began hitting the street.
    The first thing Leah read about was the nail shavings. No blood was found beneath them, and there was no external DNA. Mercy Jo Carpenter gave every indication that she went willingly or was highly inebriated. Leah guessed it was the second. Of course, there was always the possibility that this was done by someone Mercy Jo knew.
    What was found under the nails was a high concentration of cedar shavings and some small particles of dirt and soil. Going by the nutrient and contaminated content, composition, trace elements, and acidity of the soil, it matched the same sort of soil you’d find in the northern parts of Alvin. It definitely didn’t come from Willet Lake.
    With a heavy sigh, Leah turned to the next page of the document.
    The shoe casts she had made came back with three different types of running shoes and one type of loafer. She hadn’t bothered to send the cast she made of Luanne Cooper’s shoe prints.
    The sneakers were a man’s size-eight Reeboks, a woman’s size-seven Nikes, a man’s size-seven Nikes, and the loafers a man’s size-ten Hush Puppies. Leah gave another big sigh. These weren’t going to be much use in catching the killer. That pretty much covered everyone in Alvin, and there was nothing stopping a killer from wearing a shoe too big for him.
    The last thing she looked at was the information garnered from the casts made by the tire tracks they found in the mud up by the side of the road. They were almost all from trucks. Chevys and Fords mainly. Anywhere from a 1981 to a 1986. There was one set that could be from a Toyota, but the lab was unsure because they were an off-brand that would fit any vehicle.
    Near on everyone in Alvin drove trucks. These could belong to anyone. Nothing in this report was really going to help narrow things down to find the killer.
    Leah ground her teeth. It was a habit she had and something she did when she was frustrated. Setting the information from Mobile aside, she opened up the ballistics report from Satsuma.
    The slug was a .22 short caliber, and ballistics’ best guess was that it was shot from a rather ancient handgun. One of the original Beretta Model 950 Jetfires, a model that has been manufactured by the gun