Per 
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Electronic copy below as per Federal Records Act
UIU File 2016-018: "Chasing Chase"
Summary: Suspect robbed four small banks in Portland, Oregon over the course of 2 days using telekinetic abilities. Primarily used abilities to avoid leaving fingerprints. $67 000 USD stolen in total.
Kevin Rumlow’s stomach churned as he read the document in front of him. He fiddled with the sausage roll in his hands, before finally taking another bite. He’d have to savour this one: If the doc meant what he thought it did he wouldn’t be seeing the Isle of Portland again.
Agent Reuben Zilo looked like he might explode. “Telekinesis!?”
He pointed an angry, shaking finger and the evidence page. “She had all the stolen money! This is some of the most braindead, incompetent -”
Spittle flew from his mouth as he ranted, showering the sausage roll. Rumlow shifted the bag to defend his treasure, wiping as much of it off as he could. ‘Incompetent’ was not ‘corrupt’, he could work with that. “20 damn years ago. We all make mistakes.”
Zilo’s finger found the evidence page again. “Well, genius? Think you’ve cracked it this time? Keep in mind Chase-“, he cut himself off to mime exaggerated speech marks in the air, “talked to himself during the robberies!”
Rumlow shifted in his seat, doing his best to hide his relief. Zilo had no clue he’d cut a deal, he just thought he was an idiot. He took a grateful bite from his pastry. “It seems, looking back, he might’a had an invisible partner.”
“And who, pray tell, do you think this mystery partner could be?” Agent Zilo stroked his chin in mock thought.
“That’d be Sarah King.”
Zilo burst, screaming every obscenity he could muster. When he shouted himself out, Rumlow spoke again. “I was dumb. Why’s it matter?”
For a second, he thought he’d stumbled onto a memetic phrase because Zilo’s deflated expression flipped completely, and the man looked about ready to scream again. Still, he kept something resembling composure as he said “Why does it m- Why d- Why- There’s been an update in the case. King’s old building is under renovation, and they found something under the floorboards in her old apartment.”
“The last 2k? That’s good right, case closed.” The last $2000 was not under the floorboards. Last time Rumlow checked most of it had gone on British pastries.
“A knife. Traces of blood. Chases of blood, because it belongs to Cody Chase.” He laughed sarcastically, unamused at his own joke. “And he’s been missing for 20 years. Now this was your case, so it’s yours again. Congratulations. And I’m going to work it with you, so you can’t fuck it up again.”
Rumlow felt his stomach churn again. This was simple, he could solve this. All he had to do was catch Sarah King, the murderer, and cover up the fact that Sarah King, the murderer, had previously bribed him. Easy. At least he knew how to do step 1.
“I know where King works.” He sighed, stuffing the remains of the sausage roll into his pocket. Looks like he would be visiting the Isle of Portland again.
Rumlow had been to England enough times to know that it was, for the most part, trash. The adults were stuffy, the kids were mouthy and the food bland enough to make him beg for a Wendy’s. The sole exception to this were the pastry shops that coated the country, and he had sampled as many as he could over the course of his “UIU investigations”.
The best, he determined, was a family owned business in Portland (not that he’d done much research outside of Portland, UIU business really only led him there) called “Harveys”. Harveys stood before him and Zilo now. “She’ll be jumpy. One of us oughta stand out here, in case she runs.”
Zilo nodded. “Invisibility, probably other magics. See if you can use your existing rapport.” Rumlow took another step toward the building before Zilo waved him over again. “Don’t fuck this up.”
Important stuff said, Rumlow walked into the shop. The woman behind the counter studied him for a second, then smiled with recognition. “Afternoon again, Mr Rumlow. The usual?” Rumlow fumbled around in his pocket, feeling its contents. Notepad, pen, half a sausage roll, ah, there- badge! He held it up to her. “Afraid not Katie, official business. Where’s Sarah?”
“In the back, went in as you walked up. Want me to get her?” Katie turned to go.
“Is there a way out back there?”
Katie grimaced as she nodded, her brain figuring out what was happening.
“Fuck.” Rumlow signalled Zilo, pointing round the back, before moving past the counter and through the back door. The exit flung open, and Rumlow instinctually ran through it into the alley behind the shop, drawing his weapon as he did so. He pointed his gun into the empty alley. “C’mon, King!” Through the corner of his eye he saw Zilo moving into position at the other end of the alley. “Give up.”
Zilo moved forward, taking away as much space as he could. She had to be between him and Rumlow. He mentally scanned the thaumaturgy books he’d read in UIU training, trying to figure out how long her invisibility would hold. Ten minutes, at most. Finally, she appeared before them, hands in the air. The agents approached after the glow of her tattoos died down. Rumlow spoke first. “You killed him?”
There was a pause as Sarah processed the question. “You said you wouldn’t arrest me.”
“For armed robbery. Sarah, you killed him!”
