Aaron was glad he was the first person down to what the door had labelled the ‘Law Enforcement Office’. It had given him a chance to look around. To familiarise himself with surroundings that were at the same time already familiar and entirely alien to him. To actually equalise some of those feelings before anyone else got here.
He had put up the most negative of job applications, and yet he was still here. He had a hard time believing that that many people would have voted for him. So either he was here because of a small number of votes. Or the entire thing had been rigged because they wanted an actual cop on the scene. He figured that, when you got right down to it, it didn’t really matter which one it was. He was here and he had promised that if he was elected, he would do his job. And he was going to do that.
If they had elected him in, some of them were really going to fucking regret it.
Smiling a little, Aaron sat down in behind the desk in the front room. Linking his hands behind his head, he crossed his ankles, resting his heels on the desk. And then he waited, to see when the others would turn up.
There was no doubt about the fact that Brady was not pleased with the results of the voting. It almost made him wish that he'd filled people in on just what Aaron was in prison for. Claiming innocence or not, he didn't think as many people would have voted for him if they knew he was in for rape. He was better than that, though. Or at least he was trying to tell himself. He just really had been hoping Jason would get it with him and Jae. Instead, Aaron had got it, and now he was going to have to find a way to work with the world's most snuggly fucking teddy bear. And voting Ryan into one of the Detention positions? What the fuck were people thinking, seriously?
Fuck, his head hurt.
And Aaron's message didn't really help anything. Of course the jackass would take point on this. Though even he knew that he needed to find a way to stop looking at it all this way before he got down to their office, or whatever it was. The message from Aaron hadn't seemed antagonistic, so he needed to just figure out how to work with the guy. It didn't help that he was just winging it as it was with this whole law enforcement thing.
Brady didn't dawdle after sending his short reply to the message, making his way across the courtyard and to the elevator, taking it down to the basement. It was no surprise that Aaron was already there, and he gave him a nod in greeting, expression at least far from antagonistic, opting to wait on Jae before saying anything, unless Aaron decided to speak to him first.
“It’s not a bad set up, really,” Aaron said, almost conversationally, not moving from his position. “There’s this room, another out the back. Detention next door, and a room across the way that’s designated as a courtroom. It’s possible they’ve actually given some thought to it this time.” He watched Brady, waiting to see what his reaction would be. Aaron had been serious with his journal post - he didn’t want this job. He didn’t want the exposure, or anyone looking in his direction wondering why the hell someone like him knew what they were doing. His game plan since he had been convicted was to only be noticed for the wrong things, and so far that had worked for him. Like he had said, he didn’t want this job, but if they asked him to do it, he was going to throw his all into it. And his name was down on the list. This was now a professional matter and all his rules to date were gone as a result. They wanted him to be a cop. They had voted him in to be a cop. They were going to get a damn cop.
Jae was heading down as fast as she possible could, lugging her notes from, well, everything going on in the past day or so with her. Because there were cases to be working--all-fucking-ready. When she arrived, she walked in with her armload of notes, barely glancing around before she dropped them down onto the nearest flat surface. "Okay, so I was going to do this another way, possibly something less direct which isn't my forte to begin with, but we're here, we're in this shit now, and I've got a question, Mr. Fuckoff." she said, without a greeting.
Leveling her gaze on Aaron, she continued. "Were you a cop?" she asked.
All right, Brady thought, so we're going with playing nice, I can do that. "Yeah, it doesn't look bad, what I've seen so far," he agreed in the same almost-conversational tone. He hoped that the Administration had given thorough thought to all of this, and he was inclined to think that they had. He doubted they could have got all this shit set up in the past few days. It was far more likely that it had been here to start with.
When Jae came in shortly after him, though, he figured she must have been not far behind him, probably having just had to wait for the elevator to get back up and bring her down. Only Brady didn't even really get a chance to greet her when she was speaking to Aaron. And then she asked that question, and his brows furrowed in confusion. Where in the hell did she get that idea? he wondered, glancing between the other two. If he were to think about it, he'd probably be able to connect some of the dots, but he wasn't, he was just looking at Aaron waiting to see how he'd react to the question.
Aaron locked gazes with Jae, though his expression remained the same - stoic and mostly blank, though with a hint of interest. “Do I look like a cop?” he asked, carefully. He was playing for time whilst he considered how best to handle this situation - and also wondering what had given him away, for her to come to that conclusions despite the precautions he had put in place to ensure that was the last thing on anybody’s mind.
