Don’t miss the fantastic investigative story today over at Civil Beat (“Hidden Links Exposed: Hawai?i Fireworks Bust Tied To Mainland Suppliers“).

The long sub-head provides a good idea of what’s in the story: “One mysterious address on shipping documents in a seizure at Honolulu Harbor is the first in a chain of clues that lead across the country and through the decades — a mysterious web of connections between the legal and illegal fireworks trade.”

Reporters John Hill and Blaze Lovell tracked paperwork, court and licensing records, business records in multiple states, all in order to tell the story of a shipment of $2.7 million dollars of illegal fireworks seized in a shipping container at Sand Island.

It’s really a classic story, starting with a small piece, and then building the story one document, one name, one address, one business, one official record, across a number of states and time frames, one piece at a time until the web of connections is revealed.

And the subtext is, of course, if these reporters several year after the fact could find all this out, how is it that with multiple state and federal agencies involved, how is it that no one was held legally accountable?

Civil Beat should host a program with John and Blaze talking about how the pieces of the puzzle fell into place as they pursued the investigation.