Post by MICHAEL SHEPARD on May 31, 2023 21:15:38 GMT
Michael scooped up the folders from the passenger seat of his car. The detective who’d actually caught the case hadn’t been too keen on him taking the files out of the station, but that probably had more to do with the fact that it was the analyst asking than anything. If the breadcrumbs he’d been trying to put together actually led somewhere the guy would finally be able to close the case anyway. It was a win-win situation, if it worked out.
Yesterday he’d stood outside the shell of the house that’d burned almost down to the ground a fortnight ago. Most of the family had managed to escape once the alarm had sounded, but the grandfather hadn’t been so lucky. The blaze had trapped him in his bedroom and by the time the firefighters had pulled him out the smoke had already done its damage. At the time the police had believed that it was probably accidental, but the more the fire department had poked around in it all, the more hinky it seemed. That had been where he’d stomped in with his size elevens.
Over the last year he’d started working his way further and further into the workings of the sheriff’s station. He was still reluctant to step over the line into actual police work – experience with the agency would get him so far, but he’d still need a trip through the academy to make things entirely official and juggling both school and raising Abi felt like it would be the straw that rebroke the camel’s back. For now working on pulling leads together for others worked for him (as long as the detectives didn’t get pissy over him tiptoeing through their case loads). The program he’d written and slipped into the system with Forbes’ OK pulled together the data that the detectives plugged into it and tried to find parallels in other cases. Sometimes it just ended up coincidences, or the computer saw connections that weren’t there, but every now and then …
He climbed out of the car and headed down the sidewalk towards the station. Every now and then it really worked, and he wanted to believe that the other blazes he’d found in the files were connected. Deliberate blazes that had been put out without loss of life the first couple of times, an arsonist, or worse, who seemed to be flying under the radar.
Looking around the garage as he entered, Michael tried to figure out where the firefighters were gonna be. He’d spent plenty of time in police stations and government offices over the years, but fire stations were new. There was no guaranteeing that the people on duty today had worked all the fires, but a trained set of eyes on the files, maybe they’d get lucky. Hearing someone at the rear of one of the engines, he approached, dipping his head to glance around the corner of the big red vehicle. ”Hey,” he called out to the guy. ”I wasn’t sure if it was alright to come in like this. I’m with the sheriff’s department. You mind if I ask you a few questions about a fire you might’ve attended?” Michael flipped open the badge fold on his belt – revealing his agency ID at the top and the badge the sheriff had provided below.
hope to see you in the discord! 
