Lake Hiawatha - A Harbor City Universe Teleplay

Post by **LtBroccoli** » Sat Jul 25, 2026 2:19 am

Chapter Tags: Nosex, police
Content Warnings: Descriptions of offscreen child sexual abuse.

A note about ages in this story. When I originally wrote this story, it was on a forum where stories involving underage characters was allowed. During the writing and publishing of this story the rules changed. I've modified the ages to fit with the current rules but some parts might not make as much sense. For example, in the original version Stacy was young enough that her going through the process of legal emancipation made sense. That was still a big plot point of this story but an 18 year old doesn't need to go through that. If there's any point where the ages of women in this story feels clunky, it's because of either bad math or making the story fit the site's rules.
-------------------------------------------------------------

George makes a trip to New York to uncover some truths...
-------------------------------------------------------------

Episode 9 - Confessions
INT. CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT BULLPEN - DAY
It’s the next day. ADA Steven Jones arrives with another attorney, a woman named LISA SANDERS. She’s around 30, dressed sharp, and looks like she’s ready for a fight. Her gentle looks are offset by the way she carries herself. The two walk over to Captain Smith’s office. A moment later, the door opens.

GEORGE (V.O.)
I called Steven to let him know what I had. He made an appointment to come over the next morning. He brought someone new with him.

DANIEL
Jenkins, Lewis!

George and Janella get up and walk over to his office. They walk in.

INT. CAPTAIN SMITH'S OFFICE - DAY
Captain Daniel Smith sits behind his desk, looking more stressed and haggard than usual. George and Janella enter his office, closing the door behind them. Steven Jones sits in one chair, next to the woman. The Captain looks directly at his detectives.

DANIEL
I’m going to name my next ulcer after you two.

JANELLA
Excuse me?

DANIEL
Steven?

Steven stands up, Lisa follows him.

STEVEN
This is Lisa Sanders, AUSA. She’s going to be working this case from a slightly different angle. We’ve been asked to read her in.

Lisa extends her hand to the detectives. They each take turns shaking it.

LISA
Lisa Sanders.

JANELLA
Detective Janella Jenkins.

GEORGE
George Lewis, CCPD SCU.

LISA
My client would like information on the Electric Ladyland case.

GEORGE
Who is your client?

LISA
The United States of America.

STEVEN
Miss Sanders is a Federal prosecutor.

LISA
Electric Ladyland is the code phrase we picked for this case. And yes, I know it’s a Jimi Hendrix album title. Shall we get started?

GEORGE
One question first. What church do you go to?

Lisa and Steven look taken aback by his query.

LISA
I don’t see what that has to do with this, but I’m Jewish.

GEORGE
Good. Wanted to make sure you weren’t connected to this investigation. No offense intended. What do you know so far?

LISA
ADA Jones has brought me up to speed for the most part. He mentioned that you had some sort of confession already and that you were going to show us it this morning.

GEORGE
Sort of. It was recorded back in ‘95 by one of the church’s victims right before she assaulted the daughter of the man that raped her when she was 10. She gave over 30 names of men, women, and animals that used and abused her. Who they were, what they did, how they did it.

LISA
I’m sorry, she was about to do what?

GEORGE
It’s a long story. Let’s go look at the murderboard.

LISA
Murderboard?

GEORGE
I don’t know what the feds call it, but I call it a murderboard. Here, I’ll show you.

The officers and attorneys exit Captain Smith’s office.

INT. CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT BULLPEN - DAY
The five of them walk through the bullpen and into the conference room.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
George opens the door, and lets everyone enter before closing the door. Lisa takes a look around the room.

LISA
Impressive. We usually call this a chart, but most of our cases don’t look like a crazy person trying to prove that JFK was killed by a robotic ninja dressed as a time-traveling tiger trying to hide the Moon Landing hoax from the Illuminati.

GEORGE
Yeah, we might need a bigger room before it’s all said and done. Need to make sure Hollow Earth is represented, too.

Lisa looks at him like he’s crazy.

LISA
Wait, there’s more than just this?

GEORGE
Oh yeah. We’ve just started to unpack everything on Jordan’s computers. Looks like he had years worth of videos from First Union on his drives. A lot more than our informant gave us. We can probably identify about 15-20 victims even before we do a deep dive.

LISA
Wait, rewind real quick. Who’s Jordan?

JANELLA
Martin Beskowitz, aka Jordan because he was a huge Michael Jordan fan. He’s the creep we found dead in Veneto sitting on top of a treasure trove of illegal videos.

STEVEN
Speaking of Jordan, any ideas on his killer?

Janella walks over to the board and points at Bob’s picture.

JANELLA
Robert Earl Kuntzmann, of Veneto. Goes by Bob. De facto leader of the 2236 crew.

STEVEN
I remember him. What makes him the primary suspect?

JANELLA
Lack of incriminating evidence and motive and he fits the profile. He’s a cold-blooded killer that worked with Jordan in the past and knows the area intimately.

GEORGE
As we’ve been going through Jordan’s stash, we’ve found a metric assload of terrible things, but something is missing. There’s nothing related to 2236, aside from two videos. The first one from the Roadside Motel attack where Jonas Daniels raped Michelle Bartlett and orally raped Melissa Crawford now Swanson under duress. The second is the one we’re going to watch, Stacy’s confession.

STEVEN
So what you’re saying is there’s a big Bob-shaped hole in the evidence locker.

JANELLA
Exactly. As soon as we saw that hole, we had 5 primary suspects. We ruled out 4 of them right away. Vincent Cartucci was in a halfway house, he’s dealing with a pretty bad drug addiction. Chuck Hartman, Paul Damato, and Gary Spencer had a really shitty alibi.

GEORGE
They were at Woodcrest PD replacing a sewer line. We followed up with them, they verified that all three of them were there all day.

LISA
That’s not a ...oh. Shitty alibi. Cute.

STEVEN
Anything that ties him to this?

JANELLA
Nope. No prints, no witnesses, no footage, no physical evidence. We saw a white man walk up to Jordan’s residence, stop, answer a phone call, and keep walking around the time we calculated the time of death, but he wore a jacket and had the hood up. He walked out of sight and vanished behind the building. But he knew about the party tunnels.

LISA
Party tunnels?

GEORGE
There were some holes in the basement walls of the rowhouse between them for easy access. One of the officers on the scene reported that when she was a kid they’d enter in one house, use the tunnels to go to another, party there, then escape through the tunnels if the cops showed up. This felt like one of those badly kept secrets that everyone in the town knew but no one told us about.

STEVEN
Think anyone else was in on it?

George stands for a moment. His voice drops a tone as he speaks. He points at Jen’s picture on the board.

GEORGE
Probably. He most likely had assistance from her, Jennifer Tibault. She’s very good with computers, likely had access to Jordan’s internal network, and knew where everything was. We suspect that she edited Jordan’s big ass spreadsheet he used to keep track of everything and nuked the local backup remotely before the welfare check was called in. She’s also our informant.

STEVEN
I’m sorry, she’s your informant?

GEORGE
Yes sir. All the videos she gave us were direct copies of Jordan’s files, but just a sampler. She knew where to go, what to grab, and how to grab it. Anything extra Bob took was on him.

STEVEN
Think we’d have enough to bring her in?

GEORGE
Speaking as a cop, no. As her friend, definitely not. I don’t think you’d get a conviction.

Steven crosses his arms and strokes his chin.

STEVEN
What makes you think that?

GEORGE
Think about it. She’s an accomplice to killing a pedophile. Not only did she get him killed, but got him killed in such a way that we can now take down hundreds if not thousands of them around the country on child porn charges. All the defense would have to do is portray her as someone fighting to do what the cops didn’t do for years and anyone on that jury with a kid would say she’s not guilty. Even harder to do if we can’t nail Bob at the same time. And we don’t have so much as a fingerprint or shoeprint putting Bob at the scene.

Steven nods.

STEVEN
I agree. There’s already media outlets praising Martin’s killer. Jen’s story gets out with everything she’s gone through, she’ll have a Lifetime movie of the week based on her before we can spell her name on the arrest warrant. Bob will kill again. As long as he sticks to killing bad guys like Martin, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

LISA
WHAT?

STEVEN
The minute he screws up, I’ll sign the arrest warrant myself. So, George. This confession you promised us?

George motions for everyone to take a seat around the computer. George presses play, activating Stacy’s video.

INT. BOB’S CABIN - DAY
It’s a hot summer day in August 1995. The cabin is lit from the sunlight coming in from the outside. A chair sits empty in front of a camera. Walking into frame from the right is a young STACY DANIELS. She’s fifteen and beautiful with long wavy brown hair and a dancer’s body. She’s wearing a white t-shirt that says ‘CAMP HIAWATHA’ in light blue lettering. The same color blue matches her shorts.

Stacy takes a deep breath and looks down in her lap. She holds some notes slightly out of the camera’s view. Another breath to calm her nerves and she opens her mouth.

STACY
Hello. To whomever is watching this, my name is Stacy Daniels. I’m 18 years old, and I reside at 83 Hillside Terrace in Hillside Estates, just outside of Harbor City. I’m up here at Camp Hiawatha, a religious camp run by the leaders of First Union Holy Church, located in the suburbs Harbor City. The actions that you are about to see on this video are mine and mine alone. No one coerced me. No one forced me to do what you’re about to see. You will likely see sexual acts that are illegal. This is not the first time I’ve been on camera performing illegal sexual acts, and I’m afraid it won’t be the last time. But this is the first time I’m doing so of my own will.

Stacy takes a breath before continuing her speech.

STACY
From the time I was 8 years old, I was sexually abused, raped, beaten, and tortured by those closest to me, my own family. I was groomed from a young age to be a plaything for the men in my family. That family is the Daniels family, the leading family at First Union Holy Church. The man directly responsible for those actions, the first one to rape me, was my uncle, the Reverend Charles Daniels. The first time he forced me to do anything sexual I was 8 years old. My father, Matthew Daniels, drove me over to my uncle’s house under the pretense of playing with my cousins at a sleepover. He dropped me off at the house on a Friday night and picked me up on Saturday morning. During the night, Charles, whom I still called Uncle Charlie, had stripped me out of my pajamas and molested me. Throughout the night, he forced me to stroke his penis until he ejaculated on me. When I tried to tell my parents about this, they refused to listen. I was brought back to Uncle Charlie’s house an average of once of a month for the next year and a half, each time the behavior escalated. What started as giving handjobs and light molesting soon escalated to giving and receiving oral sex for not just him, but others in the family, including his other brothers, his sons, nephews, and cousins, and close friends. This list, which includes well over 30 men and boys, will be read at the end of the video.

Stacy took another breath and looked down at her notes, composing herself. She looks back up at the camera.

STACY
The first time I was raped vaginally was the weekend after my tenth birthday. After a small birthday party, my parents tricked me and instead of taking me to the weekend getaway to Disneyland they promised, took me instead to Uncle Charlie’s new house. He and his family had recently moved into a 12-bedroom mansion. Included in this house was a section not originally on the plans. Through the study on the first floor, there is a bookcase. That bookcase hides a door. The door is activated by pulling on the copy of Atlas Shrugged located on the third shelf, approximately 8 books in from the left. This secret door leads to a hallway with several rooms. Most of these rooms are small bedrooms and a bathroom, but the three rooms of import are the studio, the control room, and the dungeon. The studio is a room that is large enough to be used as a small television recording studio. The control room is used for operating camera equipment. The dungeon is used for various torture scenes. I was brought down to the studio by Jason Daniels, Charlie’s son. By this point my parents had left. Jason directed me through the studio to a bed sitting in front of several bright lights and a couple cameras. He asked me some questions about me, like my name, age, height, and weight. After asking those, he asked if I knew what was going to happen today. I said no, this was a surprise. They then asked if I knew what sex was, and if I had ever had a guy put his penis in me. The exact word they used was pee-pee. I said no. Uncle Charlie entered the room, along with Jason’s twin brother Jacob. They sat on the bed next to me and around me and began kissing me, molesting me, and undressing me. Before too long, I was naked. After stripping them and performing oral sex on them, I was tied up to the bed and Uncle Charlie licked my vagina until I orgasmed. It was afterward that he climbed between the bed, lined his penis up with my vagina, and began to rape me. A ten-year-old girl cannot and will never be able to consent to having a grown man fuck her. After Charlie, Jacob and Jason both took their turns. Before the session was over, I was raped nearly a dozen times by those three and forced to give blowjobs to the two men operating the equipment. I later came to discover that the two men were also members of the church, Roger Martz and Larry Allensworth.

Stacy pauses, nearing the edge of a breakdown. She takes several deep breaths until she regains her composure.

STACY
At an average of at least once a month since then, until this summer started, I have been sent to the Daniels house and forced to perform sexually on camera. Those acts have included oral, vaginal, and anal sex with more than 30 men, boys, women, girls, and even animals. Their depravity knows no bounds. I have been gang raped on several occasions, forced to perform lesbian acts with family members, beaten and whipped in the dungeon, and forced to partake in similar acts against others. There were times that they would force me to have sex with other children, and if we didn’t perform the way they wanted, we would be beaten for not following directions. The most degrading of these instances was being tied up and forced to have sex with their guard dog, a Rottweiler named Roman. It’s been more than 8 years since the rapes began in earnest. The only reason I haven’t killed myself yet was because of my fleeting faith and fear of eternal damnation, and a growing sentiment from a line I once heard in a Clint Eastwood movie, ‘Don’t give the prick the satisfaction.’ If it were not for that, and if I thought for a second that anyone would actually investigate these monsters following my death, I would’ve slit my wrists years ago. Instead, I sit her tonight, about to dole out a small sliver of revenge. It is my hope that one day justice rains down on the Daniels family for what they’ve done to me and other children. Tonight, I’ll settle for a little revenge.

Stacy takes a few deep breaths before reading off of the list in front of her.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
Watching the video, George stands at the back of the room, watching the reactions of those in the room. Janella’s taking notes, occasionally wiping tears out of the corner of her eyes. Lisa is shocked at what she’s seeing and hearing, covering her mouth to stifle gasps. Steven tries to maintain a stoic posture, but even he’s getting upset. George tries to keep it together as he watches this for the second time.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Stacy described all of it in the only way she could. So matter of factly that it almost sounded boring. She listed 30 names in this video. She talked about Uncle Charlie and his sons raping her for the first time. She talked about how Jamie and Jonas would take turns double teaming her. She talked about how for her cousin James’s 18th birthday they made Stacy toss his salad while he fucked another girl. She described how an old man she called ‘The Weatherman’ kept calling her Sophie as he raped her ass. She talked about the times she was tied down over a wooden box so Roman, the family Rottweiler, could mount her for Uncle Larry’s enjoyment. She listed the hotel room where she was sent to with another girl as entertainment for a former city councilman and his wife. She talked about the whippings, the beatings, all of it.

INT. BOB'S CABIN - DAY
Stacy looks at the camera as she finishes off the list. She’s on the verge of a complete and total breakdown, but holds things together just long enough to get to the last page of her notes.

STACY
Finally, as I wrap this up, here’s a special message for Matthew and Diana Daniels. Mom and Dad. I say this from the bottom of my heart. Fuck you. You knew what was happening. You knew what Charles was like. I told you what they did to me, but you still took me over there. You violated the most sacred trust, that between a parent and child. Your one job was to protect your child from evil, and instead you hand delivered me right into it. As soon as I am legally able, I will separate myself from you and we will never have anything to do with each other again. I will never step foot in this town, and if I ever return, it will be to watch everything you valued more than me burn to the ground. I will celebrate the deaths of everyone in this family by dancing on their graves. Matt, Di, you had one job and you failed. I hope you each die slow and painful deaths, alone, surrounded by complete strangers, haunted by the thought that the person who should love you the most, your own daughter, is praying for your suffering to continue so that you can live through just a fraction of what you did to me and what you let happen to me through your own inaction. A real parent would’ve beaten the shit out of the man that their 8-year-old accused of molesting her, or had shot him or went to the cops. They wouldn’t keep driving her over there.

Stacy cries an ugly, gut wrenching cry that only comes from releasing more pain than any girl should ever know. After a full minute of crying, she stands up and stops the video.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
The video stops. The room is silent for a long moment.

LISA
(whispers)
My god. There’s...

JANELLA
Yeah. This is what we’re up against.

Steven composes himself, wiping tears from his eyes.

STEVEN
What do you need George?

George thinks for a moment, looking at the board.

GEORGE
We need to prove part of this at least. I need to track down Stacy and verify this. That’s not gonna be easy, she’s gone to ground. We need to verify the parts of the confession regarding the secret rooms, which means flipping Jesse Hickenbottom. And we need to correlate those names. We can’t go directly to them with this yet but we can see who is still alive and whatnot. Once we corroborate this, we need to act. Not just at the house, but the church and the camp all at once.

LISA
You think they’ll try to destroy evidence once they know we’re on to them?

GEORGE
Absolutely. Did you see the amount of security they had for a van full of six kids? No doubt in my mind they’ll have an office fire the moment we move against them.

Lisa turns to Steven.

LISA
The camp is outside of your jurisdiction. My side will take care of that.

STEVEN
Agreed. We’ll coordinate when the time’s right. Assuming that we can put this on them.

JANELLA
I assume some deals will be on the table.

STEVEN
First one to flip gets to walk. Second gets a slap on the wrist. After that, they die of old age in prison.

GEORGE
As much as we’d like to bring in everyone ourselves, I’m definitely okay with sending anyone we need to over to FPMITAP.

LISA
Huh?

GEORGE
Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison. Hasn’t anyone seen Office Space?

They look at George with blank expressions.

INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George sips his wine, taking a pause from the story for a moment.

GEORGE
Now, keep in mind we were just getting to April 2005. The investigation was going full-bore. We knew at some point no matter how hard we tried to keep a secret, First Union would find out about the investigation. Our best hope was surprise, but we couldn’t rely on it forever. We needed to act fast. But I had one really ugly task in front of me.

XAVIER
(shouting)
Finding Stacy?

GEORGE
Yep, finding Stacy. Stacy is brilliant. Like, genius level, makes me look like an idiot who eats paste stupid.

CARLY
Well...

GEORGE
Haha. No, but whatever she puts her mind to, she does. She graduated early, was emancipated from her parents at 16, earned a full ride to HCU, completed her Bachelors and Masters in under 4 years, then taught at Julliard while picking up work on various shows.

DEREK
She in anything I might’ve heard of?

ANGIE
Maybe. She was in Cats, Chorus Line, Book of Mormon for a bit, oh, Hamilton. Also a bunch of TV shows and music videos.

DEREK
What?

ANGIE
Yeah, she’s pretty good. She’s a gypsy. She goes from troupe to troupe, doing whatever she wants. As she’s gotten older, she’s taken on more choreography work.

GEORGE
But finding Stacy wasn’t easy. She didn’t want to be found. I didn’t know what state she was in, let alone what city. She changed her name when she moved to New York because she wasn’t legally required to post the notice of the new name here. She was going by a stage name at this point anyway, and that’s how I found her. I could’ve asked Jen or Angie, but I didn’t want to put them in that position until I needed to.

XAVIER
(shouting)
How did you track her down?

INT. CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT BULLPEN - DAY
George sits at his desk, looking at a website about drag queens and kings in New York City. Several men fabulously dressed as women and women smartly dressed as men populate his computer screen. Janella walks up behind him, slapping him on the shoulder.

JANELLA
(joking)
Something you want to tell me you’re hiding?

GEORGE
I think I’m close.

JANELLA
To coming out? How’s Liz going to handle this?

George looks at Janella with a ‘fuck you’ look. Janella laughs.

JANELLA
Nah, what have you got?

GEORGE
I think I’ve found Stacy. She’s hiding out with a troupe of drag queens up in New York. Looks like some of her friends from when she was there a couple years ago before her and Jen fled. After they left Chicago, she went to ground, only popping up here and there. My guess is she made her way to New York by car, sold it in Buffalo, made her way to NYC by bus, then basically disappeared. I tracked down her agent and discovered that she is available for bookings but is very selective at this point. I’ve seen her picture a couple times on this page. Most recent one is... here!

George clicks on a photo of Stacy, her hair cut short, face plastered in makeup and sparkles as she wears a very tiny dance outfit.

GEORGE
According to this, the pic was taken a month ago in Chelsea. She was helping prepare a dance number for some drag shows coming up this weekend. My guess is they’re still working on it and will have rehearsals somewhere. I just have to figure out where.

JANELLA
When do you leave?

GEORGE
You don’t want to come?

JANELLA
And miss all this?

Janella waves her hands, showing off the bullpen. They both have a short laugh.

GEORGE
I’m leaving in a couple hours. I’ll take the Crown Vic, drive up there, stay overnight, look for her until I find her. Hopefully not too long.

JANELLA
Hope so. We have a lot to do down here.

George goes back to the computer and writes down some details. Janella walks through the office.

EXT. NEW YORK CITY - DAY
The next day, George is in New York. It’s a warm day in May 2005, and he’s dressed in a suit walking around various neighborhoods in the city until he gets to Chelsea.

GEORGE (V.O.)
New York was definitely not my scene. I called an old friend that worked on NYPD, asking for some advice. Basically, he said don’t be a dick, try not to pick a fight, and relax. Then he said ‘Go Fuck Yourself’, which is New York for ‘Have a nice day.’

EXT. BODY AND SOUL DANCE - DAY
George walks down a busy street in the Chelsea area of New York City to a dance studio called ‘Body and Soul’. It’s a storefront on street level with the steel shutters drawn. As George approaches, he can hear music coming in from behind the shutters. He pushes on the door and it opens. He walks in.

GEORGE (V.O.)
It took a bit of doing, but I found Body and Soul. I called Stacy’s agent before I left Harbor City and was told that this was one of the spots she frequented between shows when she was in town. Even that took a lot of convincing to get out of the old lady.

INT. BODY AND SOUL DANCE - DAY
The dance studio is one large, open space. Hardwood floors make up the entire surface. Three walls of mirrors surround the floor. Two large dancing poles stand offset from the center of the room. Several pieces of silk hang from the raised ceiling.

As George enters, he sees a class full of women and men sitting around watching a young woman dance on one of the poles. She’s in her early 20’s and dressed in workout gear appropriate for dancing. She moves gracefully up and down the pole, supporting herself with her legs as he moves.

Another woman approaches George.

DANCER
Excuse me, this is a private class. We’re not open for walk-ins.

GEORGE
I’m sorry to intrude, I’m looking for someone.

DANCER
I’m going to have to ask you to leave.

George pulls out his badge and shows it discreetly to the dancer. He lowers the volume of his voice.

GEORGE
Ma’am, I’m looking for someone. I’d tell you what her name is, but I don’t know what it is right now. I know a couple of her names from the past, but I don’t know if I can trust you with them.

DANCER
That’s not NYPD.

GEORGE
No, Chester County Police Department. Know where Harbor City is?

The dancer nods.

GEORGE
That’s Chester County.

Over the dancer’s shoulder he sees the instructor of the pole dancing class dismount. For the first time, George sees her face.

It’s Stacy.

GEORGE
I think I know who I’m looking for. That teacher over there, the one that just got off the pole.

DANCER
Who, Carlotta? She’s in the middle of a class, you have to wait, and only if she’s willing to talk to you.

George thinks for a brief moment.

GEORGE
Tell her I’m George, and it’s about her Great Aunt Matilda.

DANCER
What happened?

GEORGE
It’s a long story, I probably shouldn’t tell it.

DANCER
Is she okay?

GEORGE
Who Matilda? Yeah, she passed away recently and I was hired by the estate to finalize some inheritance work. I really shouldn’t talk about it, my bosses don’t like us taking side work that takes us out of state, but hey, I get to charge for a weeks worth of work for 15 minutes of actual work. Then spend the rest of the week hanging out in the Big Apple at their expense.

DANCER
Cops do that?

GEORGE
Sometimes. We need some way to pay the bills. I’ll make more money on this week than I would the rest of the month, but I only get paid if I talk to her.

DANCER
Gimme a minute.

The dancer walks off and talks to Stacy. Stacy looks at George and freezes for a moment. He nods. Stacy addresses the class.

STACY
I’m sorry, something just came up that I have to take care of, I’ll be back in a few minutes.

Stacy walks off and grabs a towel to wipe off the sweat. She walks over to George.

GEORGE
Hi.

STACY
Hi.

GEORGE
Someplace we can talk in private?

STACY
Yeah, this way.

Stacy leads George down a hallway into an office.

INT. BODY AND SOUL DANCE OFFICE - DAY
The office is small and cramped. Piles of papers cover the desk. A harsh fluorescent light fills the room. Stacy walks in, George follows her. He closes the door. She slaps him once across the face, then again the other way. Before he can say anything, she hugs him and starts crying. He hugs her back.

GEORGE
You really know how to give a man mixed signals, Stace. Or should I use Carlotta.

She lets go of the hug, wiping a few tears from her eyes.

STACY
That’s Jen’s grandmother’s name on her mom’s side. She died when she was young. How did you find me?

GEORGE
Cops find people that don’t want to be found. You don’t want to be found. That is literally my job.

George looks for a chair to sit in. Stacy sits on the only chair in the office. George pulls up a stack of milk crates and sits on those.

STACY
No, seriously, who told you I was here?

GEORGE
No one. I tracked you down myself. I didn’t ask Jen or Angie or anyone else where you were. I’ve spent the last few weeks looking for you. You aren’t easy to track. After Chicago I saw that you drove to Buffalo, sold your car there. You hopped off the grid there but I didn’t think Buffalo was your scene. Then I remember all those times we talked about hiding in a crowd. Where could you fit in and be one of the crowd? Plus you still have friends in New York that would kick some ass to protect you, I focused here. That, and I called your agent to see if you were accepting bookings. For a woman that gets paid selling your services, she sure didn’t want to give you up.

