02 – Murder By Proxy
Series: Roy Kaplan
Season: Out of Sight
Release Date: January 11, 2025
Episode Summary: A ghost comes to Kaplan with an interesting request–to prove the friend who murdered him is actually innocent. Kaplan investigates the case of a man with a robot body and a guilty conscience, and learns a little bit more about the dirt behind the minds who made cybernetics a reality.
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
ORIGINAL SCRIPT: Jesse Peng
EDITING and PRODUCTION: Jesse Peng
COVER ART: Jesse Peng
MUSIC: Beacon
VOICE CAST:
KAPLAN: Jesse Peng
WES: Caleb Jensen
SALMAN: Mattswolf
CREEK: JRoyalVA
BURGESS: Christopher Michael
FLETCHER: Mystic Waterz
ELEVATOR: Rebecca Clifford
A special thank you to our $10/month subscriber, Jennifer Ford :)
01 – Bomber Blackout | Roy Kaplan Home | Out of Sight Home | 03 – Bait and Stitch
OUT OF SIGHT: MURDER BY PROXY
INTRO: In this city, there’s trouble around every corner, but trouble is his business–it’s Roy Kaplan, Private Investigator!
(INTRO THEME.)
KAPLAN: (V.O.) Kaplan speaking. Do you ever talk to dead people? I don’t recommend it–they’re not great conversationalists, even when they do talk back. Sure, interviewing ghosts is dead useful when it’s your job to find out how people die, but sometimes I think I’d be better off without it, because for every time talking to a ghost helps, I get three more coming to me for help settling their last affairs. Most of the things people ask me for are pretty easy, but sometimes, there’s the really hard ones. You know. The murder cases.
(TYPING SOUNDS.)
KAPLAN: Okay, that looks good. That should leave twenty credits for the plumbing, fifteen credits to get my jacket fixed, six credits for a new tool set…
WES: Roy! I need your help!
KAPLAN: …and thirty-two left over for food for the month. Hello, Wes. Good morning to you, too. Why are you bursting into my room and shouting? (PAUSE) And…you’ve brought a guest.
WES: This is Salman.
SALMAN: How do you do.
KAPLAN: Yeah, and he’s dead, I see. Why are you bringing dead people into my apartment?
WES: Our apartment.
KAPLAN: You’re a ghost! You don’t even pay rent! Wes, I thought we talked about the dead people thing.
SALMAN: I was murdered last night. Wes said you could help.
KAPLAN: Oh, of course they did. Wes loves hearing about murder. It’s probably the only entertainment they get outside of watching awful cinema. When you’re however many hundred years old and refuse to pass on, you’ve got to get your jollies where you can.
WES: I think you should hear him out. It’s a pretty interesting story.
KAPLAN: It’s always an interesting story with you. (PAUSE) Whatever, you’re here already. So you got murdered last night. Tell me about it.
SALMAN: Thank you. Last night, my best friend killed me.
KAPLAN: Woah, okay. If you want me to go avenge you or something, that’s not happening. I might be willing to skirt the law in a lot of things, but that’s definitely crossing the line.
SALMAN: Oh, no, that’s not what I wanted at all. You see, I don’t believe Marius actually killed me.
KAPLAN: Uh, okay. How did your friend kill or not kill you?
SALMAN: I believe he crushed my skull with his fist. It was extremely unpleasant.
KAPLAN: (BEAT) Salman, dear, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that’s not a ‘maybe’ murder. That is a ‘yes or no’ murder, and so far I’m hearing an emphatic ‘yes’.
SALMAN: Well, you see, he did it, but I have reason to believe he was compromised.
KAPLAN: Sure, sure. You, uh, gonna explain that?
SALMAN: Of course. You see, last night, Marius hosted a dinner for us and several of our business collaborators. Things were going well, until Marius said some rather…inflammatory things, and we left to argue about it in private.
KAPLAN: Okay. And what were you arguing about, if you don’t mind me asking?
SALMAN: I’m not even sure. It was something to do with the Neuraline cybernetics uplink system–we only recently released the new model–
KAPLAN: Woah, woah, woah, hold up a second. You’re the Neuraline guys? You mean your friend Marius who killed you is Marius Burgess, the guy who wrote all those cybernetics papers?
SALMAN: Ah, you’ve heard of us! Yes, that’s correct, though Marius does much more than ‘write all those papers’.
