by JM Addison
Chapter 16
Things did not go well at the station. Dell met with the chief and listened to him spew vulgarities at his insubordination. Dell ended up clearly removed from having anything to do with the case and was dangling barely within an inch of a suspension.
As Dell sat at his desk he was simply bewildered. He had been one of the best crime solving detectives ever to walk through the door. He was a perfectionist when it came to rules and procedures, he considered them essential for success. Now he was dumbfounded. He always had a good relationship with the chief. They were almost friends. Would have been if not for the fact Dell was a subordinate. Apparently someone from the mayor’s office really put the chief through the wringer. That pressure must have come from ‘behind the scenes’ somehow. Strong politics were in play here and he didn’t like getting caught in the middle. But squeezed even more, was Mara. For her, her very life was at stake. It was clearly an injustice that she was being treated like this with no civil protection from the very agencies put in place to protect its citizens.
He had to admit that he didn’t like risking his profession over a single investigation, but she had no one else to turn to. It really infuriated him that someone or some organization could get away with kidnapping and killing and who knows what else without regard to anyone who gets in the way. If he ever got to the bottom of this he was sure that his actions would be vindicated in some way because everything about this case, this investigation, was simply wrong.
He had to begin an investigation of Viiradium without drawing attention. There were a couple of investigators he was very close to and a few different people in the state police he thought he could trust. He could ask them as a personal favor to keep his interest in the company confidential.