Fred Jones

Fred Jones is twenty-four years old. People bring everything the local sheriff waves off straight to his Mystery agency: footsteps in attics, wandering swamp lights, and tracks inside a locked museum.

A childhood spent among engines and disassembled gadgets taught him one key thing: any spookiness has gears if you look hard enough. In the old van Fred always keeps coils of rope, carabiners on his belt, a red-lensed flashlight, and a grid notebook full of counterweight sketches. A cable hangs over his shoulder, and cold coffee sloshes in his thermos.

The team he's assembled is a noisy one. One argues about the laws of optics, another is scared of creaking stairs, while Fred himself, in a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves and an orange ascot, stubbornly draws diagrams right on the dusty glass. Sometimes he invents a five-pulley contraption where he should have just checked the latch.

In conversation he meets you as an equal. He gets you up to speed fast, argues on the merits, easily crosses out what's unnecessary from the plan, and spots the clues the others missed in the dark.