mystery solving thread

How many of you have something one character is keeping a secret, and another character is supposed to find out? Would you like help determining what clues would be available?

Just post a description of the secret here, and of who's trying to figure it out and why. Then we'll give advice on how to solve that mystery.

I'll start it off:

In this story, magic is an inborn ability, unfortunately, it's also addictive. Mages feel compelled to do greater and greater feats of magic, often resulting in a lot of destruction. For this reason, mages are executed.

The police department is trying to find and execute an earth mage who's been causing earthquakes. The culprit is the mayor's 9 year old son, a bullied loner who's obsessed with rocks. He's smart for a 9 year old, but not to the level of pulling a Xanatos Gambit or anything. He does an earthquake every 3-5 months, and smaller tremors more often, and he tends to sneak off to do his magic in private. He also tends to use it to get back at his bullies, some of whom have gotten serious injuries (though no one's died yet). When he wants to get back at them, he goes where he knows they'll be, and hides out of sight to start an earthquake there.

It's not necroposting if the thread is under two months old. >__>

Well, the first thing I notice is that since the guy must be present to start an earthquake and he apparently doesn't have magical protection from it, the quakes must be very localized. From what I know about seismology, earthquakes only get dangerous from Richter scale rating 6.0 onwards. And a 6.0+ quake causes damage up to 150 km away from the epicenter, way more than a feasible range of human sight.

I don't know how serious the injuries you mentioned are, but if it involved destruction of buildings, and allowed a boy "hidden out of sight" to escape uninjured, the very focused nature of the quake must have immediately suggested that his was no natural occurence but a case of malicious magic. The fact that all quakes took place under populated areas would suggest (of course, not with 100% certainity) that the attacks were deliberate, rather than accidental discharges. Assuming that in each case, one or more of the victims were actually targeted by the assailant, it makes sense to cross-reference their backgrounds, find a common link.

9-year-olds tend to live with their parents and go to school. So the culprit's bullies either live in his neighbourhood or attend the same school as he (I don't know which from your summary). Cross-referencing them will reveal either the neighbourhood or the school. From there on, canvassing said location would eventually reveal that the victims bullied a very particular person, revealing both the culprit and a motive. Even if an alibi is found, placing him under careful surveillance would reveal him as the culprit upon his next attempt.

edited 24th Dec '10 8:37:04 AM by Koveras

A natural earthquake requires a fault line. It should be simple enough to determine that a particular tremor is not natural, and any seismograph should provide the location, time, and severity. That's only circumstancial evidence, though.

To find your budding mage, the authorities need luck, an informant, or a profile. For instance, they may believe that their suspect is like an arsonist who likes to see the result of his work and that he has a persecution complex. That doesn't identify him, but it narrows the field to a manageable size.