Art of Murder: FBI Confidential Walkthrough by Peter Olafson

General
Hints

Many conversations are
broken up into chunks and require several clicks to complete. Some
may appear to end before they’ve actually ended. Keep your interviewees
talking until they begin to repeat themselves.

You can interact with certain
locations only in the close-up view.

Sometimes trivia matters.
Occasionally you’ll have to complete some insignificant operation
in order to complete your business in a given location. (Non-essential
actions that yield unique responses are mentioned in the “odds
& ends” sections.)

There’s a lot of
running around in this game, so make sure Nicole’s always running!
Double-click on your destinations. However, if a character to whom
to you need to speak or mechanism with which you must interact to
is at a significant distance from Nicole’s location — Jose
in Cusco, for instance — don’t click on the character or mechanism
directly. (This forces Nicole to walk.) First run to a nearby location.

There are some holes in
the story. I’ve tried to fill them either logically or with
informed conjecture.

You can figure out the
killer at a very early stage of the game if you’re watching
carefully. (You can’t act on this suspicion, however.)

Contact:
Comments or questions? Write to me at .

Copyright:
This document is copyright 2010 by Peter Olafson. You may not post
it, distribute it, edit it, excerpt it (except for "fair use"
purposes in news coverage), sell it or publish it in any fashion without
my prior written consent.

Introduction

Agent Nicole Bonnet’s
first field assignment is playing fetch. Fellow agent James Scott,
on a stakeout in a New York City tenement, asks her to get coffee
from the bar around the corner. She’s returned to the foot of
the tenement stairs when she hears gunfire above. James lives just
long enough to croak out, “Take the message to Nick.”
Nicole races after the killer, but she’s too late. She reaches
the roof to see a red car skidding around a corner. Don’t forget
that.

Day
1

The
Office (I)

You’ll start in the
bureau chief’s office. Talk to Chaser. He’ll partner you
up with Nick Romsky — evidently in need of a den mother to handle
his paperwork — and ask you to finish your report on James’s
shooting.

Leave the office. Outside,
you’ll have an automatic chat with perky office manager Ruth.
She suggests you request reassignment. (Nicole declines. She means
to go after James’s killer, but will be reassigned in short
order in any case.)

The unfinished report is
on the PC on the Nicole’s desk just across from the printer
on Ruth’s. But you can’t call it up right now. Zoom in
on the desk and tap the in-game keyboard once to learn Nicole first
needs information from Nick.

From Nicole’s conversation
with Ruth, you already know Nick’s not around. In fact, he won’t
show up in person until well into the game and only fleetingly then.

But you can call him. Tap
the keyboard again for Nicole to suggest this and a third time to
learn a list of agents’ cell numbers has been tacked on the
wall somewhere in the office.

You can find that list
independently (i.e. without the keyboard tapping). It’s on the
bulletin board at the far end of the room. Zoom in on the board and
Nicole automatically spots Nick’s number. Afterward you’ll
find numbers for Nick, Ruth and Chaser by clicking the bottom icon
on your PDA’s desktop.

Just click on Nick’s
to place the call. (Don’t bother trying your desk phone. This
is a new office — as you’ll see more clearly in a moment —
and the phones haven’t been connected.)

No answer. Nicole now wonders
if something’s happened to Nick. No. You just have an old phone
number. Go see Ruth for the current one. (Again, all good things seem
to flow from touching your keyboard. A fourth tap will now yield a
suggestion that you speak to the office manager.)

Back at your desk, you’ll
find Nick’s correct number on the screen. Tap the keyboard to
import it to the PDA and use the PDA to place the call. It’ll
go to voicemail but Nicole gets a text message right back indicating
Nick will explain James’s odd message later. (He doesn’t,
but you’ll eventually sort it out for yourself: James left a
message for Nick in a prearranged spot.)

Exit the PDA and tap Nicole’s
keyboard again to complete the report and then the open document on
the monitor to send it to the printer.