KAPLAN: Huh. Never pegged him as a murder-his-own-best-friend type. So you guys got into a fight, then what?
SALMAN: Marius was unusually aggressive, shouting and screaming, until something came to a head and he, well. Killed me.
KAPLAN: With his fist?
SALMAN: Yes.
KAPLAN: Strong guy, is he?
SALMAN: Yes, but no. You see, Marius uses a robotic surrogate body. He’s used it so long now that it’s simply easier for him to use his surrogate full-time. His surrogate is augmented for the technical work he does with cybernetics, so the grip strength is extremely strong. It was not…a pleasant way to die.
KAPLAN: I bet not. Look, Salman, I’m real sorry that happened to you. That’s awful. But I don’t really see where you think I can help, unless you want me to call homicide and report Marius.
SALMAN: I don’t think it was Marius who killed me, Mr. Kaplan. That was Marius’s body, but I don’t think it was Marius controlling it. Someone hacked Marius’s surrogate and murdered me with it.
(MUSIC TRANSITION.)
KAPLAN: (V.O.) I’ll be honest. I didn’t think Salman’s theory held much water. Robot surrogates weren’t my area of expertise, but those things have the most strongly secured data streams in the world, because nobody wants a body that can be taken over by some mysterious outside hacker. That’s horror story stuff all on its own. I didn’t blame Salman for thinking it–he’d just been killed by his best friend, after all, so of course he’d want to find any possible way it wasn’t what it looked like. Since I had no prior commitments and Salman was really upset about the matter, the least I could do was set him straight. He deserved to know if his best friend had really meant to kill him, so I went to the source: Burgess himself.
(FOOTSTEPS.)
KAPLAN: (V.O.) Burgess lived in a house pretty close to the medical districts that was not too big but not anything to sneeze at, either. Honestly, with the money the guy had, I would have expected him to spring for something bigger, but I guess when you spend all your time at the laboratory doing research, home life just isn’t a priority. That wasn’t my business. I just wanted to know if this was really a guy who would knock off their best friend over a heated argument.
(INTERCOM BUZZ. CLICK.)
BURGESS: (FILTER) Hello?
KAPLAN: I’m here to speak to Mr. Burgess, if he’s available.
BURGESS: (FILTER) Um, yes. Speaking.
KAPLAN: I, uh, don’t really have a delicate way to put this. I heard about what happened with you and your friend Salman last night and uh–
(GLASS BREAKING THROUGH THE INTERCOM.)
KAPLAN: Um. Mr. Burgess? Everything okay?
BURGESS: (FILTER) I think you should come in.
(INTERCOM TURNS OFF. ROBOT PNEUMATIC SOUNDS APPROACHING. DOOR OPENS.)
KAPLAN: (V.O.) I’d never met someone who used a surrogate body before, so I hadn’t known what to expect, but this was…a little underwhelming. Marius Burgess–or rather his robot body–was about 5’6″ in the shape of a typical human and made of what looked like standard steel alloys with some white plastic casing to protect all the computing hardware. In lieu of a face was a digital screen, which displayed his synthesized speech in real time. He wasn’t wearing any clothes, but when you’re a robot, I guess that’s socially acceptable.
BURGESS: Hello. Come in, Mister…
KAPLAN: Kaplan. Roy Kaplan.
BURGESS: Yes, Mr. Kaplan. Please come in.
(KAPLAN ENTERS. DOOR CLOSES.)
BURGESS: I’m sorry it’s such a mess in here. I was entertaining guests last night and didn’t have the time to clean up afterwards.
KAPLAN: It’s no problem. Everyone gets that way sometimes, right?
BURGESS: Maybe so. You mentioned last night. What did you want to ask?
KAPLAN: Did you kill Salman?
BURGESS: …Yes. I did. I suppose you’re here to arrest me.
KAPLAN: What? Do I look like a badge to you?
BURGESS: I don’t know. You showed up, asking about the murder I committed last night. What else could you be here for? Go ahead, arrest me. I deserve it! Salman was the best person I’ve ever known and I murdered him!
KAPLAN: (trying to interrupt) Burgess.
BURGESS: (cont.) I crushed his skull in my hands and he bled out in my back garden, what more do you want? I can show you where it happened! I can show you the body! Just please, please do something so this never happens again!
KAPLAN: Burgess! Calm down! Just…sit down and relax for a second, okay? I’m not here to arrest you and you’re not going to kill anybody, okay?
