Chapter 6: All Clear/New Digs (Part 2)

Tire Nutz Parking Lot
Innocence Boulevard
Strawberry
15 Minutes Later

After being suddenly taken aback by the discovery of a live proximity mine inside the rear door of the LS Paper Company, Detectives Harrison and Xander, as well as Captain Ella Gilligan and the six members of the LSPD Tactical Unit, quickly retreated back across the street to the parking lot of the abandoned Tire Nutz auto shop. Captain Gilligan made her way over to the 24-7 convenience store, where she used the store's phone to call for immediate backup.

Roughly 15 minutes later, members of the Los Santos Police Department's Bomb Squad had arrived and successfully disarmed the proximity mine. They then detonated the device in a controlled disposal chamber for safety reasons.

The head of the squad, Sergeant Charlie Dove, made his way over to the parking lot. Dove was a solid white man in his late forties, dressed in a very bulky dark green anti-explosive vest that covered him from shoulders to feet, his look being rounded out by a tactical helmet that was more or less the same color as his vest.

"The device has been completely disarmed, detonated, and disposed of, Ella" Dove said to Gilligan, "You guys are clear to go inside if you'd like. We'll send all the non-explosive remnants of the device to the lab ASAP."

"Thank you, Charlie" Gilligan replied, "There wasn't anybody inside, was there?"

Sergeant Dove shook his head. "No ma'am", he said, "We cleared the building's interior on all sides. Clear as a bell."

After a confirmatory nod back to Dove, Captain Gilligan turned around to address the two detectives and her Tactical Unit. "Alright then, gentlemen" she began, "Tactical Unit, please remove your gear and set up barricades on either end of this street. This is now an official crime scene."

"If I may ask, Captain" Harrison chimed in, "Will you be our official scene commander here?"

"No sir", Gilligan candidly replied, "You guys started this case, so therefore this is your scene. We'll just be sticking around to help out when and if we can."

Harrison shot a look to Xander before returning his gaze to the captain. "Now that you mention it", he said, "Would it be okay if Officer Michaels went inside with Adam and I to work the scene? We're also going to need your guys' help cordoning off the outside of the building."

Captain Gilligan then turned to Officer Dakota Michaels, the latter of whom was now grinning widely with anticipation. "You heard the man", she said to Michaels, "Remove your gear and get in there with the detectives, Officer. I'll call the Crime Lab and tell them to roll here."

Michaels then proceeded to the rear of the SWAT truck and took a moment to shed himself of his tactical gear before meeting Xander and Harrison at the rear door of the LS Paper Company, which was still partially ajar from before.

The three of them ducked under the open space of the door, which led them into a very dark and dusty-seeming interior. Harrison quickly found a light switch and turned it on, illuminating the entirety of the large room in bright florescent light. The interior of the LS Paper Company was a very large open room that was indeed coated in what was most likely years' worth of accumulated dust and cobwebs. Almost immediately, what stood out to Xander was one particular item that sat in the left-hand corner of the room.

"Hey Troy?" Xander called out

"Yeah, buddy?" Harrison inquired in response

"I think I found the source of all that outdated printer toner that Anna found at the murder scene", he said as he motioned to a very rusted out metal printing press with his gloved hand.

Harrison walked over and took in the sight of the very sizeable albeit decaying machine. "Wow", he said, "Franklin was right. I'm willing to be that ninety percent or more of the newspapers in Los Santos were printed here."

"Hold up a minute", a confused Xander interjected, "Franklin Clinton?"

"Yeah", Harrison replied, "You know him?"

Xander bit his lip with a considerable amount of trepidation before replying. "You can say that", he said, "I arrested him myself eighteen months ago for cocaine possession with intent to distribute."

"No shit?" Harrison asked, "That was you who busted him?"

"Yep", Xander replied, "He was doing a delivery for this South LS dealer named Harold Joseph, known on the street as 'Stretch'. When did you talk to him, anyway?"

"Before you and the Tactical crew showed up", Harrison explained, "Franklin approached me and we shot the breeze for a bit. He gave me some info on this building. My partner and I met Franklin about nine years ago when he was a teenager."

This fleeting moment of awkwardness between the two partners was interrupted when Michaels came over to them and examined the printing press for himself. "Huh", he said, "If the inspection sticker on this thing is accurate, it hasn't been used since January of Nineteen-Ninety-Nine."

"That pretty much aligns with the outdated printer toner that Anna found in that boot print at the crime scene", Harrison added as he observed the floor around him, lifting his right shoe and noticing the aforementioned black toner clinging to the sole. "I mean", he continued, "Look at this stuff. It's everywhere in here."

Harrison then turned around to find a small, twin-size brass bed sitting against an opposite wall. Removing his flashlight from his jacket pocket, he scanned the bed and the immediate area around it. He soon found a grubby and dust-ridden wooden nightstand beside the bed. A glass drug pipe sat atop it, and directly in front of the dirty nightstand sat a large carboard shipping box with its top flaps crudely ripped open.

A metaphorical light bulb then went off in Harrison's head. After donning a fresh pair of blue nitrile exam gloves, he went over to the box and manipulated one of the flaps to the position that it would have been in had it still been closed and sealed. The scrupulous detective's eyes then went wide with curiosity and enthusiasm as the light from his flashlight beam caught sight of three very minute blood drops adhering to the corner of the flap.

"Guys!" he called out, "I've got something over here!"

