Protagonists#

• Short, Lance - Agent Myra - Foreign Service Officer (John)
• Tucker, Jamal - Agent Sentinel - U.S. Secret Service - Personal Protective Detail Division (Panagiotis)
• Veronica Mare - Agent Artemis - Professor of Anthropology (Tasos)
• Bennet, Wendy - Agent Locke - Criminal Intelligence Analyst / Assistant Professor of Criminology (Konstantina)
• Coniglio, Heath - Agent Blacktail - FBI Intelligence Case Officer (Istvan)

Personal Pursuits & Home Scenes#

Activities between November 25th, 2018, and October 21st, 2019#

• Wendy Bennett
  • Getting Back to Nature: Manages to recover just a fraction of her sanity, which caused her a lot of distress.
• Lance Short
  • Stay on the Case: His recent frustration that came up after his wife almost lost her life, was detrimental to his attempts to discover who was and is behind LASD’s gangs.
• Veronica Mare
  • Improve Skills or Stats: Managed to improve her physique but her dodging abilities are still not honed.

The Briefing – Monday, October 21st, 2019 – Ithaca, New York#

A nondescript dinner, booked between 9am and 10am is the meeting spot for Working Group Masticate.

Agents Locke, Myra and Artemis, along with a couple of new members: Agents Blacktail and Sentinel.

Anthony Pitzerelli fills them in on the case:

• The Shooting
  • Last week, Bradley McKay walked into the Delta Phi Epsilon sorority house with an assault rifle, killed three women, and fled.
    • Kelsey Valentine
    • Sindra Yeung
    • Despi Spanou
  • Campus police officer Wilhelmina Duff found the shooter fleeing on foot and shot him when he raised his rifle to fire.
  • City police closed the investigation quickly, as McKay was identified on camera and by eyewitnesses before he was killed.
• The Past
  • An inquiry into the shooter’s identity and past caught the attention of Delta Green. In the wake of the young man’s crime, officials interviewing his grieving parents learn that Bradley was adopted.
  • His name was changed from “Finn Smith.” Smith was listed on the roster of Cornucopia House.
• Involvement and Orders
  • Thanks to the Program’s meddling, the FBI has pushed to follow-up on the brief investigation, claiming connections secret (classified connections) to a counterterrorism case.
  • Working as FBI consultants or agents, the Agents are to review the evidence.
  • The Agents are to confirm whether there is an unnatural threat, eliminate it if they find one, and save lives if they can.
• Local Police
  • Detective Jim Herz of the Criminal Investigative Division and Crime Scene Unit Investigator Anne McKenna handled the investigation.
  • They have been ordered to assist the federal agents.

Artemis picks up Pitzerelli’s burner phone.

Initial Investigation – Ithaca Police#

Det. Herz and CSI McKenna welcome the Agents at the Ithaca Police station. The detective is not eager to assist them, citing that the case is closed and that there is nothing else to be done. They hand over the physical files of the case, as well as McKay’s Phone and Laptop, and CCTV footage from the day of the shooting.

After quickly going through the reports, the following information comes up:

• McKay’s model CAR 5-57 rifle does not match any type of known manufacturer. Similarly, the ammunition has non-standard caliber “5.58mm”.
• The laptop, a recent-model Alienware, cannot be turned on.
• McKay’s Phone:
  • Contains an unknown app: PICKY EATER. Seems to be a web aggregator.
  • Photographs of college-aged women castrating and disemboweling a young man tied to a table. The women pose as if in a mockery of ritual. In front of dozens of supportive witnesses, they laugh in drunken selfies with the screaming victim getting flensed in the background.
    • The victim is Avery Bell (university student)
    • The women in the photograph are:
      • Emily Galperin
      • Sarah Donovan
      • Ashley Holloway

Before leaving the police station, Agent Locke whispers to McKenna to take care of herself as these murders might be related to incels.

The Morgue#

Agent Locke requests the autopsy files of both McKay and the three victims. Nothing out of the ordinary is found. Cause of death was blood loss due to bullet wounds.

The CCTV Footage#

Agent Blacktail watches the CCTV footage in his car while waiting for the other agents to finish their visit to the Campus. Key point mined from the footage:

• Bradley McKaey appeared on a traffic light camera two blocks away from Delta Phi Epsilon sorority house. He was not found in any other camera footage before then. CCTV footage doesn’t show McKay ever leaving his dorm.
• He seemed to have struggled with his phone and looked visibly confused.
• McKay shot the three women, who were the only ones present in the house.
• He was raving and screaming as he searched the house room by room, not finding what he was looking for.
• Surveillance cameras catch McKay sprinting through a student parking lot, frantically looking for something. The parking lot is largely empty due to fall break.

Buff Duff#

Agents Sentinel, Artemis and Myra interview Campus police officer Wilhelmina Duff, even though she is still on paid leave while under review by the shooting board.

• Her narrative checks out what’s contained in the CCTV footage.
• McKay was breaking into a home, presumably trying to get inside and hide from pursuit. A successful HUMINT roll detects
• A porch and a back door a dozen steps away would have been a far easier place to break and enter.

McKay’s Dorm Room#

The Agents enter McKay’s room, still sealed off as a crime scene. It has traditional college boy decor, posters of Scarface and women kissing. They can read him as an insecure young man, one trying far too hard to play a part.

His bookshelf contains a large collection of books, dedicated to themes of angry loneliness and finding meaning through conflict.

A book catches their eye: a paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye.

• Written by “J.F. Salinger,” not J.D. Salinger.
• The book feels and smells decades old.
• Its front-matter includes detailed information, which identifies a publisher that never existed.
• McKay highlighted a paragraph in red about a third of the way into the novel, a city scene in which Holden Caulfield speaks with a prostitute and her pimp. The pimp tells Caulfield to “break free of her control” and to “take the Red Pill,” a phrase unknown when the novel was written in 1951. Later, Caulfield blames his sister for his brother Allie’s suicide—Allie died of leukemia in the original—and says he is going to protect everyone from women like her.
• It’s The Catcher in the Rye as written by a furious incel. McKay circled and underlined more passages in red.

Talking to Nika#

Agent Myra calls King Torino’s Children Refuge and talks to Nika Chilikov about Finn Smith.

What about Avery Bell?#

Ithaca Police talked to Avery Bell’s parents. Their son was visiting them and confirmed he wasn’t dead.

In the report Bell says he met McKay in chemistry, fall of last year. He adamantly denies ever befriending him. Bell got sick and missed a couple of classes early in the semester, and McKay offered study sessions to exchange notes. McKay spent more time talking about “men’s rights” and trying to make Bell read forum posts on his phone. After a second meeting without any chemistry notes, Bell ghosted the weirdo. He dropped chemistry the next week. He remembers McKay ranting about a “thinker” named Robert Wallace. Bell never looked him up.