STACY
I might need a new agent then.

GEORGE
She was tough. Wouldn’t tell me shit unless I booked you for some production. By the way, I have no idea what silk dancing is, but I had to pay for two months worth of lessons.

Stacy laughs.

STACY
Jen told me she was working with you last time I talked to her. She sounded tired and stressed.

GEORGE
She’s fighting a war by herself. I’m helping where I can, but we have to do things a certain way to make a difference. What did she tell you?

Stacy takes a deep, cleansing breath.

STACY
She told me she told you about Chicago, about how it looks like you’re starting an investigation into...them. And if you went to all this trouble to find me...

GEORGE
We found the confession. The one you recorded in Bob’s cabin before, well.

STACY
How? How did-

GEORGE
Jen pointed us to a pedophile nicknamed Jordan. Bob used him back in the day to edit his movies and develop his photos. We were staking out Jordan’s place when Bob paid him a visit and killed him. Bob took all of the stuff Jordan made for him except two important tapes. One was something from the Motel, and the other was your video.

Stacy grabs her face in her hands and starts crying.

STACY
Who saw it?

GEORGE
That I know of? Me, my partner, our boss, and two prosecutors. I came up here to prove that this was real, not some production or anything else like that. And, if you’re willing, testify in court when this goes to trial.

STACY
When?

GEORGE
Yeah. This case is no longer an if but a when the shit hits the fan.

STACY
No, I meant when do you need me?

GEORGE
Oh, that. I don’t know yet. It probably won’t be until next year at the earliest. We’re building a case and are looking executing some warrants before too long, but the whole process takes time.

Stacy cries a little harder. George moves next to her and consoles her.

STACY
All these years. All these years. Finally. I don’t care what happens to me anymore, as long as those fuckers burn. They can show the whole tape to the jury, as long as they’re in the jail cell next to me.

GEORGE
Oh, no. We don’t have the video of Natalie’s attack, just the confession.

STACY
What?

GEORGE
Bob took it. At least, I assume he took it. Jordan made a copy of the confession and kept it. Bob left it behind after he killed Jordan.

STACY
You mean?

Stacy hugs George again.

GEORGE
We still have some stuff to do, and this is the part that’s gonna suck. I need to ask you some questions regarding your statement. Mind if we go through that?

STACY
No, let’s do this.

George sits back down and takes notes as he and Stacy talk about her taped confession.

GEORGE (V.O.)
She backed up everything she said on the video, and filled in all the gaps. It wasn’t easy for her, but she told me everything she could remember. I had to jog her memory for a couple names here and there, but she filled in everything. She gave me over 30 names and descriptions, and everything that happened. She also filled in the gaps that happened in Chicago, how they found out they were being followed a couple years earlier, and even answered a question I had about them getting arrested in Veneto back in the 90’s.

STACY
We were arrested for underage drunk and disorderly because we beat the shit out of a girl who called me a dyke whore. Throwing a bitch face first into a window didn’t go over too well. The girl declined to press charges when they found out who we were, so the charges were dropped. We invited her over to a party a little while later to show no hard feelings, but she never showed. She thought Chuckie was too much of a desperate pervert. Now, I heard a rumor that Angie and Chuckie are dating?

GEORGE
Not just dating, they’re pretty serious. He’s grown up a lot and is...not a horrible person.

STACY
George?

GEORGE
Ok, he’s actually a pretty good guy.

CHUCK (V.O.)
Hah, I knew it!

GEORGE (V.O.)
Dude, I’m telling this part of the story.

STACY
Really? How serious?

GEORGE
Pretty serious. I wouldn’t be surprised if pops the question before too long. They started looking at houses together. I think they’re in this for the long haul.

STACY
I hope they have the good sense to make sure to invite me.

GEORGE
You’re at the top of the list. Probably above me.

Stacy grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. She writes some stuff down on it.

STACY
Here. Protect this with your life, don’t give it to anyone until after this mess with the church is over. It has a name, address, email, and phone number that I monitor. Save it under a fake name if you have to, but remember that it’s me.

GEORGE
Will do Carlotta Johansen.

STACY
When do you have to head back?

GEORGE
Tonight, tomorrow at the latest.

STACY
Let’s have one night where the world’s not trying to kill us.

GEORGE
Deal.

EXT. NEW YORK CITY - NIGHT
George and Stacy spend a night on the town. They get some dinner at a pizza place, walk around, even go to a dance performance. At the end of the night, they say goodbye and George heads to the hotel.

GEORGE (V.O.)
It was good to have a night where the world didn’t completely suck. I came back to Harbor City the next day. Though, to be fair, I did grab some bagels, cheesecake, and pizza to go before leaving downtown New York.

EXT. HARBOR CITY DOWNTOWN - NIGHT
A white Jeep Wrangler drives down the streets of Harbor City late at night. It’s having a hard time keeping a straight line, swerving back and forth. The Jeep runs a stop light, almost causing an accident. As the vehicle goes down the next block, a police car pulls out from a connecting street. It sees the white Jeep and turns on it’s lights.

GEORGE (V.O.)
When I got back home from New York, I just wanted to spend time with Caleb, eat some dinner, maybe a little pickle tickle with Liz. Nothing much.

The Jeep pulls over. The driver is a bald white man in pretty good shape, dressed like he was coming back from the bar. It’s Jesse Hickenbottom, and he’s drunk as fuck. A police officer walks up to the car beside him.

GEORGE (V.O.)
I was asleep for an hour, maybe two when I got the call that city had Jesse Hickenbottom in custody. It took a bit of doing, but we were able to convince City to bring Jesse over to County for interrogation.

INT. INTERROGATION ROOM B - NIGHT
Jesse Hickenbottom, a bald white man in good physical shape sits at the interrogation desk. His left hand is handcuffed to the table.

INT. OBSERVATION ROOM B - NIGHT
In the Observation Room, two officers from the Harbor City Police force stand by the one-way mirror. Their names are SMITH and PASCAL. Officer Smith an older black man with greying hair and a mustache. Officer Pascal is a younger white man with a short buzzcut.

There’s a knock at the door. It opens before the officers can say anything. It’s George and Janella. Neither of them look like they had enough sleep. George carries two folders and two cups of coffee.

JANELLA
Officers. Thank you.

Janella extends her hand to shake theirs. Smith goes first.

SMITH
Officer Harold Smith.

PASCAL
Nick Pascal, HCPD. We were the arresting officers.

JANELLA
Janella Jenkins, this is my partner George Lewis. Chester County Police Department, Sex Crimes Unit.

GEORGE
Thanks for bringing him in.

SMITH
SCU? What did this guy do?

GEORGE
A lot of bad shit. Heard it was a DUI?

SMITH
Yeah. He was down on Ross weaving all over, ran a red light. He blew a 0.14 BAC.

PASCAL
We’ve got him dead to rights for the DUI. What did he do that’s so bad that?

George chugs the first cup of coffee. He takes a sip from the second cup after throwing the empty cup in the trash.

GEORGE
To be honest, I’d rather not tell you. I’m not trying to be a dick, but he’s the first small fish in a very big pond, and I’m gonna flip his ass.

PASCAL
Listen, sir... he’s ours.

Smith shakes his head. Janella does the same. George looks at Pascal.

GEORGE
Officer Pascal, I’m too tired to sugar coat this shit. Here. Look.

George opens the folder, letting Pascal see its contents. Pascal looks like he’s about to throw up. George closes the folder.

GEORGE
I’m sorry that I had to show you that, but I can’t let this opportunity pass us by. Detective Jenkins and I have worked this case for over a year and can’t risk it all falling apart because Mr. Clean in there was too drunk to drive home. I’m going to go in there, and I’m going to flip him on the largest child porn and sex trafficking ring on the East Coast. Why? Because he didn’t want to take a taxi.

PASCAL
I’m, I’m sorry.

GEORGE
It’s okay, you didn’t know. No one should ever have to see this shit.

PASCAL
Could we-

SMITH
My partner and I would like to watch.

GEORGE
You say anything about this to anyone, I will ruin your fucking lives. You will spend the next 40 years working a job where you’ll ask every customer if they’d like fries with that. Got it?

JANELLA
Nothing leaves this room. Understood?

SMITH
Yes ma’am.

PASCAL
Yes ma’am.

Pascal nods. George takes a breath, then walks out of the room. A moment later, there’s a knock on the interrogation room.

INT. INTERROGATION ROOM B - NIGHT
Jesse looks up and sees George walk into the room. He’s carrying a couple folders and a cup of coffee. George sits down, dragging the metal chair, making it screech across the floor. He puts the folders down on the table. George looks at Jesse. He can see part of the bald man’s tattoo underneath his clubbing shirt. George looks at the folders, then takes a long, long sip of coffee before putting it down.

GEORGE
Ahhh. That really hits the spot. Gotta love coffee. Nothing else quite like it, don’t you agree Mr. Hickenbottom?

Jesse says nothing, just stares at the coffee?

GEORGE
You want some, don’t you? Has anyone given you anything to drink since we’ve been here? No, of course they haven’t. You know who gets coffee? The good boys and girls of the world. Have you been a good boy?

Jesse stares at George, not saying anything.

GEORGE
I know, I know. You won’t say shit. You just want to sit here, at 5 in the morning on Saturday, May 14th 2005, inside of the Chester County Police Department, and just hope this was all a bad dream. That a minute from now you’ll wake up, and this will go away. If you don’t talk, I can’t hear how drunk you are, right? Makes sense. Except for one little problem.

George leans in very, very close to Jesse.

GEORGE
I don’t give a flying fuck about you driving drunk. I’m here for something else.

George leans back in his chair and takes another sip of coffee.

GEORGE
How do you take your coffee, Jesse?

JESSE
Cream and sugar.

GEORGE
Good choice. This stuff’s pretty nasty.

George nods to the mirror.

JESSE
Look, I don’t know what you want. I made a mistake.

GEORGE
Which mistake? I could think of a few.

JESSE
I don’t get what you’re getting.

George points to Jesse’s right arm.

GEORGE
That’s a nice tattoo there, where’d you get it?

Jesse looks at his arm, his tattoo is slightly visible under his short sleeves. He pushes up his sleeve, exposing the barbed-wire tattoo on his right bicep.

JESSE
This? Inkadat Special over in Collegetown.

GEORGE
It’s nice. I’ve been thinking of getting one. You know how you can help me? Help me narrow down which tattoo I should get.

George opens the first folder. He shows Jesse a picture of Jesse’s tattoo, taken a couple hours ago when he was processed. George’s voice goes up a couple notes, showing excitement.

GEORGE
You like this one? What about this next one, I think this next one is really nice.

George shows Jesse a picture of him running camera from the documentary, showing his tattoo in full view.

GEORGE
I like this one as well, but I can’t decide.

The next picture is a zoomed in shot of Jesse’s tattoo.

JESSE
What the Hell are you-

GEORGE
I’m not done, I’ve got one more. Tell me, which tattoo is the best?

George shows Jesse a screenshot of him fucking an obviously underage girl doggystyle. She’s crying, and there’s a big blue dot where his face should be. Jesse’s face is obscured but the girl’s is not. Neither is Jesse’s tattoo. Upon closer inspection, it’s the same picture that the blown-up pick of his tattoo came from.

George looks at Jesse’s face as he sees the last picture. All color runs away, his eyes go wide. George’s voice is still that higher pitched excitement.

GEORGE
Tell me, which one do you think is best? Personally I can’t make a decision. It’s between the second one where I see you with that tattoo and a lower third graphic spelling out your name and job title and the fourth one where you’re raping a little girl. Though, to be fair, her crying does distract from the scene. I mean, how can I appreciate the artwork on your right arm over her cries as you defiled her? I guess some people don’t have an appreciation for art, know what I mean?

Jesse doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look up from the pictures.

GEORGE
Jesse, you still with me? Earth to Jesse, please respond!

He looks up, his lip quivering. Fear crosses his face as he knows he’s fucked.

GEORGE
You know, I might’ve used too many euphemisms, metaphors, and analogies. Let me simplify this.

George points to the first picture. His voice drops in pitch, becoming a steady, slightly menacing monotone.

GEORGE
This is you, two hours ago. They took a picture of your tattoo. It matches the second picture which came from a documentary about working on the masses shot at First Union Holy Church. The third pic is a zoom-in of the fourth pic, which is a screen capture of one of the many, many films I have of you fucking little girls.

George looks back at Jesse.

GEORGE
On a scale of 1-10, how fucked do you think you are right now?

Jesse says nothing. He’s visibly shaking, on the verge of a breakdown.

GEORGE
I asked you a question, how fucked do you think you are?

Jesse still says nothing.

GEORGE
Well, I have about 20 videos of you fucking little girls. I can prove it’s you in all of them. Each one them is easily half a dozen crimes including aggravated sexual assault of a minor. 20 years each. Times 20 videos, you’re looking at 400 years, and with as egregious as these are, no way the prosecutor doesn’t push for consecutive sentences instead of concurrent. Know what that means? That means instead of serving all of them at once, you do one at a time. Best case scenario, you die of old age in prison. Worst case...well, you know what they do to kiddie fuckers in prison?

Jesse’s shaking, just seconds away from an anxiety attack.

GEORGE
Do I need to tell?

Jesse drops the picture. He drops his head into hands and starts crying. George lets him go for a minute.

GEORGE
You have three options. Do you know what they are?

Jesse’s crying on the desk. George is unamused.

JESSE
No.

GEORGE
Option 1, you plead guilty and pray for mercy. Spoiler alert, don’t expect it. Option 2, you take your chances at trial and hope that the state makes a major error. I wouldn’t bet on that happening. You interested in hearing what Option 3 is?

JESSE
Yes.

GEORGE
Option 3. This is where you help me help you. You help me by telling me everything you know. You tell me about First Union, the Daniels’ Family, the girls, all the stuff that happens at the estate, who visits there, who makes these films, who edits them, who stars in them, who watches them, what happens to the kids afterwards, all of it. You give me everything, and this disappears.

Jesse looks up at George.

GEORGE
Understand me?

Jesse nods.

GEORGE
Then tell me, what is Option 3?

JESSE
I help you, you help me?

GEORGE
Yep. You see, I can only make this deal for one person, and you’re that lucky person. I know what you’ve been doing at First Union, there’s no reason to lie to me. I know you’ve visited the estate at the same time as some high level VIP’s. I know you were there recently at the same that a van from the church dropped off 6 kids but only 5 left. I know you were there. Want to see the pics, or is my word good enough?

Jesse keeps crying on the desk. He raises his head. He’s a mess. George continues speaking in a soft, unsettling monotone.

GEORGE
So, which is it? Plead, take your chances, or help us.

Jesse thinks for a moment before talking.

JESSE
(crying)
I don’t want to go to prison.

GEORGE
I know, no one wants to go to prison. You have three options, and only one of them gives you a chance to avoid prison. You know what you need to do.

JESSE
Option 3. I’ll tell you everything. Just please, keep me out of prison.

George nods.

GEORGE
I’ll do what I can. Ready for that coffee now?

Jesse nods.

Time passes. George, Jesse, ADA Steven Jones, and an attorney representing Jesse are in Interrogation Room B. They’re going over Jesse’s story, finalizing all of the details of his cooperation agreement.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Jesse flipped like a pancake. To be honest, I could’ve done it faster or played some games with him, but I was tired and just wanted to nail this fucker. And did we ever. He gave us everything. He told us how they operated, their shooting schedule, who the crew members were, where the footage was kept, how they organized the vault, their equipment, that is was still Atlas Shrugged that opened the secret door, how they got paid, all of it. Every Thursday except once a month Jesse and several of the crew would show up to the Daniels’ Estate for a shooting day. They’d bring kids over from the church to be the actors and entertainment. One of the Daniels’s would make a list of what they wanted to see or what their clients wanted. Usually it was pretty straight forward stuff, fuck a girl here or there, fuck a boy there, make the kids fuck each other. Sometimes, they’d have guests that would come over, usually for a fee or some big favors that were owed. Other times, shit got weird. He described a few scenes where they had to work with dogs or other exotics. It gets too messy. Then there were the torture sessions. Most of the time these were saved for the orphans, but if someone wanted to use one of the kids in the church, they could for a fee. The snuff films were reserved for the orphans, though they tried to limit those to very special occasions or high ranking VIP’s. It’s very hard to do pull off safely and dispose of the bodies completely. We didn’t even know about that, but we weren’t going to stop him in the middle of his story. As far as payment, everyone on the crew was paid handsomely to stay quiet but they were also paid in whatever they wanted to indulge in. He normally ran the camera but also edited and did chyron at times. When we asked how the church affords to pay them so much, he told us how much they were making per video. Tens of thousands for specialty video. Then there were the girls. They’d sell the victims down the line. If they got bored of them or used them up, they’d sell them to child slavers. Most ended up in brothels around the world, but others, usually the black kids from Costa Rica, would be beaten and killed within a month of arriving. He even gave us the schedule for their next couple months, even recommended the perfect day to move in.

JESSE
June 9th. You should go to the Estate on the 9th.

GEORGE
Why’s that?

JESSE
I won’t be there that day. I’m taking that day off. Reverend Charlie won’t be there, either. One shipment of girls is going up to the Camp, meeting some buyers up there. Reverend Charlie will be out of town, finalizing a deal to take the TV show national, like Saddleback or 700 Club. It’ll be a light shooting day, small crew with a few B-listers.

GEORGE
B-listers?

JESSE
You know, the Somewhat Important People. Ones that paid for the experience, but don’t get the full treat, or they’re new and not completely trusted yet.

GEORGE
Like coupon day?

JESSE
Yeah, sort of. And Brian’s gonna be there.

GEORGE
Who’s Brian again?

JESSE
Brian Caspar. He was supposed to edit my tattoo out of all of those videos. Fuck Brian.

GEORGE
Fuck Brian.

Jesse sips a cup of coffee and eats some fast food breakfast. George sips on yet another cup of coffee.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Bringing in Jesse at this time wasn’t expected. We knew that at any moment the church would get wind of him being here and helping us. Hell, we told him to continue doing what he was doing to keep from arising any suspicion. We were 3 weeks out from the day he suggested. A lot can go wrong in 3 weeks.

-------------------------------------------------------------

To Be Continued...

Post by **LtBroccoli** » Sun Jul 26, 2026 2:04 am

Chapter Tags: Nosex
Content Warnings: Offscreen descriptions of child abuse
-------------------------------------------------------------

First Union makes a move which causes things to move forward...
-------------------------------------------------------------

Episode 10 - Preparations
INT. APARTMENT 204 - DAY
Dr. Michelle Bartlett sits at home on a Sunday afternoon when she hears a knock on the door. She’s startled. She grabs a pistol she keeps in the top drawer of the kitchen cabinet before going to the door. She stands behind the door, looking through the peephole. She sees a man through the door, holding a piece of paper with a camera dangling around his neck on a strap. He knocks again.

MICHELLE
Go away! You’re trespassing in this building!

SERVER (O.S)
Dr. Bartlett, I need to see you.

MICHELLE
Whatever it is, leave it at the front door.

SERVER (O.S)
Dr. Bartlett, I’m a process server. Please open the door so I can give this to you so I don’t have to have the cops come over and do this.

MICHELLE
I have a gun, you try anything I will shoot you!

SERVER (O.S)
Fine. All I need to do is hand you this, I take a picture, and I leave. Can you open the door just a crack? I’ll be gone in a minute or I’ll have to bring the cops in to finish this.

Michelle opens the door slightly. She’s holding the gun, pointing it at the Process Server.

MICHELLE
Do what you’re here to do and leave.

SERVER
Dr. Bartlett, you’ve been served. I’m sorry, have a nice day.

The Process Server hands Michelle the letter, then raises the camera and takes a picture. He turns and leaves.

Michelle opens the letter, and collapses against the wall, crying.

GEORGE (V.O.)
First Union sued Dr. Bartlett for Libelous Defamation of Character. The church was trying to shut down her website and they claimed that she was responsible since she owned the website where their alleged victims were making these, and I quote, ‘blatantly malicious and falsified statements.’ She called us about it immediately. We met with her the next day.

INT. CAPTAIN SMITH'S OFFICE - DAY
Michelle sits in front of Captain Smith’s desk. She’s flanked by AUSA Lisa Sanders and ADA Steven Jones. George and Janella take up position along the wall behind them. There’s a knock on the door. A man and woman, both in their early 30’s, stand in the opposite corner behind Lisa.

DANIEL
Come.

The door opens. An older gentleman dressed in a tailored suit enters the room. His name is FREDERICK BAIRD.

FREDERICK
I’m looking for... looks like this is the right room.

Frederick squeezes in.

DANIEL
Sorry for the small meeting place. Our conference room is, in use.

Daniel looks at George and Janella.

GEORGE
It’s taken on a life of it’s own. We might need to knock a wall down at this point.

DANIEL
No. Make due with the room you took.

LISA
Wait, your murderboard’s even bigger this time?

George nods, laughing a little.

GEORGE
Yeah, it’s obnoxiously large. Rappers are renting it out to use in music videos.

DANIEL
Enough. Everyone, introductions. I’ll start. Captain Daniel Smith, CCPD SCU.

GEORGE
Dr. George Lewis, Detective, SCU.

JANELLA
Janella Jenkins, SCU.

FREDERICK
Frederick Baird, Attorney at Law, I’m Dr. Bartlett’s representation in her libel case.

STEVEN
Assistant District Attorney Steven Jones.

LISA
Assistant US Attorney Lisa Sanders.

Lisa nods to the man and woman behind her.

JACKSON
Special Agent Jackson Carpenter, FBI.

ERIN
Special Agent Erin Kingston, FBI.

Michelle looks around the room, awed by the names and titles. Then it’s her turn to talk.

MICHELLE
Oh, um, Doctor Michelle Bartlett. I’m the one getting sued.

Frederick looks around the room.

FREDERICK
I’m sorry, could someone fill me in on what’s going on? This looks like it’s a little bigger than a defamation case.

DANIEL
Dr. Bartlett was the first victim to lodge an official complaint against First Union Holy Church and the Daniels family. She hosts a website where at least 2 dozen other victims have since come forward to us. This fed into an investigation that Detectives Jenkins and Lewis were already working on regarding reports of sexual abuse by the clergy and elders at First Union. Through their work they uncovered, well, a lot.

FREDERICK
How much?

JACKSON
We’re here.

DANIEL
We’re looking at everything from mail fraud to human trafficking to child porn to murder to selling mattresses with the tags ripped off. But this lawsuit throws a wrinkle in things.

FREDERICK
I spoke with my client briefly this morning. It sounds like a bullying tactic by the church to shut her up. I’d like to file a motion to dismiss with prejudice.

STEVEN
Agreed. I’m worried about the timing. We’re working on plans that if they hear about them will...

GEORGE
Completely ruin our surprise party.

George winks badly at Steven. He nods back.

STEVEN
Yeah, surprise party. We have a date for the party, so we need to make sure this filing happens on or after.

FREDERICK
I was over at the clerk’s office. We pulled Judge Reynolds for a preliminary hearing, 10AM on the 9th of June.

George and Janella look at each other in shock, then at Steven and Captain Smith.

GEORGE
Mr. Baird, how long do those hearings take?

FREDERICK
They’re pretty short, usually just a few minutes of formalities. If we’re running on time, probably 15-20 minutes.

STEVEN
Push it back to after lunch. I’ll talk to the clerk today, get this pushed to the afternoon. What time do the festivities start that day?

GEORGE
Party tent opens at 11 that day, clown and pony should be there by 1.

JACKSON
Beach toys will be ready about the same time.

JANELLA
Pretty sure I can get the wine by then.

STEVEN
And I’ll give the guest of honor the party invite. It is a surprise for them after all.

Dr. Bartlett looks around the room. She understands something just happened.

MICHELLE
All I heard was a lot of coded phrases about something happening that day. Is it safe to assume I probably shouldn’t know what’s going on that day?

STEVEN
If all goes well, this part of your legal troubles will disappear. You’ll enter into a whole new world of craziness after that, but if things work right, it will no longer be a secret. And Judge Reynolds will have no choice but to dismiss your case.

FREDERICK
I’ll prepare my motion to dismiss, we’ll present it during the hearing.

Frederick moves forward to Michelle and puts his hand on her shoulder.

FREDERICK
Michelle, these next couple weeks will be very stressful. It is important that you try to relax, don’t let the world smother you, and just focus on the day to day. I’ll make sure that the Daniels family rues the day they did this.

MICHELLE
Thank you.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
George, Janella, Steven, Lisa, Captain Smith, and Special Agents Erin Kingston and Jackson Carpenter huddle around the table in the conference room. The murderboard is even more obnoxious and crammed than it was before, following the information Jesse provided.

GEORGE (V.O.)
May 16th, 2005. That was the day we met with Michelle and her lawyer in the Captain’s office. It was also the day we figured out our plan with the Feds. I have to say I really enjoyed working with them. They were efficient, thorough, and went straight to the point.

A section of the murderboard is renamed ‘Electric Ladyland’. On it, there was a note that said ‘Release Date 6-9, 1PM’. Below that were four columns. They were labeled ‘Crosstown Traffic’, ‘Long Hot Summer Night’, ‘House Burning Down’, and ‘All Along the Watchtower’.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Since the Feds picked the name Electric Ladyland, we ran with that. We coordinated our plans to execute all three search warrants at the same time, during Michelle’s preliminary hearing. I loved that Steven came up with that idea. Nothing like a big ‘Fuck You’ in the middle of a courtroom to set the stage. The only downside we found out was that Reverend Charlie and his children would likely be out of town, leaving most of the work in the hands of various cronies. Well, beggars can’t be choosers.

