June 20, 2058

Downtown Neighborhood

Regina, Algonkian-Manitou Council

~~~

Two men paced across the crime scene, one looking exasperated, one looking angry. When they woke up this morning they did not have plans to fly 90 minutes to Regina via helicopter, and they didn't have plans on dealing with a murder case that would likely claim a spot on the news. But such was life in a policing job.

The angry one was the boss, David Longmiles, the Cree CEO and chief of the Long Arms security company. Long Arms held the contract for policing the Algonkian-Manitou Council, and Longmiles was its tenacious and incorruptible leader, a rarity amongst bosses of a private police service. Longmiles was not the least bit pleased to have another murder to deal with, as he was proud of the Council's low murder rate compared to the rest of North America, and wanted it kept that way. Furthermore, he had a good idea of who killed Koki Ishimura......

"It's that damn Leon Eagles again!" Longmiles yelled. "I feel it in my bones!"

The second man sighed. He was a middle-aged Apache cop known as John Summers, and he held the title of Central Captain of Detectives within Long Arms. This made Captain Summers the main man for major criminal investigations in Regina, Saskatoon, and the surrounding towns. It was a high-prestige position within Long Arms that paid well, but came with the downside of dealing with David Longmiles directly, who headquartered himself in Saskatoon (the Council's capital). This meant that every single case had one primary suspect pushed by Longmiles, and one only: Leon Eagles.

Summers had listened to hysterical accusations levied against Leon for the past few months, and was getting tired of it. He wanted to get on with his job and close these damned cases, but even an eighty-year old woman standing over a dead body with a smoking gun could have Longmiles thinking Leon orchestrated the hit somehow. It was kind of funny the first time, but grew old quickly.

"I don't see how it can be Leon when you look at the evidence, Chief. There's too much thats weird about this."

"Oh yeah? Like what?" Longmiles said challengingly.

Summers sighed. "Look, when I read through that dossier you gave us all on Leon...... and I'm not sure how much of that is even true...... you get the impression that Leon is a total pro. He doesn't handle things like an amateur, he tries to avoid any heat, or at least now he does, and he's an obsessive with his weapons. He's all about competence and reliability, and he has a lot of the latest gear, right?"

Longmiles nodded in response.

"Okay, the shots that killed the vic, they're small caliber. If I had to guess I'd say Streetline Special, maybe even a Walther derringer. Probably too big a caliber even for a 101T or an L36. Furthermore, we got neighbors testifying that they heard close to a dozen gunshots. Some were louder than others, but you could really hear them."

"Yeah, so?"

"So why would Leon Eagles use an unsilenced holdout gun to kill a Company Man? Why not just silence one of the big guns he has and let rip? Hell, why risk getting into a gunfight in the first place? Why bother breaking into his house to kill him? Why not snipe him from distance through his bedroom window or something?"

Longmiles took a moment to mull over this, as a beat cop named Wally came in, out of breath.

"Captain Summers, I got the security footage from BarrierSafe!"

"Good work Officer......let's see what we got here......"

Summers and Longmiles watched the footage. Two of the four security camera feeds were disabled, but the back entrance feed clearly showed two masked figures wearing all black arriving at the door, picking the maglock with an electronics kit, and entering. Both had what looked like Streetline Specials drawn as they entered.

Not long after, they left, and the camera could barely catch one of the figures pulling a revolver out before exiting the shot. This corresponded with a neighbor's testimony that one of the perps fired a shot to drive her away as they came out of the house.

"We got Leon on tape!" chortled Longmiles.

"......I don't think so...... I think, hold on...... Big Canoe, do you have a measuring tape in your bag?"

A lab tech named Berton Big Canoe stopped digging out a slug from the wall, and went to his bag, finding a flex tape and handing it to Captain Summers. Summers took measurements of the door, looked at the footage, and measured several more times, before shaking his head.

"Can't be Leon. This perp doesn't fit the profile."

"Don't toy with me Summers!"

"I'm serious Chief, this doesn't fit. Leon's six feet even according to your profile, correct? Well this guy going into a 7 foot doorframe, his head is too close to the top of the door for 6 feet. I'd say 6'4, maybe 6'5. And this second person is short, probably closer to 5 feet than 6. I don't think there's any known associates of Leon fitting those profiles. It's not Brandon Rivers, he's too tall and too big in the upper body. It's not that woman with him either, Sylvia, right? She's 5'10 or so."

"Summers, don't you see it? He used magic to disguise himself!"

Summers sighed in exasperation. "Masking spells can't fool a heat-sensing camera David!"

"Yeah, and neither should Invisibility! But he fooled Renraku's cameras AND their security mages with it! I mentioned that in his dossier! Don't you see!? He disguised himself to throw us off!"

"Oh come on, we haven't even seen Leon cast a spell yet! It's been Brandon and that girl of his Sylvia, they're the shamans. Leon is cybered and everyone knows it. He wouldn't have the magical essence to cast anything like this, and I doubt Brandon would be the type to try Invisibility or masking spells. Maybe it's Sylvia doing all this for Leon, but even if it is, and even if these mythical spells existed, we have no way of proving it was Leon killing the vic! It could've been Sylvia and Brandon acting on their own! Plus...... I'm not sure this Invisibility spell story is true, because that story could be Renraku lying to cover their own asses!"

Summers sighed in frustration.

"Furthermore, even if it COULD be Leon, we still don't have an explanation for why he brought a Streetline Special with him, when he has so many better weapons to pick from and even the permit to use them. Why bother with a cheap hold-out pistol when you can use a better gun with a silencer? We see him carry a Predator openly on the street, why not carry one to work? Also, how did Leon miss two shots against the wall? Does he ever miss? Is THAT moment of history in his precious dossier?"

Longmiles mulled over this one.

".......Leon could've done a sloppy hit on purpose to throw us off the scent."

Summers could not believe what he just heard. But then, it was David Longmiles saying it.

".......Chief, you're reaching. This has happened before to every detective in the world, you have the fish that got away, it bothers you, you think of nothing else. LET IT GO. It's much healthier that way."

"So what's YOUR theory then, Captain!?"

Summers looked back inside the house, scanned the BarrierSafe footage and security report again, and sighed.

"......Well, we won't know what really went down in there, unless we had more camera feeds. The ones in the office and bedroom were disabled, looks like it was by the vic's wife a month ago, but the vic wasn't shot there anyways, and we haven't found any slugs in a wall upstairs...... BarrierSafe seemed to have a general outage throughout the neighborhood, so we have no idea on the perps getaway route. Hopefully it's a B&E couple who were stupid enough to sell the stolen goods to a fixer we can squeeze. Maybe I'll have a better theory once we actually finish investigating here."

"That will not be necessary."

Longmiles and Summers turned around to see a sharp-looking Asian man with high-tech designer glasses approaching the house.

"Hey this is a crime scene citizen, please go back behind the yellow tape."

"I am here to take over the investigation of this crime scene, actually. My name is Kenta Kawasaki, and I am a local supervisor of affairs for the Yokogawa Corporation. We have reason to believe that the tragic death of Koki Ishimura is related to our ongoing corporate...... affairs...... and as such, Yokogawa Corporation has decided to invoke our extraterritorality privileges."

Kawasaki's corporate credentials were determined to be in order, so this was legit. Corporations had the right to investigate and litigate the murders of their own as related to corporate disputes, and only relied on local law enforcement if the culprit was a minor criminal not affiliated with any rival corp (in the rare instances they didn't just shoot the drek-head and hide the body).

Longmiles was not pleased by any of this, but Summers just shrugged it off. Now this case was someone else's problem, and Summers wouldn't have to hear magic bullet from Leon Eagles theories for the next week.

"Fair enough, can you give us some time to pack up?"

"Certainly. Take a few hours if necessary. Also, I would like a copy of your investigational summaries to this point, as well as any evidence you've come across in your investigation thus far."

"I'll have a secretary type that up for you, should be available in a couple days."

Captain Summers left back in the house with a small smile and a jaunt in his step. Longmiles headed out to his squad car, and while walking past Kawasaki, he leaned in close and muttered.

"......I know Leon Eagles is behind this somehow. Good luck......"

Longmiles entered his car, as Kenta smiled to himself.

