Part 36: Episode 36: Seeking Atonement
This update covers:Naomi Kimishima 6 - Seeking Atonement (part 1 of 2)
Introduction
Naomi: The Revolutionary, Stephen Eldred, was not, in fact, the Raging Bomber.
LG: Right. The real bomber placed an explosive inside a stuffed animal, and then... sent it to you, Dr. Kimishima. Let's trace that delivery back to its source immediately!
Naomi: There's no need for that. Don't you think there's someone much more suspicious?
LG: Who?
Naomi: I believe the person most likely to be the bomber is the deliverywoman.
LG: Then, the Raging Bomber personally handed you the bomb? Isn't that... too dangerous?
Naomi: I have proof: the carbon dust. I got it on my hand when I signed for the delivery. The deliveryperson said the digital pad was broken. Both of the victims we examined also had carbon dust on their fingers.
LG: That explains why it was only on their dominant hands.
Naomi: The fact that the deliveryperson was female also points to her culpability.
LG: What do you mean?
Naomi: Don't you get it? Let me ask you this, then: How did the bomber hide her true identity? She hired Stephen Eldred to make the bomb threats for her. But even this was a trap. That's because the voice was unprocessed. The bomber let them go out this way on purpose.
LG: So the bomber wanted us to think--
Naomi: Everything she did was an act, and we were fooled. We were all led to believe that the Raging Bomber was a young man.
LG: I see. If that woman IS the bomber, then it all makes sense.
Naomi: On the other hand, there's one mystery we can't solve yet. That is, why was the Revolutionary killed? She was using the character as a cover to protect herself. Why would he be killed, then. ...Little Guy, what happened to Alyssa's house?
LG: Oh... Unfortunately, it completely burned, then the building collapsed. It's useless as a potential crime scene now.
Naomi: I see... then, I'm going to investigate the Revolutionary's room one more time. This time, I'll know what I'm seeing. You look into those deposits into Stephen Eldred's account. I'm going to catch her. It's the only way to atone for what happened.
Several new cards get dumped on us, and the crime scene is open to investigate again. We still have both cell phone cards, but everything else from the previous episode has been dumped. We're starting this investigation over from scratch.
Naomi: We need to find out more about the Raging Bomber. If the same method was used to deliver the bomb here as was used to get the other bomb to me, the area with the most clues would be the right side of the room.
The game cheats pretty blatantly for this one, as there are two new clues on the right side of the room that most certainly did not exist before. The third clue is something that did exist before, but we had no reason to suspect it.
The first clue is this delivery form discarded on the floor. Nice of it to survive the explosion.
Naomi: That clue would be fingerprints.
We can take a look at the mat at the entrance to try and find a trace of the bomber's footprints. If she's the deliverywoman, she would have been there shortly before the explosion.
It's not easy to see at first, but...
A couple of these are distinctly different from the rest.
Naomi: This one is different in size and pattern from the others. Let's send this in for analysis.
There's a piece of hair that is basically impossible to spot in the back here. Now that I think about it, it's possible that the ALS would pick this up. If not, it's a pixel hunt. Honestly, I knew the general area, but it wasn't until I got these screenshots from an S-video input that I was able to see the damn thing. Anyway, that's all the evidence in the apartment.
In no particular order, we'll do the hair first.
LG: This hair is dyed black, but it's actually red hair.
Naomi: Can you tell if it belonged to the bomber?
LG: Well, I'd need some DNA from the bomber to compare it to.
Naomi: Of course... but there's a chance that this hair does belong to the bomber. Only two to three percent of people in this country are true redheads. It isn't a common color at all.
LG: How is that related to this case?
Naomi: Think about it. If the bomber is a redhead, she'd have to dye it, because her natural color stands out. If there were any witnesses, her identity would be easy to discover.
LG: That does make sense. The dye seems to be a temporary coloring agent, as well.
Naomi: It's designed to be washed out? In that case, she could change her hair color with every delivery to create conflicting witness accounts. The hair would be part of the costume as well.
