Conversation · Coffee Table

A large table with two huge vacuum-insulated thermal coffee dispensers. Someone has forgotten a small plastic card next to the stacks of cups.

Peer into a discarded coffee cup!

Pick up the card.

You snatch up the red plastic card. It features a black contour of a crane lifting a container. The name 'Etienne Hogarth' is written in the middle, below it in smaller text: 'Member of the board'. It comes with a magnetic strip -- meant to open electronic doors.

[Leave.]

Look into one of the old coffee cups.

You see nothing exceptional. It's a dirty cup, smudged brown, with old ground coffee stuck to the bottom... slowly getting mouldy.

What am I supposed to see here?

Look closer!

If you squint your eyes enough the coffee grounds almost seem to make up two letters: F... and K.

It's a clue!

A clue of what?

A clue about the person behind all the murders.

Yeah. Of course. It's certainly not just an example of paréidolie, noticing patterns in noise. Worth it.

It's meaningful, I swear! You just wait... I've got the case nearly busted wide open.

Uh-huh, great. I somehow doubt old coffee is how the police solve investigations.

You would be correct.

If you can't trust your own eyes, who can you trust? Certainly not Kim. He's so... suspicious.

If you can't trust your own eyes, who can you trust...

It is a sign! Just like a remote viewer would operate. Signs hidden inside the mundane...

You got it, pal. I would never make such a thing up.

Huh, okay. Thanks, this certainly wasn't a waste of time.

You throw the cup back into the trash bin.