Episode Transcript
Reyne: This is the log of Detective Derek Reyne, formerly Homicide Unit, 8th Precinct Etherax. The date is October 20th, 2245. It has been a little under a month since my last recording, and I am still suspended from the Police Force and kept under watch 24/7. In that time, the killer who I have been tracking has not, to my knowledge, struck again. In the days following my initial suspension, I was able to get into contact with Optic via Risk, who was able to patch into Police channels and has kept me abreast of any developments during my time without access. While there have been plenty of murders, there has been none of the type done by this killer. With this information, one might assume that the Police were correct in arresting Sid Rot, who has since been executed, and that the murders are no more. Of course, if you believe that, you’re a dumbass. Rot was a murderer, but he was not this murderer.
So instead, it means the murderer has gone to ground, and is electing to stay hidden for the time being. I can only guess as to his reasons for this decision, but it is possible that, if he were keeping track of police activity, he picked up on the fact that there was some heat around the murders and wanted to keep a low profile until it faded away. It’s a smart move, and while it’s likely unnecessary given the lack of care the Police have for anything like this, it does mean we’ve had time to re-examine the case without worrying over another murder situation.
To that end, we have discovered…not much. We were able to cross-reference Ocularis’s set of cards with Jet-Fire’s clients and cards that were on him, and there were some links, but nothing specific. At least one or two members of the BlueSky Group were buying from Jet-Fire, as was Securitech Contractor Patrick Smith, and a gangster known as Lyred, who was recently involved in an Ocularis deal. In checking on these various individuals none of them seemed particularly exceptional, but Optic and Risk have both maintained surveillance on them. As of right now, there has been nothing, though it does appear that the BlueSky Group is planning on making a big corporate move soon. I have a feeling that will end in an entirely separate set of murder cases.
Searching for any connections with any other victims has proved inconclusive, with no strict evidence for any of them, at least none that could be useful in an investigation. Smith has been contracted for a variety of different firms, and did work for Raylir a few times in the past couple months, but that’s really it. Lyred, the gangster, had been to Gearheads, the tavern of Debrah Jane, but then again, so have a lot of people. And from what Risk says, Lyred isn’t the type to carry out these types of killings.
Optic still isn’t able to reclaim the footage of any of the murders, all of it has been well and truly corrupted beyond any sort of use. We have a lack of any real digital information that we could use to get through this, and without me being able to get on the ground, it’s hard to look for more physical evidence. Obviously I could try, but I want to try and make sure the officers watching me are as lax as possible for when I do eventually need to go after something. If I’m constantly snooping around or looking even vaguely suspicious, they’ll be on to me. The police might be lazy fucks but when someone could cause real problems for their equilibrium, well that’s when they start to actually care.
I will say it is…depressing to feel so lost in this case. Every lead seems just short of working out and I don’t get what’s supposed to be happening. I’ve been…I’ve been starting on the Psier again sometimes. I’m not on it right now, and it’s not all the time, but…without any kind of guidance or purpose…I just feel lost William. I know I said a lot of big things about how I wasn’t going to let this suspension and everything break me, and I’m not, but being so close but instead locked behind a wall that I can’t even understand…it’s awful. I feel useless, like someone who tried to change things but only really kept everything the same. Even worse, I gave people hope, and now I can’t deliver on it. What am I going to do when this fails? When there is nothing to show for it? What do I do with myself at that point?
William I’m just…I’m worried. For the first time in many years I had started to care again and to believe that things were worth fighting for. I saw people like Jane, and Risk, and Optic and found myself caring about them, albeit in very different ways, but at the least caring about how they felt and what they wanted. Aside from maybe Sophie, I hadn’t felt that way about anyone in years. I don’t want to backslide and return to what I was before, but I can feel it happening the longer I exist in this lull. I had a purpose, and now…it’s fading. And I don’t know how to maintain it, how to take that leap and truly embrace this style of life. It’s scary. I don’t know what to do. And the only thing I know is terrifying.
-ringing noise-
Oh thank God, it’s a report from Optic, something must have happened. Ok, let’s see, its uploading on the computer now…it’s a murder report. They struck again. Let’s see…ok methodology is the same…body looks like it was found at night…still in this area…adult male, aged 32…still had personal effects on him…Optic said she’s already sent Risk over to check on his things before the police get there, see if he has anything interesting…good, good, should have that soon then…ok and victim name…oh…William Haverford…William…you’re dead.
Reyne: William was…you were a friend from a long time ago. We haven’t talked…really talked in a long, long time. Since we left high school actually. We weren’t super close, you were a year older than me, but we got along. You were a good guy. Helped me out when I was feeling rough, kept older bullies away from Sophie and I when you could…just kind of lost touch I guess. I wonder if…no, it’s no use wondering. You’re gone now. No saving you now. Just justice. Just vengeance.
Looks like you had become a corporate man, working in the archives for Cydinar. Guess that’s as far as you can get from the war crimes divisions. You didn’t commit them, just had to keep records for them. I wonder if you wanted to stay there or to leave. Do you think you were happy? Was this what you envisioned in school? Minus the dying part that is. I don’t know. Never will.
No kids, but you did have a husband. Says his name was Samuel. Samuel Haverford. Hope he’s doing ok after this. Maybe one of us can pay him a visit and check in. The officers on the case will hardly do anything to help. He deserves some actual care. I wonder how he’ll mourn. Was he prepared for this eventuality? Or will he be shocked? Traumatized? Horrified? Hard to say. I don’t know him. But I can only imagine the pain he will feel when he realizes you’re never going home.