Uh-oh. The printer’s
throwing up an exclamation point on Nicole’s screen.. Zoom in
on the printer itself and open the feeder drawer. Empty. It needs
paper.

You’d expect to find
paper in the storage room at the far end of the office. Too easy!
Instead, use the side door to exit to the Mezzanine. (This gives you
a sense that this new office is still a work-in-progress.) In the
near left corner of the screen, you’ll see printer paper atop
a cardboard box.

Grab it, jet back to the
printer, open the drawer, place the paper there, close it and claim
your printed report from the top of the printer. (If you examine the
report, Nicole calls it “a bald description of human tragedy.”)
Again, you don’t have to wait until you need the paper to take
it. You can grab it as soon as you’re out of Chaser’s
office — irrespective of whether you’ve previously checked
the paper drawer.)

In Chaser’s office,
drop the report on his lap and then talk to him until he tells you
he’s busy. In a conversation interlaced with gory cut-scenes,
you learn you’re not on the James case but assisting Nick in
the search for a serial killer who to date has killed three well-to-do
white male professionals: Henry Fairbanks, Mark Chestum and Andrew
Haig. Chestum and Haig had their hearts removed and all three had
16th century Spanish coins placed in or about their bodies — a fairly
transparent accusation of greed.

You’ll come out of
this chat with a picture of a shovel-like ritual dagger and instructions
to consult a file on the office network. (Don’t bother looking
on your PC. You can’t access any such file.)

Outside, you’ll endure
another automatic chat with Ruth. An important one: On learning Nicole
is headed to the museum, she’ll tell you that Nick suspected
the porter there of selling “marching powder” (slang for
cocaine) on the side. That’ll give you some leverage when you
speak to him.

Out in the Mezzanine, descend
the stairs and exit via the door to the right of reception. Your car
is the black one on the right side of the building … and I’ll
note without comment the presence of a red car out front not dissimilar
to the one you saw speeding from the scene of James’s shooting.
Just a coincidence?

In your car, just click
on the picture of the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art atop the NYC map
and you’ll find yourself outside that handsome structure.

Odds & ends:
In Chaser’s office, you can examine the two diplomas and map
on the left wall and Chaser himself. Outside the office, you can examine
Ruth, the piles of papers at the corner of her desk, the shelves to
the left and the door to Chaser’s office. In the full view of
the office, you can examine the three other desks — James’s,
Nick and one kept open for a newcomer — and the larger of the file
cabinets on the left side of the room (which elicits a reference to
J. Edgar Hoover’s purported cross-dressing).

In the close-up view of
Nicole’s desk, you can examine the telephone, coffee cup, picture
and wanted posters. In the one of the bulletin board, you can examine
three wanted posters, two police reports and a post-mortem photo of
a gangster. (This is as close as AoM comes to an Easter Egg. Presumably
these are members of the development team at City Interactive?)

IThe two post-it notes
can’t be examined, but can be read directly off the board. Presumably
the other number on the note with Nick’s old number is Nicole’s
or James’s. The other note is mildly intriguing. It’s
a to-do note for James: “302 Fylop [or so it appears] (don’t
leave on your desk).” Was this the location James had under
surveillance or his own stakeout location?

If the latter, that would
be dangerous information in the wrong hands.

Try the number you found
for Nick on the bulletin board a second time after Ruth describes
the fate of Nick’s phone to get a unique line from Nicole.

Museum
of Pre-Columbian Art (I)

Use the front door and
talk to the uniformed porter (who’s all ready to deny the “marching
powder” charge) to the left to locate director William Warren.
Walk through the entrance straight ahead and you’ll run into
this well-dressed and rather odd man. A conversation follows automatically
in which you’ll establish that an exhibit of Aztec knives can
be found in the main hall.

This may prove a bit confusing,
Warren is talking about -this- hall — it’s the only accessible
exhibition hall in the place — but the only knives you’ll find
here are the Incan ones in the display case to the left of the crouching
dog. Surely Warren knows the difference! In any case, you’ll
have to inspect these knives close up to satisfy yourself they don’t
include anything like the murder weapon before you can leave the hall
again.