LG: Yes, but until we can prove it, this is just speculation.
Naomi: I know. We need something to match her DNA with. It's a decent heory, anyway. Let's keep investigating.
Let's also show him the delivery reciept.
LG: I'll send it to the lab, so it'll take a while.
In the meantime, we also need to have the footprint analyzed.
LG: The footprint in 27 centimeters in length, so we should expect this person to be between 170 to 180 centimeters tall.
Naomi: The woman who delivered the bomb to me was about that tall.
LG: I see... oh, I've also compared the print to the FBI's shoe print database. There aren't many stores that carry this brand, but it's still over 100. I can narrow it down, but it's going to take some time and effort.
Naomi: Well, do what you can.
LG: Ah, the results of the fingerprint analysis have come in. There were two sets of fingerprints on the paper. One of them was Stephen Eldred. He'd be the recipient. The other set belongs to someone else. Well, common sense dictates that they'd have to belong to--
Naomi: Let's not jump to any conclusions yet.
In order to get a good confirmation on this, we need something to compare the prints with. Luckily, we have Naomi's delivery form as well.
Naomi: I want you to look at these forms. Compare any prints that don't belong to either Stephen Eldred or myself.
LG: Just a moment... There's a complete match here. No mistake, these are from the same person.
Naomi: Good. This proves something important. The forms each have two sets of prints: one from the person who received it, and the other from the one who delivered it. If they match, then the person who delivered the bomb to the Revolutionary is the deliverywoman who was at CIFM.
LG: Ah, Dr. Kimishima, it turns out that this woman doesn't exist. We've contacted all the delivery companies that work in this area. None of them can confirm having an employee that fits our description. And of course, none of them have any record of a package being sent to you that day, either. Do you think the woman making the deliveries is the Raging Bomber?
"That day" presumably being "today."
Naomi: I can't be sure yet. It could be someone being used, like the Revolutionary was. We'll keep her in mind. What about the prints? Did you compare them to the FBI's database?
LG: Of course I ran them through the system. No matches, though. If this woman is the Raging Bomber, then she's a complete newbie.
Naomi: That's an awful thought. No criminal record at all, and she's already killed four people?
LG: This may turn out to be one tough murder spree to end. But as long as she doesn't blow you up, we'll be okay.
Naomi: You may want to avoid saying things like that in the future.
LG: Sorry. Anyway, we've figured out how she was delivering the bombs.
Naomi: Yes. To summarize, she hid behind the character of the Revolutionary to hide her identity.
LG: On the other hand, she used the names of people close to the victims to send the packages, so they'd be less suspicious.
Naomi: Yes. All the bombs were set to explode in close proximity to the target. It's likely that they were triggered by opening the package's lid. In my case, though, she used a time bomb.
LG: That does seem odd. Why would she do that?
Naomi: It makes a lot of sense, if you think about it.
This one is a little tough, since security was clearly not any tighter, and Alyssa being the target could possibly make some sort of sense in the right circumstances.
Naomi: She was anticipating heavy security. Let me ask you, Mr. Investigator: if someone working with the FBI appears in a tabloid, what's the by-the-book response?
LG: Hm... we'd increase security around you to prevent the killer from striking at you.
Naomi: Right. In fact, security at CIFM was tighter than usual. If there had been a baggage screening at the entrance, and the package was opened there, it would never have reached me. She even put a note inside the package to ensure I'd be close when it went off. If it wasn't for Alyssa I would have been...
LG: She's a tough one.
Naomi: This is the kind of mind we're dealing with. The question remains: is the deliverywoman the bomber, or not?
LG: From the evidence we have, she's definitely the most suspicious character at this point. Still, taking the risk to deliver the bombs herself... And if she was the bomber, wouldn't the Revolutionary have noticed before he was killed.
Naomi: Only if he knew her face. The bomber was sending her messages through his computer. Perhaps he only knew her through the internet. Our technology gets better and better, but people remain as naive as the day they were born. But, why was he killed in the first place?
