NationStates Jolt Archive

City of Madison, United States of Latoia

Richard Dagostino was a man on a hunt. He walked slowly down the sidewalk, wearing a local policeman’s uniform, trying to look casual and confident. Like any policeman he set his eyes in a roving pattern, scanning his surroundings constantly. Like any policeman, he kept his hands free, ready to spring to the pistol carried on his belt. Every thing about him looked proper, appropriate for a policeman. There was just one problem with it.

Richard Dagostino was not a policeman. In fact, he had never been with law enforcement in his entire life. The uniform, the weapon, the posture, everything was a ploy. He was on hunt, seeking certain, very specific prey. He’d been hunting for days now, and so far luck had been against him. Now, however, it looked like his luck was changing. He thought he might have finally spotted a prey worth going after, worth the risk involved.

He watched the young blonde as she walked down the sidewalk. She was very pretty, and had a certain aura which suggested she was not a local, which suited Richard just fine. He knew the police-the real police-would have more trouble finding the body. He watched as his quarry walked down the pavement, moving quickly, evidently a little upset. Keeping a highly practiced casualness to his actions, he observed the girl as she moved on. When he had made his decision, he moved in directly.

“Excuse me, young lady,” he said, trying to sound friendly. “You seem to be lost.”

Hours later, a woman jogging through a city suburb would stumble purely by accident, on mangled remains of a young Aresian girl. Her name was Aikaterine, and within just hours her name would start to become the most well known in all of Latoia.

It had been one week since Aikaterine had arrived in Latoia with her parents and older brother in what they all hoped would be a marvelous vacation from which they could gather all sorts of happy memories. I am sorry to tell you, dear reader, that there is to be nothing of the sort for any of them and that, indeed, they would have nothing but the bitter gall of sorrow and the rotten fruits of despair to dine upon. I bade you to read something more of a happy nature if you will find the following to be repugnant but, then again, such things will occur all over the world.

Aikaterine looked at the man with a look that suggested she was willing to be cordial and that she wasn't going to run away or anything like that. She had nothing to fear from this policeman because she knew she hadn't committed any crimes. When he had asked her if she happened to be lost, Aikaterine simply shook her head and tried to explain how she hadn't been lost at all but that she was simply heading back to the hotel where her parents were waiting; it wasn't hard to notice that she had a bag of trinkets in her hand. Over time, there came to be an argument over that she allegedly stole the trinkets to which she vehemently denied. After a while, Aikaterine simply vanished without a trace and was never seen again. No one heard the bloodcurdling screams nor saw the blood gushing from the wounds that came from the knife. Her parents and older brother were oblivious to her plight. They had trusted her apparent confidence in the idea that she would not have any problems going alone to the trinket shacks. When they watched television and discussed all the happy thoughts they had, Aikaterine fell into a deep slumber from which she would never awaken. Her skin turned pale from the loss of blood and she had been horribly gutted, as if she were a fish, and left for dead in some valley while the so called policeman simply walked away from the scene.

When her family discovered the news about the murder of Aikaterine, they had been immediately horrified as they rushed to the morgue wherein they saw with tearful eyes the corpse, lifeless and mangled, of the girl they had cherished. Her mother, in particular, rushed out of the room wailing like a banshee while her father went to chase after his wife. The brother took the hand of his dead sister in his and wept. For the first time, a boy who many said was one of the toughest, wept. Soon enough, the news would spread to Aresium. In Aresium, this sort of event always guaranteed an execution if the criminal had been captured because many Aresians never tolerated what they had called, perhaps, the world's most disgusting crime. However, what would happen in Latoia?

OOC: Your turn, Latoia.

City of Madison

Fonda W. Kenney, Detective Chief Inspector of the Madison City Police Department was in charge of the case to find out who had raped, and murdered Aikaterine. The case was a lot like at least a dozen others Kenney had taken part in since entering the police force, an ignorant foreign girl, accosted and raped by a local thug. Often times on such cases things literally dragged on for years as the authorities tried to figure out who had done the crime in less than ideal circumstances. A foreign woman, with no local connections would often lay unidentified in a morgue until buried as an “Unknown Person” at state expenses while law enforcement officials, like Kenney struggled in vain to find the culprits.

Fortunately, this time it had not ended like that. The girl’s family had been in country and had been on hand to positively identify the body. They had since gone home, having been reassured the body would be sent along just as soon as the investigation was finished, and it was no more use in helping find those responsible. Along with the body police gathered individual possessions, found on the girl’s corpse. These had all been shown to the family in a private meeting before they left, to see if anything was missing. Something was gone, like usual, and a description of the missing item had accordingly been taken down and the information sent to police authorities around the country.

Kenney had actually been shocked when, not only did they get an alert on that stolen item inside the first week, the I.D. on the person who had sold it was already on the records, an individual arrested once before on rape charges, and let out on evidence issues.

“Richard Dagostino,” she muttered as she clicked through the file on the suspect. “He has lots of violations on record, mostly small things like traffic violations; one exception is an inconclusive rape charge, filed seven years back by one Sarah Robsart. Case was dropped in the early stages on evidence issues. Specifically, there wasn’t enough. Consensus is the lousy swine did it, and got away scot free with rape.”

Click the mouse, next page.

“Following the court case, Mr. Dagostino left town, and came to Madison, where he lives in a small apartment in…looks like the Dockyard District area.”

