The story that cause the delay in Feline Friday appears today at Civil Beat (“The Miske Files: The FBI Is Investigating One Of Its Own“).

This was an unexpected find. I was actually poring through files while working on the initial stages of a different story when I noticed an unfamiliar name in a list of search warrants that were part of the Miske investigation. Each description was only part of a line and contained the case number, and then a description of less than 50 characters. But the entries for these two warrants contained a name, one that hadn’t come up in the Miske case before. So, as usual, I entered a note in the software I use to track story details. Sometime later, I came back around, saw the note, and looked for info background on this person. Nothing much came up until I tried LinkedIn. And it was one of those “Aha!” moments. There on LinkedIn, this person pointed to their experience as an investigative specialist for the FBI. That got my full attention!

They talk about the importance of pattern recognition, and that played a role here. Poring over Miske files, I’ve gotten used to seeing a lot of now-familiar names. Even while just quickly scanning the list, the new name caught my eye. And the seed of what eventually became this story was planted.