“The One That Got Away” by Leah “Princess” Figueroa (@Sweet_Grrl) and Todd “Foxx” Carr (@frozenfoxx) Sam's was an old school pub, with a couple of TV's here and there softly hissing out the news. The walls were still smoke stained years after they had abolished smoking in any public place. The cushions in the booths had been lovingly repaired with duct tape so many times there was more duct tape than cushion. It was ugly, smelly and dirty. My kinda place. "Hey Jo," bellowed Sammy Jr., "Isn't that the lady you worked that case for? The one that got blowed up?" he said, vaguely gesticulating at the TV. I turned slightly, still sipping my beer. I already knew what I was going to see. There, on the screen, they were posthumously awarding her something or the other for her work. Poor Trixie. She would have blown a gasket to see her formal name plastered everywhere. "Yeah, that's her alright." "Shame,” he said, polishing an empty pint glass. “Smart ladies like that shouldn't get blowed up." "You're right, Sammy...you sure are right. Sometimes, though, the world don't listen to what's right." I turned back around and kept sipping my beer. A smile played across my face while sadness pinched at my heart. Trixie had been a hell of a woman. * * * It started with a dame. A story like this always starts with a dame. I know it’s not PC to call women dames but I'm not just a PI, I also like to envy Humphrey Bogart in my spare time. Work was steady most of the time but it seemed like all I did was spend time tracking down cheating spouses, locating stolen money, or fixing stolen identities. It was thankless and not at all what I dreamed about but it paid the bills. Mostly. As I sat there in my reverie, the sound of a stubborn door refusing to obey some poor sod's banging fist started and would not stop. When you're as low rent as me you've got to be choosy with where you spend your money. That means sometimes you've got to put up with paper thin walls so you can afford heavy duty toys. I scrunched lower into my chair, pulled my fedora down over my eyes and tried to get back into my head. Still, the knocking wouldn’t stop. I finally pulled myself up and strode across my palatial 300 square feet to open the door, ready to yell at the tenants next door. Except they weren’t knocking next door and in my rush to open the door I knocked over a dusty redhead, tilting my door numbers in the process. “M-M-Mr. Cooper,” she stammered. “Josiah Cooper?” I just blinked at her, startled that someone actually came to my door. Almost all of my work came through the black box, cloaked in anonymity and usually paid with whatever crypto currency was hot at that moment, though sometimes envelopes of cash appeared in my mailbox for special customers. “Mr. Cooper...you gotta help me. You’re my only hope.” And with that, my Jim Rockford persona flashed into life as scenes from an old movie played in my head. I was gonna be a hero and it had all started with a dame. I stood there, lost in rapturous thought when something almost pulled me down. The woman made an annoyed cough. Snapped out of my reverie I realized I was standing on her jacket. Oops. Doing my best to salvage what little charm remained in me I pulled her up. “Sorry about that, ma’am. You know my name, but I have no clue who you are. Come on in.” I held the door in and ushered her. She looked around nervously. I would be, too, given some of the exposed metal in the walls. "Don't worry, you're safe to talk here. I lined the office with a Faraday cage. Makes for bad reception but it stops eavesdropping equipment real good." “Oh,” she said softly. “Is that necessary?” Pulling up a chair for her and settling into mine I said, “I think so. Buys you a little privacy from The Authority, considering no signals get in or out.” I smiled and she seemed to relax a little bit, but only just. "Why don't you tell me what's wrong?" "I, uh, think I'm in trouble." Still fidgety, something must have really been bugging her. "I think someone's following me and I think it has something to do with a mix up a few weeks back. "What happened?" She pulled out a small, black, rectangular object, smaller than her fingers and slid it across my desk to me. As I picked it up and scrutinized it she said, “This was supposed to be my research data while I was working in Iran. Somewhere I must have grabbed the wrong one as this isn’t it and my trouble started when I plugged it into my computer.” “Iran, huh?” I raised an eyebrow. “Kind of a dangerous place for a woman, isn’t it?” She apparently had heard this a thousand times, didn’t flinch. She gave me an icy gaze and continued with her story. “I work as a contractor for countries with nuclear power to improve efficiency of workers while increasing safety margins. That’s the last place I was and after sharing my findings with the director, well, I took MY USB drive and left.” I thought about this for a moment. “And then you went to take a look at what you thought was your drive. Has anything else happened?” “Well, someone’s been in my emails and in my apartment. My files were out of order and someone had- “ “Your files, like your computer files?” I interrupted her...maybe she did know more about infosec than she let on. “I don't think so, no, but I guess it's possible. These are paper files, though. I always keep hard copies of my work in a fire safe. The thing is, the files