Ling indicates to the others with hand signs that she will check out the corridor, and quietly moves into it.

The corridor is long and bland with doors running down both sides. It has a green-grey colourlessness to it that screams "government". Occasionally a police officer or detective comes or goes. 

Nikolai nods. “Nikolai. I do indeed. I am sorry that I cannot seem to recall your name as well.” He shrugs apologetically. “The Clave has asked me to look these muggings as it is believed to be the work of rogue Underworlders. I believe there might be something more that could lead to backlash against our kind. I do not wish to see that happen. Do you know anything about it?”

Alaris moves forward with Ling, walking with quiet purpose and an economy of steady movement far different from their normal swagger.

OOC: any doors labeled File Room? Or are we supposed to hijack someone's system login?

"Matvey," he responds, offering Nikolai a handshake.

"I've heard of these matters, but I wasn't aware of any warlock involvement. Where did you get that idea from?"

Meanwhile, Ling hears the distant buzz of conversation from up ahead on the right and Alaris begins inspecting the doors for signs. She finds a toilet and what looks like a secure area for evidence storage, but no files. However, a room in the direction indicated by Ling has a small window and looks like a large communal office area with many desks.

As they successfully make it into the station Caio seems to give up the plan to be a distraction, but is still ready to dash if they get caught.

Ling waves Alaris over and pulls them close, whispering: "Let's see if we can get any information from their computers. Look over their shoulders, maybe we can grab a login while someone gets a doughnut or something. They eat a lot of doughnuts, right?" Ling waits by the side of the door until someone leaves or enters and then quickly slips into the working area.

Alaris whispers back to Ling, "Rummage around on empty desks - I bet they keep their logins near their computers!" The paladin steps into the squad room and makes their way to an open desk and starts checking the area for slips of paper with odd strings of characters.

Ling nods at Alaris. She approaches a policeman sat at his desk and peeks over his shoulder, but what he is working on does not seem related to their problem. She walks around a few more desks until she finds one in a more quiet corner of the office and starts looking for a password to log in. The desk is fairly cluttered with post-its, chocolate bar wrappers and files.

Ling struggles to find a password nearby, but does overhear a conversation as she searches.

"...and they're all missing books? Why would somebody kill for books?"

The shadowhunter picks up this snippet of conversation and pauses her search for a computer login. She walks closer, careful not to be so close that someone could bump into her, and continues listening. 

Ling follows the two detectives over to a nearby desk, where one of them sits. He starts to browse through what look like crime scene photos on his computer.

"Obviously, we don't have any way to reliably inventory the Kuznetsov residence, but the other victims were very forthcoming. All of them reported books missing and nothing else."

"What kind of books?" The first man's colleague asks, confused.

"Wierd old ones. History books and fairy tales. I'm telling you Ruslan, this case is weird like nothing else I've seen before."

Nikolai's hackles rise as he did not specifically mention warlocks being involved, he takes a moment to examine the man and notices the little telltale signs that even the most proficient liar cannot seem to overcome. As if the human body railed against falsehoods. Given that he's in the middle of a police station, he decides to play it off with a shrug. "You know how the Clave is, always looking to pin this sort of thing on us. I was hoping you might have some idea as to who may be involved in it, given your position to privileged information that isn't accessible to the public. Is it warlocks? I had hoped this was the work of overzealous fey trying to create another rift and stir up another war. Are you able to provide me with anything to help?"

Matvey shrugs.

"We have no evidence of downworlder involvement. These robberies could just as easily be the work of mundanes. Why does the Clave suspect otherwise?"

History books and "fairy tales"? This could be something... whenever mundanes say "weird", it's usually the Shadowworld. They could be talking about the same killings that vampire mentioned, the "shadow beasts"... Ling googles the name "Kuznetsov" on her phone and finds an article about the Kuznetsov couple being killed. She skims it and realises that Mr Kuznetsov was a book dealer - more books? Who murders for mundane books? She tries to search for an address, but comes up empty. The two cops are now talking about where to go for lunch and Ling rolls her eyes in frustration. Say something useful, argh! About to walk away, Ling notices that the cop as kept scrolling as he was talking, and a picture of one of the coins with a horned head flickers past. It is too fast for her to be certain, but it sounds like the ones Nikolai was talking about.

Ling goes back to Alaris and waves for them to follow her back into the hallway, where she quietly tells them what she saw and overheard. "Let's they take a look at the basement, see if there's anything in storage. Seems like upstairs is just more offices and I don't think they have anything useful, they don't seem to know what's going on with the mundane murders."

Ling goes downstairs to take a look.

There's a storage room in the basement that seems to contain large metal shelves with filing boxes full of old case notes and archived evidence. There's a chain-link gate with an electronic keypad attached.

Ling peers through the chain-link gate, but cannot see if there is anything useful in there. She tries her luck with the keypad, but the modern device is unfamiliar too her. After several attempts, all she achieves is making the thing spark prettily. Well, I guess not then. Hmpf. She taps her fingers in the back of her hand for a moment, then stands up and look at Alaris, out of ideas. I guess that means we'll have to go pay those vampires a visit... uuuuugh

Alaris scrutinizes the system, following the little wires from the keypad to the magnetic plates holding the gate closed.

With a whisper and a flicker of light, their seraph blade flashes into existence as the paladin tries to make the radiant blade break the magnetic connection between the plates.

While the blade doesn't split the mag plates apart, it does sear through some of the thin wire links that the fence is made of. With another murmur of Celestial, the blade vanishes, and Alaris turns to Ling.

"Well, we can carve our way in if we have to... what are we looking for again?"

"Ha, I like your approach! The name was Kuznetsov. Let's see if we can find a file about that murder at least!" Ling takes her own seraph blade and cuts into the fence, just wide enough to squeeze through, and starts looking through the files. After a moment, she pauses, a file in hand, and looks up. In slow motion, she turns to Alaris: "I'm a royal idiot. It said archived files, Kuznetsov is an open case. We won't find anything here." She puts the file back and squeezes out, face-palming. "Now what do we do about that fence?"

Alaris palms a pack of zipties off of a nearby shelf. "Well, short of a welder, these might be our best bet." They use two of them to stretch the chain-link fencing taut again. It won't last forever, but with it being an archive area, maybe tired eyes won't notice it for a while.

"So if it's an open case, who do we need to open to get the info we need?"