grady barrett (ashadowgrows) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2017-12-13 11:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | #september 2017, grady, grady x ty, ty |
Who: Grady and Ty
When: Thurs, Sept 21, late morning
Where: the station
Status: Complete
Ty was starting to think the goddamn rain would never end. It had been going steady all week, and while he kind of enjoyed stormy days sometimes, he was starting to feel generally drenched. Especially since his job was a lot of in-and-out of places. But that was what happened when you lived by the ocean, and even worse weather days were coming, so he guessed he should be grateful that it wasn’t freezing yet.
It made for damp patrolling, but Ty did his rounds dutifully. Being in the car alone gave him too much time to think and fret, unfortunately. He was worried about Jared hearing shit again, even though it hadn’t happened again, and Ty had been doing his best to downplay his concern. Auditory hallucinations weren’t something to just brush off, but he hadn’t wanted to pile the worry on Jared -- he was freaked out enough about it. Ty told himself just to keep breathing and wait and see what a doctor said. It had been lung cancer that had taken his father, but Ty had spent enough time in cancer wards to hear stories about how devastating brain cancer could be. He was hoping hard that it was nothing that serious, maybe just a touch of PTSD, but his brain tended to jump to worst-case scenarios. Even besides all that, he couldn’t get the fight with his mother out of his mind. They hadn’t really talked yet, though he’d checked in on her.
All of his circular thoughts were interrupted when he drove by the Rogan house. There was a For Sale sign out front and a realtor lock on the door. It caught Ty’s attention -- wasn’t that place still considered a crime scene? The State Police had taken over the case, so he wasn’t sure what was currently going on in the investigation, but selling it already seemed really fast. Weird.
It was still bothering him a little when he returned to the station, so once he’d gotten a fresh cup of coffee to warm up with, Ty stuck his head into Sheriff Barrett’s office door, rapping his knuckles on the frame to announce himself. “Hey boss,” he said. “Did you know the Rogan place is for sale?”
It made sense that Ty would show up minutes after Grady hung up on an officer in the State Police Department. He generally wasn't a man to slam the phone down, even when he was irritated, but the blatant avoidance of his calls in the past, and now the vague confusion as to what Grady was even inquiring about - Did you say Peter Rogan? - had severed his last thread of patience. He was starting to realize he might need to drive there himself and force someone to talk to him. Someone with at least half a brain.
When Ty appeared, Grady leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hands over his face. "Yeah," he answered, his voice muffled until he dropped his hands back to his desk. "Called the real estate agent on the listing, but got voicemail. They're not a local realtor, if you noticed." Grady took a breath and motioned to the phone. "Get this. No one in Augusta has a clue who Peter Rogan is. Got the run around for about twenty minutes before someone finally told me they have no casefile on Rogan. They said I must be mistaken and did I have the name right."
Ty had indeed noticed. He was also noticing that Grady was in a bad mood. His eyebrows lifted at the other man’s words and he glanced at the phone like it might have some answers. “What the fuck,” he asked rhetorically under his breath. Ty came into the office and perched on the edge of the on the chairs in front of Grady’s desk. “Did the officers who came for him leave cards or anything?” Ty had only briefly seen them when the Staties had swooped in to take over the case, but he knew they’d gone over it all with Grady. Or should have, anyway.
Grady lifted up the business card that been on his desk since the State Police had come in and wrangled the case away from him. There hadn't been much he could do at that point. Grady might have been the Chief of Police, but he had a boss too, and he generally had to do what he was told. Working in a small nowhere town like Point Pleasant didn't allow much clout. "Detective Resin. Conveniently he's on an extended leave of absence." Grady tossed the card to the side in frustration. Margaret Rogan's already been transferred to a hospital in Portland. I'm trying to track down the name of it... waiting on Mercy to call me back." He released a long breath, trying not to vent too harshly at Ty. Grady was generally pretty calm about things, but this particular case had gotten under his skin. "They cleaned up the house. Doesn't even look the same inside. I have no idea when they managed, because I didn't see anyone there during my patrols, and I know if any of you guys had, you would have mentioned it."
