Cop Transcript, Session One a Cyberpunk game compiled by Amy Luther (mockery@cox.net) GM is Amy Luther. PR is Joseph Kilcoyne, playing Detective Sergeant David Nobel. GM - The date is Saturday, June 4, 2022. It is a clear and sunny morning. We'll assume it's about nine or ten. You don't have to work today, but you are on call. PR - Cool. GM - You worked yesterday, though. Wednesday and Thursday it rained quite a lot. Friday it started to clear up, and today is actually nice. So it looks like a very good, beautiful weekend ahead. So, what are you doing in your Drifter today? By the way, the name of your mobile home park is "Sunny Acres." PR - [laughs] Sunny Acres? GM - Which sounds like a cemetery. PR - [laughing] Well, it's funny, because it's probably not very sunny too often in Night City. GM - Mmm, that's what I need to get. Do you have the Night City book? PR - No, I don't. GM - Okay, let me pause this while I go get it. [Tape paused] Well, you don't have to have a camera, 'cause one of the NPC's will bring one, but you might want one, which is why I brought it up. PR - Yeah, I think I will, but . . . I'm running short in between paydays, since I only get paid once a month. GM - How much do you make? PR - I don't do too bad. Let's see [flips pages] . . . I think I make thirty- three hundred a month. I haven't figured it out exactly, but I think that's what it is. [laughing] That's one of the reasons I wanted to be a sergeant so bad, because I make about double. GM - Do you keep your dog in your Drifter when you're not home? PR - Yeah, I imagine I've probably got some type of doggie-door option. GM - 'Cause you don't have a yard. PR - Yeah. GM - I don't know if you've been in mobile home parks . . . Have you? PR - One of my ex-girlfriends used to live in one. GM - You know how you have a concrete pad to park the mobile home on, and the little manicured paths that run in between them? That's what you've got. The whole park has moderate to fair security, and a few other retired police officers live here, which makes the manager happy. It's mostly a retirement community--not old people, but people who have just retired recently and are using their savings to move to California and kick it in a mobile home park. There's about an eight-foot concrete wall running around the development, with broken glass on top, and there are a couple of security guards from a small but decent no-name agency manning the gate and patrolling at night. You can leave your dog out, if he's well- trained, or you can just have it so that he can go out whenever he needs to. PR - I figure you can probably take the doggy door and latch it down to lock it from the inside. GM - If he's trained enough to just lie out front, nobody cares if he's out. PR - Okay, that's cool. GM - But if he's rotten, you know, if he runs around and eats people-- PR - [laughing] Chews up the local plastic shrubbery . . . GM - [laughs] Plastic, yeah. You can't afford bio-engineered shit here, so . . . PR - Where is . . . [flips pages] digital camera. 150 bucks. GM - Do you want one in your eye? PR - Well, it takes two options and I already have all my options filled, so . . . That is an option I thought about, though. GM - You can get those handy-dandy goggles. PR - [laughs] Yeah. Well, I don't have a camera currently, but I'll get one soon, now that I've just been promoted. GM - Your mobile home park is down south of the city park. As I explained to Gary when we were playing-- PR - Is that north? That way? GM - Yeah. The Combat Zone does not start on the other side of 21st Street, for the simple reason that you cannot confine Chinatown and J-Town to four square blocks. PR - [laughs] That makes sense. GM - So the center city stretches down for almost a mile, and then the Zone starts, and it moves in and out. Near Charter Hill, it's really close in, and then it cuts back out around Chinatown and J-Town and the College and Gaslamp area. PR - Yeah, there's probably not a definite border area. GM - And Little Italy goes out that way. Down over here, to the west, are the black and Hispanic neighborhoods, which are not outlined in the source- book, but I figure they've got to be here. After all, this is California. The upper-class areas are the buffer between center city and the Zone. And your precinct--I gotta show you this, you'll love this. [flips pages] PR - [laughs] GM - This place is evil. PR - Oh, is that it? With the landing pads and everything? GM - Oh, no. It's not the Muckjuck. You're in Precinct #3, which is right here. PR - The southernmost precinct. [laughs] GM - It's right around here, so you're not actually very far from your work. PR - Yeah, I'm pretty close. GM - You could probably walk there if you wanted to. PR - Yeah. GM - I don't know if you'd want to, though. But let me show you what it looks like, and give you an idea of what's going down. I looked at this place and I just laughed, and laughed. PR - [laughs] GM - Damn. Here it is. PR - Jesus. It's huge. GM - It's giant. PR - I can't believe it's that big. [laughs] GM - [laughs] It's humungous. PR - That's like the biggest . . . the biggest prison ever. GM - They talk about it . . . uh . . . [flips pages] right here. So, if you want to read about it . . . You're in the Southside Precinct, so if anybody says, "Southside," that's you. PR - Do you need this? GM - No, go ahead and look at it. I'll stop this while you read it. [taped paused while player reads the description of NCPD Precinct #3 in the Night City Sourcebook] GM - Yeah. That's the main headquarters. The administrative center is the Muckjuck, the Municipal Justice Center. That has the main courts; this is detention. Most of the other precincts are going to be bringing their suspects here to process. NCPD Precinct #1 has limited cell space. PR - Which one services the corporate area? Or does one service the corporate area? GM - The Muckjuck. PR - Mmm-hmm. GM - But you have a little bit here, mixed in on the Vice floor or something like that. PR - Cool. I can use the firing range under the building. GM - Yeah. I think there's a range at all the precincts, actually. PR - I know that there's a gun club that's really popular in Night City, but that would cost me money, so . . . [laughs] GM - There's an affiliated firing range and gun shop at the Northside Precinct. PR - It's also cool, because I can probably watch the Militech Home Shopping Channel and actually order things that only law enforcement can buy. [pause] Yeah, this is quite a bit bigger than the sample precinct in Protect and Serve. [laughs] GM - Oh, yeah. That's more like the Northside Precinct. It's very, very easy to get lost in the one that you're at. PR - Cool. It has all the stuff in the same building, like Forensics. It even has a gym. At least I don't have to listen to that bunkboy crap. GM - Oh, I decided you also get a lot of the unsolved cases. PR - Oh, okay. [laughs] GM - Because the scrub officers are very busy-- PR - Doing scrub stuff, right? GM - Yeah. You don't exactly have time on your hands, but whenever you have a free minute, they expect you to pick up an open case and look at it. Because that's one of the things the media loves to get a hold of. "NCPD has three thousand unsolved cases as of this day." PR - [laughing] Am I expected to make up . . . ? GM - Technically, yes. Informally, no. Unless you get a real dick lieutenant. Your lieutenant is Lt. Dana Espinoza. She's Latina, from Nicaragua or something like that. Nobody's really sure. She's relatively laid back, and she lets you work the way you want to work unless shit hits the fan. And then she'll say-- PR - "How could you let this happen?" GM - "Okay, what were you doing, guys?" PR - Mmm-hmm. GM - "Why did this take place?" PR - "Honestly . . ." GM - "No, we had to shoot him." What are you doing this lovely Saturday morning, since you have nothing planned today? PR - I'll probably sit out front on the steps of my Drifter, going, "God, I wish I was somewhere else." [laughs] GM - "I wish I was camping." You're sitting out there, soaking up the sunshine, and it looks like you're going to laze away the morning, because you're really not sure what you're going to do today. At eleven o'clock your phone rings. Do you have a beeper, or do you use a cell phone? PR - I have a cell phone. GM - Then your cell phone's going to ring. Do you have a phone in your Drifter, too? PR - Um, no, actually, just the one I carry myself. GM - Then your cellphone rings. PR - Hello? GM - A young man's voice answers. This is a voice that you recognize. This is one of the plainclothes homicide detectives you've worked with on occasion. His name is Christopher Nichols. He's about 22, and he's just a regular veteran officer. NCPD, by the way, works ranks like this: you start out a uniformed officer, on Patrol, and after you become a veteran officer, you can stay in the uniformed areas, and get promoted up through there, or you can basically take a detective's exam and move into plainclothes. Everybody wants to be a detective, and all the detectives hate the uniforms. You can start in plainclothes as early as second-year veteran officer, as long as you pass the exams. Which is what he did. He's about six-two, kind of thin, with short brown hair worn in a brush cut. He looks like a college professor. He wears glasses. You're not sure why. He normally wears jeans and a gray suit coat, with a dress shirt and a tie. PR - I can't see him walking a beat, can I? [laughs] GM - Nope. From the waist down he's got jeans and tennis shoes on. From the waist up he's Ivy League material. He says, Sergeant! PR - Yes, Christopher? On my days off . . . [laughs] GM - [laughs] You're not very nice? PR - No, I tend to address people with their first names to emphasize the fact that it is my day off. [laughs] GM - He gets the message. He says, Ah. Yeah. Hi. Sarge. Beautiful day out, isn't it? PR - Uh, yes. GM - Well, I hate to have to ruin your day for you, but . . . PR - Ah, well, that's okay. I'm sure somebody would. GM - As we have on so many other beautiful weekends. Today, for instance, we have a stiff we need you to come take a look at. PR - What's the address? GM - Ah . . . hold on a minute. [flips pages] You won't have to write all this stuff down, 'cause I have handouts to give you. He says, Ah, 14 West Hunsaker Street. It's an apartment building. PR - What appears to be the problem? GM - Landlady went to collect the rent from one of her delinquent tenants, entered the apartment, tenant was missing, entered the bedroom, tenant's girlfriend was dead on the floor. Apparently shot in the head. PR - I see. GM - Ah, attending officer was . . . Larry Hogan. You've never heard of him. He's just some faceless Patrol flatfoot, probably. He says, He's still down there, meatwagon's on its way, I haven't been down there yet. I just got the attending's report over the phone. So, I got bird-dog duty, and I have to call you and tell you where to go. PR - Well, I appreciate you calling me so nicely. [laughs] On my day off. GM - For a small fee, I could tell them I couldn't find you. PR - No, no, that won't be necessary. I'll . . . ah . . . He wasn't serious, was he? GM - You don't think so. PR - [laughing] I just wanted to make sure. GM - He's usually a pretty straight-laced guy. Of course, if you'd been serious about it, he would have flipped out. "Okay, how about five hundred?" "What?" PR - How long will it take me to get there? GM - I'll show you where it is. Hunsaker, Hunsaker. You are at home. The place where you're going is over here. Notice everything is off the map. PR - Yeah. GM - There are a pair of cross streets that connect, Hunsaker and Jameson. You know this area is kind of a run-down area, not the nicest of places. You're going way down south, past the university west and kind of southish about six blocks. You're well into the black section of town now. There are lots of small businesses here, and you're about the only Anglo face in the area. PR - [laughs] GM - It's eleven in the morning, and a lot of the residens are at work now, but the kids and mothers out shopping are mostly Hispanic and black. You're heading into a section of town right on the Zone, which was originally a business area, almost as big as the Corporate Center, but since the Zone has been moving north, businesses have been moving out. The big corporate office buildings out here have been sublet out as cheap office space to smaller businesses. One of the buildings in this cluster has been converted into residential housing, and that's the one you're heading for. Farther south, as you drive along, you can see a group of very large buildings, larger than the Corporate Center, but you know from reputation that they're in the heart of the Zone and you don't want to go there. They're burned out, and gangs live there, etc.; hell-holes, basically. The tallest one of these buildings is about thirty stories tall; the one you're heading to is about half that size, around eighteen stories. PR - Okay. GM - So you pull up. In front of the apartment building . . . hey, Adam, will you grab me a piece of paper? OT - Yes, master. GM - Are two other cars, one of which you recognize as a main Forensic man's private car, and one of which you decide is probably Nichols', one of the plainclothes cars they take out, because you've driven it yourself. PR - [laughs] GM - As you pull in, the ambulance is just arriving. OT - Is this enough? GM - Yes, that's plenty. Thank you. The building is long and rectangular. The front door is right here, and the garage entrance is around the side, down an alley. The black-and-white is also parked out front, along the street. The Forensic guy's car is right here, and Nichols' car is behind it, and the ambulance is getting ready to double-park. Nobody's been around