On with the story (The Ringly's ch. 2 pt.2/2)

Queenie Ringly was an excellent talker. Briar Ringly was a flawless pickpocket. At six o’clock, two girls walked into the evidence locker of the Kroy City Police Department. One hour later, they walked out, leaving a tampered computer and a very confused evidence custodian.

“Father?” Briar’s voice echoed in the empty room.

“He’s probably at work or something,” said Queenie, helpfully, “Welp, you can take care of the drive thingy, I’ve got things to do.” And with that she skipped away, her blonde curls bouncing against her neck and down over her eyes in that way that she denied they did.

Briar pulled the thumb drive out of her coat’s inner pocket and tossed it between her hands. It was a short walk from the foyer to her father’s office, where she carefully placed the drive in the top drawer of his desk. She was about to walk away when something caught her eye.

A book was tucked neatly into the corner of the drawer, partially concealed by a blanket of office supplies. With her mind screaming for her to just walk away, she gingerly lifted the book out of its place. It’s age-worn leather was smooth against her traitorous fingers as they ran over the engraved cover. Carlson John Ringly.

It was just the right size for her inner coat pocket.

~

“You remember that DNA evidence found at Wenton corp.?” Jackson asked, seeming to have forgotten the plate of ‘food’ before him.

“Yes,” replied Briar. Her attention was elsewhere.

“Well, apparently someone got into the evidence locker a couple of nights ago and destroyed all the evidence. Whoever it was hacked the computers too while they were there and got rid of all the digital files too, so we gotta assume whoever killed Wenton is a pro-”

“Or they hired someone.” Briar flipped the page.

“So you do care.”

“No.” He continued talking, but she tuned him out in favor of her new source of reading material.

...Stephen has been getting restless. I am beginning to doubt his reasons for volunteering on the Cross case…

“-video evidence might get a suspect brought in,” Jackson was saying, finally remembering to eat the food in front of him.

Briar’s eyes snapped up, maybe too quickly. She regained her composure and put on a mask of nonchalance, “Video evidence?”

“Yeah, the security cameras at the evidence locker were disabled, but this blog I’m following says that there was an experimental backup system in place that caught the guy on video. The police are going over it now, it sounds like they’re going to bring someone in soon.”

“Blog?”

“If you want I can show you?” Jackson was looking just the least bit smug at her display of interest, “Here, I’ll send you the link.”

He took out his phone and, after some fiddling, Briar’s dinged. She turned it on and there was the link.

“You have one of those 10sx, something, something, fancy phones?” Jackson inquired.

“Yes.” She was going to have to check out that blog.