Case of the Chatty Roadrunner

by Jeffrey M. Poole

“As you wish. We’ll know soon enough. I don’t know how, kid, but I do know you’re involved. Somehow, you’re involved with this cover-up.”

  “What cover-up?” Chuck asked, as innocently as he could.

  “Keep it up, pal,” Vance said. Then he pointed down at the two corgis, who had locked eyes on Chuck and hadn’t blinked since. “They are the reason I know you’re lying.”

  Chuck looked skeptically down at the dogs before shaking his head.

  “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m a nobody at Semzar. I can’t be the person you’re looking for.”

  Officer Gutierrez appeared by our side. She was holding Chuck’s employee badge in the air, as though she had found one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets.

  “I have an answer. Mr. Etherington here works in IT.”

  Vance turned back to Chuck and raised an eyebrow.

  “Is that a fact? Well, well. You failed to mention that to us, didn’t you, pal?”

  “Since when is it a crime to work in IT?” Chuck demanded. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

  “You sure do keep saying the same thing over and over,” I commented.

  Chuck sneered, “So?”

  “It leads me to believe that you’d really like to think that it’s true, only it isn’t. So, the question is, what have you done that you know is illegal, but keep trying to tell yourself that it’s not?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I can tell you he’s a CSR at their IT help desk,” Elizabeth offered.

  “See?” Chuck cried, as he leapt to his feet. “I’m a… hey!”

  Chuck had been forcefully pushed back into the squad car the moment he had stood up.

  “I answer phones,” Chuck continued. “It’s a dead-end job, okay? It’s not something I’m proud of. Day in and day out, talking to the dumbest, stupidest people on the face of the planet. Do you have any idea how many times a day I have to tell those morons to reboot their computer? Or how to recover a forgotten password?”

  “I’m sensing a wee bit of bitterness there,” I chuckled. “It still doesn’t get you off the hook. Why were you running? Would you, perhaps, have a guilty conscience? The question is, about what? Wait a minute. That’s why the dogs are growling at you. You must be the one.”

  “He’s the one?” Vance asked. “He’s the one who what?”

  I pointed a finger at the young kid.

  “We just caught the guy who stole the laptop. Then, we learned someone hacked the hotel’s computer to get the access codes to Vance’s door. And then, we’re lead over to an Internet café? What do you want to bet he’s the one who did the hacking? Why else would he run from us?”

  There were two short, affirmative barks. I looked down to see that both dogs had suddenly lost interest in the kid, as if their job was done. Smiling, I nodded. That’s what Sherlock had been trying to tell me. The person responsible for hacking the hotel was in that café.

  “Is he now?” Vance asked, interested.

  Unfortunately, Chuck was no actor. His face became a mask of sheer incredulity as he stared at me.

  “No way. There’s no way you could possibly know about that.”

  I pointed at Vance, “Well, he’s the one who was staying in the room at the Phoenician. His was the room you hacked. That’s how we know about it.”

  “Oh, shit,” Chuck cursed.

  “Are you the one who’s responsible for remotely taking over a car two years ago and causing an accident?” I hotly asked. “An accident which claimed my wife’s life?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Start talking, kid,” Vance ordered. ‘Spill. If you don’t want to go down for multiple charges, including murder in the first, then you’d better tell us all about how you hacked into my hotel’s computer so you could open my door.”

  “All right!” Chuck cried. “It was me, okay? I was paid a nice chunk of change to steal an access code from a Scottsdale hotel. That’s all I really know about it, I swear!’

  “Who hired you?” Vance and Officer Harding asked, at the same time.

  “I don’t know,” Chuck admitted. “He never told me his name. We’ve only corresponded via email.”

  “You’re a hacker,” I pointed out. “You’re telling me that you didn’t try to find out the name of the person that had hired you?”

  Chuck’s gaze dropped to the floor.

  “You did!” Vance exclaimed, delighted. “Beautiful. I’ll take that name, please.”

  Chuck stared, unblinking, at the ground.