to the garage yet. There's no police tape up outside. PR - Would they need it out here? GM - No, not unless the crime occurred out front, which apparently it did not. PR - Is there room to park right there? GM - Yeah, you can park on the corner. You pull up and park. As you drive by, you see two of the ambulance people getting out. It's a police ambulance, one that's normally used to transport wounded bad guys and bodies. You recognize the two people on each end of the gurney; one of them is a short, Vietnamese man named Nguyen Tranh, or something like that. The other one is a tall, red-headed lady with a mane of curls that go down past her shoulders. She's fairly pretty. Her name is Sheila Barnes. Everybody razzes her because she's cute and she has meatwagon duty. They're both civilians, but they work for the city in Forensics. You see them a lot. They end up picking up all the shit. You don't see the main guy, though, the one who'll be directing all the evidence pick-up. A uniformed officer, who you've never seen before, is standing out front. He's blond and good-looking, the cop's cop, the kind you put on all the recruiting posters. PR - [laughing] Uh-huh. GM - He's got those boyish good looks. PR - The Aryan Race poster [laughs]. GM - Yeah. He's standing in front of the main doors, being berated by a portly black woman. She is about thirty-five, and wearing one of those dresses that's just one step short of a church dress. She's smoking one of those thin, black cigarillos, and she's going off on him. PR - [laughs] How's he holding up? GM - He looks uncomfortable. He looks like he's taking it, and just nodding and saying, "Yes, ma'am. I understand, ma'am," where appropriate. And she just rattles right over him. PR - Can I get the gist of what she's bitching about? GM - "Now, I know you have to get up there and take care of that poor girl, but I have tenants who need to use those elevators. You can't just be walking in here and asking everybody all sorts of questions." Etc. And how she always knew that girl was going to come to bad, and she doesn't want to be bothered by all this. As you walk up, Nichols comes bopping down the front stairs with his hands in his suit pockets. PR - How you doing, Nichols? GM - Hullo, Sarge. PR - So, any preliminary ideas, yet? GM - Well, we have one deceased, on the twenty-second floor. Uh . . . twelfth floor. PR - Twenty-second floor, huh? I look up at the building. GM - Well, it's the twenty-second apartment, so I got confused. She was shot in the head once. Forensics is up there collecting stuff now. I figured you'd want to come up and look the place over before they cart the body away. Landlady here found the body. PR - What time did she find the body? Around eleven o'clock? GM - Yeah, ten-forty-five, thereabouts. Here's the kicker. The deceased does not live in this building. It's her boyfriend's apartment. He's not on the premises, and we don't know his whereabouts. However, his car is in the garage, and his tires have been slashed, so . . . he did not exit using that vehicle. We have his description, and we can issue an APB if you want. PR - Well, let me take a look first. We might have a possible missing person. We might find his body somewhere else. Yeah, uh . . . I motion to the perfect cop. GM - The uniformed officer comes over in his clamshell armor. Nichols leans over and goes, His name's Hogan. PR - Well, Hogan. GM - He does a little salute to you, because you're a sergeant and he's just a flatfoot. PR - Were you the first person on the scene? GM - [Hogan] Yes, sir. PR - Ah, what time did you reach the scene? GM - [Hogan] Eleven-oh-five. I was rolling on Jameson Street, so I got here right away. PR - Okay. You've never been called out to this house before, have you? GM - [Hogan] No, sir. PR - Okay. I'm going to need to talk to the landlady later, so could you make sure she doesn't, ah, take off on some unknown errand? GM - [Hogan] Yes, sir. I took a statement from her after I verified the deceased. I don't believe she's going to leave any time soon. I think she wants to tell everyone exactly what she thinks of the entire operation. Sir. PR - [laughs] Well, I suppose she has a right to tell what she thinks. GM - [Hogan] After I saw the scene, I sealed the apartment. PR - Was the apartment door locked? GM - [Hogan] Yes, sir. PR - From the inside, or the outside? GM - [Hogan] Well, the locks are deadbolts, so from the outside. There is a chain in place on the inside of the door, but it was not engaged. I assume the perp locked the door after him as he emerged, so he either had the key or had a key. When the landlady went upstairs to determine whether the tenant was ready to pay the rent, she found the door locked, decided the tenant was sleeping inside, unlocked the door, saw the apartment was empty, opened the bedroom door, saw the body, exited the room, and locked the apartment behind her. I had her open it for me, and then relock it behind me. PR - So she didn't touch anything? GM - [Hogan] No. She says no. PR - [laughs] Well, we'll see. GM - Nichols says, We only just opened the door just now, for Forensics. PR - Well, I'll be on up there. GM - The Aryan officer nods and heads off. PR - Good luck. I think you might need it. GM - He goes back with his report forms and continues listening to her. You go on up the stairs. PR - No elevator? GM - Well, up the front stairs into the building. Nichols trots behind you. PR - [laughs] I was gonna say, twelve floors is a long walk. GM - Just wait and see. [laughs] Here's the layout of the building. From the main lobby, there's an elevator and a flight of stairs down to the parking garage. There's also a passenger elevator on the left side as you walk in the front door. It goes up from the lobby into the building. There are two banks of phones opposite you, and a laundry room next to them. PR - So, those stairs go down? GM - Those two go up. This one goes up and down to the garage. PR - Okay. God, I don't want to walk up and down twelve flights of stairs three times. GM - Well, you can't use the elevator, because there's tape up around it. Nichols hasn't said anything about it. PR - Hey, Nichols? What's the tape up around the elevator? GM - We got some spots in the elevator. PR - Blood spots? GM - Yeah. We also got some in the parking elevator. PR - Okay, so he obviously used the elevators, then. GM - Yep. And some more down in the garage itself. We got a splotch on the wall next to the elevator in the garage, and some drips leading to an empty parking space. PR - Is it a visitor parking space, or assigned parking? GM - It's general parking. I'll take you down in a minute and show you. But for now we have to use the stairs. That's why the landlady is so upset, because we have both elevators blocked off. I bet Tranh is about on the fifth floor right now with that gurney. [laughs] PR - Well, we'll go through those as quick as we can. We'll want to get the elevators first, so they can bring the body down, but I want to look at it first. GM - Okay. Let me show you some stuff real fast. As you're going through the lobby, he takes you to the elevator and points out some stuff inside. There are some small blood drips on the floor, and a larger blot in one corner. There's a camera up above the blot. PR - Is there? GM - Yes. And he points it out to you. PR - Does that camera still have film? GM - Yes. We have two seventy-two hour disks, which I'm dying to look at. PR - Really? GM - I haven't looked at them yet, so I don't know if there's anything on them. I hope there is. PR - Is it obvious that the camera's there? GM - Yes. PR - That's odd. Well, rampaging boyfriends can be weird. GM - The camera is at such an angle that a person riding in the elevator can stand under it and be out of its visual range. And the blood splot's right beneath it. There's another camera upstairs in the hall, facing the landing. PR - Did the other elevator have any . . . GM - Yes. In fact, I'll show you, we found a couple drops in the lobby itself, and you can tell that somebody crossed the lobby between elevators. Apparently the perp came down the elevator, was either bleeding or had blood on him, bled a little bit in this elevator, crossed the lobby to the other elevator, dripping all the way, got in the other elevator and got some blood in there-- PR - And went down. GM - Went down, got some more blood on the garage floor, and then got in a car and left the scene. PR - Okay. I'm going to check the inside of the elevator with Image Enhancement. Are there any chunks, or bits of hair in that blood? GM - Go for it. Make a basic Awareness/Notice roll, and add +2 for Image Enhancement. PR - I want to see if there's actually any cell matter, or if he's just bleeding. Uh . . . two, four, eleven . . . twenty. GM - No. You just see drips. In fact, the drop pattern looks fat and slow; it wasn't a spurt, it was a slow drip. It was probably from a wound, because there's too much blood there to be from someone's clothes. PR - Okay. GM - You take the stairs. It doesn't matter which set. You stump up there. Nichols briefs you on the way up. What were you going to ask him? PR - I was going to see if I could smell anything odd, like cigarettes or perfume, in the elevator before we go up. GM - It smells like piss. And there's some cigarette smoke, but that's probably ingrained into the elevator itself. Do you want to roll for that? PR - Sure. GM - Do you have olfactory enhancements? PR - Yeah. I have a lot of cybernetics. GM - That's okay. Roll. PR - Eleven . . . another twenty. GM - Okay. Piss. Cat and human. Hits you like a wall in the face. And some blood. PR - [laughs] Shut that down, quick. GM - You don't smell any unusual odors. PR - Do I smell blood . . . more blood than could be accounted for by the splotch? GM - No. What you're smelling is coming from the blotch. PR - Would a large amount of blood leave a stench after it's gone? GM - Yeah. I figure it would. Nichols says, The deceased is Lisa Stansfield, age 21. She has her purse and other identifications upstairs with her. PR - What did she do for a living? GM - She worked as an apprentice body piercer/tattooist at a parlor called Voodoo Doll. PR - [laughs] Really. GM - It's down in the college area. PR - I imagine it is. GM - As far as we can determine, she doesn't have any kin in Night City. She has a pair of roommates we haven't contacted yet--well, obviously, since we just started going over the body. But we looked through her purse, and she has one of those, "In case of emergency, call so-and-so," and we figure they're her roommates, since they have the same address. Her boyfriend is Joey Galvano. His ID and other stuff are also in the apartment, along with most of his clothes. PR - In the apartment? GM - Yep. Along with most of her clothes, as well. PR - Okay. Welp, this might be . . . well, he could have wigged out, too. Well, we'll see when we get up there. GM - You guys finally get to the right floor. As you step out into the hallway, you notice that there is a second camera here, facing the elevator landing. Nichols tells you that both of them are color, and the footage is color, but the focus sucks on both of them. PR - Are they digital, or what? GM - They're digital, yeah. So we can enhance them if we want to. God, thank God that they're not tape. I have been in some buildings where they were actually using old VHS videotape. Can you believe that? PR - Yeah. I was on a case once where they used the same tape every time, and they'd just rewind it at the end of the night. GM - That's what this is. It's a seventy-two hour loop. I mean, they don't keep it, they don't need to. But we took it. PR - Yeah, it's pretty scary. GM - Thank God it's digital. But I'll tell you right now, if we get any shots of the perp, from the elevator it's going to be from the head down. From the landing it's a full body, but the focus won't be very good. We'll probably have to enhance it and see if it gets any better. PR - Question: Is there a full DNA sample in blood? GM - Yes and no. Most of blood is protein, and the red cells are pretty much useless for DNA. But it's my understanding that you can get DNA from white blood cells, and from any other tissues in the area, so that's how I'll work it. I figure science has advanced enough from this point that you can collect enough DNA from a blood sample to provide you with a good bit of information. Something else I should also mention while we're on the subject: I figure standard practice for NCPD is to release what DNA traces they have of any missing persons to all the body banks, and in exchange for allowing the body banks to continue disposing of questionable corpses, they run the DNA though. NCPD faxes them a tag list, or something, and they check the list, and if there's a hot number on the list, they call up NCPD and turn the body over. PR - That's actually a good idea. GM - And, if it's not . . . PR - Yeah, it's like, "Oh, well." GM - Otherwise I figure they'd have this continuous battle with the banks over corpses and stuff. You get up to the twelfth floor and you're looking down a long hallway that runs down the long axis of the building and T's on both ends. Nichols tells you that there are sixty apartments on this floor. The apartment you want is 1222, which is three-quarters of the way down, on the right-hand side. Up here you can see that there is a Forensics team, busy thumping around. PR - I have another question, real quick. Does the blood trail lead from the door down this hall to the elevator, or does it go around the T? GM - No, it's straight down. PR - Okay. GM - Nichols says, It's a pretty minor blood trail. I was happy that Hogan spotted it. PR - If a guy was all juiced up, is there enough blood that he wouldn't notice it? GM - Well, yes and no