"Hey, how's it hanging? Marina, congratulations on the promotion" said Action as he sauntered into the 13th Precinct squad room.
"Thank you for noticing the new stripes on my tunic but where the heck have you been? The shift started 30 minutes ago" she replied.
"Wrapping up some loose ends, you know how it is"
"Yeah, and what was the name of this 'loose end'?"
"Action don't kiss and tell. Anyways, I'm here now and ready to handle whatever you have got for me." he said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together in anticipation.
"Those old case files" she said, nodding to a big cardboard box filled with folders.
"Ah..." he said, his face changing from enthusiastic to that of a man who's been pointed in the direction of a mountain of potatoes and told to peel the lot.
He sat down at his desk and started to fill in the arrest forms from the previous week. At around 10:30am Sergeant Kitchen approached him.
"Sarge, you'll be pleased to know I've sorted out a pickpocketing, two stolen vehicles and a flasher..."
"Can it, Action. We've got a bigger situation to deal with: A homicide down in Oasis Springs. Can you handle it? You're the senior detective here."
"Give me what details you have and I'll be there" said Action, wasting no time in getting up and checking that his .38 service revolver was ready to go.
"Here are the details..." said Kitchen, handing Action a case file. "Officer Gunn is there and securing the crime scene. You and forensics are to head out now."
Action quickly headed towards the parking lot to get his car but at the front desk he spied a familiar but not welcome face: Daphne Blake. "Oh no, she's probably got one of her cockamamie ideas about some spooky goings on which is probably just a cat stuck up a tree" he said to himself.
"...and then it turned out it wasn't a ghost, just someone dressed as one and when we pulled off the mask we discovered it was old Mr Wickles, the county museum curator!" she was saying to the confused looking officer at the desk.
Geez, I could have told you that! Hello, he's the only person you had contact with down at the museum...it was obviously him! Action thought as he headed to his car.
Heading out of Willow Creek he drove south, over the bridge that divided the lush bayou area from the more parched and scrubland of Oasis Springs. Locals often commented that in Summer the heat from the Springs hit you in the face as you crossed the river and already Action had his car air conditioning turned up as he drove along.
The crime scene was in a suburb known as Parched Prospect. It was the kind of place people lived in when they were on the rise and they had money to spend on these new mod styled houses that came with every modern labour saving device yet developed. The actual house where the body was found was shared by 4 young professionals who had pooled their resources together to buy and live in a house that would have been beyond their pay packets had they'd purchased it individually. The main name on the deeds was a Mr Jameson Huntingdon III; a name that Action knew...he was a young socialite and member of the Kitten Club who he'd spied at their meetings, using his charm to get his way with the ladies. Mention of the Kitten Club invariably meant Alan Cuffe being involved as well and Cuffe was already a "person of interest" to Action. Could this homicide be linked to Cuffe or the trouble he had been in?
Action parked his car right outside the front, showed his badge to the officer on duty and crossed the hazard line that had been erected around the property to keep bystanders out. Inside the coroner's team had just finished their cursory examination of the victim and were taking photos. Action spoke to the other officers present and got a better picture of who this guy was and what had happened here.
Name: Unknown. No ID on the victim. Age, approximately 35-40 years of age. Sex: Male. Race: Caucasian. Pale blue eyes, a round, pale face and close cropped fair hair; probably a military style crew cut. Height: 5'8". Victim was wearing a red and yellow Hawaiian shirt, tan slacks and brown leather shoes. No hat. No obvious marks or wounds on his body, no traces of poison but that could only be ruled out once they had got him to the morgue.
"So we have no idea who this guy is...and we don't know what his connection to this place is. He's not listed as one of the residents" Action said, reading the duty officer's notebook. Once the outline of the body had been taped onto the floor and it had been transferred to the coroner's wagon he took some crime scene photos himself.
