Part 11: Chapter 4-3

So Sheriff Kate is out here. Let’s see how she’s messing up our investigation now.



…

Alright, so call up Claire instead.





We’ll ask her about the useless meddling sheriff.

“The local sheriff is causing me hassles. I have the feeling she’s trying to undermine my investigation.”



“Yeah. You’ve heard of her?”







Well, maybe I’m too hard on her. Maybe she’s just caught on to how incredibly incompetent Vickie is and has decided to handle this herself.



“Hmm…I think I should have a few words with the sheriff. Thanks for the tip.”



And that missing person Sheriff Kate was blabbering about.

“I’m looking for information on a case…an ‘Anderson’ male, who supposedly disappeared in Maine.”









Or maybe he abandoned his life of farming to don a gas mask and kidnap women while holding out hopes of making a crappy movie out of it and becoming the king of 2:00 AM Sci-Fi channel films. Nah.

“Okay, Claire, thanks for the intel.”



*Now* we’ll bug Kate again.

“Sheriff…I have a few points to go over with you. Listen Sheriff, I want this to be clear. I have proof that you sent samples to be analyzed without my authority. Here, it’s the FBI who leads the investigation. If you forget that, or decide to ignore it…I’ll break you.”

Meow.



Pictured: My expression while playing this game.

“I don’t have time to play ‘Who’s the bitchiest?’. Believe you me – that is one contest you’ll lose. So, unless you want to be charged with obstruction of justice, I advise you to tell me what you found.”





And…and you didn’t feel like sharing this? This seems kind of important.

“Very good. I hope I won’t have any other occasion to lose my temper with you, Sheriff.”





So now we analyze the stuff from Kate.



More of Chuckles being a clean freak.



As for the electronic thing, Garris over here can handle that.



“You’re good at electronics, right? Maybe you can help me I found an electronic lock half dismantled upstairs. Come take a look.”

And then we’re automatically teleported back into the house to look at said lock.







Well, that’s a fine reason for ruining a murder investigation.



“Brilliant! We’ve got a creepy house in the woods, and a shifty sheriff. Man, I miss Chicago.”

Me too. Can we go back to the Ripper thing now?



Well, Garris will be awhile messing with the locked door, so go back downstairs and in here.



But the cursed unadjustable darkness of this game foils us again!



Check right here. Not that you can see it or anything, because this game hates you.



And I hate playing Still Life. Yet I’ll still end up doing Post Mortem after I’m done here.



And this is where that oil can we’ve been carrying sees use.



...but it’s still too dark to actually do anything.



So run back over here, to that matchbox Vickie wouldn’t take before.



That’s the spirit. I guess.



Use the matches here.





…and after all of that, the door down here is locked.



So use the key Kate gave us.



Hooray.



In there, Vickie automatically draws her gun. Then puts it away as Chuckles is clearly long gone.



You know what else stinks? This game.



The cabinet here is locked.



Diverting three more seconds of our time to fetch the lockpick.



Well, that sounds like a not so subtle clue.



Bust out the revealer spray.





Swab and analyze that. Six victims. Collect them all!



And nothing can be done with Chuckles’ trenchcoat. Moving right along.



I don’t believe in impossible.



…especially when we have the key Kate gave us.



Vickie does another automatic sweep of the room once we’re in. We don’t really need to be here yet though, so go back where we came and start checking out the rest of the room.





He’d also puke and likely ruin our entire investigation. Well, moreso than it was already.



Analyzing that mess shows that…uh, it was Paloma? Okay then.



The drawer over to the side reveals a stiff.



Grab the tweezers and nab some of her skin.



Now that’s some pointless dedication to being a weirdo.



Next check out the desk over here.



No messages or anything, though.





So just flip that on.



…oh come on. His username is “Killer”? Really?





And we’re given the usual random list of password guesses since we don’t have any clues to what he’s actually using.



They don’t work, of course.



But we do have a handy dandy hacking dongle.



Which utterly fails as Chuckles is one step ahead of us.



These are off to the left, but nothing can be done with them.



Check out the desk over here instead.



The radio here can be turned on to play old timey swing tunes. Really.









I guess the glass-on-the-floor bit wouldn’t be as effective if she still had her shoes.





Pop open the drawer here.







But before we do that, the entire speaker here can be yoinked right off of the radio. Do so, then call Claire.



“I think I have something new to help ID the killer..I came across a few pages of a thesis on cinema, on USC letterhead. USC’s a university in LA, right? I think the killer was a student there.”

Well, that’s quite a leap. How do you know he isn’t a professor, or an angry janitor? It would explain the cleaning fixation.







Grab the cord sitting over here too.



Now backtrack into the room with the lantern and take a left.



As soon as we’re in there, the phone rings. It’s the result on that carving back outside on the wood shed. That’s kind of interesting.



Maybe Chuckles is an English professor at USC.





We’ll just pull that aside.



It’ll have to wait as we have nothing to break the wall with.



Speaking of, here we go. A demolition mass. Which is a fancy way of saying ‘A sledgehammer’. We’ll just grab that…



…



Fortunately, there’s a storage box right here or I’d be saying fuck it to this LP and game right now.



I ditch the speaker in there. Hopefully it won’t be needed anytime soon.













Microscope that.





Analyzing that shows Chuckles burnt Dorothy’s wig. That monster.





Vickie’s kind of a boozehound. You might recall her FBI password in the last game was ‘Vodka’.



And Chuckles removed this camera too. Mind you, only a night had passed between Paloma’s last adventure and Vickie getting here. Guy moves quick.



Back over here, we’ll go ahead and smash the damn wall right down. Cathartic.



…which deposits us on the other end of that dumbwaiter to the morgue. Maybe now we're getting somewhere.