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 Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 1:48 pm
He was seriously contemplating falling asleep at the table, but he knew that was supposed to look bad. He’d turned down their awful coffee, though he’d wanted it because he didn’t want to be stuck in here and not allowed to go to the restroom; it was probably him worrying too much, but after hours of ‘questions’ and pushing, officers ragging on him for his history, for his record… <******** tore into him like they didn’t care if he HAD done it; they just wanted him to have because then they could get him off the streets and, by default, out of their hair. He hated them, hated them for being petty, for being childish and petty, for just latching on to him as a quick and easy fix. Hell, he only half blamed them for that because the city was Rife with Vigilante’s, and while they couldn’t possibly know he was one… he was a concrete ‘solution’ in a world made of magical quicksand. But he still hated them. His head hurt, his butt hurt because he refused to pace around, his PRIDE hurt because he still had some dignity, and the idea that he’d burn a house down was bullshit. Never mind that they’d implied he’d stolen the books. Like he needed to steal them for drugs or something. Had the table not been bolted to the floor, he’d probably have flipped it into the b*****d’s lap and damn the consequences. He was half sure he was going to have to walk back to his car. He hoped Priam was ok… He hoped against hope they hadn’t been told what the Cops knew, what Ilya knew… He was so ********. He hadn’t even done anything wrong today, not that he knew of. But he was SO ********. He groaned and leaned forward as the main ‘pusher’ returned, a handful of files to add to the ones already there. “Let’s go over this again…” He said with the tone that said he was ‘done with this bullshit,’ the ‘we know you did it, so just tell us’ tone that had shared mouths with so many foster families. It didn’t matter what ‘it’ was, didn’t matter if he’d done it… they just always ‘knew’ he had.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 4:50 pm
The interrogation probably could have gone on all night; there was no shortage of officers who would have rather sat in a small room, belittling someone with an disadvantaged background into confessing a crime he might not have been responsible just so they could have been done with it.
There was a knock on the door, rapid and insistent; the officer behind it didn't wait for permission before pushing open the heavy metal.
His gaze drifted to Yu for only a second, and then to the officer across from him. "Your dinner's here. I'll take over," he said; the officer across from Yu looked smug, perhaps because he thought it might be so tempting to tease that he had something to eat while Yu had been deprived of anything the entire time he was here.
The man rose, straightened himself out, and felt the need to announce, "I don't think he's got it in him to keep up this charade for much longer."
"Oh. That's a relief," the redhead said, with none of the glibness of the officer who had been grilling Yu for the past three hours straight. He waited, eyes on the man as he smugly walked past Yu, past him, and out the door.
There was a moment of silence and then he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and moved to stand at the chair across from Yu. He picked up the manila folder full of papers--the same that the officer had only recently been waving in front of Yu, bragging about everything that he knew, the contents of those sealed files.
Vague enough that he never actually brought up the charges first, but concise enough, nitpicking enough, that it seemed impossible that he was just guessing.
But then, you only needed to push so hard on someone's weaknesses to get them to break and tell you on their own.
Jeremy flipped through the papers--blank report sheets, with a copy of Yu's statement on top of the stack.
The silence hung in the air with a tension Jeremy didn't really care to touch.
"...It burned down," he said, with a sort of solemn disappointment. "The house next to it kept catching embers, but it didn't catch. Helicopter had to do a few sweeps, they had two trucks there at one point in time. I don't know if your friends stayed out for all of it, but they sent everyone home when it started getting dark. They've called the station six times that I know of, so it's probably only a matter of time before they show up, too."
He tapped the now closed folder on the table contemplatively.
"I suppose the officers you spoke to already gave you the run down, yeah? You've been in here for long enough, they've probably asked you ever question in the book about where you were today, what you were doing in the area, if you'd been back. I'm supposed to give you a few more questions, but. I want to go home. I figure you do, too. So I'm just going to keep this short."
He had a copy of the first statement Yu had made, when he first arrived here; Jeremy had read over it and it seemed pretty straight forward. "The neighbors said they saw someone matching your description snooping around. I've got a few reports of it, on the first, the twenty ninth, and the twenty fifth. Two of which were break ins, one was a stranger in the backyard. Stranger in the back yard was about eight on the twenty ninth, break ins on the twenty fifth and the first were at one and three. Have you got an alibi? --Anyone who can vouch for where you were, maybe you were at work, anything?"