BURGESS: Okay. Okay.
(BURGESS SITS DOWN.)
KAPLAN: There. You feel better?
BURGESS: I don’t know.
KAPLAN: All right. That’s fair. Look. I’m not here to arrest you. I’m just trying to get your side of the story. I don’t know if anyone else knows about what happened last night. The only reason I know–and there’s really no way to put this that won’t make me sound nuts–is that, this morning, Salman’s ghost showed up at my apartment and asked me to look into it.
BURGESS: Salman’s…ghost?
KAPLAN: Yeah. I talk to ghosts sometimes. It’s a thing that happens.
BURGESS: Even if you did talk to…ghosts, why would Salman go to you? I’ve never even heard of you before.
KAPLAN: Uh, my roommate gave him a referral. It’s not important. I’m a private investigator, okay? I swear I know what I’m doing. The point is, Salman doesn’t believe you would do what you did, so he thinks your body was somehow hacked and you were forced to kill him.
BURGESS: That’s…not possible. The neural link that connects my brain to this body is quantum encrypted–it’s impossible to intercept any of the signals without altering them, and this body only accepts properly encrypted signals.
KAPLAN: I see. I’ve got to admit, this looks pretty bad.
BURGESS: I committed the murder, Mr. Kaplan. I appreciate you trying to tell me otherwise, but it’s hopeless. You can’t change the truth. I was lucid the entire time–I was angry, angrier than I ever remember feeling before, and I just…did it. I still can’t believe I’d ever do such a thing, but I did it.
KAPLAN: Then you and Salman are on the same page. Look, I don’t know if I believe you got hacked, but I promised Salman I’d check. If it turns out you really did murder him, I will gladly call Homicide and have them book you. But let’s not jump the gun. We’ll look at this thoroughly. Salman can’t get any more dead than he already is.
BURGESS: You’re wasting your time, Mr. Kaplan.
KAPLAN: Maybe. But if there’s any chance you aren’t the one who committed the murder, don’t you want to know for sure?
BURGESS: I’m already sure. I did it.
KAPLAN: Okay, well, I can’t get you arrested until I have proof nobody else tampered with things. So would you mind if I looked around?
BURGESS: If you must.
(MUSIC TRANSITION.)
KAPLAN: (V.O.) Burgess didn’t think there was a lot of point to letting me look around. I didn’t either, but I had made Salman a promise and I wasn’t the kind of guy to leave a job unfinished. Burgess offered again to show me the scene of the crime, which I gratefully accepted–we just had different opinions on where, exactly, that was.
BURGESS: I still don’t see why you want to see my life support room so much. There’s hardly anything there.
KAPLAN: Your body’s in there, isn’t it? That’s not nothing.
(FOOTSTEPS, THEN STOP.)
KAPLAN: This is it? Just a room in the back of your house?
BURGESS: Where else would I put my body?
KAPLAN: Huh. I guess I never really thought about it.
(KEYPAD BEEPS. LOCK SYSTEM SUCCESS. DOOR HANDLE JAMS.)
BURGESS: One second. The door seems to be stuck.
KAPLAN: I’m pretty good with locks. Do you want me to take a look?
BURGESS: Go ahead.
(KEYPAD BEEPS, LOCK FORCED OPEN.)
KAPLAN: There we go. Some of the inside pins were jammed. Are you sure nobody’s been here except you?
BURGESS: I manage my own life support. The only person I let in without supervision is my neuro technician, and even he doesn’t have a key.
KAPLAN: Sure, sure. That’s good to know.
BURGESS: Here, come on in. Don’t touch anything.
(DOOR OPENS. ENTER ROOM. LOW MACHINE NOISE.)
KAPLAN: (V.O.) Burgess’s life support room was just that–a clean room full of life support equipment of all kinds to keep his body as healthy as he possibly could without personally taking it for a drive every so often. The body itself was floating in an upright tank, with a massive cable plugged directly into the back of his neck. Other lines were attached for oxygen, nutrition, waste removal, and IV access. Running a body without actually using it looked like a lot of work.
KAPLAN: Is the tank really necessary? I figured you could just use a bed or a chair or something.
BURGESS: The tank regulates temperature and prevents pressure sores. It works better than a bed for long-term use.
KAPLAN: Ah. That makes sense. When’s the last time you took your body out of the tank?
BURGESS: That would have been about two months ago. My neural port needed maintenance, so my technician came in to work on it.
