《Killer Bay》Delta Protocol
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"Ok... So where is this body?" Frank inquired as Adalet, him, and Roxie entered the greenhouse.
"No idea!" Adalet replied, "Charles didn't say anything about that when he called, but I think the best place to check is in the entrance by the fountain!"
Frank and Adalet walked further into the greenhouse and approached the area the captain had been referring to. It wasn't as hard as they thought it would be to find the body, the killer had left it floating face up in the fountain. The poor victim was a man who looked to be in his late sixties with silver hair framing his pale face. His steely blue eyes were void of all life as he stared up at the roof above. The water and blood were soaking into his tailored black suit as his body moved with every ripple of the water.
Around the fountain was another mess. Flowers and dirt had been ripped out of the ground and tossed around like confetti. But even with the mess, Adalet still managed to find something of interest. There was a pile of flowers that had been torn from the ground, but it seemed like the plants were piled together to cover something up.
"Holy shit Adalet!" Frank cried, "this guy is missing the back of his head! And I don't see a brain inside either!"
"Aw!" Roxie pouted, "I thought we were done with the missing organs!"
"We better not find the head in a jar!" he stated, "but on a less gross note, what did you find, Adalet?"
"A pile of flowers," Adalet answered.
"Are you going to make a bouquet out of those plants?" he smirked, "they don't look pretty, you know..."
She rolled her eyes, "haha, very funny Frank... Not!"
"Aw come on, you love my jokes!" Frank beamed, "but I suppose you're onto something, there might be something hidden under all those plants! And we can't forget to talk to that botanist, what was his name again? Charles something?"
"Parker," she supplied.
Roxie began to prepare the body for transport while Adalet started to look at the pile of flowers. Most of the flowers were the common ones that could be found in the greenhouse, but there was a purple flower near the bottom that looked to have traces of blood splattered on its petals.
"So you found a flower in that pile of flowers, Adalet," Frank deadpanned, "I don't know what you were expecting..."
"Frank, you're missing the important part," Adalet showed him the petals, "flowers don't bleed blood!"
"Oh, you're right!" he exclaimed, "I hadn't seen the blood on the flower, do you think it might be our victim's?"
"Well I know Charles wears gloves, so he wouldn't have cut himself," she replied, taking a quick swab of the blood, "Roxie, could you take this to Yann and Grace for us?"
"Sure can, sweetie!" Roxie responded, taking the blood sample and flower from her, "they'll have their hands on this before you blink!"
"Thanks, Roxie!" she beamed, "now, let's go have a chat with Charles, Frank!"
After helping Roxie load the body into the back of the ME van, Adalet and Frank headed further into the greenhouse to talk to Charles. It wasn't hard to find the botanist, he was making quite the commotion over by the rose bushes.
"A dead body! In my fountain!" Charles was yelling, "oh when I get my hands on the person who did this, they'll wish they had never messed with Charles Parker!!"
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"Good to see you again too, Charles," Adalet rolled her eyes, "I'm guessing I don't need to ask how you're feeling?"
"No you do not!" he spat, "that man had caused enough trouble in this city, and then he had to take it one step further by dying in my fountain!"
"You know who our victim is?" Frank questioned, "tell us!"
"His name is Ratko Kovac, some sort of a Russian businessman I think," Charles responded, "I heard he bought the old asylum for some reason, but no one's been able to find out why. He's kept it under lock and key and few have been inside."
"The asylum?" Adalet hums, "do you know anything else about Ratko, Charles?"
"No and I don't want to," he glared, "I knew that man was trouble once he stepped foot into this city, and this murder proves it!"
Frank, if Ratko bought the old asylum, maybe there are some clues to his death in there," Adalet suggested.
"Oh no! You can't be serious!" Frank yells, "you want me to go to an old, creepy, abandoned asylum?!"
"Yes."
"... Fine! But only because there's no reasoning with you!"
Adalet and Frank left the greenhouse and Charles to his ranting. The cops drove to the outskirts of the city and Adalet navigated to the asylum they were looking for. They had to kick down the door to get inside, but it was worth it. The dim lights lit the way through the long, spiderweb-infested halls to the one-room they found to be unlocked, they almost wished they hadn't found it.
