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| Episode 1.4: Briefing and Fact Finding | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 3 2011, 02:09 AM (18,121 Views) | |
| Captain Jeremiah Hutchins | Jul 6 2011, 10:31 PM Post #196 |
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Hutch
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10/14/10 “Have you got any idea where he usually celebrates, sir? I think it’s important now that we find him.” "Well, it says he went uptown," Hutch said pointing at the sign. "Could be there or not. Would be nice to know who his client was. We could check on him then. But then again, he didn't exactly leave an address or a map to where he was going." Hutch thought about what Mac had said just a couple of minutes ago. "Why do you think he is almost done?" |
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| Skye MacKenzie | Jul 6 2011, 10:33 PM Post #197 |
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"Mac"
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10/14/10 Hutch wrote: "Why do you think he is almost done?" Mac pulled up her data on her pad again and pointed it to Hutch. “His modus operandi. The Butcher kills between two and six whores generally, ending in someone’s face being taken. We’ve had six murders already, so he’s about to wrap up here and move on. The only reason I think he’s still around is so far, no one’s shown up with a face missing. “He also has to know we’re closing in on him. True, it’s not quickly, but it is still happening. He’s got to know it’s time to finish this here. “I figure one, maybe two more kills and we’ve lost him. And the way he’s been killing, that means one or two more days and he’s gone. I’m going to err on the side of caution and say if we don’t find the Butcher tonight, we never will.” Those words were all well and good and made it sound like they had a chance to stop the Butcher. But the reality was, they still didn’t know who or where he was. Without some way to find both Ink and Bradford, the Butcher was going to get away. And if it turned out that the Butcher was neither, then he was as good as gone already. Her mind started to pore over this latest puzzle, but without seeing many answers. She had no clue where to find Ink; she couldn’t even guarantee he was in the District right now. Where does a murderous sociopath go for fun when he’s not murdering? And Bradford. He could very well be uptown and it was worth checking that out. If that was a regular hangout of his, perhaps someone there could tell them where to go next. Or who his client had been. But if he wasn’t there, Mac once again, didn’t know where to start the search. And uptown was tricky, too. Where to start in it? Maybe it was worth just concentrating on the Butcher instead of running about aimlessly. If he stayed true to form, he would probably strike in the Flats, but other than a door-to-door search that turned out all the hookers, Mac didn’t know how to find him either. Her frustration started to rise again and she tried to quash it. “Okay, we have two ways we can go about this. One, find Ink and Bradford. Or two, find the Butcher. If we’ve got the boots, we should probably do both. “The Butcher is likely to be in the Flats. But outside of a door-to-door search, I wouldn’t know how to find him. “We should check out uptown for Bradford. If he’s there, it gives us a chance to talk to him. If he’s not, maybe someone there knows him well enough to point us in the next direction. Perhaps they could even tell us about this client of his. “Ink is a problem. I wouldn’t even know where to start. But it’s critical we find him, too. Maybe another search through his office will reveal some clue to his usual whereabouts. “I don’t know. I’m grasping at straws here. If you want my opinion, I’d say, send Coop and Joe back to Ink’s office to look for something that would tell us how to find him. You and I can take the search for Bradford. We’ll start uptown and pray really hard. Adria and Andrew can start turning out the Flats along with whoever they can conscript to help. I wish I had more, but this is all I can think of. “Oh, and get someone started on a background search of Bradford. See if there’s anything in his history that ties into the previous murders.” |
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| Cooper Mandrake | Jul 6 2011, 10:34 PM Post #198 |
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10/14/10 I rubbed my eyes, Bradford... right, I ran his name and ran up an avatar to go search and cross reference with all our other data avatars, specific to the locations of the previous murders; including fashion events and businesses. Then I ran Ink and Bradford together and ran a probability program to see which matched the profile we had: loner with few friends, sociopath, medical skills, . . I sent a message out to all, "Bradford Avatar loose." We'd done a building by building search, run another one and we'd meet even more resistance; if cooperation could be less. |
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| ILEV Constable | Jul 6 2011, 10:36 PM Post #199 |
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10/16/10
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| Captain Jeremiah Hutchins | Jul 6 2011, 10:38 PM Post #200 |
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Hutch
