Mid-West Campaign
Session Sixty-Three

Friday, 18 May 2001

The pair head to Richmond, Virginia and their meeting with Elizabeth Crum. Jane has a theory that the intention of the thief was to steal the antique weapons and that the other items were taken to cover this up. After hiring a 4×4 they arrive at the Richmond regional office (a period 1930s building) and are shown into see Crum. Crum is a severe looking woman with her grey hair pulled back into a tight bun. She obviously considers the agents to be wholly unprofessional to have taken seven months to get on with the case. Jane maintains an even temper.

Crum goes through the casenotes. The weapons cabinet has all the characteristics of a safe. It is a hermetically sealed, armoured cupboard protected by a key pad and a lock. The ten agents that occupy the building know the key code and there are three keys. One is held by Crum, one is held by the Leading Agent and one is kept in a key safe on the premises. All agents have keys to the key safe. The safe is located on the ground floor of the building.

The Fredericksburg office is the home of the Critical Response team. There are six agents permanently stationed in the building: Leading Agent Sandra Wallace, Senior Special Agent Brian Woods and Special Agents Tony Cole, Patrick West, Harry Jordan and Timothy Reynolds. In addition to this a further four "floaters" (deep cover agents) are based at the building on an ad hoc basis. These are special agents Margaret Freeman, Dennis Wells, Douglas Webb and Ryan Tucker. There has been no turn over of staff in the last seven months. The only difference is that when the items were stolen Freeman was on deep cover; currently Freeman is in the office and Webb is on deep cover. There is also a secretary and a contract cleaner. Neither of these have changed either.

The contents stolen from the locker were standard equipment for the team. The antiques had only been stored there for two weeks. They had been stolen around 28 September from a civil war museum in Fredericksburg. They were found in the possession of local crime-lord Gerard Blank. Jane has heard that name (she used to work in the Washington office before 'the incident'). Blank is currently awaiting trial for a different crime.

The forensic investigation of the locker gleaned absolutely nothing, says Crum. This concludes her report to the agents. She warns Jane and Alex not to "piss off" this team. The agents depart and Jane telephones Sandra Wallace to announce that they are on their way to Fredericksburg. Wallace remembers Jane's Olympic fiasco and finds the entire thing extremely assuming.

Jane and Drake arrive in Fredericksburg in the early afternoon. Fredericksburg was the site of two important battles in the American Civil War, and sports a large number of museums. They arrive at the local FBI office and are shown into the waiting room. There they meet five of the agents based here, who have spent their time creating a greatly-enlarged photograph of Jane's car upside-down in a fountain in an Australian shopping mall: the incident that had her booted to evidence response in the first place. It is quite a piece of work - it even sprays water.

The agents are obviously very pleased about their handiwork and keen to see the response it elicits from Jane. Jane quickly glosses over the entire thing, comments on the amount of work they have obviously put into it, but otherwise ignores it. None of the agents except Special Agent Tony Cole bother to introduce themselves to the agents (the leading agent isn't present) so Jane and Alex address all their questions to him. It is not a friendly environment. It seems that most of the agents have a very low opinion of evidence response and Jane in general. They don't understand why it took seven months for them to investigate this crime. Dennis Wells takes offence when Drake implies that if they've found the hours necessary to create this thing for Jane then they don't do very much work themselves. He manages to gloss over the situation.

Cole is friendlier. He tells Jane that if she hadn't 'crashed and burned' quite so spectacularly she might be in this team by now. Jane is flattered. Cole takes the agents to the vault where the weapons were stolen from. He says that the vault is checked three times per day. All the weapons were present at 9:15am on 11 November, but they were all gone by 12:45pm. Brian Woods and Margaret Freeman were out that morning, but everyone else was in. Cole draws a plan of the downstairs of the regional office:

The evidence locker is air tight and reinforced on all sides with thick metal. It borders the women's toilets to the left, the kitchen to the right and backs onto the pantry. Above is one of the bedrooms. Below are just the foundations of the building. A CCTV camera is trained on the door (the agents take the tape for analysis). It is inconceivable that the door could have been opened and the items removed without someone else in the building seeing or hearing it (the cannon would have weighed close to 200 lbs). It is the classic locked-room puzzle.

Jane asks Cole about Gerard Blank. Cole tells her that Blank is a crime lord that they couldn't pin anything on. The FBI got a tip that he was handling drugs, and the critical response team were the nearest agents. They raided the place, didn't find the drugs, but did find the stolen weapons. This was enough to arrest him but not to hold him. He was subsequently arrested for tax evasion, but Cole doesn't think it will stick. The critical response team were just used as muscle, they are no longer involved in the case. The agent currently in charge is Lewis Harrigan who works out of Richmond.

Jane and Drake enter the locker to have a look around. Drake inadvertently closes the door behind them and locks them in. The pair spend an hour and a half trapped in the locker (most of it in the dark). There is no evidence of any tampering with the walls, floor or ceiling and no tell-tale magical glyphs. Everything is as it should be, except for a few peculiar scratch marks on the back of the one of the metal shelves. The agents take samples of another metal found in the scratches.

Eventually they are released by Cole and say that they will head off and examine the tape. Outside they find members of this team have amusingly up-ended their 4×4 in a child's paddling pool. Jane doesn't rise to this. The agents leave the car where it is and get a taxi to the museum where the antique weapons were stolen from. Alex thinks the weapons might have some special significance.

In short they don't. They speak to the curator at the museum who tells them that the weapons were all from the second battle of the Fredericksburg - the closest the confederates ever got to Washington. The cannon was a signalling cannon. The rifles would have been used by common soldiers. The pistols were more interesting: the navy version of the Colt pistol was better made, water resistant and had a longer barrel. For soldiers to carry these meant they were important, or had enough money to buy their own weapon. The curator is a bit upset because some of the stolen items had only just been restored and put on display.