They were basic questions and yet--when Jeremy flipped through the officer's notes, he couldn't find anything that indicated he'd actually recorded if Yu had provided an alibi. He squinted at the page and kept flipping through them, but he glanced up from the pages to look at Yu.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 5:33 pm
Kyuseisha no Hikari He sagged back in his chair at the news of the house, wilting like a dead house plant. <********… oh ********.” He rubbed his face, thinking of the house being so destroyed, “That… ******** he’s gonna be crushed.” “I have a -key-“ He sighed. “Priam is staying with us, someone hurt him really bad, and he needed help, so he’s at our house, so they probably saw me on different days when we were picking up stuff from the house if they didn’t just decide they saw me.” He growled. “I work, you can call my restaurant, or I have a lady I’ve been helping I can give you her number, but given the holiday I’ve been pulling a ton of Overtime in the Kitchen. I have like… dozens of people who work side by side with me, I told them. I know you guys think I could slip out, but you can’t…it’s a kitchen. Do you need the phone number again? Cause… god…” He groaned and tipped his head back. “Look, I don’t care what you guys think you can put together from my record, I don’t ******** play with fire. I was in the damn house when it started. If you’re gonna arrest me anyhow ******** do it already. Then I really won’t have an alibi for whatever goes wrong next because they will ******** fire me.” He knew they had no reason to care, but his anger was only just held back, like a clenched fist on a tight chain.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 6:21 pm
Jeremy was still flipping through papers; he couldn't find much information that even remotely sounded like what Yu was saying, so he slid a sheet of paper and a pen over. "Go ahead and write that all down for me. Your schedule for the past week and a half if you can remember that. The name of your place, the phone number, people you worked with. Just to get that all in the file. Won't do us any good if we're chasing a dead end and someone's out there burglarizing and-slash-or starting house fires. We still don't know if it's intentional or not, they won't even be able to check until tomorrow. It's too hot still, and I don't know if they can work in the darkness."
He didn't seem upset at Yu but there seemed to be some unease crawling beneath his skin. He didn't look happy to be here and his expression had remained one of general, barely subdued, annoyance. It had softened when he was speaking to Yu, but there wasn't really anything tender about him.
He was disgruntled, disenchanted, and he wasn't sitting down--like he didn't even plan on being here for very long.
"I'll make the calls, myself. No need to make a big deal out of it. Not going to endanger your job if what you're saying is true."
The if was heavy, but he wasn't wielding it like a weapon, an accusation. Just the truth.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 6:43 pm
Yu sighed and started jotting the words down. His handwriting wasn’t the nicest, but he wrote slower so that he could be sure to fit everything, his schedule, names of co-workers, even listing Karone, he trusted her to be a character witness even though the times they were sitting he’d been either already neck-deep in full-on cooking or helping do set up. “It IS true, you can probably even ask my boss but he’s gonna swear more than I do, especially if someone burned the Pilaf.” He finally slid the paper across the desk and back, pointing at two schedules. “This was the posted schedule…this is the hours I -worked-, so you gotta ask him about payroll not just get a photo of the schedule. Nala and Rizzo work station with me most days, and when it’s not them we get Rue.” He pointed at names. “We had a new guy but he burned too many people and pissed off the boss so I don’t have his name… Boss might. But he’d have been there for most of the days too.” He did watch the man's face, wondering why -he- looked uneasy too. "It's the same s**t I told the other dude. But I keep telling you guys whatever else you think from my file, I'm not a ******** burner. Fire bugs are crazy."
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 7:26 pm
"If I was worried about someone swearing at me, I wouldn't be working here," he said dismissively; he didn't care. Didn't care about a lot of things around here, anymore. Less so because of how normal everyone tried to pretend like things were.
They could look him in the eyes like they weren't ashamed of themselves and it made his skin crawl.
He accepted the paper and looked over it--but more than that, he took out his cell phone and took a picture of it, just in case.
He didn't really know if there were many people worth trusting around here anymore, but the nagging voice in the back of his head said that was just the paranoia talking, just the bad memories, just the resentment and anger.
Whatever it was, it was ******** loud, and if you wanted to get something done right you had to do it yourself.
He gathered the papers up and shoved them into the folder.
"All right. There's nothing to charge you with, we don't have any evidence. I can't hold you. I promised you a ride back, so let's go. When we get out of this room, you should have cell service again."
He looked like he was itching to get out of this room too; he'd been looking at the door while Yu wrote, checking his phone almost constantly to see the time.
