2026-03-23 9:38 - 19:23 PST
Calimastia went to speak with incumbent mayor, Dwight Way, a member of the Grimaldi family and an important figure in maintaining the masquerade1.
- Cali finds the crime scene
- body, leeches, hand, TV
- “To the traitor <3”
- encoded message → later leads her to 7th hole, “To the overachiever :)” “Keep an eye on the news, friends! :3”
- must’ve been nearby
- van with stolen plates
- Kaveh
- tension
- camera
- Thalia, Mordecai
- “To second place”
- “Blankbody” → inquisition
- ASL “B”
- email meeting setup, schedule cleared for tuesday
- signal message with “K” :flying money: :+1:
- cameras looped
- Kingsnake, Roy’s friend whose name i forgot
- Drive → golf club → thumb drive → security footage of Dwight meeting with Luke, Ally, and Sarah Keene
- Sarah Keene has an orobouros tattoo
- Kingsnake trades Kaveh golf club to get a meeting with Sarah Keene’s right hand guy
- Drive → golf club → thumb drive → security footage of Dwight meeting with Luke, Ally, and Sarah Keene
She made her way to the Greenway Country Club, which the mayor frequented and found several things:
- The TV was on, playing the first three paragraphs of 1 - Interlude, Something in the Way on a loop
- An ASL alphabet diagram out of place on the wall
- A seemingly arbitrary sequence of letters (see below)
RFKFSIVRIRUUSSRKFURSSVUIIUIFHSFIRKSUUF
KOBDCYJDZEAQGPWANQGLPPTJNOMLNTMYYAEOLI
HMAHKRSAXQFIIUTAZFIKRHADRDDERXOIUVINYH
ITTIECXKDBKLQLUJNJZSYXPOIXXWHGPUCJTQGF
FPLRNWMKOPVVIIXLWBCILOAAKENNSCDILNNOEI
SCWVDTMHNYFXTMIELBYICJJASYCZIAOSIVRAXK
HJLRQETHBEVWLBSTAMPIOJXDCSLIEABVNJXETU
VXEUDJYFMCUJXBVPCYGRZDCYOFOVPOYIAZWQQI
FEZKSSKELLUZMOFZWKSIRULMXDHYOXEKISIZCK
ICQPEMJGQCLADALNAZZCNQMBBDTXMNWCDDYBAR
SFFFFIKHRRFVSVIRIFIISIIVIHIIHIVVRUVFUV
Then, in the bathroom she found
- Dwight Way beaten to death, covered in leeches
- His hand bound in the shape of an ASL “B”
- His thumb removed
- A letter stapled to his hand, addressed “To the traitor <3” containing a card depicting a cartoon cat with the text “Want to find out who I am? Look inside and see…” on the outside and the below image on the inside.
Then, Kaveh arrived, a camera neither had noticed above the doorway in sparked and was quickly flung out the window, the two came to blows, Thalia and Mordecai arrived, and Calimastia left to continue her investigation elsewhere.
Mordecai found a second letter, addressed “To second place” with an identical card inside it. Thalia snooped around the computer for a while and found that the security cameras had been looped since earlier that night, and still were. Additionally the mayor had cleared his schedule for a meeting on Tuesday, and had a deleted signal chat with someone labeled as K.
They solved the puzzle, with help from a technomancer friend of Roy’s, resulting in the following message revealed when removing the letters ISHURIVKF from the message:
RFKFSIVRIRUUSSRKFURSSVUIIUIFHSFIRKSUUF
K____________________________________I
H__HKRS___FIIU___FIKRH__R___R__IUVI__H
I__I___K__K___U____S____I___H__U_____F
F__R___K__VVII_____I____K___S__I_____I
S__V___H__F___I____I____S___I__SIVR__K
H__R___H__V___S____I_____S_I___V_____U
V__U___F__U___V____R_____F_V___I_____I
F__KSSK___U___F__KSIRU____H____KISI__K
I____________________________________R
SFFFFIKHRRFVSVIRIFIISIIVIHIIHIVVRUVFUV
DRIVE. This led them to the mayor’s golf club, inside which there was a thumb drive and the mayor’s severed thumb. When plugged into the right computer, it revealed security camera footage of Dwight Way meeting with Luke Grayson, Ally Barnes, and Sarah Keene, the kingpin of Sacramento, all independently of each other, the audio left unrecorded. Kingsnake got in contact with someone from her old life about arranging a meeting with Keene but the best she could get was a commitment to try and get her a meeting with Keene’s second in command.
Meanwhile, Calimastia had independently solved the puzzle and followed the clue “DRIVE” to the seventh hole on the Greenway Country Club’s golf course. There she found a final letter, “To the overachiever.” It contained a picture of her and Kaveh from before the fighting broke out, earlier that night. From this and the scavenged camera she was able to discern that the killer must have been nearby, and thanks to some traffic camera footage she could tell he’d been spying remotely from an unmarked white van, but the plates had been switched. She’d have to do more digging later.