The ‘Crosstown Traffic’ section contains information pertaining to First Union Holy Church. Who should be there, where their files are located, what to expect, number of people, and Janella’s name at the top of it.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The first section was ‘Crosstown Traffic’, that was the church itself. At first I was going to lead it, but it was decided that Janella would take this part. Remember how the manager at the camp said that they kept all of the records at the church? This was enough for us to get a warrant.

The next section labeled ‘Long Hot Summer Night’ showed pictures of Camp Hiawatha. The pictures were detailed, showing a layout of the facilities, all the ways in and out, proper locations to scout the camp. There was even a mark for the neighbor’s hunting tree stand that overlooked the camp.

GEORGE (V.O.)
‘Long Hot Summer Night’ was the camp itself. The FBI was going to take the lead here. It was way out of our jurisdiction. Captain Smith would tag along, but Special Agents Carpenter and Kingston would take point. The Feds had eyes on this place for a while. They knew everything, including Bob’s daily routine. They had interest in him for a few things he did, but for the most part he was below their radar and was surprisingly helpful to them. I was shocked by that, but then again if he saw a way to take down First Union, he’d sign a deal with the Devil to fuck them over. We discussed getting a message to him to get him out of the way that day, and I volunteered for this one. I would ask Chuck to call Bob the morning of the raid and have him tell Bob that it would be a really good idea to get lunch at either the Bistro or Larry’s Diner.

The third section was labeled ‘House Burning Down’. It showed pictures of the Daniels’ Estate, blueprints, info on the hidden sections, the vault, all of it. George’s name was at the top of the list.

GEORGE (V.O.)
I was in charge of ‘House Burning Down.’ This was the raid on the Daniels’ Estate itself. This would be the most dangerous one, in my opinion. If something went wrong in any of these, it would probably be here. This was more of a planned military strike than a door-knock. We’d have to get through the gate, through the door, through security, through the house, and to the hidden area before they’d have a chance to destroy anything or escape. Fortunately SWAT and some FBI agents were at my disposal for this. I felt confident, but I always look for how things can fall apart. It’s part of my nature. It’s what makes me good at this job, I see the worst case scenario and figure a way how to survive it.

The final section was ‘All Along the Watchtower’, and showed details of Dr. Bartlett’s lawsuit. The attorneys would be there in full force.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The final section was ‘All Along the Watchtower.’ The attorneys picked the best song for themselves. They said it was because it was near the end of the album, but they just wanted the cool song. The plan was that as soon as each of us had breached our targets and had some success, we’d call or text Steven or Lisa, whomever each of us reported to. Once they had confirmation, they’d drop the bomb on the lawyers for First Union. Like Fred said, they would rue the day.

EXT. CHARLIE DANIELS ESTATE - DAY
Jesse’s white Jeep Wrangler drives to the front gate. He enters a security code, 2550, and the gate opens. He drives through the gate and to the parking area for employees and regular guests. On his dashboard sits a digital camera hidden under a ballcap. It faces the driver’s window.

GEORGE (V.O.)
We had a little over 3 weeks before we executed the warrants but still had work to do. One was getting as much intel as possible. That’s where Jesse came in.

Jesse parks the Jeep and takes his cellphone with him. The Jeep is parked so that the driver’s door faces the employee entrance. He walks up to the door, opening it with a traditional key. He enters.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The great thing about flipping a witness is that once you get past their hangups about betraying their friends and co-workers, they’re yours. Especially when you outline in the cooperation agreement that if they don’t give you everything, they will spend the rest of their lives in prison.

INT. CHARLIE DANIELS ESTATE - DAY
Jesse walks down the hallway that leads to the Servant’s quarters and main kitchen. No one else is in the hallway as he walks down it. He has his cell phone in his hands, looking like he’s in a text conversation. Instead, he’s taking pictures.

GEORGE (V.O.)
We told Jesse that we needed to see the vault, the production studio, the equipment, and the secret door. We needed to know how to get in once we got there.

At the end of the hallway, Jesse turns left into a library. There’s a bookcase halfway along the back wall, under a mounted Boar’s head. Jesse walks up to the bookcase, and pulls on the copy of ‘Atlas Shrugged’. The bookcase swings open.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Jesse gave us the code to get in the building, directions to the secret area, and confirmed that the activator was ‘Atlas Shrugged’. Really, is anyone surprised that a narcissistic leech on society that preaches the prosperity gospel that greed is good and helping others is means to an end that can usually be ignored would pick an Ayn Rand book as the key to his secret, self-made empire? Even if I didn’t know about it beforehand, I’d probably pick it first.

INT. SECRET AREA - DAY
Jesse enters the Secret Area. There are several doors lined up along a dimly lit corridor. Each of the 6 rooms has a number on it, 1-6. Odds are on the left, even on the right. After #5 are two more rooms, labeled ‘IT’ and ‘Vault’. After #6 are two rooms, ‘Bath’ and ‘Suite’. A closed door opens, and there are two rooms flank the small room. The left says ‘CR1’ and the right says ‘CR2’. In front of that are two double doors with a red light over top of them. A sign next to the light says ‘LIVE SET WHEN LIT’. The light is off. Jesse enters, taking pics and looking like he’s texting the whole time.

GEORGE (V.O.)
This place was a fully laid out brothel and production suite. First thing you see going down the hallway were 6 private rooms. Next to that, a bathroom, a production suite, a vault and IT room.

There’s a large TV studio with two cycloramas along the walls. The room is an ugly shade of green from top to bottom. Even the floors are this shade of green. There is a large divider spread out, splitting the room in half. On the left half, a couple men work on setting up cameras and props, dressing the studio. This studio looks like it’s being dressed for a scene in a school. On the left half, another man sets up bondage equipment. Jesse goes to the left, checking the cameras. These are really nice cameras, capable of shooting in HD quality. They are not cheap. Jesse checks them, and takes a couple pics.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The TV studio was fully professional, and they even had HD cameras. I found out during the trial that each of those camera bodies sold for $50,000. They had 6 of them. That doesn’t even count the lenses.

After checking the cameras, Jesse goes into CR2. It is a fully-equipped control room with a wall of monitors, several VTR machines, a graphics generator, audio monitoring, a multicam switcher, lighting control, the works. Jesse checks to see that the equipment works as he ‘texts’ on his phone.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Everything they had was top of the line. I’m glad to say that most of this went to a good cause after all hell broke loose. A lot of this equipment was donated to a local TV station that ran children’s educational shows and to a certain local film school that helped out with a documentary that was entered into evidence.

Jesse enters the Production Suite. It hosts two AVID editing machines running on Mac Pro computers and a few other Mac’s running Final Cut. One of the machines is in use by a man editing a film captured from one of the private rooms. Jesse ‘texts’, getting a grainy shot of the man working.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The fact that they were so matter-of-fact about what they were doing was very disturbing. Then again, when I worked Homicide, I got so used to seeing dead bodies that I would have lunch in the morgue with the coroner waiting on reports. Those were the perfect days for salad, by the way.

Jesse goes to the IT Room and Vault. The vault contains rows upon rows of Betamax tapes, then newer DigiBeta tapes and HDCAM tapes. The IT Room had several servers and stacks of drives in boxes. Jesse took pics of all of it.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The IT cave and vault held a treasure trove. We had them with these pics. Even if we raided and they cleaned house before hand, we’d have them for destruction of evidence. They had no way of getting out of this.

Time passes. Jesse locks down the camera positions in the first studio. The set is dressed for a parody of a school. In the second studio, he walks over quietly. It’s a live set. It is brightly lit, even though it’s supposed to look dark and dreary. Two men run two of the three cameras. In the middle of the set, a young girl, maybe 15 at the most, is strapped to an X-frame. She has a gag in her mouth. She’s dressed in a dance costume. A muscular man in his 40’s and a fit woman in her 30’s are on set with the girl. Both are dressed in bondage gear that conceals their face. A selection of torture implements including nipple clamps, weights on chains, and whips lay on a table nearby. Jesse quietly takes a pic from the shadows.

GEORGE (V.O.)
On the day Jesse gathered this evidence, two films were made. One was a wealthy couple beating and raping a girl that looked like their daughter’s best friend. The other was a scene of a couple kids misbehaving in class and being taught a lesson.

Jesse enters CR2, taking up position behind the Director, who was also running the board. Only two people were in the room beside Jesse at this time. The Director who was running most of the equipment and making the calls to the camera guys, and someone running audio. The Director notices Jesse.

DIRECTOR
Check my time left on VTR 4&6.

JESSE
Got it.

Jesse goes to the stack of Video Tape Recorders and reads the displays.

JESSE
22 left on 4, 25 left on 6

DIRECTOR
Copy.

Jesse takes a couple pics. The men working are too busy to notice anything.

GEORGE (V.O.)
He got us the pics of the staff working, too. Most of them were the core crew from working on First Union’s television show. This confirmed what we thought.

Jesse walks out of the room and puts his phone away.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Now, the part that you have to remember was that this was all the way back in 2005. Cell phones with cameras were still pretty rare. Texting was a new thing. Nobody thought twice about cameras that could take pictures and video. It just wasn’t common, and anyone that did worry about it was usually crazy to begin with. We were still a few years away from the iPhone. So no one thought twice about Jesse taking pics. One person asked him later on what he was doing, and he said he was texting, that he just signed up for a new phone that gave him 3000 texts for $10.00 a month. They just shrugged and made fun of him for texting.

EXT. CHARLIE DANIELS ESTATE - NIGHT
After a long day of work, Jesse gets in his Jeep and leaves.

EXT. WALMART PARKING LOT - NIGHT
In a Walmart parking lot across town, a white Jeep Wrangler pulls up next to a crimson Crown Vic. Jesse gets out of the Jeep, then climbs in to the Crown Vic.

INT. CCPD CROWN VICTORIA - NIGHT
Jesse sits in the passenger seat as George sits in the driver seat. Jesse hands George the phone. He plugs it into a cable that’s hooked up to a laptop. He downloads the contents of the phone onto the laptop.

GEORGE (V.O.)
After work, we met across town in a Walmart parking lot. Far enough away from Hillside that no one should be there, and common enough to think he’s doing a drug deal, and no one would question that there. He gave us the names of those working, who was doing what, everything. He couldn’t get a lot of pics of the school scene as he was operating the camera, but he did get a couple of one of Brian Caspar getting a blowjob from a 12-year-old boy. I really sensed a lot of anger from Jesse about Brian.

JESSE
I fucking hate Brian. No matter what happens to me, he goes down worse. Fuck, even if I die, I’ll die happy knowing he died first.

GEORGE (V.O.)
He really didn’t like the guy.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
The whole gang plan the final pieces of the search warrant raids. They’re joined by a Sergeant on the SWAT team and two more FBI agents.

GEORGE (V.O.)
As we approached the 9th, we had a lot to cover. We went through the plan a dozen times just to make sure that nothing went wrong. We kept eyes on the targets to make sure that no one caught wind of anything. Steven was able to get Dr. Bartlett’s hearing moved back a couple hours, and we had all of our ducks in a row. Those last few days were a pain, but like Tom Petty said “Waiting is the hardest part.”

INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George finishes his glass of wine. Xavier is there with a refill. Everyone is hanging on his story at this point.

GEORGE
Now, while this was going on, life continued on like normal. Chuck and Angie were looking at some property to build a house, Vinny was in and out of a halfway house, and Liz was up to her eyes with Caleb. It was during this time that Chuck asked if we could meet one day during lunch. This was good since I needed to ask him for a favor anyway.

INT. SCORCHERS - DAY
Inside of Scorchers, Chuck sits in a booth, looking at the menu. George approaches and sits down.

GEORGE
Sup?

Chuck lowered the menu. He looked nervous and fidgety.

GEORGE
What’s going on?

CHUCK
Um, uh, I’ve...

GEORGE
Dude, what’s up?

CHUCK
Listen, I’ve, I’ve gotta ask you something, and it’s really hard. I’m trying to find the words.

GEORGE
Oh..kay. Do you need to try it as a knock-knock joke?

Chuck looks at George for a moment.

CHUCK
Knock-knock.

GEORGE
Who’s there?

CHUCK
Guy who wants to marry your sister.

George flinches for a moment.

GEORGE
Guy who wants to marry my sister who?

CHUCK
Me.

GEORGE
Shouldn’t you ask her this question?

George sits there for a moment, not saying a word. Chuck fills the silence.

CHUCK
You’re not just like a brother to her, you’ve also been like a father, too. You’re the only family that’s stood by her over the years, and you mean the world to her. And she means the world to me. Things are getting pretty serious and we love each other. We’re building a house soon and talking about having kids. I mean, this is it. I know we haven’t always gotten along, first couple meetings we got off on the wrong foot, but you know me, you know what I’m like now and how much I’ve grown and changed. I run my own company, I can more than afford to provide for us, I’ve been beyond loyal to her, and she’s the one I want to grow old with, and her me. I mean, it’s like, I don’t know, just-

GEORGE
Okay.

CHUCK
Okay.

GEORGE
You had me at the knock-knock joke.

CHUCK
Really? Then all that-

GEORGE
Was what we call Interrogation Tactics 101. Shut up and let the other guy dig themselves a hole. Remember that when you’re a dad.

CHUCK
Does that really work?

GEORGE
Do you know how many times I’ve gotten a confession just from staring at the spot right under a man’s right eye? Enough that we make bets on how long it takes to crack a man. Fastest was 4 minutes but he had a lot to say.

CHUCK
So, that’s it?

GEORGE
That’s it. If you need to hear the words, you have my blessing to ask her, but it’s ultimately her decision. She could do a lot worse than you.

CHUCK
Cool. Thanks.

GEORGE
Don’t hurt her. You hurt her, I’ll shoot you myself and make it look like an accident.

Chuck laughs. George smiles a little.

GEORGE
Besides, I have a favor to ask. I don’t want this to be a quid pro quo thing, so it’s unrelated to that last thing.

CHUCK
Oh...kay. What’s the favor?

GEORGE
I’m going to need you to call someone. I can’t call them, and I can’t tell you when until the day I need you to call them.

CHUCK
Who?

GEORGE
Your older brother, the one that lives up by the lake.

Chuck tilts his head in confusion.

CHUCK
Bob?

GEORGE
Yeah. My last conversation with him, well, didn’t turn out so well. But he asked for one favor. A heads-up in case things get crazy up by the lake. Some friends are showing up soon, and it might be a good idea if he wasn’t at his cabin when they showed up.

CHUCK
What friends?

George writes out “F B I” with his finger on the menu. Chuck’s eyes go wide.

GEORGE
They’re not after him, but given his...history, let’s just say that he’s not comfortable around them.

CHUCK
What do you need me to do?

GEORGE
Coming up soon, I’ll call you to relay a message. Something like he should get lunch at the bistro or the diner that day and hang out for a while. Just make sure he understands that he shouldn’t hang out at home that day.

CHUCK
Got it. So what you getting?

George looks at the menu.

GEORGE
I don’t know, how are the boneless wings?

CHUCK
They’re chicken nuggets tossed in buffalo sauce. Not bad. Not great, but not bad.

GEORGE
I’ll try those. You know as soon as you pop the question, everyone will ask you a hundred questions from when is the wedding and how long till you have kids?

CHUCK
I know. Granny’s asked a hundred times when she’s getting a great-grandchild. Oh, she said Hi and Go Fuck Yourself.

GEORGE
How is she still alive?

CHUCK
I think the Reaper’s afraid of her. Only explanation at this point. He’ll only show up when he has backup. Even then, he knows he’s in for a fight.

The two laugh.

GEORGE (V.O.)
It was nice to have a moment to get back to normality. What did I screw up?

CHUCK (V.O.)
Nothing, that was pretty spot on. I thought you said something about how Caleb was already calling me Uncle Chuck at that point.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Nah, that was a few weeks later I think. Caleb couldn’t pronounce Ch very well, so it came out like F’s. Funny as hell watching a toddler run across the room screaming “UNCLE FUCK UNCLE FUCK!”

CALEB (V.O.)
That story again, Dad?

GEORGE (V.O.)
I told you to... stop interrupting. Where was I? Oh right, the shitstorm was about to become a clusterfuck.

-------------------------------------------------------------

To Be Continued...

Post by **LtBroccoli** » Mon Jul 27, 2026 2:55 am

Chapter Tags: Nosex, viol
Content Warnings: Hostage situations and Improper Courtroom Etiquette
-------------------------------------------------------------

Everything happens at once and there is no hiding it from the Daniels Family now...
-------------------------------------------------------------

Episode 11 - Electric Ladyland
EXT. LAKE HIAWATHA WOODS - DAY
In a small clearing near Lake Hiawatha, Captain Smith stands around a table with an overhead map of the lake, focusing on Camp Hiawatha. With him are FBI Special Agents Carpenter and Kingston. Several other FBI agents are in the area, going through equipment checks and finalizing plans. Four large, black, unmarked Armored Rescue Vehicles and a black Humvee are parked nearby.

GEORGE (V.O.)
It was June 9th, 2005. The day rolled around more or less on schedule. ‘Long Hot Summer Night’ started early in the morning. Captain Smith couldn’t risk someone finding out why he rented a hotel nearby, so he drove up to the lake at 02:Fucking Early. I told him if he had time or needed coffee, stop by the bistro. He thought I was pulling his leg about a bait shop having great food, but he was absolutely floored.

Special Agents Carpenter and Kingston lay out the battle plan for the last time to the agents. Captain Smith stands back, observing.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Normally the FBI would reach out to local law enforcement for assistance, but their investigation found out that the Sheriff for Hiawatha County was on the church’s payroll. He made a nice bit of scratch to turn the other cheek. That meant no assistance from the local yokels. But, it’s not like the FBI wasn’t used to this kind of work.

INT. CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT BULLPEN - DAY
Janella Jenkins talks with a handful of officers and two FBI agents attached to the case. They finalize their plans for the church.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Janella had ‘Crosstown Traffic’ ready to roll easier than most of us can figure out what we’re getting from Taco Bell. She had everything down and knew everyone’s job as well as they knew it. The church should be relatively empty by that point. The post-prod meeting would be over and most of the staff in the church would be in other sections like the day care. The office should only have a secretary and manager. Even still, they needed to be careful. Never know when the admin will try to stab you with a letter opener. And yes, I’ve seen it happen.

INT. CCPD SWAT BRIEFING ROOM - DAY
In a large briefing room, 30 men and women sit in a conference room facing 4 men sitting at a table and 1 man standing at a lectern. SGT. THOMPSON of SWAT gives the briefing. At the table, George sits next to an FBI agent, an FBI analyst, and a member of the evidence collection team.

GEORGE (V.O.)
‘House Burning Down’ was my most stressful operation to date. We were executing a search warrant against a house with enough security to that it could be classified as a military strike. We knew the Daniels’ family for the most part wouldn’t be there, but Jesse had only a little clue about the security. We knew the personal security staff carried AR-15’s and that there were a dozen of the high ranking ones on the payroll. We knew some would travel with the family to Colorado, but that left who knows how many back at the house. We figured anywhere from 2-10 armed guards. Plus, who knows what was inside. People react kind of crazy when you execute a warrant at their place of work and they’re in the middle of a dozen felonies.

INT. CHESTER COUNT DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE - DAY
ADA Steven Jones and AUSA Lisa Sanders finalize their plans and make sure all of the paperwork is complete. They each carry three envelopes with them. Steven smiles at Lisa as the two flirt a little.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The lawyers had ‘All Along the Watchtower’ ready to roll. Their job was simple. Go to court, wait for the phone calls or texts that we breached the targets, give the First Union lawyers copies of the search warrants, and watch their heads implode. I would’ve given real money to see this.

EXT. LAKE HIAWATHA WOODS - DAY
Special Agents Carpenter and Kingston check their watches.

ERIN
Everyone listen up, T-minus 1 hour to breech, finish up your prep work. Do what you have to do, get wheels up in 30!

Captain Daniel Smith sent a text.

DANIEL
(text)
Have you ever been

INT. CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT BULLPEN - DAY
Janella’s phone beeps. She looks at it and sees the message from Captain Smith.

JANELLA
Let’s go.

Janella’s group grab their stuff and head to the door. Janella types 10-4 and hits send.

INT. CCPD SWAT VEHICLE - DAY
George is surrounded by fully armed SWAT officers. He’s wearing a bullet-proof vest and a long coat overtop, even though it’s the middle of June. He’s tense, even though the men in the truck with him look a little relaxed. Everyone copes a different way. Sgt. Thompson sits across from George.

George’s phone beeps. He checks the messages.

GEORGE
T-minus 1 hour, Sarge.

George replies to the message, then makes a call.

THOMPSON
Alright everyone, pack up and be ready to leave in 10. Hillside is a 40 minute drive, 15 with the sirens. You know the deal, we drive like normal until we’re close enough to surprise them.

EXT. EMPTY LOT - DAY
On an empty lot in the suburbs north of Harbor City, an earth mover is making short work of a small forest, knocking trees over with ease. A pickup and a large towing vehicle with a modified flatbed sit on the pathway where a residential street will go in a few months. The pickup says ‘HARTMAN CONSTRUCTION’ on it.

Chuck oversees the work that Paul and Gary are doing knocking down dozens of trees when his phone rings.

CHUCK
Hello?

GEORGE (O.S)
It’s go-time. Make the call.

CHUCK
Got it.

George hangs up. Chuck scrolls through his phone for a moment.

INT. BOB'S CABIN - DAY
Bob sits in his cabin, smoking a joint and looking out the window. He’s relaxed, lounging around in a pair of jeans. His phone rings. He looks at the caller ID. It’s Chuck. He lets it ring a couple times before he answers and puts it on speaker.

BOB
What’s up Chuck, bleegh! Haha, sup?

CHUCK (O.S)
Yo, bro, what you doing for lunch today?

BOB
Nothing, just hanging out, why?

CHUCK (O.S)
You should really go out for lunch today. I heard there’s a couple nice, quiet places nearby.

BOB
Nah dude, I don’t wanna drive. I just took my medicine.

CHUCK (O.S)
No, you REALLY want to go out for lunch.

BOB
What you talking ‘bout Willis?

CHUCK (O.S)
Look. I’m delivering a message. You should go anywhere. Now. Because something’s gonna happen in an hour.

Bob straightens up and looks at the phone.

BOB
Who sent the message?

CHUCK (O.S)
Someone who hates you. Last time you two saw each other, you beat the shit out of each other.

BOB
That mother fucker.

CHUCK (O.S)
Yep. He’s giving you a heads up that something’s coming and that you should get some lunch.

BOB
Ah’ight, I’ll get some lunch. Thanks bro.

CHUCK (O.S)
Later.

Bob hangs up the phone. He grabs his shirt, shoes, wallet, and keys, then leaves.

INT. CHESTER COUNTY COURTHOUSE - DAY
In the lobby of the courthouse, Dr. Bartlett and her attorney, Frederick Baird, enter through the main doors and head to a lobby where they check in.

INT. CHESTER COUNT DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE - DAY
Steven and Lisa’s phones beep. They both look at them, after getting the same message. They each reply, ‘10-4, heading to courthouse.’ They get up. Steven holds the door open for Lisa. She shakes her head playfully at him before they leave the office.

EXT. E&B'S BISTRO & BAIT - DAY
Outside of the Bistro, Bob pulls in to the parking lot in his 1984 Chevy Pickup. He exits the truck and enters the Bistro.

INT. E&B'S BISTRO & BAIT - DAY
Behind the Bistro counter, Brandon is making some food. He sees Bob come in.

BRANDON
Oh hey, long time no see stranger. Whatchya having?

BOB
Hey Brandon. Eric around?

BRANDON
No, he’s doing a supply run. What can I getya?

BOB
I’ll go with a club sandwich and chips with an iced coffee.

BRANDON
Lotsa cream lotsa sugar?

BOB
Same as always.

Brandon works on making Bob’s lunch.

BRANDON
So, what brings ya in today? Don’t usually come in on Thursdays.

BOB
I gotta feeling that I might not want to be around the camp today.

BRANDON
Oh? Care to enlighten me on what’s going on? This have to do with all the FBI agents that have been hovering around the camp?

Bob’s eyes go wide with surprise. They were already red from the weed.

BOB
What...

BRANDON
Please, hun. A half-dozen clean-cut men and women wearing bad suits driving black SUV’s with US Government license plates came through a couple times. They acted like they were just passing through, but they weren’t. I noticed them, but then I notice everything. It’s my job to keep quiet about rumors unless it concerns me. You eating inside or outside hun?

BOB
Outside. If anything happens, I wanna watch.

Brandon goes back to work on Bob’s food.

EXT. LAKE HIAWATHA WOODS - DAY
Captain Smith and Special Agents Carpenter and Kingston make a final walk around of the 4 armored FBI vehicles. Daniel Smith makes a last minute adjustment on his bullet-proof vest. They do a quick confirmation that everything is good to go, then hop in the black Humvee. Captain Smith and Special Agent Jackson Carpenter climb in the back while Special Agent Erin Kingston gets in the passenger seat. An FBI agent in full armor drives.

ERIN
Okay, let’s roll. Hit it.

The black Humvee pulls out of the clearing, followed by the 4 armored vehicles. Captain Smith sends a text from the back.

DANIEL
(text)
Long Hot Summer Night en-route.

INT. CCPD CROWN VICTORIA - DAY

Janella Jenkins rides shotgun in the Crown Vic she normally shares with George. Another officer from CCPD is driving today. She receives a text from Captain Smith. She replies.

JANELLA
(text)
Crosstown Traffic 5 minutes out.

