Suggestion: have unreliable witnesses. Mysteries are very easy for spellcasters to waltz through. Those divination spells can be very handy!
The following was e-mailed to my by my buddy Keith. Hope you get something out of it!
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Suggestions:
Witnesses with faulty memories and/or senses.
Witnesses who have been hypnotized/brainwashed to believe falsehoods.
Witnesses who are delusional.
Witnesses who are intensely traumatized or in some other state of mind
that overpowers whatever the mind-reading characters are digging for.
Witnesses whose minds can be read but, for whatever reason, cannot
testify, meaning that what they've witnessed can't be produced as
evidence.
Witnesses whose wits and senses are working perfectly but have simply
misperceived what they saw. (For a fantastic example, read "The Moving
Toyshop" by Edmund Crispin.)
Witnesses who have their own magical/psionic capabilities and can feed the
mind-reading characters false information.
Witnesses who produce conflicting testimony, not because they're lying or
mistaken but because they observed two completely different -- and perhaps
even competely unrelated -- events occurring around the same time.
But I suspect that the fundamental problem you're facing is the
characters' ability to read the mind of the actual criminal. The
challenge, then, must be first to identify, then to FIND the criminal:
he's no longer on the scene. You can't read the mind of a guy who isn't
there.
Another, nastier possibility: You can identify the criminal immediately,
even prove his guilt -- but to do so would be extremely dangerous for
political reasons. (Read "The Skull Mantra" by Eliot Pattison.)
Remember the Universal Brotherhood? We all knew the truth, but what could
we do about it?
Yet another possibility: A second person has a stronger motive for
committing the crime than the one who actually did it, and out of guilt,
he's managed to convince himself that he DID do it. The mind-reading
characters have to recognize that his delusional story is full of holes
and that the real perp is someone else.
Another possibility: The criminal thought he'd committed the crime
successfully, but actually he failed, and somebody else finished the job.
Or it may turn out that no crime was committed at all -- the suspected
murder victim is still alive, for example, or the stolen jewels were
simply moved, not taken -- meaning that now a crime must be PREVENTED.
(See the movie "Laura.")
Another possibility: For whatever reason, the characters find themselves
in a position of having to PROTECT the criminal rather than see him
brought to justice,in which case their knowledge of his guilt doesn't help
him at all.
Another possibility: Another character who either can read minds or
claims to be able to offers up contradictory testimony. How do you prove
which of you is right?
