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Maybe the first thing that tips Lisa off to the two of them being shady is that they're saying they're a newlywed couple, and the woman is out of the man's league in a way that Lisa's daughter would call "disgusting". Her daughter has been saying this about a lot of couples lately, and Lisa sort of hopes it means her daughter is sly. Maybe it's selfish, but that would probably mean less of a chance of becoming a grandmother before she's ready, and Lisa is too busy to be helpful with a baby at this point in her life.
The state of the sheriff's office is proof enough of how hectic life on Paradiso is. Half the town is in here; some of them here desperately pleading for their allotment of Pascaline D, some of them detained as part of the train passengers while they were simply attempting to return home after a week away with family or seeking another job off planet.
Once upon a time, Lisa looked for jobs off of Paradiso too. She doesn't blame them.
She passes out cups of coffee to folks. I'm so sorry. You know we have to check everyone. It's the only way we can figure out who's responsible. It wouldn't seem fair if we let the locals go and only interrogated outsiders.
The people Lisa has grown up around and worked with her whole life are nothing but understanding.
I get it, Lisa. No, of course, we need to find the monster who did this. How's your little girl doing?
Sheriff Cole interrogates the suspects himself, and even though Lisa is at the other side of the station, filing her report, she can tell that he's got them cornered. Cole hasn't been the sheriff the whole time Lisa has worked here; he was a railroad repairman for a while, but then he started working on posses and had an eye for investigations and when the old sheriff passed on, Cole took over. She likes working for him, likes that he cares more about respecting folks and listening to good people than he does following the exact letter of the law. He does his best but most times his hands are tied. Folks have to go to jail. Folks have to be punished. Paradiso is under Alliance jurisdiction and that means they follow Alliance law. It ain't always efficient, in Lisa's opinion. Everyone else in Paradiso seems to agree too.
Cole leaves the two suspects by his desk while he talks to the family that was next to them on the train, and Lisa gives him a little nod when he looks at her and gestures towards the two. It could mean yeah, they did it and it could mean yeah, I'll keep an eye on them. Both work.
She doesn't get to keep an eye on them for very long, because a woman in a red silk gown and a gold cape appears at the door to the sheriff's office. She's buzzing with energy and something else; anger, maybe.
"I hear you're detaining some people here," she says loftily, and Lisa braces herself for the argument she's about to have with this rich lady asking for special treatment for an employee or a lover or whoever.
"Yes, ma'am. There was—"
"Oh, thank God," the woman says, surprising Lisa, and sets an elegant leather folio down on Lisa's desk. "I know you'll have to run my files just to be safe, but I have chased this hooligan halfway across the system."
"Hooligan?" Lisa asks, starting the process of scanning the papers. Registered Companion, huh? Nothing to sneeze at, certainly. Lisa's never met one before, and she's only human: she'd like a little gossip fodder for the pub.
"A man indentured to me," the woman sniffs. Her name is Inara Serra and her files are impeccable. "He's stolen quite a bit of money from me and run off, as though I don't have the ability to track spending from that account." She smiles at Lisa. "And as much as I'm sure you'd do a wonderful job charging him here, I would really like to have him prosecuted on my home planet." Her eyes are scanning the room and eventually she focuses coldly at the corner. Lisa knows without looking that Inara has caught sight of the suspects. The Raymonds?
Lisa runs the files again, because they're sort of too impeccable, but she can't help but agree with this lady. If there's drama over fraud and indenture contracts, she doesn't really want that to tax Paradiso's already bare bones system. When the second scan of Inara's Companion files checks out green across the board, she hands back the folio and lets Inara go on her way.
The slap Miss Inara delivers across the suspect's face actually echoes.
Sheriff Cole manages most of the fallout afterwards, and once these strange people are all out of their hair, he and Lisa return to processing everyone else.
Veronica, a miner on her day off who came in to the office to rubberneck when all the train passengers were first brought in, shows up again in the early evening out of breath.
"There's a ship in a canyon out near the trucking road," she tells them. "Unregistered."
It's easy to pull a posse together just from the folks in the station, and soon enough they're out on the trucking road and there's a mule coming towards them.
It's the two suspects. They're dressed differently, more suited to the hard living thieves they are than the newlywed couple they were pretending to be, in leathers and gun belts. Inara isn't anywhere to be seen, but she probably doesn't work on the grittier or violent parts of the cons with them. Lisa heads for the medicine on the back of their mule as soon as they've killed the engine. She can't help it. Everyone's doses of Pascaline D are on that vehicle, or at least they should be.
And they are. Every single vial. Lisa could cry.
There's something in Sheriff Cole's eyes as he speaks to the man. Something that tells Lisa they'll be saying this shipment got accidentally left on the train and was found at the next cargo stop.
That's fine with her.
Half a year after the medicine fiasco, men show up to Paradiso. They're wearing workpants without a speck of dirt on them and flannel shirts that still have the creases from being folded in a box and their shoes are the black leather of a federal agent rather than the scuffed steel toe boots that men wear around these parts. People stare at them in town and they seem to be aware of it, and have the good grace to be embarrassed.
"We need to know if you've seen these two before," says one of the federal agents pretending to be miners looking for work once he makes it into the sheriff's office and flashes his badge. He holds out a photo of the thieves. It's a blurry still from a security camera, somewhere with the telltale cold lighting of an Alliance facility, and Lisa can recognize them immediately. The two of them are wearing EMT uniforms; it looks a bit silly on the man because his hat might be too small for his head, and it looks a bit silly on the woman because her hair is definitely not in any medical personnel regulation hairstyle that Lisa has ever seen.
"Can't say I have," Lisa says. It's surprisingly easy, to lie to a federal agent.
They show the photo to Cole, and he shakes his head.
"Nope, not here."
"These are dangerous criminals," the federal agent says. "If you have any information, we could really use the help."
"If I haven't seen 'em, I haven't seen 'em," Lisa tells them. She's starting to get genuinely angry with these kids.
"We heard that there was a robbery here a while back," the other agent says quickly. "And that medicine was stolen. You can see that this gang has a history of that."
"We found all that medicine same day," Sheriff Cole says coolly. "Just a big misunderstandin'." And he stares at the agent with a face that says we're done here.
The agents seem to grasp that they're not going to get anything out of Cole, but Lisa isn't surprised when she's left behind in the afternoon while he goes out to settle a fight and the agents approach her now that she's alone.
"Look, we know that it can be difficult, to work in law enforcement out on the Rim planets, and that maybe things don't seem as big a deal to you, but we do take everything seriously. If you remember them but you didn't have the time or resources to pursue them, we can help with that. You could lead the investigation, if you just give us something to start with."
"I don't know anything about that," Lisa tells them. "I'm a sheriff's deputy on Paradiso, not some big shot fed looking for thieves on Core planets. I ain't gonna tell you how to do your jobs, but I'm fair certain you shouldn't be asking me to do 'em for you."