Gameplay - Bad Moon Rising Part 2

August 29th

The last few days have been fairly routine. There's been no time to dig deeper into Ekhardt's history and no further clues have come up. The surveillance on the accountants apartment shows nothing out of the ordinary, just an old man going about his every day routine.

That is until August 29th.

Skegg has been reassigned and Phaerin and Noss are now a two-Judge team. On the morning of the 29th, before morning briefing, they are contacted by Tek. It seems there was an explosion last night at the Warren Buffet conapts. All surveillance was disrupted.

Cleanup have made the way safe and a body was found in Bennetti's apartment and Forensics are on route. You are given dispensation to miss briefing and get over there.

Arriving at the conapts, the place is a mess. It seems the two floors above Bennetti's apartment were blown up, causing huge amounts of property damage and at the same time putting out all power, cameras and all.

Heading past the cleanup droids, you find forensics in attendance. Bennetti, as expected, is dead, sitting in a chair where he was shot through the forehead. He is unrestrained and from all the evidence, the accountant may have known his attacker. Forensics are unable to produce any DNA although there are hair and fibre traces, both draw blanks against MACs database. The only piece of evidence is a red scarf.

The red scarf is a trademark of the Van Zandt crime family, noted enemies of the Contraltos

As he's dead, you can access the accountant's personal computer and bank records if you wish

Also, one of Forensics hand you a data memory slug found within his personal belongings. It's data pretected so anyone with Computers 2 can try and hack it with a roll (or Data Access special technique - no roll required)

It turns out the slug is both password protected and encrypted but it's short work for Phaerin who has is cracked in a matter of minutes. Within is Bennetti's daily diary, kept almost consisitently over the last 30 years.

The diary contains personal recollections and observations. Real names for people are not used, so, although the diary contains information that might incriminate members of the Contralto crew in all manner of crimes, there is no hard evidence to use the diary to trigger direct investigations.
Much of the diary is humdrum, however the following entry catches your attention.

‘15th March 2106
I don’t like what I’ve discovered about Jani. She’s
definitely talked to the heat and I’ve seen the
conversations. She really has it in for the for Drum
and what she’s told them will really beat down on
the Drum just like the Sovs beat down on us not
that long ago. If the top of the food chain learns
what she said – hell, if the Drum learns what she
said – that’s it: curtains for poor Jani.
So, here I am, a man who never knowingly took
a stupid breath, about to take the biggest, most
stupid breath I can. Top of the food chain wants
answers about the Drum so I’m gonna feed ‘em
in. Jonny-Boy getting killed like that makes it the
easiest and best way – I pin it all on Jonny-Boy
and Jani stays in the clear. She never needs to
know. There’s lots she never needs to know. Like
how I’ve loved her every day since the day I first
saw her. She won’t look at a schlep like me so I’m
not fooling myself here but I can do things for her
that prove all that love to myself.

Thanks for dying Jonny-Boy – you saved a life.’

No need for a roll, but searching archives for the names mentioned might be a good start.

Archive searches for Jani and Drum return nothing but a search for the name Johnny and 2106 brings back a Justice Department report of a pile-up on the Ralph Little skedway in Sector 9 on October 5th, 2106. Weather Control was out of action following the Apocalypse War and the road was wet.
Some jerk changed lane too rapidly and caused a major pile up that killed thirteen. One of the deceased was Jonathan Bugatti, also known as Bones, a middle-ranking racketeer for the Contralto crime family.

Max Contralto is not an easy man to track down. He lives in the penthouse level pf Jimmy Gandolfini but after asking around, the Judges find he hangs out in the Badaboom Bar and Grill of the Gandolfini entertainment level.

It's a seedy bar offering continual lap dancing, karaoke, shuggy and all manner of low-rent pastimes whilst just remaining within the law.

The head of the Contralto family is a massive imposing man in his mid-40's with slicked-back dark hair. He wears a loud shirt and sharp jacket.

Checking through the regular department records yields nothing and there are no records of Jonny Bugatti or anyone else mentioned acting as an informant. If this is connected to a judge though, the SJS records may prove more fruitful. It will involve jumping through a lot of hoops including getting assent of Sector Chief DiMaggio.

Noss makes great headway but the SJS are notoriously secretive and it takes a lot of work and time. Di Maggio agrees to put the words in the right places and Noss's administrative skill pays off. Within a few days,you get access to the SJS records for 2106.

The SJS records show that in June os 2106, the year of the pileup that involved Johnny Bugatti, an investigation was launched into Judge Aiken Moon, following information supplied by one Anji Karter. The investigating SJS Judges were Cripps and Eckhardt, with assistance by street Judge DiMaggio - the current sector chief. Moon was arrested in July 2106, interrogated and sentenced to twenty years on Titan.

