Annotated 39-24
Let’s address a minor issue before moving on to the bigger stuff. Johanna von Karajan noted that ABC 27 was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but we’d previously given Kaye’s address as being in Casper, Wyoming. You can call us out for that or assume Sepia World’s ever so slightly different in a few details beyond the existence of Hurricane Studios. Your choice!
Now: how believable is this? That JJ makes this his plan, and that it works?
I think there are two important qualifiers here. A good deal of this plan had to be improvised, and I don’t think the plan “works” so much as it “holds together long enough for JJ to get out of range.” He went to Kaye’s planning to murder her, but he didn’t anticipate that she’d be ordering pizza, any more than he expected her to be on call with every other person of interest in his sights. Intercepting the pizza guy and finding him both easily intimidated and easily bribed, JJ decided he’d be more useful alive. That delivery guy doesn’t seem likely to hold up under police interrogation very long, and forensic investigation will confirm the prints and DNA match a lot of other unsolved cases. But none of that is going to happen before JJ is in the wind again.
Long before we first saw him, JJ got used to living in the wind, to a life that depended on never being even detained by officers, to endless disposable false identities, to being an invisible man. (The highly recognizable look he has now is probably not the first such look he’s cultivated.) His high-paying, well-connected clients give him the resources to do this, outside of the occasional crime scene report. And considering the level of clientele he seeks, those crime scene reports are basically free advertising.
Let’s just put it this way… He’s a pro. :D
And the sad truth is that people coming after him are just people as well, they have a whole lot other things to do as well as looking for him and there’s probably still a whole bunch of paperwork to be done before you can issue a nation-wide manhunt to a person who you kinda know what he looks like and is maybe even a man to begin with. They did have a mustache those three times and beard at least once. Though there was that one time they were in a dress… That kinda threw a lot of people off, but I think they are the same person…
I know it’s kinda “eek and oh, my” to root for the villain these days (again), but JJ was pretty much one of my favourite characters in this whole story. :D
Ignoring, just for the moment, that the people who most immediately want him caught have a literal video of him threatening them, mocking the police, and declaring that this isn’t the first snuff film he’s been on–a slight difference from “you kinda know what he looks like and is maybe even a man.”
He can shave his face, hell, shave his entire body, get a nose job, and go around wearing thicker glasses than I do.
His most distinctive physical characteristic isn’t one that can be disguised, and everyone describing him will still say before anything less extreme than “he attacked me”: he’s frickin’ eight feet tall.
That video is probably something he should worry about — but didn’t consider until it as happening.
We don’t know (or at least: he doesn’t) whether the gamers got their nerves together fast enough to start recording their conversation.
(although, if they used Skype, there’s a good chance that Microsoft has a backup copy, and in this case, they might even be willing to supply it, given they want something from Hurricane, too)
His physique alone, though, is not going to identify him. Go to any serious gym, and you will meet several people who would fit the description. Worse: In order to identify him, you need to find him first, and he’s really good at not being found.
LOL, that’s my neck of the woods. It was funny seeing a somewhat accurate reference to my local area in a webcomic (although the real “Beech St” is just a ticky-tacky development out in the ‘burbs; no apartment complexes.)
Guarantee you that JJ would easily get away with this one. Harrisburg is batting <50% on their murder cases. He'd have to ice someone in front of multiple cops, a camera, and a district attorney to get caught…and could probably still just bribe all of 'em.