"For fucks sake, answer the damn question like you're not a total fucking freak jackhole." Jae snapped at him. "It's real simple. Were you or were you not a cop?" she asked. "Looks mean precisely fuckall here and now. We've been tasked with being cops. I already have two cases. So, a simple yes or no, would be fucking fabulous here, you colossal dickhead. Try real hard to keep your answer simple, so we can all move on and actually do something about this shit." she said, gesturing to the pages of notes she had.
Aaron looked between Jae and Brady, then shook his head and stood, holding his hand out for the notes. “Then yes - and I would really appreciate it if that went no further than this room, okay?” he said, tightly. “So, you wanna give me the rundown of the cases, or should we go through what skills the two of you have to do this job before we get down to actually doing it. I figure you can both hold your own, but since it’s cards on the table time...”
Yeah, there was no fucking way Brady was jumping in the middle of that, and by Aaron’s initial response, he found himself wanting to know the answer even more. At this point, he wasn’t really surprised by the answer, and he also saw no reason to let it get any further than this room. That didn’t mean Aaron’s abrasiveness didn’t piss him off, but he was trying real hard to play nice. “Let’s just get down to business,” he interjected calmly. “What’ve you got, Jae?”
"Fine." Jae said to Aaron's bit about not wanting the information to get further than the room they were in. She was fine with that. She just needed to know since they were all playing the role of police, now. "If you want to know what my skills are, we can get to that, I want to get the cases out here first." she said, agreeing with Brady that getting down to business was the way to go.
"First we have a simple B-n-E, with property damage." she said, laying the photographs Matt had provided down for everyone to see. "Top suspect is Pippa due to previous aggressive interactions, I was going to talk to her after this. The other part, is the rape. Our victim is Becka, it happened during the blackout. Wu came to me with this case, has had me trying to run down condoms to check people's supply. Matt says he threw all of his away. Mostly what I want is an immediate check of every male's whereabouts during the blackout." she said, putting down the few notes she had on the rape where the guys could see it, but there wasn't a whole lot. There was a map with female rooms x'd out, a note on Matt's room. Becka's room was colored in red.
“Where did Matt throw them? Anywhere where someone who was after an untraceable supply could have gotten ahold of them?” Aaron asked, going straight for the rape over the B-n-E. “And have you had a chance to talk to Becka yet?” he asked. Once upon a time, he would have stepped forward to interview the girl. Once upon a time he had been first choice for that kind of thing. These days, however, he wasn’t going to be putting himself forward for that, even though he wanted to catch the bastard that had done this. He looked over the maps and studied names. “If we break down the guys, take some each, we’ll get through this a whole lot faster.”
Brady was curious about the B-n-E, for Pippa’s involvement, but the mention of rape - which he’d only known about from Cal’s post about it - absolutely took precedence. If there had been any doubt before, the mention of Matt having thrown his supply of condoms out made it perfectly clear to him that he was far from objective. Matt was close to Edan, and it was like an itch in the back of his head, some need to get to the bottom of just how dangerous the guy might be. He tapped the square representing Evan’s room on the map Jae had put out. “Evan was in B Block during the blackout, I know that much.” And it didn’t escape his notice that the guy’s name was actually Evan, which made him wonder if that was what Edan’s fixation was all about. But that was something he was trying to not focus on right now when there were other far more important things. “Anyone else been eliminated as a suspect so far?” he asked Jae, adding it to Aaron’s list of questions. Was it the right question to ask? He’d never done criminal investigation before, so he was just kind of winging it and following their lead.
"I think he said he dumped them down the garbage chute, after he was done looking absolutely horrified at the word 'condom' being in use in a conversation. If I had to guess, sex is a dirty word to that dude." Jae said. "So, no. Right now, though, I honestly think that people have been fucking, and the condom supply isn't going to be an accurate gauge. We need to know where everyone was. And we also need to know if anyone's been removed since then. I think I saw something about a male recently getting booted. But I'd have to check to be sure. It wasn't anyone I knew. I don't know if anyone else has been specifically discounted. I know Wu likes Ryan for it."
Aaron considered that, mentally going back through what he had heard of and read. “Guy called Leandro got booted, just after the blackout. The artist guy, Kyle, posted about it specifically. Anyone know anything about him? Could we have a situation where the reason he was removed was because of this?” he asked. “Though that would raise the question of how the Administration knew, given that apparently the power was out enough that they couldn’t even get backups working. Doesn’t fit with me that the cameras would be functioning on another loop and still going, but we can’t rule it out. I’d suggest talking to Kyle about the kind of guy this Leandro was.” He looked at Jae. “What’d Wu’s reasoning for liking Ryan for it - and does either of you have first hand experience of the guy?” he asked. Getting up, he walked over to the whiteboard alone one wall and started to make notes, writing down names, leaving enough room to really start working this, structured in a way that suggested clearly this wasn’t the first time he had done this.
