Downtown Rocked by Car Bombing. [Attn all]

[Ulv]

Cutter sat on the curb just across from where parts of two charred bodies remained in a burned out car. You couldn't make out what kind of car it was - it was hard enough making out body parts - but Rex had tried. He's sitting with his left hand bandaged from being burnt and his right rubbing the back of his neck. The arson investigator was asking the same questions and Rex was giving the same answers. He saw nothing. Heard nothing. He was only a few blocks away when he heard the explosion and called it in. He was pretty sure the parties inside the vehicle were dead when he got there, but that's just a guess. He tried to open the door any way and received a burnt hand for his efforts.

"Coroner will get with you on IDs."

Rex nodded. He sat on the curb watching the clean up for a little while longer before he left to return to the station.

"I'm going to be late.." Their conversations always started like that lately. Rex would be sitting at his desk, looking at the picture of his wife and three kids, phone pushed against his ear. More often than not they would end with an argument or tears or statements like I can't do this any more Rex. He'd say good night to his kids and before he could do the same with his wife, the phone line would be dead.

The night of the explosion, just after his wife hung up on him again, Cutter picked up the Resendez file and frowned at it. He meant to talk to that bounty hunter about this guy. Shit. He didn't get her number. This train of thought leads to moments before two people were blown to bits in a car near Downtown. It brings his near perfect recall memory to Kingsmith and Jade. He didn't have her last name, but he had the old mans.

Detective Cutter checks every information database available to him for Kragen Kingsmith and Laurel Hensley. He'll check warrants, arrest records, public records and state and federal databases that he has access too. It also trips his eidetic memory to the cell phone the man had on the table.

He's going on 43 hours of no sleep and lines are blurring. Leaning back against the creaking protest of his chair he links his fingers together at the crown of his head.

Thinking and resting his eyes.

(Joey / Samael / Shayla, Cutter is looking into Kingsmith and Laurel, he has access to most police / public info database given his line of work. He's just looking for anything on them - last known address, arrest records, any vehicle registrations...anything at all. Also he will be investigating the explosion in downtown as well. Many thanks to you all!)

[errin]

[hijacking!]

It may or may not be of use, but, well, Jade doesn't know about the detective's perfect recall. She doesn't know that he also noticed the device that Kragen Kingsmith was messing with.

All she knows is that a concerned citizen should absolutely alert the police when they notice suspicious activity just before an explosion. If you see something, say something, right?

Particularly to the detective you saw who could be connected to your new best bail bondswoman friend. And Jade is all about making as many connections as she can in Denver.

When the tip comes through, she asks to be directed to Cutter. Won't talk to anyone else, hm mm, no way.

"Mr. Cutter oh thank goodness," she says when she gets patched through. "This is Jade, Laurel Hensley's friend? Listen, I don't know if you noticed, but that man, Kragen Kingsmith, he had some kind of phone. But it like, it wasn't really a phone? I thought he got a message on it, but it was just like, numbers. It looked like a weight and a distance. In metric, I don't know if that helps, but you never know." She is helpful, see? She will even leave him with a phone number where she can be reached, a number to a penthouse in the Magnolia Hotel.

[Shayla]

The saturday news was awash with the report.

Death Downtown!

The Denver City Bombing!

Car Bomb Massacre!

The studios and the feeds always did this, sensationalize, depersonalize, make it snappy, make it news. But the hard facts remain amongst the bustle of graphics and the myriad of professional opinions and eye witness accounts. Early friday night outside of the downtown restaurant, The Fern two individuals lost their lives after entering their car after leaving the restaurant. After driving a short distance the car was destroyed with explosive force killing the two individuals and wounding several innocent bystanders.

The names of the two deceased have not yet been released due to the requirements of the ongoing police investigation, sources claim that the perpetrators of this act could be anyone from Al Qaeda to Colorado separatists. But so far no official claim has been made by any party. The police have stated that no arrests have been made and that all suspects are being investigated. More of course will come, as the story develops.