KAPLAN: I see. Out of curiosity, who is your technician?
BURGESS: He’s a friend of mine, Oskar Creek. He contributed a lot to our cybernetics research. His designs helped make this surrogate body possible.
KAPLAN: Really? I don’t think I’ve heard of him.
BURGESS: He doesn’t like to make public appearances.
KAPLAN: I guess fame doesn’t suit everyone.
(SLOW FOOTSTEPS.)
KAPLAN: So walk me through the process here. How does using a surrogate body work?
BURGESS: Well, conceptually it’s straightforward. My neural port intercepts nerve signals traveling to and from my brain. The signals are used to control this robot body, while sensory data from this surrogate are transferred back into nerve signals and sent to my brain.
KAPLAN: Sounds simple enough.
BURGESS: Yes, simple except for the trillions of calculations every second. It’s really no surprise cybernetics haven’t become viable until recently.
KAPLAN: Good to know. And I see you’ve got some medicine pumps here. Does using a surrogate need a lot of medication?
BURGESS: Some, but not as much as you would think. Most of these are my personal medications. I’ve had some health issues for a while now. I don’t use my body much because of them, but I still need to take care of it. Heart attacks and seizures can kill me no matter what body I’m in.
(KAPLAN PEEKS INTO A WASTE BIN.)
KAPLAN: Makes sense. And, uh, do you have issues with a slow heartbeat by any chance?
BURGESS: No, I don’t. Why do you ask?
KAPLAN: I see some used epinephrine in your trash.
BURGESS: That must be old. I keep epinephrine for emergencies, but I haven’t had to use any in years.
KAPLAN: Sure, sure. Well, this has all been very informative, but I think I’ve seen enough.
BURGESS: So you agree there’s been no tampering, right? There should be more than enough proof to turn me in.
KAPLAN: Actually, I’m gonna ask you to wait a little longer on that. Do you have any kind of security on this house?
BURGESS: I have personal security cameras outside.
KAPLAN: Brilliant. Do me a favor, Mr. Burgess, and check the footage from last night. I want to know who showed up and left when. Can you do that for me?
BURGESS: I don’t see the point, but if you really think it’ll help.
KAPLAN: Don’t worry, it will! I need to talk to some people. I’ll get back to you soon.
(MUSIC TRANSITION.)
KAPLAN: (V.O.) It didn’t take a detective to tell something wasn’t right about the whole situation. I didn’t know what had happened between Salman and Burgess, but it was starting to look more than a little rotten, and I had to figure out what it was before Burgess got tired of my crap and turned himself in for a murder he might not have done.
ELEVATOR: (DIGITAL) Fourth floor.
(ELEVATOR DING. DOOR CLOSES.)
KAPLAN: (V.O.) I knew a lot about breaking into things, but I didn’t know a lot about robot surrogates, so it was time to call in an expert. I looked up Burgess’s technician, Oskar Creek. A quick check through the city directory told me Creek had stopped working for Neuraline a long time ago. These days, he worked for a company developing biometric security systems. I had run into their products back in my burglar days. They made good vaults–just not good enough to keep out someone of my unique talents. It was a bit hard to get ahold of Creek, but once I mentioned Burgess, he agreed to take some time out to talk.
CREEK: Mr. Kaplan, I assume?
KAPLAN: That’s me. Thanks for meeting on short notice. I know you’re a busy man.
CREEK: You said it was urgent, wasn’t it? Now what’s this about Marius?
KAPLAN: I’m looking into an incident for him, and he mentioned you were his friend and technician.
CREEK: He said that about me?
KAPLAN: Are you…not?
CREEK: I’m his technician, sure, but we haven’t spent much time together outside of that in years. Not since he and Salman took off with Neuraline.
KAPLAN: I see. When’s the last time you saw Burgess?
CREEK: Last night. He invited me to his fancy dinner. The food was fine, but I hate those social things, so I left early. What, did something happen?
KAPLAN: He got into an argument with Salman. Things got pretty heated after that, so I’m trying to figure out what happened.
CREEK: Did they? That must have happened after I left. It’s not all that surprising. Salman and Marius got into fights all the time.
KAPLAN: Really?
CREEK: Yeah. The three of us made Neuraline together when we were graduate students, though you’d never guess that these days. Salman was always butting heads with us over how to run the company. He was the PR guy, you know? He knew how to do the business and money stuff, Marius and I just did the science. The fighting only got worse after Neuraline hit it big.
