[center][color=darkgray][b][h1]J O H N  D O Y L E[/h1][/b][/color][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqR1cjuPXUg]♫♫♫[/url][/center][right][b][color=darkgray]Saturday, June 11th. 11 PM
Downtown Charity, Charity Beach, Florida
Charity Beach Police Department Headquarters[/color][/b][/right][hr]
The CBPD Headquarters was a beautiful building by all accounts. Built of grey bricks, glass, and tempered steel, it was purposefully made to 'fit in' with the rest of the district's towering skyscrapers and ornate corporate offices. It was all a little too grandiose for John. He couldn't help but feel overwhelmed when stepped into the sprawling lobby earlier that morning. The mountains of paperwork they'd handed him the moment they knew who he was did little to ease his worries. Questions on questions, many of them quite personal in nature. Some of it was information he'd hesitate to share with his wife; yet they assured him it was all quite necessary, so he reluctantly filled it all in.

If he might've thought things would get easier when he finally got to speak with an actual person, the sheriff was wrong. Oh so wrong.

Detective Morgan was a rough man. He had a sharp, hawk-like nose and a smile that could kill a flower. A pair of round, ugly glasses sat on the tip of his beak, accentuating his pair of even sharper eyes. Thin as a wire though he was, Morgan carried a presence about him with his every movement, like a vulture looking for just the right moment to snatch up its prey. And here, trapped in this tiny, grey interrogation room, Doyle certainly felt like his prey.

"Did you or did you not allow Aldrich Leblanc, the [i]Warmonger[/i] as you insist on calling him, kill three of your deputies? Did you or did you not fail to apprehend him before he could go on to kill another six civilians and injury [i]twenty-eight[/i] more?" Morgan spoke with an accusatory tone; the same one Doyle had used on many of the criminals he'd spoken to over the years. It was...quite the experience to be on the other side of it.

John wasn't going to take that sitting down. He pushed back his chair and stood, his hands gripped tight around the edge of the table in front of him as he and Morgan locked eyes with one another. "You got a lotta nerve talkin' to me like that!" Doyle roared. "I take down the guy you n' your boys let run rampant fer, what, eight months? And this is how you thank me? You think I wanted that asshole to kill my people?"

Morgan didn't back down. "I don't know, Sheriff, did you?"

"Go to hell." John snarled. "I come down here to help you with your investigation n' this is how ya treat me? You got a screw loose up in that fat head'a yours or are you always this awful?"

The detective went quiet and finally broke eye contact, moving to unlatch the briefcase he'd set down on the table when he first walked in. He pulled a cream-colored file out and slapped it down in front of Doyle, tapping on the paper with a sharp, boney finger. "Did you open the case Leblanc carried with him?"

"Course not. Not like we could anyway; lock on that thing was nothin' like any I've ever seen." Doyle fell back into his chair, dragging the file up in front of his face. A picture of the stolen case sat front and center. Its exterior was fat and chrome-ish, covered in small lines and bearing a handle on the top for easy transport. What caught John's eye, however, was the locking mechanism on the front of the case. No keyhole, no keypad, no fingerprint analyzer, no combination, no keycard. None of that. Just a little black square with a silver dot in the center. Doyle had no idea how somethin' like it would work.

"[i]Someone[/i] managed to get it open in the time between you collecting it as evidence and it being transferred back to us. The only people to touch it were you and your boys, the Feds, and my people- who'd already found it open." Morgan's demeanor shifted after that. He got quiet. Slipped back into his own chair, his eyes fixated on some point in the distance. Some question must've hung on his tongue, but something was stopping him from asking.

John furrowed his brow, staring down at the words in front of him yet barely comprehending any of it. He was too busy mulling over what Morgan had said. Somebody had managed to get that case open. "Did they take something?" John asked after a moment, his eyes flickering up to Morgan's face. The detective didn't meet his gaze for a few, elongated seconds, yet even after he did he chose not to answer the question.

The sheriff of Donovan county leaned forward in his seat, lowering his voice as he did. "Detective," he started, his teeth sinking into his lower lip. "what was in that case?"

Morgan's mouth fell open but no words came out. He sat there like that for a while, awkwardly squirming. Nothing like the man that had been holding Doyle's ass to the fire not but a few minutes ago. After what felt like an eternity he finally got up from his seat, packed up his suitcase and started for the door.

"Detective-" John began, but he wasn't allowed to finish.

"I'm going to need you to stay in town for a few more days, sheriff." Morgan turned around, his lips contorting into a terribly ugly grin. "I'll give you temporary jurisdiction while you're here, but I'd recommend taking a...short vacation while you're in town. We're known for our beaches here, after all. I'll contact you when you're needed again."


[hr][center][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt2mbGP6vFI]♫♫♫[/url][/center][right][b][color=darkgray]Saturday, June 11th. 12 PM
Downtown Charity, Charity Beach, Florida
Boardwalk[/color][/b][/right][hr]
John Doyle sat at a little restaurant on the boardwalk, a half-finished cola in one hand and his flip phone in the other. The sky overhead was dark and gloomy, threatening to make the day even darker and gloomier by dropping a bit of rain on everyone's heads at any moment. His straw hung out of the corner of his mouth as he fumbled to press the tiny buttons on his phone. He hated texting. Always seemed like a waste of time to him; why text somebody when you could talk to them, after all? But when he'd gone to make the call he'd felt his stomach twist around inside of itself, so now he was stuck plinking away with his fat old fingers at a tiny keyboard. He'd make sure to talk to his family later that night, but at the moment...

He just needed time to think.

Once the message was off into the void Doyle tossed his flip phone down onto the table just a little too hard. There were a million different thoughts rotating through his head. A million different attempts to explain just what in the world was going on. Something had spooked Detective Morgan- bad. And John could tell from spending just a few minutes with the guy that he wasn't the type to be spooked easily. Warmonger had been a dangerous man. An evil man, even. But...something about the stuff he stole...

John let out a loud, overexaggerated sigh. He took a long sip of his cola, the cold liquid bubbling in his mouth like he'd poured a bunch of poprocks onto his tongue. He couldn't remember how long it'd been since he last tasted the stuff. His doctor had insisted he switch to something less caffeinated and sugary, and John had been good about it for the most part. Only drinking some variant of tea. But he figured he'd earned a cheat day by now, 'specially with everything that was going on. Besides, the soda reminded him of his youth- all those days he'd spent at the diner with his friends chasing girls and ghosts and all other manner of frightening things.

Maybe he didn't need time to think. Maybe he was thinking too much.

Doyle pushed the brim of his hat up. He'd swapped out of his uniform, leaving it in the hands of the hotel staff so they could get some of the muck off of it. Now he was stuck looking like a regular ol' civilian; as regular as a man in a cowboy hat and boots could be in a place like Charity Beach. Though given how odd everyone here seemed to be, he wasn't all that out of the ordinary. He swore he'd even seen a giant lizard walkin' down the boardwalk earlier.