Third law

In class we're always discussing different scenarios about what we would do in case this happened and how we would react. Well today I found it very interesting that we couldn't win in any way just because we didn't know what the outcome (We Never Will). If we ended up lying about where whether we saw our friend it would still be lying and if we didn't lie then he would most likely be murdered. Did we need to lie out of the sake of duty or because it was our friend? Maybe it was our duty to save him and if we had to lie to do it then is it justified. The fact that we told them to go look for him in the backyard and he ended up finding him and killing him is pure coincidence and not our fault.The third proposition, also related to the first two, is that duties should be undertaken out of "reverence" for "the law." Any organism can act out of instinct. We reacted to save the life of our friend because thats your first instinct but in doing so we did something "immoral" which is lying. It is obvious that in this case it is okay to lie but how far can it go?