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Excellent!

Mine seems to be on the blink ,so try me at atomicflea@comic.com

Product placement! How much they paying you?

Dark

Once again... Very nice Kao!

Dare I say..... RACK THAT! (You've gotten my very first Rack you lucky bastage)

Thanks, I think?

/bump

/pokes Kao

/pokes Kaolian just for GP

Totem

If it's not too late to join in, I humbly volunteer to be a doddering old millionaire (i.e., Hugh Hefner), a befuddled inspector, a Huggy Bear/Rooster-type snitch, the disturbing groundskeeper with an unusual fondness for barnyard animals (especially goats), the Damien-like "quiet" child, or basically anything else you might have room for.

Great story so far!

<Pokes Kaolian> Whoo hoo! Spiffy! <Pokes himself> Zowie! Even Spiffier!

Heh, Do I get an endorsement from Pilsburry after this?

Author's note: I again want to remind people that I am writing characters, so If I portray you differnetly than you actually are, just think of it as an acting job. it's not personal.

Darkplague’s PDA was set up with one of the new exados mail applications. Basically Microsoft Outlook without most of the security holes. He had it set up with a main inbox, a folder descriptively marked “stuff” and a folder labeled “business - action.” There were 4 read, and 13 unread messages in the main inbox, 5 messages in the stuff folder, and 40 in the business folder. 5 of the unread messages were spam. 6 more were just family “hey how’s the trip” type messages. I checked them over, but unless the guy was more paranoid than me, there were no secret messages hidden in any of those. 2 of the unread messages were of interest. The first was a reservation confirmation for the evening after the day of the murder at the Schnitzer Concert hall in Portland, OR (right across the river) to the 6:30 Oregon Metro. Symphony concert. Pretty normal for the jet set crowd, but the odd thing was that the reservation had been e-mailed from Darkplague’s now missing cell phone several hours after the murder supposedly took place. Interesting

The other message of interest was a bit of garbled text that was supposedly from an e-mail address that couldn’t actually exist. I stripped the header information from the file. Sure enough, it was a rerouted message bounced around several different servers, but supposedly originating right here in Vancouver. I sent that message over to the cryptography buffer of my main computer and set the cypherbot to work on it.

Of the previously read messages, Only one was of interest. In the “stuff” folder, I discovered another short garbled message. This time with an address indicating it came from an Australian server. Interesting. Off to the ‘bot it too went. The rest of the messages didn’t look to be relevant so I made a backup of them all to be looked at later on. While I was there, I also took a look at the calendar functions, phone lists and other pda functions. I noticed a journal file that was password protected. This too I transferred for later.

I pondered my next move. At least 2 people with motive. I definitely wanted to talk to them, but before I did that, I needed more information. I decided a trip to the scene of the crime, and the local PD might be in order before I visited any of the suspects. I grabbed my jacket and headed out the door.

* * *
A short while later, I arrived at the Vancouver Police headquarters. The imposing stone and brick building Down on Evergreen Blvd. Hadn’t changed much since the last time I had seen it. I fought down a mix of regret and nervousness, and walked towards the main entrance.

Inside, I recognized Katielynn at the front desk. I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be, but I didn’t have to wait long.

“Sir! Uh, er, I mean Kaolian!” she said with a wary smile. I relaxed.

“Hi there Katielynn. It’s been a long time.” I said.

She nodded. “Aye, it has. Look, about what happened…”

I stopped her. “Look, it’s been along time, we’ve all moved on. I’m a PI now” I said with a wry grin.

She laughed. “You? Heh, I guess it figures. So what brings Mr. **** Tracy around this part of town today?”

“I need a favor. The Darkplague case. I need to see the file.”

She wavered for a minute. “Gee, I dunno… You know who’s running the case file.”

This time it was my turn to nod. “Yeah, “Detective” @workslacking. Not exactly my biggest fan if I recall correctly.”

“Gee, that’s an understatement…”

Detective @workslacking, Or lieutenant as he was back then, had been instrumental in playing a part in the internal affairs investigation after the … incident. To this day I don’t think he was the one that set me up to take the fall, just a “by the book” type that latched onto the wrong cause. He helped the investigation find every clue, every trigger, just as “they” wanted, and sent my career down a flaming path to destruction. Lucky for me I’m not the type to hold a grudge.

“Please Katielynn, this is important. I need this case..”

She sighed. “All right. Meet me out by the copy room service entrance in 10 minutes.”

I thanked her, then made my way out to the lobby. When who should I run into but…

“Well if it isn’t Mr. Drachensborn, Detective to the stars! How’s the client babysitting buisiness going?” said @workslacking, a snide grin on his face.