KAPLAN: Is that why you left?
CREEK: Sure was. I’m great with cybernetics, don’t get me wrong, but nobody wants to get involved when Salman and Marius start fighting about it. I’m not surprised things got messy.
KAPLAN: Well, I was investigating the possibility that someone influenced Burgess or hacked his body. Since you’re his technician, do you think that’s possible?
CREEK: What? Marius’s surrogate is quantum encrypted. That’s impossible to break (without detection).
KAPLAN: (INTERRUPTING) Without changing the data. Burgess told me that already.
CREEK: Then you already know that’s not possible.
KAPLAN: Creek. You work security. I did a lot of security work myself, some years back.
CREEK: Did you?
KAPLAN: There’s a joke we used to tell sometimes, about the guy who was so scared of getting robbed he put unbreakable locks on all his doors and windows. When thieves rolled up to burgle his house, they just broke through the wall instead.
CREEK: I haven’t heard that one.
KAPLAN: We probably did different kinds of security work. My point is, if the quantum encryption is unbreakable, then nobody’s going to break in that way. They would do something to his surrogate or to his neural port. Would that be possible?
CREEK: The neural port? I doubt it. There’s hardly anyone alive who knows enough about neural encoding to mess with that. But the surrogate? Maybe. It’s just a machine taking in signals. You could probably tamper with that to remote control it, but you’d think Marius would notice something like that.
KAPLAN: So you can’t think of anyone who might have compromised Burgess?
CREEK: No. I don’t think anyone would do that. The equipment is too specialized.
KAPLAN: Great. Well, that’s all I wanted to ask. I’ll let you get back to work.
CREEK: I wish you the best of luck. I’m sorry to say it, but I think you’re wasting your time, Mr. Kaplan.
KAPLAN: I wouldn’t be so sure. See you around, Creek.
(MUSIC TRANSITION.)
KAPLAN: (V.O.) Creek seemed like an okay guy. A bit of a misanthrope, but some people were like that. He seemed sharp–he’d have to be, if he was one of the founding members of Neuraline. I just didn’t get how a guy who helped pioneer cybernetics in the leading cybernetics company would leave and become, of all things, a researcher in a relatively small security company like the one he was at now. So I took a detour to look into his background a little more. Call me nosy, but it’s my job to look into people’s personal business.
(PARK AMBIANCE. NOTEBOOK PAGE TURN.)
KAPLAN: Hmm.
SALMAN: Mr. Kaplan!
(KAPLAN DROPS HIS NOTEBOOK AND PENCIL.)
KAPLAN: (Startled) Ah! Salman! Don’t sneak up on me like that!
SALMAN: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Why are you out here in the park? I thought you were investigating my murder.
KAPLAN: Do you not see the notebook in my hand? I’m working on it.
SALMAN: Is it going well?
KAPLAN: Salman, dear, it’s only been four hours since you asked me to investigate this. You have to give these things a little time. But no, if you must know, it’s not going great. Burgess thinks he did it, Creek thinks Burgess did it, and I’m sure all the evidence will show Burgess did it. You’re pretty much the only person who thinks Burgess didn’t do it, and unfortunately ghost testimony doesn’t hold up in court.
SALMAN: What about you? What do you think?
KAPLAN: I’m still on the fence. This whole situation doesn’t feel right, but if Burgess didn’t do it, someone else did…and I don’t have any other suspects. All I know is whoever murdered you had to have known how Burgess’s body works, and about the dinner last night.
SALMAN: Well, that narrows down the suspects, doesn’t it? It was a private event, just for us and our collaborators, though I’d hate to think any of them would do this to us…
KAPLAN: No. Nobody at that dinner could have made him murder you. Have you ever tried remote controlling a robot? Burgess grabbed you and crushed your skull. That’s precise–you can’t do that blind, and the two of you left the room to have your argument. The only one with enough information to kill you that way would be Burgess himself or someone using his cameras.
SALMAN: So you think it’s hopeless? Marius really did kill me in a fit of rage?
KAPLAN: I didn’t say that. I think there’s something I’m missing, still. (PAUSE.) You know Creek, don’t you?
SALMAN: Oskar? Yes, of course.
KAPLAN: I talked to him. He said he was one of the founders of Neuraline. Is that true?