Judge Aiken Moon was taking bribes from members of the Contralto family although the money was never retrieved and Moon did not reveal under interrogation who had made the payments. Some low-level arrests resulted but nothing that would ever injure the syndicate. Video recordings of some of the interrogation sessions are available and they show Cripps and Eckhardt subjecting Moon to an incredible amount of physical punishment in a bid to make him talk.
Moon does not break once, despite the amount of brutality inflicted upon him. One memorable clip from the video shows a barely recognisable Moon, face a bloody pulp, fingers broken, spitting-out a mouthful of teeth and grinning slyly to
the camera.

Further records from the Titan Penal Archives show that Moon was amongst that rare group to survive the full term on Titan.
He was released in September 2126 with a travel permit for Earth but there the trail ends: Aiken Moon disappears.

You both know Cripps well from the academy. After being wounded in the course of duty he stepped down from the SJS and opted for a position in the Academy of Justice, becoming a tutor in Basic Applied Violence. You both remember him from as a specialist in interrogation techniques with applied violence and always seemed to enjoy his work.

He boards at the Academy, safest please he could be.

Despite all of Phaerin's best efforts, their is no trace in the system of Moon, no record of residence, no indication on cameras anywhere in the Megacity. Facial recog can run indefinately but the data pool of surveillance around the city is so huge, it could be months before you find a hit.

While looking, the Tek Judge also looks for record of Anji Karter. Records state that she left Sector 13 in 2112 to live in seclusion in the well heeled area known as Bethany Beach, one of the districts of sector 119 bordering the Black Atlantic.

Following up on this will need to wait. Shift is over.

The next day, Phaerin and Noss are summoned to the scene of a murder.

In a rancid alley in the lower levels of the city, some juves have found a body in a gruesome condition. The throat has been ripped out, the entrails torn from the abdomen and devoured and the limbs are covered in bites and scratches. When Tek and Med Division have finished with the corpse, they reach the same conclusion: definitely an animal. A big animal. A frenzied animal. Someone either has a pet klegghound or there is an awfully big, real-life dog wandering Sector 13.

Checking the crime scene for evidence you find the following:

Massive paw-like prints left in the blood spill from the victim

Some shreds of fur, possibly pulled out of the creature's hide by the victim during the struggle

Some clothing fibres from some kind of coarse cotton.

A strange of scarlet silk - high quality fabric - that does not appear to belong to the deceased.

There are no further tracks. The victim, one Tomas Spugfield was a low level data entry clerk, no priors and seems to have no connection with your other cases.

Phaerin's Lawmaster chirrups and a message from Sector Chief comes through.

::Judge en route to join your team, Med Judge Merrick. Will be useful in ongoing case.::

Phaerin is very familiar with the Judge, they trained together in the early years at the academy before going off to their own specialisations. Moments later, a lawmaster rolls up, the familiar Med Judge insignia on the side panels.

The fur has the odour of dog or perhaps wolf, but also cheap cologne.

The fur is analysed but doesn't give you much. The best guess is that the hair is definately not any dog breed known to the Justice Dept, wolf is a more likely suggestion but clearly fresh not preserved or artificial. Given that wolves are little more than legend in this day and age, except perhaps outside the city.

What is interesting is a link to a number of other unsolved crimes. Six similar murders in other sectors over the past few weeks, a clear trail originating in Sector 166 which borders the Wall and following a more or less straight line up to Sector 13. Bodies , both male and female have been found in identical conditions.

Going by the previous patterns, the search area would still by fairly large and for a three Judge team next to impossible without a sensor of some kind.

Nothing like that exists, but something could be jury rigged between you to serve the purpose. It will take a day or so and require 3 rolls.

Mechanic
Engineering
Computer

Phaerin takes the other Judges to one of the many Tek labs and gets to work on creating something that could detect certain scents. The prototype device (which you may name) essentially extracts the scent from a physical piece of evidence and will track any similar scents within a block. Though not as accurate as Phaerin would like, it will make this particular hunt a lot easier. The computer elements are incredibly glitchy though, the program requires recallibrating every hour or so (requiring a further Computers roll to get it operating each time) but that should be sufficient to cover a blocks radius.

OK let's have 3 computer rolls to get FIDO working correctly.

The team travels past several blocks of the search vector before FIDO kicks into action, the scent leads to the Griffin Dunne Block. A 98% match to the scent on the fur.

It's late in the day, almost sun down as you pull up to the Griffin Dunne Block. Control forward the location of Grandma Parker's apartment on the 30th floor.