-----------------------------------------------

The tragedy in the human world is one thing all together, but through the mirror darkly it is an entirely different thing for the vampires of the city. The two individuals were known to the members of the Fern, one of the proscribed 'feeding area's' of the cities Camarilla members. It was two ghouls who lost their lives in that blast, two servants of the Camarilla and its ideals.

Questions are raised, opinions tossed here and there like so much blood soaked confetti. Has the war, silent and cold for the last several months suddenly become hot once more? Is this a prelude to a Sabbat assault? Or is this a bold and bloody move between elders, or the upper and the lower clans?

Have hunters come to the city? Were they targeted specifically, or, more unlikely were they simply the random target of some lunatic? Regardless on what side the kindred sit on the great divide, tensions begin to rise, voices have become hushed as they await the word of the elders, of the councils.

Some say, the storm is coming. But despite all of the talk, so few answers have been brought forth.

[jamie]

[OOC: Calling dibs on having Nathan be one of the Denver Post assholes handing this story.]

[Joey]

The long winter season may have been a cold one, but the war has not up unto this point been especially so. One could try telling that to Narcisa the Sheriff or Gui the enforcer of the Sabbat's more martial pack, but they would probably be too busy washing the blood off their hands to laugh. The same could be said of the vampires left for the sun or with their souls ripped from their bodies. They're otherwise occupied being the fallout of this war.

Otherwise occupied. It's a good phrase to describe the neonates, ancillae, and elders of either Sect in a city under siege. Otherwise occupied holding on to what they've got or holding on to what they've gained in the particularly notable flare-ups. They're a self-interested bunch, Kindred (individual and in coteries) or Cainite packs, but they get on with their unlives because they must.

* * *

This is very different from the nightly skirmishes in the street, so easily peddled to the news agencies as gang violence or psychotic breaks. This isn't some freak act and it isn't insulated to the areas of lower-socioeconomic-giving-a-fuck.

This was purposeful and skillful and unconcerned with the value of human life.

In any case someone had decided to affix an undisclosed (pending investigation) amount of remotely detonated explosive on the underside of a car. That had gotten the attention of local and federal law enforcement.

* * *

In any case someone had decided to do away with the prized errand boy and girl of one Jasper Durant, Toreador ancilla. Jack and Jill might as well be good names for them as they were out fetching pails of blood from The Fern. The Fern, sanctioned feeding ground of the Camarilla's posher high clan licks, was left shut down that night when the Kindred need waystations like it to stay in the red and keep their heads down. It had happened just down the street from all those high rises that one Ventrue had acquired before she'd gone off on some other directive from her Strategos.

The Camarilla takes notice and turns their eye on the only possible culprit: the Sabbat.

It's the cost of doing business, this sort of thing, and so is the ensuing retaliation.

* * *

Makeshift electrical wiring leads to a blaze in a building off Federal leaving five squatters dead. It's actually a pack of shovelheads and their two True Sabbat handlers, but if the Camarilla PR machine is already up out of bed and pulling strings what's one more atrocity swept under the rug?

Police raid a house off Colfax linked to a Brazilian gang making a move in the area and recover a sizable stash of illegal firearms. Gui will not be pleased with this.

Police are out and about on street corners, the city shelling out for overtime while some are canvassing for eyewitness reports and others units make shows of force in primarily Sabbat neighborhood.

Those more discreet Sabbat are out and about uptown, knowing there will be a blood shortage as people stay in their homes, trying to track uncontrollably peckish Camarilla Kindred back to their havens with plans to drop in unannounced.

[Ulv]

Rex won't have anything to do with the arson / fire investigation only so much as it relates to the murder investigation of the two people dead inside the car - which he will be taking on. He's also checking into Kragen and Laurel as posted in this http://forums.woddenver.com/showthread.php?tid=612 threads.

many thanks

[Joey]

[ Ulv and Jamie, I need to grab you for more rolls regarding your PCs' investigations into the explosion.

The two threads started by Ulv and Shayla regarding this event have been merged in order to consolidate the information in one place. This can also be considered to reflect the timeline regarding events:

1) The explosion takes place on the evening of April 4th at approximately 10 PM on the corner of East 13th Ave and Lincoln Street.