There were a couple of witnesses, none of them residents of this house but there were present when the man had died. After he had finished taking the photos he looked across the living room and recognised one of them: Tasha Michel. She was a model, one of the most well known in Sim City and also Miss Ginger, one of the Lothario Kittens of the Month. Now she was sitting at a dining table looking frightened. Her sad expression changed to surprise mixed with relief when she saw Action.
"Action! Thank goodness you're here! Listen, I didn't have anything to do with this guy! I don't even know who he is! He just stumbled in..." her words came out as a torrent awash with panic.
"Cool it, Tash...how about we slow down and let me take a statement, OK?" said Action, raising his hands in a calming manner. She nodded and he sat down, taking out his notebook and pen to get her statement.
"OK, so let's back this up a little. Where's Jameson?" asked Action.
"He...left. Ran out. He got spooked by this guy showing up here and dropping dead and all that" she replied.
"And that's what happened is it? This guy dropped dead right inside J's house?"
"Pretty much. Well it was like this; J, Don and myself were all hanging out here and there's the doorbell rings. Don offered to answer it to see who it was and it was that guy...he staggered in here, trying to say something but couldn't get the words out. Then he collapses right there. J's panicking and Don goes over to check on the guy and says he's dead. I then call 9/11 and that's when J says he can't be seen here with a dead body in his house and with the cops on the scene so he high tails it out of here."
"And you said you don't know who this guy is?"
"No. Never seen him before."
"Are you sure? Maybe he's a client at the Kitten Club or attended one of Cuffe's parties?"
"Well...maybe. I don't recall meeting him though."
Action scribbled down all this information and was thinking that Tasha was telling the truth about not knowing who this guy was but Huntingdon's behaviour was highly suspicious. Maybe he knew who this guy was? Action thanked Tasha for her information and he turned to the other witness who was present: The man Tasha referred to as 'Don'.
"OK, and what's your full name?" asked Action.
"Don Lothario"
"You're kidding me..."
"No, it really is that. Here's my driver's licence. See? Donald Lothario of Sultry Springside, Skyward Palms, Oasis Springs."
"OK, I believe you" said Action, waving him away. "So you tell me what happened here"
"I was visiting J and Tasha was with us and, you know, we're just hanging out and having a little fun..."
"What do you mean by having a little fun?" asked Action.
"Does that have anything to do with the stiff?" said Don, defensively.
"Well, maybe this guy wanted in on the fun? Maybe he was here to stop it?"
"Well...it's like this...we were...uhm...goofing around" said Don, awkwardly.
"Action...we found this in the living room" said one of the other policemen. He was holding two tabs that were half the size of a postage stamp but twice as thick. Action took one look at them and knew what they were.
"Acid...I'm guessing there was a third of these but J took it" said Action, giving Don a hard stare.
"OK, so we were taking some LSD and you're right, J took one before we did and just freaked out when that guy crashed into the house."
"Action...we're not...well, regular users." said Tasha, apologetically.
"I'm more interested in this 'stiff' as you call him. Now both of you are certain you've never seen this guy before?"
"Positive"
"Never"
"OK, Tony...take down the rest of their statements and let's finish up with forensics before heading home" said Action, closing his notebook.
The rest of the shift was taken up with getting the forensic evidence down to the lab, filling in some forms and trying to find out who this guy was. The coroner hadn't worked that one out so it was a lot of ground pounding by detectives and uniform to I.D. him. By the end of Action's shift, no one was the wiser.
He went home but wasn't feeling hungry at all. He found a message on his answerphone from Suzy Humphries saying that she wanted to see him soon as she'd had an idea about an old case of his. Returning her call he found that she wasn't at home that evening, but had gone down to the Movers and Shakers gym.
He made his way down there and saw what he thought might be her, running on a treadmill but that she looked very different to normal as she wasn't wearing make up and had her hair tied back.
"Suzy?" he asked as he approached her. "You look very different from how I usually see you" he said, impressed by her rhinestone studded pink exercise outfit. "That's a very Las Vegas look you've got going there."
