Protagonists#

• Short, Lance - Foreign Service Officer (Γιάννης)
• Miller, Liam (Agent Dave / Jocko) - Naval Special Warfare Group One (SEALs) (Παναγιώτης)
• Agent Artemis - ?????? (Τάσος)
• Bennet, Wendy - Criminal Intelligence Analyst / Assistant Professor of Criminology (Κωνσταντίνα)

Sunday 18th November 2018 - Weekend Investigations#

Working Group Masticate activities revolve around phone calls and surveillance.

Phone Calls#

Agent Artemis, under the guise of “Mary Crouch”, calls Nelinha Esteves and attempts to extract information from her. When Jaz Ihejirika is mentioned, Nelinja tells her to “Tell Marlin to go to hell” and then hangs up.

Agent Jocko sends a message to Pitzerelli, expressing his concerns about Agent Artemis. He suspects she might be a double agent, as she seems to create more issues than she resolves.

Agent Locke updates Pitzerelli on the case, assuring her he’s working to shield them from superiors who see them as expendable. He commits to supporting them and emphasizes that Agent Artemis is an important asset to Working Group Masticate.

Covert Surveillance#

Agent Jocko secretly follows Deputy Julian Sainz from SSSW throughout the day and uncovers the following details:

• He mostly sits around.
• Instead of patrolling, he spends time chatting with LASD officers or visiting other stations.
• He works day shift despite guys twice his age pulling nights.
• He is the most spoiled young deputy he’s ever seen.
• He lives in La Puente.
• His parents’ home is in Lancaster.
• Fiancée: Kathy Amon.
• Girlfriend: Encarna Araujo.

Retracing Steps#

Agents Artemis, Locke, and Myra spend the day gathering and reviewing footage from cameras that tracked Ihejirika’s movements the night before he died. The team couldn’t access the bank’s ATM footage on Sunday, but later that night, Agent Locke hacked the ATM and retrieved the footage.

• Quickstop, a 24-hour convenience store nearby, was Ihejirika’s sole stop that night. Surveillance footage captured the victim purchasing cigarettes and then heading northbound.
• A hooded man in a Golden State Warriors hoodie followed up the street after.
• A block north, a bus-stop CCTV recorded Ihejirika pass. The hooded man tailed him, a dozen steps behind.
• The stalker clenched a gloved fist for a moment before putting it back in his pocket. A flash of wrist indicated him being a white man. Besides his being roughly six feet tall, skin was the only feature visible.
• The ATM with a camera facing across Sutra Street, showed Ihejirika walking past. Right before exiting the frame, he seemed to notice the man shadowing his steps and looked behind him. The stalker pulled something from his pocket and stabbed Ihejirika in the back, which takes both men out of view.

Interviewing the 17-year-old Sutra Sandwich employee Hugh Sun, the agents acquire the original recording from the sandwich shop on his laptop. It goes on for much longer than the upload to YouTube.

After paramedics declare the victim dead, Deputy Julian Sainz gathers up a phone, wallet, and keys from the victim’s pockets.

Monday 19th November 2018 - Weekday Investigations#

Agent Myra finds information on “The Southside Tiger”.

The Southside Tiger Timeline#

• 27 NOV 2003 - Franklin Dyer is expelled from Miskatonic University after a single semester for nonpayment of tuition. His application listed parents with fake Social Security numbers; their listed address is a vacant lot in North Carolina, uninhabited since before the 1920s.
• 17 APR 2013 - Franklin Dyer purchases the house at 4261 Third Avenue. He pays a lump sum transferred from a long-closed Montenegrin bank account.
• 10 JAN 2014 - Franklin Dyer finds his first victim, Levar White, prostituting himself on skid row. The 16-year-old is found dead two weeks later, covered in deep fingernail gouges all over the chest and arms. Tongue and teeth were removed pre-mortem, fingers post. He died from exsanguination and suffocation.
• 14 APR 2014 - A victim matching Levar White’s pathology is found in an Anaheim dumpster: female, late thirties, tongue removed pre-mortem, mouth carefully sewn shut. Signs of restraint on the wrists and legs. Cause of death: cranial trauma to the back of the skull. Authorities have yet to positively identify the body.
• 27 JAN 2015 - Kelly Ann McMillin, age 29, is reported missing by fellow wait staff from Terry’s Truck Stop outside Llano. She got in her car with a hooded customer and never returned from break. Her vehicle is found at a hiking trail off Mt. San Antonio three weeks later, McMillin stuffed in the trunk. Her injuries were similar to other victims, plus swollen and necrotic wounds on the veins of both arms from multiple puncture marks. She died of dehydration. Reporters and social media threads first notice the case.
• 13 DEC 2016 - Dyer’s fourth victim—Edvard Panossian (age 41)—is found stuffed down a manhole in Compton. Panossian was reported missing on his way to work a month earlier. The body is fresh enough to indicate long captivity. Fingers were removed premortem along with the tongue, and the mouth sewn shut. Restraints left bruises across each appendage. Fingernail gouging was limited to the eyes. Cause of death was malnutrition. The press christens the killer “the Southside Tiger.” National media coverage begins. The FBI convenes a task force.
• 13 JAN 2017 - Rosario Clements (age 23) is dragged into a car at 3 a.m. from a bar outside the University of San Diego. Witnesses were unable to identify the man in the dark or see plate numbers, but an anonymous tip puts a vehicle of similar description in the vicinity of 4261 Third Avenue.
• 15 JAN 2017 - An LAPD officer running plates in the neighborhood to look for Rosario Clements’s vehicle spots Edvard Panossian’s car sticking out of Franklin Dyer’s backyard garage. With hostages likely, a warrant and urgent tactical response are prepared. Sheriff’s Station Southwest is tasked with tactical response.
• 16 JAN 2017 - The Tactical Narcotics Unit “Slug Squad” executes a no-knock warrant on the Dyer residence. Dyer flees to the basement. He slits the throat of an unidentified white male captive. He’s shot dead while fatally bludgeoning Rosario Clements.
• 20 JAN 2017 - The Southside Tiger murder cases are closed, blamed on Franklin Dyer based on evidence collected from the raid.