SALMAN: Yes. He was doing research in capturing nerve signals and the calculations for converting between biological and mechanical signaling. Marius and I did robotics but didn’t know that much about biology, so we approached him about putting our work together to make proper cybernetics.
KAPLAN: It sounds like he’s the one who put the cybernetic in your cybernetics.
SALMAN: I wouldn’t go that far, but his work was absolutely critical to our development.
KAPLAN: If he’s so important, why didn’t I ever hear about him until today? When I look up anything about cybernetics, it’s all about you or Burgess. Creek’s name barely shows up.
SALMAN: Oskar hated public functions. Marius and I, we spent years on demos and working with medical professionals and people who might benefit from cybernetic prostheses or remote control devices–trying to figure out how to actually make cybernetics something people could use. Naturally, people got to know our names, but not Oskar’s.
KAPLAN: Creek doesn’t even work cybernetics anymore. He’s doing biometrics security. Why the switch?
SALMAN: Oh, that isn’t a switch. He’s always worked security. One of his biggest jobs was securing our cybernetics so they couldn’t be hacked or tampered with. I dare say nobody would use our products without it.
KAPLAN: …Interesting. He said you and him butted heads over how Neuraline was run. That’s why he left.
SALMAN: Did he say that? I suppose he might see it that way. He was a visionary, you know. He wanted to expand out of the city boundaries and across the land, like in the old days. Clean up the radiation and toxins and reclaim the earth, and he thought cybernetics could be used to get us out there.
KAPLAN: That’s quite the vision.
SALMAN: It is, isn’t it? The problem is, it’s not a vision that can sell–maybe some people want to go back out into the hazard zones, but we’ve got enough problems in the city. Cybernetics needed something we could use here and now, and that’s how we ended up in prosthetics and neural-linked devices. Oskar never liked it.
KAPLAN: And that’s when he split?
SALMAN: No, that was later, after Marius got…sick. Things were bad for a while, and Marius had to stop working completely. That’s when we picked up the surrogate project, because we were desperate for anything that might help. People had been trying for…I don’t even know. Over a century to transfer a consciousness to a robotic body. But the surrogates aren’t exactly that–Marius is still in his body, just controlling a different one. But the concept is similar. The people before us didn’t have the resources or the knowledge to make it work, but we did. It took us months, but Oskar got Marius transitioned and smoothed over the difficult patches, and Marius was able to get the medical treatments he needed while still continuing to live the way he wanted to. It was practically a miracle. Oskar thought it was the breakthrough we needed.
KAPLAN: I guess you didn’t think so.
SALMAN: Well, it’s been eight years and you still don’t see many people using surrogate bodies, do you? We’ve gotten some use out of it for hazard zone workers, and Marius probably wouldn’t be alive without it, but it’s a specialty thing, and we treated it like one. Oskar didn’t like that and we got into a horrible argument over it. In the end, he split off. I offered to give him compensation for everything he did for us, but he turned it down.
KAPLAN: Proud guy, huh? I know the type. So it’s safe to say you and him are not great friends.
SALMAN: No. Not anymore. Marius kept trying to reconcile over the years, but Oskar isn’t willing to meet him halfway. There’s nothing we can do about is.
KAPLAN: Definitely not now that you’re dead.
SALMAN: Yes, that does tend to put a damper on things.
(KAPLAN’S RINGTONE. PICKS UP.)
KAPLAN: One moment. Hello? Kaplan speaking.
BURGESS: (FILTER) I suppose you didn’t find anything useful.
KAPLAN: Burgess? What are you talking about? Did something happen?
BURGESS: (FILTER) The garda’s arrived outside–you called them, didn’t you? You found me guilty.
KAPLAN: What? No! I absolutely did not call the garda. Burgess, listen to me. Do not turn yourself in. Don’t let them in without a warrant.
BURGESS: (FILTER) Mr. Kaplan, I appreciate all your work, but you don’t have to do this. It’s over.
KAPLAN: It’s not over! It is not over! Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be there.
BURGESS: (FILTER) …All right. Fifteen minutes. I guess I can wait that much longer to turn myself in.
(END CALL.)
KAPLAN: Oh, this is bad.
SALMAN: What happened?
KAPLAN: Your murderer just showed his hand.
(MUSIC TRANSITION.)
KAPLAN: (V.O.) It took me twelve minutes to get to Burgess’s house, and sure enough, Inspector Fletcher’s homicide troupe was there. The Inspector herself was standing by the gates, looking very sour.