~~~

(Two days later......)

Kenta had finally received the investigational summaries from Long Arms, pertaining to the murder of the dearly departed Koki Ishimura. He left a message thanking the hapless secretary who delivered them, and then promptly deleted the message and the reports.

Kenta decided not to hold any material on Leon except a barebones profile. It was a precaution, just in case Leon or one of his friends came snooping around the offices (or the Yokogawa Matrix). If he wanted to, Kenta could manipulate Leon by building a file and threatening to leak details of Leon's contract killing to the right channels, while falsifying documents to hide Kenta's involvement. Kenta and Yokogawa would escape consequences, and Leon would be tried and convicted for murder, unless of course he did Yokogawa's bidding. This was a normal blackmail tactic to gain a hold over shadowrunners, one that a company would use ruthlessly to clean up any problems for minimal cost.

But this was not a normal situation. Very subtle off-the-books research into Leon, combined with tips from sources in other companies, were starting to paint a picture of the man. He was more than a big fish in a small pond of runners, he was closer to a shark. Kenta theorized that Leon was the man known as "Wild Fire", a legend in the North American shadows. Among other feats, the man had run against the high-security Renraku offices in Seattle twice, and seemed to get away (mostly) clean from every other run he ever took. Renraku were apparently hit so badly that they wouldn't even admit it to most sources, but more than a couple rumours leaked out that Leon somehow used an undetectable Invisibility spell to do the run.

Normally Invisibility could be detected by heat-sensing cameras, or by skilled mages capable of seeing residual particles of the spell in the astral plane. But if Leon, or maybe the people close to him, had the ability to walk undetected amongst even the tightest corp security in North America, Yokogawa couldn't stop him. A war with Leon would end in Yokogawa being run against over and over and over, until there was nothing left to run against.

Instead, it was best to see Leon as a business expense, a part of the local culture that couldn't be replaced. Like bribing a politican, or making concessions to avoid angering the local spirits. It was best to build currency with Leon through good will, and try and build a friendship. A soft approach that a corp normally didn't use, but Yokogawa was the number 2 corp in the Council, and had enough problems on their plate just trying to unseat Aztechnology for number 1.

Besides, Kenta had gotten the impression in his research that Leon largely left Aztechnology alone. For all Leon's connections, he seemed to not want to rock the boat too hard while on the Council lands. Aztechnology even seemed to employ him on occasion, through a local "Mr. Johnson" named Donovan Reed. If Yokogawa became number 1, Leon would presumably leave Yokogawa alone like he did Aztechnology, and maybe he'd take the occasional shadowrun from them as well. A win-win for everyone.

Kenta finished up the last of his business in his home office, before standing up, stretching, and departing. Kenta now had a much more important task on his mind......

......"Comforting" the widow Ishimura in his bedroom.......