“Gas explosion, really?” when Caroline, Thomas and Detective Kuhn met with their captain back at their SJPD precinct, the captain was not too happy about their answer about why the bar they were investigating exploded: “You want me to believe that?”

“Captain, there’s no other explanation there - we haven’t found any other evidence for explosives.” Detective Kuhn was quite hesitant, but yet he couldn’t seem to bring himself to find the right words to obscure the truth: “And it just exploded - we’re lucky we weren’t caught within the fatal blast zone, and neither were the victims or the perps.”

“None of whom we can take much credit for, because of that big-ass ‘gas explosion’ attracted the attention of the feds, and now they’re sending some credit hogging assholes to come and take over the case, where our city might just get stuck with the bill for the property damage.” the captain waved his hand and continued with his angry rant: “Now, unless you can figure the entire case out in the next - let me see, next three to four hours, whatever hotshot agents that are on their way already will come here and start their work investigating the case.”

“Is that a challenge?” Caroline said to herself and looked up at the ceiling.

“Challenge? No! No!” the captain hear Caroline’s words, and started shaking his head: “It’s a rhetorical question, this fucking Drainer case has been high profile for a while, but the city kept blocking the feds, because it is reelection season for the mayor. But now with things happening at this scale, then even the mayor cannot block the feds from sticking their noses and their greasy hands in this investigation. ”

“So what do you want us to do, sir?” Detective Kuhn took a look at Caroline and Thomas, then asked: “Organize the material? Prepare to hand them off? I’m afraid we can’t do that! We’ve been working on this case for… ”

“What are you, first day on the job?” the captain scoffed: “You are still working the case, because you are most familiar with it. You’ll just have to work with the feds with it. And yes, you will have to take some orders from them.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“The SJPD is not the subordinate of the feds, why do we have to take orders from them?” Thomas asked: “I - I meant Detective Kuhn and Detective Lee ...”

“Detective Chaver - Thomas, you know very well things are much more complicated than that.” the captain let out a loud blow out of his nose: “You know that some local politician’s kid got involved right? Well, they have connections and strings and now they are gaining an advantage on their push.”

“Okay. So what should we do?” Thomas asked, with a slight hint of impatience.

“Date your notes and evidence, make sure on the record that it was you that found them, and hand me a report on what you have found so I have something to tell the mayor. At least that is what he requested.” the captain said: “Have that report ready for me in less than two hours, remember, dates and details.”

“On it.” Detective Kuhn stood up and said: “Lee is not here, but we can call him and start first without him.”

“Yes, call everyone who can help.” the captain waved his hand as a gesture of sending them off to their work.

“Let’s first review the ledger, that’s the most important piece of evidence from the case so far.” Caroline said the moment they walked out of the captain’s office.

“I already read through it while we were driving back. It’s all written in codes.” Detective Kuhn said: “We could either interrogate the suspects for the means to decode this, or we can have some lab techs to help us figure it out. I’ll send some uniformed officers to do some door duty as well.”

“Or we could do both.” Thomas said: “I’ll talk to the lab techs, I am buddies with a few of them and maybe I could help speed things up a bit. You go ahead and ask what they can tell you. Caroline, can you … can you watch over Detective Kuhn on the interrogation? ”

“Sure, of course.” Caroline nodded: “I’ll let you know what happened.”

“... at this rate, we can probably see the Corin crime family be cut in half within this yeah.” just when three of them were walking by the desk of one of the detectives, Caroline overheard the detective telling her partner: “I have checked almost every angle possible, to me this looks like some kind of family civil war. But we have yet to find out what the warring factions are. It could well be more than one.”

“Wait wait wait, excuse me.” Caroline immediately rushed to the detective and asked: “Did you just say the Corin crime family is having a civil war?”

“I’m sorry, but who are you?” the detective frowned and asked.

“Hey, Carter, this is Caroline, she’s with us.” Thomas immediately walked over to Caroline’s side and said to the detective: “She’s our consultant and she’s helping us and Kuhn with the Drainer case. And she’s had a previous run-in with a girl from the Corin family.”

“Emilia Corin, to be precise.” Caroline nodded and asked: “Can you tell me, even just a little bit, about what this civil war is?”