are arranged chronologically and when I got back to the apartment, well, they were in alphabetical order.” I could tell this wasn’t going to be one of my usual cases, where I could use a keylogger or set up a honeypot or even use WEMOs to work my way into someone’s life and uncover something mostly harmless. I wasn’t sure if this was a bad thing or a good thing and thought it over for a couple minutes. “Not possible you did that yourself, or a colleague?” “Mr. Cooper, I give nobody access to my safe and I would remember if I had done that myself. I may not be all computer savvy, but I think I can remember how I filed my paperwork.” She looked around the room, then back at me. “I was told you were the best and that you were discrete. Something is very wrong and has been since I got the wrong USB drive. I don’t even know what is on it, I can’t read it on my computer. At this point, I don’t want to read it. I just want all this to stop and I want to go back to my life.” She was one determined broad….I mean woman. “Well, ma’am, I guess you should tell me everything, including your name.” “Trixie Potter.” My eyebrow started to climb skyward of its own accord. “Don’t you give me that look. It’s my real name. It’s actually Beatrix Potter and if I see it on ANYTHING from you, I will punch you in the face. My parents thought it was cute. I do not.” “Okay… well, Ms. Potter, uhm….tell me more about what's been going on.” She was going to be a handful, but she was smart….and kinda cute, if you were into the slightly grungy, sciency, geeky woman with a million watt smile look. Not that I was. “Like I was saying, my files had been messed with and someone had left some really strange messages on my answering machine. I think my phones are tapped, too. I don’t know how they did my cell phone, but with all the stuff wrong at my apartment, I can figure out how they got the landline.” “Why do you think your phones are tapped?” “Well, my cell has been using so much data. I just use it for emails and to make calls and this last month, my data usage tripled. And it just sounds weird. I know international calls always have some issues, but since I got back, the phone calls are so much more distorted and there’s just something wrong.” I sighed. “It's probably nothing but let's go check out your apartment for good measure." I grabbed my trench coat and fedora and walked her out the door, stopping briefly to straighten the little plaque bearing my office number in old style script, No. 23. * * * Trixie's place was a high rise condo that catered to traveling professionals on the other, more upscale part of town. I still wasn’t sure about Trixie’s claims but figured poking around the apartment couldn’t hurt. Part of me was still hoping this was a disgruntled colleague or boyfriend, but that part was getting quieter the more I looked around. Her apartment, number 230, was neat, but tiny. It was probably the same size as my office, but she had somehow managed to make it feel bigger. There were bright prints on the walls, the miniature loveseat had a handmade blanket draped on the back and pillows that were chosen with care. The bed was tucked in a corner behind a divider, but the bright colors from another handmade blanket there peeked across the room. All in all, this was a place someone called home. “Mr. Cooper, thi-” “Call me Josiah, okay?” “Fine, fine. So, I’m sure someone has been messing with my things. My desk was messed up, the blankets were wrong. The whole place has been messed with.” “The blankets were wrong?” “Yeah. See, I sleep with the quilt my grandmother made me and the quilt my mother made me always sits on the loveseat. When I came home, they were switched. Just little things all around my place were wrong.” “Do you have a house sitter, old boyfriend with a key?” “No. In the winter, the super makes sure the heat is on if I’m gone when a cold snap hits, but no one else. My mail goes to a PO Box and they hold it while I travel. There’s no reason any of this should have been messed with.” "Well then, I'll start checking it out. You can hang around while I do a sweep of the apartment." "Yeah, okay. Might as well catch up on some brain candy novels." With that, she rolled her eyes at me and tucked herself into the corner of the loveseat with an e-reader. * * * Sweeping a place for bugs is a lot like tackling anything unpleasant: you start at the top and work your way down. However quite a bit like any infestation if you find one you're probably going to find more. By the time I was done I had found a tap in her cell phone, a tap on her landline, numerous listening devices all around the tiny apartment, and keyloggers on her laptop and desktop. Something was definitely up. "Well, ma'am, seems I owe you an apology," I said as I headed back into her living room, sat down, and set down a sealed bag with the various bugs in it on her well-worn coffee table. She had stopped reading and her expression was one of wide eyed horror. "I don't want to frighten you but this amount of surveillance is a little much for almost anyone." I pulled out the USB drive from my coat and looked at it, both our gazes drawn to it like some thing of horror. She swallowed and said, "Do you think you can get to the bottom of it? Make it stop?" I narrowed my eyes, staring at the drive. This thing was radioactive, Kryptonite, and it was going to cripple anyone