That was... too bad for Edan, though Brady pushed the thought from his mind. He had to agree with Jae’s thoughts on the condoms check and what they should be focusing on. “No, I never met this Leandro guy, and I’ve never talked to Ryan personally,” he answered. Would it do any good to point out that it was going to be kind of difficult to figure out who’d been removed when they were never actually notified of who was joining the community and had only been told specifically of a couple removals so far when there had been many. “I’d suggest someone else talk to Kyle. We’ve met, and he’s not not likely to want to cooperate with me,” he offered after a moment’s thought on it.
"Why just ask Kyle? If he was the one who posted, then sure, he might have known the guy, but he also might be biased. I say we put up a general post, asking people if they've got an opinion." she suggested. "Leandro, no, Ryan, yes." Jae said. "And part of the reason Wu likes him for it is I think the same reason I wouldn't put it past him which is his punishment in the stocks the day he was nailed for whatever, and when I spoke to him, he just...came off wrong. I know that sounds stupid, but that's all I can say. My instincts say he's a bullshitter. Wants to play the nice gentleman card, but I think it's just an act."
“Sure, he may be biased - he’s a starting point though,” Aaron pointed out, not missing a step at the criticism. It was a fair point. “Okay, Jae - you take looking into Leandro. Talk to Kyle, talk to anyone else who may have know the guy. And add to that seeing if you can find out either from other people here, or the Administration directly who exactly was in the facility at the time. Who has been removed since then. Maybe if these people have been removed they would be willing to release information on them.” He looked across at Brady. “Which leaves you and I to look at everyone else and Ryan especially. We’ll take him together. Get him in here - bullshitting is harder when you have two people coming at you.” Jae’s instinct on that was more than enough for him.
Brady wasn’t sure putting a post up would actually get them anywhere, as it was way too easy to lie on the computer and much easier to spot a lie in person, but it was a starting point, something they could actually do, so he didn’t say anything against it. He let Aaron and Jae take the lead on figuring out their next steps, since they did seem to have a better grasp on just what to do. He nodded at Aaron. “Yeah, sounds like a plan, but I’m not gonna bullshit you, man. I was military, but that’s pretty far from detective work. I don’t want to fuck this up, so I start going somewhere that’s gonna throw things off, no hard feelings if you reign me in and take lead.” Personal feelings aside, Aaron was clearly the more qualified of them.
"Alright." Jae said, nodding with her own personal task. "I'll get on that right now. Talk to you boys when I've done my legwork." she said, heading to glance into the next room, and she saw there was a computer, so she was going to start typing up notes as well as get her post about Leandro up.
Aaron nodded to Jae as she headed off, though most of his attention was on Brady. “Military’s not a bad background to have for this,” he told the other man. “There’s some cross over there. Just gotta remember that with this job, no matter what the other guy says - you can’t throw the first punch. Much as you might want to. Gotta look at everything. Gotta suspect everyone. Gotta go through the shit until it’s coming out the back of your damn head, but we’ll get them in the end. And we’ll get it right. Nothing gets achieved by fingering the wrong person. Just lets the right person get away with it,” he said.
It didn’t escape Brady’s notice that Jae hadn’t actually answered all of their questions, but they had a starting point, so maybe they’d go more in depth on things after doing some interviews and coming back to regroup and assess whatever they might find out. He focused on Aaron after Jae went into the other room, nodding at what the guy had to say. “That what happened to you?” he asked without thinking, though he blew out a breath and scrubbed a hand through his hair and followed it up right away. “Not the time for that. All right, let’s divvy out the names? Get started talking to people tonight?” he asked, gathering that that’s where they were meant to start their share of the legwork.
“That’s what happened to me,” Aaron said, though his tone didn’t come across like he wanted to talk about it. Really - he didn’t. Especially not now. “Divvying up the names is a good idea.” He circled the top half. “You take these. I’ll take the rest - just cross off the people you’ve dealt with, write up a report and summary of what you found, and if you get through your list before I get through mine, then keep going. We can always go back to people. But we want the basics - alibi, motive, opportunity. Anything they may have seen or heard. Anything that’s off. Most of the time, these things are solved because of the most really fucking ridiculous bits that don’t seem important to whoever tells them. Piecing it all together. This is where it starts.”