Bast’s Synchronicity#

Agent Jocko locates Ethan Spicer and figures out what happened.

• The message originated from Ethan Spicer of the L.A. Bureau of Street Services.
• It was meant for a street sweeper named Liam Muller who works the Sutra Avenue route.
• Spicer, tired and having seen a disturbing video, looked up his coworker’s number but mistyped it.
• Recent reprimands about radio chatter pushed him to text instead of calling.
• The mistaken search led him to send the message to Liam Miller by accident.
• The transcription error. The search engine. The lives of the two street sweepers. The dead man. The Agent’s very name: All converge to form the interlocked bars of inescapable fate of the Teeth.

Revisiting the Dondry House#

Agent Locke, operating undercover, visits the Dondry House. She successfully gains entry and inspects the apartment while the tenant is present; however, she is unable to persuade the manager of her cover story.

Nelinha Esteves#

Agents Artemis and Lance travel north of Los Angeles to meet Nelinha Esteves, who operates from an office rented by El Puente de la Esperanza—“The Bridge of Hope”—an immigration defense nonprofit offering legal support for asylum and naturalization cases.

Once convinced of the agents’ intentions, Nelinha allows them inside. She makes it clear that all conversations are being recorded on both video and audio before sharing the following information:

• She represented a woman in immigration court who was the aunt of the youngest child killed at Dondry Daycare. The families filed a civil suit against the LASD, LAPD, and City of Los Angeles. Esteves volunteered her legal services.
• Shares the history of deputy gangs in L.A. and tells them about the structure of the Slugs.
• She suspects Lt. Marlin is the leader of the whole clique and that his “four-man death squad” on the Tactical Narcotics Unit are enforcers.
• Esteves heard rumors that Capt. Dieffenbach insisted on taking Slug Squad out on a “trial run,” replacing LAPD SWAT at the last minute. They went in half-cocked, ignoring procedure.
• Esteves willingly cites her sources, since now they’re all dead.
  • Annice Walker, Died 7 MAY 2017
  • William Tavilin, Died 1 OCT 2017
  • Elizabeth Ray, Died 18 FEB 2018
• She is certain Jaz Ihejirikam was murdered by the Slugs.
  • She was supposed to meet with him the next morning. She visited his apartment when he didn’t show. She heard rumors of an overdose in the neighborhood and watched the video before it was taken down. She tried to identify the body at the morgue but retreated under scrutiny from the receptionist.
• She’s done risking her life over this and plans to return to Texas. The lawsuit has fallen apart. She fears pursuing the case further can only get more people killed. She already suggested her clients get out of town
• She’s only still there to box up materials.

Canvassing Witnesses#

Agent Locke spends hours talking to uploaders (Andrew Baswell, Max Nestorowich, Nick Robertson, Dan Smith, Kayla Reeves) present at Ihejirika’s death scene. By the end of day, she pieces together the following, based on cross-referencing their remarkably consistent accounts:

They heard a car alarm. A man was in distress. Then things got worse. They were either pushed down trying to help, distracted dialing 911, or retching. Some ran. Most stayed and were questioned by deputies. The deputies said PCP overdoses could cause what happened. They took some pictures as paramedics loaded the body into an ambulance, then left.

Every witness described a consistent smell of feces around the victim. Most who mention it attribute the stench to city sewers or death, but three of them mention hints of cinnamon and peroxide, unbidden. Asking about that smell jog the memory of any witness. Everyone remembers a faint, sweet, chemical note beneath the smell of shit.