You’ll need one item
here to complete the museum segment, and though you don’t yet
know you need it, you may as well grab it now rather than hunting
it up in a pinch later. Walk to the upper right corner of the hall,
where Nicole makes a crack about a “scary-looking mummy.”
You’ll see a fire extinguisher beside the display to the right.
Take it. (Nicole refers to the extinguisher as “this pot”
— evidently a translation issue.)

Return to the porter and
talk to him to learn not all of the museum’s collection is actually
on display — it lends items to other museums — and add Warren’s
cell number to your PDA. Now you can ask permission to check out the
off-limits storage area . (Why does the porter read the number off
in that super-weird voice, though?)

Busy signal. Talk to the
porter again to issue an implied threat about the marching powder
and he permits Nicole into the storage area. Descend the stairs and
discover you’re in the dark.

The only lighted area is
the pillar with a panel of five light switches — the first of the
game’s stand-alone puzzles. Nicole says she’ll ask the
porter to turn on the lights. He won’t do it, but Nicole can
pick up a small clue about the simplicity of the process: “One
up, one down or something like that …” (Don’t take this
literally. It’s more along the lines of something “something
like that …”)

Unfortunately, I can’t
tell you how to pull this off, as the lights connected to each switch
vary from game to game. But it’s easy and easier than it first
seems once you realize the five lights don’t all have to be
on at once and that your business here can be broken down into sub-tasks:
illuminate (and thus make take-able) two items you’ll need once
you reach “The furthest part of Storage” and then light
a path up the right side of the screen. In each case, the required
light can be illuminated with the throw of a single switch.

AThe first item is the
“flight case” on the right side of the middle shelf in
the near left corner. To take this, the light must be on in this same
corner. Left-click on the case once in inventory to open it and again
to extract the contents: an X-ray scanner.

The second is the inflatable
dingy (yes, as in “little boat”) on the floor to the right
of a second set of shelves farther up the left side of the screen.
This is slightly trickier. In addition to the item itself being visible,
there must be a lighted path to it. (Nicole won’t cross any
dark areas en route.) Hence, for Nicole to claim the dingy, Nicole
must first light either: a) both lights on the left side of the screen
or b) the lower two lights on the right side of the screen and the
upper light on the left.

Now you just have to light
the way to the far end of the storage room. That means turning on
either: a) the three lights on the right side of the screen or b)
the two lights on the left side of the screen and the upper two lights
on the right.

Once they’re on,
you’ll see crates at the far end of the room. Head that way.
The view reverses — now you’re looking back toward the stairs
— and your attention will quickly focus on the sealed rectangular
crate lying on its side near the upper wall (to the left of an upright
crate with the “Load this end up” legend). It’s
too heavy to move and apparently “very suspicious.” Opening
it is not an option.

Actually, this is sort
of a red herring, and you don’t have to inspect its contents
at all. You just have to move it out of the way to get at the larger
crate immediately behind it. Hence, the important location here is
the gap between the two crates. Use the dingy on the gap and then
use the fire extinguisher on the dingy to inflate it. The smaller
crate pivots away, and you can inspect the big crate.

Left-click on the “flight
case” once to open it and again to retrieve the X-ray scanner
it contains. Use it on the revealed crate to establish it contained
four pairs of knives — including one set that matches your murder
weapon — and that one of that particular set is missing! You’ve
found the source o the murder weapon!

And that’s it. Oddly,
you still have to do a little clean-up work, returning the scanner
to the flight case and the case to the shelf where you found it. And
you need to check in with the porter again to ask for the paperwork
on the shipment (which is handed over invisibly).

Leave the museum and enter
your car for a text message from Nick on a fourth murder — John Rudolph,
a stockbroker who lives on Staten Island — and a new picture atop
your NYC map. (The house is more Victorian than “villa.”)

