A Cover Story

Shoot! Someone ruined the photoshoot...

**A Cover Story** is the 36th case in The Origins as well as the 1st case to occur in the West Central Region.

## ***Plot***

After one of our colleagues and old friends, Ronda Warner, was murdered, we rush to Des Moines, Iowa, where Ursula Gemini and the player searched an interview area and found a woman with her throat slashed. Ursula immediately identifies the woman to be Rosa Field, a famous model on many big magazine covers. Ursula also mentioned that what made her famous was her being a suspect in two cases back in 1995. At the crime scene, we find Blake Caulfield, Imogen Caulfield's brother who's also Maria Caulfield's grandson. We ask Blake what he was doing at the crime scene, and he said that he was going to film him giving workout tips after Rosa was done. He then mentioned that he left to go to the bathroom. Blake then says that Rosa's photographer, Malcolm Harris, spent a lot of time with her in her day-to-day life. We inform Malcolm about Rosa's murder, and he acts shocked about his best client's demise. We later search Rosa's living room, as she spent a lot of time there, and we find a heart shaped guitar with fingerprints all over it. We analyze the fingerprints and discover that they belong to Dennis Jr., the rockstar we met back in Texas. We assume that Dennis and Rosa knew each other quite well due to the heart, and we bring Dennis in for interrogation. Dennis tells Ursula and the player that him and Rosa got together for public reasons, but they started to realize that they had fallen in love with each other. Dennis then said that he got a text from Malcolm letting him know that Rosa died. We then find a note saying "Rosa, come on, you don't want to miss out on this opportunity." We send the note to the team's profiler, Lily Hall, who says that the note was written by none other than Miss Universe herself, Melissa Mcnally. When the duo interrogated Melissa about the note, she told them that Rosa and herself were going to go on a trip to Milan to buy new clothes for their upcoming fashion show. We then find the victim's phone, and send it to Imogen. Imogen told Ursula and the player that the phone was Rosa's and that she found a text on it, saying "Rosa, leave me alone!" She then traced the message back to Blake. When we ask Blake about the text he sent Rosa, he said that Rosa kept constantly flirting and wanting to get together with him. He then said he knew that she already had a boyfriend and was going to tell him, but he never had the time to. We immediately rush to Dennis to ask him if he knew Rosa was cheating on him or not, and he said he had no idea, but that she wasn't as open as she usually was. We then find a death threat saying "Help me or I'll silence you, Rosa!" We sent the note to Lily, who matched the note with Duchess Sophia Bartlett, Ronda Warner's killer and our main enemy, ever since she killed two team members. We immediately rush Sophia into our custody, and she says that Rosa originally wanted to help her with her plans to start a war on Russia while she was drunk the other night, but later claimed to not remember it. Sophia got furious and threatened to silence Rosa. As soon as we leave her in her cell, we hear a bang and Sophia escapes. We later find a computer, which shows that Melissa had a two-way trip to Milan and back while Rosa had a one way trip to Milan. When we ask Melissa about this, she says that everyone thought of Rosa as an annoying stuck up little brat who needed to learn some manners, as fame had gotten to her head. Melissa said that she thought leaving Rosa in Milan would smack some sense into her. We later find a security camera on top of Sophia's former cell, which we send to Imogen. Imogen told the team that the camera shows Agent Muddslide, Sophia's accomplice, planting bombs beside her cell, which blew it up and let her escape. We know that there's no chance of finding Sophia now, and that our main priority should be finding Rosa's killer before the unsolved murder becomes a cover story. We later find yet another security camera in the interview room, where we see an argument emmence between Malcolm and Rosa, with Malcolm storming off. The team asks Malcolm what the argument was about, and he said that ever since he could remember, Rosa has always been such a bossy client, and that he would've dumped her for another client in a second if she wasn't as famous and the job didn't pay well. Malcolm said that he's sad that someone killed her but relieved he doesn't have to hear her yelling at him anymore. After realizing they're running out of time, Ursula and the player decide to do one final sweep of the music room in order to find the evidence they're missing in order to arrest the killer.

## ***Killer And Motives***

The killer turned out to be Dennis.

Upon admitting to the murder, Dennis said that Rosa wanted to leave him and focus on her career. She told that to him right after he was preparing to engage her. He bought tickets to Haiti, but she just threw them on the ground and stepped on them. After the photoshoot, Dennis sneaked in and gave her a last kiss.

## ***Preparing For War (1/5)***

We arrest Dennis and take him in. He says he thought their relationship was spot on, but since Rosa's career started to kick off, she ignored him and cheated on him many times. After he gets taken away, we head back to the station, where Maria waits for us, saying that she got a call from the local prison about a woman in a big hat walking in and taking Esfir Volkova with her, shooting two guards in the process. Both of them survived. We know she wants to assassinate her on live TV in order to kick the war into overdrive. She must have a hideout where she sets up her studio, so we ask Imogen if she can hack into the system and find her location. She says she can do that, but that will take some time. After the talk with Imogen, we get a call from Adeline Mann. She says that the war would not be beneficial for The Summoners, so they're willing to stop until we catch Sophia. She said we should go to Keystone, South Dakota, as we might find some useful information there about Sophia's plans.

## ***Suspects***

***Blake Caulfield (Traits: 3)Malcolm Harris (Traits: 1, 2, 3)Dennis Jr. (Traits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)Melissa Mcnally (Traits: 1, 2, 4, 5)Duchess Sophia Bartlett (Traits: 1, 2, 3, 5)***
## ***Quasi-Suspects***

***Maria CaulfieldImogen CaulfieldAdeline Mann***