2) Rex arrives on scene and begins to put together the pieces of evidence at his disposal. Concurrently preliminary news reports begin to broadcast regarding the event. (Outside of social media. That kind of word of mouth is pretty instant.)

3) Jade calls Rex with a tip on a possible suspect only a couple hours later that night.

4) Nathan begins his research into the event.

5) The investigation gains federal traction.

6) Later that night and into the early hours of the following morning the Camarilla strikes back against Sabbat interests. ]

[Joey]

Nathan is not the most talented reporter on the Denver Post's staff. He is not the most intelligent or the most worldly or the most connected either. If one thing can be said for him, though, he's like a dog with a bone. A little terrier, maybe, but that means he can squirm himself into those places he shouldn't be able to get. And he seems to be squirming toward that coveted front page, with the likes of political reporters and feature writers and those with far more prestigious beats that aren't filling the police blotter, talking to veterans, or looking into other things that end up deep behind the fold and forgotten.

Only one of his contacts will answer his call. That prosecutor he met one day at an event for young veterans (reintegration is key) is staying tight lipped about the investigation, but there's another place where everyone knows his name, or at least his drink, and Vincent owns that place. Lips are loosened up a Vincent's (yes, that's the name). It's the kind of place people go to calm their nerves after an explosion rocks their neighborhood, and one of those gentlemen works at a company that installs and maintains security systems for different buildings downtown.

It seems federal investigators have (predictably) subpoenaed all of the footage from their closed circuit security cameras: ATMs, lobby surveillance, and pretty much everything facing the streets or sidewalks along a certain route near the explosion.

The path leads away from the Denver Art Museum and the Civic Center, just near the Colorado State Capitol building, heading east on 13th Ave from Lincoln Street, south on Downing, before the trail begins to cool off and the investigation again becomes scattershot. It picks back up near Cheesman Park.

Carole drops word to Nathan that for the past two days an FBI forensics team has been carting off evidence from the scene of the explosion to their Denver field office. The explosion happened only blocks away from the Capitol, in the city's bustling downtown arts center, and there is no shortage of jockeying and browbeating for the case between local and federal agencies, with the Colorado State Patrol and Denver Police Department both demanding information on leads. The effort only becomes coordinated when a special agent and former Denver police detective, Brendan Cahill, is put in charge and begins working directly with acting police chief Deborah Vox. The two had a working relationship before Brendan was recruited by the FBI, Deborah having been his supervisor.

Carole is privy to certain information through a personal relationship with one of Vox's assistants. The pair (the victims now identified as Jacques and Gillian Lescot) were leaving a gala hosted at the Botanical Gardens, lit up bright with grand white tents full of music if the Arts & Entertainment section has anything to say about it, then stopped home for an hour before heading out for a late dinner at a pricey restaurant followed by their trip to The Fern.

Press conferences have so far discounted theories that the act was part of a foreign terrorist threat, though domestic roots haven't been ruled out, and FBI agents have been canvassing for leads on a person of interest thought to still be within Denver. Routes in and out of the city are being monitored and sporadic road blocks at major and minor thoroughfares are in place. There are bomb sniffing dogs at most major airports and train stations, as well as as many of these roadblocks, especially those near government buildings.

Hours later Nathan receives another call from Carole. The forensics investigation is still in progress, but the ATF was called in, and another of her friends higher up in the food chain who often liaises with that that agency says that they seem to have a match on the ordinance and style of explosive material used in the bomb. They're tracking it back to bombings in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Chicago. All cities were the victims of altercations in which private military contractors were used to guard highly secured facilities or in the movement of high value personnel for corporations. In all of these situations clashes arose that involved military grade weaponry and ordinance.

It seems these investigations all led back to a private military contractor known as Dogwood. Though nothing more than circumstantial evidence was ever able to pin wrongdoing and violence back on the mercenaries, recognized by the Department of Justice as private military contractors working on American soil as well as overseas, there is no shortage of hearsay and soft intelligence on them.

The next morning Nathan may decide that visiting the scene of the crime and trying to dig up information on who the police are canvassing for is a good idea.

It's at this point he hears a description of a man fitting a certain pyromaniac's description, from a police officer patrolling the area, though no name seems to yet have been identified for the suspect.