The room was large, with chipping gray walls and cracked stone floors, all of the windows were boarded up with steel bars and wooden planks and the bright lights were harsh on their eyes. In the center of the room was an examination table with leather restraints, some smaller tables surrounding it with medical tools on all of them. There was a computer set up along the far walls with large screens displaying some data about a person.
Adalet picked up a tray of medical equipment from a table on the other side of the room. As she walked back to join Frank, Dean and Hunter seemed to have become interested in a rusty filing cabinet.
"Alright, so we have a creepy asylum owned by our victim," Frank summarizes, "and a tray of medical equipment and a filing cabinet."
"Nothing could be more creepy," Adalet snorted.
"So what do you think you'll find in that mess?" he asked, referring to the tray, "besides some disease."
"Hey, I had all my shots!" she laughed, "but I'm not sure, the tools are too messy, and there's too many of them!"
You're right," he agreed, "and that filing cabinet seems to be locked, but that won't be a problem for you, Adalet!"
Adalet laughed as she pulled on a pair of gloves. She sifted through the medical tools being careful not to cut herself on any of the scalpels. It didn't take her long to find an ID card hidden near the bottom of the tools. She pulled it out and read the information next to the picture.
"This ID card belongs to a woman named Dr. Min Song," Adalet says looking at the Korean woman's picture, "it says here that she works for someplace called U.N.I.T. as the head scientist."
"Never heard of it," Frank grunts, "but if her card was in the asylum, she must have met our victim!"
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"Which earns her an interview with us!" she agreed, "I'll text Hannah and see if she can get us an address for Dr. Song."
After she had sent the text to Hannah, Adalet walked over to the filing cabinet. She took a look at the lock and saw that it was a spinning combination style. She turned the dials of the lock one by one until she heard a clicking noise and pulled open the drawer to see what was inside.
"Great, you opened the filing cabinet Adalet!" Frank cheered, "now we can have a look inside!"
Adalet pulled open the drawers and dove into the files inside. She skimmed through all of the papers in the folders as quickly as she could and one paper, in particular, caught her eyes. She pulled it out of the file and saw the victim's name written at the top.
"Get a load of this, Frank!" Adalet calls, "Ratko, we need to discuss our next course of action, meet me at my apartment at 10:30. Nick M. Doyel."
"This Nick guy must have been working with our victim," Frank reasoned, "by what did he mean by "our next course of action"?"
"There's nothing here that tells us more," she replied, "but hopefully Nick can tell us about this..."
"Then let's go find him!"
Hannah messaged them back with an address for Dr. Min Song, and Adalet asked her to find one for Nick M. Doyel. She promised to do so and the cops left the asylum. They drove over to an apartment building where the doctor was living and made their way up to the top floor. They knocked on room number D34 and it was opened shortly for them.
Dr. Min Song was a 39-year-old Korean woman of average height and size. She had her black hair pulled up into a messy bun with lab goggles strapped on top of her head. Her black dress was littered with red polka dots, paired with a set of dark heels, tights, and a long white lab coat.
"Can I help you, officers?" Min asks.
"Dr. Song, I'm Capt. Adalet and this is my partner Det. Frank," Adalet made the introductions, '"we are investigating the murder of Ratko Kovac, we found your ID card in the asylum he owned."
"Oh!" she gasped, "Mr. Kovak is dead! That's terrible!"
"So you knew him?" she inquired.
"I didn't know him well, but yes, I knew him," she confirmed, "Mr. Kovac had hired me for the project he was starting. He wanted to bring the asylum back to its former glory!"
"So you were hired for the medical side?" Frank guessed.
Min nodded, "he hadn't been around for a few days, but I figured he was just trying to plan out the rest of the project! Now, what'll happen to the asylum?"
"We don't know," he responded, "but thank you for speaking with us, doc."
Frank and Adalet left the apartment building and drove over to the condo that Hannah had tracked down Nick M. Doyel to. They rang the doorbell of his condo and the English gentleman greeted them with a warm smile. He was a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair styled into a comb-over that helped to frame the gray eyes hidden behind some thick-rimmed black glasses. His brown trench coat was worn over top of a blue suit with a black dress shirt.
"Nick Doyel?" Adalet questioned, "I'm Capt. Adalet and this is Det. Frank, did you know a man by the name of Ratko Kovac?"
