[Nine Nine]
Amy and Boyle sat in the break room, eyes fixed on the laptop. The CCTV footage from the hotel played on screen, timestamped and grainy but clear enough to show movement in the hallway outside Emma's suite.
Jackson from Cyber dropped off a thick folder on the table. "Here's the report. Metadata, routing paths, server logs. You'll want to check page five." Then he left.
Amy opened and flipped through the report, reading the highlighted lines. "The phone number... It's from a stolen phone and the call was so short that it's impossible to track. As for the email, the sender's IP traces back to a cyber cafe near the hotel. GamerZex. A public access point, which means anyone could've used it, and it's open 24/7. Looks like our perp had everything planned out."
Boyle frowned. "So basically, it's like trying to find one weirdo in a room full of other weirdos playing Fortnite."
"Exactly," Amy said. "But we have one advantage: the timestamp." She pointed to the line on the page. "The email was sent at 6 a.m. If we can get the CCTV footage from GamerZex during that time, we'll see who logged in. Hopefully, there won't be many people up that early."
Boyle leaned forward, tapping the hotel footage on his laptop. "And if we line that up with everyone who had access to Emma's room, maybe one face overlaps."
"Right," Amy said, already jotting down notes. "We'll check the hotel footage first. Anyone who entered that suite after Emma booked it goes on the list. Then we'll see if any of them show up at GamerZex within the timestamp."
Boyle looked impressed. "Cross-reference mode activated. Santiago style."
Amy ignored him and started scrubbing through the hotel recordings. The screen filled with timestamps and silent clips of staff moving through the hallway outside Emma's suite.
"Housekeeping, maintenance, room service…" she muttered, fast-forwarding. "Pause. There." She pointed. A woman in a standard uniform stopped at Emma's door and scanned a keycard. "That's the temp housekeeper Emma mentioned."
Boyle zoomed in slightly. "No visible name tag. Let's flag her for now."
Amy nodded, jotting down the time. "Tuesday. 9:42 a.m."
Boyle clicked over to the next clip. "Now let's see who else entered that day."
They scrubbed through several more hours until the list was complete: two cleaners, one maintenance worker, and the housekeeper replacement.
Amy leaned back. "Alright. Let me call Ray. He can get the CCTV recordings from the cafe. Ah! I almost forgot. We need to get a proper warrant this time." She sighed. "It'll take 24 hours or more."
"Or, maybe Ray can talk things out?" Boyle said with a knowing smile. "You know how persuasive he can be, right?"
"Yeah, that would save us time and we can probably catch this perp before he could do any more damage," Amy said as she took out her phone.
...
[Let's go to Ray's side]
Ray sat behind the wheel of his cruiser, parked near a curb, scribbling notes into his pad. It had been a weird morning, even by his standards. Two reckless drivers, both claiming they were "testing the limits of their friendship," and one elderly woman who had decided that flashing college students was her way of "celebrating body positivity."
He'd seen a lot during his military days, but that—he was never unseeing that. Not even years of combat flashbacks could compete with a seventy-year-old wearing large chrome nipple piercings shaped like lightning bolts. The image had burned itself into his mind like a cursed photograph.
His phone buzzed. He checked the caller ID. Amy.
"Yeah, Santiago?"
"Hey, Ray. Sorry to interrupt your, uh, shift," Amy said. "We need your help."
He listened quietly as she explained everything—Emma Stone, the hidden cameras, the anonymous email, and the cyber café lead. Amy's tone was steady but tight, like she was balancing control with urgency.
When she finished, he asked, "You're saying the email came from GamerZex, the one off Lexington?"
"Yeah. We're getting a warrant, but that'll take a day. If you can convince the owner to cooperate, we could move faster."
"I'll handle it," he said.
"Legally," Amy added pointedly.
He smirked faintly. "Legally adjacent. Got it."
"Ray," Amy warned.
"I'll keep it clean," he assured her.
He hung up, checked his watch, and shifted the cruiser into drive.
Fifteen minutes later, he parked in front of GamerZex, a narrow storefront squeezed between a tattoo parlor and a vape shop. The windows were plastered with neon posters advertising tournaments and energy drinks. Inside, rows of computers glowed with screensavers of fantasy characters holding oversized swords.
Ray parked, got out, and walked straight in. Heads barely turned. A few regulars glanced up from their screens before going back to their games.