KAPLAN: (Out of breath) Inspector Fletcher…good afternoon.
FLETCHER: Kaplan. What do you want? Are you trying to get on my crime scene again? Because it’s not happening. We’re taking Burgess in.
KAPLAN: No. Burgess didn’t do it. He was framed.
FLETCHER: Framed? Kaplan, we found Salman Kravets’ body in Burgess’s back garden. There’s security footage of the two of them leaving together and Burgess coming back alone, with his hands covered in blood. It’s the most open-and-shut case I’ve ever seen.
KAPLAN: I know. I know what it looks like. Burgess’s body did the murder, but he’s not the one who did it. He was being controlled by someone else.
FLETCHER: What the hell are you on about? Is this more of your magic mumbo-jumbo?
KAPLAN: No, for once, this has absolutely nothing to do with my magic mumbo-jumbo. Burgess’s robot surrogate body was hacked.
FLETCHER: This is ridiculous.
(FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING.)
CREEK: Kaplan? Fancy seeing you here.
KAPLAN: Creek. I could say the same thing. Why are you here?
CREEK: The same reason you are: Salman’s murder. I can’t believe you’d try and help Marius escape punishment for such a horrible crime, so I did what you wouldn’t–I called the garda.
KAPLAN: Oh yeah, I’m sure you did.
CREEK: What’s that supposed to mean?
KAPLAN: This was all part of your plan, wasn’t it? Not just to get Salman killed, but to have Burgess arrested for it and have him think he murdered his best friend. Imagine your surprise when Burgess didn’t turn himself in. Of course you had to call in the garda yourself.
FLETCHER: Kaplan, what the hell are you talking about?
KAPLAN: Creek killed Salman.
CREEK: What–How dare you!
FLETCHER: Don’t be ridiculous. You think Creek, what, hacked Burgess’s surrogate and murdered Salman with it?
KAPLAN: Creek influenced Burgess and made him murder Salman.
CREEK: This is unbelievable, I’ve already told you–
FLETCHER: (Interrupting) Let Kaplan speak. How would Creek be able to do anything like that?
KAPLAN: Creek was at Burgess’s dinner last night–so he knew that Salman and Burgess would be together. Creek excused himself early, citing his dislike for social gatherings, then made his way up to Burgess’s life support room in secret. He tampered with the lock and gained access to Burgess’s body and cybernetic machinery. From there, he influenced Burgess into arguing with Salman. The two of them left the room, then Creek made Burgess kill Salman.
CREEK: Do you even hear yourself? Do you think I somehow have the power to mind control Marius just by being in the same room? You don’t know anything you’re talking about.
KAPLAN: No. You can’t mind control him. You can’t make him think what you want him to think, but you have access to his body. You can change how he feels. There was a used vial of epinephrine in his life support room–also known as adrenaline. You shot his body up with it to make him feel angry and stressed, then took control of his body to crush Salman’s skull. That’s how you made Burgess kill Salman and think he did it.
CREEK: That’s not possible! The encryption on Marius’s surrogate cannot be broken–any expert could tell you the same thing!
KAPLAN: But you didn’t break the encryption. You altered the data before it hit encryption, and you were able to do it because you did maintenance on Burgess’s neural port two months ago–maintenance where you were completely unsupervised in his life support room and could wire in anything you wanted.
CREEK: Do you think engineering is just putting little pieces of electronics together? What you’re proposing is ludicrously difficult. How would I possibly do all of this on my own?
KAPLAN: You’re the one who originally designed most of Burgess’s surrogate and his neural port. You’re also the one who designed almost all of Neuraline’s cybernetic security. You are the only person with the knowledge to make this murder possible!
CREEK: I can’t believe this. Inspector, please don’t tell me you’re listening to this lunatic. He’s clearly grasping for straws.
FLETCHER: I’ll make my own judgments. Fine, Kaplan, so you’ve established means and opportunity. What about the motive?
KAPLAN: Salman Kravets and Marius Burgess are the two biggest names in cybernetics development. Their work would have been impossible without Creek’s cybernetic research. Without him, Neuraline wouldn’t exist–and yet, hardly anyone has heard of Creek.
CREEK: How petty do you think I am? You think I’d murder someone just for being more famous than me?
