Logs:PrP:Emptied Streets - Nadia

PrP:Emptied Streets - Nadia

The first four victims' remains are examined.

Players

31 May, 2022

OOC Information: All information is considered Out-Of-Character until you learn it through In-Character means.

Content Warning: Descriptions of horrific crimes listed below - user discretion advised.

Duquan Willets Foster - age 43. Known enforcer for the Southside Crips clique currently running a strong racket on prostitution, off-track betting, underground pit fights and loan sharking. Reputation persists of domestic abuse charges, drug trafficking and gun-running - before he was sixteen and then affiliated with the Crips. Busted about eighteen times before he was eighteen, he was a menace to anyone who knew him - and he only got worse for the next twenty-five years. Loyal soldier, he's done five years for the Crips and managed to avoid the police radar so to speak after the disappearance of two witnesses in a kidnapping/murder scenario in 2009. For a hardcore gangster like him, it'd be like him finding the cloak of invisibility.. or inventing one himself.

Jerry Vedic - age 47. Signed up in grade school as a runner for the corner boys of the Southwestern Bloods. Operated a small clique of his own until he turned 20, where he went professional and street legend says he caught his first legit kill - as opposed to the five suspected off-books kills on his own time. Brutal, if not savage, he ran a pipeline of heroin and cocaine into Poland, native land of his adopted parents, and when both of them were arrested for their involvement, he paid to have them both set on fire in their cells to ensure their silence. In short: not a very nice person. He vanished from public view, as a rule, for a few years, then emerged again, this time marketing himself as a 'fixer', solving Bloods' problems for a small fee; from eliminating competition to strategizing, he was a brilliant tactician who routinely ran circles around the OCB and GTF on the regular. In 2009, December of, he went underground for a few weeks, then came back - a whole lot meaner than ever before, turning into a holy terror even inside of his own tribe. Four more bodies, all Bloods, had his signature kill marks: three bullets in the head; one for each ear, one up a nostril. He's had a low profile for the last thirteen years; state police think he is considering retirement or is grooming a successor to the throne of King Badass.

The men and women of the Chicago PD's Gang Task Force are rarely in their office, save for the stay-at-home types. Those too old to chase suspects, wise to bother or involved to care. The only promise of the GTF is never dying of natural causes and they all know it. Yet, it remains a popular choice for the career-minded.

Seated at the head of the table in the conference room, a box of donuts being slowly devoured and savored, a pudgy man with a five-day growth of beard is holding court with a couple of boot recruits, preparing them for a life of thrilling heroics and an eventual folded flag gifted to a weeping woman in the rain. Practically a predatory behavior, at seeing Nadia approach, he smartens up, dismisses the recruits, then drops a manila envelope onto the table, nudging it toward her with a smirk. "Fun fact," he says, his tone dry and humorless. "Both of your boys, Duquan and Jerry, they have professional-grade fake addresses." He rolls his eyes, snorting with derision. "Even by gangsta chic standards, these two were ghosts. Well, before they got got, anyways." He shrugs, then raises his chin to Nadia. "Both of them knew tricks on avoiding the sunlit world, and really, we kinda thought Duquan was dead for the last, like, five years. Snitches came back with him never going out of business - just, y'know, workin' on the down-low, y'know?" He laughs, then shoves the envelope toward Nadia. "You're chasing the wrong kind of people, you know that? Go after their coworkers, not the one who is doin' us some real favors." And with that, he's back to scrolling his phone, well and done with Nadia. Typical retirement chaser - just counting down the months until they can open a sports bar destined to close in a flurry of sad, pathetic choices.

Nadia is used to being dismissed by the old guard, the boys' club, the ones who still don't trust that she's not in her family's pocket. "And when whoever it is gets tired of hitting gangers and middle management? Or runs out of 'legitimate' victims and starts going after innocent people? Better to stop them when the body count is low and criminal than have to scrabble when some paper pusher suddenly thinks someone important has been targeted." She's polite because it costs less effort in the long run but picks up the envelope ready to head out. "It ain't half as glamorous as he makes out." She comments to the two kids. "Not unless your overarching ambition is to live off stale doughnuts and pee in a bottle in the stakeout car."

In 2009, December 11th, they both filed paperwork for a noise complaint, requesting a duty sergeant take the report. As in, they specifically demanded the duty sergeant on shift for their district visit the location, filled in the report, and then seemed to go a lot lower in profile.. and increase their 'mean factor' by about fifty to sixty times over, each.

The reporting sergeant for Duquan Willets Foster incident was James "Licorice" Licor, currently 64 years old. Served a further six years in the CPD, transitioned directly into the National Transportation Safety Board as a liaison to a pilots union out of Arizona. Semi-retired, he's a paper-pusher with no significant busts or black marks. He did his twenty and skedaddled.

The reporting sergeant for Jerry Vedic incident was Troy "Coco" Benito, who served eight years in the CPD, then joined the DEA as an assistant firearms trainer. Currently holds three state championship records for marksmanship in competitive pistols and a regional for fast-drawing, also in pistols - in Washington state, where he currently teaches karate and judo to college students in his spare time. He did twenty-five, walked and seems to have a family thing going on up in Seattle.

Cho Xiang Lu, talent scout and brute for the Harmony Union Society - ostensibly a Chinese-American benevolence group, according to the folk at Organized Crime, that's the Chicago Triad on the Southside. He moved heroin, women and firepower, then went dark - around 2009, December of, and yes - he filed a noise complaint. His was at 9PM, yet *another* shift. His routine went from casual, elegant brutality into the kind of thing normally done for a horror movie. The OCB team were glad when he went dark as they were tired of the sheer number of missing persons tied to him. No fixed address, exactly like the other two, and the snitch line, though thin, is exceedingly fragile into his world - people like him rarely vanish on their own, and he was doing it *masterfully* for about thirteen years straight.

