Oberon's Meaty Mysteries_The Squirrel on the Train

by Kevin Hearne

  Because you’re hungry. And because at this point I think our unorthodox, extra-legal methods are working much faster than conventional law enforcement. When the detective finally pulls that footage of the parking lot I’m sure she’ll see the same person covered up head-to-toe with no distinguishing features and any license plate they get will turn out to be stolen. And I bet the person will disappear from the shot too after a short while; I’m sure that’s why they were hugging the building walls coming in. They knew where the cameras were ahead of time. They made and used an untraceable weapon that can easily be melted down to goo. They hit him in public and ran, as professional a hit as you could imagine, except for Suluk’s presence. But just think: If Suluk hadn’t thought Keane looked like me and gone after him, they would have caught him all alone in that stairwell, no witnesses. So as Suluk said, this wasn’t a crime of passion or a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a well-planned assassination, and that means that there’s a big pile of money behind all this. And you know what that means for law enforcement?

  It took me a moment, but then I got it.

  Exactly. Delays and obstacles while the bad guys get away. But we’re going to skirt around all of that. We’re already far closer behind them than they thought anyone would be.

  Atticus put down the knife and brought over the cutting board, clutching it with a paper towel. He quickly threw chunks of sausage at our mouths in turn and we caught them all, and it was all gone in about a decade or whatever.

  Orlaith said, and Starbuck and I agreed.

  Heck yes. Let me say goodbye to the detective and we’ll go like squid pros.

  Atticus no sooner said that than the detective shouted from somewhere in the apartment. “Ahh! Son of a—!”

  My Druid dropped the cutting board and darted into the apartment, calling “Detective?”

  “It’s all right,” I heard her reply. “I was just startled. That’s a damn big lizard.”

  “Hmm. Oh, indeed. That’s one impressive iguana. Out of his terrarium.” Privately Atticus shot a thought to me: You called it, buddy. Lizard in the house.

  I may have been licking the cutting board at that precise instant but I am very talented and can ingest sausage residue and think about chicken at the same time.

  “Yeah,” Detective Ibarra said. “Look at how it’s all messed up, the rocks and sand and shit all over. They were looking for something in there.”

  Atticus knew exactly what they were looking for because it was already in his pocket. But he said, “Huh. That’s strange. Well, look, Detective, I’ve fed my hounds and don’t wish to intrude any more than I already have. But I would really love to help some more if I can. Will you call me, please, and let me know what you find out about Hudson Keane? I’ll be returning to Eugene tonight but I’m also flexible. I’m at your service if you need me.”

  “Yeah, all right. Thanks, Molloy. I’ll call you when we know something.”

  We reached the bottom of the stairs as Detective Ibarra’s backup arrived in the parking lot. We three hounds walked out of the complex with our Druid walking us on leashes, but they weren’t holding us back, no sir. We were way ahead of the police and headed for justice—and gravy, of course. If you think about it, they’re almost the same thing.

  Chapter 4:

  The

  Crypto

  Keeper

  Atticus led us to Random Order Pie Bar so we three hounds could enjoy the rich gravy of their pot pies, for he had made a Solemn Gravy Promise earlier and needed to keep it. While we were eating, he made a phone call and we listened in to his side of it.

  “Hi, Earnest. Connor Molloy here. Say, since you’re a computer wiz of sorts, I wondered if you might have a standalone machine handy on which to try suspicious flash drives, check for viruses, things like that, without being on the net. You do? Fantastic. Might I trouble to you inspect something? I promise to pay you for your time, and if it turns out to be something terrible that destroys your machine, I promise to replace it.” He paused to let Earnest reply, then said, “Absolutely. I’ll drop by this evening if you wouldn’t mind sharing your address. And what do you like to drink? I’ll bring some of that too, then. Thanks.”

  We had met them recently because Jack had been kidnapped and we rescued him.

  “It was. We’ll see them when we get back to Eugene.”

  He made another call to an actual private investigator in town and we swung by there to pay them some money. He wanted a background check on Hunter Keane and some family history as soon as possible. After that there was nothing for us to do until we saw Earnest that night, and we were finally able to enjoy Portland’s parks and smell things.

  That did mean, however, that by the time we returned to the train station for the afternoon ride home, we were pretty dang tired, giving the train only a cursory inspection for squirrels before boarding and curling up for a nap. We never did find out if the squirrel got out of the stairwell or not.

  When we arrived in Eugene Atticus told us that he got a couple of calls while we slept. He filled us in on the way out to the truck and on the way to Earnest’s house.

  “The reason Hudson Keane looked so much like me is because he was a descendant of mine, albeit many generations removed. I’d been trying to hide from Aenghus Óg in New York in the late nineteenth century, and my relationship with a woman back then resulted in his birth more than a century later.”