  “Perhaps you don’t fully understand the seriousness of the situation you’re presently in,” Vance said. He pointed at me. “His wife was murdered to cover up something Semzar was doing. His wife’s work laptop surfaces, and is promptly stolen out of my room, which you had a hand in, whether you think so or not. You provided access to my room, which makes you an accessory, get it?”

  “Yes,” Chuck meekly answered.

  “The only chance you’re going to get to avoid jail time is with your full cooperation, you got that?” Officer Harding snapped. “And if you refuse in the slightest, then we can only assume you want to spend the next twenty years behind bars. This offer is going once... going twice…”

  Chuck sighed and nodded his head, “Fine. I’ll do whatever it takes. I was promised that I would never be caught.”

  “Who promised you?” I asked. “Who told you to steal that data from the hotel?”

  “He never told me his name,” Chuck repeated. “As I said, we only ever communicated through email.”

  “You said you tracked him down, didn’t you?” Vance recalled. “What did you find out?”

  “Nothing much. A couple of cops drove by the front of the building. I panicked and had to log out.”

  “How much did you get paid for the job?” Vance asked.

  “25K.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” I whistled. “How long did it take you to hack the hotel’s computer?”

  “Please,” Chuck scoffed. “Their network uses WPS encryption. A child could break it. It took me less than twenty seconds to penetrate their firewall. Then, since I had the room number, all I had to do was pull up the access code assigned to that room. Piece of cake. Easiest 25 thousand I had ever made.”

  I rapped my knuckles on the patrol car’s door, “Is it? Considering your present circumstances, I’d say it wasn’t.”

  “How did you find me?” Chuck wanted to know. “I took great care to cover my tracks. I used proxy servers, bounced my connection through multiple countries, and even changed remote locations several times. There’s just no way you could have tracked me.”

  I squatted and draped an arm around either of the dogs. Then I tapped Sherlock’s nose, which caused the corgi to snort with surprise.

  “I’m beginning to think it wouldn’t matter where you were hiding. Sherlock here would’ve found you.”

  Chuck ruefully looked at the corgi. Sherlock’s hackles were raised, and he hadn’t stopped stop growling at the kid. Watson was silent, although she was by her packmate’s side and watched the young hacker like a hawk.

  “You obviously know your way around a computer,” Vance began. “Who do you know who could hack a car and deliberately cause an accident with it?”

  Chuck shrugged, “No one I know, I promise. I’m not into those kinds of things, you follow me? I’m a rule-abiding citizen. I have scruples. You can’t believe everything you see in the movies.”

  Vance shook his head, “Horseshit, kid. You accepted a large sum of money to illegally hack into a hotel’s computer system. Your scruples mean nothing. Take him away.”

  Officers Harding and Gutierrez took a few steps toward Chuck when I held up a hand.

  “Wait a sec. Before you do that, I have an idea.”

  “What idea?” Vance wanted to know.

  I pointed at the guy who had broken into the hotel’s computer system.

  “He’s a hacker. He’s already admitted it. I say we
use him.”

  “To do what?” Officer Harding asked.

  “To track down the person that hired him to hack the hotel,” I answered.

  “I told you,” Chuck began, sighing exasperatedly. “I wasn’t able to find anything. I didn’t have a chance. I had to log out.”

  I pointed back across the street, at the Internet Café.

  “Well, Zone is right over there. You won’t need to worry about the cops interrupting you this time. What do you say we allow Chuck here adequate time to track this person down?”

  Vance nodded thoughtfully. He looked over at Officer Harding and waited, expectantly, for his permission. Brad held up a hand and pulled out his cell.

  “I’d like to let him have at it,” our new Arizonan friend told us, “but for something like this, I have to call it in.”

  “Do you think he can do it?” Officer Gutierrez asked, coming up close behind me. Her lips pursed together as she frowned at the hacker. ‘There’s no guarantee he’ll be able to find anything.”

  “She’s right,” Chuck implored. “Trying to unlock a user’s identity requires some serious, hard-core coding skills. I’m not ashamed to say that sort of thing is above me.”

