WHO:Joan Watson & Sharon Carter WHEN: June(ish) WHERE: Records Department/Police Station WHAT: Researching; the fun part of detective work RATING/WARNINGS: None STATUS: Complete
Sharon wasn’t a cop anymore, but she still had to come back to the police department from time to time for research purposes. Actually, whenever she could she tried to pass off the visits to someone else. It wasn’t like she’d left this place on good terms. Though, that was well over a year ago, and she heard that the guy she’d punched in the face had since retired… but the stories still remained. The few, lingering ‘good old boys’ thought she was an empty-headed, PMSing, gold-digger who slept her way into her position, so good riddance. But everyone else--all the women who worked on the force, and the men who had to deal with the ‘good old boys’ and their garbage--respected her for not putting up with their garbage any longer.
Anyway, she headed back to the records room, giving a gentle, “hey, Wanda,” to the woman sitting in the lobby. A few people greeted Sharon, but there was a high turnover for Orange County PD (go figure) so she didn’t know as many people now as she had a year ago. She headed into the records room. Most of the time you could come in here and read whatever you wanted--so long as you put things away. No records were to be removed, but couple be duplicated for a small fee. Sharon just had a couple of things to check, so she didn’t bother with the fee.
But she stopped when she saw there was already someone else in the room.
For the most part Joan was focusing on the case with Sherlock, they were fairly certain that the murderer had been an offender of some sort, the gap between murders was just a little too large. So Joan was chasing down a few possibilities there. It was grunt work, but like Sherlock always said, sometimes those jobs offered the most insight. Joan didn’t mind it too much -a day in an air conditioned room with files to go through wasn’t too painful a day.
She was cross referencing any of her victims names against anyone who had made complaints or filed reports against anyone, potentially someone having seen or noticed they were being followed. Stalker cases often went unsolved just because there was very little that police could do without harm being caused. So far, it wasn’t going well, and Joan was already neck deep in files and reports.
“I didn’t realize anyone else would be in here,” Sharon said, hoping she wouldn’t startle the other woman. She’d been lost in thought in here before, working on a case, and nearly had the wits frightened out of her when she’d thought she was alone. The blonde woman came further in and set down her things at one of the small table, then stretched out her shoulders, pushed up her sleeves, and started to go through the first filing cabinet, looking for the paperwork she’d been sent to inspect.
Usually Joan did get lost in things, but never so much that she was completely oblivious to her surroundings, that was a sure fire way to encourage Sherlock to sneak up on her just to test her. “No trouble, um… Just let me know if I have anything you need.” Because Joan hadn’t been expecting too many people in there either, she had mountains of paperwork around her while she sorted through what she needed.
And Joan didn’t want to be responsible for holding someone else up with this stuff either.
“I will, thanks.” Sharon said, turning to look over at the other woman. She smiled softly, and turned her attention back to the filing cabinet. After searching for a minute or so, Sharon frowned a little and glanced once around the room. Then her eyes fell on the woman once more.
“You just might have what I’m looking for.” Sharon said, apologetically, and moved over toward the small table. Then she rattled off the case number in a questioning tone.
“Oh um,” the number was instantly one Joan knew that yes, she did have. She had each of the victims sitting out on her little desk, going through all their connections, “You’re looking into the Travis Witt murder?”
Travis had been the second from last victim, killed in April in his home. He’d been the second victim to have his murder shot posted on his social media along with his body being cut up and rearranged. It was a particularly harrowing part of the case. “Um, here it is right there.”
Of course now Joan was curious as to why the other woman needed it. “Detective?”
“Yes, thanks,” Sharon pulled out a chair and slipped into it, drawing out a legal pad and a pen. She just needed to verify a few of the facts of the case, and this seemed to be the easiest and fastest way to do it. “I work for a private Security Agency,” she explained, hoping that would be enough for the other woman. Then, when she decided it wouldn’t really be enough for herself, she added, “We’ve been hired to investigate Witt’s connections to a company we suspect might be a front for illegal activity.”
A simple ‘private agency’ wouldn’t have been enough for Joan, she might not press matters at the time, but she’d be curious, and it would likely have led to more questions on her part. “Do you think that had anything to do with his murder?”
So far, they hadn’t really found anything that linked all of the victims together; they lived in different areas for the most part, went to different bars and gyms, their paths may occasionally cross at coffee shops, but most of the time they weren’t there at the same time or for long. So Joan was pretty sure Sherlock and her couldn’t both have missed any illegal connections if they were rife through the victims. Sherlock had a knack for sniffing those things out.
Sharon was frowning a little as she glanced down at the paperwork in front of her. "Honestly? I think this is a dead end for us. I'm not sure if there's any kind of connection between this guy and the front company that we're researching." She sifted through some of the papers until she found what she was looking for, and jotted down a few case notes onto her legal pad.
"I think this guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his name somehow got added to a list where it shouldn't have been." It'd happened before. Sharon actually enjoyed dead ends, because it meant closure. It meant they could wrap things up on one part of an investigation and refocus their energies where it mattered more.
“What’s your interest in the Witt case?” Sharon asked, glancing up and over at the other woman.
Wrong place, wrong time seemed to be a very common thing right now, from murder to suspected criminal ties. “His murder case.” Which was part of an ongoing investigation, but Joan wasn’t exactly police anyway and she seemed to be at least partially affiliated if she was looking through the records. “My partner and I are consulting detectives.”
And while Sherlock wasn’t technically her partner anymore, she was still very used to calling him that and referring to him as such. “We’re looking for any connections that the victims might have right now.” Since they were really coming up on potentially being entirely reliant on circumstance right then.
Sharon wasn’t sure she’d ever heard of a consulting detective before, but it sounded impressive. She nodded, though, letting that slide. Anyone who was in here consulting records had been properly vetted by the police department, and if she was okay in their book, she was okay in Sharon’s. The blonde may have had her problems with some of the old dickheads in the homicide department, but that didn’t mean the whole department was evil.
“I see. Tying them all together? Do we have a serial killer on the loose?” Sharon asked, taking a few more notes on her legal pad. That was something that interested her a little, but she wasn’t going to press for more information. She was confident it was classified, anyway.
“An exceptionally patient and specific one.” The fact that more people weren’t aware made sense, this guy crossed county lines, he moved around the area, he was methodical and controlled, he was the epitome of an organised killer. “The evidence is fairly minimal, so we’re just going over everything with as much attention as possible, which happens to include triple checking our facts.”
And looking for any overlap in the victims.
The best police work--or consulting detective work, in this case--was all about triple checking facts. Sharon gave a little sigh as she finished taking her notes, then passed the file back over to the other woman. “I think I’ve got all I need here.” It was a dead end for her, but she hoped the other woman found more luck. “Good luck with your serial killer.”
For a moment Sharon debated passing over her card. Mostly out of morbid curiosity. But that would be hard to explain. Hey, call me when you catch the guy seemed kinda weird and lame. So she simply stood and smiled before making her way out.