You Might Find You Get What You Need
Posted on Mon Dec 12th, 2016 @ 4:33pm by Commander Jordan Gunning & Warrant Officer Marcus Lazlo
Mission:
Lie Of Omission
Location: Gunning Investigations
Gunning's office was awash with papers and half-filled PADD screens. Every surveillance report and personnel tag check-in from Peluu, one of the resorts so well attended on Archa IV. So far there were a few notes on Murak Sazarel's last movements thanks to the student identity chip he carried. A few bars, a few other less than reputable establishments and then nothing.
Nothing was suspicious. Under Archan law, and following a series of kidnappings and brutal slashings in the areas surrounding the Institute, students were issued a chip which they carried on their personal communicators which would log their location. No-one was monitoring it but if something went wrong they would be able to find their last known location.
It wasn't perfect, but it was something, and all the Institute was expected to do was something.
Gunning had used as much of his silver tongue as he could afford to retrieve the records - not difficult. Campus security had seemed delighted to have someone to take the pressure off them, but it was the personnel records, criminal and otherwise, which Lazlo would be able to provide which would give him the information he needed.
Laz walked up to the door of the non-descript office in the lower levels, smirking a bit at the stock printed door label "Private Investigator". He wasn't sure what he was doing here other than a favor for a friend... he just hoped he didn't wind up unemployed because of it.
"In for a penny, in for a pound I guess," He said with a sigh, tapping the chime.
The door parted and a woman stood up from behind a small desk in the room. She was in her thirties and had the look of someone who thought her life would have gone in a completely different direction. Her voice was shriller than a red alert klaxon. "You hear to see Mister Gunning?" The accent wouldn't have sounded out of place in a Boston port. "He's in there." She pointed towards the larger part of the office, separated by another door.
"Thanks, doll," Laz said with a nod, heading toward the door to Gunning's office and knocking.
Velda, the woman behind the desk, muttered something inaudible to Lazlo but the content would have melted the skin off a Priest's face. A muffled sound of what seemed to be motors came from the other side of the door before Gunning beckoned him in.
"Detective Lazlo!" Gunning said, ushering him inside, his salubrious demeanour more than a little disconcerting. "Good news, I hope?"
"Hopefully," Laz replied with a dry chuckle as he tossed PADD to Gunning. "That's all the info I could dig up. Keep it quiet where you got it, okay?" He said, flopping down across the desk from Gunning.
"Discretion's my middle name." Gunning replied with a wide smile. He was drowning in paperwork, trying desperately to find something, anything that could help him track the kid down. Thankfully Lazlo's timely intervention assured him that he could do away with most of it. He began looking through what he had.
Lazlo chortled at that, "Not from what I heard," He said with a smirk.
Fair enough - Jordan wasn't exactly renowned for subtlety. A lot of it was what he'd expected, a sudden drop-off in seminar attendances, behavioural problems, lower test scores. All of the things that would have pointed toward a young person getting involved in something they shouldn't have. Drugs? Alcohol? Both? "Looks pretty cut and dry, eh?" He asked Lazlo.
"Always does, never is," Lazlo replied, simply. "I want in on this one... on the side. What are you after here, kid?" He said, leaning forward on the desk. "This kid in trouble more than you're lettin' on?"
"As far as I know, no." Gunning didn't want to disappoint him but he just needed the money. "Fact of it is a lot of kids fall off the map and are never heard from again. You hear their parents bleating - 'So promising, so gifted, so sensitive, so much to live for' - but the kids don't want to live for anything that they can't inject into their arms. That's the risk you run in Galactic South, you're never more than a few yards from a Chem dealer."
Laz nodded, "That's the damn truth. So you think he's shacked up in a flop house somewhere?"
"I'd put my money on the kid being dead or at least too far gone for his dearest mother to get anything salvageable from him but if I can put the squeeze on a few dealers, maybe disrupt some of the supply lines by asking the right questions in the wrong places then we can do something to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again."
"Yeah, that's definitely something I can put some effort behind," He said, grinning a bit a nodding.
"We'll need an in with the local police, just in case I find myself in a jam. Do you have any contacts down there?"
"I have a few favors I can call in. One of m old partners is in this sector from NYPD. He owes me a bunch," Lazlo replied, grinning broadly now and laughing a bit too hard.
Gunning didn't really want to know the kind of favours that Lazlo had been doing for people. The possibilities were endless and terrifying. "That's something. I'm going to hit the streets tomorrow and see what I can dig up on the local grapevine."
"Sounds good," Laz said, nodding. "I'll be in touch. Tell me what you need. And keep it quiet. I don't need station security giving me hell," He said with a grin.
Jordan Gunning
Private Investigator
Marcus Lazlo
Investigator
Station Security
