So my MC needs to sneak into a police station in the middle quiet hours of the night and access a computer. She wants to log in with her dead husband's ID and see what case he was on before he was killed, since it's top secret and nobody will tell her. As far as I can tell, while police stations will become less staffed at quiet points, they are still staffed and guarded. Even if she has to go through the roof or a window on an upper floor... (she has powers, it's doable) Does anybody have any ideas or suggestions? I want some believability within a comic book, but it doesn't have to be super realistic.
i think you have problems doing it that way dead peoples accounts are usually closed so nobody can access them without IT doing special things to make it available again and physically b&e without getting caught is unlikely a more feasible method would be to hire a hacker who could access the data remotely by going through IT safeguards firewalls etc
Good thoughts! Perhaps instead of going into his file, she is able to access a case list and digs around in there. It's more of an excuse to dress up in a quick makeshift costume and get information as her "first time" being a "superhero." Though I suppose it is also a good way to bring hacking into the plot, since our major antagonist whom we will see later on in the series is a pro hacker.
In my story - contained inside a book, actually - the bad guys set fire to the police station. The 'so-called' cops don't have the balls to withstand a 10000 degree raging inferno, and they evacuate. So...in your story...set off the fire alarm, and MC arrives with his hose, fireboots & braces available in any good joke shop.
strikes me that if her dead husband was a cop she could get in legitimately during the day... perhaps when the captain/chief/whatever wants to see the grieving widow to pay his respects then she logs onto a terminal with his partner's ID which she guesses due to him being a good friend of the family so she knows birth dates and names for his kids etc
Diversion, hmm! That is also a possibility, something I briefly thought about, and now I just entered a small plot hole I'm going to attempt to sew up. The death happened years back, so either perhaps she didn't think about doing it because she was grieving so hard, or for some other reason. She was focused on raising her daughter with her husband gone. Her daughter vanished however, and it kind of set her off. Perhaps she's now being reckless.
What would a superhero wear to gain access to sensitive police records? Batman had Commissioner Gordon to help him. Well it worked for Snake, so it should work for a not so well trained person too. Otherwise I would recommend a subtler approach, or some sort of distraction to gain access to sensitive records.
Hmmm. Well if dead cop didn't finish the case, someone else would be assigned to it. And joe sixpak is right, dead cop's access would be removed pretty quickly. So maybe wifey has to suck up to whoever now has the case. Perhaps the partner, as big soft moose suggested? Also to consider- is the case closed, or still open? bc that would affect access to it as well.
It's pretty hard to get into a police station, I used to work as a dispatcher. The only thing I can think of that might be borderline plausible is: 1) Accomplice A gets arrested for something minor that requires transport to the station 2) Accomplice A fakes a medical emergency while in custody at the station 3) MC somehow disguises him/herself as a medic, but when the ambulance gets there, detours to the computer. Dunno if that helps, but it's about as plausible as I could think of.