“What we’re doing is…”
“Sort of legal.”
“And what they’re doing is…”
“Definitely not legal.”
Ms Mycroft circled around the desk, shaking her head. “This is quite terrible.”
“And quite typical.” Tally responded, a sad little shrug in their shoulders. “Because they’re cops, though… we can get in trouble, and they won’t.”
Ms Mycroft sat down again, looking at the screen. She’d circled around the table, and Tally’s hands, and the tablet, like she was on some sort of widening gyre, her brows furrowing at the pictures as they came past. “It’s been a long time since I had access to police photography of a scene.”
“And… realistically speaking, you shouldn’t have access to this.” Tally murmured.
“But we do.”
“We do.”
Ms Mycroft seemed, at least temporarily, caught up on the legal quandrary. It was an untidiness, two systems overlapping in the worst possible ways. The power dynamic of police, which she thought of as incompetent, and the law, which she thought of as worthy of respect.
Tally wasn’t so conflicted.
It really had been as simple as getting one of the phones onto the same wi-fi at a burger place as the police were using. The police were using it, because they were hungry. The police were still sitting there, in the burger place, because they weren’t particulary busy and it was a slow day. The police had an unsecured network on the device, literally completely gates-open, because… well, because they didn’t seem to know anything about information security. Tally could have been looking at filed reports and traffic fines.
It was an enormous temptation.
It wasn’t like Tally would be miraculously spared trouble if somehow, this information came to light by any other means. It would be a Cybercrime by a Cyberhacker, a Cyberfeat of Cyberterrorism that Cyberattacked the Cyberheart of the Cyberpolice Cyberinfrastructure. These were the kind of utter lemons who would count the packets and file every single one as an individual intrusion fine.
Tally lived assuming they’d always be boiled for mutton, living in a world where there was always a crime for breathing that Tally could suffer. Walking While Brown was enough. It made it very, very hard to respect those boundaries.
“What are you looking for, then?” Tally asked. Swipe, swipe, swipe, quietly fretting about the things that hopefully would be fine, but really felt like they weren’t going to be.
“Specifically, signals of premeditation.” Ms Mycroft stopped, furrowing her brows. She never made to look confused. Confused was the sign that she had been interrupted in an assumption, that she had two determined mental structures, and that they were in conflict. No, that was too much work. She was the kind of woman who made an artform out of being intensely, incredibly, lazy. She’d reach a conclusion only when she had enough data that every alternative was impossible.
“Suicide can very rarely be a reaction to a startling event. But catastrophe is part of it – you don’t typically have people make this sort of decision very easily… for the most part, it’s an action of extreme duress but made with the best information possible.” Flip, flip, flip went the pictures.
“But.” Tally murmured.
“It’s possible to induce someone to commit suicide. It’s very rare, and it can be more a function of coincidence. You need… something to kick it off. And in this case… I’m not seeing any signs of anything in the photos to indicate that.”
“If there aren’t many opportunities…?”
Finally, Ms Mycroft stood up, putting down the tablet on the table. “I’m satisfied.”
“Wait, is that IT?”
“Yes.” Ms Mycroft said, moving around the table to stand in front of Tally. “I even have a working theory as to what happened.”
“… You do?!”
Ms Mycroft tucked her arms behind her body, tilting her head, and looked down at Tally. “Do you, yet?”
“… How could I?!”
A moment passed, and Ms Mycroft tapped Tally’s nose. “You want to – carefully, if you’re sensitive, google-up the proper care temperature of irukandji jellyfish.”
“Is this what we’re going to do?” Tally asked, leaning forward, their elbows on the table.
“You mean…?”
“Peering into keyholes? Testing your curiosity?”
“What would you rather we do, Tally?” Ms Mycroft asked, folding her hands under her chin.
“Well.. I mean…” Tally’s brow knit.
“It’s a little more complicated, isn’t it?” Ms Mycroft said, standing up from the desk and walking towards the doorway. “We can’t just demand that the world present us with easy problems. Sometimes… we’ll just get tiny hints.” She turned in the doorway… and grinned. “Who knows. Maybe we’ll have to start breaking laws and start looking into things that are, you know, hard.”