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10/16/10 "I don’t know. I’m grasping at straws here. If you want my opinion, I’d say, send Coop and Joe back to Ink’s office to look for something that would tell us how to find him. You and I can take the search for Bradford. We’ll start uptown and pray really hard. Adria and Andrew can start turning out the Flats along with whoever they can conscript to help. I wish I had more, but this is all I can think of. “Oh, and get someone started on a background search of Bradford. See if there’s anything in his history that ties into the previous murders.” Hutch nodded. "Good thinking. I was going to have us go exactly that way. Good to see you're still got your head in the game," he added. His face turned sober. "I know it's hard..." His voice trailed off. He knew how hard it was to lose someone. He lost his whole family. The pain was still there to this day. At least Jelani has a chance. He was still alive. He had the best doctors. He decided to stop dwelling on it and get back to the case. Just before he was about to give the order about searching for Bradford on the cortex, he heard Cooper pipe in. "Bradford Avatar loose." "Hey Cooper? You and Joe feel like a walk?" Hutch asked. "Go see what you can find out about Ink? Adria? You and Andrew keep up the searches and report back what you find. Mac and I will look around for Silas." Hutch looked at Mac. "What do you think about knocking to see if he's back yet. Could be looking for a nice rest after a long day?" |
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| Skye MacKenzie | Jul 6 2011, 10:39 PM Post #201 |
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"Mac"
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10/17/10 Mac had seen the sympathetic look in Hutch’s face and for a while, she was tempted to respond to it. But she didn’t know what to say, so she held her peace. Funny, now that they had a shared experience in their loss of loved ones, she would have thought it would have brought them closer together. Yet it seemed to drive them farther apart instead. And not for the last time, Mac thought about a transfer off Constable. She turned away from him, unable to meet the look in his eyes. Hutch wrote: "What do you think about knocking to see if he's back yet. Could be looking for a nice rest after a long day?" Mac had been thinking along those lines already… and more. “Sure, I was planning to start here and work our way uptown, see if we can find someone around here who saw Bradford or where he went. In fact,” she said, reaching up to her hair and pulling out a small set of lockpicks from the roll, “If he’s not in, I think we should let ourselves in and take a look around.” But best to ask permission first. Mac rapped on the door. |
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| Cooper Mandrake | Jul 6 2011, 10:40 PM Post #202 |
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10/17/10 OH CHRIST! that was it then. I sent the data out on Roulon. "BOS.SS.." In my excitement I double clicked the switch on and then back off... then.. got it. "Gorramit... House Roulon, crystal clear here Captain. Remember we noticed it goes from cheapest whore to the upper class. Well, it seems to end with the top prostitute.... now... who's the top prostitute in the district? That's where the butcher is." He knew who I was thinking of. And he'd better not just look around. I figured nothing would get him in gear like a threat to Lily. I waited for confirmation before heading out to look for Ink.. ________________________________________ (addendum) After a quick check on Roulan I found them. They had progressed to on of several local crminal gangs on New Vegas. Which in and of itself meant at the very least border on teh big time. I loaded up the same list of questions and data, . . ... we are close to this butcher of 2494 that harmed your family. need all evidence, forensic and descriptions to identify and apprehend. killer is close to signing off with final kill, expedite, all credit and identification will be acknowledge to Roulan assistance provided... . . . releasable that is and sent it on to Roulon, maybe they'd be a little more interested in providing help than the tight anal lawyer of Madrassa. ... sure, why not? criminal gang helps reach out and capture killer that did it wrong twenty years ago. That'd make you think twice. I sent pretty much the same to House Madrass and local law enforcement at the local and regional offices of all the previous murders. maybe someone had some piece of evidence or drawing or screen capture that we could acutally use in a bonefide court of law. Then I double backed on some old lesser priortiy searches, adria and andrew... later... I edged up on my seat and waited for a reply from Hutch. I called the guards and told them to assemble a squad. We might need them for crowd control... or god knows what if word gets out we've made an arrest. or worse don't take the huhn dahn at all. |
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| Captain Jeremiah Hutchins | Jul 6 2011, 10:41 PM Post #203 |
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Hutch
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10/17/10 “Sure, I was planning to start here and work our way uptown, see if we can find someone around here who saw Bradford or where he went. In fact, if he’s not in, I think we should let ourselves in and take a look around.” No one answered Mac and Hutch's knock, so they walked around to the back of the building. Hutch knocked there, but no one answered. He turned to Mac and grinned a little as he pulled out his lock picking tools. He deftly jimmied open the door and stepped in. ![]() "Upstairs then?" Hutch asked. "It's where his residence is. If it were me, that'd be where my skeleton's were hid. Less traffic and all." Mac and Hutch quietly inched up the stairs and when at the top, they found it locked too. Hutch repeated the same entry method. The apartment over the shop was spartan. One closet. Basically an open room. Hutch pointed over at the kitchen. "I'll take the bedroom and the closet? You take the other half of the room," he said as he pointed to the kitchen and surrounding areas. Those would be on her side. The place was meticulous. The closet was orderly to the point of obsessive compulsiveness, but nothing out of the ordinary. He went to the bed and it was made so neat, Hutch was quite sure that a coin would bounce on it if he tried. "Find anything yet?" he asked Mac. Then he looked underneath the bed and found a long case. Well insulated. He popped it open and opened it up. His eyes bulged at the contents. "Wo de tian!" he whispered so quietly that he probably didn't even hear it. It was a box of perfectly preserved faces. Edited by abbey, Jun 10 2018, 01:20 AM.