"Did I?" Nick blinked, "Wait, are you telling me Ratko is dead?!"
"Unfortunately I am," she confirmed, "were you and the victim working together?"
"We have been partners for many, many years," he explained, "while my official title is his assistant director, he never did anything without consulting me first."
"That includes whatever he was planning to do to the asylum?" she promoted.
"Yes, we were renovating it into a rehab center of sorts," he told them, "Ratko had a passion for helping people, something I admired in him. It is sad to see that he is gone."
"Yeah, tragic," Frank says, "but don't skip down, buddy, we may be back!"
"So your brainless body had an interesting story to tell, guys!" Roxie tells them as she, Yann, and Grace enter the office, "but his cause of death is rather obvious, the killer removed his brain!"
"So the man died by having his brain ripped out of his head?!" Frank was looking green.
She laughed, "it's a little more than that, the killer took the time to remove the brain, and it was done with skill!"
"You're saying the killer knew what they were doing?" Adalet infers.
"Of, definitely!" Roxie nods, "your killer had all the right tools and knew how to use them to remove the victim's brain. It was a perfect extraction, so if you find a brain anywhere, it'll be this guy's!"
"So our killer has surgical skills!" she hums adding it to the profile, "what about that flower, Yann, Grace?"
"This lab could use some new equipment, but it did the trick!" Yann commented before getting to his results, "that blood sample you sent us matches your victim's. But further analysis found traces of Solanaceae, more commonly known as Nightshade."
"Nightshade?" Frank frowned his brows, "isn't that one of the deadliest plants?"
Grace nodded, "it is, so we asked Roxie for a fresher sample of Ratko's blood..."
"And we found traces of the plant in it!" Yann took over again, "your victim had been poisoned with deadly Nightshade just hours before his death!"
"Hours?" Adalet blinked, "how long would it have taken for the poison to kill him?"
"It's hard to say," Grace responds, "the sample we managed to extract from the blood was small, but this poison is like nothing I've ever seen before. Your killer must have mixed it with some other poisons and ingredients to slow down the killing processes, but also make it more excruciating at the same time."
"So our killer dabbles in botany," Frank deduced, "and we already have a suspect who fits that profile!"
"Adalet!!" Ramirez cried as he and Amy ran out of the elevator, "oh Adalet! It was horrible!"
"Ramirez?" Adalet frowned, "what's wrong?"
"Oh, it's bad Adalet!" Amy exclaimed, "Ramirez was showing me around town and giving me tips to be a great detective when we, we-!"
"We saw a zombie walking into the gold mine!" Ramirez finished loudly.
"A zombie?" Jones groaned as he came to see what all the noise was about, "Ramirez... Zombies aren't real!"
"But that one was!" he insisted, "he was moaning, and groaning and walking like the undead!"
"Have you ever seen the undead walking?" he asked rhetorically, "don't answer that..."
"Well, this city sure has its excitement," Andrea remarked joining the group, "and what's this about a zombie and a gold mine?"
"It's an old mine that has been in Grimsborough for hundreds of years," Jones explained to the Chief, "we sealed it off a little while ago to the public after we arrested the Crimson Order."
"But if someone went in there, they could be in danger!" Adalet says, "that mine wasn't in the best shape when we left it, Jones, remember?"
He nodded, "you're right, Adalet, like always... I can't believe I'm saying this, but you and Frank better go check it out!"
"What!" Frank cried, "you want us to go zombie hunting?!"
"No Frank," Andrea rolled her eyes "you two need to go make sure that no one gets hurt in that mine but don't forget about the case!"
"Let's go, Frank!" Adalet yelled.
Driving out to the gold mine, Adalet and Frank discovered that the planks of wood boarding up the entranceway had been torn off. They turned on their flashlights before slowly making their way into the cave. Once they reached the main part of the cave, Adalet and Frank split up to search for the "zombie" Ramirez and Amy had seen.
Neither ended up finding anyone inside, but Adalet did find some other clues to examine. There was a crate of mining supplies that appeared to have recently been disturbed, a pair of old, slightly faded dog tags, and a torn picture near the river's edge.