A lanky teenager with green-streaked hair looked up from the counter. His name tag said Trent. "Yo, officer. You lost or looking to join the leaderboard?"
Ray flashed his badge. "Neither. NYPD. We are working on a high-profile case..." He explained the situation, keeping it subtle.
"...and I need access to your CCTV recordings for the last two weeks."
"Wow! Blackmail from my cafe? Shti! Okay. I'll get it. I just don't want any trouble. Darn it! I can't afford another lawsuit," Trent said as he hurried back into the security room.
A few minutes later...
Trent came back with a hard drive, "Here you go. Just to be sure, am I in trouble?"
"Are you involved in this mess?" Ray asked as he took the hard drive.
"No! Hell no. After I ran into problems last year, I upgraded the way I run this place. Proper ID check, sign in and cameras and everything," Trent said with a nervous look on his face.
"Then you've got nothing to worry about," Ray said. "I'll return the drive after we copy the recordings in a couple of hours."
"Fine by me," Trent replied with a side nod.
...
[Nine Nine] [4 PM]
The cyber team copied the content from the hard drive and forwarded the data to Amy. Ray returned the drive to the cafe and resumed his patrol duty, blending back into the rhythm of the city streets.
Back at the precinct, Amy and Boyle scrubbed through the copied footage, matching timestamps with meticulous attention.
Timestamp 5:40-6:10: Only four people were in the cafe. Among them, three faces were clearly visible, but they didn't match the employee profile who went into Emma's room. The fourth, however, had a mask and a hat, obscuring all identifiable features. Amy paused the video.
Boyle leaned closer. "Gottcha," he muttered, confident, until Amy raised a hand.
"But his face is hidden," she said. "We're back to point one."
Amy rewound the footage and started playing it from the beginning, her eyes scanning each second with surgical focus. She watched the masked figure enter, slump into the chair, do something, and then leave within 30 minutes. The masked guy was limping as he walked. Amy's lips curved into a small smile.
"Not necessarily," she said. "Look at the limp on his right leg."
Boyle's eyes went wide. Then recognition hit him like a lightning bolt. He slammed his fist into his open palm. "The hotel manager!"
Amy nodded, tapping the keyboard to pull up hotel staff schedules and cross-referencing them with the timestamp. "Exactly. The limp, the timing, the access. He's the only one who fits all of it. He probably used one of the employees to plant those cameras, or those cameras were already inside the rooms even before Emma booked. Either way, we got a solid lead now."
Boyle whooped quietly, punching the air. "That's it! We caught him red-handed. Or masked, I guess."
Amy shook her head, smirking. "Now we just need a little more evidence to make sure he can't wiggle out of this one."
...
Ray returned from his patrol duty. He wrote and submitted the reports. Then he decided to check up with Amy. So, he went to the break room.
Boyle looked up, "Hey, Ray."
"Charles," He said. "How's it going?"
Boyle leaned back in his chair, his fingers drumming on the desk. "Good and not good," he admitted. "Good thing is, we got a prime suspect." He pointed at the screen, still paused on the masked figure. "The hotel manager, Carl. The limp matches, the timing matches, and he's the only one who fits all of it."
Ray raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like a breakthrough."
Boyle's smile faded slightly. "Yeah, except… here's the not good part." He gestured to the footage again. "He's masked the entire time. Anyone could have a limp. And just showing up at a cyber cafe? Not a crime. We can shut down the last excuse, but as far as the law goes, we don't have anything solid enough to arrest him."
Amy leaned back in her chair, rubbing her temples. "Exactly. We've got a lead, but it's circumstantial. Right now, all we can do is keep gathering evidence and hope he makes a mistake."
"Or," Ray said as he walked closer and leaned in toward the screens. "We can arrest our perp, right now." He pointed at the masked guy's legs. "That guy is faking it. He ain't a limp. I can just tell it from the way he's walking. He's trying too hard."
Amy zoomed in.
"You sure? Wait a sec! The bowling ball ring!" Amy quickly replayed the footage from the hotel. She fast-forwarded and paused it on a guy. Then she zoomed it on his hands. "Look at that. The same bowling ball ring!"
"Bingo!" Charles said with a serious expression.
"Mark Winchester. Started working at the hotel last month," Amy said after pulling up his data.
"Looks like Mark is trying to frame the manager and has almost succeeded. Now, we have enough evidence to bring our guy in," Ray said with a subtle smile.
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