Odds & ends:
In the lobby, you can examine the porter, the gift-shop display case
behind him, the glassed-in display case beside the column, the two
statues flanking the door to the exhibit and the exit to the street.
(You can also use each of the items you find on the porter and elicit
unique responses for each.) In the exhibit hall, you can identify
the ceramics display in the hall’s upper right corner and examine
the bowl on the wall to the right. (This establishes it’s probably
a replica, which may be why Nicole feels free to make use of it later
in the story.) In the Orangery, you can examine the large statue in
the near right corner and the smaller one in the middle distance and
the potting soil in the foreground. (You can also take one of the
small pots in the foreground, but can’t carry it out of the
room until later in the game.) Ditto for the Archive, where you can
examine the magnifying glass and, in a close-up of the shelves, identify
the box of Professor Dickinson’s papers. (You’ll also
elicit a couple lines here that seem to jump out ahead of the story
— notably when you first enter the room and move in for a close-up
of the shelves.) At the near end of storage, once you’ve taken
the x-ray scanner, you can examine the empty space occupied by the
case. At the far end, you can examine the poster on the central pillar,
the table nearby, the broken vase in the right near corner and, using
the x-ray scanner, the contents of the smaller of the two accessible
crates. (It contains two pots and a mask.)

Staten
Island (I)

Have a quick chat with
the officer at the gate for a briefing on the NYPD’s findings.
But not too quick, as Macgregor offers a vague clue: This victim’s
heart was found in a corner pocket of the pool table.

Enter the house and have
a peek at the low table near the door. Signs of struggle? The whiskey
bottle and one of the two glasses on the table here have been upset.
And one of the two armchairs is slightly out of skew. Move the right-hand
one back into position with a left-click and then back out of the
close-up to discover you’ve uncovered a business card for an
Allan Branford.

Looking at the card in
inventory adds the collector’s phone number to your PDA and
Nicole says she’ll call him the next day. But she’s already
decided he’s not a suspect. Why? It’s declared but never
made clear.

To the left (the exit arrow’s
above the sofa), you’ll find a niche with an umbrella in a hat
stand. (You’ll return here late in the game to inspect the photos
on the upper wall.) Left-click on the umbrella in inventory to strip
it down to a single wire. Pretty clearly a tool for some undone task!

Return to the lounge and
then move right (the exit arrow’s under the stairs) to the pool
room.and random stand-alone puzzle #2. Zoom in on the blood-drenched
pool table for one of Nicole’s sillier lines and access to the
blue #2 ball in the slot below the table’s right end.

Remember Macgregor’s
reference to the heart in the corner pocket? It’s not immediately
apparent from the scene, but something’s been concealed in the
pool table. You just have to locate it by dropping the #2 ball in
the six pockets until it fails to reappear. “Something … blocking
… the ball,” says Nicole.

Just use the wire remaining
from the umbrella on the pocket where you encountered the blockage
to free both ball and blockage: the head of a pre-Columbian figurine.
Take the head and scoot. Nicole says she’ll leave the head in
Evidence Deposit the next day and automatically exchanges a few words
with the officer out front. Click on her car and the scene fades to
black.

Odds & ends:
You can examine the officer, the pictures high on the lounge wall
and the one to the left of the front door, the grandfather clock to
the right of the door and the bottle, decanter and glasses on the
table. (It looks as though the newspaper on the table was supposed
to be take-able, but Nicole refuses to pick it up bare-handed. Shame
she’s not so circumspect with the statue head!) In the pool
room, you can examine the cabinet against the rear wall, a large bloodstain
on the rug on the near side of the pool table and any of the six pockets
on the table itself.

Chatting with Officer Macgregor
after he stands aside from the front walk or says good night yields
one additional unimportant line. And a second close-up look at the
table near the door elicits Nicole’s theory of the crime.

Day
2

The
Office (II)

We see Nicole
waking from a dream of a shadowy killer and find her outside the office.The
first step: Wrap up unfinished business.

Inside, Nicole suggests
dropping off the head with Evidence Deposit. That’s the room
to the left of reception downstairs. Sadly, the door requires a keycard
and our girl doesn’t have one.

