The Thunder Rolls
By: Jake Boney
Chapter 6: De-Ja-Vu
Pete and Myka were in the security office at the ball field, they had just finished combing through a couple hours of footage from today's game. They had the head of security make them a copy of some of the more interesting tidbits, they were going to send this back to the Warehouse for Claudia to analyze. It had been a close game, and the home team was up by one run going into the bottom of the ninth inning. The Philadelphia pitcher walked the first batter, and the second batter hit a walk off home run. That was enough to get any sports fan emotional. The agents couldn't locate anything in the video that clued them in to where the Key may have been, but they knew it had to be here somewhere. If anyone could sift through all this footage, and find the proverbial needle in the hay stack, it was Claudia.
"Maybe we should head over to the machine shop now," said Pete, "and talk to the owner. He may be able to tell us if anybody was exceptionally angry at being laid off."
"That sounds like a good idea," said Myka. "Any information that we can get will be beneficial at this point. Once we finish there, we should go to the hospital, and interview the victims. We may be able to find a recurring theme in their stories, which could help us figure out who is doing this."
The machine shop was in a small steel building, on the outskirts of the city. When they walked in, they were greeted by a chorus of industrial sounds. They were led to the owner's office, and found him deep in thought. "There are some government agents here to see you Mr. Krimp." said the man who brought them in. "They said it was pretty important that they talk to you immediately."
"Thank you Rich, you can go now." said Krimp. "How can I help the two of you? What is the reason for this surprise visit?"
"We are here to ask you some questions about the employees that were recently struck by lightning." said Myka. "We believe that there may be more to it than just lightning strikes, there may be foul play involved." Krimp was looking at her and Pete with a look of confusion on his face, so she continued. "Doesn't it seem like a very strange coincidence that eight of your employees were struck by lightning within a three day span?" she asked.
"We understand that you recently laid off about six of your employees." said Pete, "Did any of them seem exceptionally angry at this news? We think someone was trying to get his job back by opening some positions up."
"Most of the guys that I laid off were not very happy," said Krimp, "most of them have families. Do you realize how hard it is to feed a family off unemployment benifits? Let me be the first to tell you, it is extremely difficult to look your kids, and tell them you can't afford to buy them new shoes because you have to pay your mortgage. There was one guy though, Jerry Thompson was his name, he was pretty irate. Kept saying things like, 'You ain't seen the last of me' and 'You're gonna regret this.' He stormed out of here like a tornado, and I haven't heard from him since, he hasn't even stopped by to pick up his last paycheck."
"Thompson, huh?" said Myka, "Can you tell us where he lives? We would like to go talk to him."
It was as if a light went off in Myka's head, Thompson was the name of the guy who had used the Key all those years ago. By the look on Pete's face, she could tell that he had recognized the name too. Mr. Krimp gave them an address on the other side of town, and they thanked him, and left. She decided to call this information into Artie and Claudia, she wanted to find out if this Thompson was related to the original Thompson from the file.