Aaron didn’t want to talk about it, and Brady was well aware that now was far from the time to push, even if he did have that niggling worry in the back of his mind about the guy investigating a rape case when he was in for rape. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off there, but he was determined to focus on the case. It was important, and people had voted him into this position because, for whatever reason, they trusted him to get the job done. So, that was what he was going to do. “Alright, reports I can do.” Because God knew he’d written and read enough counselings and other reports in his years in the Army. “I’m guessing that the victim isn’t common knowledge. Saw Cal put up a post about it, but he didn’t put Becka’s name it. We keeping up with that?” He just really didn’t have any clue what the protocol was for this kind of sensitive case.
“Honestly? If we were out there then I’d say no - we get subjects in and we question them. And we tell them what’s going on.” He paused. “But we’re not out there. And this is a small community. So I say that, for Becka’s sake, we keep her name out of it where we can. We ask for where and when. We find out what we can. If you have a lead - if bringing her specifically into it will mean that you can pin that down, then you have that discretion. But let’s give the girl some dignity if we can.”
Brady nodded at the answer, thinking that it ran along the same lines as he’d been thinking anyway, and glad for that at least. “Bear with me here, I’m full of questions. Just wanna make sure I go about this the best way to get answers. So when looking at motive, the kinds of things to ask might be...?” he trailed off, hoping Aaron would fill in the blanks, as he was drawing one big one without bringing the girl’s name into it. Moving across the room, he grabbed up one of the flip file notebooks, opening it and grabbing a pen to make a copy of the names for himself.
“That depends,” Aaron said, taking the question as seriously as it deserved. He moved to lean against the side of the desk. “We’re dealing with rape, which is a hard subject at the best of times. To give you some theory, rapists can generally be categorised - it all depends on what kind of rapist we’re dealing with. Categories would be ‘power assertive’ - that’s a guy who rapes with a weapon and it’s the most common. They want cooperation, no matter what. Then you have ‘anger retaliation’ - those at the fuckers who are out to punish women for something they’ve done. Usually the vic ends up with more injuries than I think our girl here has, so hopefully we’re not dealing with that, or with the ‘anger excitement’ type, who is out to hurt, or kill. We could be dealing with opportunity rape, of course - with the power outage and all, that would fit. Not great, but better than some of the options.”
The list of different types of rapists churned his stomach, but Brady’s expression didn’t show it. It was flat as he listened, nodding periodically to show that he was following along. “Opportunity rape would fit, but doesn’t mean it rules out one of the others. Could be a combination of factors. But hang on just a sec,” he said crossing over to the doorway of the other room. “Hey Jae, did you get a chance to talk to the vic yet?” It felt weird to say ‘the vic’, like he was playing some kind of role, and he hoped that he’d settle into this whole law enforcement thing quickly. But he figured that their best bet in figuring out what kind of rapist they were dealing with would be to find out just what kind of trauma he may have caused the girl.
"No!" Jae called. "All I got I got from Wu and the post Cal put up! I've been juggling cases and people and shit before I even got the damn job." she answered, not actually bitter about that, but she didn't want to appear like she was blowing things off, either. "Wu seemed to be taking point, though now, we are."
“Well damn, girl, if you hadn’t sold yourself so well in that post...” Brady replied in a teasing tone, not at all surprised that people had come to her with cases before she’d even been voted in. “Okay, so I’m thinking someone should talk to her, see if we can’t get more details of what all went down than Wu did, and not to sound sexist, but isn’t it usually easier for rape vics to talk to women about it?” It was an honest question, and as he asked it, he glanced at Aaron for some kind of confirmation on the thought, though he wouldn’t get bent out of shape if he was wrong.
Aaron shook his head. “Not always. It depends on the person. Though I’ll come right out and admit that I would prefer the person talk to her not be me, under the circumstances.”
"If you guys want me to take it, it's fine, I can. Just let me know. So, who wants it?" Jae called, still typing up a storm on her files for the two cases.
Well, that was something, at least, Brady thought about Aaron recognizing the circumstances. “I think I’d feel better if you talked to her,” he told Jae. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he’d be able to, he just still had that sexist thought in his head even though Aaron had said it depended. “So, let’s break off and get going on this, report back on our findings first thing in the morning?” he suggested.
“Good for me,” Aaron agreed. He was encouraged by this first meeting. This could work well.