She looked away as if in thought, but Zilo stopped any response she might have had.
“You knew? You knew from the start? Fucking hell, Rumlow! I thought you were an idiot. But a corrupt idiot? From the minute I met you I said you should have been fired. I told them, time and time again, told them you were stupid, and lazy, and you couldn’t do your goddamn job.” He forgot completely about King, levelling his vitriol at Rumlow. His voice moved an octave higher. “There’s a reason he survived the Nineties. You’ve got to trust him, he knows what he’s doing! Sure looks you know! IA are going to eat you alive! I’ll make sure of it. Good luck finding a job, you-“
A scream from the shop cut him off. His eyes became focussed again, and he took off running toward the shop. “I’ll check it out. Stay with King. No deals.”
Zilo moved in through the back- it was empty, whoever was screaming was in the front. He tried to listen in at the door but could only hear her blubbering. The girl behind the counter, undoubtedly. He nudged it open and poked his head through and saw the problem.
He was paler than the security footage, almost unnaturally so. Great dark circles hung under his eyes, and his body seemed to twitch uncontrollably. Zilo made a mental note to search him for ecto. All that aside, Cody Chase hadn’t aged a day.
A knife danced in his hand about an inch from the girl’s eyeball. Chase interrogated her in a voice far too deep to be his own. “Where is Sarah King?”
Pointless wasting time negotiating, when Zilo had the element of surprise. And a clear shot. He fired four rounds into Chase’s chest, and the man collapsed to the ground. Zilo directed the girl out toward Rumlow and moved to examine the corpse on the ground. Thin, like he hadn’t eaten for a few days. His unusual pallor. The holes, showing his squishy insides. But no blood. Not ecto, then. As Zilo looked closer, Chase’s mouth flew open.
Rumlow held his gun in one hand and reached for his sausage roll with the other. It would be cold by now, but he could deal with that. Sarah was talking at him. “I couldn’t exactly have said that part, could I? You’re a cop. And it’s not like he stayed dead!”
Rumlow stopped, dropping the roll back into his pocket. “Meaning?”
Sarah studied his face. “He came looking for me. In Threeports. It’s why I moved here.”
Rumlow silently cursed the case for ruining his snack time. “You’re sayin’ you killed him, and he came back?”
There was a crash as the door flung open and Katie ran out into the alley with a petrified look on her face. Rumlow moved to comfort her. “Katie, it’s okay. Agent Zilo’s handling it. You’re okay.” There were tears in her eyes.
Footsteps behind him. Sarah! He spun around in time to see her running away, tattoos glowing again. He set off in pursuit when he heard Zilo cry out. Mumbling a curse toward King, he ran back into the shop, smashing through both doors. He stopped in his tracks as he entered the shopfront. Chase lay on the floor, unmoving, while tentacles emerged from his mouth and swung wildly, with one pinning Zilo to the wall.
Rumlow leapt counter and dove toward Chase’s body. He yanked it as hard as he could across the floor, moving the tentacles away from Zilo. As soon as he was free the agent bolted directly out the front door, leaving Rumlow alone with the Chase monstrosity. The bullet holes in Chase’s body ripped open as more tentacles poured out of him. Rumlow tried to leap the counter again, only to find himself dragged down and into the ground. He emptied his gun into the tentacles and, when that failed, began beating them with the handle. It didn’t take long before they tore it from his grasp and began to converge.
He fumbled madly for something to use, looking around the room for anything he could find. The counter? Useless, empty. Doors? Too far. There had to be something… It hit him. The counter had been emptied. The pastries on display had been taken- by the tentacles, perhaps? In a fit of either genius or panicked delirium, he pulled the half-eaten, cold sausage roll from his pocket and held it in the air. A tentacle slapped it out of his hand, and they pulled him closer to the central mass.
He heard a noise- gunshots. Zilo was in the doorway, opening fire on Chase’s body. It did nothing but agitate them, and they began to drag on the floor, pulling the body toward him. A poor distraction, but enough. Rumlow got to his feet and ran for the door, as more tentacles converged on him. Chase was dragged back toward him, then Zilo, then him again. There was an awful squelch as Chase ripped in two, one half heading for each agent. Rumlow slammed the door on them and made his way into the alley. With Katie’s assistance, he dragged a dumpster in front of the door and headed round to the front.
The two agents sat in front of the store, waiting for backup. Inside, the two halves of Cody Chase had begun attacking each other. Rumlow studied them for a little while. “King got away.”
Zilo sighed, also watching the fight. “So, there’s a murderer running around? That’s great. Just what I’d expect from you.”
A tentacle collapsed onto Rumlow’s sausage roll and he saw it explode into pieces. “We have her face, we’ll get her.”
Zilo nodded, watching two intertwined tentacles grapple with each other. “I won’t tell IA. Not yet.”
“Yet?”
“We know who killed Chase. The next step is finding out who un-killed him.”