"You can call your friends and tell them you're on your way back. I don't know if one of them moved your car or if it's still over by the fire, so at least text to check for me. You have any plans to go on vacation or head out of town for any reason?" he asked, walking to the door and gesturing for Yu to come with him. He walked, almost too quickly, and opened the door; he held it, but stood just outside the room as he waited.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 7:40 pm
His eyes flicked between the cell phone and the paper, that creeping suspicion that was more than half confusion that made his skin crawl. Why had the cop felt that was even needed? He wasn’t sure. “…I don’t do vacations.” He shot back. “Not like I have a family to go visit.” He huffed knowing where this was heading. He appreciated the idea of a ride back to his car at least, hustling after the man as fast as he could without looking like he was in too much of a hurry. He wasn’t sure if hurry made him look better or worse as a suspect. “Also it’s the holidays and I work as a cook, I’m not going anywhere. I can score overtime at the drop of a hat.” He looked like he could use a little less overtime to be fair, Whatever his history, it was written in a sort of code, bones that still whispered of bones pressed taught against freckled skin, the clothes he wore almost calculated in their size, too big, but just so much that it implied a greater mass. Scars peering out around leather bracelets and around cuffs. All giving small and appealing whispers it seemed to those others in the station. As soon as they were out of the room though, he was checking his phone, questing for missed calls and fresh messages with a thread of hope and longing. He was surprised not to be held… suspicion could get you 24 hours, he knew that too well. But… he wasn’t going to question it. Home, away… no questions no plastic chairs, at least for a little. He texted a message first, to warn of the call just in case… before dialing to see who he could reach. Sterling first, but he was the first ‘speed dial’ Yu had ever added, to be honest. “Off shift officer?” he added, as casual a glance as he could.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:40 pm
Jeremy didn't seem to care about scars or whispers or reputations; he stopped by a desk and opened a drawer, dropping the papers in and then locking it.
"Trying to be. But I've got an hour left before I'm out of this place. Let's see how long we can drag this out for."
He stood up straight and began to walk again, not making eye contact with any of the other officers. Still, he walked close enough to Yu that they could still speak. "If you leave town, it'll be suspicious. Until they've figured out the cause of this, until we've gotten all the answers, we'll be asking you to stick around. In case we've got more questions or," he gestured vaguely.
In case it did turn out he was guilty.
"If your alibi checks out, you'll probably be off the hook for the calls around the neighborhood--the sneaking around, breaking and entry. It just looks pretty suspicious given the fact that someone that looks like you has been trying to get in places, and you've got someone else's property in your car--and his house is on fire. But. Gotta say. Doesn't make much sense for you to call for help once it started smoking, and the fact that you have a key--and the owner of the place has vouched for you--certainly makes it seem like you're a poor prime suspect. You must have quite the record for them to be so hell-bent on keeping you. But."
Jeremy didn't seem to care, he just seemed to be glad to be out of the building; he was walking towards his car and pulled open the door to the backseat for him.
He didn't seem like he needed the conversation, but he was available for it; he guessed that Yu was going to have to deal with texts and phone calls, so he just enjoyed the fresh night air while he had it.
Priam had called--and texted--a number of times; he had left a few voice mails and text messages, most of which just sounded tired. The phone calls were updates on the situation, Priam letting him know that he was going to keep calling the station and if he wasn't out soon he was going to contact a lawyer. The messages always ended in 'I love you,' and a few of the texts did the same.
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2020 7:45 am
“You mean to stick around in case they have more questions and or decide they can prove it was me regardless of my alibi.” He shot back, it felt safer to say once they were out of the main doors. He grimaced at the back seat but slid in anyhow, pushing his frustration back down because who knew if he’d just be brought right back if he opened his mouth too much. He liked this cop better but…also, still, a cop, could just be a good cop bad cops situation right? “I told you too, I’m not a damn firebug, and anyone who watches TV knows eyewitnesses aren’t worth s**t.” He texted back to Priam, letting him know he was out, asking about the car, admitting he knew the state of the house. He’d fill them in more when he got back.
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2020 8:54 am
"Yeaaaah," Jeremy dragged the word out, like it was exhausting just to say. He turned the car on, buckled up, settled himself in. He was agreeing with both of Yu's statements, for better or worse. "...If it comes to that, just get a good lawyer. They're probably banking on you not being able to afford one, but if you can get a somewhat respectable name to back you up, they'll let it go. A lot of weird s**t happens in Destiny City."
He pulled out of his spot, careful because of Yu in the back seat, but eager to just be on the road.
"They won't hold onto any case for too long. It's the insurance that'll make a bigger stink, probably. But your case has my name attached to it, if you're innocent, I won't let anyone throw you under the bus. But I've already said, seems pretty stupid for you to burn down the house and call in about the fire. Seems like you actually wanted to save it, so," he shrugged; he hadn't plugged in any GPS but recalled the area enough to know where to go.
