The Parting Shot

The Parting Shot is a case featured in Criminal Case as the one-hundred twenty-sixth case of the game. It is the eleventh case of the game's World Edition (Season 3) and also the fifth case to take place in the Sahara Region.

Plot
Ingrid Bjorn, Jack Archer, and the player made it clear in The Bureau Headquarters in Dubai that the assassin who killed Chief Ripley, known as The Sword, must be stopped before they struck again. Ingrid also made it clear that this task was not just about the late chief’s murder anymore, but it was also about The Sword’s ties to SOMBRA, the global organization who had their goals of dominating the world.

Ingrid told Jack and the player, who would be disguised as rebel leaders, that their mission in Dubai was to purchase a large quantity of weapons from an arms dealer named Seamus Cummings, whom they would meet at Dubai’s famous rooftop golf course, to attract the attention of The Sword.

Jack was eager to meet Mr. Cummings in disguise when the team had, in fact, found the arms dealer dead. With the mission failing to initiate, the team’s goal was to find Mr. Cumming’s killer. After hours of intense investigating, catfights, and tigers, they unearthed the killer to be the victim’s wife, Fiona Cummings.

Jack assumed Fiona killed her husband because he was cheating on her with popstar Vanna Alabama. Fiona kept denying her actions of killing her husband until Jack pulled the trigger with the evidence of her using her husband’s own gun to kill him and finding her earring back at the same place the weapon was. Fiona finally confessed to the murder, but claimed she did it because her husband had killed their son, Damien Cummings. Fiona explained that she was told that the murder had been a drive-by at the wrong place and the wrong time. She had worked hard to rebuild her life due to how much the event destroyed her, but she found out the event was a lie a few months before. Fiona confessed that her son had shot himself with Seamus’s gun and the latter covered it up. Jack was understanding of her situation, but told her that it did not justify murder and sent her to trial.

Judge Adaku had actually asked Fiona how the golf course was when she murdered her husband rather than what she thought about her actions. Fiona was shocked when he asked her that question and asked him if he had no soul because of what she had been through. The judge reminded her of the saying “you live by the fire, you die by the fire,” and he sentenced her to 10 years in prison.

Just as Jack was about to focus on finding more information on The Sword, Ingrid rushed into headquarters to report that Andrew Stern, U.S. Ambassador Jessica Stern’s son, had been kidnapped. Because it was a time-sensitive issue, Ingrid enlisted the help of Carmen Martinez.

Carmen and the player started things off by asking Jessica what had happened. Andrew had gone to the bathroom in the underwater bar, but he was taking a long time; his mother went to check on him only to find him gone. Jessica went on to explain that Andrew took his teddy bear everywhere with him, but then realized that she had her staff install a tracking device in it, and she could track it using her phone. However, Jessica panicked when she could not find her phone, so the team, along with Jack, did not hesitate to go back to the underwater bar to look for it.

Carmen, Jack, and the player could not find Jessica’s phone in the bar, but they found a stained note from The Sword addressed to the Bureau as well as bar napkins with fibers. Firstly, the player collected some of the fibers and sent it to Lars Douglas, who confirmed that they were wood wool, which was used for stuffing in teddy bears. Carmen thought that the kidnapper had taken the bear as well to look for the tracking device, but Lars confirmed that Andrew still had the bear with him and the tracking device was still inside it. Carmen was prompted to find Jessica’s phone, so the team went to the rooftop golf course where they found it. They unlocked it only to find that Andrew and the bear were in the middle of the gulf instead of Dubai.

Meanwhile, the team also collected some of the substance on it and analyzed it further to discover that Andrew had cried on the note, confirming that The Sword had kidnapped Andrew. Jack did not hesitate to call Jonah Karam for help. Unfortunately for the team, Jonah explained that The Sword had the same modus operandi for every kidnapping: they would kidnap the target and then ship them out of the country. Jonah then explained that one of The Sword’s hideouts was in the Dubai slums and recommended the player to take someone with them, so Jack suggested they take Asal Hawaa to go with them.

Jack, Asal, and the player went to the slums together to find a mousetrap, in which there was an orange feather – the same feather that was found on the darts that had killed Chief Ripley in Europe. The team discovered a faded message on the trap, and it was revealed: “There’s nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” The player decided to ask Armand Dupont for more information, and he explained that the quote was found in the Sherlock Holmes books. The author of the books wrote the quote for Sherlock to say that which is the most obvious is also the most misleading. It took teamwork from the four people that The Sword had laid out all the events that had happened since the player’s first visit in Morocco to lead The Bureau into a trap.

With everything in mind, the goal of The Bureau now was to find and rescue Andrew. Just when they were about to gear up, Jessica rushed into headquarters to report that Andrew and his bear had moved and were now in Iraq.

Victim

 * Seamus Cummings (found shot in the chest)

Murder Weapon

 * Pistol

Killer

 * Fiona Cummings

Killer's Profile

 * The killer skis.
 * The killer drinks coffee.
 * The killer wears oud oil.
 * The killer has brown eyes.
 * The killer wears earrings.

Trivia

 * While one task in Crossing the Desert required one star to talk to Jonah Karam, he was not accused of any wrongdoing during the murder investigation, and him showing up on the suspect list during Crossing the Desert should be considered incidental.