EXT. INDUSTRIAL PARKING LOT - DAY
In an industrial parking lot a few minutes away from the Daniels’ Estate, 3 SWAT vans, half a dozen marked and unmarked police cars, and two black Chevy Suburbans sit in a parking lot.

INT. CCPD SWAT TRUCK - DAY
Inside one of the SWAT vehicles, George sits, trying to calm himself. Sgt. Thompson sits across from him, saying a little prayer to himself. He then looks to George.

THOMPSON
You ready?

GEORGE
No. Still do it anyway. You?

THOMPSON
As ready as ever. I hope this is overkill.

GEORGE
Me too. Me too.

George receives a text message. It’s Janella. George types on his phone.

GEORGE
(text)
House Burning Down, Code 3

George looks up from his phone to Sgt. Thompson.

GEORGE
Let’s go.

THOMPSON
Alright, let’s do this. Code 3.

EXT. INDUSTRIAL PARKING LOT - DAY
All of the vehicles that have lights and sirens turn them on. One marked police car and one Suburban take the lead, followed by the SWAT trucks. The one George is in is first. They haul ass out of the parking lot.

INT. CHESTER COUNTY COURTHOUSE - DAY
In the courthouse, Dr. Bartlett and her attorney Mr. Barnes sit in the lobby outside of their scheduled courtroom. ADA Jones and AUSA Sanders sit nearby. A clerk speaks up from his desk.

CLERK
Docket number 5687341, First Union Holy Church versus Dr. Michelle Bartlett.

Michelle and her attorney stand up and walk toward the courtroom. As she’s about to enter, three men lean over to Frederick. They are the lawyers from First Union Holy Church. The lead attorney, HAROLD SCHUMACHER, speaks.

HAROLD
Come on, Freddie, last chance. You tell your client to pull the site, issue a public apology and say this whole thing was a big lie and we won’t ruin her.

Frederick looks at Harold, and puts on the biggest smile he can muster.

FREDERICK
Harold, you’re gonna rue this day for the rest of your miserable fucking life. Not only is your client full of shit, but that sounds a hell of a lot like extortion. Now, if you’ll excuse me.

Frederick turns on his heels and enters the courtroom, behind Jones and Sanders. The prosecutors take up seats in the front row right behind the Defendant’s desk. Fred enters and stands next to Michelle. He pats her on the shoulder. Steven Jones sends a text.

STEVEN
(text)
I’m in the Watchtower.

EXT. E&T'S BISTRO & BAIT - DAY
Bob sits outside of the bistro, eating his sandwich and drinking his coffee when an unmarked black Humvee tears down the road toward the camp at breakneck speed. Right behind it are 4 large armored vehicles. Brandon rushes outside, wiping his hands on his apron.

BRANDON
What the hell was that?

BOB
Trouble.

From their vantage point, they can see the first car turn down the road to Camp Hiawatha. The other vehicles follow.

EXT. CAMP HIAWATHA - DAY
The black Humvee pulls into the Camp right in front of the main office. Special Agents Jackson Carpenter and Erin Kingston exit the Humvee, followed by Captain Smith. The other vehicles follow.

A group of campers swim in the lake while another group of people run off into the woods. Counselors try to round up the children while Jackson heads to the main office. Jackson approaches one of the Counselors, looking for whomever is in charge. He finds a manager and gives them a copy of the warrant. The manager is dumbstruck.

Several men at the edge of the camp see the action and run off into the woods.

Jackson asks where the kids are that just came up from the church, the manager points to a building out past the edge of the camp. Agents converge on the camp. They find a cabin full of 4 drugged girls, all apparently dark-skinned Costa Ricans. Outside of the cabin, they see some motion in the woods. It’s the men that ran. They call for backup.

Half a dozen agents in tactical gear converge on the cabin and run after the men in the woods. It looks like the running men are going to get away, until they turn and see 2 K-9 units hot on their tails.

Captain Smith grabs his phone and sends a text.

DANIEL
(text)
Long Hot Summer Night is good, found girls arresting perps, getting docs.

EXT. FIRST UNION HOLY CHURCH - DAY
Janella Jenkins pulls up to First Union in the Crown Vic. They’re followed by 4 marked CCPD police cars, two more unmarked Crown Vics and two black Chevy Suburbans. Everyone gets out of their cars. Two officers stay back to cover the front. Janella leads everyone else into the lobby.

INT. FIRST UNION HOLY CHURCH - DAY
Shock and awe as Detective Janella Jenkins enters the lobby of First Union Holy Church, flanked by several police officers and FBI agents. She makes a path for the main office, located right off of the main lobby. A man in a very nice suit sees them coming his way and runs down a hallway.

Janella turns into the office and announces that they have a warrant to search the premises. The secretary behind the desk goes white as a ghost.

The officers make their way through the office, telling everyone to get away from their computers and files. Janella finds the PA system. She gets one of the women in the office to activate it. Janella announces that the police are here for a search warrant and that everyone should remain calm.

One of the officers gets into a foot chase with the man in the nice suit. It’s Jamie Daniels. Jamie almost got away, but gets tackled as he reaches the door to the parking lot.

The day care is a scene of chaos as teachers try to keep the kids calm. In the hallway past them, several staff members run down the hallway. They’re being chased by FBI agents.

EXT. FIRST UNION HOLY CHURCH - DAY
Two men that were working in the rear of the building book it for the parking lot. They hop in their cars drive off. Just as they’re about to get out of the parking lot, one of the police cars blocks their exit. One of the cars slams right into the front right side of the police cruiser. Cops get out and arrest the man.

INT. FIRST UNION HOLY CHURCH - DAY
The situation is starting to come under control. Janella pulls out her phone and sends a text.

JANELLA
(text)
Crosstown Traffic is good.

INT. CHESTER COUNTY COURTHOUSE - DAY
Dr. Michelle Bartlett and Frederick Baird sit at the Defendant’s desk. The lawyers for First Union Holy Church sit at the Plaintiff’s desk.

Steven and Lisa sit in the front row. Their phones buzz a couple times as the judge enters. Everyone rises.

STEVEN
(whispers)
One more.

EXT. CHARLIE DANIELS ESTATE - DAY
Three guards patrol the estate grounds. Two walk around the yard while one is stationed near the front gate. They’re relaxed, about as relaxed as one can be carrying an AR-15 while on guard duty.

Off in the distance, they hear sirens. A lot of sirens. Those sirens are getting louder and louder. The guard by the street sees the first sing that Hell comes for them.

A marked police car with its lights and sirens on drives up the road to the house, followed by a black Chevy Suburban. They pull slightly past the entry to the house. Behind them, a SWAT armored vehicle with a battering ram approaches the front gate. The PA from the SWAT van crackles to life.

GEORGE (O.S)
CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT, WE HAVE A WARRANT TO SEARCH THE PREMISES! OPEN THE GATE NOW OR WE WILL OPEN IT FOR YOU!

The gate stays closed as the first SWAT vehicle approaches the gate.

GEORGE (O.S)
CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT, WE HAVE A SEARCH WARRANT! LAST WARNING, OPEN THE GATE!

The guard closes to the gate was not expecting this today. He snaps out of his stupor and drops his gun as he waves his hands frantically, getting their attention. He makes it to the gate right before the van gets there. He pushes a button on the inside, opening the gate. The other guards are now close enough to see what’s going on.

The first SWAT van drives up to the front door of the house. The second SWAT van circles around to the Servant’s entrance. The third van circles the house and goes to the rear entrance. The fourth van takes up position halfway between the gate and the front door. All of the officers exit their vehicles in perfect formation. Squad get to each of the doors, ready to breach their doors. The radios fill with a cacophony of codes indicating they’re ready to move. George exits the SWAT van, flanked by Sgt. Thompson and an FBI agent. They run to the front door. George has a letter in his right hand and a bullhorn in the left. He pounds on the door with his right hand and screams into the bullhorn.

GEORGE
CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS, WE HAVE WARRANTS TO SEARCH THE PREMISES! WE’RE COMING IN!

THOMPSON
Go!

The SWAT officers use a hand-held battering ram to smash open the front door.

INT. CHARLIE DANIELS ESTATE - DAY
The SWAT teams pour into the house from their breach locations. They go room by room, scaring a dozen staff members and bringing everyone into a communal area. George and the FBI agent arrive.

GEORGE
Who’s in charge here? Where are the owners?

An older gentleman, BRYCE, hesitantly raises his hand. George waves him forward. He walks forward, terrified by what’s happening.

GEORGE
Who are you and where are the Daniels Family?

BRYCE
I’m, I’m, My name is Bryce. I’m the Head Butler. The family proper is out of town.

GEORGE
Are you in charge?

BRYCE
Yes, yes I am in charge of the staff.

GEORGE
Here.

George hands him the letter he’s carrying. The FBI agent does the same.

GONZALEZ
Special Agent Hernando Gonzalez, FBI. Search warrant.

GEORGE
Detective George Lewis, Chester County Police Department, we have a warrant to search the premises. How many people are here?

BRYCE
It’s just the staff and the guards.

GEORGE
How many?

BRYCE
Um, three guards plus us. A dozen, maybe 15.

GEORGE
Are you including the people in the secret area behind the bookcase in the library?

Bryce’s face goes white.

BRYCE
Um, um...

GEORGE
Don’t fuck with me, Bryce. You have damn near 30 cars in the parking area and 15 people here. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for that one, but you bullshit me one more god damned time and you and everyone here goes down for the sick shit they do back there. Now, tell me. How many?

Bryce doesn’t say anything fast enough for George.

GEORGE
Too bad.

George walks past goes to the staff. He pulls a pair of handcuffs from a pouch on his belt.

GEORGE
Since Bryce here won’t be helpful, that means you all pay for his failures. First one of you to tell me how many people are in the back area earns a get out of jail free card. The rest get a pair of these shiny bracelets and a trip to the shittiest hotel in town. Now, how many people-

BRYCE
I don’t know, I swear! I didn’t count them!

George turns back to Bryce.

GEORGE
Give me an estimate. How many kids, how many crew, guests?

Bryce takes a moment to catch his breath. He’s on the verge of a panic attack.

BRYCE
About 6 guests, maybe 6 crew, and about that many kids. I’m not sure, I didn’t see everyone come in.

George pats Bryce on the shoulder and softens his voice.

GEORGE
Thank you. Can you walk to the library or do you need to rest.

Bryce bends over to catch his breath. One of the cooks jumps up to help Bryce without thinking about the several guns pointed at him. George puts his hands out.

GEORGE
Whoa, whoa. You, come, slowly. Walk with Bryce.

The cook helps Bryce through the house as they walk to the library, the one with the secret door.

George, FBI Agent Gonzalez, Sgt. Thompson, and two officers walk to the library. They meet two squads of SWAT officers primed and ready to go.

THOMPSON
Expect at least 2 dozen possible hostiles and 6 kids, maybe more. Remember the layout. 3 bedrooms on each side, right has a bathroom and production suite, left IT and a vault. Two control rooms with hidden corners and two shooting studios.

George looks to Bryce and the cook. He puts his cuffs away and pulls out his pistol.

GEORGE
Can they hear us in there?

BRYCE
No.

COOK
No, insonorizado.

George looks for a moment, trying to remember his Spanish.

GONZALEZ
Soundproofed.

COOK
Si.

GEORGE
Gracias.

George walks up to the door, bullhorn in left hand, gun in right. He grabs the top of the book ‘Atlas Shrugged’ with a couple fingers on his left hand. The book leans forward. A CLICK is heard and felt, followed by the door opening.

INT. SECRET AREA - DAY
The door to the Secret Area opens. The hallway is not well lit. The sounds of sex and crying can be heard at the door. The first SWAT unit enters and takes a quick check. George stands behind them with the bullhorn.

GEORGE
CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT, WE HAVE A WARRANT TO SEARCH THE PREMISES! STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING, KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM, DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID! KEEP CALM!

The SWAT team opens the first two doors, to rooms 1 and 2. Both are empty. The next officers open the doors to rooms 3 and 4. Screams are heard from both rooms. Same thing with 5 and 6. The next group of SWAT officers go down the hallway. They enter the vault and IT room. No one was in there. Someone was taking a shit in the bathroom and wearing headphones. The production suite had two men inside it. Both surrounded immediately. CR2 was empty. CR1 had two men in it, the Director and Audio engineer. Their hands went up as soon as the door flew open. A couple SWAT officers made it to the studio, George hot on their heels. Nothing moved in the studio to the right. They saw several men to the left, with a couple girls. George yelled into the bullhorn.

GEORGE
CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT! PUT YOUR HANDS UP AND KNEEL ON THE FLOOR!

George got a good look at the scene. Two men were completely naked and two girls wearing just their underwear. The two girls, one black one about 11 and a white girl with red hair that was about 9, stood in the middle of the room. Three men dressed for work were around the back of the room. One ran behind a curtain on the far left wall. The other two pulled out pistols. The first man, ran to the white girl and grabbed her, pointing the gun at her head. The second opened fire on George and the SWAT officers. George and one of the SWAT officers in front him hit the ground.

THOMPSON
SHOTS FIRED, SHOTS FIRED!

The SWAT officers opened fire on the guy with the gun. George dropped to the ground, a pain coming from his left arm. The officer in front of him groans in pain before making his way to his knees. He grunted, then looked at the situation. The naked men and the black girl lay on the floor, face down. The man with the gun to the girls head looks around frantically. SWAT take position around him. George stands, his arm hurting. He draws his gun on the man holding the girl hostage.

GEORGE
Stay calm, everyone.

The man holds the gun to the girl’s head.

BRIAN
Back off or I blow her fucking brains out!

The girl cries harder. She’s about 9 or 10, comes up to chest height on her. George takes quick inventory of the room. One man is missing, likely hiding behind the curtain. Three naked people are taking up space. Sgt. Thompson and two of his best have beads on this man and can take him down in a heartbeat. The other man with the gun is bleeding out on the floor from a chest shot. Thompson calls into his radio.

THOMPSON
Shots fired, officers hit, subject down, hostage situation in the studio. Down the hall to the left.

George softens his voice, keeping his gun aimed at the hostage taker.

GEORGE
What’s your name? What’s your name?

BRIAN
Brian.

GEORGE
Okay Brian. What’s your friend’s name over there?

Brian glances quickly at his friend bleeding on the floor, but keeps the gun to the girl’s head. He looks back at George.

BRIAN
He’s also Brian.

GEORGE
Okay Brian. Here’s what’s going on. Your friend is hurt, bad. We can’t help him while you hold that little girl.

BRIAN
I’m not letting her go! Not until I’m away from here!

The girl cries and coughs as he chokes her, his left arm around her throat.

GEORGE
Brian, that’s not gonna happen. You know we can’t let you leave. Not like this. There’s 50 cops and FBI agents here. You think they’re gonna let you just walk out? No.

Brian looks around the room, gun still at the girl’s head.

GEORGE
Look at me, Brian. Even if you get out of the building, there’s a dozen cop cars in the parking lot and a chopper nearby. They’ll track you down and this will end badly, and your friend over there will die. Is this how that Brian wants to go out? A gut shot where he bleeds out on a TV studio floor?

Brian is beyond nervous. He’s petrified. Sweat pours down his forehead.

GEORGE
How long you think you can hold that gun against that girls head? You’re sweating. These lights are bright and hot. How long till that sweat gets in your eyes? 30 seconds, a minute tops. Know what they’ll do if you’re still holding that gun and you flinch?

The realization strikes Brian. He begins hyperventilating.

GEORGE
You’re only way out of this Brian is to drop the gun. Other Brian will die. Do you want that to happen?

BRIAN
You won’t hurt me?

GEORGE
You shoot her you die next, and I’ll make sure you suffer. You put the gun down and let her go, we won’t hurt you.

BRIAN
Promise?

GEORGE
I promise. Tell me what you’re gonna do.

Brian breathes rapidly for a moment, the sweat getting into his eyes.

BRIAN
I’m putting it down.

Brian awkwardly drops the gun. He then lets go of the girl. She runs right up to George. Brian falls to his knees as the SWAT officers approach him. Another SWAT officer enters and checks Other Brian. He calls for an ambulance and administers first aid. George points to the curtain.

GEORGE
Someone check that curtain, one got away.

Four more officers made their way to the curtain. A moment later they return, dragging the third crew member that tried to run. George turns his attention to the girl.

GEORGE
Shh, it’s okay, it’ll be okay. What’s your name?

ALY
Aly.

GEORGE
It’ll be okay, Aly. Here.

George takes off his coat and wraps her in it, covering her up. As he took his coat off, he noticed his left arm hurt like a son of a bitch. He points to the other girl.

GEORGE
Someone help that girl, cover her up.

One of the officers goes to the black girl on the floor, giving her their coat. Sgt. Thompson comes over to George, looking concerned.

THOMPSON
George, you need a medic. Now.

GEORGE
What?

George finally sees his left arm. The entire upper arm of his white dress shirt is covered in blood.

GEORGE
Fuck. Don’t tell my wife. Please don’t tell her.

THOMPSON
That’s your call. Ambulance will be here in a minute.

George’s eyes go wide.

GEORGE
Shit, I gotta call someone. Quick, what did we find?

THOMPSON
A fucking vault of child porn.

George gets up to run, but Aly won’t let him. George tries to leave, but she’s hanging on him. He pulls out his phone and writes a text. He presses send, but isn’t sure if it went through. He then rewrites it and gives it Thompson.

GEORGE
Fuck. Here, take this. As soon as you’re outside, press send. If you don’t get a response, call Steven Jones, he’s in the Top 5 contacts, and tell him I said “House Burning Down is the Motherlode.” He’ll know what I’m talking about. Go! Go!

Thompson runs full speed out of the Secret Area.

INT. CHARLIE DANIELS ESTATE - DAY
Sgt. Thompson runs full speed through the house, holding George’s cell phone. He runs past the staff, spin moves around an officer escorting a john out of the building, and plows right through one of his officers lollygagging in the hallway.

THOMPSON
Sorry! Get back to work!

He jumps over the remnants of the door in the main entryway as he makes his way outside.

EXT. CHARLIE DANIELS ESTATE - DAY.
Thompson runs another 100 feet to clear the house before he presses Send. No response. He tries again. No message. He goes to the phone’s main screen to Contacts and finds “STEVEN JONES”. He presses Send. The phone rings.

INT. CHESTER COUNTY COURTHOUSE - DAY
In the courthouse, JUDGE REYNOLDS sits at his bench. Everyone in the courtroom sits. The lawyers for First Union Holy Church make their opening statement.

HAROLD
Your Honor, our client, First Union Holy Church, has suffered irreparable and nearly incalculable damage to their reputation and standing in the community due to Dr. Bartlett’s libelous website and the baseless accusations. We seek full monetary compensation, as well as demand that her website be shut down, a list of the identities of those making these baseless claims, a full and public retraction of her claims.

Steven and Lisa’s phones buzz. Then they buzz again. They check their phones. They both received the same message twice.

GEORGE
(text)
HBD is teh motherlod

They look at each other in confusion for a moment. The Judge clears his throat.

REYNOLDS
Make sure your cell phones are turned off in my courtroom.

STEVEN
I’m sorry Your Honor.

Judge Reynolds looks at Steven.

REYNOLDS
You seem very familiar.

STEVEN
We’re here regarding this case, Your Honor.

REYNOLDS
Defense, do you have anything...

Steven’s phone rings. It’s George.

STEVEN
I’m sorry Your Honor, I need to take this, it’s regarding this case.

REYNOLDS
You have one minute, and no further outbursts. Defense, when you’re ready.

Steven answers his phone, whispering into it.

STEVEN
George?

THOMPSON (O.S)
No, Sgt. Matt Thompson, SWAT. You Steven?

STEVEN
Yes. Where’s George?

THOMPSON (O.S)
Medics are checking him out and he has a traumatized 9-year-old girl hanging on him.

STEVEN
What?

THOMPSON (O.S)
Hostage situation, he was shot in the arm, he’ll be fine. He asked me to send you a text but I don’t know if it worked.

STEVEN
George was shot?

THOMPSON (O.S)
Surface wound, he’ll be fine. Don’t tell his wife, he’ll do that.

STEVEN
What’s the message?

THOMPSON (O.S)
House Burning Down is the motherlode.

STEVEN
Copy that, 10-4. Thank you, and tell him to call me when he gets a chance.

THOMPSON (O.S)
Will do, Thompson out.

Steven hangs up the phone. He nods to Frederick, then turns his attention to the Judge.

STEVEN
I’m sorry for the interruptions, Your Honor. That was directly involving this case, we hope it’s the last one for the rest of this hearing.

Judge Reynolds looks at the lawyers in the front row for a moment then turns his attention to the desk in front of them. Lisa pulls out her phone and sends a text.

LISA
(text)
There must be some kind of way out of here, said the joker to the thief.

REYNOLDS
Defense.

FREDERICK
Your Honor, my client would like to file a motion to immediately dismiss this case with prejudice. The Plaintiff asserts that these claims are libelous and defamatory. A statement cannot be libelous or defamatory if the statements are true. There is enough merit in my client’s claims that the Chester County Police Department opened an investigation into First Union Holy Church over a year ago. Case number is CC20030519SC00235 for the records for the court. My client, Dr. Michelle Bartlett, was the first of many, many victims to come forward and give statements to the police. In the last year plus, their investigation has grown to include Camp Hiawatha, several members of the Daniels family, and several of their associates. Many clients came forward to the police thanks to Dr. Bartlett’s website, and First Union is trying to extort my client into silence.

The lawyers for First Union talk in a huddle.

HAROLD
Your Honor, this is preposterous. The defense is clearly making up a vast conspiracy of nonsense. If this investigation is so vast, then why are we just hearing about it now?

FREDERICK
It’s called good police work. It happens when you don’t pay off cops with bribes.

REYNOLDS
Enough! Mr. Baird, do you have anything to back up your claims? You said many claims of abuse. How many is many?

Frederick turns to the two lawyers behind him.

FREDERICK
Your Honor, I believe the two prosecuting attorneys sitting behind me could better answer your questions.

REYNOLDS
Prosecuting attorneys? You two, come forward.

Steven and Lisa stand up and approach the bench.

REYNOLDS
Mr. Baird called you two prosecutors. Please, identify yourselves for the court.

STEVEN
Your Honor, my name is Steven Jones, I am an Assistant District Attorney representing the People of Chester County.

LISA
Your Honor, I am Assistant United States Attorney Lisa Sanders. I represent the People of the United States of America in this matter.

HAROLD
This is outrageous! Nothing more than some hair-brained attempt to-

REYNOLDS
You will be silent! Mr. Jones, Ms. Sanders, is there any credence to what Mr. Baird has said in my courtroom?

STEVEN
Yes, Your Honor.

REYNOLDS
And how many other people have filed complaints?

STEVEN
At least 25, Your Honor.

The judge’s jaw drops.

REYNOLDS
25? And that’s just from the defendants website?

STEVEN
Yes, Your Honor. Those are only the people who filed official complaints with Chester County Police Department’s Sex Crimes Unit in the last 13 months and were referred to them through Dr. Bartlett’s website. Many of them were children when they were attacked and have since grown up, but quite a few of them occurred well within the Statute of Limitations.

LISA
This doesn’t include the numbers from the Federal investigation, either.

REYNOLDS
This is Federal, too?

LISA
Yes, Your Honor. Several of the alleged crimes we’re investigating them for cross state and international borders. We’re working with the local authorities on this matter. As far as to why the legal representation for First Union Holy Church, the Daniels Family, and Camp Hiawatha have not been notified of the investigation, we have reason to believe that if they were notified too soon, they would’ve destroyed evidence and posed a threat of flight risk. That’s why we waited until today to notify them that...Your Honor, we request permission to approach the Plaintiff’s desk.

REYNOLDS
Why?

LISA
So that we can officially serve them with their copies of the search warrants that are being executed as we speak.

The judge simply waves them over. He is bewildered. Steven and Lisa approach the Plaintiff’s desk.

STEVEN
On behalf of Chester County, here you go. The search warrant covers the church and the Daniels’ Family Estate listed at the address on the paper. From what I understand, several arrests have already been made and at least one of our officers was shot.

LISA
And on behalf of the United States of America, here’s the search warrant for Camp Hiawatha. Have a nice day.

The two lawyers walk back to in front of the judge.

REYNOLDS
These crimes you’re investigating, is it safe to assume that they are major crimes related information gained from the defendant’s website, and that the Plaintiff is attempting to silence criticism against them?

LISA
Yes, Your Honor.

STEVEN
If the court would like, we will provide them with the case numbers involved, but considering that this is currently an ongoing investigation, there’s not much we can give the targets of the investigation in this matter.

The judge turns toward the Plaintiff’s desk.

REYNOLDS
Mr. Schumacher, it seems like you’re going to have your hands full with much more than a lawsuit against a critic. Your client is looking at complete and total ruin, and pursuing this matter in the face of everything which has just been brought before us sounds like a grievous misuse of the courts. I side with the Defendant and grant their motion to dismiss this case with prejudice.

The judge slams his gavel down. Harold sits at his desk, dumbfounded about what just happened. Steven and Lisa congratulate Frederick and Michelle, who hugs everyone involved. They leave the courtroom, with Frederick hanging back. He approaches Harold.

FREDERICK
What was it I said a few minutes ago about you rueing this day? I hope your client can afford a good attorney.

Frederick walks out of the courtroom.

-------------------------------------------------------------

To Be Continued...