again. There's about the same equivalent as from, say, a bad bloody nose or a shallow cut. It's dripping freely, but it's not gushing or spraying. You walk down to the apartment and go in through the front door, ducking the tape. The gurney is parked out here next to the door. There are three techs in here, all identical in whites and collecting masks. One of the main Forensics men is in here, too, directing the op. His first name is something unpronounceable, so they call him Rajah. His last name is Monson, and he's a scholar and immigrant from Bangladesh. PR - [laughs] GM - I won't attempt to do his accent, although he has a slight one. He has a dark complexion, black hair. He has his field gear on. He's kneeling on the floor next to the body in the bedroom. Here's the crime scene map. PR - Oooh, cool. GM - It's kinda complicated, so I'll explain to you what's going on. PR - So, there's blood behind the door? GM - Yeah. PR - That's interesting. GM - Nichols says, I've talked to Hogan about this, and I been watching the techs, so I can give you the guided tour. And, of course, Rajah's been pointing stuff out to me. And Rajah is in with the body right now, and hasn't seen you yet. PR - I'll talk to him later. GM - There's a few other guys wandering around with vacuum hoses and tweezers and baggies, taking pictures. PR - Is there a large pool of blood here? [indicating the area behind the door on the map] GM - Yes. Nichols brings you around the front door. PR - Is any of this blood still fresh, or is it all dry? GM - It's dry. Rajah says, ETA time of death is sometime between ten last night and four this morning. He can't narrow it any more at the moment. Nichols puts gloves on as you walk around the door. PR - Yeah, I'll grab a pair from a tech and put them on. GM - He says, Oh, wait a second. He pulls a pair of plastic shoe baggies out of his pocket and hands them to you, and pulls another pair out and goes to put them over his tennies. PR - I'll put them on. GM - This is a shabby lower-class apartment. The furniture is second-hand. The carpet is a kind of avocado green, with a short nap. There are no pictures or posters on the wall, or photos of any kind. The door is heavy oak, very thick and very dense. There are two key locks, and a chain. PR - Are they good locks? GM - Yes. PR - And there's no sign of forced entry, correct? GM - No. And the chain is off. PR - Okay. GM - It's not broken. It's taken off the door. Nichols sees you looking at the chain and says, That's one indication we have that the perp left through the door, because the chain is off. And, of course, because there aren't any windows. He laughs. On the other side, at approximately head height, there's a big splotch of blood on the door. PR - Head height? GM - Yeah. Right next to the chain. PR - Okay. Is there any chunks in that? GM - Take a look. You're gross. "Are there any chunks in that?" PR - [rolls] I'm getting the same thing, all the time. Twenty. GM - Yes. There are some clumps of hair and what looks like skin. PR - Okay, I'll make a note to make sure that Forensics takes a look at this. GM - There's a smear of blood down the door from the splotch to the floor. There's a little blot of blood right behind the door, right behind it if it were closed. There's a big smear running from that blot to a larger puddle by the wall next to the door. PR - Does it look like somebody, maybe a body, was back there? Like there was a body behind the door, and they had to push it over to get in? GM - That's possible, yes. Nichols says, It kinda looks to me like someone was standing behind the door here, and got whacked against it, and then fell down and got pushed behind the door. Or there coulda been a body here, and then someone came in and had to push it aside. PR - I'm going to look at the door very carefully, to see if there's a footprint on it. GM - Roll. PR - [rolls] GM - Roll again. PR - [rolls] Damn. GM - You scrutinize every inch of the door. You do not see a footprint. However on the outside of the door, you do see some cloth fibers caught in a splintered area. The door is old and scarred, and there are some fibers caught at about your ear height, maybe a little older. PR - I'm going to get out-- GM - Evidence bag? PR - Well, usually what they do is get a grease pencil and mark a big circle around it. So that's what I'm going to do. The landlady's probably going to be pissed. And take another note. GM - Nichols says, The next item of interest on our little tour . . . He takes you into the kitchen and indicates the kitchen counter. There is a phone there. The phone has been ripped out. Now, not only has the phone been ripped out, but the cord is gone. We don't know where it is. We haven't found it yet. The cord has been ripped out of both the walljack and the phone. Both the jacks are still stuck in there, but the cord is gone. PR - Does it look cut, or ripped? GM - Ripped. PR - Ripped. Okay. Maybe somebody used it to tie something. Um . . . GM - Then he takes you over to the bedroom, where the techs from Forensics are working. PR - Have you guys found any wall safes, or any, ah, obvious cubbyholes? GM - One of the techs looks up and says, No, not yet. We haven't done a full search. We're just picking up physical evidence right now. PR - Okay. GM - But we'll tell you, if we find any. Nichols walks in and says, Okay. Here, on the floor, we have the deceased. Next to the deceased is a footprint. PR - Oooh. Male or female? GM - Probably male. Eleven or twelve shoe. Maybe a dress shoe. See, he stepped in the blood here, and made this footprint, so he was apparently stepping over the body to exit the room. PR - Dress shoe, eh? GM - Yeah, it looks like a flat sole. PR - Is it unusual for the people living in this area to wear dress shoes? GM - You think so, yes. PR - Okay. Partial, huh? GM - Yup. And the main part of the show, he says, and he walks over to the side of the bed. Here the body of a young, blonde woman is lying on the floor in a pool of crusted black blood. She's wearing a black bra and nothing else. PR - I have a question. There was a red mark here [indicating the door on the map] right around face level, as though somebody slammed . . . ? GM - Yeah. As if someone got their head smashed against it. The deceased is, as I said a blonde woman, probably about twenty, maybe twenty-one. She's wearing a black, lacy bra. She's pitched forward in a face-down position, and her hands are thrown out to either side. She has a single bullet wound to the head. PR - In the back of the head? GM - Kind of in the back, but more up towards the crown. And there's blood sprayed backward all over the bed. There is no bullet hole in the opposite wall, and you can see no exit wound from where you are standing, so you assume it's still lodged in her skull. You won't know until there's an autopsy. PR - Make sure they check for facial trauma, okay? GM - Yeah. That corresponds with the marks on the door. There's a pillow on the bed, and it has a burnt and torn hole in it about the size of a dime. There is a larger hole on the other side, and some of the foam filling from the pillow is scattered on the bed. PR - Does it look like it coincides with the bullet hole in her head? GM - If they were using it to muffle the shot, yes. PR - I want them to look for hair or any other fibers on that pillow, and also for gunpowder. GM - Gunpowder residue, okay. There is a pile of mixed male and female clothing on the floor next to the bed. PR - Does it look like it was gone over, or does it look like normal, strewn around, taken off before going to bed clothing? GM - To you, it looks normal. Make an Awareness roll. Damn, this is like Spot Hidden in Cthulhu. Roll this, roll that. PR - [laughs] Do I get Image Enhancement? GM - Yeah, what you're looking for is a pattern indicating a search. PR - Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen . . . twenty-three. GM - No. It looks thrown like it was taken off. The techs indicate that you can look through it if you want; they've already photographed it. There is a full set of male clothing here, except for underwear, and there is a full set of female clothes here, except for the bra. It stinks in here rather badly. The blood smell is really strong, and now you can hear the carpet crunching and squishing as the Forensics people pull the woman's body away from it. PR - Uh. I'm going to look through the closet and see if there's any clothing missing, like a jacket or something. GM - Okay, you take a look. PR - Roll? GM - Yeah, go for it. PR - [rolls] GM - Roll again. PR - [rolls] Twelve, fourteen, twenty-four, plus . . . uh, thirty-one. GM - Not to your eyes, no. The clothing looks intact. There aren't any empty hangers, with other clothes disarrayed around them, which would indicate that something was pulled out of a tight closet in a hurry. There's some female clothing in here, too. PR - It doesn't look like anything was taken? GM - No. No one packed and tried to get out of here in a hurry, if that's what you mean. PR - Well, yeah, but what I want to check for is . . . it looks like somebody was, perhaps, taken out of here, and it would be weird to have him taken out in just his underwear. So I imagine that they probably threw a jacket over him. GM - That's a good hypothesis, but you don't see anything in here to back it up. [tape ends. During the interim, the player wanders through the living room, checking randomly throughout the room for hidden safes or boxes, i.e. behind/ in the bookcase, and under the sofa and chair cushions for signs that anything was stuffed in there. A pad with various numbers on it was discovered by the phone. There was no address book or other debris lying around. The victims' ID's were examined. There was nothing in, on, or under the couch.] PR - I check the chairs. GM - Same thing. PR - And the TV is flush with the wall? GM - Right. PR - I'm going to have them check it for prints. GM - They will. They'll dust everything. This is just the preliminary investigation, after all. You'll probably learn a lot more after you check the camera tapes. PR - I figure, after they take the body out, I'm going to go over everything one more time, and that'll be it. GM - Nichols gets up from where he's been digging around through the kitchen drawers and says, Let's go down to the garage while they get her out of here. PR - Yeah. GM - And then we can look at those tapes. I am dying to look at the tapes. You leave the apartment and go down to the lobby. He says, Gotta take the stairs again, 'cause there are drops in the elevator. You come out of the stairs and head around to look at the elevator from inside the garage. Right next to the elevator doors is a big nasty splotch of blood, and you can clearly see that there is hair and tissue in it. PR - What color hair is it? GM - Dark brown or black. PR - Does what's his name have dark hair? The kid, or the perp? GM - You're presuming it's the perp, because you don't have any other suspects right now. He has dark brown hair, according to the picture on his driver's license. There is another thicker blood trail leading away from this spot to an empty parking space which, presumably, somebody parked in. The killer. If it was Galvano, he took a different car to get out of here, because his car is sitting in the lot. Nichols takes you over and shows you its tires. PR - Nichols, is there another security camera down here? GM - Nope. PR - Damn. That would be great. GM - Don't you wish? I wish, man. That would be my dinner on a plate, right there. Uh, victim's car's over there. Galvano's car is a little green car. Two of the tires have been slashed. Of course, we don't know when this occurred, if he was using somebody else's car for a long time, or what. PR - Two of the tires are slashed, huh? GM - Yeah. Let me see which tires they are. PR - I wonder . . . That's weird. GM - Uh . . . front passenger tire and back passenger tire. PR - Okay. I'm going to look into the car and see if I see anything. GM - Roll. PR - [rolls] GM - My god. PR - Nine. I've been getting some good rolls today. GM - Yeah, you're just the God of Good Rolls tonight. PR - So, that's an eighteen . . . twenty, twenty-seven. GM - There's generic junk in the car. There's no radio. It was ripped out a long time ago, by the looks of things. The paint is scratched and the upholstery is that nasty plastic shit that melts in the sun and leaves those welts on your legs when you sit down. A couple of old t-shirts are thrown in the back, and a pair of old shoes in the front. A rag with some old, brown stains on it is in the front passenger seat. PR - What do they usually do? Do they tow it and go over it? GM - Yeah. They'll go over it here, and if they decide they need to, they'll tow it. PR - This is weird. I'm going to look in the empty parking space. There wouldn't happen to be any oil spots here, would there? GM - Yes. And there are similar ones in every space in the garage. PR - Are they fresh, though? GM - They're dark enough to be fresh. There's also some rainbowy transmission fluid here. But oil looks fresh for a while, so you have no way to check, visually, whether this oil is from last night or not, or from the perp's car or not. There are some tire tracks in the oil, which you can photograph. PR - I want to get a sample of the oil and transmission fluids, and also see if I can get a photo of that tire later. Does it look like perhaps someone was leaned up against the car? Is there blood on this side or that side of the car? GM - There is blood on the passenger side of the space. There are some drips here, and then it stops. PR - There isn't a bloody hand print, or anything? GM - No. There are no hand prints or footprints or otherwise. PR - Are there any obvious fingerprints on the handle? GM - Where? Here? The