Noburo Takiwa, a Japanese business consultant. According to the OCB, he's also a gigantic basement-grade monster for the Tachihana outfit, the Southside's own Yakuza franchise. He transitioned from normal, everyday pimping and dope-running directly into a series of crimes so horrific he may be the worst of the bunch so far. Out of his many offenses, he's only done three years in Cook County Correctional, and even then, he got out in 2009, summer of.. and then vanished after December, 2009. Filed a noise complaint, and his is the offset instance - he did it for the district four blocks to the west, although he managed to get it filed just the same; there was some overlap in a then-recent redistrict mapping, so it slid under the grandfathering clause. His filing was done at 1AM, making it the earliest - and also the second to use James Licor as the reporting officer. OCB says there's at least eight bodies to his name, with exactly *one* living victim.

[OOC] Nadia says, "Huh...Ok this may be player geek brain kicking in but...Suggests it is very definitely a western killer because no one of Japanese or Chinese descent would equate the two nationalities as being 'the same' for something like this. Since mapping stuff did sterling work for her last time around, what is the spacing like for the complaints? Are they in something obvious like a pentagram pattern or circle or something? (wishful thinking). Also, were any of them actually checked out and if so what were the results?"

[OOC] Monroe says, "The complaints have similarities: made from a payphone in front of a low-rent mom-and-pop grocery store; requesting only a duty sergeant; noise complaint filed with detail, 'I kept hearing a loud humming sound and I want it to stop'; no follow-up made by any patrol.. except for the first incident, for Duquan Willets Foster. The only pattern which emerges: it's the edges of the Southside itself. Like, someone is drawing a line across the bottom of it. Following the same trail, it is starting to move from east to west, angling up to the north with the last filed call, which was Cho Xiang Lu."

[OOC] Monroe says, "Noise complaints, as a rule, have a ridiculously low turn-out rate for a follow-up, except for the first one filed. That has a report added to it."

[OOC] Monroe says, "Where each call was made from and where the report is originated, as far as targets, they're within about a hundred yards or so. Like, someone standing in the payphone could be calling about something they could see in line of sight."

The reporting officer, Henry Keller McCool, was a six-year veteran of the LAPD SWAT team who transferred to Chicago in 2009, July. He was waiting out his turn for the CPD SWAT and chilling on early-morning nuisance runs, mostly runaways, vagrancy shuffles, DUI checkpoints by local festivals, that kind of thing - noise complaints was also part of that. He answered the call, and was on foot patrol, then filled out a three-line report on the issue: 'Zero probable cause for a follow-up; responding duty sergeant insistent on this; reporting party wishes to make no court appearance nor further statements without an attorney present'. There's a nine-minute gap between him showing up on scene, then the report being filed electronically using Licor's terminal in a patrol cruiser.

Notable because the patrol cruiser is for the Western district, on loan to Licor for the nuisance call. Rather an unusual choice, as most departments would rather loan a dirty diaper to a fellow district than a valuable cruiser.

Henry Keller McCool currently works in the Chicago PD's School Crossing Guard Training Program, as a Tier II trainer. Meaning: he's third in line for eventually teaching cadets how to be crossing guards for schools.

A reminiscing moment, wherein Nadia thinks back to an earlier time in her career with the CPD.

It was a midday call. Summer heat, middle of 2010. Brutal, oppressive temperatures, spiked tempers and endless tides of complaints, founded and unfounded, all demanding immediate and permanent replies, none within reason. She was riding shotgun with a veteran of the drug war, a thirty-year man, rolling into retirement on his way to a thick pension and a thin sunscreen somewhere tropical. His name was Pavlov, Victor Pavlov, and yes, he did own dogs. With a name like that, it'd be a crime to not own a good dog.

As a ride-along, she was quiet because he was quiet, and when he talked, listening was a survival skill. He did engage, more than a few times, and kept a weather eye on her back, more than the usual scoping-out of bodily features - he was One Of the Good Ones, really. Then the call came in over the radio. Two dead, two down, officer on scene, partner missing. Hitting the gas and then the scene, Pavlov rolled out with the sidearm and made sure she had the shotgun racked and readied.

The scene was terrifying. A chunk of a human leg in the hallway, surrounded by an ocean of blood, half-wet, half-tacky, liberally coated in feasting flies. At the end of the hallway was The Door In Question; thick, heavy, broken. Just as Pavlov cleared the corridor for her, something flew out of the dark tunnel and struck the floor - an intact human hand. It was still twitching, a few drops of blood pulsing from the stump. Then the screams began.

Pavlov didn't wait long, just checked on the crouching man by the hallway's door, and moved in, his face stony and resolved. When he went in, he shot his sidearm eleven times in under three seconds, and whatever he hit, it died and hit the floor with a loud, booming thud.

He walked out, stared at her, then shook his head. Whatever it was in that room, nothing was alive for it. Then he was looking into her eyes when he pressed the muzzle beneath his chin, tears in his eyes, and gave a short, loud shout.

He didn't get the shot off, as the survivor of the first responders was able to tackle him to the floor, slipping into the morass of blood and debris, both of them tangled, one of them grunting from exertion, the other sobbing, still trying to end his misery.

Whatever it was in that room, she never saw it - she did hold the line until CSU and the homicide crew showed up.. and none of them looked at Pavlov in disgust. Rather, some of them looked at him, hollow-eyed and vacant, a shell of a man, with something akin to jealousy. At least he was mentally done with his suffering.