There is a coffee shop nearby where one of the waitresses seems very nervous and is talking to an FBI special agent and his partner. Or at least that's what her coworker says. Nathan is just in time to see her being driven off in one of their government issue SUVs.

Another officer refers Nathan to a Denver Police Department detective, one Rex Cutter, hoping that the local boys in blue might get some coverage now that the State Patrol and the feds are turning their city into a circus. It's in the middle of the conversation that he's radioed off to deal with one of Denver's hundred other problems.

[jamie]

friday, 4 april 2014

"How in the hell did you pick this up before Bachman did?"

Nathan was sitting in his father's kitchen with his laptop and a slew of papers taking up a corner of the island countertop. Not even 24 hours had passed since he showed up at the old man's townhouse scared out of his fucking mind and even though he would have been able to accomplish more from the bullpen back at the Post offices he still wasn't convinced someone or something wasn't going to let itself in through a window when he wasn't paying attention.

The two symptoms that distinguish paranoid schizophrenia from other subtypes are auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions. Hearing voices belonging to dead people and believing a shadowy undead creature could come after your family would certainly qualify if Nathan were to speak to a psychiatrist. But Nathan isn't speaking to a psychiatrist and he doesn't intend to. Ghosts and vampires won't go away just because he starts swallowing pills and attending psychotherapy.

His editor was having trouble comprehending how he managed to get on the Fern bombing before anyone else did. It had fallen within his coverage area but the kid had only ever reported on shootings and break-ins. This was a whole other league.

"Bachman's out of town," Nate said.
"What? When did that happen?"
"He said he was going to a concert, I don't know. I wasn't really listening."
"Kid, this isn't the blotter we're talking about here, or one of your little veteran fluff pieces. It's going on the front page. People are going to read it."
"Yeah. I know."
"You're going to have to talk to the FBI."
"Yeah."
"You drop the ball on this--"
"I know."

Nathan's editor didn't like him. He hadn't ever liked him. This wasn't a secret. But thus far other than a couple of hospitalizations that took him off the beat he hadn't done anything that would warrant a firing. The 27-year-old ex-Marine had only been on staff a year and if he had any promise in him he hadn't shown it yet.

If he dropped the ball on this he was getting shuttled over to local news where he could cover art walks and animal shelter adoptions until a second chance presented itself. He had more to lose than his editor did and they both knew it.

"Alright," said his editor. "I sure as hell hope you're awake. You've got two hours to get a draft in."
"Yes, sir."

monday, 7 april 2014

Between the fact that the headline and the article beneath it had gone on Saturday's front page and the fact that no one had read anything by this Marszalek person before by the time the weekend passed Nathan had hardly slept for the constant ringing of his phone. All of the leads he was chasing down calling him back.

It wasn't Pulitzer Prize material but Nathan had written an article that not only managed to be informative and impartial but gripping. Devoid of speculation or sensationalization. Even his editor hadn't been able to find anything in the finished product worth criticizing. But it was Monday morning and the middle-aged newspaperman had been chewing antacids all weekend. The air in the breaking news bullpen was ripe with stale sweat and cigarette smoke.

"MARSZALEK."

The shout came from the editor's door. No one stopped what they were doing. Everyone was used to the guy bellowing for whoever it was he wanted without getting up from his desk. Just an hour ago he had shouted for one of the veteran breaking news guys to get his ass in there and explain a phone call he'd just received. So Nate was prepared for a reaming when he pushed back from his desk and walked down the aisle to his editor's doorway.

"Yes, sir?" he asked.
"Get your ass in here." Nathan got his ass in there. "And close the door."

After he closed the door the reporter stood at attention before his editor's desk. The Monday edition of the Denver Post sat on his desk. The bombing coverage was still dominating the front page and the headline had morphed over the weekend. What started out as Explosion Downtown Kills 2 has become Fatal Car Bombing Now a 'Potential Terrorist Investigation'.

"Did you write this yourself?" his editor asked.
"Yeah?" he said.
"You wrote this yourself."
"Yes, sir."
"What the fuck. It takes something blowing up for you to show me you know how to write about something other than missing homeless people?"

