However, the night guard survives the assault as he shoves Sewick's arm aside at the last second. Flight or fight reflexes kicking in, probably. He grabs Artemiy by the jacket, and tries to pin him down.
Artemiy is caught off-guard by the sudden counter-maneuver: he finds himself at the floor, with the night guard on top of him. He's trying to get a better hold of the nightly intruder. If he manages to do that, he could have a free hand to speak to his radiophone.
Milo, in the boss's office, hears the ruckus from the fight in the corridor. But he has faith in the Russian's abilities, and gets to work.
The password protection cracks like a biscuit under Milo's aptitude, and the encrypted files reveal their secrets to the new master.
It seems that Ron Parks was doing a regular gig on the day of his death. He had no customers when he died: the car was sitting at the time Parks had a heart attack, around 1 PM. On that day, he had four customers: one in the morning at 9 AM, another at 10 AM, the third at 11 AM, and the fourth at noon. The key to his cab is in the boss's drawer, just nearby: how convenient!
Meanwhile Jake has used a coat hanger, from his car, to open the taxi cab's door. It's not the most elegant solution: it left a few small scratches at the door. Luckily they're practically unnoticeable without close examination.
The car door is open. Though the cab isn't the newest model, the interior is relatively clean and neat. It's hard to imagine someone's died in the very same car, just a month ago. Of course, not for Jake the former FBI agent, it isn't.
"Isn't this a bad thing?" asks Freeman. "We must be looking suspicious now, don't we?"
Artemiy grunts heavily as the guard pins him to the floor, and the jangle of keys in his pocket is heard for the first time during the break-in. Realizing almost by instinct what the guard is attempting, Artemiy shifts his feet and pushes, throwing his weight to the side in an attempt to put the man off-balance and break his hold.
Jake takes a good look around the car.
"Hmm? Oh! Well, this bodes. How well or poorly, I guess we'll see." Will turns to the suits across the way to speak.
"Can we help you gentlemen?" He offers a warm smile, though he can't shake the feeling that there seems to be something up.
"Wh- GAH!" A slight lapse in the guard's concentration gives Artemiy a chance to get back on his feet thanks to quick thinking and good moves. He pushes the night guard away.
The two are at equal footing now. This could be anyone's game, it seems. But suddenly the night guard turns tail, and tries to create a distance to the intruding Russian. His hand grabs the radiophone...
----
Meanwhile Jake is investigating the taxicab. His trained gaze knows just where to look when he searches the seats and the glove compartment and leg space. He immediately finds a small pad of paper, stored near the driver's seat. In this pad of paper there are numerous addresses on each of its pages. Jake draws the conclusion that these are the addresses the taxi driver picked his clients up from, sorted by day. On the surface page, which is presumably the latest, there are only four addresses. Perhaps Parks only had time to make four trips on his last day.
153 Dusty Chapel Lane
7 New Wilson St.
39 West Maudel St.
10 Blackview St.
Dusty Chapel Lane is somewhere in the central area, New Wilson St. rings no bells for Jake, West Maudel is also somewhere in the central area, and finally Blackview St. is also unknown to Jake.
This could be an important piece of evidence.
Jake continues the search. After just 1 minute, he reaches an unpleasant conclusion: there are no other physical clues here. No signs of struggle, no traces of chemicals, nothing.
The two suitmen start acting a bit more "normal" now, and stop the transparent staring. One of them takes out a newspaper and starts reading it (or, more likely, pretends to read it). But they're still clearly keeping an eye on you.
The lawyer recognizes a paper-thin lie when he sees one. Motioning to Adrien, Lisa and Kira, he looks away and turns back to the car. He keeps an eye out for the two men as he slowly makes his way back to the car.
"No you--Сукин сын," Artemiy breathes, and he gives chase to the guard, boots pounding down the hallway. Once close enough, he launches himself forward in a mighty tackle, slamming into the guard's midsection in an attempt to send him sprawling to the floor.
Jake makes a note of the info and puts the paper back. Not like he can run fingerprints on it or anything.
Milo takes the key's and information, and sneaks out of the building. he covers his hacking tracks before he leaves best he can
Adrien does his bes to memorize the suspicious guys faces before leaving, and now that he is close to them try to notice anything that can shed more light about them.
-
The mighty tackle sends the night guard to the floor, and the impact throws the radio phone away from his hand. It slides a couple of feet forward, away from both the guard's and Artemiy's reach.
The Russian is now on top of the night guard, and in a prime position to emerge victorious.
----
With the key to the important car in his pocket, Milo hastily erases signs of his intruding, turns off the company head's computer, and exits the room. He uses stealth as he heads for the building's exit, but then a thought occurs to him:
What about surveillance videos? Though this may be a relatively small business, it should be obvious that there'd be surveillance cameras. Fortunately, Milo's Russian ally seems to be currently taking care of the night guard, so getting into the security room and erasing the surveillance videos should not be a problem.
However, there's a risk involved: if there are more than one night guards present tonight. It's unlikely, but it's possible.
----
Jake is wrapping up the investigation. But what's taking those guys so long?