Yu's phone lit up with a response immediately; Priam was texting back that the car was still there, it was safe. The texts were short, distracted, but all of the information was there--'Come home safe. Let me know if anyone gives you any trouble. Love you.'
"Best I can do is say try to get some sleep and don't worry too much about it if you can. If it was an accident, they'll know soon. It went up pretty quick from what I hear? You didn't smell any gas or anything?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2020 9:58 am
“Right… I can afford that.” He grumbled. He flinched a moment later knowing Priam would help, but he hated the idea of that kind of money sink. “Thank you…” He said after a moment, even if it was just words, words that said he wouldn’t be tossed under a bus were good ones. “I just… smelled smoke, I thought maybe someone was cooking outside or had like, a wood stove burning, maybe even a barrel. A nice clean barrel for the cold weather.” He rambled. “I didn’t realize it was the house till I saw smoke, and it was just… it was just everywhere. I just went to get him some books to read, I figured the beat-up ones cause it meant he read them more. It… I could see flames when I got outside, I didn’t think anything could burn so goddamned fast.” He rubbed his head and sighed.
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2020 2:04 pm
Jeremy seemed a little surprised at the word of thanks; he glanced in the rear view mirror with one brow raised, like he was trying to determine if it was an actual word of thanks or if Yu was prepared to make him the butt of some joke. When no rebuke or sarcasm came, he just grunted and returned his eyes to the road.
"I doubt there was an accelerant, then. They're pretty pungent. He had a lot of books?"
It was an open ended question, maybe just to fill the void or maybe because he was actually curious.
Or, maybe it was something good for the case.
"I mean, paper burns. Everything burns, but." He shrugged. "Got a call once about a lady who left a can of hairspray on her stovetop. Walked away, forgot about it, I don't know. Was on the phone. Fifteen minutes later, explosion, whole kitchen on fire. It was an accident, but, still. If your friend does any crafting, most of that stuff is just an accident waiting to happen. Hand sanitizer, some coffee creamers. Look, I know the situation sucks, but there's a lot of leeway in fires. As long as they can't prove you did it, you'll be okay. Just...do yourself a favor and don't do anything suspicious for the next few weeks. And stay out of the neighborhood. Turn on GPS tracking on your phone. Just be smart. This time of year turns a lot of people crazy."
Even the station, apparently.
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2020 2:45 pm
He groaned softly. He wasn’t even sure his phone HAD GPS on it. “I have a pay by minute phone, I’m not sure it’s that cool.” He admitted after a moment to fill the silence. “And yeah… he has …had… a lot of cool looking books. I wish I’d grabbed more.” He still did. “To get out!” He added hastily. “Not steal, He liked his books. I wouldn’t do that to him. But…I’ll take your advice. I’ll stick around people too,” He added with a dour expression crossing his face for a moment. He wasn’t about to let them try and snag him for anything else either. “… Most cops I’ve met don’t know that much about fires.” He said after another long pause.
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2020 4:15 pm
Jeremy considered the phone for a moment and then suggested, "Good plan. And if you're out, always stop somewhere with a camera, try to give it a good luck. I know it's stupid, but. It helps."
He let out a long sigh and then said, "There was a fire back home a while ago. House I grew up in. And next door, a few years back. I got nosey. Doesn't hurt to ask questions, I guess. We get called to hold the perimeter for the big fires, to evacuate people if we have to. When you're around a fire for four, five hours, you want to know what's going on. Firemen don't have to keep secrets, and they're always ready to talk about fire prevention. You talk to a lot a cops, about fire?"
There was almost something teasing about it, far from the constant berating of the other officers who were so insistent that Yu was so close to breaking.
To giving up some information, to force the narrative they'd already prewritten for him.
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2020 4:26 pm
Yu Snorted. “Not… a fire bug.” he persisted. “But you already know I got dinged for vagrancy. Things burn down, sometimes they want witnesses, sometimes they don’t like what we say.” He waved a hand to brush it off and pulled his feet up, folding his knees to his chest. “Also if you were a fireman instead of a cop, I wouldn’t assume you were probably an a*****e. I just always got told, when they asked people on the streets, that ‘things don’t go up so fast’… I don’t know… you seem more like a Fireman than a Cop I guess. Most of what I remember from Cops is like… seeing someone’s cart, with no one by it. Knowing they're gonna lose it.” He shrugged. “Not very helpful, not so nice, like it’s someone’s fault they don’t have a home, but you offered me a ride, so it’s either a trap or…” He shrugged.
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