So whaddaya think? Ruth?
Yeah, Ruth. Simply take the keycard from her desk. It’s just
to the right of the coffee pot, which is to the right of Ruth’s
telephone.

While you’re up here,
visit Chaser to update him on your progress. In return, he’ll
give you your agenda for the day: You’re going back to the museum
and have a look into director Warren’s whereabouts the previous
night.

Back in the office, Nicole
notices that Nick’s muddy footprints lead to her desk. Anything
new there? Yup. On the right, just above the “wanted”
posters, is a little paper boat. Grab it and left-click on the map
in inventory to flatten it out. You’ll find a map with a note
to meet Nick at 4:30 at the tenement where James died.

Now drop off the statue
head. Back downstairs, use the keycard on the Evidence Deposit door
and then use the head on one of the two empty sections of shelf. (Note
that there’s a box of James’ belongings and another of
“tailor’s supplies” on the middle set of shelves.
You can’t do anything with them just yet, but these will be
important later in the day.)

Finally, you need to set
up meetings with Branford and Warren. (You can do this only after
you’ve spoken to Chaser.) Call Branford first. You won’t
get through. Then try Warren. It turns out he knows Branford — and
that’s kind of strange, isn’t it? — and indicates he’ll
meet with you at the museum as well. Get over there!

Odds & ends:
You can have a chat with Ruth about the missing Nick. And if you show
her the statue head, she’ll suggest you drop it off in Evidence
Deposit.

Museum
of Pre-Columbian Art (II)

No need to
check in with the porter this time. Just head straight into the exhibit
hall to find Warren leering at you again. It’s a long conversation
but, once past the sparring over Nicole’s unauthorized search,
an important one. It turns out Warren knows the late Rudolph as well
— and that he has an alibi for the previous night. He says he was
at the Philharmonic with Branford.

Use the right-hand exit
to reach the Orangery. You’ll find Branford at the far end of
this greenhouse. Despite Nicole’s attempt to fake him out, he
backs up Warren’s alibi, reveals that he, too, knew all the
dead men and says he last saw the late Mr. Rudolph six months ago
at a charity concert. (Nicole’s already determined psychically
that Branford isn’t a suspect and she doesn’t ask him
about the presence of his business card under the chair adjacent to
the one where Rudolph was apparently knocked cold.)

But, really, could Branford
be our killer? We don’t have any other evidence that points
to him. And he’d have to be really sloppy to leave so transparent
a piece of evidence behind. Then again, maybe Branford didn’t
leave the card there. If I was the killer and wanted to redirect the
attention of authorities, a judiciously-placed business card from
a close acquaintance of the director of the museum that was the source
of the murder weapon would just the ticket.

You’ll never confirm
that this is the case. (AoM leaves a lot of unanswered questions in
its wake.) And, in truth, Branford here feels much more like a frightened
would-be victim.

You’ll get one bit
of vague info out of him. Agitated after learning of Rudolph’s
death, he points a finger at a suspect: Huaquero. But when Nicole
questions him further, he says only that the Spanish word means “grave
robber.”

Nicole lets this slide,
and you won’t sort it out for a little while yet.

It may seem you’ve
addressed everything on your agenda. But something’s missing.
Have you made a full survey of the museum? Get back to the exhibit
hall and zoom in on the left of the two glassed-in exhibits just to
left of Warren.

One of the two gold figurines
here is missing a head. If you inspect this after your chat with Branford,
Nicole makes explicit the connection to the statue head from Ruldolph’s
pool table and can ask the returned Warren for a loan of the body.
Warren asserts that the museum has rules about such things and asks
for a formal request. So it’s back to the office once again
for some busywork.

The
Office (III)

You’ll
need to touch base with Ruth first to find the right form in the supply
closet, so check in with her (automatic when you reach her desk),
jog down to the storage room and grab a form from the stack that’s
straight across from you as you enter. (It’s on the right on
the second shelf from the bottom.)