Post by **LtBroccoli** » Wed Jul 29, 2026 1:39 am

Chapter Tags: Nosex, viol
Content Warnings: On-screen and off-screen violence. Keel-hauling and unsafe boating practices.
-------------------------------------------------------------

First Union strikes back, and one of their own falls...
-------------------------------------------------------------

Episode 12 - Death in the Family
INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George sits back down at the table, a toilet filling can be heard in the background. He sits down at the table, a fresh glass of wine sitting in front of him.

GEORGE
Now, something to keep in mind was that from this point on, there’s no hiding our intentions. We just pulled off one hell of an operation. The FBI broke up a child sex trafficking ring using the bible camp as a cover. We had every financial record for the church and how their donations were being distributed, and collected more videos than a chain of Blockbuster stores. There was something like 20-30 arrests that day. The only thing we didn’t get were the main members of the Daniels’ family. The only one we popped was Jamie, Natalie’s cousin. He was released on bail. The rest of the family were still hiding out in Colorado, but we knew they had to come back soon for their TV show. But we also knew that they’d try something. We just didn’t know how dirty they’d play. And they didn’t know how dirty we’d fight.

George takes a sip of wine.

INT. HARBOR CITY GENERAL HOSPITAL - NIGHT
George sits in a chair in a hospital room next to Aly, who wears George’s overcoat and a hospital smock. They’re playing a card game. George’s left arm is wrapped in bandages. His dress shirt is long gone, but he’s still wearing his white t-shirt, though the left sleeve was cut off due to the blood. Some dried blood was on the inside of the shirt.

There’s a knock at the door. It’s Aly’s parents. They rush in and nearly smother the girl with hugs.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The little girl, Aly, wouldn’t leave my side the entire day. She was a tough little cookie who just had the worst day of her life. Medical exam proved what we suspected. I called her parents, they were shocked as hell to find out that Aly was even down in Harbor City. She was supposed to be at the camp the whole summer.

The parents and George talk. He tells them the basics of what happened and they break down.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Her parents genuinely didn’t have a clue how this happened. After a little digging, they told me that Aly’s uncle, the wife’s brother, was a Deputy with Hiawatha County Sheriff’s Department. The Sheriff recommended the camp to the family.

EXT. LAKE HIAWATHA WOODS - DAY
A Sheriff’s SUV drives through the woods near Lake Hiawatha. It drives down a path, then turns down a driveway. It parks.

GEORGE (V.O.)
From what was discovered over the next few days, the Sheriff thought that his deputy, Ryland Holmes, was getting too close to finding out about his relationship with the church. Ryland didn’t have any kids of his own, but had a niece that he absolutely adored, Aly.

EXT. BOB'S CABIN - DAY
The Sheriff’s SUV parks next to a rusted-up powder blue 1984 Chevy Pickup. Out of the SUV comes DEPUTY RYLAND HOLMES. He’s a good looking man in his 30’s, and carries himself with an air of respect and authority. He puts his large Sheriff’s hat on as he exits the car and walks to Bob’s door. He knocks on it. Bob answers.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The Sheriff had the brilliant idea that if he hurt Aly and threatened to do it again, he’d keep Ryland in check. The Sheriff made three mistakes. First, he no longer had the church covering his ass. Second, overplayed his hand.

I/E. LAKE HIAWATHA WOODS - NIGHT
On a backroad in the woods at night, a Sheriff’s SUV slowly drives around a blind corner. A deer dummy stands in the middle of the road. SHERIFF HENRY BUFFORD hits the gas and the horn. He drives right into the deer dummy. It’s made of steel and concrete, and his SUV slams into it. The push bars take the brunt of the accident, but it causes the Sheriff to lose control and drive right into a tree. The airbags deploy. Just as Bufford regains his senses, his door opens. A man dressed in all black hits him with a tonfa, a police baton. Two more men dressed in black drag the Sheriff out of the SUV. Once the Sheriff is on the ground, two more men dressed in black show up. Five men are beating the Sheriff to within an inch of his life.

After a long ass-whooping, the men throw the Sheriff into the back of a powder-blue pickup truck. Bob’s pickup truck. Bob’s in the driver’s seat. Two men hop into the cab with Bob and take off their masks. It’s Paul and Gary. In the bed, the other men continue to beat Sheriff Bufford. One of them takes off his mask. It’s Ryland.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Third, he underestimated how much Ryland loved Aly and what he’d do to anyone who hurt her.

EXT. BOB'S CABIN - NIGHT
Bob’s truck pulls up to the dock by his cabin, near his 25 foot fishing boat. The men get out, dragging the Sheriff with them. They climb in and leave the dock for a night cruise on the lake.

EXT. LAKE HIAWATHA - NIGHT
The boat makes it’s way to the middle of the lake. The Sheriff is bloody and beaten. The remaining men in masks help Ryland and Gary tie the Sheriff’s feet to one end of a long rope and his hands to another. Once secured, Ryland spits in the Sheriff’s face and punches him in the stomach one more time. The men throw the Sheriff overboard in front of the boat. Bob gives a signal to Paul by the rear engines to tilt them up out of the water. Gary and Ryland walk the rope down the length of the boat, keel-hauling the Sheriff. Once the Sheriff cleared the end of the boat, they tied the ends of their ropes to the cleats on the aft of the boat. Another signal from Bob and the engines were back in the water. The boat cruised around the lake for the next hour, dragging the Sheriff’s body behind them.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Sheriff Henry Bufford’s body was discovered the next morning. His death was reported as a fishing accident. Later on, I asked Ryland, off the record, about what happened. He stuck to his story, but mentioned that Bufford got what was coming. I didn’t push further. I kept in touch with the family for a while, still talk to Aly from time to time. She still has that coat, patched up the bullet holes when it started to fray. She’s a tough little girl, and an even tougher woman.

EXT. WALMART PARKING LOT - NIGHT
George pulls into the Walmart Parking Lot in the crimson Crown Vic. He parks the car in the usual location. He sees Jesse’s white Jeep Wrangler. It is just sitting there, with the engine running. George sits there for a few minutes, wondering why Jesse hasn’t come over. George pulls out his cell phone and calls Jesse. It rings a few times before going to voicemail. He can see a small light turn on in the Jeep.

George gets out of the Crown Vic and approaches Jesse’s Jeep. He dials him again. No answer. As he gets close enough, he sees why Jesse wasn’t answering. Jesse is slumped over in his seat in a pool of blood. He’s not breathing, and there were a couple bullet holes in him.

GEORGE (V.O.)
First Union wasn’t taking this lying down. It didn’t take them long to figure out who flipped on them. Jesse wasn’t there the day everyone else got busted. The church called in a hit on him, like it was some bad Mafia movie.

Time passes. CSI is going through the scene, and they find a laptop under Jesse’s seat. It was connected to a cable that ran through and up to the dash. It was a camera cable, but the camera was missing.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
The next day, George and Janella go through Jesse’s laptop. They can see as clear as day a man wearing a red zip-up hoodie and hat approach the door. This was peculiar since it was the middle of July. The man taps on the window and flashes a police badge, identifying himself as a cop. When Jesse doesn’t get out of the car, the man shoots him, then grabs the camera.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Unlike a bad mafia movie, First Union used Hillside PD as their hitters. We identified the man in the video as an officer from Hillside PD. Someone in the middle of the ranks. At that point, we knew we had to act, but arresting an entire police department isn’t easy. They had 28 officers. We knew at least half of them were on the take, and most of the rest were still dirty as fuck. We’d barely scratched the surface and saw a few of them in the videos. We knew this was going to be a clusterfuck. We had to bring in all of them at once, but wouldn’t be able to make a move until the next day. That night was rather...interesting.

EXT. OLD HOUSE - NIGHT
The garage door is open in George’s old house. A man lays underneath a beaten up project 1986 Porsche 911 up on jack stands. The stereo plays loud heavy metal. The sound of ratcheting comes from underneath the car.

From outside, a police car rolls up in front of the house. An officer climbs out. He looks around and sees no one. He pulls out his firearm. A passing car illuminates the car’s side, showing that it’s a Hillside PD cruiser. The officer enters the garage and sees a man under the car. He leans under the car.

HILLSIDE OFFICER
What the fuck?!

The Hillside Officer stands up. BANG! Cha-Chunk BANG! Cha-Chunk BANG! The officer collapses on the ground. As he’s writhing in pain, he hears another Cha-Chunk. He looks up. It’s George, holding a shotgun to his face.

GEORGE
They say rubber bullets are less lethal. Care to test that out with a point blank shot to the face? Empty hands where I can see them.

Two of Chester County’s finest come in after George. As the man is dragged to his feet, he looks at the ground as he’s arrested. George turns off the small stereo under the car that played a loop of ratcheting sounds and drags the George dummy out from under the car.

GEORGE (V.O.)
They made an attempt on me at my house. They also tried Janella’s house but the hitter was stopped as soon as he got out of the car. We had officers all around. We put out an APB to every other department to stop any Hillside PD patrol cars they saw outside of their jurisdiction. We tipped our hand, but had no choice. By the end of the night, all of Hillside PD’s officers but two were accounted for.

EXT. EMPTY LOT - NIGHT
Chuck and Angie are on a date, laying on a blanket under the stars on a clear night. They’re in the woods where they’re going to build their new home. Chuck’s truck is off from the street, back in the woods. It’s angled toward their blanket, but turned off. The door is off and the dome light’s off.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Chuck and Angie were off having a nice, quiet evening to themselves. It had been about a month since I met him in Scorchers, I guess he was waiting for a good moment. Anyway, they were on a date-

ANGIE (V.O.)
Hey, this part is our story, We’ll tell it.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Okay.

ANGIE (V.O.)
We were on a little date at our new home. It’s just a few minutes from here, but at the time it was a big piece of woods. During time between jobs Chuck worked on clearing the lot. We were finalizing where the house would go, where the garage would go, things like a playground. We’d talked about kids a little bit here and there. Well, it was getting late and he was getting nervous. I asked him what was up, and he said he had something for me back in the truck. I had a feeling what it was, but I let him go do his thing. Don’t want to interrupt a man in the middle of proposing.

CHUCK (V.O.)
In bird culture, we call that a dick move.

Chuck gets up and walks to the truck. As he gets there, a van pulls up by the property. Two Hillside PD officers exit. They have their weapons drawn. Angie sees them. They approach her.

HILLSIDE OFFICER 2
Angie Lewis?

ANGIE
No, no habla englais.

Chuck, who stands by his driver seat the door open, reaches under his driver’s seat and pulls out a 1911 45 caliber pistol.

HILLSIDE OFFICER 3
Come with us Angie, or we’ll have to hurt her.

HILLSIDE OFFICER 2
Fuck it, just shoot her.

ANGIE
No! No!

Chuck turns the lights on from his truck, blinding the officers. He sees they’re dressed like cops, guns drawn. Angie dives down and covers her head.

BANG!!! BANG!!! BANG!!! The two cops drop to the ground. The one closest to the truck rises to his knees. BANG!!! His head explodes like a melon before he drops to the ground. The second one turns toward his partner. A tall figure emerges from the darkness. It’s Chuck. BANG!!! One more shot as the other officer falls lifeless to the ground, a big hole where his face used to be.

Angie’s freaking out. Chuck runs to her and consoles her.

CHUCK
It’s okay, it’s okay, they can’t hurt you, it’s okay, I’m here hun, I’m here.

ANGIE
They’re...

CHUCK
They’re bad guys who got what they deserved.

ANGIE
Oh my god, oh my god.

Chuck hugs her tighter and shushes her.

CHUCK
I got this. I got this. Go sit in the truck. Let’s go hun.

Chuck walks Angie back to the truck. He grabs his cell phone and makes a call.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Now, I’m not sure what happened to the bodies, but I know that the van they came over in was Hillside PD’s evidence lot until that day. It was used by a serial rapist who would kidnap his victims and rape them in the back. Problem was the van disappeared before trial. Another fuckup by Hillside led to him getting out and reoffending. The van went to a chop shop and the engine and tranny were found a few years later after an auto accident. As far as the officers, no one ever saw them after that. Considering that Chuck’s crew were at work the next day tearing up dirt, well, there were some rumors that they’re buried there.

CHUCK (V.O.)
They’re not in the ground. Hypothetically speaking of course.

INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George looks to Chuck, as do most of the people at the table.

DEREK
So those two crooked cops aren’t buried in your backyard or basement?

CHUCK
Oh, Hell nah. You bury what you wanna keep, why would anyone want to keep a body? Besides, bad things happen when you bury a body.

DEREK
Such as?

CHUCK
Look, I worked a job a few years back where I helped solve a missing person’s case that turned into a murder investigation. Took the cops all of like two weeks to solve a 15-year-old cold case, all because they were lazy. You know what happens to a body over time? It decomposes. Smells bad after a while. And as the body breaks down, it creates a hole. What happens to the dirt above the hole?

DEREK
It fills the hole?

CHUCK
Exactly. Now, you bury it outside, the ground will sink a little. You bury it inside, under a concrete slab, guess what happens to the concrete.

DEREK
It cracks?

CHUCK
Yeah. It cracks. So now, you have a cracked slab in your basement, and guess what happens to all that gas that had nowhere to go from the body decomposing. It ends up in your basement and your house smells like death. Owners don’t know why, they think they’re sewer just backed up so they call a plumber or foundation guy like me, and we find a broken slab. We tear it up, find all this fresh dirt that moved, and boom, there lies Phillip Casavetti. A couple tests told y’all who he was, and all they had to do find out who buried him there was look at the building permits for when the house was built. An inspector would sign off on the concrete and foundation work. They’d have the name of the company. If that company was still in business, y’all call them and ask who worked for them all those years back. It might take a little doing, but they find out that Phil’s brother-in-law lent Phil a shitload of cash that Phil blew at the casino instead of investing for him. The brother-in-law whacked him, threw him in a basement he was working on, and made sure to cover him up with stone before the crew got there the next morning when the cement truck showed up. A little misdirection saying that a skunk or something must’ve sprayed nearby and he thought he got away with the perfect murder. But now the brother-in-law is old, fat, and can’t run anymore and the cops tracked his ass down at his boy’s football game. Got popped at the concession stand.

DEREK
So, don’t bury a body?

CHUCK
No, don’t ever bury a body. Besides, it was a construction site with a big-ass wood chipper. Hypothetically speaking, it’s a lot easier to get rid of a body that way.

SERENA
Man, that’s some Fargo shit right there.

GEORGE
Anyway, we knew we had to move on Hillside PD. But it was also unprecedented territory.

EXT. HILLSIDE PD - DAY
Outside of Hillside Police Department several officers hang out in the parking lot, talking nervously. Down the street, several sirens are heard in the background. Just in sight of the officers, 4 CCPD Crown Vics, 2 black Chevy Suburbans, and two SWAT vans pull into the parking lot. The county police exit the vehicles, weapons drawn. The cops in front of the building surrender immediately.

GEORGE (V.O.)
We were in unprecedented territory. We had arrest warrants for 26 of the 28 officers of Hillside Police Department, along with a few employees. They had 2 newbies they didn’t trust yet to bring in on everything. 14 of the 28 were on the day shift that day. 4 were out on patrol. 10 were in the station. We made 9 arrests. The Commander took the cowards way out and swallowed a bullet in his office. The rest of the staff were rounded up at their homes or given the choice to surrender. A couple tried to flee, but they didn’t get far, not with us and the FBI on their asses. We started this on a Wednesday morning. By Saturday, all but 2 of them were accounted for. Those two, well...

EXT. EMPTY LOT - DAY
An industrial sized wood chipper sprays out chunks of wood chips into the forest. Then the chipper sprays out a red mist. Then more wood chips.

GEORGE (V.O.)
What was the name of that chipper back then, Big Bertha?

INT. DANCING GOAT - DAY
George sits with Jen at the Dancing Goat. She’s tired and stressed. As George drinks his Chai, he looks at the younger woman again and again.

GEORGE
You okay?

Jen shakes her head.

JENNIFER
No, I’m pretty fucking far from Okay. They’re after me, but I’m not done yet. They’re getting close.

GEORGE
Who?

JENNIFER
Who do you think?

GEORGE
The Daniels Family.

Jen nods.

JENNIFER
I think they found me. I’m afraid, George. They know it was me, that I was your source. I changed my patterns but I think they found me. Here.

Jen reaches under her seat and pulls out a box. It’s a present, wrapped like a birthday present.

GEORGE
What’s this?

JENNIFER
My laptop. Don’t worry, I have others. But this is my old one. It’s set up to network with my secure server. All of my little tools are still running, so killing me won’t stop that.

GEORGE
Stop talking like that Jen. Come with me, we can protect you.

Jen’s on the verge of tears and breaks down as she talks.

JENNIFER
I have too much to do. Too much to do.

George leans in and hugs her. She hugs him tightly, crying in his shoulder.

JENNIFER
I miss her so much.

GEORGE
She knows. She misses you, too.

They sit like that, hugging and crying for a few minutes. By the end, both of them have red eyes. They separate. Jen wipes her eyes.

JENNIFER
The instructions are in the box. Just take it to work and plug it in. It’s programmed to do the rest. Adam in IT will answer any questions you have.

GEORGE
Wait, you know Adam?

JENNIFER
A little. He’s okay, bit of a creepy weirdo but not bad. Take care George.

GEORGE
Call me every day from now on until this mess is over. I’m worried.

JENNIFER
I’ll email every day and call on the same schedule.

GEORGE
Call twice a week, Friday and Tuesday. Mail every day, something different. Don’t just set up a bot that sends randomized mail.

Jen smiles a little.

JENNIFER
Okay “Dad”.

They laugh and hug one more time before George leaves.

GEORGE (V.O.)
That was the last time I saw Jen alive.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
George sits at the desk, opening the laptop Jen gave him. He opens up the laptop and powers it in. He connects an ethernet cable, and a few minutes later it’s connected and working.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Jen’s laptop was something else. She had this server going through a VPN that the laptop connected to that was linked to half a dozen email accounts at least. I believe the term is Pwned. She pwned their asses. We had her brother’s email, her stepmother’s email, Angie’s father’s email, Justin Daniels’ email, he was another one of Natalie’s cousins but a little further out, and Jason Daniels’s email. She infected all of them with a virus or trojan or whatever and had access to their mails, browsers, everything. This is back in 2005, and Windows XP was about as secure as a screen door with a chain lock on it. If you knew where to push, pop it open. We could see that the Daniels Family was back in town, but for the most part we were still building an airtight case against them. It was late July by this point. We figured that by Labor Day we could make some arrests. All we had to do was get through August. August is when this turned from a shitstorm to a clusterfuck. It all started the first week of August.

INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George takes a sip of wine, tears in his eyes. Angie grabs his hand. She’s on the verge of breaking down. Chuck comes over and hugs her. He’s already crying a little. George finishes his drink then motions for another.

GEORGE
This next part is, well, August 7th was a sad day for us. We lost a friend and a sister that day. It’s also the day I completely ruined what should’ve been a joyous occasion.

ANGIE
It’s not your fault, and it never was. It was those assholes who did this.

GEORGE
Still. Like they say, good news can wait, bad news has no patience.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
George sits in front of the murderboard, trying to put together the final pieces for the arrest of the Daniels family. He’s nervous, anxious, pacing around.

GEORGE (V.O.)
I was worried. It was Saturday, August 6th. Jen had missed a few days of emails and Friday’s call to check-in. She never missed a check-in. This wasn’t like her. Even if she was out of town, she’d call and say ‘Nothing new’. I tried to make headway on the case, but I was too worried. I called her cell phone. No answer, went to Voicemail. I used a coded message that said to call me, but she didn’t answer. I tried again a half hour later, followed by a text. Still nothing. About two hours later, I called her again. This time, someone answered.

SHANE (O.S)
Hello?

George is taken aback.

GEORGE
Hello, whose this? I’m looking for Jen.

SHANE (O.S)
Sir, who are you?

GEORGE
My name is George, who’s this? I’m not trying to be a dick, but I don’t think I have the wrong number.

SHANE (O.S)
Sir, my name is Shane Boland, I’m an officer with the Westchester Police Department. I found this phone in a car while, sir, what does Jen look like?

GEORGE
Skinny brunette, about 5’5”, long curly black hair, brown eyes, olive skin, looks like she hasn’t slept in a week.

SHANE (O.S)
Um, sir, I’m afraid-

GEORGE
10-20?

George stood up, grabbing his coat and walking out of the Conference room.

INT. CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT BULLPEN - DAY
George makes a beeline to his desk to grab his keys.

SHANE (O.S)
What?

GEORGE
What’s your 10-20? Detective George Lewis, Chester County Police Department. I’m on my way, where are you?

SHANE (O.S)
Sir I’m-

George’s voice starts to break.

GEORGE
Listen Officer, I’m on my way to your crime scene. You were about to tell me that the woman you found dead in that car matches my description to a T. She’s not just my friend, but also a source in a major investigation I’m working on. If you’ve seen the news in the last two months, you know which one it is. Tell me where you’re at and I’ll be there in less than a half hour.

SHANE (O.S)
On state route 88 between Thorncrest Road and Aberdeen Drive, heading South.

GEORGE
Thank you, I’ll be there soon.

EXT. STATE ROUTE 88 - DAY
Two police cars sit behind a late model maroon Ford. The door is open on the car. The officers are milling about, looking at the scene and exchanging notes. Suddenly, a crimson Crown Vic comes barreling down the road from the other direction with flashing lights and siren on. The Crown Vic overshoots the scene, then turns back and stops right behind the parked police cars. George gets out of the car, not even turning it off. He double time walks over the officers.

SHANE
Whoa, whoa.

George flashes his badge.

GEORGE
George Lewis, CCPD. You Officer Boland?

SHANE
Yes, that’s me.

George points to the car.

GEORGE
That’s her?

Shane nods.

GEORGE
Sitrep?

George starts walking over, but Shane puts a hand up to stop him.

SHANE
Sir, I need you to stay back for a minute.

George takes a long, deep breath.

GEORGE
Officer, I’m not here to take over your case. I’m not running over there to fuck with your crime scene. I want to know what happened and what you found.

SHANE
Okay. We received a report this morning that there was an abandoned vehicle on fire on the side of the road. By the time we showed up, the fire was out. A passing off duty firefighter saw the car on fire and put it out with an extinguisher they had in their truck. After putting the fire out, they saw a young woman slumped over the steering wheel. I arrived on the scene about 15 minutes before you called. I opened the car, and the driver was proun...sir. We didn’t find any identification on her, the plates were stolen, and the VIN was last registered in New York a few years ago. No purse or bag or anything. I only heard the phone buzz because you called right when I was inside.

GEORGE
I understand. It’s not gonna be a pretty sight.

George walks toward the car, slowing down as he approaches, hoping against hope that this was some other woman.

He gets to the open car door and sees the body slumped over. He puts on a glove with a shaking hand and moves the hair out of the way.

It’s Jen.

George breaks down and cries, falling onto dirt by the shoulder of the road. Shane comes over and attempts to console him. Shane helps George get up and walk back toward the police cars. George clears his eyes as he tries to regain his composure. He talks through the tears.

GEORGE
What do you need to know? What did you find so far?

SHANE
What was her name?

GEORGE
Jennifer Tibault. T I B A U L T. About 24, 25 years old. I have to look up her exact birthday. Last known address was in Chicago. She has a girlfriend, wife, partner, whatever the term is in New York City. She hasn’t spoken to her parents in a long time. I always assumed they kicked her out when they found out she was gay. Her and her girlfriend, Stacy, lived with my cousin and me for a bit in the late 90’s. After that, they moved around. She came back to Harbor City last year after those two were attacked by members of the Daniels family. Of First Union Church infamy. She was an inside informant, helped our case greatly, and in our last face to face she was scared that she was being followed. I offered her protection, but she said...she said...she said still had work to do.

George takes a long moment, letting another burst of tears through. Shane lets him get it out.

SHANE
You suspect foul play?

GEORGE
Absolutely. You heard about Hillside PD?

Shane nods.

SHANE
A little.

GEORGE
Did you hear about how a few of their officers attempted to kill several people related to the First Union case? She was one of their upcoming targets, if they knew where to look. The Daniels family wanted her dead for what she knew.

Shane is a little hesitant to believe him, but doesn’t discount him either.

SHANE
Sir, did she do any drugs or alcohol?

GEORGE
She drank a little when she was younger but her vice of choice was weed. She was scared shitless of needles. Hated pills, even Tylenol.

George wipes the tears away again and takes a few deep breaths. He walks toward the car, taking a look at it. The license plates are missing, the paint on the rear of the car is scorched from flames, but the rest of the vehicle is untouched by fire. It looks like a generic beater Ford from the 90’s. George changes gloves, then touches the hood and the trunk without opening them.

GEORGE
Notice anything weird about this?

SHANE
Aside from everything? Sorry, that was-

GEORGE
In bad taste but whatever it takes to help you look at the case. You said this car was on fire. How many car fires have you worked where the engine was bone cold and the lid of the trunk was the source? Not even the gas tank, but the trunk.

SHANE
That does seem a little unusual. More than unusual.

GEORGE
Back in my patrol days, I responded to about 30 car fires. Almost all of those were because oil or gas leaked onto the engine block, catalytic converter, or exhaust. Flammable materials on the hottest parts of the car. What’s the coldest part of the car?

SHANE
The trunk lid?

GEORGE
So why is the trunk hotter than the hood?

SHANE
The firefighter said the rear of the car was on fire.

George steps back for a moment, almost backing up onto the road.

GEORGE
If I hadn’t told you what I told you about Jen, what would you assume? Go on, be honest.

SHANE
A junkie in a stolen car, pulled over, then OD’ed. Someone drove past, stole the plates, then set the car on fire, hoping to destroy the evidence. If not for the firefighter, the car would’ve burned to the ground, taking her with it.

GEORGE
And now?