The agents have their own theories about what happened. Drake things that either the critical response team did it themselves to have an opportunity to humiliate Jane, or the explanation is a supernatural one. Jane wonders if the weapons were ever put in the safe, and that they disappeared because they were never there in the first place. It all seems rather unlikely and the pair check into a cheap motel.

Saturday, 19 May 2001

Jane awakens with a splitting headache as the effects of Peter Ellis Dean's cursed car begin to surface. She can't stomach breakfast with Drake and heads to get some fresh air. At that point, Kirsty Faber appears to Drake. She doesn't want to see Jane as it will upset her. Kirsty has remembered the message for Jane: she is going to get a visitor she shouldn't trust.

On the street outside, Jane is approached by the mysterious Simon. Simon says, "Have you ever felt dangerously vulnerable?" Jane is instantly on her guard. Simon alludes that Danni is in danger. He speaks of the farm in Wichita that Danni has rented, and links it with the Brain Bug infestation of Twin Valley Farm (case 0024-GCF). By the time Drake rushes outside, Simon is gone and Jane is on the telephone to Danni.

There is no answer. An increasingly flustered Jane tries Drake's phone and there is still no response. Drake tells Jane what Kirsty told him - that she shouldn't trust Simon. Jane says that there's no way to know whether Kirsty's warning was against Simon and she cannot do nothing. But Jane is so far from Wichita. She telephones Michael Levin.

Levin tells her that there is nothing going on at the Twin Valley Farm (he has a man there). He says that he will send a plane to fly Jane to Wichita. Jane is becoming distraught. She argued with Danni the last time they talked. She doesn't know where the farm is, she doesn't know how to find her sister. She telephones Todd to see if Danni talked to him, but she discovers from Dominic that Todd and Ecks are attending a 24-hour Star Trekorama at the Aztec Theatre. Alex tells Jane that all this is suspicious. He thinks it is a trap. Jane is going anyway.

There is a plane laid on for them both at the airport, and in very little time they are in the air heading to Wichita. Jane phones her sister-in-law, Linda, in New York but she hasn't heard from Danielle either. She promises to visit Linda next weekend. She then telephones estate agents and finds the one that sold Danni the farm (it is only about a fifteen minute drive from the Wichita HQ).

Levin and a disapproving Monty are in Wichita to meet Jane. Drake is more and more suspicious. They race to the estate agents get the address and key and head to the farm. Jane feels guilty when they arrive. It is the perfect place for them both. She shouldn't have been angry at Danni. The farmhouse backs onto a corn-field, and is on three delightfully uneven floors. Jane, Drake and Levin go around the perimeter of the house and then use the key under the mat to gain entrance. Danni is not there, but they do find her mobile phone. Levin notices the last number called on it was to Jane's father.

Jane calls her dad. Danni is safe, and with him in Augusta. He is very disappointed in Jane. Danni is very delicate, and she has just got out of one abusive relationship and doesn't need Jane attacking her for no reason. Danni doesn't want to see Jane. Jane is upset, and feels a little foolish for dragging everyone on this wild goose chase. Levin is understanding. He says that she can use his plane to head straight to Augusta. This is what she decides to do.

In the car to the airport, Jane apologises to Drake and asks him to return to Richmond and use the lab time they booked to have a look at the metal shavings and the tape. She'll be there as soon as she can. The agents take the opportunity to fill Levin in on what Raphael said pertaining to the Brain Bugs. They speak of the evidence response mole, and Levin won't tell them who it is (he doesn't want evidence response fighting itself). Jane volunteers to be his mole, but decides that she isn't ready to trust him that much just yet.

Drake arrives back in Richmond and (after an inexplicable loss of sanity causes him to drive his car wildly over the local rooftops) heads to the lab and starts work. He discovers that the metal flakes are steel with a high carbon content. He sends it off for a proper analysis.

Jane gets to Augusta at about 10:00pm. Danni is in bed and Jane hasn't the heart to wake her. She has a long conversation with her father (the longest she can remember having). He makes Jane feel any more guilty, and says that she has to learn to control her temper. That's a bit rich coming from him, but perhaps he said it because he understands Jane better than most. They drink whisky and Jane eventually hobbles to bed.

Sunday, 20 May 2001

Drake wakes at midnight, after having fallen asleep watching the CCTV footage from Fredericksburg. He tries watching the tape again and falls asleep again in exactly the same place. He begins to think the tape is bewitched. He gets bored and tries summoning coffee and doughnuts.

In Augusta, large amounts of coffee and doughnuts appear in Jane's bedroom. She tries to smuggle them out of the house and sees that her father is still in the living room, even though it is now 4:30am. Something is evidently troubling him, but he will not say what it is. Jane buts two dozen Starbucks coffee cups in the dishwasher and throws the doughnuts out of the window.

In the morning, she finally gets to talk to Danni (mostly through a locked door). She is very sorry to have upset her sister, and knows that she was in the wrong. Danni eventually comes around - somewhat mollified by her father's outrage at Jane dumping a load of doughnuts on his prize-winning flowers. She agrees to return to Wichita with Jane. Their father announces that he will be visiting when the child is born, and that Jane should remember to keep his table properly French-polished (he is giving the table to them as an earlier inheritance).

The bad news is that because Danni is pregnant she has to go back to Wichita by train. It is a two day train journey. Jane telephones Alex and tells him to take a couple of days off and meet her in the Wichita office on Wednesday.

Tuesday, 22 May 2001

After two days of non-stop Scrabble, Monopoly and Clue, Jane and Danni arrive back in Wichita and head back to the farmhouse. Drake is already back in Kansas by this time. He has managed to master summoning small useless objects during his days off.

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