A Speech To Die For

The speech everyone will remember.

**A Speech To Die For** is the 35th case in The Origins as well as the 5th and final case to occur in the East Central Region.

## ***Plot***

After the shootout between the team and The Summoners, the head of the CDRA as well as the team's weapons expert, Ronda Warner, told the team that the president is going to present a speech in Lansing, Michigan and that he is in grave danger. We rush to Lansing only to find Ronda dead at the speaker podium. We immediately find Bill Wise, the Vice President of the U.S.A., near the scene. He tells us that he's heard of Ronda, as she's the head of the CDRA and all, but that he never actually met her. We then ask him to lead us to the president, Tom Fisher. Max Snowcone and the player then inform President Fisher of Ronda's early demise, and Tom says that he is disappointed that the new CDRA leader is gone so soon and that she had a lot of potential as a leader. We later escort Tom and Bill to the station as we search the suite for more clues. We later find a gun there. After analyzing the weapon, we send it to a secret agent that Max knows of, Nicholas Wildzap. Nicholas tells Max and the player that the weapon was purchased by one "Nina Semenova." We know that Nina Semenova died. Hence, she couldn't have left her gun there. We do, however, know a member of The Summoners with a gun like that and named themselves "Nina Semenova" in disguise: Mary Thompson. We ask Mary what she's doing in Lansing, and she says that she wanted to get a good shot at the president. We immediately rush Mary to our custody and start to investigate the suite gate. At the gate, we find bug spray. We immediately send it over to Sandra Davis, the team's lab chief, who says that the DNA on the spray matched Hugh Smith's. We realize that the last time we saw Hugh was back in Rhode Island, and that it would be a good time to check up on how he's doing. Hugh told the duo that he wanted to meet the president and hear his speech in person. We ask him about Ronda, and he said that they interacted for a bit until Tom Fisher's speech started. He then saw Ronda apply a bug spray onto herself. After, she immediately collapsed. He immediately tried to help her and called for help after the speech. We go back to the suite gate and find a golf club, with fingerprints matching Silvio Razzio. We ask Silvio about his golf club, to which he replies that he was going to go on agolf trip with the president after his speech. We tell Silvio to stay at the suite and not to leave until the investigation's over. We later find a note telling Ronda to step down. We give the note to Lily Hall, the team's profiler, who tells the team that the handwriting perfectly matched one of her father, the late Aaron Hall's prized handwriting samples from Bill Wise. We ask Bill why he told Ronda to step down, and he said he wanted to take over the CDRA from Ronda, as he thought he was better fit to lead the agency. We then discover a laptop, and we send it to Imogen Caulfield, the team's tech expert. Imogen tells the duo that the computer belonged to Mary and that on the computer was an email from Shaun Fearmore, the leader of The Summoners. We asked Imogen if we could read the email, which said "Mary, there should be NO delays, you hear me?! Get rid of the president NOW!" We then went to Mary's cell, where she tells us that as the best shot in the cult, Shaun chose her to shoot down Tom Fisher, but she failed because Ronda stopped her and confiscated a gun of hers, which distracted Mary long enough for Tom to finish his speech and head back to safety. The duo immediately decided to investigate the scene of the crime once again, where we find a security tape. Once again, we send it to Imogen, who tells Max and the player that the camera does not have footage of Ronda's murder, rather an argument between her and one of our suspect. Imogen plays the clip and we see Ronda arguing with the president. We hear Ronda saying "There are people in that crowd that want to KILL you, Mr. President! I suggest you delay the speech" with Tom Fisher replying by saying "Ronda, that is the last time. I respect that you're worried about my safety but I must make this speech!" We immediately bring the president in for interrogation. He says that Ronda suggested he not do the speech due to a potential threat in the crowd. President Fisher then went on to say that he could gain many more supporters with this speech and that it couldn't be delayed or else he'd be a laughing stock, and that he got annoyed with Ronda always talking about and worrying about his safety, when she was the one who got murdered in the end. We then find a broken locket. After assembling it, to our shock, we find out that the locket has one picture of Ronda and one picture of Silvio. We ask Silvio about the locket, and he said that ever since he could remember, he's had a crush on Ronda. He finally saw her during the speech and decided to ask her out, and she rejected his advances, leaving him in a depressive state for the rest of the time. We now finally have enough evidence to arrest the killer.

## ***Killer And Motives***

The killer turned out to be Hugh.

Upon admitting to the murder, Hugh admitted to buying a bottle of bug repellant for the speech. He then said he left the bug spray to go to the restroom. When he came back, he didn't know that someone had replaced it with toxic gas. When Ronda saw that Hugh was about to use the gas, she asked Hugh if she could borrow it for a second. Immediately after spraying it on herself, Ronda collapsed immediately. Judge Virgo pardoned Hugh for the murder.

## ***A Guide On Chasing Chaos (5/5)***

After the gas from Hugh's bottle started to spread, we escorted everyone to safety, including the President and Bill. We believe the poison was supposed to be a distraction because Hugh was the aimed target. We then find out that the gas bottle and the fingerprints on the bottle belonged to Duchess Sophia Bartlett. On the bottle, we also find a coded message, meant for her accomplice, Agent Muddslide. We send the message to Lily, who tells the team that Sophia needed a distraction to kidnap the president in order to blame it on The Russians, moving them closer to war. In this message, Sophia said that she chose Hugh as a target because he's old and nobody would care if he died anyways. We realize that they must be pretty happy about how the situation carried on, as the head of the CDRA died instead. We must stop Sophia and Muddslide before they start a war with Russia. We have to move closer to the center of the country, so our next stop is in Des Moines, Iowa, as that's where A Russian Hitwoman we arrested, Esfir Volkova, was escorted to.

## ***Suspects***

***Bill Wise (Traits: 1, 2, 3, 5)Tom Fisher (Traits: 2, 3, 4)Mary Thompson (Traits: 1, 5)Hugh Smith (Traits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)Silvio Razzio (Traits: 1, 2, 3, 4)***
## ***Quasi-Suspects***

***Alexander VirgoNicholas WildzapJessica CharlesLily HallMax Snowcone***