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| Adria Stark | Jul 8 2011, 11:27 AM Post #204 |
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10/18/10 Adria liked the idea of searching Ink's place, but before she could voice her thoughts, a new person arrived and Cooper was talking to Hutch over the comm. While chaos reigned, she stopped her pacing to stand near Andrew. Events were moving faster now, and the two of them seemed to have been...for the most part...left behind in the chaos. She'd added a new search with the parameters 'faces removed, prostitutes, murder' to the ones she already had going, so there wasn't much she could do there other than wait for the results to come in. Adria's gaze went to the newcomer...another who seemed to have been forgotten in the chaos. "Hi" she said, walking over to talk to the woman and holding her hand out in a friendly way. "I'm Adria Stark." |
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| Skye MacKenzie | Jul 8 2011, 11:28 AM Post #205 |
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"Mac"
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10/21/10 Hutch wrote: "I'll take the bedroom and the closet? You take the other half of the room." Mac nodded agreement. “I’ve got the kitchen and bathroom then.” She headed off in that direction, noting the obsessive-compulsive neatness to the place, which in her mind placed Bradford solidly on the suspect list. But as with everyone else, she didn’t think much more of it than that. Everyone else seemed to have the same disorder and that was no guarantee that Bradford was the Butcher any more than any of the others yet. She poked through the medicine cabinet and cupboards in the bathroom, also noting the various chemical Silas kept on hand. Now some of those were getting interesting. When she had finished poring through everything she could find in the bathroom, she went off to the kitchen for the some more. The contents of the cupboards didn’t seem unusual for a man of Bradford’s age and lifestyle, if rather obsessively neat. But there were no real surprises there. Nearly on a whim, she looked through the icebox, seeing some containers that didn’t quite look like food. She opened one up and peered inside. Then almost recoiled. She was no doctor, but even she could recognise an eyeball when it was looking right back at her. Suddenly tense, she opened up a few more of the containers, only to discover what looked to be like yet more organs. They may have been cow’s organs, she didn’t know. But somehow she doubted that. She tried calling for Hutch, but her throat had closed with dread, so she grabbed the containers with an ear and en eye (those were unmistakably human) and went in search of him, finding him half under the bed with yet another box. She swallowed before looking over his shoulder into the box, half knowing what she would see there and really not wanting to. It was a good thing that Mac had a strong stomach for gruesome or Hutch might have needed a shower. Even then, she didn’t trust her voice, forming that sight into words might have been made the sick come. She swallowed again, trying to keep it down. Wordlessly, she put her containers in front of his eyes, so he could see their horrific contents. After a moment of composure, she found her voice again and whispered through a tight throat, “It’s Bradford. We have to find him now.” But that still left the question of where. He worked his way up through the whores, but which one of the Gems would he be with right now? Then Cooper’s message came through and Mac cursed herself for an idiot and a fool for having failed to recognise that connection. Hutch was wrong; her head wasn’t in the game. It didn’t affect her self-criticism that the critical information had been in the one datum she hadn’t yet read; she felt she should still have been able to make that intuitive leap. Obviously, she didn’t belong here. But this was the wrong time to ask for a transfer, so she held her tongue, waiting for Hutch to tell her what to do next. |
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| ILEV Constable | Jul 8 2011, 11:31 AM Post #206 |
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10/21/10 A report came in that Adria had sent out the search parameters for.
