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Send to: Mr. Mercury (M.Mercury.JSHotline.co)
Subject: RE: Juno Steel Investigation
Let me be clear at the start. I am not interested in collecting the reward you're offering for information on Juno Steel. When I started investigating his case I didn’t know about the reward, the tip hotline, or the fact that anyone was actively looking for him. Keep your creds.
I'm a private investigator. For the past two years I’ve been working with a network of volunteers looking for missing people across the galaxy. Though I’m not working on their behalf now, I do specialize in cold cases.
Last month a member of my team mentioned Juno Steel’s name in conversation and it gave me an unsettling feeling. When I looked him up I realized that we were detectives with the HCPD around the same time. I have no memory of him, but the information led me to your search party and the vids you made laying out the case. Something about the story got me thinking.
I started asking questions, did some digging, and at the time of sending this I believe I’ve found a tangible lead on Detective Steel. However, I will need urgent help to proceed.
To be blunt, people who have been missing for as long as Detective Steel has, by the time we find our answers they’re often not the answers we want. I’m not insensitive to how that must sound, but please keep that in mind.
None of the evidence that I’ve gathered strongly suggests that Juno Steel is dead or alive. I have no witnesses more recent than a year ago, which didn't include an actual sighting of Detective Steel. The oldest physical evidence I’ve been able to find is from the time he disappeared. This case is deep and it's going to take a lot more digging to get to the bottom.
The first picture I’ve attached is from the files your search party shared on the net around the time he was last seen. The second one I took last night. It’s damaged nearly beyond recognition, but the VIN number matches the ship Mr Steel was last seen on. I found it in a scrap yard orbiting in an outer-rim asteroid belt, buried under about a dozen other junk ships. The scrap yard was abandoned when I got there: equipment, the sales office, the coffee pot, everything left behind except some files.
The internal systems of the ship were damaged by whatever external force destroyed it. After a few hours of digging with the equipment I was able to pull the black box from the wreck. On the day Juno Steel went missing his ship was intercepted, boarded, then manually shut off from the inside. The box logged two years of inactivity, then late last year it recorded some kind of impact before shutting down for good. Besides the black box I was able to pull the ship's security drive. It's cracked and scorched, but there's a chance it still contains the cockpit footage or scanner data from the flight. I hooked it up to my coms, but it’s encrypted beyond anything I can break into.
Finding the ship was a good lead so I ran with it, found an old record of past employees at the scrap yard, and tracked down the owner who confirmed receiving the same destroyed ship. He said the reason he remembered was the pair who dropped it off insisted that it be buried. A few months later he received an anonymous offer to purchase the scrap yard in its entirety. Which led me to bank records.
Whatever Juno Steel was up to got him mixed up with some powerful people. This is all more dangerous than I can pursue on my own and unfortunately my contacts here are limited. I have reason to believe something is happening in his case now, and when it does, finding answers is going to be a whole lot harder.
This line is secret and as secure as I can make it, but it would be best to discuss the rest in person. If I can meet with someone on his team I can give them the rest of what I’ve gathered.
Get in contact with me. I’d like to help you if I can.
Detective D.R.