Drop it on Ruth, then visit
with Chaser for him to sign off and, upon exit, Ruth tells you it’s
ready. You’ll find the completed form just east of Ruth’s
coffee pot, where you earlier found Nicole’s keycard for Evidence
Deposit. Nicole then tells her she’s headed back to the museum.

Museum
of Pre-Columbian Art (III)

Warren’s
where you left him. Just drop the form on him and he’s cool
with Nicole claiming the head-less statue. He’ll tell you to
talk to the porter and the porter grumpily tells you he’ll unlock
the case. Return to the exhibit hall, open the case and take the statue.

Uh-oh. You’ll notice
some action with the alarm light at the lower left. Previously it
was green. Now it’s flickering red. The system still registers
the statue as missing.

You can return to the lobby
and talk to the porter to confirm this and learn he won’t let
you leave the museum until this situation is rectified. But that’s
not necessary to the ensuing puzzle. A touch of “Raiders of
the Lost Ark” here. You have to replace the missing statue with
something of equal weight.

You don’t have far
to go. At the far end of the the Orangery is a trio of vases (on the
right) and a sack of potting soil (on the left).

Here I part company with
most of the AoM walkthroughs. Most of them report that this puzzle
is random. My testing (four run-throughs) suggests it’s only
semi-random. That is, you should always take the smallest vase —
the one in the middle — but the amount of potting soil you’ll
add to it will vary from game to game. Sometimes one handful. Sometimes
two (the maximum). Sometimes none.

The least labor-intensive
solution: Take a handful of potting soil along with the vase. Don’t
put it in the vase yet. (If you already have, simply use the vase
on the potting-soil bag to empty it.) If you place the vase in the
display case and the alarm light doesn’t go green, take it back
again, add the potting soil in inventory and replace the vase in the
case. If it still doesn’t go green, return to the Orangery,
grab another handful of soil, put it in the vase and replace the vase
in the display case. (You can only hold one handful at a time.)

Once the alarm light goes
green again, you’re free to go.

Abandoned
Building

lHeld up by
the alarm puzzle, Nicole is late and has missed Nick. So what can
be extracted here without the presence of Nicole’s colleague?
Not much without some gear. Climb the stairs until your climb is called
on account of darkness above, head left (the apartment to the right
is inaccessible for now), enter the kitchen on the right at the end
of the hall and grab the booze from the open fridge. (Note the fallen-down
flap of calendar on the table beside the door. This’ll become
important in a bit.)

In the apartment across
the hall, enter the bathroom and grab the plug from the floor between
the grimy toilet and the grimy sink. Then back out of the scene and
head left into the bedroom. This is apparently where Nick was waiting.
Take the wire hairbrush (between the cup and the can on the table
in the foreground) and left-click on it in inventory to remove the
bristles. Leave the apartment and Nicole mentions she hasn’t
checked the place at the far end of the hall.

You can do so now. Apt.
No. 9 is on the right. Enter the second room to surprise (and be surprised
by) a drunk named Joel Tatum — an unlikely repository for a message
from Nick.

You just need to get him
something to drink to shake it loose. Unfortunately, the booze from
the fridge at the other end of the hall isn’t Joel’s particular
brand of poison, so you’re stuck with the time-honored adventure-game
business of making one liquid appear to be another.

There’s an empty
bottle of booze under the round table near Joel. Take it, get back
to the kitchen where you found the original bottle and zoom in on
the sink to the right of the fridge. Use the plug from the bathroom
in the drain, place the empty bottle in the sink and turn on the water.
The sink fills with something halfway between water and oil, the label
on the bottle quickly floats loose and you’ve only to slap it
on the bottle from the fridge to make it palatable to Joel.

In exchange, he turns over
an Origami bird . Flatten it out in inventory with a left-click to
read “James – mobile.” This’ll soon become self-explanatory.

When you try to send Nicole
out the door, she coaxes Joel to leave instead. On the empty sofa,
you’ll now find a blown fuse.

Perhaps you noticed the
fuse box just outside the apartment. Use the loose bristles on the
fuse and it’s as good as new. (Apparently, it was just as grimy
as everything else in here.) Now you can use it in the close-up of
the fuse box. The only working slot is the second from the right in
the bottom row.