car isn't here, you understand. This is the empty space. You can check Galvano's car for that, but there's no car here to check. PR - Oh, yeah, that's right. Okay. GM - Looking around, you can see that there are about sixty cars in here. A good quarter of them are in various stages of being broken up and ripped off. One way in the back has been burnt out and gutted. Galvano's car is in the midst of the cars that are in better shape. PR - Is Galvano's car tagged, or anything? GM - Tagged how? PR - Like, the tires are ripped, and-- GM - No. There's no tow tags or ticket on it. PR - No, what I mean is, are there gang marks on it? GM - No. PR - Are any of the windows broken out? GM - No. PR - Is there any vandalism on it? GM - No. PR - So it looks like the only vandalism on it is . . . GM - The tires, yeah. You would expect, from seeing the other trashed cars, that if this had been left like that over a period of time, it would have been stripped. So the damage must be relatively recent. PR - Well, it looks like someone didn't want him getting away. GM - Most of the fluorescent lights are broken in the back. The cars that the tenants are using are closer to the elevator, and more of the lights work over here. PR - I guess we can go look at those films. GM - Ze fun part. Nichols looks very happy now. So you guys go back upstairs. PR - Are these walls pretty thin? GM - You can't really tell. You'd have to ask the tenants if they heard anything. In the far corner of the building, above the laundry room on the second floor, is the superintendent's apartment and the "security office," which is nothing more than a small walk-in closet equipped with twelve different monitors, plus the ones for the elevators and stairs. PR - Is there, like, a shotgun on the wall, or anything? [laughs] GM - Nope. Just the monitors and the recorders. The superintendent changes them every few days, but it doesn't look like anyone ever sits in here. PR - Obviously, we're going to want to get copies of the tape. GM - Right. Now, I'll tell you about the footage you're going to watch, and I'll give you this sheet in case you would like to go over it in your spare time. You guys squeeze into the office--the door is already unlocked--and Nichols says, I've been down here already. We had a big argument about whether we were going to be allowed to look at this set -up, but I won, and I got her to let us in. And we even have our own player, and a little monitor to watch it on. Isn't it wonderful? PR - Yeah, a happy day. GM - We got two cameras we're looking at. We'll call them Camera One and Camera Two [laughs]. Camera One is the elevator camera. Camera Two is the hall camera. He sits down in front of the player. The monitors are set up on shelves running in a U around three walls, with the fourth wall being the door. There's one rickety wooden kitchen chair in here, and the walls are stained yellow from cigarette smoke. You're going to have to stand and look over his shoulder. PR - Okay. GM - There's one bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, one of those crappy energy-saving fluorescent ones that make you look like a vampire, and it's right by your face. There are a couple roaches running around, and the monitors are all dusty and greasy with fingerprints. This is one of the nastier little rooms you've been into in your career. PR - I'll take out a handkerchief and clean off the monitor a little bit [laughs]. GM - Some of the screens are black, and have little signs taped to them that say that they're broken. You count yourself lucky that you got a pair that were still working. One of them has a post-it note stuck to it that says, "Out of Order," but the tape is still working and the picture looks fine. Nichols wipes off the seat of the chair and sits down. He takes his jacket off and hangs it on the back of the chair. Puts the first disk in, and you rewind through twelve or fourteen hours of tape. PR - So we can probably get an exact time. GM - Yeah, from the monitor counter. Rewinding is boring; you're just watching people go up and down the elevator. Only four people use the elevator between ten o'clock and midnight of the day you're looking at. PR - Are any of those people the female and the guy? GM - Well, here's what you've got. PR - What I'm looking at is to see if both the male and female were in the apartment at the time. GM - Neither of them used the elevator for some time before the incident. The first person to use the elevator after 10 pm is a blonde woman who looks like white trash. She gets in the elevator from the tenth floor and goes down to the lobby. This is at about 11 pm. At 11:10 two men get into the elevator at the lobby level. Both keep their heads down, and you can only see vague details. One of them has a hat on. One of them has black shoulder-length hair. You saw Pulp Fiction? PR - Uh-huh. GM - He's got John Travolta hair. PR - [laughs] GM - It's not tied back, it's just loose. PR - Are they wearing suits? GM - Both of them are wearing dark clothing. One of them is wearing an overcoat and one's wearing a suit jacket. PR - Do I notice any, ah, unseemly bulges? [laughs] GM - Not from this angle, no. You're basically looking down on top of their heads. The one with the hat is wearing the overcoat. The one with the loose hair is wearing the suit. Suit Jacket Man has a bag or duffle slung over one arm, and his hand is inside. He also has a glittery earring dangling from his left ear. PR - Let's make sure we get an image enhancement on that earring later. GM - Okay. It's probably about a half-inch long. It looks like a piece of crystal, or a piece of ice. We'll call them Earring Man and Overcoat Man. They ride up the elevator, not talking, and get out on the twelfth floor. PR - Which is the floor we're looking at. GM - Which is the floor you're looking at. And the door closes. About twenty minutes go by, and it's 11:20 or 11:30 now. You can't really tell; you'll have to check the tape later for the exact length of time that elapses. The elevator doors open and a man with short brown, dark brown hair enters the elevator. He has his head down. His hands are behind his back, and he has what looks like a robe or possibly some kind of jacket thrown over his shoulders. PR - [surprised, laughs] Bingo! GM - [laughs] As you see this, Nichols rocks back in his chair and goes, Got you, you motherfucker! PR - [laughs] GM - He's sitting in his chair, narrating as you watch this. Look at this, look at this. Here they come. It's like he's watching a football game. PR - [laughs] He's all, "Yeah!" GM - And pumping his fist. PR - Does it look like there's blood being splattered from this guy's face? GM - You can't tell, 'cause when he comes in, he is shoved into one corner, and then he is moved so that he is underneath the camera's field of vision. Overcoat Man comes in and stands opposite him, facing the camera, but his hat is obscuring his face because he has his head deliberately down. PR - Is there any chin, or anything? GM - A little bit, yeah. You could probably enhance it. PR - He wearing any hair on it? GM - Nope. He is clean-shaven. The elevator goes down. It goes to the lobby. Overcoat Man grabs the other man, pulls him out of the elevator, and pushes him into the lobby, holding on to him by one shoulder. The elevator is empty for a few minutes, and then it goes back up to the twelfth floor. The doors open, and Earring Man gets in. PR - Oh, so the one guy went down first. GM - He is carrying something in his right hand. You can't tell what it is. It could be a tool, or it could be a briefcase. He stands in the same corner that the brown-haired man stood in, under the camera and out of range. The elevator goes back down and he gets out. PR - So . . . About what time is this? GM - Eleven-thirty-ish, eleven-forty. PR - Um . . . anything happen on the film after that? Who's the next person to go up? GM - The blonde woman who went down earlier comes back up. This time she's holding a little fussy blonde boy in her arms. He looks about three. She gets out on her floor. PR - What time? GM - Maybe five minutes afterwards. PR - Really? So she's a person we need to talk to. GM - Meanwhile, Nichols is narrating. Wait, it's going up again. It's Earring Man. Oh, man, stay right there . . . Goddammit, he's under the fucking camera! I can't believe this. PR - [laughs] GM - And then a few more people use the elevator, and then the tape gets to where you are when Nichols got it, and it ends. Camera Two is the landing camera. This has a better shot, angle-wise, in that you get a full-body picture, but the focus is terrible. As you step out of the elevator, it's in the corner, facing the doors. PR - Is it immediately obvious? I mean, can you tell the camera as soon as you get out of the elevator? GM - Mmm-hmmm. PR - So, it's obviously there. GM - Yeah. You can see it as soon as the doors open. PR - Okay. GM - Camera Two. Nichols has rewound it and is fast-forwarding it to the time that you want. About elevenish, the same two guys step out of the elevator and head down the hall, exiting this camera's range. Their clothing, height, and approximate weights can be determined from this shot with a little work and some enhancement. PR - I have a question. If we take all these films together, and perhaps make a reference point, can we make a 3-D image of them? GM - It's possible. Nichols says, We could probably do that, yeah. I'd have to talk to Chuck and some of the techs, and see what they can come up with. PR - I'd be interested to see what they can come up with. Right now this is looking more like a kidnapping case than a homicide. GM - Do you want an APB out, or do you want me to take the DNA shots and fax them? PR - I don't think we're going to get too much DNA from them. Are these guys wearing gloves? Both of them? GM - Yes, it looks like it. PR - I want to see if we can get any hair off the long-haired guy. There's the long-haired guy and the guy wearing the hat, right? The long-haired guy has the earring? GM - Right. PR - I want to see if we can get any DNA off the long-haired guy. Look for long, dark hair. It's dark, right? GM - It's black. PR - The other guy didn't have dark hair. GM - Galvano has brown hair, dark brown. The hat guy looks like he might have black hair, but you can't really tell, because he has the hat on. It's a fedora-type thing. PR - But it looks short, right? GM - Yeah. PR - Okay. Tell them to look for long, black hair and, uh, maybe see if they can find any short hair that doesn't match the missing person. GM - Okay. Forensics is gonna type that blood, too, and see whose is it. I have the feeling it's going to be Galvano's. PR - I doubt if either of the men were injured. GM - On the tape, fifteen minutes go by. Overcoat Man enters camera range. He pushes in front of him another man, with his hands behind his back and a bathrobe thrown around his shoulders. You can see that the belt of the robe has been tied around his waist, and the empty sleeves are caught under it. He appears to be barefooted. PR - [laughs] Does it look like his hands are tied with a telephone cord? GM - You can't tell. [laughs] 'Cause they're under the robe. PR - Is there blood streaming from his face? GM - As he's turned around inside the elevator and pushed under the camera in there, he lifts his head and looks straight into the landing camera as the doors close. There's blood running from his nose and covering his chin. Overcoat Man gets in behind and the doors close. A few minutes go by . . . PR - [laughs] And obviously, the guy with the hat is like this [puts his chin down] the whole time. GM - You got it. Earring Man comes toward the elevator, keeping his head down. And he's sprinting. PR - Sprinting? GM - Yep. And he has a small submachinegun clearly visible in his right hand. The duffle is hanging empty by his side. PR - Can I tell what kind of submachinegun it is? Is it like an Uzi type, or more like an H-K type? GM - Mmmm . . . H&K type. PR - Large, or . . . ? GM - It's a little one. PR - Oooh. Okay. Maybe it's got subsonic loads. GM - Dinky. And it's got a silencer on the barrel. He gets in the elevator and the doors close. He looks rushed. He has his head down, but he's not taking any pains to hide the gun in his right hand. The elevator goes down and that's all you see. You can keep this, if you want. The blonde woman isn't listed in here, but I'll note her for you. She goes down, and then up afterwards with the kid. PR - First thing we need to do is get . . . um . . . since this guy is technically a missing person, he's probably killed by now, I figure. GM - Yeah, I don't know. I guess so. Do you wanna put out a missing persons out on him, or just fax whatever we get from his blood to the body banks? PR - Let's do the body banks. We need to talk to the blonde lady, obviously-- GM - We can probably get the super to identify her. PR - The big thing we're going to have to worry about with the super is, I wanna talk to some of the people around the apartment. I want to talk to the tenants in 40, 42, 38, 20, and 24. GM - All the surrounding apartments? PR - Yeah. I doubt if we can get much over here, because when they knocked, they probably . . . Can I tell from the camera if, when they knocked, there was a conversation? GM - You can't tell. It's pointing the other direction entirely. They go up and go out of range as soon as they get past the corner of Number 2. PR - The only thing I'm wondering about is, if they knocked, did they immediately burst in, or did they knock and exchange words? GM - At this point, Tranh, the ambulance driver, comes to the open door of the security room and knocks on it to get your attention. PR - Yeah? GM - He says, Hey, can we use the elevator yet? PR - Um, yeah. Well, no, we need to