SHANE
Not sure. Assuming it wasn’t an OD like before, I couldn’t say until I checked out the car.

GEORGE
Why?

SHANE
If it runs or not. If it runs, it was driven here. If not, it was towed here. If it was towed, Then we’re looking for a tow truck or trailer. No one would notice either on the side of the road. I’d be surprised if it ran.

GEORGE
Why’s that?

SHANE
Look at the wheels. They’re flat.

George looked at the wheels. He hadn’t even noticed that they were flat and bald.

GEORGE
So, flat wheels, no registration, and no plates.

SHANE
It’s a beater that died years ago. It was abandoned. No one bothered to do anything about it until today. If she was killed, they looked for a way to get rid of her and figured to use the car, kill two birds with one stone. I’m sorry, sir. It’s...

GEORGE
I understand. It’s what we have to do to do the job. I want to know what your detective finds. If she was a junkie that OD’ed, show me the track marks. Let’s treat this like a homicide until proven wrong. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make some calls.

SHANE
Yes, sir.

I/E. CCPD CROWN VICTORIA - DAY
George walks back to his car and sits in the driver’s seat. After closing the door, he turns the lights off. He sits and cries for a long minute before grabbing his phone and making a call.

GEORGE
Ang, it’s me. Are you sitting down? I’ve got some bad news about Jen.

INT. ANGIE’S APARTMENT - DAY
Inside Angie’s studio apartment on the Main Shore, Angie steps out of the bathroom. She’s dressed in a tank top and sleep shorts. There’s a stick in her hands. She walks into the kitchen and reads a box while looking at a stick.

ANGIE (V.O.)
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I woke up nauseous, again. It was a few days in a row. I’m thinking maybe I have the flu or something. It didn’t strike me until I was talking my manager on Friday that it might not be the flu. Things were busy with the house and work and whatnot, so I lost track of what day it was. My period was a couple days late. Normally no biggie, I’m pretty regular, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve ever been a day late. Well, Saturday rolls around and I’m now 4 days late. Every morning I’m sick as a dog, throwing up or feeling like I want to throw up. After work, I picked up a pregnancy test from Walgreens. Chuck worked late on a job so we talked on the phone most of the night until going to bed. If my period started, end of discussion. If not, then it was time to pee on a stick. Instructions say to wait a minute. That was a very long minute.

Angie looks at the stick. A second line appears. She looks at the instructions. One line - Not Pregnant. Two Lines - Pregnant. She looks at the stick again. Back to the instructions. Back to the stick. Two lines. Back to the box. Pregnant. Back to the stick. Still two lines, it looks a little darker. Back to the box. Still pregnant.

She walks over to her couch and sits down. She’s in shock for a good minute before she breaks down, crying and laughing at the same time.

ANGIE (V.O.)
Nothing prepares you for the moment that you find out you’re pregnant. I sat there in shock for a while it all struck me. I’m about to be a mom. I’m growing a life inside me. I’m having Chuck’s baby. And then the floodgates opened. Everything hit me at once. Neither of us had good role models for parents, neither of knew what to do, we weren’t married. Hell, he hadn’t even proposed yet. Not that it means a lot, but at least then I’d know he’s in it for the long haul. I knew I shouldn’t be afraid that he’d bolt as soon as he found out, but I was bit of a mess right then. But he was coming over soon, we’d talk about it when got there.

Time passes. Angie had changed into a pair of dark blue jean shorts and a flowing, flowery top. She tried doing her makeup, but had to reapply it after having another emotional outburst.

ANGIE (V.O.)
One of the first things that goes through your mind when you find out you’re pregnant is how everything will change. Suddenly, we needed a new place. My trendy studio apartment wouldn’t work for a kid, and as much as I loved Chuck’s family, I didn’t want to raise my kid, our kid, in Veneto. We needed that house built right away. This went from a nice thing to have someday to “we need this built in 9 months.” We’d cleared the lot and set on the design, but now we were in crunchtime. But that assumes he doesn’t just run because he didn’t want a kid now. But what if he decides to stay only for the kid? God, I was such a mess that day.

There’s a knock on the door, followed by a key unlocking the deadbolt. It’s Chuck. He’s dressed in a pair of clean shoes, a light short-sleeved Tommy Bahama shirt, and sunglasses. He closes and locks the door behind him, and walks in.

CHUCK
Hey huneypie, what’s...

Chuck sees that she’s been crying. He kisses and hugs her.

CHUCK
What’s wrong.

ANGIE
It’s um, it’s, well, here. Sit.

He sits on the couch, she follows him down. She hands him the pregnancy test, looking more nervous than he’s ever seen her. He looks at the test. Then at her. She hands him the box, where he sees in big letters ‘PREGNANCY TEST’ on it, then reads the instructions on the back. It takes him a moment to put the pieces together.

CHUCK
(under his breath)
One line by itself, not pregnant. Two lines...

Chuck looks up at her. A big smile forms on his face in slow motion as the realization hits him.

CHUCK
HOLY SHIT!

Chuck hugs Angie. She hugs him back. They’re both crying now.

ANGIE
So, you like this? You’re not-

CHUCK
This is amazing! We talked about having kids one day, I guess one day is what, about 9 months from now? Holy shit, we got a lot to do in 9 months.

ANGIE
I’m, I’m just. I’ve been so worried all day. It’s that I don’t want to lose you and I was afraid-

CHUCK
That you’d scare me off? Not on a bet. We’re in this for good.

They hug again. She curls up onto his chest on the couch.

ANGIE
It’s just, I don’t know, it’s nothing.

CHUCK
No, tell me babe.

ANGIE
Well, it’s just, I started freaking out earlier because we’re, well, we’re gonna have a baby. And Mommy and Daddy don’t even live together yet, let alone are married. I know it’s not like a legal thing that we have to be married, but I started panicking thinking-

CHUCK
What’s to stop me from leaving for a pack of smokes? Aside from the fact that I quit smoking...

Chuck has a look on his face like he’s chewing something around in his mind.

ANGIE
What is it?

CHUCK
I’ve been sitting on something for a while. I almost said something a few weeks ago, but things went, well, you were there. Instead I figured I’d try to make a perfect moment. We’d go out for dinner, walk through the square, end up at the fountain, and I’d ask you something there, but since we’re talking about it now and, well...

ANGIE
Well? Well what?

Chuck slides Angie off of him and he stands up off of the couch. She stands up with him. He drops to one knee. Her eyes go wide. He stands up a little as he realizes he didn’t get the box out of his pocket before he went to the ground. Then, he’s back down on one knee. He looks up in her eyes and opens the box. It’s a ring box with a diamond ring in it.

CHUCK
Angela Marie Lewis, will you marry me?

She leans down and plants the biggest kiss on him she can manage. After a moment the break up the kiss.

CHUCK
Is that a yes?

ANGIE
(laughing and crying)
Yes. It’s a yes.

Chuck slips the ring on Angie’s finger. She squeals with delight. The two embrace on the couch.

CHUCK
So, what’s next?

ANGIE
I don’t know. It’s been enough for one day. How about we stay in and get Chinese? Or Pizza. What about...Shit!

CHUCK
What?

ANGIE
We can’t go to the bar anymore. At least not to drink.

CHUCK
Don’t worry, I can drink for the two...three of us. Damn, there’s so much to do. We need to finish the house by...March, April. Plans and money are finalized, now comes the hard part. As much as I love Granny, ain’t no way we’re raising our kids in Veneto. I want them to have a yard.

ANGIE
Only known about the first one for a few minutes and you’re already planning more?

CHUCK
Sure, that way they can play with each other. Then we’ll slowly go mad as they run circles around us.

They chuckle at the comment.

ANGIE
I love you.

CHUCK
I love you too.

Angie’s phone rings. She looks at the Caller ID. It’s George.

ANGIE
George. Should we tell him?

CHUCK
About which part?

ANGIE
All of it.

CHUCK
I guess.

Angie answers the phone and puts it on speaker. She can hear George crying over the phone.

GEORGE (O.S)
Ang, it’s me. Are you sitting down? I’ve got some bad news about Jen.

INT. VENETO BAPTIST CHURCH - DAY
A few days have passed. Inside of one of the smaller worship halls in Veneto Baptist Church, a Memorial Service is being held. A collage of pictures of Jen Tibault stands by an open casket. Jen lays in state.

Pastor Reggie gives a reading in front of the room. It’s a small crowd. Only 20 chairs were set up, and about half of them are filled. In the front row sat Stacy, Angie, Chuck, Bob, and Vinny. In the second row sat Paul, Gary, Granny, and Tyrell Jenkins. In the third row sat a few more friends of Jen’s from Veneto Baptist Church. In the last row sat George, Liz, Caleb, and Janella. The men are all wearing suits, except for the toddler Caleb. The women wear black dresses.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The coroner report came back with proof of foul play. I didn’t notice it at the time, but she had marks on her throat consistent with strangulation. Her stomach contents showed a handful of Vicodins but they hadn’t been absorbed into the system yet. She was strangled and force fed the pills to make it look like an OD. We traced the car back to a retiree who died a few years back. His kid didn’t want the car anymore so he donated it to First Union. Some smudged fingerprints showed that Jacob Daniels had touched the car. A couple strands of hair put him or his brother in it recently.

The Pastor goes around the room and gives his condolences to everyone, starting with Stacy.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Stacy came down for the funeral. It took a bit of doing, but we got her in and out of town without anyone noticing. I offered to help her pay for it, but she insisted on doing it on her own. Turns out they had quite a bit of cash saved up over the years. They weren’t sure how the future was going to turn out, so on one of Jen’s trips out of state, they went to Boston and got married. At that time it was the only place in the country gays could legally get married. They wanted to surprise everyone when this mess calmed down, throw a surprise wedding party.

George looks at the empty chairs.

GEORGE (V.O.)
I called Jen’s parents. Her mom was a piece of work who moved to Northern California. She said that she’d focus her shakras or some shit like that. Her dad and stepmom, fuck’em. They kicked her out of the house when she was 17 when they found out she was a lesbian. I called them to identify the body and the stepmom told me that they didn’t have a daughter. I called the father, and he was torn. He sounded like he wanted to make amends, but didn’t. I called them both back later and gave them the details for the funeral. Neither showed up.

George sees Angie and Chuck, crying. Chuck whispers something in her ear, and she hugs him.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Angie and Chuck came down to the morgue to officially identify the body. They didn’t even get a chance to tell me the good news they had. Finding out that you’re going to be an uncle in a morgue kind of sucks.

George looks around the 2236 Crew. They clean up nice. George pays extra close attention to Vinny.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The 2236 crew cared more about Jen than her own blood. Say what you will about them, they have loyalty and love for each other. I didn’t know Vinny too well, but he looked like he was having some rough times. He was about my height, black hair, real skinny by this point. Paul and Gary looked like they were ready to go to war. This was the first time I met Tyrell. He worked with a bunch of addicts trying to get better. As far as Granny goes, the bitch flipped me off. Not the first time I’ve been flipped off at a funeral.

Everyone gets up to give their final goodbyes. One by one, everyone approaches Jen and says their peace. Stacy goes last, staying behind with Jen’s body.

INT. VBC REC CENTER - DAY
The wake was in the attached Rec Center. Most of the guests are spread out at various tables. The 2236 crew sit around a table, quietly staring at their food and drinks. Bob, Vinny, Paul, Gary, Angie, an empty spot for Jen, Stacy’s plate, and Chuck circle the table. Eventually Stacy joins them for something to eat. The only two that don’t have a beer or drink in front of them were Vinny and Angie. Everyone did their best to console Stacy, but it wasn’t helping.

George walks over to the table.

GEORGE
I’m sorry for your loss. All of you. All of us cared for Jen. It’s...

George can’t finish his words. Stacy grabs his hand.

STACY
I know. She loved you like a brother.

Stacy turns to the table.

STACY
All of you. She loved everyone at this table. She didn’t say it enough, but she missed all of you every day we were away. Ang, you were the sister she never had. You guys, you were brothers that looked out for her and protected her. George, you were there to balance out these guys, help make sure she didn’t do anything too stupid. Bob, you made sure it was just stupid enough. Vinny, you always had her back when she bit off more than she could chew. Gary, Paul, her inseparable Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, there to help with a problem no questions asked. Chuck, you always knew how to make her laugh, even if you were the butt of the joke. It didn't matter if you ended up with egg on your face if it brought a smile to hers. You guys want to tell them what you told me?

Angie and Chuck look at each other, then back at Stacy.

CHUCK
Well, timing could’ve been better but a couple things happened. First, well, you wanna show them?

Angie holds her left hand up, showing off her engagement ring. Everyone around the table looks happy for a moment.

VINNY
Holy, shit, congrats bro.

CHUCK
Might want to save that for a moment. You got this, hun?

ANGIE
See how I’m drinking water? I could really use a beer right now, but I can’t have one for another nine months.

BOB
Wait, you’re...

ANGIE
Yes. We’re pregnant.

Paul and Gary get up and come over to give her a hug. Everyone around the table does so, except Bob. He nods, looking happy.

BOB
Congratulations. Boy, girl? I think Bobby Junior is a great name either way.

ANGIE
Thanks. We won’t know for a while. We were going to keep this quiet for a few months, but then, well.

STACY
We get it.

ANGIE
We won’t know if it’s a boy or a girl for several months. It takes until around Week 20 at the earliest to find that out and we’re, I’m not even sure.

GEORGE
Start from the first day of when your last period started.

ANGIE
That puts us about 6 weeks along. So at least another three, four months till we know.

CHUCK
But something we decided on already. If it is a girl, we’re naming her Jennifer.

Stacy starts crying again. Angie hugs her.

VINNY
If it’s a boy, what then?

CHUCK
I don’t know, Johnnifer?

VINNY
I hope it’s a girl, just so my nephew doesn’t go through life being called Johnnifer.

Time passes. Most of the room has emptied out and the mood has lightened. George walks over to the table once again. Liz and Caleb are ready to go. Bob sees George walk over. Before George can say anything, he interrupts him.

BOB
Hey Fucker.

GEORGE
Yes Asshole?

BOB
Mind taking the girls for a little walk? The boys and I need to talk about something. Chuck will catch up in a minute.

George nods.

GEORGE
The kind of talk where a cop being in the room is a bad idea.

BOB
Yeah.

GEORGE
Copy. C’mon, let’s go see what the little guy is up to.

George takes Stacy and Angie with him on a walk out of the rec room. The only five left at the table are Bob, Vinny, Gary, Paul, and Chuck. They all lean in.

CHUCK
What’s this shit about I’ll be catching up soon?

BOB
Dude, you got a wife and kid now. You gotta look after them. We’re going to war. Hell, we’re already in a war, we just didn’t know it yet.

VINNY
Dad was never around growing up. Not for any of us. You got a chance right now to change that. I mean, look at us. Bob ain’t seen his kid in years and his baby momma shot at him last time he came around. Gary, Paul, they ain’t having kids unless one of the bitches they tagged team got knocked up. Me, I’m a junkie. I can’t kick the shit no matter how hard I try. I’m a statistic waiting to happen. But you, you got your shit together, a good job, a woman that loves you, and a baby on the way. All of us. All of us are telling you to stay out of this.

CHUCK
Don’t cut me out.

The other four look at each other.

PAUL
Not completely. We’ll call you in for the endgame.

GARY
But the rest of them...

PAUL
Tell them we’re coming, and Hell’s coming with me.

GARY
Good one Wyatt.

PAUL
I always loved that movie.

BOB
But yeah, you gotta sit on the bench on this one.

Chuck looks around the table. All of his brothers are nodding.

CHUCK
Alright. I’m on the bench. But what’s the plan?

BOB
You do what you do. Run the business, build a home, be a husband and father. We’ll wait 72 hours to get our friend’s ashes back, then we turn their lives to ash. No quarter, no mercy.

Chuck gets up and gives everyone at the table a hug before walking out of the room to catch up to George and the women.

GEORGE (V.O.)
I’d like to say I know what they talked about, but that would be a lie. I’m pretty sure that by the body count that followed and the amount of property damage that ensued, the phrase “Let’s host a bake sale” was not uttered at that table.

INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George sips his glass of wine, then puts it down. He takes a deep, deep breath before he continues.

GEORGE
First Union Holy Church was looking at a world of hurt. By the time of Jen’s funeral, we’d already made 50 arrests in the case. That included all of Hillside PD and those we busted on the initial raids. As we identified more people out of the videos, we built more and more cases against the church members.

George takes another sip.

GEORGE
When they killed Jen, they thought they were sending a message. Instead, they woke the dragon. At least I play by rule of law. Bob and his crew had no such compunction. And, true to his word, 72 hours later all Hell broke loose.

-------------------------------------------------------------

To Be Continued. Shit gets real in the next episode...

Post by **LtBroccoli** » Wed Jul 29, 2026 3:07 am

Chapter Tags: Nosex, viol, tort
Content Warnings: Interesting ways to die...
-------------------------------------------------------------

The 2236 Crew throw a curveball and force George and the Feds to speed up their plans...
-------------------------------------------------------------

Episode 13 - RedJoker
INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George sips his glass of wine, then puts it down. He takes a deep, deep breath before he continues.

GEORGE
First Union Holy Church was looking at a world of hurt. By the time of Jen’s funeral, we’d already made 50 arrests in the case. That included all of Hillside PD and those we busted on the initial raids. As we identified more people out of the videos, we built more and more cases against the church members. We also had cases going against Hillsdale Financial and the Batey people.

George takes another sip.

GEORGE
When they killed Jen, they thought they were sending a message. Instead, they woke the dragon. At least I play by rule of law. Bob and his crew had no such compunction. And, true to his word, 72 hours later all Hell broke loose.

INT. INTERROGATION ROOM B - DAY
George and another man sit across a metal table from a middle-aged woman dressed in business attire and a slightly younger man dressed in a suit.

GEORGE (V.O.)
That day, I was in the box, flipping one of the loan officers from Hillsdale. She confessed to her part in the money laundering and fraud schemes. She claims that she had no idea what the church was doing, but admitted to filing some of the paperwork under duress. She provided us with emails and correspondence from the branch manager and Batey Automotive Group that these high risk auto loans were to be approved without question. She also gave us proof that the loans were paid by accounts owned by people close to the church leadership. She gave us those names and their account information, showing large deposits in their accounts from accounts owned by the church. She gave us everyone on the bank’s end of the process, we gave her a get out of jail free card. She’d have a hard time working in finance ever again, but at least she stayed out of prison. That’s when Janella knocked.

Janella knocks on the door and opens it.

JANELLA
George, with me, now.

Janella leaves the door open. George looks at the people at the table.

GEORGE
Excuse me.

George gets up and leaves the room.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
Janella, Captain Daniel Smith, and Adam from IT sit in the conference room in front of the murderboard. George enters, closing the door behind him.

GEORGE
What’s going on?

DANIEL
This.

Adam shifts to the side, allowing George to see the screen. It’s Michelle’s website. There’s a new posting called “Why We Fight”. George looks at the screen and reads the post.

GEORGE
This is why we fight. Her name is Stacy, and the following video...Oh fuck.

DANIEL
How the Hell did this end up there?

ADAM
I don’t know.

GEORGE
She’s one of us, and her story is like so many here... The post goes on, is this...

JANELLA
It’s the confession. Someone posted it on Michelle’s website. They also transcribed it, too. Every name she gave is now on the web. Everything she went through.

GEORGE
Dammit.

JANELLA
It gets worse. People are coming out on the forum, corroborating her story, talking about what they went through, and naming names, too. And addresses and phone numbers and emails.

George looks at Adam.

GEORGE
How the Hell did they get this?

ADAM
I don’t know. It’s on a secure server, no new traffic in or out. I’ve gone through the network logs a dozen times, nothing unusual.

GEORGE
What about Jen’s laptop?

ADAM
I checked that, nothing from it.

George looks at the computer and the website?

GEORGE
How long has it been up?

JANELLA
About an hour. While you were flipping the banker, this went live.

GEORGE
Any chance we can get Michelle to take it down, or give us the logs about who did this?

JANELLA
I tried. She’s on a flight to L.A.

GEORGE
Mother fucker.

ADAM
I’m downloading this video, I want to compare it to ours. There’s a chance it could be from someone else. Gimme a minute and I’ll tell you if it came from us.

GEORGE
How?

ADAM
Gimme a sec...

Adam navigates to the copy locally kept and compares it to the one he just downloaded. He opens both of them in QuickTime.

ADAM
Oh shit.

GEORGE
What oh shit?

ADAM
It’s not ours.

Everyone in the room looks at him. He turns from the computer to meet their gazes.

GEORGE
What do you mean it’s not ours?

ADAM
It’s not our copy. This didn’t come from us. It’s too long. Look.

Adam moves the mouse over to the timelines of both videos.

ADAM
Our copy is 15:29. This one is 15:35. It’s 6 seconds longer. Ours was created as an MP4. Theirs was a dot MOV file. Ours was encoded on a PC. Theirs was created on a Mac. Whoever uploaded this got that video from someone else or uploaded it.

JANELLA
Anything about the username?

ADAM
Nothing, just some random numbers. 28263360.

George writes the numbers down. He stares at the paper for a minute, moving numbers around, rewriting them.

GEORGE
28263360. Might be coincidence, but I can pull 2236 and 8630 out of it. I think it’s Bob’s crew.

JANELLA
I get the 2236, but 8630?

GEORGE
The last four of his license plate. YLX-8630. Pretty damn thin, but it’s not like there’s a lot of copies of this going around.

JANELLA
Why? Why upload this? He knows we’re working on a case.

ADAM
Guys, this thread is blowing up. People are identifying those she didn’t name but described, they’re coming forward if they were forced to work with her as kids...uh oh.

JANELLA
What now?

ADAM
“I live down the street from Larry. I know I’m not alone now. I’m gonna make him pay.” Guys, does that sound like a threat to you?

Janella opens the conference room door.

JANELLA
Get me a radio, ASAP!

She turns back to the others in the room.

JANELLA
Now we just need to figure out where.

GEORGE
Adam, how many Larry’s are on the list?

ADAM
One sec. I’ve got Larry Daniels, Larry Allensworth, Larry Snyder. Three Larry’s so far on this list. Four. Lawrence Carson.

GEORGE
Don’t suppose we have addresses on them.

DANIEL
We need those addresses, now.

One of the people in the bullpen brings her a radio. She hands it to Captain Smith.

DANIEL
This is Captain Smith, SCU. I need addresses for the following persons. Allensworth, Larry. Snyder, Larry. Daniels, Larry. Carson, Larry. We’re running on a tip that one of them is a target for a former victim of theirs. As soon as we get those addresses, I need patrols at those locations ASAP.

GEORGE
Chaos, fear. That’s why he did it. He’s sending a message.

DANIEL
What’s the message?

GEORGE
If it’s war you want, it’s war you got. This is how you fight an asymmetric war against a stronger opponent. Take away their strength, turn it into a weakness. They’re strength was hiding in plain sight, no one knowing their secret. Now, their victims know where they live.

Daniel’s radio beeps.

DISPATCHER (O.S)
Captain Smith?

DANIEL
Smith, go.

DISPATCHER (O.S)
Sir, we received a call for shots fired at 1324 Harborcrest Road in Ambrose, owner of the property is one Allensworth, Larry. Ambrose PD and County are en-route.

DANIEL
Thank you.

Daniel Smith puts the radio down.

GEORGE
This is going to get ugly quick. We need to move on what we got, put people behind bars, and make this work. Our timetable just moved up a few weeks.

DANIEL
Agreed. Jenkins, get a hold of Steven, we need to see where things stand with the indictments. Lewis, go check out that shooting, tell me what you find. IT, I need everything you can get. They’re posting addresses and other vital info, let’s use that. I’ll see how big of a mess we’re looking at.

JANELLA
Copy that.

GEORGE
On it.

Janella and George each leave the conference room in a hurry. Adam gets to work scouring the page for as much info as he can get.

EXT. 1324 HARBORCREST ROAD - DAY
George pulls up in front of a light blue Cape Cod house. Two police cars from Ambrose PD and an ambulance are already on the scene. George gets out of the car and walks to the open front door. He flashes his badge at the door to one of the cops by the door and they let him in.

INT. 1324 HARBORCREST ROAD - DAY
The living room looks well decorated with nice furniture but very few pictures of family. The walls are a light blue that matches the outside. Two EMT’s stand over the body of an older man, probably in his 50’s or 60’s, with a couple bullet holes in his chest. Two police officers stand around, investigating the scene. George recognizes one of them.

GEORGE
Officer Good.

Jon Good turns around. He looks at him a little confused.

JON
The County Mountie?

GEORGE
Yeah. George Lewis, CCPD. Whatchya got?

Jon waves at the floor.

JON
A dead old man, a 17-year-old girl in cuffs in the back of a cruiser, and a big headache. You?

GEORGE
The cause of and solution to your headache, probably. What do you have on that kid?

JON
She’s a straight shooter. Bad pun, she’s a good kid, never caused any problems, then all of a sudden we get a call about shots here. The kid was seen running down the street right after. Easy to arrest her, but she’s not the type to do this.

George looks over at the old man.

GEORGE
What can you tell me about him?

JON
Lawrence Allensworth, 58, divorced recently. He moved here a year or two ago. Stayed to himself for the most part. No one ever visited him, only went to work and church, occasionally the bar but that was it.

GEORGE
Did anyone say what church he went to?

Jon looks at George, then back at the body.

JON
FUCK! You fucking kidding me, he’s wrapped up in this shit?!

George nods.