  I looked at Vance, but before I could say anything, I heard a growl. I looked down at the dogs and saw that, for some reason, both had resumed their growling at our data thief. Why? Was Sherlock trying to tell us that Chuck was lying? If so, then that was definitely a new skill I didn’t know they had. Canine polygraphs. Was there anything those dogs couldn’t do?

  “I’ll bet he can do it,” I announced. I looked over at Vance and shrugged. “Give him some proper motivation and let’s see what he can accomplish.”

  Officer Harding finished his phone call. He strode purposefully back over to us and gave us a thumbs up.

  “Chief Wilcox has given his permission and his blessing. Let the kid uncover the identity of his employer.”

  A look of stubborn resolve appeared on Chuck’s face. He purposely crossed his arms over his chest. Officer Harding squatted next to the petulant teenager and smiled patronizingly.

  “Here are your choices, son. Either give us the name of the person that hired you, or else you’re going down for breaking and entering, burglary, fleeing from law enforcement personnel, handling stolen goods, impeding an ongoing investigation, impeding…”

  “All right!” Chuck cried again. “If I do this, then I want amnesty. I want a full pardon!”

  Surprised, I looked at Vance, who then turned to look at Brad. We walked away from Chuck and huddled together.

  “Is that something you can negotiate?” Vance asked Brad.

  Officer Harding shrugged, “The chief says we need to get his cooperation. I just sent him a text, outlining what the kid wants. The chief gave me permission to negotiate, and if this is what the kid wants, then unless I hear otherwise, that is what he’ll get.”

  We returned to the patrol car. Chuck was still sitting in the back seat, cuffed, while Officer Gutierrez stood guard. Harding motioned for his junior partner to help the suspect up. Then he pointed across the street.

  “Now’s the time to see what you’re made of, kid. Either you produce a name, which results in an arrest, or you will be going down for everything. As long as you aren’t implicated in this mess, other than what we already know, then you’ll walk after all this is said and done. How’s that for motivation?”

  “Effective,” Chuck mumbled. “Very well. We have a deal. Get me to a computer.”

  Ten minutes later, we were back in Zone. Zack and Officer Harding were sitting in chairs directly behind Chuck, while Officer Gutierrez and I waited outside, with the dogs. Yet again, I couldn’t help but wonder if Elizabeth was trying to hit on me. She kept looking my way and giggling at practically everything I said.

  “I can’t believe I’m sitting here with Chastity Wadsworth,” Elizabeth was saying. “Your books helped get me through the academy.”

  “The police academy?” I asked, confused. “If you don’t mind me asking, how, exactly, did I accomplish that?”

  “It was a lonely time for me,” Officer Gutierrez hesitantly began.

  Elizabeth coughed nervously and then looked away. If I wasn’t too far off the mark, then I’d say Ms. Gutierrez was blushing! Thankfully, before she could continue, I was saved by an unexpected encounter. A loud chattering could be heard, and it was coming from above my head. Damned if it didn’t sound like a…

  Yep. It was. I wandered out into the parking lot so I could look behind me and up. There, perched on the store’s awning, was a roadrunner. I may not be able to tell the markings of one roadrunner versus another, but it sure did look like the same one that has been hanging around the hotel. What was he doing all the way out here?

  “You usually don’t see those guys venture this far into the city,” Elizabeth idly observed, as she, too, watched the brown and white streaked bird. “I wonder what he’s doing here.”

  The roadrunner started up its chattering noise again, and this time, it was louder than before. I couldn’t begin to say what it was doing. Signaling others of its kind? Perhaps it a mating call?

  The dogs finally looked up at our feathered intruder. Sherlock cocked his head as he stared at the bird, as though he wasn’t sure what he should be seeing. The roadrunner made the chattering noise again, and this time, flew off, out across the parking lot.

  “I didn’t know they could fly that far,” Elizabeth observed.

  “That makes two of us,” I admitted. “I always thought of them like ostriches.”

  “Meaning, ‘flightless’ birds,” Elizabeth guessed.