This seems futile at first.
The fuse just blows again. (Remove it, use the bristles to doll it
up again and it’s ready for its next fuse box close-up.).

But think: Could said blowing
have had useful consequences somewhere else on the floor? Yup. Remember
that flap of calendar back in the kitchen where you found the booze?
It turns out this covered an exposed electric cord and the short from
the blown fuse has now burned away the calendar. Now you can return
to the kitchen and pull the exposed cord out of its plug. Who knew
that flattened Origami paper had the properties of a pair of insulated
rubber gloves?

You’ve just eliminated
the only drain on the fuse box. It stands to reason it should now
be able to power something else. Scoot back down the hall and plug
in the fuse. It doesn’t blow! And when you return to the stairs,
you’ll see light from above. Now you can climb to the next landing.

Here you’ll find
a “look more closely” zoom-in spot beside the radiator.
And here, through a gap in the floor, you’ll see a cell phone
— as per Nick’s note. Use the hairbrush handle on the gap to
prop up the board above and then grab the phone and get back to your
office.

Odds & ends:
Notice the raven on the ledge above the entrance? You can examine
the graffiti to the right of the entrance and get a description you’ll
also find in Akakor deep in the game. In the kitchen sink, note the
dripping faucet and the appearance of the odd cockroach.

The
Office (IV)

Upon entry,
Nicole reminds her listeners to drop off the statue body in Evidence
Deposit. When she does, she’ll notice the head is missing. That’s
bound to make you uneasy, and we’ll follow up in a moment.

But something’s changed
here. To date, Evidence Deposit was a place only to drop things off.
Now it’s become your own personal Lost & Found and you can
claim two items from evidence boxes: agent James’s ID card (from
the box of his belongings) and the scissors (from the box of “tailor’s
supplies”).

OK — the missing statue
head. See Ruth. Turns out it was taken off to be checked for prints
and should be back on Day 3. Regrettably, the only prints were Nicole’s
own. She handled it without gloves. (Of course, since Nicole hasn’t
been permitted to take latex gloves until this point in the game,
it’s not really Nicole’s fault.)

In any case, you can go
get gloves now. They’re on the left side of the right middle
shelf of the supply closet. And in fact you can take them without
first going through the Evidence Deposit/Ruth sequence, which is really
just an elaborate prompt rather than an authentic reproach.

The funny thing is, you
never have to use them.

While you’re up there,
you can take all the other gear you have been denied to date: a cell
phone battery from the box on the second shelf from the top on the
closet’s left side; a bottle of luminol from the middle shelf
to the right; a plastic bag from the middle shelf to the left; and
a lamp (which works with the luminol) from the same shelf as the plastic
bag.

And that brings us to your
new, broken toy: James’s cell. Right-clicks on it in inventory
will establish that, though the battery was destroyed in the shooting,
the data stored in the phone might still be recoverable. It needs
a new battery and you just grabbed one from the supply closet.

But try to use the new
battery on the cell in inventory and Nicole talks to you like you’re
an idiot. This combined item needs to be handled differently than
earlier ones: Zoom in on your desk and place the cell and battery
on the lower-left corner.

Now you’ll need wires
to connect them.

Did you notice the rafters
near the top of the stairs? As mentioned, the rehabbed building is
a work-in-progress and there’s a ladder here and some tangled
cables hanging down. Push the ladder to the right and you can reach
them. Use the scissors to snip away the blue and red wires closest
to the top of the ladder, descend again, push the ladder back to the
left (so you can pass) and, at your desk, use the wires on the battery.
The phone comes to life. It’s asking for a PIN code.

Where could it aside from
James’s ID card? Alas, it’s visibly tarnished and unreadable
in this form. You need to clean it up. To do that, we’ll visit
a new room: the laboratory.

