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Chapter 7: Wolverine's Nail Clippers

He was currently reading the file belonging to a Mr. Henry Uul, a cook at the Institute as Cooper had begun to call it, who had a record after he assaulted his niece. No charges were ever brought against him, but there were several other cases of girls in their teens leaving the neighbourhood a short while after he arrived no matter where he lived. Cooper believed in coincidences, however, that was a little more than a coincidence in the eyes of most people.

Mr. Uul also had a tendency to get into bar fights and was known to be violent by the few people he'd managed to get a hold of over the telephone. They had only talked to him because he said there was a reward for catching the Wolverine, the media had named him and it stuck, and they might be helping catch his killer. It helped that no one particularly liked him too though.

The French culinary graduate was bunking in the staff quarters of the Institute and hadn't been able to verify his location during any of the murders so he was a promising suspect.

If the girls who ran off weren't all blondes and it hadn't been scientifically proven that he was an idiot.

Cooper had decided to set him in the "bad but probably not our guy" as Jinet called it, section, which already had six names from the past few hours alone. Not too horrible considering the lack of real computers and databases as well as the none to effective emergency lights that had gone on to conserve power, or the fact that the station was constantly being swarmed by people desperately trying to report a crime or get inside.

He was in the process of picking up a second one when the officer he'd met when he first arrived entered the room.

"Hey, Carl." Jinet called back, a frown crossing his face when he noticed the pile of boxes in the officer's arms. "Already?" he asked.

Carl nodded and shrugged. "It's a pretty bad storm, we've already had to stick all of the reporters who didn't bring their own van in the conference room and most of them have refused to do any work without some sort of statement."

"What is going on?" Cooper said, trying to figure out why Carl was talking to them about this.

"Whenever we have a really big storm we have to start sending out care packages." Jinet explained. "It helps keep the calls down a bit and it keeps some people from turning to crime to get power."

Carl nodded in agreement, but it was countered by a glare in Cooper's direction. "We've got some food in here that we stocked up on near the beginning of storm season, there are also some flashlights and batteries. We take this out of the government funding we get and each family will get at least one package, after the first storm its food and some blankets if we have them."

Cooper tried not to look too surprised at this unconventional method, he'd grown up in the city without any thoughts of a snowstorm crossing his mind. As far as he could remember, the most snow he'd ever gotten barely went up past his shoes, here there was already enough snow to swallow one whole in some areas.

"Either way, we need the extra hands, we don't have enough packed this year. They got put off because of this case so you guys can help or you can tell the press something and get them to." Carl said.

"What a difficult choice." Jinet said, it was impossible to tell if he was being honest about that or not up until he grabbed some of the files and beckoned for Cooper to follow him.

It didn't take long for the twisting hallways to lead to a small, cramped space full of uniformed officers with multiple cups of coffee each, some people dressed in civilian clothes with volunteer pins and a few others with cameras and press badges were all squished around a table, methodically putting items in the cardboard boxes. These boxes were then passed to the scientist who had come into the room earlier, to be wrapped in plastic bags and piled near the door.