 

  “Yes, it’s very sad. Hudson looked to have a bright future and seemed to have inherited my paranoia along with his features.”

 

  “The reason the police never found a phone was because he didn’t own one, so far as they know. If he had one, he used burners only, like me. And his digital footprint is absurdly small. He has a bank card but only uses it to buy coffee at different shops around the city—he was purposely all over the place. All his other financial transactions are deposits and withdrawals of cash with no clear indication of where it’s coming from. He’s unemployed, so far as the world is concerned, yet he clearly has an off-the-books income from somewhere. The best guess we can make right now was he was doing some kind of super-secret science.”

 

  “Hudson graduated from M.I.T. last year with a chemical engineering degree. Which means he graduated from both high school and college early. Big brain, in other words, and in the employ of someone who wants no clear records of his employment. At this point I’m just hoping it’s not narcotics.”

 

  “Gods below, I’d forgotten about that. You never did tell me where you heard such a thing, but regardless, I think we’ll find the answer on that flash drive.”

  Earnest Goggins-Smythe was a very nice guy with an unfortunate foot odor problem and a habit of wearing T-shirts he bought at Comic Cons. This time he wore one from the movie Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. Atticus said he was a British expatriate, which may or may not be the same as an ex-patriot; he said such things were complicated.

  Earnest worked from home as some kind of I.T. professional and showed dogs on the side, so I doubted he owned any other clothes except for one suit he wore on the show circuit. He practically ignored Atticus and just paid attention to me, Orlaith, and Starbuck when we arrived, asking only if we could have snacks, which Atticus agreed to. Atticus watched him pet us and make silly noises for a few years while he looked around.

  We were in
a sort of living room that Earnest had tricked out to be an extra-large office. He had one of those extra-long wooden tables you find in libraries with reading lamps at either end, a kind of deluxe office chair at his work station, but a couple of wooden dining room chairs down at the other side. His work area had three different monitors and two keyboards. He had some code on one that looked like something from The Matrix, a video game paused on another, and the sci-fi movie Arrival playing at low volume on a third, because I recognized the heptapod noises.

  He told Atticus in his British accent, “Laptop’s on the end, ready to go. It doesn’t have much on it in the way of apps besides antivirus software. Run them all on your flash drive and then we’ll see what you have on my station.”

  Atticus thanked him and I shot him a mental request.

  Sure thing, buddy.

  Earnest asked him if it would be okay to take us out back to play with Jack and Algy, and Atticus said that would be fine. In less time than it takes for a badger to get angry we were outside smelling asses and having a great time.

  I was already in a friendly, chewy boxing match with Algy when Atticus told me what was on the flash drive.

  There are three encrypted files on here. And I have three decrypt keys provided by Detective Ibarra.

 

  She had no idea they were decrypt keys. They were just three strings of 64 digits each they found in his apartment taped to the inside of his closet wall and she thought it was a code instead of the key to something else. She thought it would be harmless to give them to me, though I did have to ask to see them.

 

  Running virus scans on here now. I’m sure it’ll be fine but best to be sure. How are you doing?

 

  I got rambunctious after that and lost some time playing around. But eventually Atticus came outside and told Earnest the flash drive was all clear and he’d like to take a look at the files on the sweet custom setup.

  Earnest said we should just keep playing while they went inside and I reminded Atticus to keep the play-by-play going.

  All right. First file decrypting…huh. It’s a Word file with the title Stable Solar. Opening now, doing a bit of speed reading…holy shit.

 

  Well, uh, it would seem my descendant was a genius who had solved the world’s energy problems. Which would basically pit him against everybody currently producing energy. No wonder he was paranoid.

 

  It is a thing, but the only reasons solar hasn’t already wiped out gas and coal and the rest of it entirely is because it’s inefficient, and to keep the lights on at night you’d need much better battery storage than we currently have. He’s claiming here to have solved both problems. He’s increased the solar efficiency of Perovskite cells to forty-nine percent—that’s really high, you could make solar practical in the upper latitudes with that—and he says he’s figured out a way to stabilize the rapid degradation of Perovskite surfaces in humid environments. And he also has some kind of new rechargeable battery that will store the excess electricity for nighttime usage. Well, now we know why he was killed.

 

  I’m assuming the other two files are schematics for the cells and the battery, but we’ll see. Point is, even the threat of this being real would get him killed, and he knew it. So he was operating as anonymously as possible.

 

  Nobody knows I have it except you, and you won’t tell anyone. And they might not be aware it exists. They probably have his computer and think that’s sufficient. If they’re looking for anyone, it’s for the person listed on the paper here with him: Ignacio Medina, PhD. He was the electrical engineer part of the team. I need to call the detective. But let me confirm what these other files are first…

 

  No, I’m just going to get her to look for Dr. Medina. Hmm. Yep, these other files are schematics for world-changing tech. That tells us why Hudson was killed. We just don’t know who did it.