“It’s a living” I shrugged.

“Better than the likes of you deserve.” He glared at me angrily “So you think you can just waltz back in here, all is forgiven? I don’t think so”

I didn’t want to have this argument, especially with a uniformed police officer, but I decided to stick it out to give Katielynn time to grab the file.

“Look, they never proved any of that besides the dishonorable conduct charge, and even that was a wash. You know it, I know it, get over it. But you still helped those vultures take apart my life. Don’t you get it? You won. It’s over”

I turned and walked towards the door. I heard him call after me. “You were a dirty cop, rotten to the core. You didn’t follow the rules. We all knew you would crack one day. It was just a matter of time.” He spat on the ground in my direction.

I turned. “No, you didn’t know me at all. You saw what you wanted to see. What was convenient for your path to promotion, and you went for it without a second thought. A lot of good officers left the force because of you, and you don’t even see the rot you let inside. Fine detective you are. And with that I strode for the door.

I could see in the door reflection, he started towards me, rage in his eyes but a few of his friends stopped him. I made it outside.

I paused to take a deep breath of the crisp river air, then I made my way around back.

“What took you so long!” inquired Katielynn.

“I ran into an old friend. He wanted to play” I replied, looking off to the left in the distance.

“Oh” she said, with just a hint of sadness. “Well, anyways, here’s a copy of the file. The original is back, he’ll never know. He didn’t even lock his file cabinet”

“Heh, figures. Those by the book types always cut corners when it suits them. Thanks”, and with that, I headed back to my car.

Inside, I examined the file. Crime scene photographs, evidence receipts, copies of all papers found in possession of the deceased, possessions of the assumedly homeless man. I looked it over briefly. No shell casings found at the scene, no prints. The ballistics report indicated the shots all came from the same gun, a colt 45, fired from around 2 and 30 feet away. Whoever fired the gun was at least a half decent shot. It was time to check up the scene of the crime.

I pulled into the main parking lot of Esther short part. The towering green spires of the interstate five bridge behind me as I headed in. The hour was just after 6:00pm, around the time when the shooting took place. As I walked, I passed the large restored steam engine that is the centerpiece of the park. Massive and blocky, it was still dwarfed by the 150 year old evergreen trees all around. The park floor was a mixture of grass and the ever present pine cone. Many, many cell phone sized shiny black pinecones.

I reached the scene of the shooting and pulled out the crime scene photo and aligned it to the area around me. Darkplague must have been about here. The homeless man was probably just about there. I placed a small scrap of paper in each spot on the floor, and then a third where I thought the shooter might have been standing, then stood back to survey the scene. After all this time, even if there had been a print, I wouldn’t be able to see it, but I at least had a good idea where to look for a shell casing.

I started looking around, when I heard a <bleat!> from behind. I turned. A Rhododendron bush was bleating at me? WTF? I went over to take a closer look. As I approached, a small grey shape took off like a cheetah . I could swear it looked like a goat. I didn’t pursue it though, because at that moment my eyes spotted a black shiny shape nestled in the branches of the Rhododendron bush. It was the missing cell phone. I picked it up.

It was not too badly off for 2 weeks out in the cold wet Vancouver air. Those Japanese make some durable toys! The top of the line Motorola flip phone’s battery was dead, it apparently had been open all this time. Why was it open? Had Darkplague been making a call at the time? Perhaps with a little technical know-how I could retrieve the last stored information from the flash memory.

I looked around the area some more, but didn’t find any other clues. As night fell, I drove back to my office/apartment. In the morning I resolved to go pay Angry Hippo and Angua a visit. Perhaps Atomicflea could also shed some light on the situation. I checked the computers. Neither encryption program was quite done. Stupid 256 bit encryption. And with that, I grumbled off to sleep, the scene from the lobby of the police station turning over in my mind as I drifted off. Perhaps tomorrow would be a better day.

To be continued…

Several of you will be recieving e-mails or PM's tomorrow around noonish, asking you to write something and post it in a specific order at a specific time... you'll see. If you don't feel like writing, let me know and i can either A: ghost write something (but I'd rather have others do it because that adds more flavor to the story) or b: write around it.

Yay! More storiness. Still nice work, Kao.

Ok, but I don't want to read about a detective that smokes pot.

"Tired from a day of hard work, Kaolian sits down at his desk and lights up a dooby."

Skeet

I'm loving the addition of the goat, hehe. Really nice touch.

Don't know if I'm up yet Kao, but I work from 9 to 5 tomorrow so I won't be home to get any messages. =( Will probably mosey on home for lunch around 1pm, but that's it.