“What store was robbed?” Cassandra asked. Her curiosity got the better of her when she realized that her mask had apparently dropped for a second, genuine interest in the subject shining through for a moment. Not that Grunwald seemed to notice, the man too invested in his own words.
“What stores, you mean,” Grunwald corrected, not actually seeming happy that the correction could be made to behind with. Neither did Cassandra, for very obvious reasons related to her prior engagements with the thieves. “A whole line of them on a single street very close to the station was broken into. Glass is everywhere on the street.”
A whole line of stores. That wasn't good. That was terrible, unworkable, and not something that should have happened without the station noticing instantly. Cassandra had worked hard to make sure that there was no chance of a single store in the whole city not being broken into without her and the rest of her co-workers knowing about it.
She had expanded the timers long ago, each store in the entire city equipped with a direct line to the station. The thieves had been known for their ability to turn off the in-built alarms, and she had accounted for that, by slapping on a program meant to notice such manipulations. And it had been working for so long. Why exactly didn't it work now?
A single store could have been ignored. All the stores being equipped had been some hasty work on her part, and Cassandra would not have put it behind herself to have messed up some of the later ones that were closer to the station. Yet the chance that an entire street of them had been equipped with faulty detectors was an idea that just didn't make sense in her head.
“Do you think it might be a new group of thieves?” Cass asked, not sure what to think of the situation herself. She couldn't get it through her head.
“God, I hope not. And I don't think it is, looking at it objectively either,” Grunwald answered, looking up at the ceiling for a few moments. The man was clearly stressed to the bone with the new ongoings. “The way they’ve done it isn't that different from what we’ve seen prior to this. And from the descriptions given out, it would require technology capable of doing things that we have only seen from this specific group of criminals. No other city in the entire world has reported this problem, so there aren't any chances of it being a new product in the underground making it possible.”
“So it’s the same group,” Cass stated, feeling similar levels of despair now. “They’ve just learned to counter our tactics, making it yet again impossible for us to know when they strike a new store.”
“Exactly my point,” the older officer in the room said, not seeming happy that another person got the exact same idea of just what was happening. Had he been hoping in old age he twisted his view or something? “Some of the stores are very outside of their other targets, yet the style with each store is apparently identical. And, more importantly, one of the stores robbed was one of the ones that stored that piece of medical equipment you were so serious about removing.”
Things just got worse and worse with each word. First, there were new patterns all around, and then there were ideas about the thieves knowing more than they should have. Cassandra really did hope for some good news.
“Any chance of them recognizing the store being under lockdown due to the security in front?” Cassandra suggested.
“The chances are very slim. This is the first time they’ve hit a place so close to the station,” Grunwald stated, rejecting the idea. “No, they needed to have known about it beforehand… I have an idea about what could have happened. After failing to capture the target, you mentioned that Jared drove over to the store assigned to you. Do you know if he drove directly over to me after that or if he drove back to the store that he was assigned to?”
“He drove back since he had not yet packed all the items into the vehicle,” Cassandra answered, her mind trying to follow along with the conversation as best as he could. “Do you think the thieves could have followed along without being noticed?”
“There are very slim chances of that happening when it comes to Jared. I would think it more likely that they got a tracker on the car somehow,” Grunwald stated. That… was not something that Cassandra would have guessed towards. It honestly seemed like a blind throw into the mist.
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Yet… it did cover what needed to have happened for the thieves to know just where the store was. And since the third store, where Grunwald had been located, was over five kilometres away from the first two, it made sense for them to have only tried to hit the second one. Actually, there might have been a chance that the tracker couldn't even have hit that far, the smaller sizes used for some of them stopping any real distance from being covered.
“That does not sound like a bad theory at all,” Cassandra said. Looking at the time, Jared would be waking up in a few hours. The woman thought about suggesting that the man would be put on that case, yet she also figured that too much time would have passed by then. “I think I could actually check out the car Jared drove in and search it for anything that fit the criteria of a tracker.”
“That would certainly confirm the idea if you found anything,” Grunwald commented. “Cass, I leave this matter to you. I’ll have the location and the report from the civilian sent over to you immediately. The rest will be done by you. And remember to catalogue all the stolen items, please.”
