Two tenants, two attitudes

James

Today was the day Officer Miller and I were supposed to visit two of the remaining three apartments with a camera. Interestingly, I noticed how the app didn't add the last person we visited. It was probably for the best, I didn't want to bother her, nor could I ever establish regular enough contact with them to be able to use the app on them. I hope today stays the same, and at least when the tenant opened her door, it was like that.

"Hello, I'm James Goodman, caretaker of the GRC, this is Emily who will remove the camera and this is Officer Miller who is leading the investigation."

An answer came quicker than expected: "You and the repair lady can come in, I'm not letting a cop enter my house."

Jane: "Excuse me?"

James: "With all due respect, Miss, Officer Miller's presence is very important. We need to understand how everything worked and need to have evidence for a future trial." Jane +3SP (-15SP)

Tenant: "I said no and I meant it. I expected you to try and repair the company's image, or do you seriously want to ignore a woman's 'no'?"

Jane: "That's not..." She gritted her teeth and was visibly frustrated.

James: "Please miss, a person like my father deserves jail, but no court can sentence him without good evidence. I understand that you might have frustrations with police officers in your life, but you need to let Officer Miller in to help lock up a criminal. She's a woman too, from the way I got to know her thus far, she's gonna fight for you and the other tenants."

Tenant: "Ugh fine, whatever. Just don't make a mess." Jane +6SP (-9SP)

Officer Miller looked relieved and gave me a slight smile. We finally entered the room, and with Officer Miller's help, we quickly located the camera and Emily was able to remove it. "Judging by the floor plans, same set up as usual", I added.

The tenant at this point gave Emily a coffee and me a tea, as she had offered earlier, but she seemed to have deliberately ignored Officer Miller. "Can I ask you a couple questions about the camera and the owner of GRC before we leave?" Officer Miller asked the woman.

"No."

James: "Miss, please, Officer Miller is just here to do her job and at least in this case, her job and your interests should align. Or do you want an alleged sex predator like my father to run around freely?" Jane +8SP (-1SP)

Tenant: "Sigh, fine. I only have half an hour though, I didn't expect a cop to show up, so I'm busy doing important stuff later."

Officer Miller was upset but managed to calm herself quickly. The interview didn't add much, my father never showed up here. After leaving the apartment, the three of us begin talking.

Emily: "She seemed a bit rude, no?"

James: "Yeah, I guess some people aren't too fond of the police."

Jane: "Thanks for helping me out, Mr. Goodman." Jane +1SP (0SP)

James: "Hey, I'm just doing my part. And we need you, anyway. Not like Em or I can call the officers to access the software and locate the camera."

Jane: "Th-Thanks, I hope the next tenant will be nicer."

Emily: "How long until we are at the next tenant? We planned a lunch break in the meantime, didn't we?"

Jane: "Oh yeah, we still have about an hour before we need to go. I had to cut the interview short, but I also added some buffer time too, just in case."

Emily: "Should we go together somewhere? I heard there's a good sushi place around here."

James: "Sure, that sounds good, what do you think about that, Officer Miller?"

Jane: "I... I'd like to go somewhere else, to be honest."

Emily: "Not that much into fish?"

Jane: "Well, kinda, it's just... expensive."

James: "Em, if you invite Officer Miller, we can go together", I wink, hoping that Em understands what I'm trying to achieve.

Emily: "Huh? Oh sure, I can do that. You can order on my tab." Emily +4SP (-6SP)

Jane: "Th-Thank you so much. I'll go with you then." Jane +7SP (+7SP)

At the sushi place, there was luckily not too much going on for lunch time, so we got our food decently quickly. I had to think back to when Klara and I talked about differences in rural and urban life and this was probably one of them, too. You don't have a sushi place in most villages. If you even have a restaurant at all, it serves local food. It's not bad of course, but the city offers you variety, the countryside offers you the feeling of home-made food from grandma.