"A leftover from my failed attempt at becoming a ballerina...I take it you got my message then?"
"I did...so have you got time to talk?"
"Yes." she said and she pushed a button on the treadmill to get it to stop. She grabbed a small hand towel and patted her face gently with it before stepping off the machine.
"I've found some things out and I have a bit of an idea I want to run past you" she said. Action was intrigued.
"I'm always one for a good idea" he replied.
"I'll let you be the judge of how good it is"
"OK, I'll head on next door to the Blue Velvet and you can tell me more there" said Action.
"Give me 5 minutes to get changed and I'll be over" replied Suzy.
The 45 minutes that elapsed between that conversation and Suzy's eventual arrival wasn't a waste for Action as he caught up with friends, colleagues and bar regulars. When she arrived Action noticed how well poised she always was; not a hair out of place, make up immaculate and she had a swagger that turned men's heads when she walked in the room. She didn't just walk, she glided.
He had claimed a small table over by the fireplace for their conversation and, after getting the drinks in, they settled to have their conversation.
"You look serious, Action"
"It's a serious business I'm in" he said. "I'm currently working on a homicide case. John Doe just shows up on the doorstep of some swanky pad in Oasis Springs and just dies and no one knows who he is or why he was there. BUT, and there's always a but, the house is owned by one of Cuffe's Kitten Club members and he had one of the Lothario Kittens in the pad so there might be a connection. Trouble is, the house owner's gone on a drug fuelled run somewhere. On top of that, Leanne McGregor's shown up again..."
"Oh her? Are you any closer to catching her?"
"Nope. And get this...she's changed her appearance. I mean, like radically. Apparently she's knocked 10 years off her age, lost 6 inches in height and is now some perky waif like redhead. Or maybe it's just someone in the same line of work with the same name and working towards the same ends. Some days this job throws up more questions than it ever answers."
"If it's any help I've found some things out about the Landgraabs; mostly background detail so far but their wealth was obtained through highly dubious means...always was, for nearly 200 years. It's Nancy who's the real boss, Geoffrey's a figurehead."
"None of that is surprising" said Action, flatly. "I've long since suspected that but do you have proof? With proof I can move against them."
"Well, not quite yet but I've got plenty of leads..." said Suzy, wishing she could give Action that little extra so he could make an arrest or two.
"Have a look into Malcolm a little more..." she continued. "I think he's the one who tried to shoot Madelyn Buchanan. The two of them used to peddle drugs but their working relationship went south and he was left in the lurch. Malcolm's a nasty, vengeful character so my idea is that he wanted to get back at her. Lily Feng was never the target."
Action nodded. It mostly made sense except that he knew the weapon used against Madelyn was some kind of laser. Where would Malcolm get hold of one of those?
Their chat was interrupted by friend and neighbour Travis Scott. He was dancing away and spotted his friends having a conversation so he waved and danced his way over to them.
"Action, Suzy...two people I haven't seen for a while!" said Travis, cheerily.
"Travis, nice to see you; how's the wedding planning going?" asked Suzy.
"Sheesh, is that all you chicks can talk about? Yeah, it's going OK. Summer's organising most of it, I've just been measured for a suit. I think Sum's got some things to ask you about the whole deal so just warning you before she calls."
"I look forward to it. Tell her she can call on my anytime to talk about it." Suzy replied, the excitement of wedding planning broke her train of thought about the Landgraab investigation.
All Action wanted to know at this point was when was the date for the wedding and was he invited? He pondered for one brief moment whether he would one day get married but almost instantly brushed that idea out of his mind.
"Suzy...I'll look into that matter with Malcolm and let you know how it's getting on. In the meantime, can I ask you a favour? Look into the dealings of a Mr J. Huntington III. He's a socialite and from old money so he'll have cropped up in your style magazines I'll bet. I know he's a member of the Kitten Club and hangs with Cuffe but see if there's any connection between him and the Landgraabs."
"OK...J. Huntington III. We'll trade information again, soon" she replied.