Kenney closed the file with a single click and leaned back in her desk chair, brushing one lone strand of her uniformly short sandy blonde hair from her gray-green eyes. Following little more than a moment’s pause, she reached out for her desk telephone.

“Is this the Front Desk? Good; I need to know where Detective Angelique Herman is at right now, if you would…thank you…I see. Can you patch me through?”

Less than a moment’s pause…

“Angel? This is Fonda. Listen, I need you to search out a dude named Richard Dagostino. He should be in the…you know of him? Oh, yeah, you did live in Hartford then. Well, he looks like a potential suspect in this case too. See what you can see on him…Yeah, I am a little tired…I should be done in three hours; why?...I know where that café’s at. Is there a little after-hours gathering I was told about?...just us? Ah, you do know fraternizing on duty is against regs?...No, of course you're not. I'll be there...See you then."

Kenney hung up the phone. Here she was, trying to handle a case, and now, she thought it might be possible she was being hit on, by a fellow Detective. Herman was lesbian, and kept it secret from nobody. Kenney sighed, stood up, took a mug from a desk drawer, and headed out to grab some cold coffee.

You could make some very strange friends in this Department.

OOC:

I'll post against fairly quickly, Aresium. This was something of a glorified bump, really.

DCI Fonda Kenney crept slowly up the stairs, moving quietly so as not to be heard before her unit was in place. Behind her, a fully decked out SWAT Team moved, eight men with heavy weapons and armor, trained just for missions like this. Kenney looked at them once in contemplation before continuing onward. When she had joined the force, SWAT Force had been an all-male unit. Now one saw the occasional female in SWAT gear, but mostly it was still an arm of the Department dominated by men. Kenney knew that right now, the large apartment building’s exits were being secured by more SWAT officers and standard Police, and as soon as the ‘Go Code’ was received and she was in position, they would be ready to storm the apartment, make the arrest, and hopefully end this damn case.

“Striker 26 to Striker 16,” the voice crackled in the headset she wore. “All elements have been confirmed as in position. Are you ready to move in?”

Kenney smiled as she came up into the right hallway.

“Striker 16 to Striker 26,” she whispered. “We are in position and will move presently.”

Falling silent now, Kenney moved swiftly to the apartment’s doorway. At a quiet signal a line of SWAT officers stacked up in a row to one side. She went to the other wall looking her pistol over, one last time before they went, and checking the armored vest she wore to keep her safe in case Dagostino had a gun and was feeling stupid this morning.

Her next hand signal set a SWAT sergeant laying explosives on the doorframe. Within an instant, a loud bang reverberated through the hallway. The arrest team charged inside and immediately began clearing the apartment. Kenney followed close behind, letting the lads intended for it handle this part of the work. Even so, she kept her pistol drawn out.

“What the Hell is going on here!?” demanded a loud voice from somewhere in the area. Kenney smiled. That would be Dagostino.

“Get the fuck down, scumbag! You’re under arrest!” And that would be the SWAT Team Leader, if she was not mistaken.

“On what grounds?” the voice demanded as Kenney walked into the kitchen. Dagostino’s image on Police files matched this man in the kitchen almost perfectly, except it appeared he now kept his face more cleanly shaved. Two of the SWAT officers were wrestling him into a prone position on the floor, though he was fighting hard.

“Is this about that trial in Hartford?” he demanded. “I was cleared on that!”

“You were,” Kenney said calmly, and Dagostino’s eyes darted up to the blonde DCI as at last the handcuffs were secured about his wrists. “This is something different.”

“Like what?” he demanded, looking a bit nervous as his apprehenders hauled him back to his feet roughly.

“For the rape, and murder, of an Aresian national,” Kenney replied.

“What are you talking about?”

“Everything else will be explained at Department HQ. Sergeant, read him his rights.”

Dagostino’s next protest faded into the background as Kenney stalked quickly outside, an iron determination being all that kept her from going back and blowing Dagostino’s brain into an interesting pattern on the wall.

Inside an hour, word that an almost certain suspect had been arrested was sent to Aresium informing both the family, and the Aresian government.

Aikaterine's family hadn't really done much since they heard the news of her death other than mourn and lament in a dreadful cycle that plagued their souls and infected their friends with thoughts of amazement at how that lovely young woman they once knew could have ended up dead. The corpse of the child was laid to rest in a small family plot with an epitaph describing how she would be missed and remembered but that was what usually dotted the tombs of children. The family met there, at her tomb, to talk about how they would miss that child, her smile, her charm, her talents, her existence. The brother in particular would spend the most time there to contemplate his sister's death while his girlfriend would worry for him. The family, when they had heard about the capture of Dagostino, remained quite numbed. All that was said was a simple statement by the father which was, merely, that they kill whoever killed his child before he stormed off, to his dead daughter's room, to lament. To reminisce, as well, about the times he read her stories and played with her when she was only a small lass. The mother's shrieks echoed throughout the house and, one day, Aikaterine's brother became determined to help his parents through the pain that they all mutually shared.

While the death of a child, as unfortunate as it is, would have normally been restricted to merely being told among the said child's family and friends, the Aresian Government had recieved a message from the Latoians about the capture of a suspect. The Government had sent its condolences to the family and had already began meeting to discuss possible plans to handle the situation. It was decided, first of all, to send a message to the Latoian Government asking for more information the suspect and, indeed, access to information concerning the impending trial.