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| Captain Jeremiah Hutchins | Jul 8 2011, 11:32 AM Post #207 |
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Hutch
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10/21/10 Hutch was shocked and repulsed by what he saw. Six faces. All preserved. And made up. Make-up applied and everything. And he could tell by looking from one end to another that the skill in which they were removed was getting better and better as they progressed. He felt Mac behind him, but she didn't speak. She was holding out a container of some sorts. He looked in to find an eye and ear laying inside. "It's Bradford..." he murmured. His mind was racing. "Mac! Mac! We need to put all this stuff back in place just like we found it. We don't have a warrant," he ordered as he closed up the box of faces and slid it back into it's original spot. He got up and was about to comm the ship to get a warrant when Cooper's report came through. "BOS.SS.. Gorramit... House Roulon, crystal clear here Captain. Remember we noticed it goes from cheapest whore to the upper class. Well, it seems to end with the top prostitute.... now... who's the top prostitute in the district? That's where the butcher is." Hutch's blood ran cold. He had Yangtree protecting her. Could she still be in danger? "Lily..." he whispered and sprinted out of Bradford's residence. He knew it would take him at least 5 minutes by running to get to her place and he was sure by their past performance that local folks wouldn't bother to get a move on to save a lowly whore. As he ran, he commed the ship, his voice wavering due to the sprint. "Cooper... I want you to get to Lily's... Bring Eva... Suspicion that Butcher is there. May be more than one victim. Could need medical attention." He turned off the comm and fumbled in his pocket for his stem phone. He queued up Yangtree's. It chimed and chimed and chimed. No one answered. Hutch stuck the phone in his pocket and set his mind on getting to Lily's flat. I'm coming ai ren, he thought. I'm coming. And he tried to push aside the images of his family's butchered bodies from when he was 15. |
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| Dr. Akira Wells | Jul 8 2011, 11:34 AM Post #208 |
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10/21/10 Akira stuck out her hand with a smile, trying not to let it slip into her face that she knew what the woman had done at one point in a very inappropriate place. Instead, Akira tried to be as oblivious to the fact that she knew things that she probably shouldn't have known as possible. "Hello. Dr. Akira Wells. How do you do." She shook the woman's hand firmly, as she was taught to as a child to do. Shaking hands left a big impression on a person, the firmer the shake the more respect people appeared to have for you, especially when it was a woman that made the handshake firm. It was also very professional, and considering Akira was going to be working with these people she figured it was a good start. "Oh I nearly forgot... A Ms. Rachel wants me to tell.... Cooper that she'll be in his room?" She was a little iffy on the details of the message, but she was pretty sure that was what she was supposed to say. It seemed like things were getting a bit chaotic. |
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| Cooper Mandrake | Jul 8 2011, 11:35 AM Post #209 |
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10/21/10 "Get ready to roll out of here. Armor up." I said to the others in the room. They were aware... well, they'd get the drift. I was already into a protective vest and pulling a shotgun from the rack, took a helmet. "Cooper... I want you to get to Lily's... Bring Eva... Sspicion that Butcher is there. May be more than one victim. Could need medical attention." "We're on our way." I commed back. "Oh I nearly forgot... A Ms. Rachel wants me to tell.... Cooper that she'll be in his room?" I was reading through the last data report as I snapped on the vest. "Right. uh, that's me.. Cooper. Come on, we might be getting lucky." I gave my head a shake to suggest that I hadn't meant that.. like that... about Rachel.. or.. what the hell did I care. I headed out. |
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| Skye MacKenzie | Jul 8 2011, 11:36 AM Post #210 |
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"Mac"
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10/21/10 One moment Hutch was there, the next gone, leaving Mac behind to clean up the mess. Sneak and peek warrant or no, she did see the necessity for sticking to procedure and obtaining the correct documents at this time. There was no way she wanted Bradford to get off on a technicality and have to go through this all over again. First things first, though. She commed the ship. Cooper was supposedly on his way to Lily’s, so Mac went to Adria instead. “Adria? It’s Mac. We’ve got solid evidence that Silas Bradford is the Butcher. Can you get the paperwork going for an arrest warrant?” Fortunately, there wasn’t much to clean up. She hadn’t disturbed much to start with, so it was just a matter of putting the box and containers back to where they were and closing up shop, as it were. She waited outside, undecided for a while over what to do next. She had no interest in saving any whore’s pigu, happy enough to let Hutch do that; he had far more interest in them than she anyway. Hutch had plenty of backup in the form of Cooper and whoever else he'd bring along. So, Mac staked out Bradford's on the off chance that he got away and came back home, passing her time by swearing at her incompetence and the general state of affairs that had led to such a balls up of the whole case. |
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9:43 AM Jul 11