 

  Sure. Let’s go, I’ve got what I need here.

  I gave Algy and Jack friendly nips on the ear as a goodbye and Atticus retrieved us from the backyard. He said thank you and goodbye to Earnest without biting his ear and dialed Detective Ibarra from the cab of the truck.

  “You might already know this, Detective, but Hudson Keane was working closely with a Dr. Ignacio Medina. Might be a good idea to track him down.”

  “No, I hadn’t heard this. How did you find out?”

  “A private investigator.”

  “Okay, who?”

  “I’d like to keep that private.”

  The detective sighed. “You really can’t. Look, Molloy, on the one hand I appreciate your help. Sincerely. But on the other, your methods are the kind of thing that defense lawyers love to use to create a reasonable doubt. They will either take apart your testimony or get your evidence tossed out because we can’t account for how it was gained, you see? So if you want to continue to help we need you to be more forthcoming, or I need you to get your P.I. license or become a registered informant with the department. I’m already getting a headache trying to figure out how to report you finding the missing wallet and keys.”

  “Okay, I confess. This isn’t really Connor Molloy but someone else using his phone to give you an anonymous tip on the Keane murder. Ignacio Medina worked with the victim. He may know something.”

  “Damn it—” Ibarra said before Atticus ended the call with his thumb.

 

  “Maybe another time. I’m ready to go home. We’ve had enough mayhem for one day.”

  Chapter 5:

  Owl

  See You

  Dead First

  We had a fine sleep and woke up to the smells of Atticus cooking breakfast in the kitchen. He likes to make himself omelets with vegetables in them, but he always cooks up some bacon or sausage for us and sometimes there’s even gravy to go on top. This morning he made us some cherrywood smoked bacon that had been cured with celery salt, and it was fine and mellow and served up with a plate of scrambled eggs.

  We hounds went outside for a while, patrolled the boundaries of our property to make sure there were no squirrels around, and when we came back in Atticus was sitting at his computer, marveling at the plans of Hudson Keane and Ignacio Medina.

  “Geniuses,” he muttered, and he shook his head. “I really need to go back to school. The science is moving ahead so fast.”

  He put Bull Durham on Blu-Ray for us so I could teach Starbuck about the lava lizards of the Galapagos Islands and why he should never be a lollygagger. Just as Ebby Calvin LaLoosh was telling Crash Davis he wanted to “announce my presence with authority,” an authority from Portland called Atticus. He paused the movie and put Detective Ibarra on speaker.

  “Medina was killed in the Eugene train station, same method as Hudson Keane, a hard plastic bolt to the head. Turns out Keane had taken Medina to the Portland station to see him off.”

  “Where did they find him?” Atticus asked.

  “They got him in the men’s bathroom.”

  “So it wasn’t the same kil
ler. It couldn’t have been.”

  “Well, it’s theoretically possible, but he would have had to drive like hell to beat the train. And if he did that, he wouldn’t have had time to come back up to Portland and ransack Keane’s place before we got there. So we’re talking multiple perps here.”

  “Where does Medina live?”

  “I’m calling you from his place in East Portland. It’s been tossed just like Keane’s, but so far no string of numbers hidden anywhere. No damn iguanas, either, so that’s a plus. Financials paint a picture very similar to Hudson’s. Lots of credit card visits to coffee and donut shops—the man liked his Voodoo Doughnuts—but otherwise everything’s cash.”

  “So someone is secretly financing two engineers but we don’t know where they were working, unless it’s in those coffee shops.”

  “Well, sort of. Turns out they were leasing an office on the second floor of the train station. We don’t know why though, apart from the fact that the space is pretty cheap; there’s almost nothing in it. But we’ll see if we can get any camera footage of them in the coffee shops, maybe get lucky and figure out why someone wanted them dead.”

  We already knew why, but Atticus wasn’t going to tell her that. We had to figure out who was paying Keane and Medina, and who was paying the assassins. It looked like it was going to be all about following the money, which disappointed me. Hounds aren’t great at following bank transactions.

  “Because they were both murdered the same day in the same way and their financials are almost identical, I don’t have to use that anonymous tip someone gave me to connect them,” Ibarra said. “But if you—or your anonymous source—know anything else, I’d be happy to hear it.”

  “I’ll let you know if I find something, Detective,” Atticus said. “I don’t suppose you got anything from the cameras at the station?”

  “Yeah, we pulled the footage but I haven’t got a report from my people yet.”

  “Let me know when you do?”