Coco Holmes (CASE FILES)

J O S E   D E L   R I G O

Coco Holmes’s archenemy is the drug lord Jose Del Rigo, who is responsible for much of Wisteria’s crime. He resembles Count Orlok from the silent film Nosferatu, with his bald head, crooked nose, and preference for a trench coat. He is a calculatively violent man who believes the current government and ways of life must be destroyed. He has many weapons and uses different execution methods for different types of his enemies.

Along with the Investigator Eviscerator, the railgun that destroyed Coco’s hand; he also has a heavy rocket launcher that can shoot down a fighter jet; and an incendiary polearm made from an oven heating element hooked to a battery in a backpack. One of his more grandiose and evil plots was when he tried to nuke Wisteria.

In one incident with the drug boss, Coco lost her left hand. As Coco had a large enough amount of evidence against him, she embarked on a potentially suicidal mission to arrest him. He was extraordinarily dangerous even for a Homeland Security or FBI SWAT team. Even the guards at the ADX Florence federal supermax prison in Colorado were unsure the prison could hold him. Del Rigo was arguably more powerful than Pablo Escobar or El Chapo ever were. As Coco entered the crime boss’s stash room, he tried to shoot her with his homemade railgun, the Investigator Eviscerator. As the boss pulled the trigger, the weapon’s rails surged with huge electromagnetic forces, sending the ammunition forward at Mach 8. The projectile itself missed Coco, but the extreme force of it passing by her hand was enough to tear it off from her arm. Had Coco been hit anywhere on her body, she likely would have been turned to pink and red mist. The bullet hit the wall she was taking cover behind, collapsing a large part of Del Rigo’s lair. This separated the two of them, allowing Coco to escape. To avoid bleeding out, she had to wrap the arm in paper towels from the hideout’s bathroom and hold it with her other hand until she got to the hospital. When an FBI unit checked out the ruins of the hideout, they only found a small fragment of one of the fingernails from Coco’s left hand.

In one of his most evil plots, Del Rigo once stole a nuclear bomb to destroy Wisteria, until that plot was foiled by Coco and her friends Timber Watson and Eleanor Edartsel. This culminated in Eleanor and Timber working together to defuse the stolen nuke, planted between the Carolina Column, the tallest building in Wisteria and both Carolinas, and the city hall. The Carolina Column, completed in 1977, has 112 floors and was one of the earliest attempts at arcology, an architectural movement trying to build a whole city in a single structure. Meanwhile, Coco personally chased Del Rigo up the tower and confronted him on top of the main spire. A struggle ensued, with Coco using her hook as a melee weapon against the crime lord. Coco landed some good jabs on the evil man, but she knew the fight was unwinnable on the tiny confines of the top maintenance platform of the spire of North Carolina’s tallest building. Coco next did the bravest thing she had ever done. She used her knowledge of baritsu and pretended to fall off the spire and tower, down to street level. Del Rigo, thinking he had 187ed his biggest single enemy, climbed down the spire and rode the elevator down unnoticed. Timber later went to the top of the antenna and saw the footprints of both Coco and Del Rigo. Timber’s heart sank as it seemed both had fallen 112 stories to their deaths. Actually, as Coco was falling from the building, she gripped a windowsill on the 95th floor with the hook. She climbed up onto the ledge, and holding on with her hook, she used her right elbow to smash the window, and climbed in amongst the shocked and confused office workers in the building.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation recommends Del Rigo be killed, as even ADX Florence or Guantanamo Bay may be unable to contain him.

B O S C O M B E   V A L L E Y   T O B A C C O

An independent tobacco company that produces cigarettes with very high nicotine levels. They are also known for their aggressive (if not illegal) ad campaigns and deliberate attacks against tobacco enforcement efforts and anti-tobacco organizations.

There have been several reports of individuals handing out Boscombe Valley cigarettes to children near schools. Only one of these men have ever been caught. He was a known deadbeat parent who was years behind on child support, but there is no evidence he was associated with the company. But there has been one report that the company is clandestinely recruiting people to give or sell single cigarettes as a sample. The citizen reporting this told authorities he was offered a temporary job by an employee of Boscombe Valley, but declined. Coco Holmes thus believes Boscombe Valley is recruiting people who want to work under the table, such as illegal immigrants or those behind on child support, to introduce their cigarettes to children.

