jdcartwright (jdcartwright) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2021-03-13 07:49:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | jd cartwright |
Piecing together the pieces
What: Waiting
Where: Moon Doggies
It had taken a while, but JD finally found it. And it started an avalanche of tiny pieces of evidence all slowly falling into place, leading the detective to the bar at Moon Doggies, phone set, ready to get a photo in the dim lighting of the dive bar.
Working his way through Rob's extensive personal file on the death of his brother and family JD had come across all sorts of notes and scribblings. From printed reports with hand written notes in the margins, to scribbled post-it notes stuck to the under side of another page. It was like he was taking a walk through the mind of his late colleague, the inner machinations of a mind obsessed with finding out what happened, why his brother and family had died that Christmas, and who had caused it. An obsession that had caused the death of his marriage, and JD believe, the death of the man himself. He came across some pieces that seemed random, but when he compared them to the additional file of stuff he'd been sent by his buddy in New York after Rob had died, he started to find pieces that were fitting together. His colleague's mind had been sharp, there was no doubting that, but JD could see the fading of that acuity as the drink had started to blur it, along with the singular focus of the obsessed. It felt odd, a little, as he read through each and every piece of paper, like he was inside Rob's head, and sometimes he felt a little like a voyeur, especially when he saw a note about Laura.
It wasn't anything personal, just times when Rob had clearly needed to talk to his ex-wife about a bill, or insurance policy, or other finances, that had happened when the man was working on this case, and the pieces had all been pushed together and filed. JD started putting those pieces into a separate envelope, keeping them out of the investigation files in case he needed to take them to the office. They weren't part of the case.
The meticulous sorting of every piece, one page at a time, eventually bore fruit, and JD had sat staring at the drawing in his hand, an artist's sketch of a face. The detail was good, the woman, or girl as she was then, had given the details necessary for the artist to capture the face of a man they'd never met, and in a way had ended up sending Rob on that final path to his death. Or at least that's what JD's gut was telling him as he sat back on his lounge, the drawing still in his hand, his other reaching out and picking up the glass that sat on the table. He lifted it to his lips and the bourbon washed over his taste buds as if trying to get rid of the bad taste in his mouth. Staring back at him, almost an insolence rising up from the paper, was 'Tim'. Or as he introduced himself to Rob, 'Micah'.
"Gotcha."
Moon Doggies was easy for the detective to blend into. Plenty of customers coming and going thanks to a ranking of top 5 dive bars in Vegas. The pizza was pretty good, and the booze cheap, in generous servings. JD guessed that's why it received the ranking. He didn't care, his focus was on tracking down 'Micah', and getting a photo of him to show Shelly Harmon. None of this was enough to nail the man, the cause of the fire in New York was still listed as 'overloading'. And for some reason the case of a police officer investigating arson cases, and his family dying on Christmas Eve in a house fire, didn't seem to draw enough attention from anyone other than Rob. JD could understand why the detective had left 'the big apple' behind.
From what JD had received from his buddy, and the headsup the fellow cop had given him verbally, it was becoming clearer to JD there was something wrong in the NYPD. Something JD hated more than criminals - corrupt cops. How much, how deep, and how widespread was not clear yet, but the challenges faced by Rob's brother in trying to investigate the arson cases wasn't looking like a coincidence any more. Perhaps it was an outsider's perspective, or simply the fact that Rob had spent the last nine years investigating it, six of them from afar, that had provided JD a different view of the case, and the evidence Rob had amassed. He recalled the drawing again, eyes seeing it as if it was in his hand still, and he took another sip of the bourbon as he sat at the bar. If his gut was right, if this Tim, or Micah, or whatever his name was, had been involved, he would have contacts.
"You know who," he muttered to himself as he picked up a piece of the pizza in front of him and continued his wait.