who hung onto it and I couldn't let Trixie face that alone. Just not in me to stand by I guess. "Yes. I do." * * * Before leaving her apartment Trixie had given me an envelope of cash to cover my fee for a week and incidentals. Only thing was, the envelope was filled with enough cash to be a few times larger than what I usually charged for a week of work. That much cash just sitting around in an apartment made me suspicious. Sure, it could just be her savings and she just decided to burn it on me, but for good measure I thought it’d be a good idea to do a little digging into Trixie’s background. I just wanted to see if she was really who she claimed to be before I jumped fully into this with both feet first. I put out a few feelers around the Net, poking around to see what I could find out about Beatrix “Trixie” Potter….though I should probably never mention it to her. Knowing whether you’re working for a saint or a devil can mean the difference between collecting a paycheck and leaving one for your next of kin, so it’s always important to check this stuff out. I posted a few offers for intel on her then settled down with some nachos and a new novel. God bless the local library, slayer of boredom. I woke up to my phone beeping at me, empty nacho plate on my stomach, and e-reader smashed against my cheek. Seems the feelers had returned some hits. I went through them carefully, learning about Ms. Trixie Potter. Partly to my surprise it turns out she was indeed a saint and that’s pretty rare in my experience. Apparently she’d won several humanitarian awards for helping improve safety in quite a few dangerous places. There were pictures of her working in modest dress in nuclear power plants, pictures of her with charity organizations, and even some plain old tourist pictures. I’m sure if I dug deep enough I could find some sort of dirt, you always can, but she definitely seemed to be on the up and up which made the findings at her apartment even stranger. I scratched my head and thought about it, something picking at the back of my mind but I just couldn’t place it. Still, I had an apparently respectable client, money in hand, and a job to do so I set to work on the USB. After hours of working on the USB drive I still had almost nothing to show for it. It had tried to call home when I plugged it in but the machine I used for it was specially set up for this kind of analysis, no network connection either; it wasn’t going anywhere. Unfortunately neither was I as I couldn’t track down where it was calling to. To make matters worse the drive was encrypted. I’m no slouch with encryption but all I could get was that it was 3DES encoded and the proverbial brick wall it presented was apparently stronger than my skull. Mercifully, like any investigator worth his salt, I knew a guy to call. ***************************************************************************** Authority Communication Log Begin Communication ***************************************************************************** lvis-n-d-haus: got a job for u. usual pay? depends. whatcha got? 3DES usb drive, trying to call home it’ll cost more double rate and i’ll throw in that brew you like from Sam’s and a couple pizzas deal. usual drop. pm when u leave it. End Communication ***************************************************************************** Elvis was great, a bona fide genius when it came to cracking things. He was a bit of a shut-in and prefered to do things by dead drop but his time was worth every penny. If there was anyone out there who could best Elvis at analysis I hadn’t heard of them. He was kind of paranoid but when you’re the best you get to make your own rules I suppose. He and I had worked out a drop system where I would put whatever I had in a public locker down at the docks, rotating the number based on week, and he would pay some local kids with pizza money to run down and grab it for him. It was a pretty good system but could take awhile. After taking the bus down and dropping the USB stick in locker #46 I headed back to the office to flex my other muscles, finding out what people know. Everywhere has its seedy underbelly, people willing to trade in illicit goods and information, a network of unlisted somebodies with the only real power, knowledge. On the Web it’s no different and I started to reach out into the Dark Net. I poked at all the popular sites and people. Forums, private encrypted chatrooms, and anonymous remailers, all tools of the trade for illicit information and goods. I’d built a good reputation; people knew that if they talked to me it wouldn’t wind up in the paper or on some agency’s desk. Connections like that are essential in my line of work. But something was odd. People I’d talked to for years suddenly didn’t want to say anything. People would log off or not respond as soon as they saw me. I was a pariah in my own town and nobody would tell me why. It obviously had to do with the case in some way but I couldn’t pull anything out of anyone on it. The feeling in the back of my mind that something about this was wrong was growing. ***************************************************************************** Authority Communication Log Begin Communication ***************************************************************************** pacodataco: wtf is wrong with u? this is hot shit. putting it in usual drop. what’s