So we agreed to look into the Dung Mai situation for Massimo. We figured checking out the scene of the crime for ourselves was the best place to start. Though since we weren't actually CSIs, staring at the crime scene a week after the fact didn't get us anything. So we split up and asked around the surrounding area to see if anyone knew Dung Mai and could shed some more light on her situation. I bumped into a relatively attractive Vietnamese girl who worked with Dung Mai. At the nail salon? Nope, turns out Dung Mai had been turning tricks. After turning down the hooker's offer (she was cute, but who know's where she's been!?) I asked her about her pimp, who was a pimp named Huu Tran and forwarded the info to the others. Jake set up a meeting with the guy at 9 that night, feigning a need for some “talent” for a party.
Lana and I went to see Massimo's contract from Bank of America, who was the one who provided the footage and alerted him to the strange activity. Her name was Anne Meryls and she was ensorcelled by Massimo, so she could see us for what we were. She couldn't give us anything about the footage we didn't already know, other than the fact that the cops assigned to the case, Montgomery Stevens and Elly Rush confiscated the footage. In the middle of this meeting I got a call from Deena, all upset over something that Faye chick did. So I took my leave and met up with her.
Spent the next few hours being a shoulder for Deena to cry on. Apparently Faye voiced her feelings for her and Deena was all she just wanted to be friends. So Faye accused her of being hetero and just pretending to be Bi to be all trendy. Saying Deena was seeing me and we were always off screwing around (I wish, lady!) Yes, the irony that I was thinking the opposite, that she was a lezzie and was kidding herself about liking guys is not lost on me. I mean, I find it hysterical that I was thinking they were the ones cavorting and probably would've eventually done the same thing Faye did if she didn't beat me to it. Owel, I took Deena out to dinner to cheer her up. Though I'm sure her running off to me isn't gonna help with Faye's accusations. The three of us should prolly sit down one day and clear the air so to speak. But I have a mysterious death to look into.
Met the others at 9 for this meeting with a pimp named Huu Tran. It was probably best he didn't see all of us, so I waited outside, pretending to be waiting for a call, just to make sure the guy didn't have any thugs in waiting to roll the others over or something. The meeting went okay, Jake and Holden pretending to want Dung Mai specifically and a pimp named Huu Tran regretably having to inform them of her demise. We did learn about his police contact, John Witherspoon, which would prove useful later.
The next day, we contacted John pretending to be a pimp named Huu Tran to get him out of the house so Holden and I could break in. Holden wanted to borrow some of John's stuff so he could more convincingly disguise himself as John to get around the police station. Witherspoon had two dogs, a great big mutt, and a tiny one. I gave them some steaks from the fridge to shut them up while Holden did his thing. We were worried about John figuring out he hadn't actually talked to a pimp named Huu Tran when the girl he asked us for didn't show up after he got home from work. But he seems to like girls on the young side, and we couldn't in good conscience call up a pimp named Huu Tran pretending to be Witherspoon to get an actual girl there. I wrecked the fridge to make it look like the big dog broke in to get at the steaks, and we hoped he would be too pissed at the dogs to notice the girl never showed up. I did feel guilty about getting the dogs in trouble like that, but better getting a dog scolded than facilitating statutory rape!
Owel, Holden and Jake were able to get into the police station (waiting for Witherspoon to actually have left, of course) okay. I declined to go, given my fetch is supposedly an Atlanta cop and it would probably not be good not only to bump in to him, but bump into him in the middle of several dozen armed law enforcement officials who know him as their fellow officer and me as some random college kid. They were able to get a hold of the case files that Jake had discovered were related to the Dung Mai one. Apparently there were other similar deaths, mostly other Vietnamese, but a few others. Not sure if the crimes were targetted, or it was just the area, which has a high Vietnamese population. In any case, the Dung Mai case was the first one with actual video evidence of what happened, and after that, the Atlanta DA, Nichole Vaughn had ordered the cases closed. Hmm, how curious. Why the cover up?