Excerpt from the Journal of A.M. Rhyder:
My co-workers are going to get us all killed. The very idea that a vampire would stalk a human, outside of their territory, outside of hunting hours, is ridiculous and stupid. 1) Vampires know better, and 2) If a man has managed to anger a vampire enough to actually be stalked this is a lawsuit and/or a bloodbath waiting to happen.
Jimmy, the poor, young sap who is on protection detail is excited. EXCITED, for some insane reason. He’s young, that’s the reason, young and too caught up in thrills and danger to see the horrible truth of the matter. There is no way a stalker vampire would turn out well. At best, the idiot man is lying or overly paranoid and the whole thing comes to nothing. Here’s hoping.
Research Report
Legal Precedent: There is no real legal precedent for a case like this. If the man has broken a law, then the vampires would simply take him to court and the Magistrate’s office would have taken him in by now (Treaty of Salus, 2.2). If the man is innocent of all crimes, and the stalker is actually a vampire, then the vampire may be charged with hunting outside curfew hours in human territory (Treaty of Salus, 3.1).
Conclusions: Not enough information at this point, likely to be a messy court trial at worst and at best the delusions of a paranoid man
Recommended Action(s): Attempt to ascertain the truth of the matter before proceeding legally. Protection detail and surveillance, with client permission.
Surveillance Report
Name of Surveilling
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“The problem with people’s stupidity,” Ana thought as she stared at the form on her desk, “is that it always manages to catch me off guard.”
Coming into the office that morning, Ana had thought her day would consist of boring write-ups and records keeping for the few cases the agency was in the process of closing out. It had, admittedly, been a slow period at work but the form in front of her held potential for more excitement than any payment made worthwhile.
Of course there was always the chance the man was delusional and paranoid. With furrows on her brow, Ana glared at the research request. The note itself suggested that it was likely Ana would be brought into the whole mess. The apology told her Amy knew she wouldn’t be happy about it.
“Which means,” she thought as she took her coat off and hung it up, “that at least one person in this agency knows that this is stupid and we’re doing it anyway.”
With that thought in mind, Ana marched out her door letting it swing loudly, and satisfyingly, closed. She wasn’t entirely sure she could stomach seeing Amy to ask for more information, so she walked towards Jimmy Hereward’s desk. It sat, generally cluttered, in the large open room on the left of the building with all the other field investigators. The theory was, being in the field, they had little need for a permanent office. The reality, at least for Jimmy’s desk, was that the clutter sat there undisturbed for weeks on end. Jimmy swore up and down that there was a system of organization to all his piles of papers, but whenever Ana had cause to pass by his desk it looked as though the piles had grown large enough to meld together in a sort of super pile which managed to encompass almost the entirety of the desk’s surface.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Jimmy, Ana noticed with even more annoyance, was currently doing nothing about the papers which covered his desk. Instead he seemed utterly engrossed in the latest edition of The Salus Inquirer. So engrossed, in fact, that it wasn’t until she was within five feet of his desk that he even seemed to notice her.
“Hey Ana!” he said, putting down his paper and taking his feet off of the small part of the desk not covered in papers, “What can I do for you?”
Ana liked Jimmy, most of the time, but at the moment his shaggy blonde hair and boyish smile grated on her nerves. The boy was about to get involved in a potential bloodbath and legal nightmare and he didn’t even seem to care.
“You can tell me what you know about this,” she threw the form where his feet had been.
Jimmy glanced at the form and then glanced at her.
“Ah,” he said, his grin dimming slightly as he realized her annoyance, “I don’t know much more than what’s on the form. Protection detail starts tonight, about an hour before curfew. The client lives in . . .” Jimmy trailed off, frowned, and then rummaged through the top layer of papers, “B Block on the East Side. I’m to escort the client from his workplace to his home before curfew and then stay the night to escort him again in the morning.” He shrugged, looking very unconcerned, “Sounds pretty straightforward, should be simple enough.”
“‘Simple enough’?” Ana repeated, torn between reactions. She wasn’t entirely sure whether she should hit him, walk away, or bang her head against a wall. “Have you not read the part about the client suspecting it’s a vampire following him?”
Jimmy sighed, looked at the form at his desk again, and looked back up at her.
“Ana, you know as well as I do that it’s probably not a vampire. It’s probably just the man’s imagination.”
Ana narrowed her eyes at him, “You’re disappointed by that aren’t you?”
He shrugged, “It has been a bit boring around here,” he offered up, almost as a question.
Ana’s hand came up and rubbed at her forehead, before giving the whole conversation up as a lost cause.
“Just be careful, at best the man’s delusional and paranoid. Don’t be so caught up in the idea of excitement that you end up borrowing trouble,” she turned and marched over to her boss’ office before Jimmy could respond. Clearly she would have to talk some sense into the only one capable of stopping this madness.
Ana stormed into her boss’ office, not entirely sure what she was going to say but prepared to expound immensely on the stupidity of accepting such a ridiculous case. Her boss glanced over at the clock on the wall by the door and then, glancing at her, said, “Good morning Ana. What brings you to my office within ten minutes of your work day this time?”
Ana didn’t go to her boss all that often, and so thought she was right to be a little offended at this. She glared at him for a few seconds before he sighed and stood up, moving around the desk to lean up against the front of it.
“It’s the suspected vampire stalker, yes?” He looked at her seriously, “Before you get all revved up, you should know that we are taking this case. It’s a simple surveillance and protection case at this point, and is unlikely to progress into anything more severe than that.”
She opened her mouth, and then closed it again. He had taken away the main purpose of her presence in the office in one fell swoop.
“At least let someone else do the research,” she said, sounding more pleading than she would have liked, “I want nothing to do with this.”
“You know as well as I do that, should this go bad, you have more access than anyone to the resources we might need,” he said in a reproaching tone of voice, “But if you’re that determined about it, I’m sure someone else could handle it. Andrew, maybe . . .” he trailed off.
Ana’s head jerked up to stare at her boss in annoyed disbelief. Andrew was a twenty year old new hire, having been with the agency barely a month. Putting Andrew on the case now would not be such a horrible thing, but if the case went bad that would be a different story.
Shaking her head, she glared at her boss, “Don’t think for a second that I don’t know what you’re doing.”
He calmly met her glare and shrugged. They had known each other for a little over a decade and, by now, understood each other very well. She didn’t bother to respond and left the office, admittedly in a bit of a huff. Closing the door to her own office she sat down at her desk and buried her head in her hands for a few seconds, before abruptly standing up and muttering a quick swear. She had left her copy of the client form on Jimmy’s desk.