LG: Oh! I had something to report! I almost forgot! We looked into the Revolutionary's financial records. It seems there were periodic deposits into his accounts. These deposits perfectly coincided with another series of events.
Naomi: The bomb threats.
LG: Yes. Five thousand dollars for the first three times, and ten thousand for the last time.
Naomi: It was double the others? And after it was made, he was targeted... If I were to conjecture, I'd say that the one making these deposite was the Raging Bomber and that they were payments for making the bomb threats. What could explain the last payment being double the rest? Maybe it was because the Revolutionary blackmailed the bomber. It's possible, human avarice knows no bounds. He may have thought he had an upper hand on the bomber, the fool. There's a plausible reason why he would do it, as well: to pay back loans. He took out a loan to buy the expensive guitar in his room. There's no way to know if his arrangement with the bomber began before or after that, but nobody wants to live in fear of debt collectors. Still, any percieved dominance he had over the bomber would have been in error. I doubt she thought twice about murdering him. She made one last payment for double the amount to pay for one more threat. He didn't even know that he was the target. It was clever. Without that, HQ and I would have immediately noticed that something was different. Hm... it's Little Guy.
LG: We've made some progress into the payments made to the Revolutionary. All four of them were made from a bank near Higgins Beach.
The manual to the game claims it's taking place in Maryland, but it's obviously actually supposed to be Maine, considering there's an actual Portland, Maine with the motto Resurgam in Cumberland County. Similarly, Higgins beach is an actual place in Maine. I think someone made a mistake writing the manual. It's worth noting that a lot of TC: New Blood actually does take place in Maryland.
Naomi: What about the security footage? Was the bomber seen by any of the cameras?
LG: It's no use. We've checked them all, but there's no conclusive footage we can identify.
Naomi: It's all right. We're closing in on the bomber. If we just use some of the other information we've gathered...
We can't do much with the deposits or the shoe stores individually, but the trick is to combine them.
Naomi: If all four deposits were made in Higgins Beach, it seems sensible to conclude that the shoe store has to be checked.
I know that one is really dumb, but we can't actually conclude that she lives there, or happens to be there at the moment or anything.
Naomi: If we search for stores that sell this particular shoe near Higgins Beach, we'll at least narrow down the number of stores that we have to investigate.
LG: That would be more efficient than checking all 100 stores. Let's see... ah, one! Dr. Kimishima, there's only one store in that area!
Naomi: Can you search through their sales records?
LG: Hold on... I've accessed the security camera footage from when the shoes were purchased.
Naomi: Good. Run it through your profiling algorithms and search for these parameters. First, her gender: she's female.
LG: What about her age?
This one is a bit of a trick. We don't know, so this one has to be left unknown.
Naomi: We can't say for sure yet.
LG: All right. What about her nationality?
Naomi: We can't say that, either.
LG: What about her height?
Naomi: We predicted her height at 170-180 cm.
LG: Ah, I remember now. Were there any distinguishing features?
Naomi: She has red hair.
LG: I'll start searching, but we don't have any substantial proof that the deliveryperson is the bomber.
Naomi: Right. We have to work off assumptions for now. If we're wrong, we'll learn why we're wrong.
LG: True enough... huh!? We have a hit! Her name's, uh, Sandra Lieberman. She's 30 years old. She lives in Higgins Beach, and bought the shoes with a credit card.
Naomi: Bingo. Send me her address immediately. I'm going to go check for myself. I'll know if it's her if I can see her face.
LG: R-right. Dr. Kimishima, please be careful, alright?
Naomi: *hangs up* He's such a worrier.
All the remaining cards combine into another gold card, and...
This isn't actually over yet, though.
Naomi: I should make sure I'm ready for anything, just in case.
In other words, save.
Next time: We will NOT finish this episode. Instead, we're finishing with CR-S01. That's right, I control time in space in this thread and there's nothing anybody can do to stop me!