Boscombe Valley is also known to have formed an alliance with convenience stores throughout the southern US. In Spartanburg, South Carolina, a 16-year-old boy was found murdered with a fork-like object to the throat. His family told police that he was participating in a program by authorities to check if local stores were selling tobacco to minors. The program involved undercover inspections where a minor would ask store staff for a tobacco product, under the supervision of a health inspector. One convenience store they were inspecting sold the teen a pack of cigarettes. A week later, they received a notice of violation from the FDA. Coco suspects that a member of store staff told Boscombe Valley about this, and they sent someone to murder the teen as he was a threat to their profits.

 I - 6 9 9    T H R O W E R 

An individual has been throwing objects from overpasses over Interstate 699. One person, a 32-year-old male working as a state health inspector, is dead. Coco has found fingerprints on some of the thrown objects.

 T H E   F I G H T E R   H U N T E R   (CAPTURED)

Oscar Fuentes, a teenage boy who broke into MCAS Cherry Point to steal a fighter jet. This individual then flew to Washington, D.C. with the stolen fighter, and flew over the White House to draw out responding fighters. He shot down 4 fighter aircraft, killing 2 of the pilots. He then returned to the WiBar area and landed in a field. After Coco Holmes personally arrested Fuentes, he confessed to the whole incident, saying he was merely bored, and wanted to lure fighter jets out and shoot them down.

S M A L L P O X   E M A I L  (RESOLVED)

The Federal Bureau of Prisons received an emailed threat from a Guatemalan drug cartel. The message claimed that they had stolen smallpox samples from the CDC laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia; and the virus would be released at landmarks in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, Wisteria, Atlanta, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, and Miami; if they did not hand over the gang’s leader who was arrested in Arizona.

City officials in the threatened cities took samples from their cities’ main landmarks. Coco helped collect samples in Wisteria, from the Carolina Column, Saitama Building, Fezziwig Building, Diogenes Beach, Bunn Park, and Manteo International Airport. None of the samples tested positive for smallpox. Later, the CDC confirmed no break-in had actually taken place at their Atlanta lab. 

B L O U N T   B O M B E R

An entity who led undercover police into an explosive-rigged abandoned motel near the town of Blount. After chatting with the officers, posing as drug runners, online about fentanyl, they talked them into a meeting at the old motel off I-699. Once the cops arrived, the bomber triggered the explosives. All 7 officers were killed in the explosion, which could be heard as far as New Bern. 

Possibly related is a case involving an attempted bombing of a diner in Lower Wisteria. A bomb hidden in a backpack and placed just outside the diner failed to explode.

A 0 4

A dog fighting ring. After one of their leaders was killed by a SWAT team, A04 members kidnapped the cops’ children and used them as bait to train their dogs. 

S T O L E N   I N C E N D I A R Y   P I S T O L

Members of the Latin Kings have stolen an experimental incendiary pistol from MCOLM Atlantic. 

R O A D S T E R    F R A U D S T E R

An individual who sells stolen cars with the VIN altered, and who always misspells the word sale as “saie”.

N A E G L E R I A   M A N

A serial killer who has claimed victims in southern Wisteria, along the Neuse River. This individual uses the brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri as his preferred weapon, spraying the pathogen up his victim’s noses. The amoeba ascends the cribriform plate and enters the brain via the olfactory nerve, with fatal results.

 I - 50   B U T C H E R

Since 2021, nine bodies have been found along Interstate 50, between Raleigh and Wisteria. Four of these were in New Bern, and two were between New Bern and Wisteria. Two suspects are under investigation.

G A T O R   O F   T H E   A S T E R V I L L E S  (DECEASED)

A colossal truck-sized alligator that had cursed members of the rich Asterville family since one of their ancestors practiced witchcraft in the colonial era, but was then eaten whole and instantly by the massive alligator. 

In the swamp to the east of Barfleur, using a mannequin of Mr. Asterville’s daughter as bait, Coco shot the gator dozens of times, weakening him so Timber could jam explosives in the beast’s mouth, killing it.

C R Y S T A L   V I O L E T   (CAPTURED)

A neglectful mother who confronted police with a large missile launcher, killing 5 patrol officers and 6 SWAT officers. Coco ultimately wounded this individual so she could be arrested.

E X I T   1 7 0 B   (RESOLVED)

Not really involving Coco but interesting events anyway. On I-99 in Barfleur, Exit 170B is a left exit from the freeway onto A street. The northbound sign for Exit 170B has been knocked down several times by drivers. After NCDOT had to replace the sign for the third time in Q4 2021, they decided to instead mount the sign on a cantilever above the ramp, with the post being on the exit gore of the southbound half of I-99.