Use the rightmost door
upstairs. On the rolling cart just left of the door is a bunch of
swabs. Take them, left-click on them in inventory to select one and
use it on the blackened ID card. Then simply right-click on the card
in inventory to collect the PIN number: 8673. Plug this in via the
phone, push the large central button and you have access to James’s
files. Click on the phone’s screen to download them to Nicole’s
desktop PC.

The phone gives up the
ghost in the process, but you’ll wind up with one fuzzy photo
on your screen. Click on the photo to clear it up and prompt Nicole
to sum up the new data: This is a thug named Huaquero. James (who
had a last name: Scott) had just started watching him when he was
killed. That’s just become your job. Descend to your car and
head for “thugs’s hideout.”

Thug’s
Hideout

The building’s
formal entrance (and your eventual exit) are both down and to the
left in the “building facade.” Naturally, this route is
unavailable to you. Instead, enter the intervening alley and move
toward the pick-up truck. You’ll need this vehicle to scale
the building … but not from this position.

You’ll see a crowbar
under the truck’s left rear wheel. Oddly enough, this appears
to be bracing the truck in position. (You can’t move the truck
with the bar in place.)

Take the crowbar, hop into
the cab and release the parking break. The pick up rolls a bit down
the alley before coming to a halt. Get out again and use the crowbar
on the fire-escape ladder above the truck. Nicole automatically climbs
on the hood, pulls the ladder down onto the truck’s bed and
climbs to the first landing.

Now you want to manipulate
the bad guys into giving you access. Zoom in on the air conditioner
here and use crowbar on the fan blades. The game cuts briefly to a
hefty-looking fellow opening the window just to the left. (How is
it he doesn’t see Nicole lurking on the fire escape?) Click
on the open window to listen to the thugs’ chatter. They’re
looking for a missing key, are aware of your presence outside, are
working with items (“old junk”) that has a value that
isn’t intuitive, have a knife stored in a drawer and are about
to make their exit.

Once they fall silent,
a second click on the open window gives you a view of the interior.
Click on it one more time to step inside.

You don’t have freedom
of movement here. One of the two thugs can be seen through the doorway
to the right. Nicole can’t move to any location where he could
see her and must stay in the area with the shadowed floor along the
far side of the room. Within this limit, she must distract the thug
to progress.

It’s slightly tricky:
You’ll need to call up your PDA and use its camera function.
Interestingly, it’s already focused on the bag over on the sofa
beside the door — but to no clear purpose. From the two positions
nearest the window, the bag appears to be just a bag.

But there does seem to
be something printed on a tag at its left end. If you could get closer,
the camera might pick it up.

Move to a position between
the cardboard boxes closest to the door and use your camera there.
You’ll now see three sets of three numbers on the tag. (You’ll
only get a quick glimpse of the numbers in the camera function, so
switch over to the picture function just below it on the PDA’s
desktop to study the shot you just snapped at your leisure.)

It’s another random
puzzle. The numbers on the tag will always be different. But they’ll
always have nine digits and always include a “555” at
the bottom.

This should ring a bell
with you — literally. Have you noticed that all the cell phone numbers
in the game begin with “555” and have nine digits? This
a cell phone number viewed in reverse-image. Read it upside-down so
the 555 part comes first. (For example, “506199555” works
out to “555661905.”)

You’ll have to dial
this manually. A cell rings in the distance, you’ll hear the
thug’s departing footsteps and Nicole can exit the PDA and move
safely into the next room … where there is no sign of a dagger,
key or anything else! This seems to be the extent of the apartment.
What are you missing?

There’s a secret
room, and it’s not artfully hidden. You just have to open the
wardrobe to the right of the door, zoom in on the false back and step
into a dingy little parlor. Your game is then saved automatically
— a sign Nicole is at risk for her life.

Try to take the ritual
dagger from the second drawer of the dresser to the right and instantly
get discovered by the thugs. (Note that Nicole can first do some forensics
work on the dagger at this time — using luminol and then the lamp
to detect blood — or wait until later. If you do it now, you won’t
have to repeat it later.) You’ll hear a faint thump and find
Nicole tied to a chair in the room with the wardrobe.