No Pryor Convictions: Surveillance

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

Wade, Marie-Ange, Doug, and Jubilee look into the bank thefts, as they discussed last night. In the process, they figure out who's behind it, and spot the girl he's using as his next patsy...


Wade peered over Doug's shoulder as his friend worked to figure out the links between all the banks and the robberies, aside from the fact that kids were taking the fall for them. He peered and he squinted and he had to admit that he didn't understand half of what was going on on most of Doug's screens - that was what technology savvy people were for, though.

"So have we found anything yet?" He offered Doug the bag of white cheddar cheese popcorn he was munching from, still looking at the screens and hoping something useful to him would pop up - like a map. Maps were always useful.

"What this 'we', white man?" Doug said with a touch of crankiness in his voice. It wasn't that he was angry at Wade or anything, just that having someone hover over his shoulder tended to make him a bit twitchy. Still, he wasn't going to turn down snacks, and he took a handful of popcorn, careful not to get any kernels on his keyboard. "Okay, I think I've narrowed down the parameters the guy knocking over these banks is using - a general distance from police precincts, number of visible security personnel, and so forth."

Jubilee leaned over Doug’s other shoulder, pushing a hand through her hair, currently streaked a vibrant green along with the more natural black. “That’s still a fair few places, anything else we could use to narrow it down?”

"The next step is looking...under the hood," Doug said with a chuckle. "Type of security system, make and model of the vault the banks use, and so forth." He pointed at a monitor, that had the banks which had been hit already highlighted.

By comparison, Marie-Ange was sitting facing Doug and the others, rather than the screens. She could always get up and move if something was interesting or useful enough to look at. "The bank layout may be useful too. Doug, can you see if the building plans are filed electronically, I can see if there are common vulnerable points that are being exploited."

Wade was mostly zoning out, but at the mention of maps, he started paying closer attention. "Hey," he said, pointing at three of the banks on the list. "I have accounts in those. Good thing they're FDIC insured..."

"Then would you mind terribly going with Jubilee to look at the security?" Marie-Ange asked casually. Wade having a handful of bank accounts didn't seem to bother her, she had more than a handful herself. She tapped a sketching pencil against the mini sketchpad she'd been idly doodling in. "Perhaps we could get security video as well. If whoever is using these children to rob banks is actually entering them, it would be on the tape. Although I imagine the NYPD would have a suspect then."

"Chance to break into banks for fun and profit?" Jubilee replied with a grin and a shrug. "Dude, I'm totally all over that."

Doug tapped a pen against his pursed lips, unconsciously mirroring Marie-Ange, clearly already halfway into a plan. "ATMs, street cameras...let me see what I can do." He looked up at Wade and Jubilee. "Meet back here in...three hours?" he said, looking at his watch. "I'll transfer those blueprints to your workstation, Marie-Ange."

---

Wade held the door for Jubilee as they walked back into the building to meet up with Marie-Ange and Doug. Generally speaking, he was unimpressed with the caliber of bank he'd chosen to stash a few of his alias' assets in. He was going to have to reevaluate those. "I mean, seriously?" He asked, offering her a doughnut hole from the box they'd picked up after checking out the last bank. As they walked into the room where their partners in crime still sat, he continued, "I'm pretty sure I could take those systems with some wire cutters and black spray paint." Then he held the box of sugary deliciousness out to Marie-Ange, because he was considerate like that.

She snagged a chocolate donut hole. Marie-Ange had spent several hours looking at blueprints and city planning records. Marie-Ange was entirely grateful that Wade had gotten chocolate anything. "How do they even keep up insurance rates if the security is that bad?" Weren't there people whose jobs it was to make sure banks did not have bad security? "All of the banks were low on security features? Even the ones you do not bank at?"

"Don't look a me, dude," Jubilee said, leaning around Wade to steal a chocolate donut hole. "They were totally like, Molly could have broken in, it was kinda pathetic. Someone should write a letter or something. It could be all 'Dear Sir or Madam, please make your bank less easy to break into. It was like, totally boring and shit. All my love, your friendly neighbourhood robber. PS: Thanks for all the cash."

Pointing at Jubilee, Wade nodded. "That - that exactly." Then he popped another doughnut hole into his mouth and walked over to stand so he could look at Marie-Ange's computer. He pointed at the window where the blueprints of the banks were still up and said, "Multiple entry points, weak security here, here, and here," he indicated two areas on the first blueprint and one on the second. "Admittedly, I'm looking at this from an experienced position and I'm pretty sure Jubes is, too. The point is, somebody with the right skill set or mutation could get in easy. Did we ever find out what the mutations for the kids who were caught were?"

"Brute force." Doug flipped through several hardcopy reports on his desk. "Enhanced strength, telekinesis, basically anything that would help in breaking open a bank vault." He looked back up at the map. "We just need to figure out where this guy is going to hit next."

"To the video tapes?" Marie-Ange suggested. "I cannot imagine that any criminal who is getting away with this isn't at least doing the same thing we are, and going into the banks during the day to look at the interiors." She rubbed at her eye, and then commandeered one of Doug's monitors to show some blueprints and building plans. "None of the banks have the same architectural style." She flipped through a few photos. "But they all have multiple entrances, like Wade said, and are high cash volume branches. Whoever this is, he or she is not going after the safety deposit boxes, just cash."

"Well, let's check out the video feeds of the robberies that we've already got then, could be we see something that'll give us a clue now we've got all this other stuff," Jubilee replied, moving around behind Doug. "How about we start with the first one?"

"Rollll that beautiful bank footage," Doug murmured in an over-the-top Southern accent.

After a few videos of the previous jobs, they moved to live footage of the handful of banks that Doug had identified as possible targets of the next robbery. Doug stopped at one, and pointed at a young girl off to one side of the screen. "There. The redhead. She is all kinds of nervous and scared."

Wade watched the girl Doug had indicated, then pointed at her, too, and said, "She just did the same thing one of the other kids did, putting her bag at her feet and then looking over her shoulder. Probably a signal - so who's she signalling to? I don't see anybody inside the bank reacting, at least not from the angles we can see. Can you pull up the outside footage?"

Doug was already tapping at his keys when Wade said the word 'signal', anticipating what the other man meant, and what they needed to look for. "Okay, let's see, ATM cameras...oh hey, NYPD has a 'revenue enhancement' camera at the intersection there." He brought up the separate feeds as smaller windows on a separate monitor, each clearly labeled as to their source. "Let's play 'spot the real robber'," he said. "Winner gets a Reese's tree..."

Marie-Ange raised an eyebrow, as if to say she had no intention of eating such a thing, because it was absurd. It was a lie, and everyone in the room knew it. "Ah, let me see. We have bachelor number one, the man in the heavy coat with his hat pulled down low, we have bachelor number two, the man who is taking very long at the ATM, and we have, ah, bachelorette number three, who needs to stop wearing leggings as pants."

"Firstly, I would like to note my love of leggings as pants for that 2am run to the local corner store for like, munchies attacks is total and pure. Secondly, Bachelor number two is totally on the lost of Most Wanted after breaking out of the Vault, who wants to bet me a Reece's tree that we've got our Fagin?"

Marie-Ange blinked a few times at Jubilee, and then pulled her discarded smart phone off the desk. "Dominic Petros. Arrested for bank robbery. Escaped from the Vault, last seen in the company of members of the terrorist organization Magnetic North. I will be damned." She made a typing gesture at Doug, who obligingly pulled up the man's record. "He really does not look good with his hair dyed that colour. Perhaps he should be persuaded to stop."