check for hair samples, so no, actually, you can't. Is the Forensics team ready yet? GM - [Tranh] Yeah, they're about ready to clean out now. We took the gurney up the stairs, but we can't bring the body down them. PR - Okay. Well, we need to take care of the elevators first. GM - [Tranh] I think they can check the elevators now, if you want me to go and tell them. PR - Yeah, let's do that. GM - He starts to shuffle off. PR - Tell them to look in particular for long, black hair . . . GM - [Tranh] Long black hairs. PR - And short. GM - [Tranh] Short black hairs. Uh-huh. PR - Short dark hair. GM - [Tranh] Short dark hair. Black, brown, green? PR - Black, brown, whatever. GM - [Tranh] Okay. He leaves. He shuffles off. A little while later the techs come down and do the hall, the elevator, the lobby, and then they're finished. They do not come up with any hair from anywhere. PR - Okay. Elevators are clean now? GM - Elevators are clean. It's getting on toward twelve-forty now, almost one. PR - I'm pretty close to wrapping this up, now. I just need to talk to the tenants. GM - Okay, let's do it. PR - And we should visit the blonde lady, or maybe bring her down to the precinct to talk to her. GM - Oookay, says Nichols, and stretches. Guess I get to talk to the super. Oh, boy. PR - At eleven-thirty, do you know if there was anybody on guard downstairs at all? GM - [snorts] They don't have a security guard. Are you kidding me? PR - I thought maybe the super would stay up, or something. GM - Yeah, right. Have you talked to her? She was probably in bed. The only thing we can do, time-wise, is check the cameras . . . I don't know. What else is there to do? PR - We need to check the time. GM - We've got the cameras for that. PR - And I want to talk to the tenants. GM - I think that's about it. We could check the lobby phones and see if anybody made any calls out. PR - That's actually an interesting idea. Also, um, I want to see if any calls were made from any of the phones in here. Can you do that? GM - Yeah. We can have Chuck check it for us. PR - See if any calls were made from 1222. GM - I'm on it. He scurries off to take care of that, putting his jacket on as he leaves. This will take him anywhere from ten minutes to an hour. Meanwhile, they're taking the body downstairs, and they'll take it to the precinct. He stops, turns around, and comes back. You want me to get the blonde lady ID'd for you now, or do you want to take her to the station later? And do you want to talk to the tenants now, or later? I gotta talk to the super about the phones anyway, so I figure we can get this done, too. PR - I want to talk to everybody now, so I don't have to come back here. GM - All right. PR - After I talk to the tenants, before I leave, and they close up and put the tape up, I'll make one more run through 22. Let's see if we can get the blonde lady down to the station . . . Actually, I ought to talk to her here, first. She probably won't be too happy to see us. GM - Okay. PR - The landlady didn't see or hear what happened to anybody, did she? GM - Oh, of course not. PR - Do you know if she's going to try to keep this quiet? GM - Oh, yeah. She don't want to scare her tenants off. That's part of the reason she's so bitchy about it, 'cause she sees you got a black-and-white out there. By the way, Hogan wants to know if he can go home now. He's got the sup's statement, and he did his report. PR - Yeah, just make sure I get copies of those. GM - Yeah. PR - When I talk to everybody, I don't want them to know that a murder happened. GM - That's no problem. She isn't talking. We run hither and yon for your entertainment. You guys close up the security station, taking the disks with you to the station to be done later, and head up to canvas the tenants around the apartment. Nichols takes off to talk to the super and get that ID for you. The tenants are a motley assortment of working-class blue-collar people. Apartment 40 is filled with an immigrant Chinese family of about fourteen people. PR - Nichols doesn't speak Mandarin, does he? GM - Nobody speaks Chinese here. The grandmother of the apartment speaks a little English, and she says that she didn't hear anything. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything. PR - Can I make Perception rolls to see if they're telling the truth? GM - Yes. Roll for the contents of each apartment. The people across the hall, when asked about Galvano and his girlfriend, simply tell you that they were in and out at odd hours all the time, Galvano especially. PR - Would they leave for short periods of time, and then come back? GM - Yes. And Galvano was frequently accompanied to his house by various men in business suits. One big guy they remember as being very friendly. He helped them carry their groceries up one time. The couple telling you this is a young married pair who look almost identical--they've both got blonde hair and this deep tan. PR - I'll ask them to describe those people. Do any of those people match the-- GM - Descriptions of the two men? No. PR - Okay. While I'm still in 40, the one right behind 22, I want to ask if anyone heard anything from this corner. [indicates a spot on the crime scene map]. If she was shot there, there might have been a conversation in that corner. I'm hoping that somebody might have been up watching TV or something and might have heard. GM - Roll for it. PR - [rolls] Four, plus Human Perception, is ten . . . sixteen. I wouldn't get any other benefits, I think. GM - No. Not unless you have voice stress analyzers, or something. PR - No, so 16. GM - No, they're telling the truth. PR - They probably wouldn't understand what they were saying either. GM - They really don't speak enough English. PR - Um . . . 42 and 38-- GM - 42 is vacant. There's nobody in there. PR - 38 I doubt, because it's kind of hard. GM - Because it's catty-corner, yeah. 38 is a young single woman and her two kids. She's about twenty and her older son is 5. PR - I'm saying the time, too. GM - Yes. She's off today; she normally works and her kids are at daycare during the day. She says she was asleep. Roll for it, just to check. PR - [rolls] Nine . . . uh, eighteen. GM - Nope. She's telling the truth. PR - Okay. Sixteen . . . I think I was a little lower on that one. GM - Are you checking back with the people across the hall now? PR - I'm checking 24. GM - The two sides? PR - The two sides, yeah. 24 probably not, because I think there's a, ah, what do you call it, a closet in the way there . . . GM - Yeah. It's on the other side of the closet. 24 is an elderly black couple, retired, and their adult son. PR - I'll ask if they maybe heard anything. GM - The adults were up late. They're the elderly insomniac type. PR - [rolls] Two, plus twelve . . . fourteen. GM - You can't really tell. They are a little nervous about talking to you because of your badge. The elderly gentleman reports hearing a thump around elevenish. He remembers because he was waiting for the very elderly Letterman to come on. He didn't think anything of it. PR - Did you hear that thump out in the hallway, or in the apartment next door? GM - He says, It was comin' mostly from the hallway. PR - What kind of people were your neighbors? I know they were in and out at all hours. GM - Well, they were quiet. They were in and out a lot. The young man was nice, but I think the woman was a hussy. PR - One think I want to make sure of, also, is that I keep descriptions of the people that stick out who were with them, like the big guy. GM - Okay. He says, I do believe he worked for a medical supply place somewheres. I'm wanting to say he was a college student, but I can't quite remember. PR - Do you know where she worked? GM - Oh, I don't have the faintest. She's probably a stripper or something. PR - [laughs] Well, thank you. I appreciate your time. GM - Oh, my. She was nice. She was a honey to look at. PR - [laughs] Yeah, but she's probably a viper. GM - Oh, ah, I heard them arguing once or twice about this and that. PR - What about? GM - Just screaming at each other, going at it. PR - What were they arguing about? GM - Oh, money this and money that. I don't believe they were married, but you couldn't tell it by the way they fought. PR - Do the people remember any names? Did the big guy introduce himself, or anything? GM - No. PR - Okay. Try number 20. GM - There is a child's Big Wheel parked out in front of the door. It's a yellow plastic thing. PR - [laughing] She was up late. GM - There is another single mother in here, and her mother, and her sister. So you have the woman, her mother, her aunt, and a little boy of about three. They didn't hear anything. PR - [laughs] Yeah, I got a feeling that they wouldn't. [rolls] Oooh. GM - Roll again. PR - [rolls] GM - No. Sorry. You rolled so high, I can just tell you flat out that they didn't hear anything. The woman remembers Galvano and his big friend. She remembers the big guy as being a family man, because they had a conversation in the hall one time about the best brand of diapers to use. Apparently she had been carrying the kid, talking to Galvano, and the big man came up just as the kid let go all over her, and they had a conversation about that. So she assumed he had kids, because he knew what he was talking about. In the middle of this conversation Nichols comes back up, but he's waiting for you to get done talking. PR - Sounds like a nice guy. How big was he? GM - Oh, six one, six two. He wasn't so much big as he was built like a wall. And he had this round face. And he was very cheerful, and he always wore a suit. I thought that was very sweet. He was very nice. PR - He was probably the highest paid contract killer in the city [laughs]. GM - [laughs] And he was married, too, I saw his ring. I think he was religious, too. Very old-fashioned. PR - He had a cross? GM - St. Christopher's medallion. My aunt is Catholic, so I know. PR - I have a question for you. Was this a nice wedding ring? Was it expensive? I know to these folks, it might seem more expensive than it really was, but . . . GM - No, it was just a band. He was very normal. For a while I thought he lived on another floor, he was here so often. He has, I think, three or four children. PR - Hmm. Okay. GM - But I believe his youngest is about my son's age. PR - Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Uh, Nichols? GM - [Nichols] Yeah? PR - Do you have an ID on the blonde woman yet? GM - Yeah, we got her. Cordelia Farrell. [snorts] PR - What apartment number? GM - She's downstairs, two floors. 1033. PR - Has anybody talked to her yet? GM - Ah, no. I just got the ID on her from the super. PR - All right. I'll be up there. You can come up there with me if you want. GM - Yeah. PR - Well, thank you, ma'am. GM - She nods. You get everyone's names, in case you want to talk to them again later. Of course, they all ask you what's going on. PR - I tell them we have a missing person. [laughs] I don't mention the deceased. GM - The corridor is buzzing with the news that you took a body out, though. Everyone saw the gurney being wheeled away. PR - Bad case of gas. [laughs] I'll go up and meet Cordelia. GM - Okay. You go upstairs. Cordelia Farrell is a white trash woman. That's what Nichols calls her, anyway, the White Trash Lady. He beats you up, because he leaves as you are bidding farewell to the last tenant and is just knocking on the door when you get up there. She is hung over. PR - Ah, dammit. [laughs] GM - I mean, she is not real happy with the world right now. PR - We probably have some good drugs for her at the precinct, though. [laughs] GM - She has a dirty blue cotton dress on. Her bra strap is showing, and it's pinned with a rusty safety pin. The reason I say she looks like white trash is because her apartment has that tacky scraping-by look. PR - Does she look like a tweaker? GM - A bit. She has dyed blonde hair, and you can see the roots. The debris of her apartment indicates that she is single, probably with a series of fast boyfriends. She may have had a husband living with her at one time. She has a four-year old son named Sammy who is sitting in the corner fussing away--he fusses and cries the whole time. The furnishings are cheap. There are velvet paintings on the walls-- PR - Elvis paintings. [laughs] GM - And fundamentalist knick-knacks. Plaster Jesuses, and pamphlets, and such. And she's got the TV on, and it's blaring. There's a simstim deck in the corner, with stacks and stacks of chips on it. PR - Probably the only thing worth any money in the entire apartment. GM - And the kid is just wailing away. PR - Does he look malnourished? GM - No, he looks okay. He has bruises on his arms, though, and he has a runny nose, but other than that, nothing. PR - Well, we can't deal with that right now. GM - You can call Child Protective Services on her later, if you want. PR - I'm like, "Why do I do this to myself?" [laughs] GM - But she's willing to talk to you. PR - Well, ah, good afternoon. GM - [sighs] Hello. PR - I was wondering if perhaps you saw two young gentlemen last night? We saw on the security camera that they had been coming upstairs as you were going down to the lobby last night around eleven. GM - Well, I came home from work about quarter till last night. I came upstairs to get Sammy's stuff before I went and got him from his babysitter. I picked him up, and then I went to make a phone call to my ex-husband, who doesn't live with us any more because he's a bastard, and hasn't been paying his support checks, so I had to go down and give him a call. So I was down on the lobby phone from about eleven-ten till about eleven-thirty. PR - Just a mental note to you--since we are checking to see what phone calls were made last night, I want to make sure she actually did make that call. GM - Okay. And