He frowned even deeper as Grady talked. This was starting to sound like more and more of a clusterfuck to Ty. “I didn’t notice anybody,” he confirmed, shaking his head a bit. “So you’ve been inside? When did you go over there?” Ty was kind of curious to see it now. Cleaning up a crime scene like that was no easy task, and he found it unlikely that Peter Rogan had been able to arrange all that from behind bars. And put the house on the market, to boot. “Think some relative is behind this?” he tacked on, trying to go over in his mind who might be making these big decisions. “Or that it’s Margaret?”
"I didn't go inside," Grady admitted before he appeared sheepish. "They changed the locks on the doors and there is a realtor lock on the front. I looked in the windows. Can see they changed out the carpet downstairs...painted the walls. It's completely empty. I've been trying to get in touch with the Rogans' daughter, but she hasn't returned my calls yet." He was doing everything he could beyond driving to Augusta to confront the situation face to face. That was on his agenda, however. "I suppose it could be Margaret, but that doesn't explain how Peter Rogan has fallen off the radar completely, unless someone in Augusta has completely fucked up." He ran a hand through his hair. "I know I've got other shit to worry about right now, but it's hard to let this one go."
“And if she’s still in the hospital, why would she do all this?” Ty murmured, his brow furrowing some more. It didn’t add up, it was way too fast, and if the two Rogans were in completely different cities, one in hospital and the other in jail, how did they coordinate that? Didn’t it take both people on a mortgage to sell a house? Ty didn’t blame Grady for being frustrated and confused. “Yeah it is,” he agreed, looking fretful for a moment. “You thought about driving down to Augusta?” He knew his boss pretty damn well, and if something really got into Grady’s mind, he could be like a terrier and unable to let it go. This looked like one of those things. “I’ll go with you, if you want. They can’t call both of us crazy. And losing a prisoner ... we could make it really bad news for them.”
"Their daughter could have power of attorney," Grady pointed out. "If neither of them are in a position to make those decisions... I don't fucking know. But yeah, I plan on driving to Augusta. I'd rather you stay here, though. We're short staffed enough as it is and I'd probably only be gone a day. I fully intend on making it bad for them if they can't give me any answers to my face. I'd like to keep an eye on the Rogan house, though. Try to track down anyone coming and going, whether it's family or the realtor." They didn't have the kind of man power to just place a deputy on the street for twenty four hour surveillance, so he would have to depend on everyone to hit the house when they were on patrol. Grady exhaled and stood to grab his jacket from the back of his chair. "I've got to go talk with Mr. Mercer again. He seems pretty convinced Zelenka had something to do with the grave robbing going on and I've got to talk him down from the ledge."
“What? Naw, Zelenka loves that place,” Ty said with a dismissive huff. He knew Mr. Mercer was upset and grieving, but they still had to be logical. “Why would he start fucking with graves now?” Ty stood up when Grady did, tamping down on a bit of disappointment that he didn’t get to go to the capital too. Admittedly, he kind of wanted to watch Grady “make it bad” for someone. Their sheriff had the patience of a saint about most things, but he was a force to be reckoned with when something really got his blood up. “I’ll put a bug in the guys’ ears about the Rogan house,” he offered, just to take one small thing off of Grady’s plate. “We’ll keep our eyes on it.”
"I know that, and you know that," Grady said as he shrugged his jacket on. "But to most people here, Zelenka's... eccentricities are construed as being... strange." That was the nicest way he could put it. There was a lot of weird shit that happened in this town, and a lot of people pegged Rost as the 'small town weirdo' who lived in a cemetery. Grady had spoken to Rost enough times to know that the guy was essentially harmless, and he seemed to have high respect for the dead. Grady grabbed his keys and shoved them into his pocket. "I'll let you know when I hear back from Mercy about Margaret Rogan. If we've got to make a trip to Portland too, we'll do it."
Grady didn’t have to tell Ty how the skinny foreign guy who lived in the cemetery was seen around town -- he heard plenty about it, all the time. He’d talked to Rostislav plenty himself. The guy was strange and liked to speak in riddles, but Ty didn’t think he had that kind of darkness in him. He would let Grady handle that mess, though. Being a cop meant he’d seen all kinds of nasty shit in the line of duty, but he wasn’t eager to have anything to do with dug-up rotting corpses of nice little old ladies who used to go to church with his mother. Unless he had to, of course. Which he might, if things kept going the way they were. “Got it,” he said as he headed out of Grady’s office. “Good luck, boss.”