up? what r u talking about? get out, dude, get out. this is poison. just get rid of it. lvis-n-d-haus logged out. End Communication ***************************************************************************** Right when everything was drying up on the Dark Net I heard from Elvis again. Something on that drive had him spooked bad so I needed to go down to the docks to pick it up. Picking the lock on the locker was always a tricky affair but I’d gotten much better at it and my contact insisted on it. This time, it only took me an embarrassing five minutes. With the drive safely in hand I started the bus trip back to the office which gave me a lot of time to think. No answers on the Dark Net, Elvis afraid to touch it, all connected to an otherwise harmless researcher. My bad feeling had been building as I felt like there was something missing from the equation, something not balancing. That was when my phone chirped at me, bringing me out of my thoughts. It was a news alert someone had sent me from an anonymous mailer. Elvis was dead. * * * The whole trip back my heart was pounding in my chest. I read and reread the article. Elvis had been found dead in some bathroom in Vegas. The article claimed that he had died from a drug-induced arrhythmia but that didn’t jive in my head. Elvis didn’t use drugs. In fact, he had paid for a couple of his neighbors to go through rehab and get clean. The way he saw it, if he took care of them, they’d take care of him and he’d never have to leave the house. He hadn’t seen outside his front step in years. Elvis certainly didn’t travel outside of town. He even had his toilet paper delivered. There was simply no way he would've made the trip to Vegas, not even for DEFCON. I was so distraught I missed my bus stop. Rather than wait for the next bus, I walked the mile and half back to my office. Walking helps me think and I definitely needed all the thinking I could get. The whole time I felt that menacing prickle up and down my spine. I kept looking to see if anyone was following me, but there was no one. This whole Elvis thing had shaken me to the core. Someone had messed with Trixie over the USB drive, then Elvis ends up dead. This thing was kryptonite, dynamite even, and if I didn’t get rid of it this whole mess was going to burn me. There are days I appreciate the old school charm of a walk-up office, especially since my windows actually had a decent view of the city. With five offices to each floor my office was smack in the middle of the fifth floor. After the day I’d been having though I did not appreciate the walk-up. And once I opened the door I appreciated the view even less. My office had been ransacked. Wiring had been pulled from the walls, parts of the Faraday cage were cut or simply missing, my computer’s multiple hard drives had been pulled. Almost everything had been trashed, pilfered, or destroyed. My heart sunk, I sighed and began to clean up the shattered pieces of my life as a private investigator. At least this would keep my mind off the maelstrom my life had become since I took Trixie’s case. * * * It had been a long day and I was physically and emotionally spent but I had some cold beer in the fridge and a pizza was but a phone call away. I locked up my office and headed home. It was a quiet night, the sort where you sometimes hear things that aren’t really there. I kept hearing odd noises but nothing was amiss until I was almost home. Then, I heard them. From behind steps followed me. Clipped, precise, sinister steps, keeping time with mine. My heart started to thud in my chest and I hurried my pace. The steps quickened their pace as well. Perhaps, if I pretended to not hear them, maybe I could make it to my apartment. I turned the corner and walked smack into a man in a stark black suit. “Hello Mr. Cooper. We have much to discuss.” “Uh...we do?” I started slowly backing away. “Indeed.” He looked up the walkway to my apartment building. “It’s customary to invite in your guests.” I looked around and his friends dressed in the same style suit emerged from the darkness, flashing just a bit of their weapons to let me know they were serious. “Uhm….sure...Mr.?” I looked at him expectantly. “Mr. Smith.” “Sure...Mr. Smith. I assume you know the way.” * * * I offered “Mr. Smith” a drink once we got to the apartment but he just made himself at home in the one comfortable chair in my living room. He drummed his fingers together while I clumsily made a drink. “Where should we begin, Mr. Cooper?” I sat down across from him. “I have no idea what you are talking about.” I took a sip of my drink to try and hide the fact my hands were shaking. “Mr. Cooper, do I look like an idiot to you? We’ve kept a tab on you for a very, very long time.” “I still have no idea what you are talking about.” The man sighed and opened his briefcase beside him. “If you cooperate with us we’re prepared to overlook your past...indiscretions.” “What indiscretions? I’ve got a clean record, pal.” “Is that so?” He pulled out a folder, flipped it open, clean and cool, mechanical-like. Page after page had my name, my face, and places I’d been but also had a long list of things I most definitely do NOT remember doing. My blood would have run cold if it wasn’t ice already. “We can make this all go away, we just want the drive.” This would normally be the part where I’d play dumb but one look and I knew these