GEORGE
Yep. Larry Allensworth, he was a person of interest in the First Union investigation. His name came up in a videotaped confession from one of his victims. We had enough to move on him before Labor Day, just waiting for official word from the DA’s office. Then someone posted a copy of the confession on a website for sex abuse survivors. About an hour later, someone figures out his address. One of his victims said they live right down the street from him. A few minutes later, he’s got a visitor knocking on his door looking for revenge. All this happened within the last couple hours.

JON
Fuck. Only saving grace for that kid is she’s still a minor. One good thing, she just saved the county money putting him up for the rest of his life.

GEORGE
It gets worse. There’s a fuckload of names on that tape. Most of them live around here.

JON
How many?

GEORGE
Between 20 and 30 on the tape, but the other victims listed their abusers as well. Probably close to 50.

JON
Shit. It’ll be a fucking slaughterhouse.

Jon’s radio crackles to life.

DISPATCHER (O.S.)
All units be advised, possible 187 at 926 Chesterfield. Victim identified as Chaplin, first name Christopher.

George shakes his head. Jon grabs his mic.

JON
Dispatch, acknowledged. Ambrose PD, we’re kind of busy here, call County. This sounds like their mess spilling over.

Jon turns off the radio and looks at George.

JON
Lemme guess, he’s on your list.

GEORGE
Yep. Chris Chaplin. One of the names on the list.

Jon activates the mic again.

JON
Dispatch, this is Ambrose PD. I’m onsite at 1324 Harborcrest with County detective. Be advised, someone leaked a list of alleged sexual abusers onto a website for abuse victims. It’s big. County’s pulling together the list but there’s a lot of names.

DISPATCHER (O.S)
Acknowledged Ambrose. How bad?

JON
Dispatch, Ambrose. Between 30 and 50 names, most of them live around Ambrose and Hillside.

DISPATCHER (O.S)
Holy... Ambrose, be advised, we’re routing Harbor City, County, and any other spare units to help.

JON
Copy that, Dispatch. Ambrose out.

Jon turns off the radio, then turns to George.

JON
Looks like you County boys are gonna have a rough weekend. Might’ve been a little easier if you hadn’t busted all of Hillside PD before telling every victim in the city where their rapists lived.

GEORGE
Yeah, I know. I’m on my way to that other call. We’ll...think of something.

George makes his way to the door.

JON
That something better come real fucking quick!

George leaves the house.

I/E. CCPD CROWN VICTORIA - DAY INTO NIGHT
George drives around the city, going from house to house investigating murders.

GEORGE (V.O.)
It was a fucking bloodbath. That weekend, I responded to 6 murders, 4 more shootings, a stabbing, and two accidental deaths at a nursing home. We had to put patrols out to watch all of the addresses listed.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY INTO NIGHT
Adam sits at the computer, pulling information from the website and talking on a cell phone.

GEORGE (V.O.)
It took us until late evening to get a hold of Dr. Bartlett. Adam and her worked on locking the posts on the forum and pulling the personal information, but by then it was too late. The info was already out in the wild.

EXT. HOUSE IN HILLSIDE – NIGHT
Janella Jenkins sits across the street from a house of one of the alleged rapists. A nervous young woman walks down the street wearing a hoodie on a hot August night. Janella gets out of the car and approaches her.

GEORGE (V.O.)
6 murders in a place the size of Harbor City is crazy. When they’re all focused in a suburban area with maybe 60,000 people, it’s positively insane. This doesn’t count the ones we stopped, too. Janella told me about a young woman who found out one of her rapists lived a few blocks away from her. She just happened to be outside when the girl came up. Couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20, had her dad’s pistol in her hoodie pouch. She talked the young woman down, but others weren’t as lucky. One kid ran into the wrong cop, things escalated, and the kid was shot. Young man, 23, never did a thing wrong in his life except try to get a little revenge when it looked like the cops didn’t give a shit.

INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George looks down at the table, having another couple sips of his wine.

GEORGE
By the time the weekend was over, the list contained 68 names. 68 accused abusers from First Union Holy Church. By Monday morning, 16 had been “accounted for.” 8 were killed that weekend, a few more died of old age or accidents in the intervening years, and a few more were old and sick, like nursing home Alzheimer’s or cancer sick. The forum decided that the best thing would be to let them live and suffer. That left 52 names. 52 alleged accusers. Most of them were already targets of our investigation.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
Adam sits in front of the computer, looking at some supposedly private traffic on the website. A conversation entitled “Rules to Poker” grabs his attention. He checks it out. In the main post is a spreadsheet with the names and addresses, as well as a column that assigns a card and suit.

GEORGE (V.O.)
This was in 2005, right around the Iraq War. Someone had the bright idea of copying the whole Deck of Cards thing and assigning each of the remaining names a card. Charlie Daniels was King of Diamonds, wife Samantha was Queen of Diamonds, Natalie was Queen of Hearts. The Daniels’ family was mostly in the red suits while the others were in the black suits. That way, if something happened to a perp, they could say “3 of Clubs is out of play.”

EXT. HIGHWAY - DAY
On a highway outside of Topeka, Kansas, a silver Lexus sits aflame. A passing Kansas State Patrolman approaches the car and pulls over. A moment later, he’s putting the car fire out with a fire extinguisher. It’s only after the fire is out that he notices the driver was still inside the car.

GEORGE (V.O.)
By the way, 3 of Clubs was Bradley Ware. His car was found on fire outside of Topeka. He was, well, people rave about Kansas Barbecue. He was found taped to the steering wheel of his car, trapped inside as it was set on fire. He fled before the indictments came down, trying to get as far away as possible. He wasn’t he only one.

EXT. HARBOR CITY AIRPORT - DAY
Outside of a busy airport, a taxi pulls up to the unloading area. Richard Batey jumps out, carrying a small suitcase with him. He enters the airport.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Another big problem with this whole mess was that it tipped our hands. All of a sudden, we’re doing patrols in these quiet neighborhoods. Neighbors notice 5-0 rolling down the block, and when they ask questions, they either get an answer or they gossip. We couldn’t tell them why we’re there, so they start speculating. Doesn’t take a nosy neighbor long to suspect that the sweet old man down the street who goes to First Union must be one of those sickos they saw on the news. So what do those sickos do?

INT. HARBOR CITY AIRPORT - DAY
Richard Batey is at the ticket desk for one of the airlines, purchasing a ticket out of Harbor City.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Those that could left. Anyone reading the tea leaves would see that we were coming down with indictments soon, and it being open season on scumbags meant we had to fast forward things. Fortunately, we weren’t the only ones thinking like this.

INT. AIRPORT SECURITY - DAY
Richard Batey attempts to make his way through TSA. He’s stopped by an agent, and escorted away. He tries to break free, but is tackled by a couple TSA agents. He’s led away in cuffs.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Guys like Richard Batey, they tried to run. He made it to the TSA checkpoint. He booked a flight to Paris via JFK in New York, but the FBI had a warrant for his arrest, too. He didn’t get far. He fared much better than his finance manager.

INT. DOWNTOWN APARTMENT - DAY
Officers Pascal and Smith of the Harbor City Police Department knock on a door in a swanky apartment building downtown. They’re accompanied by the building supervisor.

SMITH
William Potenza, open up. Harbor City Police, open up. We have a warrant for your arrest.

Smith knocks again. Pascal moves forward, hand on his pistol.

PASCAL
Mr. Potenza, last warning. If you don’t respond right away, we’re coming in.

Nothing. They motion the super over, who unlocks the door. Pascal and Smith enter, guns drawn. Just as they enter, they’re overwhelmed by the stench of death and decomposition. Pascal checks the rooms, one by one, until he gets to the Master Bedroom. He screams, then runs back out of room. He makes it to the hallway before he vomits on the floor. Smith walks back to check what was so bad.

SMITH (O.S)
OH MY GOD! DON’T COME IN!

Time passes. George and Janella arrive on the scene. A half dozen police officers from Harbor City PD and their CSI crew are on the scene. Officers Pascal and Smith are in the living room. The detectives walk up to them.

GEORGE
Hello again, officers. What do we got?

Pascal looks like he’s seen a ghost. Smith isn’t that much better. The Building Supervisor sits on a chair in the living room.

SMITH
Detectives. It’s just... We were executing an arrest warrant for William Potenza.

GEORGE
Yes, he’s the finance manager at Batey Lexus. I’m guessing things didn’t go according to plan?

SMITH
It’s just... Sir, this is one of the most disgusting crime scenes I’ve ever seen. It’s bad enough it made Pascal throw chunks in the hallway. The super walked in for a moment and he’s freaking out. I don’t want to describe it. It’s bad.

GEORGE
Thank you. We’ll check it out. Walk us through what happened, word for word.

SMITH
We knocked on the door, identified ourselves. Super opened the door, and that’s when we smelled it. He had to have been dead for a couple days. Pascal checked the rooms, then he saw the body. What’s left of it, anyway. He ran out to the hallway and threw up.

PASCAL
Sorry sir. I did my best to get to the hallway.

GEORGE
That’s okay. I think everyone in this room has had a crime scene that made them hurl.

PASCAL
Really?

GEORGE
Yeah. One of my first murders made me lose my lunch. You don’t forget the first time you see a disembowlment.

PASCAL
Oh, shit. I don’t wanna remember this. Why is it when you’re nearby there’s nightmare fuel?

GEORGE
Just lucky, I guess. Back to the crime scene.

SMITH
Well, I went to check, and I saw the victim. He’s as he was found. As well as the rest of the bedroom. Well, mostly.

GEORGE
What do you mean mostly?

SMITH
Sir, there was a video playing that we turned off. The body is one thing, this...

GEORGE
I understand.

SMITH
Sir, it’s bad. Brace yourselves.

GEORGE
Thanks Officer.

George and Janella walk through the apartment, paying attention to everything. Most of the place is in good condition, until the bathroom and bedroom. Two CSI’s work in the bathroom while everyone else is in the bedroom. George and Janella stop at the doorway. After a moment, they get closer. A detective form HCPD turns to them.

Tied to a queen-sized bed is an overweight man, probably in his late 40’s to early 50’s. The bed underneath him is soaked with blood. The man has cuts all over his body. Some are shallow, some are deep. Pieces of skin are missing from his arms and legs. His ears are sliced into ribbons but still attached. More flaps of skin are cut from his abdomen. His genitalia...

GEORGE
Hey, where’s this guy’s dick?

The HCPD detective KYLE ANDREWS turns to George.

KYLE
His penis is in his ass. His testicles are in his mouth. Who are you?

GEORGE
George Lewis, CCPD. She’s my partner, Janella Jenkins.

KYLE
Kyle Andrews, HCPD Homicide.

JANELLA
We’re with the Sex Crimes Unit. Is this William Potenza?

KYLE
What’s left of him. Sex Crimes? Explains the video from earlier.

Kyle points to the TV. For the first time George and Janella see the HDTV on the bedroom dresser. It’s paused on a shot of a video of a much more alive William Potenza in a professionally shot porn video. He’s on screen, approaching a pair of kids, a boy and girl much younger than him.

JANELLA
Don’t recall seeing that one.

GEORGE
Guess we’re still going through the catalog. All we had him for was money laundering, financial fraud, and conspiracy charges. At least until his name showed up on the list.

KYLE
What list?

GEORGE
Long story. You know how all hell broke loose in Hillside and Ambrose last weekend? A bunch of these monsters were outed on a website for their victims and some of the victims went all Boondock Saints on their asses.

JANELLA
We tried to bring him in before someone got to him.

KYLE
A bit late for that.

George looks at the body again. The rope is normal clothesline. The cuts were all surface level, except for two larger stab wounds in the gut. Little barbed holes are on his chest. Tape residue is on his face, mixed in with the dried blood. On his hands, there are cut marks on Potenza’s palms. The fingers are all cut off at the top knuckle. Those cuts look different than the rest of the cuts. No extra blood.

KYLE
Our best guess is that he’s been dead for about 48 hours. Whoever did this really didn’t like him. Someone was sending a message. At first we thought it was also a robbery, but only half of the room was tossed.

JANELLA
They found what they were looking for?

KYLE
Yeah, and my guess is it’s that video. It’s been on a constant loop with the volume turned down until we got here to pause it. There was a stack of DVD’s. We haven’t gone through them yet but all of them have the same kind of generic names like this one. “Wilderness Safari ‘03”, “Christmas Vacation ‘02”, and “Graduation Party ‘99”. Shit like that. They were in a false bottom of his dresser drawer.

George puts on gloves then looks at the cuts on the hands again.

GEORGE
Anyone check the hands yet?

KYLE
Cut marks on the palms. He struggled after the blood dried and it stuck to the cords. CSI took some pics and samples earlier.

George pries the right hand open. He can see something cut into the palm. It looks like a 6. On the left hand, a much more precise drawing of a Club, like from a deck of cards.

GEORGE
6 of Clubs.

KYLE
What’s that mean?

JANELLA
I think that was his card.

GEORGE
Some members of that website were getting yelled at for using the assailant’s real names. Instead, they assigned everyone a playing card. His was the 6 of Clubs. Someone with access to the website did this.

George looks at Potenza’s nose and face. His nose was sliced multiple times, designed to elicit pain. George stands up and looks around the room.

GEORGE
What happened with the bathroom?

KYLE
Looks like killer used that to clean up.

GEORGE
Killers. Two of them, male, around my height. This is too precise and too much work for one person.

George looks around the room one more time. He blinks.

INT. THE ZONE - DAY INTO NIGHT
George is in the apartment. The crime scene is the same as before, but everyone is gone. The video plays on the TV. It’s blurred out, he doesn’t need to see this. George makes a couple motions and everything rewinds to right before Potenza died. He pauses. There’s a lot of blood, but not much on the floor. George pushes down on the bed and hears a crinkle. Looking under the mattress, he finds a tarp. A blue one, like the kind sold in every hardware store. George steps back from the bed and looks at the carpet. No distinct shoeprints or footprints. All of them are generic. George looks at them. Two left footprints of different widths.

GEORGE (O.S)
We had two killers. About the same height but within a couple inches of each other. They prepped the bed for this. That’s why this mountain of blood didn’t seep into the room below. They were here, waiting.

George rewinds the action, moving through the walls to when William Potenza came home for the last time.

GEORGE (O.S)
They waited for him, likely disguised as some tradesmen. This is a nice building with decent security, so two shmoes would get noticed, but no one would ask about HVAC or Plumbing guys needing access. It’s also how they got their gear in.

William Potenza opens the door. He walks in and closes it behind him. Before he can say anything, a faceless man in front of him shoots him with a tazer. Potenza falls.

GEORGE (O.S)
He was shot with a tazer, then dragged back to his bedroom. He was tied and beaten there. At this point Potenza’s thinking this might just be a robbery. That’s when things take a turn.

One man puts on the video while the other cuts off his clothes. They put them in a pile. George looks at the two faceless men. They’re wearing gloves and foot coverings. The dresser drawer is opened and the false bottom is removed. The videos are on the dresser next to the video player.

GEORGE (O.S)
When they played the video for Potenza, that’s when he knew he was in for a nightmare. One man stripped him, removed Potenza’s clothes. A couple scratches here and there, nothing too big yet. They saved the pain for later.

George sees that Potenza’s mouth is taped with duct tape. Once he’s naked, he’s forced to watch the video on the screen. He gets hard watching the action. One of the assailants wraps something around the base of his cock, ensuring he stays hard for the operation. The second faceless man grabs a knife cuts off Potenza’s penis, slowly.

GEORGE (O.S)
They needed Potenza hard for where they put his dick. I’m not sure how much of this was planned out first, but cutting off a man’s dick and shoving it up his own ass sounds like premeditation.

Potenza screams into the tape. It’s removed and the first faceless man holds Potenza’s nose closed. The second faceless man takes the testicles and puts them in his mouth before retaping it shut.

GEORGE (O.S)
They used his balls as a makeshift gag. He could either choke on his balls or chew them. That’s when they started having fun.

The two faceless men take their time torturing Potenza. They slice him, dice him, flay him, skin parts of him alive. They use multiple tools. Knives of various sizes, exacto blades, drills, hammers, all of it.

GEORGE (O.S)
They went to town on him, almost like they were using him for practice to see how long he could stay alive. At some point they knew their fun would run out. They carved the 6 and Club on his palms before the end.

George looks at the two larger wounds in Potenza’s gut. They’re round, not straight like a knife.

GEORGE (O.S)
Out of all the knife cuts they made, the killing blows were made with a drill, likely a power drill. Looks like a half-inch bit, did a lot of damage going in and out. They did this to make him suffer.

George watches as Potenza slowly dies. After, one of the faceless men cut off the finger and thumb tips off of both of Potenza’s hands. The fingers curl back up around the rope.

GEORGE (O.S)
They cut off his finger tips after he died. That explains the blood loss difference with those cuts. Heart stopped pumping before they were removed.

George sits back and watches the faceless men clean up after themselves and leave.

George blinks.

INT. DOWNTOWN APARTMENT - DAY
George looks around the apartment. He moved around a little bit while he was in the Zone. He looks at Janella and Kyle.

GEORGE
Sorry, did anyone find any clothes for any of these three men?

KYLE
No. No weapons, no clothes, no prints, nothing. And we’re having a hard time with the bathroom and body, they sprayed the place with cleaner before they left.

JANELLA
So we’re looking for two men that entered the building dressed as handymen of some kind, carrying a toolbox and other stuff, and left the same?

GEORGE
Probably. My guess is they had a second set of clothes they changed into, packed everything up, and brought it with them. No one would look twice at the repair guys or wonder why they’re messy.

KYLE
And the fingertips? If they cut them off and took them, how do they get rid of them? It’s not like they can just throw them away.

GEORGE
They probably already did. This killing was planned out at Home Depot or Lowes or Ace. They brought contracting bags with them, probably threw all of this away in a black bag, then chucked that bag in a dumpster for a restaurant. No one’s looking twice in a restaurant’s dumpster. Maybe a butcher or grocery store, some place that cuts meat. And they have a two day head start.

KYLE
Which means William Potenza’s fingertips and the DNA of the killers is in a landfill somewhere.

George and Janella keep looking around the apartment.

GEORGE (V.O.)
We never found those tips. Video surveillance just showed two men, one of slightly above average height, the other slightly below. They both covered their faces the whole way through the building, avoided the cameras, and picked the lock to get in.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
Adam sits in front of the computer. He sees a new post on the forum. “6 of Clubs is out of play.” The username was RedJoker. Adam calls George and Janella.

GEORGE (V.O.)
We didn’t tell anyone about Potenza, so we had a good feeling that RedJoker, the username that posted about Potenza, was either one of the killers or close to the case. We asked Michelle for what she could tell us about that user, but she didn’t have anything. They were registered to a spam email address that was randomly generated by Hotmail, and they gave no other information. IP address said they were going through Turkey, so we assumed a VPN was in use. What we’d find out later on was who RedJoker was.

CARLY (V.O.)
Who was it?

GEORGE (V.O.)
I’m getting to that. But first, I need to tell you about the craziest thing I saw that week. I think Potenza was on a Wednesday or Thursday. I thought there’s no way anything will top this. I only had to wait 2 days.

EXT. FIRST UNION HOLY CHURCH - DAY
A box van pulls up in front of the church. Two men exit the van dressed as movers. They unload a stand-up piano in front of the church. The piano is tightly wrapped in plastic and packing material. After leaving the piano at the front door, they climb back into the truck and leave. A little while later, a secretary comes out and grabs the paperwork attached to the piano. That’s when she notices something leaking underneath it. It smells like blood. She panics, backs up, and runs back inside.

Time passes. Several city and county police officers arrive on the scene. The Bomb Squad inspects the piano. It’s not a bomb. Eventually someone cuts open the plastic wrap and packaging material. An officer opens the lid. They wave over George and Janella. The detectives see the inside of the piano.

Two dismembered bodies are crammed into the space. It’s a man and a woman, both in their 50’s to 60’s. The heads are on top. The man’s head has a 4 of Diamonds playing card nailed into the forehead, while the woman has a 3 of Diamonds nailed into hers.

JANELLA
Think the piano will still play?

GEORGE
No way it stays in tune now.

The police officer who first saw the scene is off the side dry heaving while the detectives crack jokes.

JANELLA
3 and 4 of Diamonds.

GEORGE
Looks like we found the Garvers.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Patrick and Erica Garver. They were the music coordinators for First Union. We had a warrant for their arrest but they disappeared shortly before it was served. She was the organist and he would direct the bands. We had several videos of them using the kids as their own sexual instruments. They were eventually pieced together. They were beaten and tortured and cut apart while still alive. We suspected a chainsaw.

XAVIER (V.O.)
(shouting)
Holy shit. I heard about this, but thought it was some urban tale, like about the guy being found in a vending machine.

GEORGE (V.O.)
That didn’t happen for a few months. But back to the Garver’s. There was no trace on the truck but the piano was different. We found a Craigslist ad for the piano. Spoke to the old owner. He sold it for cash, said three men took it away a couple days ago. The descriptions he gave matched Vinny, Paul, and Gary.

INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George sips his wine. He looks over at Chuck. Everyone at the table follows his gaze.

CHUCK
I was out of the loop. Gary and Paul showed up to work the day after the funeral. They said they had to take some time off. That was their last day. Next thing I know, George calls me, asking if I know where any of them are. I say no, because I didn’t know. They went off the grid. They became ghosts. They stole the box van from a contractor that ripped us off and owed us a few grand. The plates came off a totaled vehicle in a local mechanic’s shop they worked at from time to time.

DEREK
Man, that’s...

CHUCK
Something to understand, these men are crazy but loyal. They loved Jen like their own sister. They loved Stacy like their own sister. They knew what the church did, and decided to take matters into their own hands. Did they enjoy it? Yeah, they made a game of murder. How crazy could they get? What could they do to send a message?

DEREK
That doesn’t justify hacking up an old married couple and stuffing them in a piano.

GEORGE
With the shit they did, I’d say it was pretty damn close. Plus, once word got out that those that run or tried to run died gruesome deaths, they surrendered quickly. By the end of August, we made 25 more arrests. That doesn’t include City Councilman Danvers.

INT. HARBOR CITY COUNCIL BUILDING - DAY
ADA Steven Jones and AUSA Lisa Sanders arrive at the offices of Councilman Francis Danvers. He is a well-dressed, obese man. They barge in, uninvited. A secretary tries to stop them. Councilman Danvers sits behind a desk, his lawyers sit opposite him.

FRANCIS
Excuse me, this is a private meeting.

STEVEN
This will take just a moment, Councilman Danvers.

Lisa points to the men opposite Danvers.

LISA
Are they your legal counsel?

FRANCIS
Yes, but I said-

LISA
Don’t interrupt me, sir. If they’re you’re legal counsel, then they need to hear this and see this too. Which one of you is the lead attorney?

The one on the far right of the row raises his hand. Lisa hands him a letter and gives the other to Francis. Steven does the same.

FRANCIS
What is the meaning of this?

LISA
I’m here to inform you that you’ve been indicted by the People of the United States of America.

STEVEN
And I’m here to tell you the same thing, but for Chester County. This is in regards to your dealings with First Union Holy Church.

LISA
You have until 10AM to peacefully surrender to either local authorities or to the FBI.

STEVEN
You’re facing charges across the board in local and federal jurisdictions. Your lawyers should inform us which one you’ll surrender to. If you do not turn yourself in by that time, you will be considered a fugitive in the eyes of the law. You are being given this courtesy to avoid more public embarrassment.

The lawyer opens the letter and reads it. His eyes go wide and he freezes. The other lawyers grab the letter and read it.

LISA
By the way, we have video evidence of him performing in those acts laid out in the letter. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Have a good day, gentlemen.

STEVEN
Councilman.

Steven and Lisa leave the room. They both have the biggest shit-eating grins as they leave the office. As they get to the hallway, Steven puts his arm around Lisa’s shoulder. She wraps hers around his waist.

INT. DANVERS RESIDENCE - NIGHT
In Councilman Danvers’s kitchen, the obese man sits at a bar-height counter. In front of him sits a bottle of Macallan 30-year-old scotch, a key lime pie, and his insulin medication. He cuts himself a slice of pie, pours a glass of scotch, and loads up his insulin. After several gulps, he eats some of the pie then gives himself a lethal dose of insulin. He keeps eating and drinking until he eventually collapses and dies.

GEORGE (V.O.)
According to his wife, Francis Danvers had a heart attack induced from the stress of the upcoming legal troubles. The family insisted on no autopsies. They found a bottle of Macallan 30-year-old scotch, a half-eaten key lime pie, and a used insulin needle. That fat fuck wasted a perfectly good bottle of 30-year-old scotch.

CARLY (V.O.)
Sounds like that’s the only thing he liked that was 30 years old.

EXT. HILLSIDE PD - DAY
Outside of the Hillside Police Department, four men and women are escorted outside by County police officers. George and Janella are running the operation. A news crew films the action.

GEORGE (V.O.)
As the end of August approached, we ramped up the arrests. Not only were some of these people flight risks, but rumors were going around about what happened to those who ran. It sure didn’t help when pics of the Potenza and Garver crime scenes leaked. Our next move lined up to the Hillside Borough Council Meeting. Chief of Police Anthony Palumbo, who was already out on bail, was scheduled to speak. A little birdie told us that after the meeting, several members of the council planned on doing a fact-finding mission out of state. Those members had indictments for dozens of crimes ranging from accepting bribes up to child rape. We intercepted them in the parking lot. I gotta say, putting the fear of God into a grown man who was the former police chief to the point where he pisses himself on the news is one my career highlights.