We were all too hungry to really have a conversation, Officer Miller briefly went to the restroom. "Here, Em. For the officer." I hand her 30 bucks. "Was this really necessary, James? Why not invite her yourself?" "Well, wouldn't that make it a bribe?" "I guess you're right, but doesn't the same apply to me?" "Is your company under investigation?" Em took the money.

On our drive to the next apartment, Em asks a question I had myself: "Officer, do you really earn so little that you can barely afford sushi?"

"W-Well, no, but... We're severely underfunded in terms of equipment and understaffed. So I have to be very weary of how much I'm going to spend on refueling the car and how much I'm going to spend on takeout when I have no time to cook for myself. I can make it, but anything fancy like sushi needs to be avoided for my financial stability."

James: "Damn, that sucks. Sorry for asking for free rides so often, Officer." Jane +2SP (+9SP)

Jane: "Eh, you do know the car itself is over a dozen times heavier than you? You're not adding that much fuel usage, Mr. Goodman. But thanks for your concern."

Arriving at the next apartment, the woman quickly opened the door. "Thank you for being here. I hope you can get the camera out of here as quickly as possible. And that fucker into jail."

Officer Miller was noticeably relieved by this tenant's reaction to her. "I'm glad to be of service. We'll locate the camera, Ms. Emm will remove it and repair the wall, and I will ask you some questions later for more leads and evidence for the state prosecution."

Tenant: "Excellent, then the two of you can come in."

Jane: "Two? But Mr. Goodman is here too?" Jane +1SP (+10SP)

Tenant: "I don't want him inside."

James: "Officer Miller, it's okay. If the woman doesn't want me inside I can always just give you the floor plans, it's pretty much the only reason I'm here anyway." Jane +8SP (+18SP)

Jane: "No, I'm leading the investigation and I decide how it operates. Miss, Mr. Goodman over here has been cooperating well with the investigation into the company he's the caretaker of. In addition, he has promised adequate financial compensation to all victims, I would like to make it possible for him to anticipate as early as possible how much that would be." Jane +3SP (+21SP) Good point, I hadn't realized that this could be useful for me too.

Tenant: "Fine, he needs to hear what his father did in all excruciating detail, to make sure that he understands the trauma we went through." She was angry at me, it didn't really take a genius to figure that one out.

We found the camera quickly yet again and Em was getting even better at removing the spy cam and repairing the wall, she was moving around at pretty good speeds considering how finicky this job was. "You got a hang of this pretty quickly, Em." "Thanks James."

Tenant: "Oh, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, huh? Sexist pig is surprised that a woman can do something. And don't you call her nicknames when you don't know her."

Emily: "Uh miss, we were childhood friends. And he's right, I am getting better at this, I sadly had practice." Emily +7SP (+1SP)

Tenant: "Whatever, I was just trying to protect you."

Emily: "No worries, but I can handle myself." Em gave the woman a smile and flexed her arm muscles.

The questioning went as expected, just that this tenant had to endure sexual advances from my father. That probably explained her hostility, honestly. After about an hour, we left.

James: "Thanks for sticking up for me this time, Officer Miller."

Jane: "No problem, I kinda owed you one anyway, didn't I?" She was reading a couple of text messages, before announcing: "Mr. Goodman, Ms. Emm, I likely won't join the two of you tomorrow, schedules changed and honestly, a fourth interview is likely to yield less results."

James: "Are you sure? Can't you just send someone else? This is just a fourth person, three might not be enough to prove anything, especially considering that my father left one of them alone."

Jane: "Fine, I'll join you two tomorrow but I won't do an interview. I have to leave early because we probably found the people assisting your father in installing the cameras. And I'll interview your previous tenant tomorrow as well, so that should be enough of that. Jane +10SP (+31SP)

Emily: "Well then, until tomorrow. You can call me Em, by the way."

James: "Goodbye, Officer Miller. You can call me James too, if you want, I haven't gotten used to the formality yet."

Jane: "Y-You two can call me Jane, too, if you want." Jane +6SP (+37SP)

With that rather awkward goodbye, the day was over and I returned home.