About Alternative Investigation Methods

[Dark Passenger]

'The middle of the night' had passed already. It was dark outside. Jessica is fully packed and wears tight clothes. She needed all the instruments but couldn't wear a bag in case she needed to run away or fight.

Slowly she walks through the street, approaching the house of Valon Behari. She checks her pockets. Lockpick, check. Strange device ON, check. Her hand moves to her back, where brass knuckles were attached to her belt. Not really the police kind of weapon, but she had to improvise something.

First thing to do: know your enviroment. Jessica tries to look at the house, a bit inconspicuous. If there are no lights on, she'll check if there is no one is looking at her in the streets. If no one is there, she'll look if a little round around the house can be made...

Gather your guts girl, you can do this. With a litre of coffee in your blood you're ready to kick some ass.

[Jmiland1]

A cool wind blows down the dark street, the streetlamps hardly doing anything to hold back the night. The deep black makes it clear that there are no lights on in Behari's house, and no one seems to have an eye on the street.

So far, looks easy enough. And if Johnson is right--if Behari's not here--then all she has to do is get inside and she'll be home free.

The sides of the house are clear of brush or fencing; Jessica's easily able to dash down the thin patch of lawn to the backyard, empty except for a young birch tree. It rustles softly in the wind.

The back of the house is just as dark as the front. Unfortunately, there's no back door to be found: just several bay windows.

[Dark Passenger]

Jessica looks around one more time, and then goes to the front door. The recorder is in a pocket on her chest, so she bows her head to speak softly.
'3:04 am, house's surroundings seem to be clear. I'll try to get in now.'
She holds the maglight, which she was wearing in her left hand, now between her arm and her body, and puts it on very soft, shining on the lock.

She wasn't very trained, so she could only hope this would work. With the lockpick in her hand she starts trying to get in. First she was doing it wrong, obviously. This was just her second time ever trying to lockpick a door. She nervously looks to her left and right before giving it a second try.

Please god, disable any alarmsystems and camera's in and around the house.

Pick da lock

2011-04-27 06:59:53
Jessica rolls 5 to dex3+larc1+equip1 to lockpick door (10 Again)
6, 6, 5, 3, 4
failure

2011-04-27 07:01:11
[02] Jessica rolls 5 to dex3+larc1+equip1 to lockpick door (10 Again)
2, 2, 2, 6, 8
1 success

2011-04-27 07:01:11
[01] Jessica rolls 5 to dex3+larc1+equip1 to lockpick door (10 Again)
1, 8, 10, 6, 2, 6
2 successes

3 turns, 3 suxx. Alright if I keep going?... what's the target ?

[Jmiland1]

Call it Providence; call it beginner's luck; call it a sign that she could have been a cat burglar in another life. After a minute of trying the lock she both hears a soft click from inside the mechanism, and feels the tumblers inside slide into place.

Well. That's the first obstacle, down.

The door opens quietly. There's a boost of confidence when no dog jumps out of the shadows barking madly, no gun pressed against the side of her head. Could it really be as easy as Johnson seemed to suggest?

[Dark Passenger]

Jessica steps into the house, and bends her head forwards. '3:06, I'm in. I'll walk around the main floor.'

She walks inside the house, with the maglite shining softly. She'll try to get a first look on how the house is built, how many rooms on the ground floor, is it just the living room or is there also a computer and a work bureau where useful information could be?

Oh, and there is special attention for flashing red lights or other electronics in the house.

[Jmiland1]

The lone spot of light floats around the house as Jessica tries to get her bearings and map out the house in her mind. Through the living room, the kitchen, bed, bath, and beyond; the agent gets an idea of the house's layout. She notes, with some relief, that there are no stairs leading to a second story; and while several of the doors hide closets none of them are hiding a basement level. There's just the one floor to be examined here.

It's a simple layout: from the door into a foyer; from the foyer she can go into the living room straight ahead, or the kitchen on the right. The kitchen flows into a hallway which passes a half-bathroom and the bedroom before the hall empties into the living room. It's one circular route.

Wadded napkins and grease-spotted paper plates fight for space on the coffee table and couch in the living room; fruit flies buzz lazily in the kitchen; worn clothing dots the bedroom floor. It doesn't take a detective to see that Behari is clearly a bachelor with better things to spend his time or money on than housekeeping.

And like any bachelor, what effort he isn't putting into keeping a clean home has been directed into his entertainment center: a wide-screen plasma TV, with a rack nearby full of flat black boxes of consumer electronics of unknown duty and design. Although they are all off there's a raft of blinking indicator lights all over them, and the soft glow of digital clocks on several of the devices which are all within spitting distance of the correct time. A computer, however, is not to be seen.

[Dark Passenger]

God I thought I prepared for everything, but it turns out to be I forgot my medical mouth cap.

Jessica checks if all the curtains are closed, then she'll put the maglite brighter. She first checks the papers on the coffee table, though she doesn't expect much. She is very surprised there is no computer in here, although it was good too, if he held his business on paper she didn't have to try to break into a computer, which is not her strongest feature.

But she can't entirely believe it yet. She takes a closer look at all the electronics, these days there are enough devices to save digital information. If she comes across a phone, she'll start looking for a contact list nearby, hopefully a contact book.

And we wish this was all easier, I'm really not going to look beneath his matress for hidden stuff.

[Jmiland1]

Jessica shines the maglight on the rack of electronics, trying to divine some meaning from the stack. She makes out a BluRay player, and some sort of DVR device; one of the black rectangles has thick wires jammed into its back panel like a spinal tap patient, the cords hooking into the speakers arrayed around the TV. Everything seems to be set up properly, legitimately--but if someone wanted to hide a CD or thumbdrive, they could do worse than stashing it amongst all these cables or inside a loose panel here. Jessica makes a mental note to return to this later if all other options are eliminated.

The cone of light swings through the living room as Jessica takes stock, then guides her through the house. There are phone jacks in the kitchen and the living room, but nothing plugged into any of them. By one of the kitchen jacks, however, there's some drawers, and one of them is filled up with papers:

An instruction manual for the microwave. A box of Blue Diamond matches. A rebate package for a water filter, the whole pack still wrapped in unopened plastic, as abandoned as a teenage pregnancy. Some candles, some scissors, a mound of rubber bands. A junk drawer.

And at the bottom of the drawer, under everything else, is a small, thin booklet of brown leather. Just the size and shape of an address book.

[Dark Passenger]

Gotcha! The first thing here that at least looks like it could contain useful information.

Jessica opens the little book and reads if it comes near to what she thought it was. If it is an address book she'll start looking for names she knows from the investigation. And if she doesn't know the names, there might be a "Work" chapter.

Then, if it's not an address book, she'll be just as curious, if not more...

[Jmiland1]

The book is reluctant to open, the pages stiff and crackling, almost like it is resisting. Behari must not put a lot of use into it. It is indeed formatted like an address book, and like many address books before it, it has many empty pages--used once and tossed aside, like the detritus of the microwaved dinners the Albanian has left around his home.

But the book is not completely blank: 'S.S. Depot' says one line, with just a phone number below. Most of the listings (about a dozen, all told) are like that: Just a phone number matched to a set of initials or a terse description. 'G. L.' 'D. K.' 'Red Mill.'