Nathan lifted his eyebrows.

"I want you to keep following up on this," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"And while you're--"

Despite the fact that it made him look like more of a dork than he already looked Nate wore his work cellphone clipped to his belt. If he survives another year this may be the moment when he decided he was going to marry Carole Klein. The phone started to ring and he glanced down to see it was a landline coming from the Denver Police Department and excused himself from the room to his editor eye-rolling consternation.

"Nathan Marszalek," he said.
"Hi," said Carole. "It's Officer Klein."
"... hey. What's--?"
"I heard you were covering the car bombing."
"That... yeah."
"Look, I'm really sorry I haven't called, it's just been--"
"It's--"
"What?" she asked.

Out in the bullpen again it was difficult to hear her so he plugged one ear and walked out of the space. Ducked into the stairwell. In terms of temperature and acoustics it was like standing at the bottom of a mine but he was alone at least.

"Sorry, go ahead," Nate said.
"Oh. Well I just thought you'd want to know that the Feds are on it now. You know Deborah Vox?"
"Yeah?"
"Her assistant used to babysit for me."
"Is that information off the record, or...?"

She laughed.

"You're not funny," Carole said.
"What about Deborah Vox?"
"This part is off the record."
"Well I mean you're calling me on my work phone."
"So?"
"So anything you say on the work phone is part of the record."
"Well..."
"Maybe we should go get lunch or something."
"Oh, great, so you can record me with one of your little reporter-spy tape recorder gadgets."
"Is that a yes?"
"You know there's going to be a press conference at four o'clock, right?"
"No, I didn't get the memo."

Even over the phone he could hear her glower at him.

"Meet me afterwards and we can talk. If you're going to be an asshole and put what I say in the paper can you at least not name me as your source?"
"That would look pretty bad, don't you think?"
"Well, I mean..."

He waited.

"I figured you don't have to deal with a lot of high-profile... things... usually... I'm sorry, Nate, I'm an asshole."
"So you're gonna buy me a drink to make up for it."

Carole laughed and said, "Meet up with me after the press conference. I'll call you if I hear anything else."

Hours later he was throwing an empty Coke can at Doherty the sports writer when his phone rang again. The conversation lasted only a few minutes but in that amount of time Carole gave him one word that made him lean back in his chair. Nothing like having one's borderline-paranoid hunch proven right to make one feel as if the floor has just dropped out from underneath him.

"I don't know who ATF is looking into," Carole said. "No one I've ever heard of. I think they're called..." Rustling of pages. "Dogwood?"

[Joey]

The fallout has been raining down on Denver since the blast, repercussions intended and not, and eventualities planned for rearing their heads in unexpected ways. The worldly and cliche say expect the unexpected, but there's only so many ways you can hedge your bets before you've parlayed yourself into a corner.

Here are the odds. Who they favor? Depends on what side you're putting your money on.

The interested parties, those privy to certain facts of the investigation through direct or indirect means, may find it especially surprising that there's still only the vaguest police sketch of a man – a wiry coyote of a man with devilish facial hair and a shifty gaze that speaks of either mischief or madness, both with a dangerous need for destruction – that circulates on the news outlets and around law enforcement circles on the all points bulletin.

It's what doesn't come that is disconcerting.

A hard photograph of the man seems to never surface. The surveillance video released always seems to show him at a hard angled profile or from behind.

A name for the bomber never worms its way from the pile of information still being sorted through. Those who have made certain calls and filed certain briefings with superiors may find this fact surprising. Nathan will find his contacts surprisingly mum about the identity of the suspect. Those higher up in the food chain have task forces working on discerning his whereabouts and securing his apprehension. Even the suspect may find this surprising.

Only Dogwood makes its way into the papers, and even then it's as group he may or may not be affiliated with. They are portrayed with the colored sort of history that thrilling action films and Soldier of Fortune articles are cut from.

And so the world slowly begins to move on and the people that populate it continue to look over their shoulders, jumping at misfiring cars and gazing suspiciously at every hooded figure with a bag or cell phone.