Adrien tries to memorize their faces, but from this distance it's going to be difficult.
Artemiy pins the guard on the ground, using his weight and a little leverage to keep him down and unable to effectively fight back. He then clamps the man's mouth shut, covers his nostrils, and slowly applies pressure. It takes several minutes to actually suffocate someone to unconsciousness, but given enough time it's a very effective way to incapacitate someone without causing too much lasting damage--and Artemiy doesn't really want to hurt the guard, even if it'd be most pragmatic to kill him here.
Jake goes back to the car, cranks it, and makes ready for a speedy escape.
Will does the same. But with a charming smile.
Jake O'Malley got what he wanted: mission successful by all standards. But acquiring the evidence is the easy part: now the Fisher St Club must act on it. But how will a list of addresses help them? And how is it possible that there was no signs of struggle, no single piece of evidence pointing to a murder?
As he ponders these thoughts while walking to his car, he hears a police siren blasting in the city night. The siren comes from a few blocks away... and it's coming this way. If the police are coming here, they'll arrive in less than two minutes.
And those two are still inside the office building.
----
Using his weight and muscle, the Russian man pins the night guard down, and slowly silences him to unconsciousness. More than likely the guard will live to see another day with no permanent damage. Tonight, however, he's not coming back up.
The radio phone is silent. The distress signal attempts didn't go through, it seems: otherwise someone on the other end would be asking questions. It was a close call.
The Russian spots his cyber-investigator ally, Milo, sneaking around. Just at that moment, both of them hear a distant, faint police siren coming from outside.
“dang it, can just leave the camera's though.” Milo begins rushing heading towards the office to get rid of the video .
Artemiy breathes out slowly as the guard stops struggling, and he lets go of the man. Ideally he would now prop the guard in a seated position somewhere, perhaps lying down or slumped in a chair--if he was found like that, most people would sooner believe he drifted off than a frightening man assaulted him in the night. At that moment, though, he spots Milo and hears the sirens. He can't be sure the cops are headed their way, but it's probably safer to bug out now than hang around any longer.
Figuring Milo knows what he's doing, Artemiy moves for the stairs to head back down and out of the building. If he notices an obvious back door he uses that, preferring to slip away on foot rather than peel out in a car if possible, but if not he simply dashes to Jake's car.
Jake picks up the pace on the way back to his car. He keeps a listen for how close the sirens get. When they're closer than a few blocks away, he leaves at the speed limit.
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Jake hurries to his car, and listens to the sirens howling in the night. He waits a few seconds, and when the sound gets too close to comfort, he steps on the gas. The Russian exits the office building just as O'Malley leaves the scene at the speed limit.
However, the police don't show up at the taxi center. The blare of police sirens moves past the area, and then quiet down. It seems the police were on a hurry to someplace else.
In the meantime, Milo has had a good opportunity to find his way to the security room. There are rows of monitor screens in the room, but only some of them are turned on, each displaying the vision of a different security camera.
No one seems to present: maybe the night guard was alone. And the police sirens seem to quiet down, too. Now Milo can take his time to eliminate the discriminating evidence. Just like that, the security videos from last night are copy-and-pasted over tonight's.
Before the night guard wakes to consciousness, Milo and the Russian make their leave.
To minimize the risks, the quartet leaves the scene.
March 10 (Wed)
7:00
The morning comes. Same sun over same earth.
The members of Fisher St Club may find today's newspaper to be worth reading. It seems some people broke into a taxi company last night. The sole eye witness, the night guard working there, reports "at least two" burglars, one of whom was spoke Russian. The police are investigating this, and are welcoming to tips.
There's also some interesting headlines. "BOLD ELECTRONICS THEFT", "TVs and computers stolen: worth tens of thousands". Last night a shipment to an electronics shop was intercepted by an armed criminal. The robber had made a road block to stop the truck full of electronics. The truck driver was coerced into moving the contents of the truck into the robber's own car. When the crime was reported, and the authorities gave chase, the robber had already managed to disappear. The authorities suspect organized crime to be behind this.
17:00
Once again, members of the Fisher St Club gather at the same place, at the same time.
As customary, Adrien take his time to investigate the meeting place surroundings, this time wit some more care due to last day incident.
The early morning sun glares off the glass work on each surface as Will gets into his car, usually the worst part of his trip to work. But this time, the lawyer gives an abnormally long look at the church down the street as he passes it by. Otherwise, the only notable thing that he does is by some cheap sunglasses and a pair of leather gloves.
For once, Will walks in late and with the same briefcase as last time. Doesn't look like he got much sleep last night. He does however have a copy of the newspaper with him.
"Folks? What happened? Or would you rather not say?"
″Don't know about you guy's but thing's went rather well for me, i hacked into the company boss's computer, erased the security footage, the works. But anyway the information,one Ron Parks, dead from a heart attack around 1 pm, he had four customers that day, at the time of death his car was at a stand still. How'd you guy's make out? ″ The fbi agent snickers a bit looking at the headline , ″I still got it... You guy's might want to change your look a bit and keep your head down.″ He say's to his fellow burglars.
