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+--- Thread: Doing the leg work (/thread-375.html)
- Drayson - 07-25-2013
Continued from: On the Job
It had proven simple enough to get a copy of The Guardian's security recordings of the Emergency Room entrance, and more importantly of the surrounding parking lots. The vehicle that dropped off the mysterious stab-wound patient couldn't be seen on the hospital's cameras, but they did reveal two figures, one whose face was obscured with a hoodie, come up to the entrance, where the stab-wound victim was unceremoniously dropped and the hoodie wearing figure ran off the way they came. It would have been so much easier had they simply driven up, and gave Drayson a good view of their vehicle and license plate.
But at least he knew the time, and the direction they had approached the hospital. With that information, he had returned to the Red Aquare, and more importantly to the Custody of Roads and Transit. Like many modern cities, Moscow had thousands of cameras watching it's streets and intersections. At least, there were thousands that were publicly known of. There were thousands more that were less openly advertised, but the paperwork to gain access to those would take a few hours to clear, at the best of times.
He had acquired three of that Custody's staff to help sift through the camera feeds. They had an approximate time, and an idea of direction, and had been able to narrow down their search accordingly. Computer software analyzed the number of passengers, helping to narrow down just how much time they needed to spend staring at monitors.
He leaned over the shoulder of a young woman, one of the many computer specialists that worked in the Custody, as she expertly cycled through the camera logs of one of the roads approaching the Guardian. They had narrowed it down to within a half hour of when the victim had been dropped on the steps of the hospital, but so far nothing had caught their eye. The cameras were more then capable of getting a good look at the faces of the drivers, and often the passengers, of the passing vehicles, but after cycling through the feeds twice, there just wasn't anything to go on.
Either the victim and his friend hadn't come to the hospital in a vehicle, or they were in the back of one of countless vans and trucks that could easily hide the two passengers, and had dropped off somewhere the Custody of Roads and Transit simply couldn't see.
"Why can't it ever be easy."
He stood and rubbed at his eyes tiredly; he couldn't fathom how some people made their living working at computers. The monitors here were far better then what he used in school, but they still seemed to give him a headache. Of course, that could also have something to do with the fact that he had been hunched over and peering at the screen for too long.
He thanked the three technicians he had appropriated and let them return to their day jobs; which was basically exactly what they had just been doing, but mostly just to watch for accidents or problems with the traffic flow. The angles of view of all the cameras they had accessed were arrayed on an interactive map of Moscow on his Wallet, as well as the license plates of the dozens of vans and trucks that the mystery men could have been hidden in, but he doubted he was going to find anything there.
He exited the building to stand within the walls of the Kremlin, and took a slow sip of terrible communal office coffee pot dregs. His sip was stopped and he lowered the cup to work a mouthful of coffee grinds. There was a brief moment where he nearly entertained the idea of spitting the grinds out, but that simply wouldn't do in so prestigious an area, so he sighed quietly and swallowed, taking a few more shallow sips of coffee to help rinse his mouth of errant grinds, then delivered the cup to the nearest trash can. It was going to be a very long day.
It was while he dealt with that mouthful of coffee gunk that he had an epiphany. Not too far away, a van was parked near an open manhole, a few safety cones put out to ward off foot traffic. One technician fed a roll of cable into the open hole to his partner in the tunnels below.
The tunnels. The city was a bloody maze beneath the streets. Who said the knife victim and his friend had approached the Guardian in a vehicle? What if they had used the service tunnels, or the metros? Or the sewers even. The medical report did indicate the man had been dirty, and that he had reeked to high heaven, although that had been attributed to the fact the fellow had soiled himself, on account of being nearly stabbed in the heart.
He grinned faintly and made his way to the Custody in charge of those tunnels.
Another few hours later, and he had something to work with finally. They hadn't actually spotted any suspicious movement on what few working cameras they had, but he now knew of dozens of ways to reach the streets near the Guardian, and which ones didn't have working surveillance. His map was growing more and more complicated, and the best way to think was to go for a walk.
Continued in: Browsing
Edited by Drayson, Aug 11 2013, 07:02 PM.