she rambles on about her ex-husband. And he never paid his bills, and he was always bringing his dirty friends over, so finally I just had to kick him out-- PR - I see. About-- GM - Now he's running a little porno store-- PR - Um, perhaps, ma'am, did you see two people in the lobby while you were making your call? One gentleman with long, black hair, wearing a suit, carrying a duffle bag-- GM - [shrugs] I can't really remember. You think she was a little bit, ah . . . PR - Not quite there? GM - Yes. Somewhat high at the time. I don't really remember people moving in and out. I vaguely recall a couple of guys coming in through the front door and going up to the elevator-- PR - Through the front door? GM - I don't remember, really. It might have been the garage door. I remember thinking that I hadn't seen them before, but I don't know everybody who lives here. PR - You wouldn't recognize these guys. GM - Well, I had Sammy down there with me, and he was putting up a fuss. PR - Was Sammy in the picture? In the film? GM - No. Not the first time, but the second time, on the way up. You presume that she picked the kid up from somewhere in the building, maybe from the second floor. She took the elevator down to the lobby, exited, maybe took the stairs to another floor and got him, and then made her call. Or whoever had him was on the first floor, maybe in the laundry room. He is in the second picture as she goes back up the elevator. PR - When you were going to go back up the elevator, I believe these gentlemen were coming down. Was there a man in a bathrobe? GM - Oh, I don't remember. I was on the phone for a while, and then I had to go check my laundry. PR - How much time does that leave her? GM - If what she says is true, she came down and got on the phone, they came in, crossed the lobby and went up, she talked on the phone for a while, she got off the phone and went somewhere else, they came down and left, and she went back up. PR - Um, I was going to ask you, can I tell if she's telling the truth about not seeing the two men, and not remembering them the second time? GM - Roll. Make dat Human Perception roll. PR - Come on, baby. [rolls] GM - Check it. PR - Twelve, uh, seventeen. GM - She's telling the truth. If you work with her for a while, you might be able to get some kind of description out of her. PR - I want to do a little bit of that now. Were they talking when they came in? GM - She says they weren't. She says the only other person she remembers being in there was one of the local homeless, a guy they call Old Abe, who was asleep in the corner. PR - Was he asleep? GM - Yeah, as far as she can tell. She hasn't seen him today. She says he sleeps in the lobby sometimes, and gets up around eleven and heads out. PR - He might have seen them coming down. GM - That's really all she knows. Nichols is just sitting there, looking uncomfortable. PR - You didn't notice any distinguishing features? GM - I don't know. What would you call a distinguishing feature? My ex- husband, he had a distinguishing feature--he was an asshole. But that wasn't anything you could see to look at him. PR - Well, maybe a tattoo or something. GM - Oh, I don't know. I didn't look that close. I know better than to stare at every stranger that goes walking across the lobby of my building at eleven o'clock at night. That's a good way to get myself mugged, or raped, or beat up, or something. PR - Well, I appreciate your help. We probably won't have to contact you again, but, ah-- GM - Your officer friend there has my phone number. And you know where I live. PR - Yeah. Well, hopefully we won't need you again, but-- GM - Oh, I know. Don't leave town or anything. PR - Well, no, actually. Uh, goodbye. GM - Uh-huh. PR - If she's a big simstim addict, she's probably going, "Yeah!" [laughs] GM - Yeah, she'll be on the phone to fifteen hundred friends when you guys leave. She's just playing it cool right now. PR - It would only make it worse if I told her not to tell anybody. [laughs] GM - [laughing] No doubt. "And they took out a body! And he said, 'Did you see any tattoos?' and I thought, 'Hey, maybe they were those Japanese gangsters, you know, with the fingers cut off?'" PR - [laughs] That's awful. GM - Okay. Nichols says, Can we leave now? PR - Well, there's two more things that I want to do before I leave today. GM - Make one last sweep of the room? PR - Yeah, and I want to see if I can find Old Abe, maybe talk to the manager and see if she knows anything. GM - Oh, man. You want to talk to the super, you go right ahead. Ayisha Samuels is the super, the black woman you saw outside. She has an attitude, but she seems to have calmed down now. You catch her in the lobby. PR - Good afternoon, Ms. Samuels. GM - [Samuels] Now, what am I going to be doing for you? PR - Well, we think that somebody who stays in the lobby sometimes might have seen something. A guy named Old Abe? GM - [Samuels] Oh, yes. That old fart. PR - We'd like to talk to him and see if perhaps he has anything to see. GM - [Samuels] Well, heaven knows you're not going to be able to find him this hour of the morning. PR - Why? What time does he usually come in? GM - [Samuels] Oh, about ten o'clock in the evening. If you come back about ten o'clock tonight, you'll probably find him sleeping in my lobby. Now, I get people to roust him out, but I don't have a security man who works here. I can't be chasing him all over creation. Your policeman probably scared him off this morning. I hope he did. I can't be scaring him out all the time when I ought to be in bed. PR - Well, thank you for your time, all the same. GM - [Samuels] You can try and find him, but I don't think he'll be telling you anything. He's drunk out of his mind, and does he sleep like a rock? PR - Well, he might have seen something. GM - [Samuels] I can't get him up half the time. PR - Um, well, we'll see if I need to talk to him. GM - [Samuels] Heaven knows, I don't know where he hangs out. PR - Okay, well, thanks a lot. I'll, ah, we'll be in touch, obviously. GM - [Samuels] Can I be using my elevators now? PR - Yes, you may, ma'am. GM - [Samuels] Do you have that tape off my garage yet? PR - Um, do we have the tape up, still? GM - Nichols says, No, it's clean. She says, And I can be cleaning up all this on the floor, here? PR - Yeah. We have samples of all that, don't we? GM - Yeah. And also from the garage. PR - Only thing is, we've taped up the door to the apartment, and you can't go in there, obviously. GM - Oh, I don't need to be going in there. Now, that officer man downstairs, he said you would be needing the key. PR - Yeah. Could I have that? GM - Now, I can get you the key, but I'm going to need you to write me a receipt for that. PR - Sure, I'll do that. GM - She gets the key for you and you write her an official NCPD receipt. PR - Um, then I'll just make one last check of the apartment. GM - She takes down your badge number. She probably took down Hogan's number when he got there, and Nichols' number when he was talking to her earlier. And she writes down everything, just to make sure she can sue the city later if anything goes wrong. PR - [shakes his head] GM - She's not smoking right now, as she was when you drove up, but you can smell it around her, a kind of cinnamony smell. As you're getting away from her you notice that she has both plugs and a chipware socket, which makes you a little curious, because this is a low-income neighborhood. You go back through the apartment, and you don't see anything that you didn't notice before. Nichols says that the techs are going to come back through later and tag all the furniture and stuff. And we'll check Galvano's background and all that. You know there's a tag on his file? PR - No. What is it? GM - I'm not sure. I started Chuck running on it and he says the guy's got a prior, but there's something funny on it. You know that the "Chuck" he's referring to is one of the NetSec guys. You've worked with him before, as well, and you should get to talk to him face to face later. I don't know what he's going to get if he pokes at it. PR - What's the prior? GM - I don't know. God knows what kind of heat we could pick up, if IAD or somebody flagged his file. PR - Well, let's go down to NetSec and talk to Chuck. GM - 'Kay. You split up for the ride down. You get in your "company car." Everybody is gone by now. Nichols follows you in his little crappy undercover compact. You get back to the precinct and park your cars. He checks his in to the desk and turns over the keys. PR - Have they done that DNA thing to the body banks, yet? GM - Yes. They don't have anyone right now. If they pick anybody up, they'll let you know. And they've sent the ID around to all the hospitals, too, in case he turns up alive. You guys go to see Chuck up in NetSec. Chuck is sort of weird. He has a whiny, nasal voice, and he dresses and acts like the stereotypical computer nerd of the 80's. PR - Yikes. GM - Apparently he puts this on deliberately, as a pose, a kind of retro style thing. He doesn't go so far as to do the pocket protectors, but he's got the clear glass horn-rimmed glasses and the weaselly face. PR - The Revenge of the Nerds posergang look. GM - Yeah. You take up the tapes and he says he can probably run them through and scan them, but don't expect miracles. This digital shit, I can't work with. PR - Maybe a 3-D image? GM - Oh, yeah, full head-body imaging. Whatever. We'll send that up to Graphics. PR - Body, too? Besides the face? GM - Yeah, I think we can clear up these body shots for you. PR - Great. GM - I did a run-down on the phone records, too. We have a listing for two calls. PR - Before we get to that, I have one other question. There's a point where the guy in the robe looks directly at the camera. Can you see if he mouths anything? GM - Yeah, I can check that for you. We can do something with that, if he does. I got two calls from that building. I think your ETA is from, what, 10 pm to 5 am? 4 am? PR - Yeah. From that room, or from the downstairs? GM - From the whole building. PR - Oh, really? GM - One's from the downstairs lobby phone to a, uh, lemme look . . . He starts shuffling through some hardcopy on his desk. His little office cubicle is plastered with Depeche Mode and Devo posters. PR - [laughs] GM - Men at Work, and the Cars, and, um . . . PR - [laughs] I'm like, who? Men at Who? GM - And he's got his deck set up, and it's plastered with stickers from old software companies, like Atari and Commodore and Texas Instruments. He has a small pistol in a shoulder holster. PR - He doesn't have one of those weefle tassle things, does he? GM - [laughs] No. His plugs and cords are ordinary. He's just got all this 80's shit plastered all over his cube. He normally wears jeans and old concert t-shirts. He says, Ah, one is a Cordelia Farrell's call to her ex-husband, Jack. He works at a video store down by the college. Actually, I guess he runs it--it's sort of a video/simstim/porn thing. She called him, and they were on the phone for fifteen minutes or so. The second one is a 911 call from, um, 1203, at 11:21 pm. PR - Really. GM - Yup. We have a transcript. PR - What was that about? GM - I got the sheet. They didn't send a car out. He hands it to you. For your information, Joe, it's this apartment [indicates on the building map]. [Transcript of call reads as follows: Call came in at 11:21 pm on Friday, June 3, 2022 from a residential building located at 14 W. Hunsaker St., apartment 1203. "D" indicates the dispatcher, "C" the caller. D - 911, what is your emergency? C - Uh, there's a . . . there's a man trying to get into my apartment. D - All right, ma'am, stay on the line. C - [voices, unintelligable, the female caller's and a muffled man's voice] D - Ma'am? Ma'am, are you there? C - Yes, yes, I'm here. Please, he's pounding on the door. He's got a-- D - Is it someone you know, ma'am? Is it your husband? C - No, no, I never saw him before. He just came down the hall and they saw me-- [a man's voice, unintelligable] D - Stay on the line, ma'am. We'll have a car there in a few minutes. C - Oh, god. Hurry, hurry please. Uh, wait-- D - Ma'am? C - He's going away, now, I think . . . Wait-- D - Ma'am? Stay on the phone, ma'am! Stay away from the door. C - [disconnects] The call was classified as a Level Four disturbance (non-domestic, non- weapon dispute). No car was sent to the address, and no follow-up calls were made.] PR - [reading transcript] Oh, man! GM - [laughs] What? PR - They didn't even send a car out? GM - Nope. Chuck says, It was Priority Four. You know how many calls we get like that every day. PR - Send out a black-and-white, right now. GM - Who, me? You've got your flunky, Nicky-boy, to do that. Nichols snorts. He's been standing behind you, reading over your shoulder. If Chuck is 80's nerd, Nichols is 90's prep. PR - [sighs] Nichols, could you please have a black-and-white sent to, ah, the building to check out apartment, ah, GM - [Nichols] 1203, yeah, right. Why? He apparently reads slower than you do, and hasn't gotten to the applicable part of the transcript yet. PR - I got a feeling you'll find a female body. GM - [Nichols] No shit? What happened? He cranes his neck, trying to read the rest. PR - Yeah. I think she might have seen one or more of the perpetrators and, ah, was maybe shot. GM - [Nichols] Ah, crap. PR - Nobody was dispatched. GM - [Nichols] This could be bad. PR - Yeah. Um, well . . . GM - [Nichols] I'll get a black-and-white out there. He bops down the hall. PR - Crap. Now I've got to go out there again. Fuck. It's at 11:21, too, which is the ETA time. GM - You have some bad men here, my friend, and this is starting to smell a lot like OG's business. Which you know is precinct-ese for Organized Crime. You know about his priors, right? PR - Galvano's? Yes. What was it, exactly? GM - Oookay. Let me lay this out for you. Galvano came in from New Jersey on May 4, 2022, on the Planetrans, and got a job working for this medical supply place in West Hill, driving stuff around--drugs, equipment, you know. Anyway, he got busted on the 19th on an illegal weapons charge. Apparently he was making a delivery to Plaza Medical Services, and they did a spot check of his van, and came up with a submachinegun hidden under the passenger seat. PR - Really. GM - It gets better. They booked him on a Priority Five weapons offense. He got fined a K and sentenced to four months in a low security block. But they suspended the sentence in lieu of community service. That, in itself, is kinda weird. When I look all this up, I see there's a notation on the file, cross-referencing it to OG. Plus, anybody who accesses this guy's records is logged. I got around that, though. But I can't figure out why there's another file on him, in OG. This wasn't a contract hit, was it? PR - No. Not yet. The person who was killed wasn't, I don't think, the target. GM - Incidental, maybe? PR - I don't know. GM - So I'm digging, and I go to look around in OG, and as I'm leaving I notice that not only is there a log order on Galvano's file, there's a goddamn flag on it. So I say, whoa, what the hell is this? Is this an OG flag, to tell them I'm coming? Is it an IAD flag? I have no idea, and I don't know if I can cross-reference Galvano's file without popping it. It's your call. PR - An IAD flag? GM - Yeah. PR - Guy might have been an informant. GM - That's what I was thinking. I have to admit, though, this is more interesting than running down those goddamned license plate ID's for the rest of my life. PR - Is this flag, basically, if you touch this file, somebody else is notified? GM - Sort of. It's more like, if you try to get any more information regarding this case number, a bell goes off somewhere. And the rest of this information, I figure, is in Organized Crime. PR - So it probably calls somebody in the Mafia division. GM - Maybe. I have a feeling, if we play with this, someone's going to come knocking. PR - Don't do it yet. Is there any way, to, ah . . . GM - Oh, there's lots of ways. I can give it a try, but I don't know what will happen. PR - If it's not IAD, will they call them in if you mess with a flagged file? GM - Oh, yeah. We'll have Infernal Affairs sticking their dicks up your ass, you bet. But I figure you can handle that. You're the sergeant, after all. I'm just a flunky on a five-year work program. PR - Try it. We'll do the flag later. I want to see what kind of flag it is first, though, but we'll purposely set it off later. GM - Okay. I can do that, no problem. Oh, yeah. Rajah called and says he's working on the body, wanted me to tell you that can come down and look at it now, if you want. PR - Yes. Question I have, about the apartment building, the actual apartment. No calls were made? GM - No, no calls. De nada. PR - Okay. I'll check out Rajah. Um, let me give you my phone number. If something happens-- GM - [snorts] I got your phone number. Jesus. PR - [laughs] Yeah, I guess you do. If something happens. give me a buzz. GM - Tell you what. I'll call you on the PA system. PR - [laughs] Just call and tell me if you come up with anything. GM - "Sergeant, please report to the lieutenant's office immediately. Your ass is on fire." PR - [laughs] GM - I can do that, you know. But I'll be nice. PR - Please, be nice. I'm going to go to the autopsy room. GM - All right. PR - Oh, if Nichols comes back, tell him where I am. GM - You don't know how long he'll be. He's off dispatching the black-and- white, and he's probably getting a cup of coffee. He's been complaining about his indigestion. PR - Um, I have a question. Do they keep digital copies of the 911 transcripts? GM - Yes. PR - Okay. Is there any way to enhance the voices in the background? GM - Yeah, but what kind of bearing do you think it will have on your case? You gotta fill out the papers first. PR - Well, I think it's probably the voice of the person who killed the woman who made the 911 call, and probably the same person who killed Galvano's girlfriend, in the apartment. GM - Well, do the papers for it. Get them to the lieutenant and I'll run that for you. You got me doing eight things at once here, dude. PR - Yeah, well, sorry about that. I figure if I'm going to do it, I might as well do it right. GM - It's better than fixing DUI tickets for rich corporates. PR - [laughs] GM - I swear, if I have to track down one more goddamn vanity plate . . . PR - Well, give me a call. I'll be in Forensics. GM - You go to Forensics, which is either up or down, I'm not sure. Your office is on the 6th floor, and Nichols is on the 11th floor, and, ah . . . oh, Forensics in on the 11th floor, too. So you just have to walk down the hall. And Rajah is there, and some of the other main Forensics guys, all with their little assistants running everywhere. The autopsy room is long and low, with steel tables and equipment set up. Rajah has not started on Stansfield's body yet. He's just doing the general external examination. He's got the lamp trained on her, and the recorder hanging from the ceiling, and he's dictating into it. He sees you and he says, Ah, Sergeant. PR - Hello. GM - I am pleased to see you today. It was a very fine day this morning, wasn't it? PR - Yes, well, it was actually my day off, believe it or not. GM - I'm very sorry to hear that. I normally take a day off, but it's usually on Tuesdays. What can I do for you today? PR - Well, I was wondering if I could be here as you examine the body. GM - You're welcome to. I need to ask you to put this mask on, please. He gives you a paper mask. And please do not touch anything, as I am doing this. PR - Sure. I'll put it on. GM - He goes over and resumes his examination. PR - [laughs] Actually, I'm kinda good at this, myself. GM - You'll know what you're looking at without him having to explain. He says, At this point, I am theorizing that the cause of death was a 9mm bullet to the head. External indications are that it penetrated into the skull cavity but did not exit. There are no facial contusions present on the subject, as you postulated, save minor bruising on the cheek and forearms, most likely post- or just pre-mortem, when she fell forward onto the floor. Hypothesis: Victim was seated on the bed, shot from behind by a standing assailant, and fell face first into the position she was discovered in. I'll have to open the skull to determine the nature of the round. PR - I'd be interested to know whether she was a habitual drug user. GM - We can verify that when we have the toxicology report in. PR - Apparently her and her boyfriend were involved in pharmaceutical, ah . . . GM - Then I will check for that. He goes over the rest of the body and then begins the actual cutting-open part, weighing and washing the organs, checking the stomach contents, and so forth. The stomach contains partially digested pill casings. He fishes these out and examines them, and pronounces them a mild over-the-counter hallucinogen. PR - Over-the-counter? GM - Yeah, they sell those now. It's funny, because all the biologicals are illegal, but a lot of the weaker synthetics aren't. So you could probably get something like XTC over-the-counter. He says he can't make out what the brand is from the casings, but toxicology will pick it up. You'll have to come back later this evening to get that. He opens the skull cavity with a saw and retrieves the bullet. He says, Yes, this is probably a 9mm. He photographs it. PR - Does it look like a subsonic round? GM - Mmmm, I can't tell. It's somewhat mangled from passing through the skull. I don't know what type of report Ballistics will get from it, but I will send it over. PR - It's worth a try. It's caseless, correct? GM - Mmm-hmm. PR - Probably not 9mm, though. Probably 10mm. GM - There's no other external trauma. PR - Does she have any hypo or needle marks? GM - No. No external signs of drug use. And, oddly enough, no piercings or tattoos, despite her occupation. PR - I'll have to make a run down by her work, too. What's her name again? GM - Lisa Stansfield. I would estimate time of death as between eleven and twelve. I don't know whether this is consistent with your findings, however. PR - It's eleven-thirtyish. We have almost an exact time. Eleven-fifteen to eleven-twenty, actually. GM - About the time he finishes with that, around four o'clock, Nichols calls you. Oh, and by the way, Forensics has typed the blood. All the blood on the floor is Galvano's, which is listed as O+. Stansfield's blood is B-, and the only blood of hers was by her body. PR - No other hair samples, correct? GM - Unfortunately, no. Nichols says, Okay. Um, the call was made by a Nicole Durand. Attending officer says she is on scene, she is unharmed, she is a little shaken up. She reports that an individual attempted to break into her apartment last night around eleven o'clock. claiming that he was a police officer. PR - At eleven o'clock? GM - She's vague on the time, says she doesn't remember exactly. Attending officer wants us to advise whether to bring her in or not. PR - Well, I want to talk to her, but I don't want to have to go back down there. GM - Okay, I'll tell him to run her down. What I'm worried about is, if she did see something, are they going to come back? PR - Well, that's the thing. GM - If she saw them well enough for them to try to get into her apartment and get to her, especially now that we've had a car down there, investigating . . . PR - It depends on what she saw. Does she say she saw the people that tried to get her? GM - She says . . . Attending officer says she had been intending to go to the lobby to get her mail from the dataterm. As she was preparing to leave, she heard scuffling in the hall, and opened the door to see two men exiting Galvano's apartment with a third man in between them. PR - Did she see a face? GM - She saw them clearly, she says. PR - Okay. GM - She says one man came out with the resident in front of him. The second man was locking the door. They both saw her, um, they had a brief conversation, she's not sure what it entailed, they moved down the hall toward her, she slammed the door and locked it. One of the men approached her door, knocked on it, attempted to get her to open the door, and at that point, she made the 911 call. PR - Is she single? GM - Yes. She's got some kind of lung problem . . . she says she's from orbit, and she's down here for medical treatment. PR - I'd like to take her into protective custody, if we could. GM - You'll have to go through the lieutenant. PR - I think, just setting her up in another apartment somewhere would do it. She'd probably agree to it. GM - Yeah, she's pretty upset. PR - Provided she cooperates. GM - Oh, I don't think you'll have any problem with that. Attending says she's freaked. PR - I'll try to get it approved. Can you bring her down now, while I'm doing that? GM - Okay. PR - She doesn't have a medical condition that would preclude her coming down to the station, does she? GM - Uh . . . that's hard to tell. I think she'll be okay. She's on oxygen. Other than that, I don't think she'll have any trouble. PR - Keep her comfortable. GM - We can have one of the precinct doctors go over her when she gets here. This is turning out to be a honey, isn't it? Now, the question is, is she going to talk to us? PR - I think she'll talk to us if we give her a place to go. GM - I told attending to get her out of there as fast as he could. I don't want the car being there more than five minutes. Hopefully, the other tenants won't talk about it, either. PR - Get her down here, and don't tell anybody what case she's here in connection with. Especially if this is mob-related. GM - Nichols signs off. He calls back about ten minutes later and tells you that on the way to the precinct she had some kind of collapse in the car, so they have to take her to a hospital. You wait a while, and Nichols arrives at the station and comes up to see you. He says that she has been placed in Emergency Admitting with an officer on-scene. She won't be available for questioning until tomorrow. PR - Would it be possible to bring a, ah, somebody by to write up a profile on the guys she saw? GM - A graphic artist? Yeah, they can do that, but they won't let anyone see her till tomorrow. PR - Okay. Crap. Well, tomorrow I'll go in with the graphic person. GM - Autopsy and toxicology reports won't be ready until tomorrow, anyway. I wanna get my paperwork done tonight before we leave, okay? PR - Before we do that, I want to talk to the netrunner guy. GM - Chuck? PR - Yeah. GM - Chuck-boy. You go upstairs. Chuck sees you, spins his chair around, and says, Well. IAD flag, definitely. PR - IAD? GM - Yeh. PR - Did you, ah, pop the flag? GM - No. I didn't. I don't think I did. [laughs] I hope not. Well, I don't see anybody knocking on my door yet, so I assume I didn't. Ah, if I did pop it, I think we'd know about it right now. I can tell you now, though, that if I dig any further, it's going to go off like a bomb. PR - What, exactly, has come up so far? GM - It's very, very touchy. PR - [laughs] I appreciate that. GM - They have a file for a Galvano. Apparently there was some other charge that he was being investigated on. It's suspected that the reason his sentence was suspended was due to some kind of involvement, maybe organized crime influence within the Department. PR - Inside the Department? GM - That was all I could get out. Now, you know, and I know, and everybody knows that Yak and Triads and Family have people on the payroll. IAD doesn't know who all of them are, and I imagine that this is how they're trying to find out. They