It’s so…odd. I know you but I don’t. I know a William, but he’s not you. He’s some memory, lost in years of drug abuse and self-loathing, and now the figure I talk to because I didn’t want to talk to myself. You are William, but you’re not him. He’s William Haverford. He’s a man who had thoughts and feelings and a life to lead, a life I once knew, and now he’s gone. Now I’ll never know who William became, not truly. I can talk to Samuel or talk to his coworkers and learn but...it’s not the same. It’s never the same.
You lose that in this world, in this line of work. It’s so easy to get reports and information on anyone that you believe you can know anyone as long as you know about them, as long as someone can tell you about them. But you don’t. You believe that you know how people are and what the world is like based on reports and statistics and patterns, but you can’t know these things without experiencing them. What does it matter that I can tell you crime rates and average salaries and who has what position if I can’t tell you how the public actually feels and what’s happening in the world and what the world truly is. We pretend we know everything, looking at our data and our reports, and we forget to just look outside.
-Ringing Noise-
Wait…wait I’m getting more details from Optic. There’s something here, it’s something about his possessions, let me look…William had a card for Patrick Smith, the securitech contractor. That’s the third name he’s shown up with…we need to relook at those older cases. We’re gonna figure this out William. I think…I think we might have something here.
Reyne: Ok, so, on the one hand I feel like an absolute idiot, but on the other hand, I think we may finally have a lock on this case.
So, as we knew beforehand, Jet-Fire and Sophie AKA Ocularis both died while in possession of a business card for one Patrick Smith, a Securitech Contractor in the area of the 8th precinct. Preliminary looks at the guy revealed him to be a fairly bog-standard guy, no real strong family connections, working fairly regularly with different businesses and megacorps on their securitech. But now, William Haverford has also died with this business card in his possession. That’s 3 out of 7 deaths, each one linked to this otherwise unassuming man.
So, naturally, we had to look into the unconnected deaths, namely Steven Terik, Cyndi S, Debrah Jane, and Erik Olen. Risk went to gearheads and, after a chat with Delilah Jane, was able to take a look at Debrah’s place, see if there’s anything that was missed in the original investigation. As it turns out, she had a business card for one Patrick Smith lying out on the table for anyone to see. Understandably her family never considered it something important to bring up, but it feels like we should have noticed anyway.
Meanwhile, Jane met up with Cyndi’s brother while searching through her things, both for actual “this person is dead what are we doing with her possessions” and to see if she was missing something. As it turns out, tucked in a corner of a messy desk was a business card, once again for Securitech Contractor Patrick Smith. Seems our friend here was really, really trying to expand his business.
I imagine you can guess what we found in Optic’s re-investigation of Erik Olen and Steven Terik William. Both were in possession of Patrick Smith business cards, Terik’s having been kept on his work desk and now kept in a locker within the Raylir building he worked at until his parents decided to reclaim all of his posessions, while Olen’s was simply in his bag at the time of death, and I was ushered away from the body before I could get a good look.
So now we know that Mr. Smith has some sort of link, however small, to all 7 of our murder victims. While it could be that Smith was just handing these cards out to anyone, it feels unlikely for a Securitech Contractor with steady work to just be doing so on the street to randos. Optic and Risk have already examined the cards separately, and there doesn’t appear to be any sort of tracking device on them, they are in fact just normal business cards, but when you’re a securitech specialist, you don’t need fancy tracking cards, you just need to be able to look at city cameras. We knew that whoever was doing the killings had skills in Securitech, it just didn’t occur to me that the first securitech name to come up in searching for the killer would BE the killer, or at least have the answers.
Obviously I feel incredibly stupid for not noticing this sooner, but there’s no helping that now. All we can do now is start to act. As I imagine, each of the victims had some interaction with Mr. Smith that led to them being in possession of the business card in question. During that interaction, perhaps something happened to inspire Mr. Smith to commit violence against them, but he was smart enough to wait and not do so in whatever, possibly open, circumstances they were in before. By jacking into the city's surveillance systems and ID tracking, Smith was able to follow these individuals around, which is no mean feat in the case of Sophie. Eventually finding the victims alone at night, he jumped them, killed them, and ran off.
Now, I still don’t know why he did it, I just know that he did, or was fuelling information to someone who held the blade, which is possible, but unlikely in my opinion. Obviously I can’t turn him into the police, they wouldn’t do anything of worth with him, and if they found out I was still doing casework, they would make my life even more hellish. So instead, Optic found his address, and Risk and some of his hands are going to make their way over and have a little chat. I’ve told them to keep him alive, as I would greatly like to speak to him about his little spree. It’s far from standard police procedure but we’re a little desperate. I’m just waiting on the signal to head to whatever safehouse they plan on keeping him in.
Honestly, I don’t know how that conversation is going to go. I really just want to know why. The how is important, sure, and I’d like to confirm that but…at the beginning of all of this, what intrigued me, what sparked me on this whole journey, was how out of place his first murder was. How clean and random it felt, how bizarrely placed in a world that thrives on a very specific type of death. And I need to know why he did it. Why he picked these people. What grudge he holds, what hatred towards the world, what weird slight, just what caused all of this. I need to know what makes this man work and tick, not to punish him, Risk will have that handled, but because I need to understand. This man, without knowing it, sparked a transformation in me, and I feel I should know who Patrick Smith is.
-Ringing Noise-
Ah, that’s Risk with the location. Looks like it’s not too far from here. Optic said she had a plan for distracting the police men watching so, I should be able to slip out undetected. I’ll make sure to record the conversation William. I think I’m going to want a record of this one.
