A number of interesting news articles, including several explaining what happened last night as "mass hysteria" and hallucinations, also heat lightning, UFOs, and bulb-fitted gas balloons. Oddly enough, no news cameras captured the event. One news article reports Ray as a hero for anticipating the ritual and having police on hand to bust it up "in time." Another article reports that the suspect from the museum heist, Jessie Chiasson, escaped jail yesterday morning (Friday morning!) without a trace. Ray maintains she was in police custody Friday and that he talked to her.
Hazel invites Didier and Kathy over to Ray's apartment for brunch and TALK. Some info sharing and some interpersonal friction. Theorize at great length on why the monster didn't kill Didier and Hazel. Because of the mark of the Queen (which we all still have)? Because it didn't want to? Conclude that the ritual didn't go as the cultists expected it to. Hazel suggests taking the box out into the country and trying the summoning ritual again (since she knows the chant), to ASK the monster what its motivations are. Adam informs her that "Experimental summonings are NOT a valid research technique."
Didier claims Chiasson was the one who kidnapped him yesterday. She reportedly came into his hotel room sometime in the afternoon and shot him with what turned out to be a tranquilizer dart. Later he also let slip that HE TOOK THE BOX FROM HER and that was when he got shot.
We go downtown and give our statements to the police, then split up to do more research: Hazel to museum, Adam to archives, Ray stays at police station, Kathy and Didier God knows where.
Hazel, Ray, & Adam meet for dinner. Didier calls Adam's cell phone and informs him that he and Kathy are flying to Providence to interview Blake. Hazel suggests breaking into Alan Flint's house to see what's there. Flint had been under police observation, but nothing interesting was turning up and there was no apparent link between him and the cult aside from Vasilev's account of the phone conversation, so the watch was called off.
Flint was home, however, when Ray, Hazel, and Adam were planning on going there, so they called it off. Ray returned home to find his deadbolt unlocked (he always locks it). The box (which Hazel had hidden so Ray wouldn't be tempted to look in it again) was gone, nothing else disturbed. Ray called in the crime lab techs to check for prints and spent the night at Adam's apartment.
The golden box came from Edward Blake, by way of his grandfather Robert Blake, who bought the box at auction in 1935. The box had belonged to a Boston-area (North End) artist Alan Pickman, who disappeared sometime in the 1930s. Apparently left no heirs, so his stuff was auctioned off. His paintings were some weird shit, inspired by some kind of madness. Adam found a book in some archives that had some of his paintings; he was able to get photocopies. Kathy did some digging and found that Edward Blake belonged to a cult called the "Fellowship of Friends." Kathy and Didier went to Providence, RI, to interview Blake about the box.
After Didier let slip that he'd had the box and had taken it from Chiasson, Kathy owned that they had had it in their hotel safe. When Chiasson (or whoever) came to the hotel and kidnapped Didier Friday morning (Kathy was out at the time), they also got into the safe and took the box.
It is not clear how Chiasson escaped from jail. Though the paper says she escaped Friday morning, Ray insists that she was in custody most of Friday. She must have gotten out Friday night or early Saturday morning. She was definitely not at the ritual, but may have gotten out around that time. Security cameras show nothing, same as with the museum. Probably the camera system was hacked into. Possibly an inside job, not sure.
Hazel's contact person in the Cult of the Rising Moon is named Lorrie Masser. She owns a children's bookstore (creepy!) called Lorrie's Books. Interestingly enough, on the same day Mrs. Vasilev (murder victim) talked to Alan Flint about their upcoming ritual, she also called Lorrie's Books. Masser is in police custody right now, along with the other surviving cult members. Kathy volunteered to check into Lorrie's Books. Ray plans to interview Masser, if he hasn't already.
Fourteen cult members were arrested and several more hospitalized. Ray is working on assembling a list of everyone, based on interviews with the people in custody. Their stories vary widely, but the sort-of consensus was that there were around 20-ish people at the ritual Friday night. Two gave off definite "not telling the truth" vibes.
Alan Flint is a dock worker.
Jessie Chiasson works for Crescent Interlude. Crescent Interlude started up sometime before the G'harne Muthlimum cult bust of 1963, bought the warehouse after the previous owners, Flint & Royce Shipping, were busted. Alan Flint's father was one of those owners. Darcy Lanford, one of the owners of Crescent Interlude (which is also a shipping company) died about ten years ago in a car-bus collision.
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