It seems that Malcolm didn't show up.
Adrien takes a moment to investigate the Labrador Street meeting place. From what he can tell, everything's the same as yesterday. No new messages or envelopes from the Sponsor, either.
Artemiy shrugs at the paper and Milo's jest. "It means nothing. There are many Russians in Roshburg. If you look at statistics, sooner or later someone from my country will commit a crime. Not to mention the local Bratva. No reason to worry, Milo Halden."
The man folds his hands on the table. "So where do we go now? We have information from the taxi driver. I assume you found clues as well? Or does this make the ass of us?"
We found some things, the most important one seems to be that other people beside us are interested in the victims. Two weird man were keeping an eye on one of the victim's family.
Adrien turns to Milo and Jake
Any chance to find out or to discard if the police or the FBI is involved in that?
″It's probably a unit assigned to keep an eye on the family until things are safe and criminal is caught. It's basic procedure. Though i should add It's not the Fbi, we don't have anything on the case yet as far ad i'm aware so the police are probably keeping this quiet for some reason. Otherwise, i'd have more access than i do i'm one of the few agent's even in the area right now. Even then i'm supposed to be looking into some low level finance scam.″ The relaxed agent explains.
"Which may mean the men we saw were undercover officers, unlikely I would think. They don't act so conspicuously. Or there is yet another interested party involved. You don't suppose they would be amiable to some co-operation?" He speaks of the event in a light-hearted tone. Apparently trying to keep the attention off of himself for the most part.
"But, in the meantime, Mr. Adrien Ms. Delgado Ms. Freeman and I uncovered the remaining addresses of the victims, and one possibly useful detail. Our Mr. Herring had made a habit of skipping work for a couple of days each month, long and consistently enough for the company to take notice. If someone were to visit his address it may become clear to us what he had been doing. Perhaps our third lovely lady was able to follow her lead successfully?" Will refers, of course to Silvia Bond in a hopeful tone as he tries to shake himself awake. He's more sluggish than normal.
"Indeed I did," says Mrs. Bond. "I spent all night looking over some old records of fundraisers and political campaigns. It took quite the time, ha ha ha. I even had my husband help me, though he didn't hear the real reason I was looking for the late Maxhold. But I won't trouble you with such details."
"Seymour Maxhold was the Oppi-cola head of marketing."
"A lovely, polite man. He was never meek, I remember he was always making sure he didn't fall out of favor. Of course, it payed off for him, he died a rich man. Poor Seymour. It is strange, however. An important person like him as a victim of this Roshburg Killer. Do you think it's a coincidence?"
Indeed, the Oppi-cola company, the one and only, has a HQ in Roshburg. The multi-million, global company has other headquarters in other countries as well, but the Roshburg HQ is one of the biggest, even in the States.
"Is it possible that Maxhold was the real intended victim, and all the others were just a distraction?" Delgado asks.
"Maxhold was the second victim, right?" says Freeman.
"Third."
"Third, okay. Either way, there's been four victims after Maxhold. That's quite a distraction."
"I'm just throwing ideas."
"Regardless," Will tries to interrupt the two.
"Mr. Maxhold sounds like the hardest to track down information on. Or at the least, the most likely to have someone monitoring who and what is trying to obtain that knowledge.
And yet, I would be very surprised if no-one stood to benefit from Mr. Maxholds untimely end."
"Sounds as good a lead as any. The only evidence I found in the cab was four addresses. I plan to check them out later but I don't hold out much hope to find anything."
"Any of these ring a bell?" he slides the paper across the table to whoever wants to look at it first.
153 Dusty Chapel Lane
7 New Wilson St.
39 West Maudel St.
10 Blackview St.
"...Mmmhmm. Yes. Definitely. There is no mistaking this. I have never been to any of these places." Will leans over the back of his chair and lets out a frustrated laugh with his face in his hands.
Adrien start spinning a pen to collect his thoughts about the matter, and then he says - Instead oc concentrating on what is in those addresses, We first have to check if somebody is keeping a watch on them as with Mr Herring place.
Will leans forward when Adrien offers his idea. He looks down in thought for a moment. "Sounds like a smart idea. We may learn something about them, and hopefully, these watchers could know something we don't."
Jake gives him a nod.
As you drive closer to Herring's place, Will notices that once again there are two suitmen standing on the street, opposite to Herring's building.
You stop the car, and watch the watchers for a moment. While both of them are wearing black suits, one of them is wearing shades. While it's somewhat hard to tell, but Will can tell that these two are not the same suitmen as last time. The suitmen from yesterday both had short hair: one of today's suitmen has a ponytail. Right now they're having lunch, eating sandwiches.
You drive to Crescent Rd., to House's home address. Crescent Rd. is a neighborhood with a good reputation, and most of the residents are probably upper-middle class. One of Roshburg's middle schools is located on the very same street, making Crescent Rd. a wanted place for families with children.
You reach House's house, a detached house. There are no lights in House's home, a bit unsurprisingly. Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary: the team doesn't immediately spot any suitmen watchers.