23 June, WY602 – Demeter, Whistler

Benny wakes Din as well and then escorts Din and Angelica down the stairwell to the ground floor where they see the body of Becca Sanders. They examine the scene before moving on to Becca’s room, where Basil lies dead on the bed. Nadine and Skylar are outside the room, both appearing quite stunned, along with Eric, the hotel manager. Skylar excuses herself to her room to write a press release once word inevitably leaks.

Din and Angelica examine both scenes, and Aidan examines both bodies later, revealing the following:

• Becca’s neck was broken, likely by someone professionally trained to do such things and possessing the adequate strength to do so. While it looks like she’d had days of rigorous sexual activity, there was no sign of abuse or rape. There was no sign she fell down the stairs. She was disheveled, wearing a crumpled dress and no undergarments or personal effects. Her body seemed to have been deliberately placed in the back of the stairwell behind some storage boxes to delay discovery. The body was discovered by Margarite, one of the housekeepers shortly before 2am. She likely died somewhere around midnight, plus or minus an hour or two.
• There was no sign of struggle in Becca’s room. The room was generally neat and tidy, save the area around the bed, which was disheveled, with numerous empty bottles and glasses on the nightstand. A censor burning some sort of local canabid filled the air with a sweet smoke.
• Angelica found both Basil and Becca’s phones in the room. She bagged them and gave them to Din.
• Basil was found naked on the bed with no sign of struggle, stabbed through the heart with a steak knife from the hotel restaurant. Closer examination revealed some hesitancy wounds near the knife strike, indicating the attacker was inexperienced or unconvicted, however the knife wound seems to have been sustained post-mortem. The body had no defensive wounds of any kind.
• Basil’s body appeared to have been shot by an advanced, long-range stun weapon. Once in the abdomen and a second time in a very specific point under the arm. Aiden believes the second stun was the cause of death. The slight burn marks on his skin are indicative of a Jericho Arms T-662 stunner, which is an incredibly advanced and rare weapon. Only fifty were ever manufactured, and Angelica and Benny both possess one.
  • Benny reveals to Angelica that his stunner is on his person.
  • Angelica sends Din to check on the speaker in the ballroom. He does, and finds her stunner missing.
• Basil’s time of death is estimated at midnight plus or minus an hour. His body was found by Tanya delivering desserts via room service around 1:30am.

While Angelica and Din continue to work the scene, Nadine returns to her room and Benny and Eric systematically go through the hotel waking everyone and informing them that there’s been an emergency and to convene in the lobby. Between the hours of four and six a.m., the hotel residents are gathered in the lobby and told the news, the hotel staff gathered, and both scenes and bodies examined thoroughly after receiving explicit permission from Benny to do so.

The crew heads to the hotel office to examine the security system, but it had been disabled from 11pm on by a sophisticated virus, preventing any logs from being stored. Aiden begins work to develop a method of being notified as doors in the hotel are opened and closed to the system doesn’t have to be monitored in real-time.

Around 7:00, Roland notices that Felix Hoffman is no longer in the lobby. One of the hotel staffers also notes that one of the housekeepers, “Marlon”, has not been seen either. Leaving Julian and Aidan in the hotel office, the rest of the crew and Benny begin searching the hotel. They find that Skylar isn’t answering her door, so while waiting for a master key, they collect Nadine and send her to the lobby. With master key in hand, they open Skylar’s hotel room and find it covered in blood, with Skylar Albertson stabbed numerous times in the main room.

• It appears Skylar answered the door to her room and was stabbed almost immediately. There is blood spatter all the way from the vestibule to the bed, where she was stabbed numerous times. Her hands and arms are covered in defensive wounds.
• The word “SLAVER” is written in blood on the bathroom mirror.
• It appears that blood was washed off of something in the bathroom sink.
• There is no sign of the murder weapon, but it’s assumed it’s a long, wide knife, like a chef’s knife.
• Angelica examines Skylar’s laptop, where it appears she had been authoring the press release of Basil’s death, but hadn’t sent it. She bags it and gives it to Din.

The crew decides it’s time for a methodical survey of the hotel, so they head to the third floor and begin at Felix’s room. It is empty, the bed appears to have been slept in, and his laptop shows signs of him performing normal work from the end of the party till just after midnight, then again briefly when woken by Benny at 4.

The crew resolves themselves to continue searching the hotel.