Xander and Michaels hurried over to Harrison, now just as equally enthused as their colleague. "What's up, Troy?" Michaels inquired.

"Adam?" Harrison asked, "Do you remember how there was next to no blood drops or blood spatter inside Jonah Zebedee's truck?"

"Yeah", Xander replied, "Why?"

Harrison shined his flashlight on the flap once again. "There's a small amount of blood spatter on the flap of this box", he said, "Which tells me that our killer began striking Mister Zebedee from behind as he was reaching for this very package."

Xander and Michaels knelt down on either side next to Harrison, at which point the former shined his own flashlight on the box so they could inspect the box for themselves. "It looks like there's more spatter going down the side here", Xander said, "It's consistent with this box having caught the spatter from the subsequent blows, too."

"I guess it stands to reason, then" Michaels chimed in, "That Mister Zebedee was supposed to deliver this exact package here to this 'Rick Oppenheimer' dude. Let's say that this mysterious 'Rick' is indeed our killer. He gets impatient and decides to track the GQ Postal truck down himself."

"And by plain old dumb luck", Harrison added, "The very truck he's looking for is a block or two over at the Ring of Fire Chili House. Now, he just so happens to catch the ill-fated Mister Zebedee rearranging his cargo in the back of the truck…"

"…So, he whips out a hammer of some kind", Xander commented, "Bashing our victim's head in from behind with three heavy blows, killing him. In the process, the killer unknowingly leaves the blood spatter all over the box, and once his raw adrenaline surge dies down, he steals the box and high-tails his ass back here."

"Huh", a female voice said from behind the three colleagues.

Harrison, Xander and Michaels turned around to see Anna Barakova, dressed in her ever-present LSPD Crime Lab windbreaker, standing just inside the ajar door. She held a small laptop in one hand and her heavy-duty crime scene toolbox kit in the other. "Looks like you guys have it all figured out", Anna sarcastically said, "I think I'll go to lunch."

Harrison smirked. "On the contrary, Miss Anna" he said with a very chivalrous tone in his voice, "You have very good timing. We've got some blood on this box over here and some drug paraphernalia on the nightstand here."

Anna grinned as she walked over, carefully setting her laptop and kit beside her, at which point she booted up the laptop and let it warm up. With a gloved hand, she picked up the glass drug pipe. She waved the airy residual scent from the pipe toward her nose, only to grimace with a sour expression. "'Toilet Cleaner'", she said.

"I take it you don't mean the stuff you can use to unclog your crapper", Harrison remarked.

"No", Anna replied, "'Toilet Cleaner' is the street name for a manmade super amphetamine that broke wide both here in Los Santos and in Blaine County about a year or so ago."

"The shit makes regular crystal meth look like decaf", Michaels said, "We had a barricaded male suspect once who was crazy-high on the stuff. It took three shots with a taser and all six of us to subdue him. The crazy bastard was lucky his heart didn't stop on him beforehand."

"That explains the rage", Harrison replied.

By this point, Anna had successfully managed to dust a very pristine latent fingerprint off the stem of the drug pipe, which she then transferred onto an adhesive print-lifter pad and scanned it into the laptop's fingerprint database access program. Harrison sat down next to her as the program did its searching.

"So", Harrison quietly said to Anna, "If you don't mind me being a bit forward, instead of that lunch, how about dinner sometime?"

A flattered grin then came over the face of the attractive criminalist. "You ever been to the Park Jung Restaurant in Little Seoul?" Anna asked.

Harrison gave a very flattered grin of his own in retort. "No", he said, "But I'm sure I can find it."

"I clock out at seven", Anna replied, "Why don't you meet me there at around seven-thirty and we'll have a late supper."

"Deal", Harrison said.

This tender moment was interrupted by a response from the fingerprint database. "Guys", Anna said, "I've got a match on that print." Xander and Michaels then came over and joined Harrison and Anna in looking at the laptop screen.

"Your suspect is twenty-one-year-old Peter Argus Hephaestus", Anna began explaining, "He's a white male about five-foot-five and weighing about one-hundred-twenty pounds. He has two arrests on his record, one in Two-Thousand-Two for attempted burglary and one in Two-Thousand-Eight for methamphetamine possession. Looks like the District Attorney plead that second one down to a misdemeanor, so he just got three months' probation."

"Last known address?" Michaels asked.

Anna scrolled further down the page. "It looks like the only address he has on file isn't a current one", she replied, "It's the Alpha-Psi-Psi Fraternity house on Americano Way in Richman. On the ULSA campus."

"No way", Harrison said, "That's where the first 'bucket-bomb' attack was. That can't be a coincidence."

Xander rose up back to an upright standing position. "I agree", he said, "I'll put out a citywide bulletin to have Mister Hephaestus brought in for questioning. With 'Toilet Cleaner' coursing through his system, this guy is a whole new threat to this city."

The Wings of Truth Mission
Elgin Avenue
Strawberry
20 Minutes Later

21-year-old Peter Argus Hephaestus hurriedly burst through the front door of the abandoned Wings of Truth Mission. With the police now having raided the LS Paper Company, the young drug addict and fugitive now had no choice but to call this derelict former homeless shelter his temporary home. Peter was a very thin and pale white man with wiry and unkempt brown hair. He lit a small camping lantern that sat atop his makeshift plywood work table, illuminating a large camping stove with three full gasoline cans sitting on either side.

"I'll make them see", he muttered in his perpetually drug-addled state, "I'll make them see…I'll make them know…"