KAPLAN: No. I think you’d murder someone for destroying your dreams. You wanted to use cybernetic devices to reclaim the hazard zones and expand out of the city, and when you successfully made Burgess’s surrogate, you thought you had finally made your vision a reality. But then Salman stopped it. He only used it as a specialty technology, for researchers and surveyors–hardly anyone at all. Neuraline was never going to live up to your vision, and you never forgave Salman or Marius for it.
CREEK: …that’s some research you did, Kaplan. Where did you even learn all of that?
KAPLAN: I have my sources. Am I close, Creek? Was Salman’s focus on normal civilian problems too compromising to your vision? Was that what pushed you over, that your robot surrogates would never see the use you wanted them to?
(CREEK PUNCHES KAPLAN.)
KAPLAN: Ah!
FLETCHER: Woah, enough of that, we’re not having that.
(FLETCHER DRAGS CREEK BACK FROM KAPLAN. STRUGGLING.)
CREEK: Don’t talk about things you don’t understand. Neuraline was built on the back of my work! Without me, they would be nothing! I never cared about the fame or the fortune–Salman and Marius could have all that, but my work was for a purpose, and they wasted it! I saved Marius’s life, and they didn’t even care! They used me–that’s all I ever was to them, a tool.
KAPLAN: Ugh. Yeah, I’m sure. So you killed Salman for it. I guess it didn’t matter if he was trying to help people–it wasn’t the way you wanted to do it, so he had to die.
CREEK: You can’t pin this on me. Everything you have is circumstantial.
KAPLAN: No, you’re not getting out of this one. Burgess has security cameras tracking anyone who leaves or enters his house. They’re going to find you didn’t leave when you said you did. Your fingerprints are probably on that epinephrine vial and maybe even on the lock to that door. And you brought the garda here? I didn’t even tell you Salman was dead. You can’t explain that away. Admit it, Creek, you’re cooked.
CREEK: You think you’re clever, don’t you, Kaplan?
KAPLAN: I have my moments. Are you going to give it up?
(CREEK BREAKS LOOSE AND RUNS.)
KAPLAN: Stop him, he’s getting away!
(CREEK GETS CHASED, TACKLED TO THE GROUND, AND HANDCUFFED.)
CREEK: (Strained) You–urgh–You can’t do this to me!
FLETCHER: I think we’re going to have a long talk down at the station.
(MUSIC TRANSITION.)
(KAPLAN’S APARTMENT. WES ENTERS.)
WES: Roy, you’re back. Salman’s gone. Did you solve it?
KAPLAN: Hello, Wes. Yeah, I solved it. Salman wasn’t happy about it–it’s not really a step up, going from ‘murdered by a friend’ to ‘murdered by a different friend’, but at least he knows the truth now. Burgess, too.
WES: That’s the robot man, isn’t it? What happened with him?
KAPLAN: He was arrested, too. He did kill Salman, physically speaking. He’ll have to stand trial, though I don’t know what the charges will be. This kind of murder by proxy hasn’t really happened before. I don’t know what Burgess will do next. Even if he’s not convicted, he’s lost two of his best friends.
WES: Creek wasn’t much of a friend, from what I’m hearing.
KAPLAN: No, not anymore. They were friends once, and Burgess wanted to be again. That’s why he invited Creek to that dinner–reaching out like he did all those other times. But you can’t repair a friendship that doesn’t want to be repaired.
WES: Certainly not after something like this.
KAPLAN: No. Not after something like this. Maybe if they’re lucky, one day they’ll finally reconcile their differences, but not now. Maybe not ever.
(ENDING THEME.)
OUTRO: You’ve just heard Murder By Proxy, the second episode of Roy Kaplan: Out of Sight. Kaplan was played by Jesse Peng, Wes by Caleb Jensen. Our cast also includes: Mattswolf, JRoyalVA, Christopher Michael, and Mystic Waterz.
Roy Kaplan is written, edited, and produced by Jesse Peng. Our music is composed by Beacon.
This show is brought to you by The Pinwheel Lab. If you like what you hear, you can find us over at roykaplanpod on Tumblr, or on thepinwheellab.com. If you really like what you hear, you can also support us on Patreon, where you can hear the next episode a little sooner than everyone else. All financial support goes to production, and helps make Season 2 more likely to happen.
What secrets will this private detective steal next? Tune in next time to find out, and I’ll see you on the other side.
01 – Bomber Blackout | Roy Kaplan Home | Out of Sight Home | 03 – Bait and Stitch