guys meant business. “Why?” The man chuckled. “Why? Does it matter? It’s vital information in the hands of a terrorist, you should feel privileged to be able to do your duty to your country in helping us retrieve it.” I blinked, genuinely confused. “Wait, a what?” “A terrorist, Mr. Cooper. Ms. Potter has been identified as a person of interest with ties to terrorist organizations. What did you think she did, humanitarian work,” he said with a snort. I had no answer, I was too stunned. It didn’t make any sense. Black was white, up was down. You could’ve told me Santa Claus was tap dancing on broadway with the Easter Bunny and I wouldn’t have been as surprised. The man continued after a pause, “Iran? Turkey? Russia? Pakistan? All actors with nuclear plants, all on her travel itinerary over the past several years.” Mr. Smith handed me a stack of pictures of Trixie dressed in region appropriate gear. “You see, Mr. Cooper? She visited these countries for months at a time, dressed and lived as the locals. And everywhere she went there was a nuclear reactor of some sort. Each of those countries are burgeoning hotbeds of terrorist activity.” He continued, “and the people she associated with? Her phone records indicate she was calling known nuclear scientists in each area and worse her emails indicated she would share highly technical details about radiation and nuclear decay, among other things.” He paused. “I understand if this is a bit of a shock to you but the data is quite clear.” Suddenly it all made sense. She wasn’t a terrorist, she’d been doing the research she claimed but that’s not how it looked, not to a paranoid agency hellbent on a worldwide witch hunt for “terrorists” around every corner, behind every window, and under every toilet seat in America. They’d put together everything she did and claimed she was an, “unacceptable risk.” It was a small miracle she managed to be stateside when they put it together; had she been anywhere else it would’ve been over in a flash from a predator drone missile. I was wrong. Playing dumb WAS the right play here, just not how I thought at first. “Oh...oh my….I didn’t know,” I said, putting on my best shocked expression. “She was so sweet. She just seemed so...so…” I put my hand to my mouth. This was all so insane. Mr. Smith must have thought I was trying to stifle more shock, but I was trying not to laugh and cry at the lunacy of the whole situation. The man interjected, “normal? Yes, they often do. Now you see why it was necessary for us to follow you. I’m sure you understand.” “Oh yeah...yeah! I just can’t believe it.” For good measure I ran my hands over the papers. If there’s an Oscar for being in a bullshit film, how come there can’t be an Oscar for bullshitting? “I’m truly sorry, it happens to the best of us. You just never can be sure that people are who they seem to be.” No. You can’t. “So, Mr. Smith, what do you need from me?” * * * It was over. They got what they wanted. They won. I hoped that my reputation was all that this was going to cost me. I’m not sure I’d ever live down being a, “snitch,” at least for awhile. It was worth it, though, if it meant that maybe Trixie would have an easier time. I had just turned onto Trixie’s street when a shock wave threw me to the ground. The next thing I knew I was on my side, bleeding from my ears, my lower body pinned beneath an old blue Beetle with a patchwork paint job. I lay there, looking down the road, at the thick, black smoke billowing from the crater that once housed Trixie’s apartment. That building had held 40 apartments…and they were all gone. The enormity of the loss of life took my breath away as I fought against that realization and the numbness of my body. Then everything went black. * * * “Josiah? Josiah. Wake up. We need to try you on some solids today.” A nurse was standing over me with an orderly holding a tray of eggs the color of week old roadkill. I groaned. I just wanted a burger. A big, thick veggie burger and a beer. And I wanted them to let me out of the hospital. Apparently, breaking your pelvis, femur and ankle means they get to torture you longer than normal. Maybe I should have just gone for the waterboarding. “So what’d she do, that woman.” Sammy was talking to me again. The news report was wrapping up Trixie’s death. A picture of her was on screen, like a family photo. They’re always so out of place, so happy in the middle of an obituary. Like they’re smiling at you from beyond the grave. I suppose in this case it was sorta true. “She made life better for a whole lot of people. She was one of the good ones.” The news rolled over, Trixie's fifteen minutes of fame in death was over, pushed out of the way to make room for the next story. It hurt me, hurt like only a dame can make a man hurt. After a few minutes the news droned on again. "Up next, a Belgian researcher's revolutionary work has enabled the once highly radioactive site of Chernobyl to be safely habitable in just a few short years." As I looked up they had a quick video of the doc giving a soundbite about how it worked. I smiled. Being part of the Dark Net, even when they can’t talk to you, still has certain benefits. Surgery's not cheap, neither is a set of papers that says you're a Belgian citizen and a backstory verified in a hundred databases the world over. Then again, to see that woman's smile again I'd give every dime I had.