"This place is creepy," Frank's voice echoed around the cave, "I can't believe you managed to get me in here, Adalet!"
"Well if we hadn't come inside, we wouldn't have found these!" Adalet says, shining her flashlight onto the clues she'd found, "take a look!"
He walked over with his own torch in hand, "you found a crate of mining supplies, a pair of faded dog tags and a torn picture... This will get us far!"
She smirked, "I thought by now you'd learned not to doubt me?"
"I'm not!" he protested, "all I'm saying is that these clues will get us far! As in they'll help the investigation!"
"Uh-huh," she hummed, "let's go with that one..."
Adalet picked up the dog tags first and set her case down on the cold stone floor. One side of the dog tag had the Russian flag printed on it while the other side contained the faded writing. She found her dusting kit and dipped the brush into the jar of powder. She brushed the faded side of the tags and managed to recover some strange words that weren't any language she'd ever seen before.
"Ahh..." Frank frowned when he was able to see what the tags said, "what is this supposed to say exactly?"
"No idea," Adalet responded, "I've seen more languages than you can count, but this is a new one! It looks like Russian, but some of the letters aren't right..."
"Well, Hannah should be able to find something for us!" he said, putting the tags into her case, "and if not, she has two other techies to help her!"
Adalet laughed as she picked up the pieces of the torn photo. She tapped it up in a flash and saw that there were two men in the photo sitting at a cafe table with tea and cookies surrounding them. Unfortunately, one was half-hidden behind a newspaper, but the other was in clear sight. And it was their victim!
"Wow, that's Ratok in the photo!" Frank gasped, "but who's the other guy with him?"
"I've never seen him before," Adalet replied, "but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a name!"
"You think he might be in the database?" he guessed, "well, there's only one way to find out!"
Adalet took a picture of the photo with her table and uploaded it to the database. She compared parts of the man's features to the ones the program was suggesting and soon had a name for the man. He was a Danish man named Filip Coalson from Copenhagen, Denmark and he had arrived in Grimsborough recently.
"So the man's name is Filip Coalson," Adalet informed Frank, "and he is staying at the Halifax Hotel for the next few days before he is scheduled to fly back to Denmark."
"What does a Danish man and a Russian man have in common?" Frank asked, "they don't sound like best friends to me!"
"Well, we'll never know unless we ask Filip ourselves," she replied, packing up her case, "we should head over to the hotel to talk to him!"
"Agreed," he nodded, "but don't forget about that crate, Adalet!"
"I know, I know!" she says walking over to it, "I was getting to it!"
Adalet stopped in front of the crate and began pulling out all the mining equipment. There were hardhats, coils of rope, hooks, pickaxes, and protective gloves. The things you would expect to find in a mine. But what she didn't expect to find in the crate was a silver ring with black diamonds set into the band.
"Wow!" Frank gasped, "that's a nice ring you got there, Adalet! But it's a little too big for you!"
Adalet frowned as she ignored him, "I know this ring..."
"You do?" he questioned, "how?"
"It belongs to my best friend," she answered, "but Nathan would never part with it, and I know he didn't lose it here when we arrested the Crimson Order!"
"Do you know if he ever came back here?" he asked.
"No," she says firmly, "the only ones allowed in here were the mining experts, not even I came back here!"
Both of the cops jumped at the loud noise that sounded behind them. Adalet and Frank whipped around to see that a stack of crates had been knocked over and all the supplies inside had scattered around the ground. Frank walked over to the other stacks of crates and took a look behind them.
"What the-?! Who the hell are you?!" he demanded, reaching behind the crates to grab someone.
He pulls a young man out from behind the stack of crates. The man didn't appear to be in the best shape, his blue scrubs were ripped, stains in all kinds of colours were on them, and for some reason his feet were bare. There were bandages wrapped around his arms, legs, torso, hands, and neck. His eyes were blank, the irises and pupils covered in a cloudy haze but they seemed to be searching for something but never focusing on one spot for long. He was shaking so badly from the coldness of the cave, and possible blood loss as the bandages were stained red in some places.
Adalet rushed over, "Frank, stop! Stop! That's Nathan!"
"Huh?" Frank asked.
"Adalet? Adalet is that you!?" Nathan yelled, struggling against Frank's grip, "where are you?!"
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