I'm glad I brought my phone. Police work is boring. All those detective shows? They skip the parts where everyone is just sitting at their desk reading reports. Reports from the forensics folks for every bagged piece of evidence saying in excruciating detail that they found nothing of note. Transcripts from the police tip line of drunk guys saying they saw Elvis dancing the Can-Can. Coroner's report on… my… corpse. Umm. OK, I did not want to know that I have four ovaries and two wombs, all connected and on different release cycles. Thank you for letting me know about the hormone storm and complete lack of safe days, not that I plan to let a man in down there.  I pause.  *I* don't plan on it… but I know first hand that it's not always going to be my choice.  So I take a moment and cast a Fleeting Spell Block The Seed. There. Now I don't need to worry about it until I want to. And on, and on, and on. Also reports they need to write. Timecards, equipment requisitions, status updates, witness interview plans, ugh. SO MUCH PAPER.

Eventually, James gets a call; all I hear of it is his half: "Sure, I'll head over now."

Jessica shakes her head before James even asks: "I have three weeks of paperwork to catch up on."

"What about you? Could use another set of eyes."

He's looking at me? "Of course! Gets me away from all the paper!  Evil stuff! Let's go get the bad guys!"

Jessica and James smile at that. I suspect they actually feel similarly.

We pile into a car… apparently it's department owned, based on the maintenance sticker I spy when James opens the driver's side door… and we head off.

"So… what's the crime?'

"Armed robbery. Masked guy pointed a gun at a bank teller, told her to pile all the cash into a bag. Stupid of him."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Less conspicuous to just wear a cloth virus mask and hand the teller a note. No need to panic everyone and make the news by waving a gun around. Doing it with the gun visible adds a bunch of charges, gives folks like me more incentive to sort it out due to the pressure from the press, and makes witnesses more likely to come forward. It's quite stupid. But hey, if crooks were smart, then they wouldn't be crooks."

We get to the bank without much hassle; Uniformed officers already have the area taped off. A slightly overweight and balding man in a black suit and red tie - whom I presume is the bank manager -  greets James immediately, "Ah, officer, so good of you to come…" he trails off when he sees me, a bulge growing in his pants, "... with your … ahem. Anyway, let me show you to the NVR…"

He takes us back to an electrical closet with a computer screen, keyboard, and mouse mounted on one of the walls.  The bank manager gives us a password, and leaves us to it.

James doesn’t even bother logging into it. Instead, he just shakes his head, "Of course there's no video."

At my raised eyebrow, he points to a small red icon of a soup can flashing in the corner of the screen, "That's the disk failure alarm for this model. They only review video when there's a problem, and I'm guessing someone silenced the audible alerts a long time ago. This box is a paperweight.  Here, I'll show you…."

He goes ahead and logs in, and clicking on the alert, it pulls up a log entry showing a disk offline error, dated a few days ago. James takes a photo of the screen.

"So you can't even take it to forensics or anything, as it would have stopped recording entirely at that time."

"Exactly," confirms the detective, "We might get lucky if they sprung for on-camera recording, but that’s uncommon, but even when they do, the cards don't last long, and nobody ever replaces them."

"I might be able to fix the…" I start as I reach for the box.

"Don't," James grabs my hand before I can touch the broken NVR, "It wouldn't have been recording anyway, and if you make it start working there's going to be questions of why it wasn't an hour ago.  Mechanical failure is… annoying, but repairing it now would only make things worse. I might take you up on it for other evidence, though."

Huh. His hand makes my skin tingle. And why am I getting warm?  Guess they don't route the AC in here.

I nod, and James lets go.

"Let’s check the cameras, eh?"

We check one of the cameras in easy reach… it has these funny screws with a six-pointed star-shaped intent and a post holding the cover on. James checks his pockets, "Ah, I don't have the T-10 security bit on me. We'll need…"

He trails off as I hand him a screwdriver with a matching head, freshly created via the Conjurer’s Toolbelt spell. It would normally last just a few minutes - which would be fine for this - but in my case, it's Permanent.

