Paper Chase

[Khalvin]

"Wait up there. I should clarify these tourists all lived here in town. I meant sight see-ers. Something about a bachelor party. I don't know if we can place them near the boat before the incident without video evidence. Even finding Super Science trace on them would only lead back to the night the ship sank. Unless we found drums of it or something."

Yeah, drums of an agent that dissolved decayed metal and plastics. "We can question the three men. But without a warrant we can't search their property, without better evidence we can't get a warrant.
And they may not even be involved beyond being at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Detective Gramps always said, if you had no lead, make one. Vince doubted that advice would work in this particular case.

[Fractured]

Frank clears his throat. "Uh. The three tourists on board were all investigated and came back clean. It was in the original detective's, O'Connell's report," he reminds his partners. "No, we'll dig up other leads. What we absolutely will not do, Mister Johnson, is pursue our inquiries with the Air Force." The old dog grins, having understood his superior's message clearly.

[Jmiland1]

"Good, good," Johnson says with a nod. "I'll speak with the Port Authority then. They're looking in to some things on their end, so maybe they will come up with the pieces we need to prevent a lawsuit." He doesn't dust his hands off with a satisfied "That's that," but he may as well--the SAC just about exudes "We're done with this."

That dealt with, Johnson places his hands on the large boxes of paperwork. "So I have another little task for you. Nothing very exciting on this, I'm afraid; we're doing ICE a favor by handling some of their overflow." He raises his hands to cut off any potential complaining. "We're all part of DHS here. We help them out on this, they may extend some courtesies to us down the line. In turn, they're helping out the State Department--so I hope you see how beneficial this could be for us. What we have here is a collection of visa requests, passports, property purchases, et cetera made by a mass of citizens from former Soviet Bloc nations. SAC Jiminez needs us to collate the data and see if there's anything hinky about it. If we can prevent any of the Eastern European criminal groups from getting a toehold here we'll save us loads of work down the line." He clears his throat and adds, "This is just a small, temporary assignment. Don't go thinking you'll be wasting weeks doing some other department's bean-counting."

"Any questions?"

[GB82]

Tim wondered to himself just how far he'd fallen, back in the FBI they dumped their shit work on ICE and here ICE was doing the same to his new organization. Damn next thing you know the ATF would show up without any beer, babes and boomsticks and try to kick dirt on us too. Still the SAC felt it was something that needed to be done and Tim wanted to make a good impression on his new co-workers.

"What's ICE looking for, people with all the wrong connections or records too good to be true?"

[Fractured]

Frank tries not to roll his eyes. Johnson had a point that there might be a favor for them somewhere along the line in this, but tossing a ton of some other department's busy work on their plates in the middle of a sensitive investigation was a waste of their goddam time. Well, it didn't have to be a waste of Frank's. "Why don't I show Agent Simmons here around Sacramento while we work on those >cough< new leads an' Patolli and Warren work on collating this," shit, Frank thinks, "data?"

[Khalvin]

Patolli doesn't look thrilled at first, but then it dawns on him that his request came from the head of ICE, Agent Johnson wasn't kidding about how beneficial this could be in the future.

"Not from me, I'll get on it right away." He turns to to Jessica wondering if she would be helping.

[Dark Passenger]

Jessica stood between Frank and Vince. Her head turned from the one to the other, she was thinking hard. Showing Timothy around would be a lot more fun, but it would be a bit strange if I take Frank's place without a good reason. So I'll just help Vince...

'Well, have fun!' she smiles at Frank and Agent Simmons and waves everybody goodbye when she follows Vince.

[GB82]

"If it's okay with you Agent Johnson, I wouldn't mind being shown around the city by Agent Rizzo, I would like to get more of a feel for the city and maybe see a couple of the locations that were mentioned in the briefing." Tim hadn't been in the city long and looked forward to a ride along with the ex-cop. Well Frank hadn't said ex-cop, but Tim had been in law enforcement long enough to make an educated guess on the subject and city cops were the best ones to get a city tour from. They knew all the little secrets.

[Jmiland1]

Johnson looks at Rizzo, then down at the two boxes, with a far-off look as though doing some arcane algebra in his head...

Ex-cop (Widower + Knows who Eisenhower was x Naps at his desk / Coffee intake) = Extremely important Homeland Security task + x. Solve for x?

...and looks back up with a smile. "I think that's a great idea. The poor boy's at a disadvantage, not knowing the city. This might do him more good than looking through visa applications. Be sure to pay attention, Agent Simmons," Johnson adds, jokingly. "There will be a test when you get back."

Waving Patolli and Warren closer, the SAC says "We need the human touch on this, folks. Database searches and cross-references can only get us so far; we need someone looking through these records for anything that warrants further investigation. You'll have access to the DHS dbase on this, and ICE has wrangled some Interpol access as well--but use that sparingly. We want to keep these inquiries in-house as much as possible."

[Khalvin]

Vince had been afraid he would have to push the papers by hand. "Understood" he replies, voice carried low as he drew in closer.