Cassandra gave a swift nod, downing the rest of the terrible drink down her throat, and leaving the cafeteria in a hurry. Jules was waiting just outside the door, ready to say some kind of comment to her. Yet the woman’s gaze was more than enough for any jolly mood to be ruined, as the two quickly began to increase their pace down the hall.
“I feel like the task of the day has been altered from what we had planned,” Jules commented as they walked outside, Cassandra beginning to search up the logs from a few nights before. “No more cataloguing of found items for us.”
The woman was sure that Jared would be more than happy to go into the forest and do it for them when he woke up from his induced sleep. In the meanwhile, she had to figure out which car that the man had driven in during the time they had set up a trap for the thieves.
It was a surprisingly hard task to do, as the man never seemed to fill out all the details in his report. That lack of proper filing finally seemed to hit them back, Cassandra was forced to rely on her own report of the night. In it, she had commented on the man using the oldest car in the entire station.
That aforementioned car had been used the previous night as well, making it easy to see which it was. The bullet holes and broken window just made it stand out all the more. It was actually scheduled for a deep clean later that day, making the woman happy that she had heard the theory so early on. If the tracker was found, then they had a much easier time later on.
“We will be responding to a robbery,” Cassandra finally told Jules, the construct seeming a bit iffy about having been ignored for so long. The woman couldn't help it, honestly, too preoccupied with doing her job. “First, however, we have to search through this car here for any trackers stuck on the outside. Do you have the necessary equipment for such a task, or do I need to-”
“I have plenty of equipment to use for this, so step aside now, please,” Jules cut in, more than ready to show off what it was made of. Cassandra took that as a yes to her unfinished question, standing back to allow the construct to move around freely.
If not for the fact that it was equipped with such a device, she would have been forced to go over to the lockers to find something that would work. Not the greatest way to spend her time, searching through hundreds of different scanners for this very specific task, making it all the easier that she had an automation at hand that could handle all the heavy lifting for it. It truly was the larger version of a swiss-army-knife, with this one being able to walk on two legs. Though, she wasn't sure how the army knife would react if she ever let that statement out into the air.
“Found it!” the army- Jules, Cassandra meant, stated. The automation was hunched over at the back of the car, nearly on its stomach as it looked up at the underside of the car. Cassandra fell into the same position right beside it, dead-set on getting a look at the situation as well.
And she was glad she did, meanwhile being even happier that she wasn't the one who had been tasked with finding it. The tracker was smaller than anything she had seen before, to the point where the woman initially thought it to be a piece of dried mud that had settled on the car paint. But that wasn't what it was at all, the domed point making it obvious that it was man-made.
“Do you recognize it from previous items found?” Cassandra asked, seeing that the automation was lying dead-still. That was beginning to become the more obvious example of it being very focused on finding some piece of information in its archives. The woman didn't even care about the lack of movement anymore, only seeing it as another method of body language that could be used for her own reading.
“Nope. There is not a single previous incident in the last ten years where this item has been used before,” Jules stated, taking it off the car and putting it in its hand. “There are a few examples that seem close to it in shape, but nothing is close to the size of this thing. It’s way too small for anything that should be remotely practical.”
The small tracker sat on the tip of the automation’s finger, yet even then it seemed so unnaturally small compared to the skin it was on. Cassandra couldn't help but fear them losing the gadget due to the wind unintentionally picking it up. She didn't even dare take it into her own hand, for the fear of it slipping through her fingers.
“Bag it quickly, and then let's put it into evidence,” Cassandra stated, getting up from her prone position. She was very happy about nobody really being outside nowadays, knowing full well that her earlier position under the car wouldn't have been looked at as anything close to professional.
The automation took out a bad from who-knew-where, before putting the small tacker inside. It barely even took any space inside the bag, even when the construct had picked the smallest one at their disposal.
“Do you think it was hand-made then?” the automation quested, bringing the bag right up to its eye. “I can see some shoddy fusing at the back of it, so it couldn't have been made in a fabricator. And since this isn't produced commercially, it has to be hand-made right?”
That was a scary thought to have.
“It would require extreme precision and very expensive equipment to do right, with the person making it being akin to a literal genius of the decade… but, yes, it is very much possible that’s what it is,” Cassandra stated. “Now, let's go inside so we can drop this off, and then let's go over to the actual crime scene that we’re supposed to already be at.”
… Cassandra felt a chill down her back right there. She didn't see it as a positive thing.