know that somebody in here wiggled some of the charges to get him off. They don't know he's dead yet. And they won't know he's dead until I pop that flag. PR - Don't pop the flag. GM - Then you better be going around and telling everybody else to keep it quiet. I don't know what they'll say, but I do know that if you tell Rajah to keep his files shut, he's going to blow up. I can try to bury the reports, but if IAD comes in, I'm going to cut and run. And there's a lot to bury--flags are going to come up when Hogan puts his report in, when Missing Persons puts a report in, you name it. PR - Let them pop the flags, so that you're not involved. GM - That should give us fourteen, fifteen hours. PR - I'm going to go write up my reports, then. GM - And submit them to the lieutenant? PR - Actually, I'd like to talk to the lieutenant. GM - She's in her office. Sergeant, she says, not looking up when you come in. PR - Well, I have an interesting case here. GM - Sit down and tell me about it. You have the feeling that she might already know what you're going to say. Then again, she always gives you] that feeling, so maybe not. PR - [laughs] This is after I've done my reports. GM - You're bringing them up, but she hasn't read them yet. PR - Here are my reports. GM - She is a tall, slender Hispanic woman, rather good-looking in an Aztec- Mayan sort of way. Her office is done up in these vibrant, bright, neo- Aztec colors, with a faux-obsidian desk and Jaguar masks on the walls. When she calls you into her office, people say that you're going into the temple to get your heart cut out. PR - [laughs] Well, what we have is a, ah . . . well, it's not a contract killing, but we believe organized crime is involved. GM - And you haven't given it to OG yet? PR - No, and there's a reason for that, which I'll get to shortly. GM - I'll be interested in hearing this. PR - Apparently what happened is, two gentleman, most likely both assassins, hired killers in the mob genre, went up to an apartment, got into it . . . I'm not sure if they knew the resident or not, but they got into it, abducted him, and left the apartment after killing his girlfriend, probably with a subsonic machinegun round. As they were leaving, another tenant saw them, carrying . . . GM - The resident. Where is that other tenant now? PR - [sighs] She's in the hospital. GM - Was she injured? PR - No. She made a 911 call at the time of the incident when they tried to get into her apartment. No car was sent. When we found out about the call, we sent a car over to pick her up, but she's from orbit and had some sort of attack. I guess she needs pure oxygen, or a higher oxygen content than we currently have in Night City. She collapsed in the police car on the way to the station and was taken to the hospital. They say we won't be able to talk to her until tomorrow. GM - All right. What are you asking me for, sergeant? PR - Well, apparently this has connections with the Department. GM - Really. PR - The man that was kidnapped, and possibly dead at this point, had an IAD flag on his files. GM - I see. I see. What are you asking me? Do you want to continue the investigation? PR - I'd like to continue the investigation, but I don't think I will be for much longer. GM - I don't think you will be, either. PR - What I'm worried about is that the witness may have an unfortunate accident if we turn the case over to Organized Crime. GM - I see. She thinks for a minute. All right. This is what I'm going to do for you. I'll write you a protection order. I am not going to date it. You can use it at your discretion. I am not going to log it. If you use it, and you are caught, it's going to date back to one of your earlier cases. You're free to continue until they shut you down. Understand that, if this becomes a problem, we never had this conversation, and I was not aware that you had retained such an order from a previous case, nor that you were using it for such a purpose. PR - Yes. Thank you. I'm sure the lady from orbit would thank you, too. GM - All right. She signs it and gives it to you, and has her get out of her office. PR - I figured, I took a chance talking to her, but I'm trying to work within the system. GM - Well, she was either going to ream your ass out, or not. PR - The other reason I talked to her was, if she told me to get out, I'd get out. I mean, IAD is involved. GM - She left it up to you. You can use the order if you want, or you can let it go. PR - I didn't want to be a maverick. GM - She respected that. It is your ass, after all. The afternoon passes. It's getting on toward six now. PR - I'll probably go downstairs and work out a little bit before I go home. GM - You do that, and then you head home. Nichols goes home. He's assigned to be your gofer on this case. You can get rid of him if you want, but otherwise he'll be hanging around. PR - I want to talk to him privately before we leave. Now, we didn't have this conversation, but I would appreciate it if you did not talk about this case unless specifically asked. GM - Hey, Bwana, I just take your orders. PR - Thank you. "Bwana." [laughs] Until we know what we're dealing with . . . GM - I'll go to the hospital later tonight and make sure everything's kosher. And I'll give you a call if the body banks get anything. So, go home. Play with that dog of yours. Have fun. PR - [laughs] My day off. GM - As you are driving home, you are just turning into your development when your cellphone rings. PR - Yeah? GM - Detective Sergeant! This is Nichols. I have good news and bad news. The good news is, we found the kid. The bad news is, he's dead. At least, we found a stiff that appears to match his ID. PR - Where? GM - Medicross Preservation picked it up. PR - Who brought it in? GM - Couple of juviegangers. We got it through the DNA tag, believe it or not. I don't know if you've heard of this thing, but there's a big abandoned oil tank over by the Stadium that the gangbangers fight in. A lot of people dump bodies in there, and the juviegangers comb it, haul the bodies out, and sell them when they can. MediCross took it, looked at it, said, "Hey, whoa!" and then found the tag and called us. He indicates to you that they are bringing the body to the precinct now. PR - I can pretty much guess that there's nobody anywhere near that area that would talk to me. GM - [laughs] Oh, absolutely not. If you turn around right now, you might just beat it there. PR - Who takes care of my dog, when I can't? GM - Your next-door neighbor, Jerry Marks. His wife's name is Sherry. One of those sick, cute coincidences they tell everyone about when they're drunk. He's a middle-aged, portly, balding guy in retirement, who golfs a lot. His wife watches game shows. You call him and make the arrangements. He likes to BS with you about your cases, the ones that are closed, but he won't press you for details about the ones you're working on right now. PR - That's kind of cool. GM - You get to the precinct and head upstairs to see Rajah. When you arrive, the autopsy room is largely empty, since it's kind of between shifts right now. The body is on one of the tables, and Rajah is waiting for you next to it. It's wrapped in what looks like a pool mattress, a translucent air mattress, slit open and duct taped shut. He sees you, nods, and moves to begin cutting the body out of the bag. He's been here all day, but he doesn't look tired. He never looks tired. PR - Hey, the lady didn't have any cyberware, did she? GM - No. He says, We've found your lady's friend, I see. PR - Yes. GM - Well, I'm about to unwrap him and see what sort of presents we have wrapped up with him. He gives you a mask, and a pair of gloves, because he might need help, and cuts it open. Inside is the body of a young man, probably nineteen. His hands are behind him. The body is face up. He's wearing nothing but jockey shorts, and your attention is drawn to them immediately, because they're just sodden, soaked with blood, all the way through. PR - Eeewww. [laughs] Well, apparently he, ah . . . GM - Yeah. His throat has been cut, deeply. There's a chemical, oily smell rising from the body, and the skin is clotted with greasy, chemical strings of gunk. PR - Probably from the tank, right? GM - Most likely. His nose is smashed. Not pulped, but broken, and swollen. Rajah makes his examination, and what he comes up with are the pre- mortem injuries, in approximate order. Nose is fractured, in at least two places. Swelling and capillary damage are consistent with the injury having occurred at least an hour before death. Severe kidney bruising. The body has been floating face up in the tank for a while, and the injury occurred before death, but the bruising was post-mortem. That is, he was punched or kicked in the kidneys, and there was no bruising at the time, but there was tissue damage, and then when the blood settled, the damaged tissues flushed. PR - Which is one of the few times a dead person can bruise, right? GM - You got it. Knuckle bruises are visible there, and Rajah photographs these. PR - So he might have been fighting back. GM - He says they were caused with extreme force, which indicates a couple of things. First, they could have been caused by a very strong suspect, i.e. one with grafted muscles or extreme natural strength. Second, by a cyberarm, covered in RealSkinn. Third, somebody with reinforced hands, like Big Knucks. Fourth, by somebody wearing a sap glove or brass knuckles. PR - My guess is probably a cyberarm. GM - Severe wrist abrasions, caused by a phone cord. PR - If he's been floating around in an oil tank for a while, I doubt it, but see if you can find any RealSkinn fragments around the bruises. GM - We may, but I think any we find will come from this. You flip him over. His right arm is a cyberarm. The RealSkinn has been stripped from here down to here [indicating], ripped open. There are no fingernail marks around the edges of the hole. His wrists have been bound behind him, as I said, and he struggled with them enough that the ropes have torn through the padding around the cyberarm and torn the RealSkinn down there, and his other wrist is swollen and fucked up, because it wouldn't give. PR - Okay. GM - Subdermal right frontal skull fracture. Pre-mortem. There is some skin torn and some hair missing. PR - Hair missing? Does it look deliberate? GM - No, it looks torn from an impact injury. There is a very weird bruise on the upper left chest quadrant. Rajah has no explanation for it. It's severe enough to cause impact trauma, that is, to knock the victim unconscious, but he has no idea what could have caused it. PR - If the victim was wearing a bulletproof vest, and was shot? GM - That's possible. It could also be from a padded billy club or rubber bullet. Moderate to severe bruises on the upper body, mostly in the chest and stomach area. These are barehand punches. Um . . . multiple fractures of the small bones in both legs, the bottom ones in the calf. PR - On purpose, or accidental? GM - Deliberate. Dermal bruising indicates that it was done with an impact from a cylindrical object, possibly a pipe. There is one clean break per impact. Ankle abrasions, consistent with binding by a nylon cord or thick plastic tether. Mortal wound occurred between 10 pm and 4 am; you can't determine the exact time because of the chemicals involved. It's a single slash across the throat that cuts the jugular vein, the carotid artery, the muscles of the neck, and the larynx. PR - Can we get metal fragments, or could it have been a monoknife? GM - Most likely metal, probably a single-edged five to six inch blade. They'll check for pieces. From the depth and angle of the wound, it was most likely inflicted by a right-handed person, cutting from a position in front of the victim. PR - How tall? GM - Can't tell, because the victim was sitting down, according to the angle of the cut. Galvano was seated, and tipped forward when he received the wound. PR - Is it a strong slice, as in more than normal human strength? GM - No, it's within the normal human range, as long as the victim was restrained. Post-mortem wounds include removal of both testicles, probably with a metal object, maybe even the same knife used on his throat. You can't find the testicles until you open his mouth. PR - Yeah. That's what I figured. GM - Even Rajah is somewhat disturbed by this. He's like, "I wonder where they went?" And then he looks in Galvano's mouth. PR - It's like, "Ah." That's funny it's a post-mortem wound. GM - When you flip him over to look at his arms, you can see that he has a neural processor, and they'll open it up later to see what kind of stuff he's got. PR - When you search for cyberware, see if there's anything missing. Anything that looked like it had chips in it, or indicates by wear that it held something for a long while. GM - There's old scarring on the left upper thigh, looks like a large caliber bullet wound, healed now. And there are superficial knife scars on the torso. By this time the autopsy results on Stansfield are back, and I'll give them to you. And I think we'll cut it here, because you have a lot of information to go on, and you might want to look it over. PR - Yeah, I will. And I'm going to write up what I think happened. It's funny that if he was hit with a gel round, he wouldn't have been hit with it in the apartment, because someone would have heard. GM - Here's the rest of the information. That was a pretty long session. PR - Sorry about that. GM - That's okay. I wanted you to discover the body. Plus, now you've done stuff that Gary may react to. PR - [laughs] Yeah. That sucks. IAD flag. IAD's the worst thing you can get. Besides LEDiv. GM - [laughs] How do you know LEDiv isn't involved? PR - Uh . . . I don't. [laughs] This is going to be cool. [end session one]