Protagonists
- Short, Lance - Foreign Service Officer (Γιάννης)
- Miller, Liam (Agent Dave / Jocko) - Naval Special Warfare Group One (SEALs) (Παναγιώτης)
- Lensing, Emma - Professor of Philology (Τάσος)
- Bennet, Wendy - Criminal Intelligence Analyst / Assistant Professor of Criminology (Κωνσταντίνα)
Investigations - Denver, Colorado, Tuesday, 10 OCT 2017
Agent Locke contacts Suzan Carmichael via phone. She claims to have lost her purse while visiting relatives on a weekend trip to Denver. She has since cancelled her credit cards and ordered a new driver’s license and insists the police need not bother returning her property. After pressing for more information, she provides details of the assailant that match Reznik.
Agent Myra goes through his contacts and law knowledge databases to figure out a way to gain permission for an inspection of Avalon Gardens LLC premises.
Denver Greens Dispensary
The group visits Denver Greens Dispensary where Suzan Carmichael purchased Guini-verve Cherry vapes cartridges.
A young employee named Norah, shows them around and lets them know that Denver Greens buys cartridges wholesale from Avalon Gardens LLC. The marketing materials for Guini-verve Cherry and related products promise strong, high-quality vape. Avalon Gardens smokers tend to abandon other products. Its potency resets tolerance well above the norm.
The purchased 2 cartridges. One from Avalon Gardens and a chilly flavoured one from Flower Prime, Inc.
Public Opinion
Agent Jocko talked to two strangers regarding Avalon Gardens, products and reputation:
- Ashlee, teenager waiting for the bus:
- “Oh my god, last year, remember when that junior at school—what was his name—Tavish or whatever? Yeah, he smoked a bunch of that stuff and drove his mom’s minivan through the windows of the school cafeteria. Almost killed everyone eating breakfast. No cap. Like, he ran over my English teacher. For real. She didn’t die, but we had subs the rest of the year. Kid acting like he was on bath salts or something.”
- Brandon, CSU Denver student
- “Avalon Strong! Yoooo, I know what you’re talking about. Me and all the guys love Dakota’s videos. I think hiswhole message about how, you know, it’s natural to want things, and forgiving yourself for wanting things…I just think it’s a real powerful content, you know?”
Brandon was carrying the Scent.
Informing the Handler
The agents sit at a nearby coffee shop to discuss.
Agent Nikita calls Pitzerelli and asks him to allow them to talk to the Friendly who brought forth the incident at the prison facility. Pitzerelli declines.
Further Investigations
Agent Locke enables alerts for prison events in Google, so that they get notified of anything that might come up at Denver County Jail.
Agent Myra realizes that the only way to get the agents into Avalon Gardens LLC is as members of the state’s Marijuana Enforcement Division. He gathers all the necessary credentials and paperwork and schedules an inspection for Wednesday, October 11th, 2017.
Agents Jocko and Nikita drive south to the Colorado State Penitentiary to find more information on Reznik during his imprisonment at the facilities from 2011 to 2017. Unfortunately, they weren’t very convincing.
Knights of Avalon Gardens
Looking deeper into Avalon Gardens, the agents find out that the company employees 36 members:
- 16 budtenders
- 10 cultivators
- 6 technicians
- 4 high level personnel:
- Bill Knight
- Dakota Knight
- Reza Houshian
- John Bellamy
Agent Locke performs a cursory investigation on Bill Knight and Reza Houshian, but she hacks into Dakota Knight cloud storage files and discover disturbing information.
Agent Jocko finds information on John Bellamy.
John Bellamy
Age 41. Director of security at Valley Dirtlands and CEO of Instant Deterrent Security since 2010. A nearly non-existent digital footprint on social media. Served one tour with the Marines before being injured in Fallujah. Honorably discharged in 2005. Divorced from Lindsey Bellamy in 2009. She retains custody of their children, Max and Samantha. Bellamy has lived at the same low-rent apartment complex in Greeley since 2010
In addition to suffering a perforated lung in Fallujah and nearly dying from infection, Bellamy came home from the war with severe PTSD. Psychological records report struggles with alcohol and domestic violence. Additional information can be found through other means.
Reza Houshian
Age 46. Director of processing at Avalon Gardens. The third son of Saudi immigrants. Earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from UCLA in 1999. Worked as a lab technician and certified chemical engineer at Ecolab’s wastewater and chemical contaminants division for nearly twenty years. A brief smattering of promising academic publications in the early 2000s. His income tax bracket moved up three steps when he came to Avalon Gardens in 2014. He has a wife, Samina, and two daughters, Shazi (21) and Sham (16).
Additional information can be found through other means.
Bill Knight
Age 61. 5’11”. CEO of Knight Chevrolet founded 1979. Issued 3,111 new and used vehicle titles last year alone. Dealerships in Denver, Fort Collins, Lafayette, and Aurora. Sits on the board of directors of “CO-operation for Colorado,” a political action committee responsible for $5.5 million in contributions to Colorado state politics since 2010. Divorced twice, widowed once, currently single. Lives in a mansion at 1 Grouse Drive in Weldona, near the Jackson Reservoir, about 100 kilometers from Fort Collins.
Additional information can be found through other means.
Dakota Knight
Age 37. 5’10”. CEO of Avalon Gardens. Former CEO of Excalibur Solutions LLC (2012–2014). Former manager of Knight Chevrolet corporate offices, his first job out of college in 2004. A late-comer in the marijuana business with a specialization in high-potency distillate products. Extremely active on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. His content mostly consists of lumber-chic vacation photos in the mountains, workout videos overlayed with investment advice text, and staged photos with beautiful women and expensive vehicles. All these accounts promote Avalon Gardens’ products. “Live like a King. Live @AvalonStrong.”
Knight runs a dozen social media accounts with fake names, photos, ages, and emails. The contact numbers used to register the accounts are all traced back to pre-paid burner phones. These numbers also appear in the DMs of the @AvalonStrong accounts. Knight frequently urges fans to “call the Avalon Gardens social media manager for special offers!” That always means one of his false identities. Over the last two years, he’s sent hundreds of these messages to fans of his company or persona. He uses the same phone numbers on dating apps when reaching out to potential partners of all orientations.
Investigating individuals who contacted Knight’s spoofed accounts and burner phones, confirm their identities. Six (Shana Edwards, Benjamin Molnar, Cutter Lambert, Lola Delahoz, Taylyn Freeman, and Lyle Carter) have been listed as missing from Colorado cities in the last 18 months. In every instance, Dakota Knight replied no more than a week before the last date the victim was reported seen. In three instances, the messages were sent the same day. Local authorities have no idea if the crimes are related.
A note in Knight’s cloud storage is enticingly titled “kill code,” a username password for the security camera network at Valley Dirtlands.
Night Shift in Denver
Agents Locke and Nikita crack the password (Cum@l0+) to Dakota Knight’s journal he kept updated for years. It spans from 2013 up to 2017.
They start analyzing its contents from 2014 and 2015 and attempt to summarize the events.
They discover disturbing information on “Yerba al Cubo” as well as on Dakota’s murders and disposal of bodies within the hydroponics of Growhouse A and B at Valley Dirtlands Cultivation Site.
Night Shift in Greeley
Agents Jocko and Myra drive north to Greeley and stake out Dr. Houshian’s house.
21:00 – There are lights turned in the house.
22:00 – Houshian arrives at his house.
00:30 – The lights go out. The agents decide to leave.
As they drive away, they notice a black armored vehicle following them.