"Thanks."

As James takes the tool, his large white masculine fingers brush tiny black feminine ones, and I feel that tingle again, accompanied by a warm feeling, and this time a hollow sensation down in my gut. Really odd.

He puts on some white gloves, and takes the cover off, "No card. So we got no cameras on our perp. Just eyes. All right, so… I’ll need to interview all the witnesses we can scare up, check all the logs we can find, and hope we get lucky."

"Aren't you going to like, dust for prints or something?"

"Oh, if we spot a spent shell casing or something, yeah, but… this is a bank. Lotta folks coming in and out and touching everything. Unless we happen to know exactly what the robber touched? No point. There's going to be like thirty different folks' prints on everything, and well over a thousand people's prints somewhere in the building. Waste of time running them all down. So witnesses first."

James asks a few of the uniformed officers handling crowd control to ask around the crowd to see if anyone pipes up, while James systemically talks to all the bank employees. Everyone heard the perp come in and yell… one from the employee bathroom, one from the vault, one from the counting room, one from the break room. It was apparently a quiet day, and only a single clerk was actually in the lobby.  

And as James is interviewing her, I get a notice from Sense Motive: She is lying through her teeth.

James picks up on it too, "Are the door access control logs going to say anyone came in or left?"

She turns white as a sheet at that, and bolts. Impressively, she dodges past James. But as she's going out the door, I call out "Halt" in my adult phone line voice, and tie the word to a Command spell… and she does. My +12 Charisma modifier from my Charisma score of 34 at his level means that a lowly 1st level spell gets a save DC of 24. I could pass that trivially, but most folks? Not so much.

The effect only lasts six seconds - it's in the actual description as well as the duration line, so while technically the spell continues past that, the further duration has no real effect. But six seconds is plenty of time for James to get to her and push her to the ground. The effect ends while James is cuffing her. I dismiss whatever remains of the spell while he reads her the Miranda Rights:

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you have the right to stop answering at any time."

When he's done, he adds, "Now, where'd you hide the money?"

She doesn't answer, and I suggest, "Maybe her purse?"

James considers, "Good place to look, and because I just officially arrested her…"

He checks, and indeed, there's several wads of $100 bills still in the bank's ribbons.

James turns to the manager, "Obvious enough, but I'm still going to need you to reconcile the tills and give us an official shortage report. This will need to be properly inventoried at the station, logged as evidence, and dusted for prints, but you'll get it back after the trial. Just check in at least once a month, all right? Also, I'm going to need the door access controller's logs. Mind sending those to the station?"

The manager takes a deep breath, thinks about it, and says, "Fine. Yes, I'll have them sent over." I watch him jot down James's badge number. No, he's not fine, but he's not going to fight it right now.

James has one of the uniformed officers load the teller up in a fully marked police car, and we head back to the station.

On the way, James gets curious, "So what'd you do back there?"

I don't like lying, "A minor bit of mind control. That spell is limited to five options. I can make folks drop what they're holding, come at me, run away, fall to the ground, or stay in place.  Didn't think it'd be too obvious, and the cameras were down."

"'That spell' huh? I'm guessing you've got others that aren't so limited?"

I hesitate, "Yes… but mind control can get you into some very dark places. I mean, if you force-fed someone in custody a bottle of scotch to get them drunk, and then got a confession out of them by hitting them with a rubber hose while you had them forcibly intoxicated, would that hold up in court?"

"No, never. I'd get fired, and arrested myself… assuming Jessica didn't straight-up shoot me."

"Right. And while it's harder to prove because it's not officially recognized, mind control isn't that much different."

"If anything, it's worse. I think I get it. So you used something small, the equivalent of tripping her, in a situation where some force was warranted.  We're making you walk a mighty fine line, aren't we?"

"Yes. But I get the impression a lot of police work is like that."

James nods, "Indeed."

We arrive back at the station safely.