  The roadrunner noticed it was being watched, ceased its chattering, and flew down to the ground about half a dozen parking spaces away. We watched the roadrunner peck a few times on the asphalt. The distant relative of the cuckoo turned to look straight at us. The chattering began again as it watched us. If I didn’t know any better, then I’d say it was taunting the dogs.

  A quick glance down confirmed both corgis were watching the roadrunner. Then, the roadrunner stopped pecking at the ground and, instead, started pecking at the car parked in the spot where it was standing. As a result, both dogs pulled on their leashes. They wanted a closer look.

  As we casually covered the distance to the roadrunner, which surprisingly, held its ground, the car, which was a black four-door sedan, suddenly sped away. I caught the ‘For Official Use Only’ decal on both the driver’s door and the back window, but was unable to tell anything else about it. Elizabeth, I noticed, was busy tapping out a message on her cell phone.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “What are you doing?”

  “I took down the license plate number,” Elizabeth explained, as she pocketed her phone. “Just in case we wanted to find out who it was.”

  “You thought that was fishy, too?” I asked.

  Elizabeth nodded, “Who would peel away like that from a parking lot? Someone who doesn’t want to be seen, that’s who.”

  “Or someone who wasn’t expecting to be seen,” I added.

  Elizabeth frowned. After a few moments, she pulled out her cell once more and placed a call.

  “Officer Elizabeth Gutierrez, Mountain View Precinct. I need a records check, please. What’s that? No, ma’am. No pending charges. Suspicious vehicle. Yes, ma’am.” Elizabeth looked over at me and then covered the phone with her free hand. “I’ve been put on hold.”

  I touched my left shoulder, “I thought police officers always wore those radios at their hips, with the microphones clipped up here, near their mouths.”

  Elizabeth nodded, “They do, and I have before. I personally don’t like those things hooked to my shoulder. I do have my radio, though. However, there have been an inordinate amount of calls today, so I’m electing not tie up one of our frequencies, especially for a suspicious call about… what’s that? Yes, ma’am. I’m still here. License plate is Wilson X-ray Wilson 5…5…8…9. Vehicle appears to be a late model
Infinity sedan, tinted windows. Thank you, ma’am. Yes, you can put me back on hold.”

  We wandered back over to the storefront. I looked in to see Vance, Brad, and Chuck in deep conversation with one another. I could only hope they had found something helpful.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Elizabeth was saying, “I’m still here. I… what’s that? No, I did not know that. Thank you, ma’am.”

  Elizabeth terminated the call and gave me an incredulous look. She then tapped the window, which drew everyone’s attention in the shop, and indicated Brad should join her. Officer Harding shook his head, said something to Vance, and then pointed outside. Vance nodded and headed our way.

  “What’s up?” he asked, as soon as he exited the café.

  “We just discovered we were being watched by someone from Semzar Pharmaceuticals,” Elizabeth excitedly reported. “Mr. Anderson and I took a brief walk as his dogs chased after a roadrunner, and that’s when we noticed a car speed off. They must have thought their cover had been blown. I managed to get their license plate number and just now confirmed my suspicions.”

  “We were being tailed by someone from Semzar?” I asked, appalled. “I thought we lost that tracker.”

  “What tracker?” Elizabeth asked, frowning.

  “We found a GPS tracker on our rental van yesterday,” Vance replied. “Zack wanted to destroy it, but I thought it a better idea to leave it on the van and have it driven around the city.”

  Elizabeth grinned, “A wild good chase. Nice.”

  “Clearly, we missed one,” I glumly reported.

  “Not necessarily,” Vance said. “Think about it. You see what’s directly across the street, don’t you? It’s the museum. Chuck must have informed his boss where he stashed the laptop when he realized he wouldn’t be able to go back for it until later.”

  “Then why were they watching us?” I asked, confused. “If what you say is true, then they should have been watching the museum. Instead, they were clearly watching the café.”

  “They were watching the suspect,” Elizabeth deduced. “I’m willing to wager they don’t care about you guys at all.”

  “I’ll bet they do,” I argued. “We have the laptop now. We’ve got everything we need in order to file charges, don’t we?”