AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Pierce once again failed to respond immediately.

"....Well, all right, I trust you, hawkeye."

He let out a sad chuckle

"Bad enough we have a murder on our hands, but the culprit had to make such a blasted mystery out of it."

Diana left with the growing group as they were called for the town hall. She had her eyebrows knit, looking thoughtful. "So..." She glanced up, seeing the cage with Joe in it.

As Lucky walked to the courthouse he speculated. " If Bud and Joe's footprints were out there together... Bud could have been murdered without ever getting to his house. He was walking towards it when he was killed. But wasn't Joe the first person to find the body? So it would make sense that his footprints are around it. Of course if none of ours are then the conditions aren't right currently so..."

Punchy coins in. "That's what I initially thought, mrmpht. There might be a reason he checked out the body first, though."

Punchy, calmed by the fact that there seems to be no evidence pointing at him, carefully relays the existing evidence in his head as he walks to the town hall.

Cranston chimed in, "But Bud would have gone back to his house two hours before the murder happened. He might have been attacked before night hours, or maybe went out in the middle of the night..."

"But there were scratch marks at the door, from the knife or something else…and the lockpicks might've played a part in it. Signs point to a forced entry or a break-in, don't they?" Diana asked.

I don't know. Perhaps Joe joined him on his walk home to see where he was going then waited for a bit then killed him?

"Whoa whoa whoa, slow down. We don't know if it's Joe that actually killed him."

"I forgot about the break-in...even so, why are Bud's footprints at the scene? Unless it's some sort of misdirection, it seems as though Bud was still walking when he was outside Joe's house. Punchy has a point too, I'd be far more suspicious if it wasn't Joe's bone replacing the lockpick set. It seems almost...planned, to set him up. Perhaps there's a good reason for it after all."

Pierce tapped his foot impatiently outside the courthouse.

"Well, we won't make any progress mindlessly throwing questions and retorts at each other. We need organized discussion, which I believe we'll be able to attain once the trial begins."

"There's still a possibility it's him, but I'm going for the idea that he was framed... there's just too much evidence pointing towards him."

"I don't know..." Whitney folded her arms with a small frown on her face. "I honestly don't think Diana's lockpicks are connected to the murder. If the culprit went to all the trouble to get lockpicks, then why wouldn't they just kill Bud in his own home? And why was his door all beat up? The culprit wouldn't have needed to beat up the door or lure Bud outside if they had lockpicks."