EXT. HILLSDALE FINANCIAL - DAY
Outside of the Hillsdale Financial office, over a dozen police officers and FBI agents raid the building. Several people are taken into custody. George and Janella are on the scene, along with Special Agent Erin Kingston.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Next day we went after the bank. We nailed everyone but the top fish of the bank, Peter MacBride. He was the Chairman of the Board for the bank. He was out of the country on vacation when we paid the bank a visit, and our friends at the FBI waited for him at the airport. He never came home. And he had enough Fuck You Money to stay offshore for the rest of his days.

INT. CHESTER COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT BULLPEN - DAY
George sits at his desk when a package is delivered. It has a return address of Caracas. It’s the size of a cooler. George opens the box. Inside is a cooler. There’s a typed note on top of the interior package.

GEORGE
Ace of Spades is out of play.

George puts the note down and opens the package. He jumps back in shock.

GEORGE
Fuck, man.

He looks in the cooler. Packed in dry ice is Peter MacBride’s head and hands.

GEORGE (V.O.)
About 3 months later he was found in Caracas. I don’t know how, but Gary and Paul found him. The story that was told on the website was that they found him living the dream down in Venezuela. On his morning walk, they grabbed him and made it look like a random kidnapping. After getting the wife to wire them some money, they sent the rest of him back to her. They kept the head and hands and sent those to me for positive identification.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
George, Janella, Adam, and Captain Smith work in the conference room. Several playing cards are attached to the murderboard, indicating who is who. Adam sits at the computer, checking the website.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Speaking of the website, interesting thing happened right after the Hillsdale Financial raid. Adam made a new account, BlackJoker. He figured if RedJoker was killing people, then someone should let the victims know who we tagged. The logic made sense. RedJoker spilled blood all over the place. BlackJoker followed the black and white letter of the law. None of us were really thrilled that he did this without asking first, but he does what he does. Pretty soon he posted which cards were out of play. The head honchos at Hillside Borough were the Ace through Jack of Clubs. Danvers, he was the King of Spades. MacBride was Ace of Spades, and so on. By the end of August, half the deck was out of play.

George looks at the section of the murderboard focusing on the Daniels Family.

GEORGE (V.O.)
We still had a big problem. Most of the Daniels Family was out of state. They vanished to Colorado when we raided their, well, everything, but we knew they had to come back. Their TV show was on reruns, and they needed to film new episodes or be in breach of their contract. I think CBN wanted them to breach just to be rid of them, but there was too much money riding on this for them. And considering their legal bills, they needed the money. And the Feds froze their accounts until they came back. Don’t fuck with the Feds.
-------------------------------------------------------------

To Be Continued...

Post by **LtBroccoli** » Thu Jul 30, 2026 3:17 am

Chapter Tags: Nosex, viol
Content Warnings: Old boys clubs, bribery, lotsa murder
-------------------------------------------------------------

First Union makes some desperate moves while Lisa uncovers a conspiracy and 2236 lay a trap...
-------------------------------------------------------------

Episode 14 - RICO
INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George grabs a rocks glass and pours a little bit of scotch. He looks around to see who else wants some. Angie motions for some, as do Xavier, Serena and Derek. Carly abstains from the scotch at first, but gives in and has a little.

GEORGE
These next couple parts, I’m switching to the hard stuff. We’re getting close to endgame. By this point, all of us combined arrested like 75 to 100 people in this case, but we still didn’t have the Daniels family. The only one we popped was Jonas, and he was released on bail after the church raid. By this point, they tried to kill us, disparage us, and harass us. They intimidated witnesses, they killed Jen, they spread so much bullshit that they convinced many of their flock that they were the victims. On top of that, we discovered that they had a judge or two on the payroll. They were most afraid of the FBI, but knew they couldn’t move against both them and us. That’s when Lisa struck a deal with their lawyers. The FBI would not interfere with them coming back to the state, would release their funds as long as they surrendered their passports upon return. The FBI also told them that we would not make a move against them without coordinating with them. We agreed, as long as they didn’t try to screw with us. Unfortunately for them, I have a very wide definition of what screwing with me means.

George takes a drink of scotch.

INT. ANGIE'S APARTMENT HALLWAY - DAY
Chuck walks to Angie’s apartment when he sees the door slightly ajar. He leans up to the door and hears voices he doesn’t recognize. He reaches under his baggy shirt and puts his hand on his pistol. He opens the door and sees Angie, sitting in a chair facing her couch, crying. An older couple in their 50’s to 60’s sit on her couch. It’s RAYMOND and SHELLY LEWIS. Angie’s parents.

ANGIE (V.O.)
We got this part. While George was breaking doors and faces, Chuck and I were busy. We had a world of things to do, just too damn busy. The last thing I expected, needed, or wanted was a visit from Mom and Dad. By the way, their first visit in over 5 years. It didn’t take them long to get to back to their normal shitty selves.

Chuck walks around the room quietly.

SHELLY
Angela, we’re worried about you. You don’t talk to us for years, then drop this bombshell on us that you’re pregnant?

RAYMOND
I don’t know why you just won’t admit you were wrong. It’s always been one mistake after another with you, and here you are, unmarried, pregnant, just like the whore you are, huh? Do you even know who the father is?

ANGIE
(crying)
Just shut up, okay Raymond.

RAYMOND
That’s Dad to you.

ANGIE
(crying)
No, it’s not. You haven’t been a father once in your life. You’re always yelling, treating us like shit, and if I don’t fall in line, I’m the asshole, huh? Always the bad girl because it’s your house, your rules, huh?

RAYMOND
If you’d listen-

ANGIE
(crying)
Shut up! You’re not welcome here. 5 goddamned years. 5 years, I haven’t had parents, and you just show up today. I thought, maybe, just maybe, you might’ve changed. Nope. Not at all. You’re back to the old tricks as usual.

RAYMOND
So it’s MY fault you ran away?

ANGIE
(crying)
You mean when you kicked me out of the house? Yeah. It was your fault. I’ve gone the last 5 years without hearing from you at all. Not even a call on my birthday. I’ve lost count of how many times I called you over the years, just to have you push me away.

Chuck stands in the background, staying very still. Raymond and Shelly don’t know he’s here yet. He’s pissed, but stays quiet.

RAYMOND
You deserved it. You refused to listen to us. You’d run off with those dyke whores-

CHUCK
ENOUGH!

Raymond and Shelly turn. They see Chuck, standing at his full height of close to 6 and a half feet tall.

SHELLY
Oh, hello. We’re-

CHUCK
You’re leaving, now.

RAYMOND
Now you watch your tone-

Chuck laughs. This pisses off Raymond even more.

CHUCK
Watch my tone? You come into our home and push her to tears, attack her, then go after her family, and you want to talk to me about my tone.

Raymond stands up. He comes up to Chuck’s chin.

RAYMOND
She’s my daughter-

CHUCK
You’re not her father. Father is a title that is earned. Dad is earned. You haven’t earned those titles, Ray. Hell, George has been more of a father than you, and he’s her cousin.

RAYMOND
I’m sure she’s told you ALL ABOUT US.

CHUCK
She didn’t need to. I saw what you did, first hand. I was there when you cut her off and chose your cult over your only daughter. I was there, watching her cousin work 80 hour weeks putting a roof over your daughter’s head and helping her through school because you couldn’t be bothered to do your job.

SHELLY
Angela has always been stubborn.

Chuck takes a deep breath.

CHUCK
And I suppose you’re completely innocent for how she turned out. Get outta here with that shit.

RAYMOND
You don’t know what you’re talking about.

CHUCK
Really? Okay hot shot. What’s her favorite movie? What’s her favorite restaurant? Where does she work? What does she do? Hell, can you even tell me her birthday anymore? No? I know her better than anyone else, especially you two pieces of shit.

RAYMOND
You watch your fucking mouth!

CHUCK
Or what, little man? My old man’s doing a life sentence in prison and he’s less of a piece of shit than you.

Raymond is seething.

CHUCK
Take a fucking swing, old man. Give me an excuse. Otherwise, state your business and leave.

Raymond looks to Shelly. She pulls a letter out of her purse and gives it Angie. Angie refuses to take it. Shelly pushes it into Angie’s hands. Angie puts it on the table.

CHUCK
Door’s that way.

Chuck points to the door. Raymond huffs and puffs, but does nothing. Shelly looks at Angie like she wants to hug her, but Angie wants nothing to with her. Raymond makes some obnoxious noise by the door, beckoning Shelly over. Raymond and Shelly leave. Chuck closes the door behind them and locks it. He runs over to Angie, holding her as she cries.

ANGIE (V.O.)
And that, that was the last time I saw my parents in person. They couldn’t hide their crazy even for a minute. I called them a couple times later, trying to reconnect, but they won’t accept any blame or responsibility.

CHUCK (V.O.)
All we asked of them was to go to therapy, respect our boundaries and rules when it comes to the kids. They won’t do that.

ANGIE (V.O.)
I guess being right all the time is more important than being grandparents.

CHUCK (V.O.)
The letter was some crazy ass shit. It was a round-about way of saying they forgave Angie for feeling so upset about things and they’d love to have her back, but she’d have to admit that everything George was working on was fraudulent and made up. We gave it to George, and using his Narcissist Decoder Ring figured out they were trying to use Angie to fuck with George’s case.

GEORGE (V.O.)
By that point, the case took on a life of it’s own. I couldn’t stop things if I wanted to. The wheels of justice are slow to get going, but once moving nothing stops them.

INT. CCPD CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
George, Janella, Steven, Lisa, Special Agents Erin Kingston and Jackson Carpenter, Adam, and Captain Daniel Smith are in the conference room. They’re planning the next phase of Electric Ladyland. There’s a large folder tacked to the board called ‘WOODSTOCK’. Under it several pictures of First Union Holy Church, the anticipated members of the family and their playing cards. Most of the Diamonds and Hearts are still on the board.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Thursday, August 25th, 2005. It was a crazy month, and all of the principals met in front of the murderboard for how we were going to move forward. I told them about their little stunt they pulled with Angie.

DANIEL
Does this meet your definition of fucking with the case?

GEORGE
Yes sir. I showed you the letter, they sent Ray and Shelly over to recruit Angie to their side. Their letter laid out that they wanted her to feed them information on the case, do whatever she could to sabotage it. They could’ve sent anyone else in that church, they chose her parents for a reason.

ERIN
Does this complicate matters further? That’s your uncle, isn’t it?

GEORGE
I’ll put the cuffs on Uncle Ray myself if I have to, if that’s the worry.

STEVEN
He’s a target. We’ve got him for wire fraud, money laundering, bribery, and moving a lot of the money around that ended up paying for the child slaves. We can throw Obstruction on there with this letter. The wife, too.

LISA
That’s gonna make Thanksgiving pretty awkward. “Could the ex-con pass the gravy? No, the other ex-con. No, no, the other, screw it, I don’t need gravy that bad.”

George laughs.

GEORGE
I’ve had to keep the Ray and Shelly stuff away from Angie. It hasn’t been easy, but it needed to be done.

DANIEL
Let’s go over this plan, top to bottom, one more time.

Janella and George stand, pointing to the ‘WOODSTOCK’ section of the murderboard.

JANELLA
Sunday the 28th, Reverend Daniels and the family are scheduled to record three hours of footage for their television show throughout the day. First part is Day 1. Taping starts at 11AM, goes straight through to 2PM. They’re doing this with a new crew. We have an undercover officer in with them working as the Best Boy. He will let us know when the Daniels’ family is onsite. Another officer will be crowd control. After the service is in full swing and the targets accounted for, we go to Day 2.

GEORGE
Day 2, Chester County, Harbor City, SWAT, and whoever else we scrounge up meets at the staging location. Once we get the word that things are well under control, we roll over Code 2. Once we’re close enough to the church, we split up and everyone goes to their designated locations. Most everyone stays by the doors. Rolling in with an army to a church service will look real bad.

ADAM
Any chance they try anything crazy like claim asylum or sanctuary?

GEORGE
Possible. There’s no legal device stopping us but it just looks bad. That’s why Janella and I will go in with a small contingent, no more than a dozen officers. We’ll announce our intentions and give Charlie and the family the chance to surrender peacefully. If they become belligerent, we’ll wait for them in the parking lot.

STEVEN
When did 12 officers become a small contingent?

GEORGE
When this went from a shitshow to a clusterfuck, right around the time all the bodies started piling up. After arrival, that’s when Day 3 starts. Any members of the family that are hiding out or not at the service, we move on them at the same time at their best known locations. This includes homes, apartments, restaurants, places that the family and the assailants are known to frequent. We expect most of them will be at the church, but a few stragglers here and there will be brought in. That takes us to Day 4 of Woodstock. We camp out and wait them out.

STEVEN
Camp out? This sounds like a siege.

GEORGE
Yep. We fully expect several of those in attendance to help the Daniels clan try to escape justice. Even if the church is fully attended with those willing to fight for them, the church doesn’t have enough supplies to feed 3,000 parishioners for weeks. We do checks at each of the exits to make sure that those leaving don’t have warrants out for them, but if they don’t surrender, we can wait them out.

Steven looks at some notes he brought in with him.

STEVEN
Solid plan. Woodstock is good to go, but we’ve another problem. Lisa, you’re up.

Steven smiles at Lisa, she smiles back and stands. She walks to a portion of the murderboard that was recently cleared off and tacks up a new folder with the words ‘ISLE OF WIGHT/BAND OF GYPSIES’ written on it. George and Janella move to get a better view.

LISA
Our investigation turned up something unexpected that we’ve had to keep from you until it was necessary. Now, it’s necessary. Remember a while back you guys submitted a request to tap the communications of Charlie and his family members?

JANELLA
Yeah, it was shot down. Steve, you said Judge Renfrow spiked it on some weird grounds.

STEVEN
Yes. It was one of the only motions we made that didn’t get approved. Even after all of the other evidence we had, Judge Renfrow accused us of skirting constitutional grounds and turning this into a wild goose chase.

Lisa pulls some photos and documents out of her briefcase and tacks them to the wall. The first is a photo of Judge Clarence Renfrow, an older gentleman dressed in judges robes. The picture looks like it was taken from a recent election photo.

LISA
Our request at the Federal level didn’t get spiked. Ours was approved and in place before yours was rejected. What we found was...

Lisa tacks up photos of Judge Renfrow meeting with Harold Schumacher and Reverend Charlie Daniels at a fancy restaurant in downtown Harbor City. She then tacks up a series of documents detailing emails sent between Charlie and Judge Renfrow with the lager copied in. A couple of the emails are highlighted. The next photos she posts show the judge entering a hotel room, followed by two young women later on. The last series of pictures are from inside of the hotel room, showing Judge Renfrow and the two girls in various states of undress and sexual activity.

GEORGE
What the fuck?!

LISA
We saw communications between Renfrow and Charlie going back for a while. Those two are long time buddies and Renfrow would give Charlie a head’s up on any matters he saw. There was an email chain we saw where he’d heard rumors about search warrants but those files were sealed. He was the one that recommended that Charlie get out of town in June. He pulled some strings to get Michelle’s case scheduled for June 9th, knowing that Charlie would be out by then. They used this time to destroy some of the worst tapes they had. At least, what they thought was the worst.

GEORGE
How bad?

LISA
Snuff films where the Daniels’ family killed several kids. Of all the films you found, did you find any with Charlie or his kin killing their victims?

George and Janella look at each other and shake their heads. They look at Steven who looks at Adam.

ADAM
Nothing that we’ve seen so far. There’s tons more to go through, but now that you mention it, a lot of what we had seemed to miss many of the family members. Sure, they’re there, but the worst of the worst was done by others.

LISA
That’s because they took their only copies out of state with them to Colorado. They digitized the videos onto a hard drive and destroyed the VHS and BETA tapes. They then packed the bags in their checked luggage. Knowing that they’d have to go through a checkpoint, they couldn’t dare take that kind of footage with them. What they didn’t know was that their luggage was intercepted in Dallas for a layover. Flight was delayed for a few minutes while our agents copied the contents of their drives. They were encrypted, but we got past that. I’m authorizing the FBI to share what they found. It’s, disturbing to say the least.

GEORGE
And I didn’t get you anything for Christmas.

LISA
Hanukkah, I’m Jewish. Get me 8 things. Anyway, back to my story. When Renfrow received your request to bug Charlie’s offices and home, he spiked it and immediately informed Charlie that he was the target of an investigation. He leaked what he knew to Charlie. Charlie said in the one email that they should all meet soon for lunch to ‘catch up on old times.’ It wasn’t old times. They picked the Delta Club downtown.

JANELLA
That’s the high and fancy club where all the old rich like to hang out?

STEVEN
More like new rich pretending to be old rich. Very fancy, very exclusive. I visited once as a guest. It was intimidating and a little disheartening. Seeing all that wealth just go to waste when so many people are suffering...

LISA
Back to the story. What I’m almost certainly sure of is that neither of those three men knew that my boss and two Federal judges were members. If they did, they didn’t suspect that we knew about their case. My boss, the U.S. Attorney for the district, invited a guest for lunch that day to the Old Boys Club. Special Agent Jackson Carpenter. It’s one of those Men Only clubs, so Special Agent Kingston had to wait outside. At lunch the three men discussed generic topics for a while before devolving into a coded conversation about how they had to make this case disappear. Once they figured out a battle plan, they retreated to the cigar room. Carpenter and my boss followed. They eavesdropped on Charlie and Renfrow talk about how much Chester County already knew, how to exploit Detective Lewis’s relationship with the church in the past, and how to make sure if it ever saw the light of day that it had to be buried.

JANELLA
Please tell me you have notes for this.

LISA
Better. Remember how Erin Kingston was sitting outside in the car? She recorded the conversations that Jackson overheard. He placed a live cell phone by the three men as they talked and she recorded the conversation. She also transcribed notes.

George laughs. Lisa looks at him weirdly.

GEORGE
Sorry, it’s just the craziness of the whole thing. We have this massive case going on, and here’s Old Charlie paying off the judge that would likely be assigned to the case. And you’ve got him on tape talking about all of this, all because they chose the Old Boy’s Club to discuss their plans, and the woman who wasn’t allowed inside sat in the car and recorded the whole thing.

LISA
It gets better. Charlie asked Renfrow how he could repay him for the favor. Guess how he responded.

GEORGE
Does it have something to do with those two girls and a hotel room?

LISA
Correctamundo. Renfrow said, and I quote ‘Maybe a little something to release some steam. Maybe two. Not too new. You know how I like my Scotch aged at least 18 years.’ Well, Charlie asked if he wanted two bottles of 15 year old Scotch. Renfrow didn’t like it that much, but relented, as long as this ‘donation was kept off the books.’ I’m guessing ‘off the books’ meant a roadside motel out in Pleasantview. A couple days later we tracked the Judge down to said motel where two girls, Emily and Sasha, met him an hour later. We knew which hotel room he would be in and bugged it from the neighboring room. We later confirmed that Emily and Sasha were only 15. We have enough evidence to destroy Judge Renfrow. That’s what Isle of Wight and Band of Gypsies is all about. Isle of Wight was Jimi’s last concert in the UK before he died, and the Band of Gypsies was his band after the Jimi Hendrix Experience. We’re using Isle of Wight for the legal proceedings and Band of Gypsies for Judge Renfrow.

STEVEN
We have a plan. We know that Judge Renfrow has already made moves behind the scenes to get the clerks to assign him Reverend Charlie’s case when it comes up. We’ll let that happen.

George and Janella look at him like he’s lost his mind.

JANELLA
Won’t he just try to spike the case?

STEVEN
He will. We’re counting on it.

LISA
The United States has given much of this information to Chester County.

STEVEN
We have a sealed indictment for the Judge’s arrest on charges of statutory sexual assault, solicitation, bribery, abuse of power, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and conspiracy.

JANELLA
So when he lets Charlie off the hook...

STEVEN
You nail him to the cross.

LISA
But that’s not all. Once Charlie is out of Judge Renfrow’s courtroom, we’ll serve the Reverend with his charging document. It’s...extensive.

GEORGE
On a scale of 1-10, how fucked is he?

LISA
RICO’s on the table.

George’s jaw drops open. He then starts to laugh.

GEORGE
RICO? Fuck, you charge him with RICO in a courtroom I will fucking dance! I even got a song picked out.

SERENA (V.O.)
Wait, who’s Rico?

INT. GEORGE'S DINING ROOM - NIGHT
George looks over at Serena, who looks a little confused.

SERENA
What’s this big deal about Rico?

DEREK
RICO is the Racketeer Influenced in Corrupt Organizations act. It’s a Federal law that allows any and all members of a criminal organization to be charged with all crimes committed by the organization.

CARLY
Ever watch The Sopranos?

SERENA
Not much.

CARLY
It’s what scared the shit out of Tony Soprano. Feds introduced it into law because mob bosses would never go down for the crimes they ordered because their underlings would never admit they were ordered by the boss or the boss didn’t pull the trigger himself. But RICO means that if there’s an organization doing some criminal shit, everyone goes down as long as the company benefits.

GEORGE
First Union Holy Church was one of the first churches to ever be tried under RICO statutes.

SERENA
So, let’s say Charlie’s the pimp that ran the prostitution ring, he goes down?

DEREK
Even better, let’s say his boy Jacob was the pimp and Charlie got paid a cut of the action. By RICO, he’s just as at fault as Jacob. They both get charged for that. And anyone else working for the church.

CARLY
The secretary working the front desk, she gets charged as well. She gets a paystub from the church and they prove the church benefited from any of these crimes, like money laundering, she’s looking at 20 years. Human trafficking like what they did with those kids, Life.

SERENA
Life?

CARLY
Life.

DEREK
Just for answering the phone.

CARLY
And then there’s asset freezing. You get charged in a RICO case, all of your assets are frozen. Keeps mob bosses from skipping town.

SERENA
Holy shit.

CARLY
This is reserved for the worst of the worst.

Carly turns to George.

CARLY
George, I gotta say I’m impressed. This is...

GEORGE
We haven’t gotten to the crazy shit yet.

George takes another sip of scotch. Carly’s eyes go wide.

CARLY
What?!

EXT. SNYDER RESIDENCE - NIGHT
Outside of a nice middle-class house in the suburbs of Harbor City, a windowless white van pulls into a driveway. The vehicle stops and three men climb out of it, dressed head to toe in black and wearing ski masks. One of them holds a bottle with a rag sticking out of it. A Molotov Cocktail. As they make their way closer to the house, a mid-90’s Chevy Blazer pulls up in front of the house. The man with the Molotov lights the rag. Just as he’s about to throw, another man leans out of the rear window of the Blazer, wearing a mask and holding an AR-15 assault rifle. The Molotov is thrown at the house, breaking a window and igniting, spreading flames throughout the first floor of the house. The man in the Blazer opens fire, shooting at the van and the other masked men. Two of the three fall to the ground, bleeding from their wounds. The man with the gun aims at the van and fires several shots, hitting the back of the van before taking aim at the driver’s seat. The van goes into reverse and is under control for a short moment before losing control and reversing wildly down the driveway and across the street, slamming into a tree. The door to the van opens as the driver, obviously wounded, hops out. Another man from inside of the Blazer leans out of the passenger window and fires a MAC-10 at the van driver, killing him.

Lights turn on in neighboring houses. The Blazer drives down the street as police and fire sirens can be heard in the distance. The last man left behind runs into the backyard. A single shotgun blast is heard.

GEORGE (V.O.)
That Friday night, a few of the boys from the church paid a visit to Mr. Larry Snyder. Larry was one of the church elders and a widower. He also had a reputation around the church as someone who would put his own interests above the family. He was one of the highest ranking members of the church not related to Charlie. It also made him look like he couldn’t be trusted, even though he was neck deep in the shit. Someone leaked it to the Daniels’ boys that Snyder was going to flip. To keep that from happening, they sent a few guys to take care of Snyder. What they didn’t know was that the whole thing was a trap. Whoever set them up, knew they were coming.

Time passes. George and Janella are on the scene, along with a dozen other police officers and a couple fire trucks. The fire is out, but the house is badly damaged. Two bodies lie in the driveway, both shot with a rifle. In the backyard, another body lies on the ground, following a wound to the chest from a shotgun. In the pool, yet another body is floating face down. All of the bodies have a playing card placed on or near them.

GEORGE (V.O.)
The body in the pool was Larry Snyder. He was beaten, strangled and drowned in his own pool. Larry was the 6 of Diamonds.

George and Janella check out the other bodies in the driveway. They’re both men in their 20’s.

GEORGE (V.O.)
David Herman, 2 of Diamonds, and David Tomasson, 6 of Spades. Both shot repeatedly.

They look across the street. There’s a white van shot to Hell and another man dead on the ground.

GEORGE (V.O.)
Brennan Dora, the 7 of Spades. He was the driver. Their plan was to pull up, set the house on fire, then leave. They didn’t expect a firing squad. Van was shot up as Brennan put it into reverse, and he lost control, slamming into the neighbor’s tree. He hopped out, and was shot dead from the vehicle. Neighbors said after the gunshots a Blazer tore ass down the street. A moment later, they heard another shot from the house. This was the shotgun blast that killed Jordan Serrano, 2 of Hearts. One of the neighbors reported seeing a shorter man dressed as a police officer running through the backyards carrying a shotgun. Nobody could provide enough of a description for an accurate match, but all signs pointed to Gary as the cop. That would mean the rest of 2236 was behind the execution.

-------------------------------------------------------------

To Be Continued...

Lake Hiawatha - A Harbor City Universe Teleplay

Re: Lake Hiawatha - A Harbor City Universe Teleplay

Re: Lake Hiawatha - A Harbor City Universe Teleplay

Re: Lake Hiawatha - A Harbor City Universe Teleplay

Re: Lake Hiawatha - A Harbor City Universe Teleplay

Re: Lake Hiawatha - A Harbor City Universe Teleplay

Re: Lake Hiawatha - A Harbor City Universe Teleplay