This is the continuation of my Sept 20 post (finally). School starts next week, but I promise to be more faithful in building this story. I have done some revisions so you might want to go back and read that Sept 20 post again. If you love mysteries… you’ve just hit on an unpublished mystery, in progress. I hope you enjoy and share. JMLandon
Once the bottle was packed up and on its way, Andy didn’t give it another thought until it arrived on his doorstep the day after he got home from vacation. It was already six in the evening with the day spent on the phone, returning calls and putting out fires. Vince, his partner, had made it a point to fill up his voice mail with crack-pot calls. And with 722 emails he knew what he’d be doing tomorrow.
He picked up the box and gave it a slight shake, juggling keys, case files, and his travel mug. “Seems to be in one piece,” he mumbled. He had a bad habit of talking to himself which seemed to be getting worse as he got older. One of those things his ex said used to bug her. Inside his home and settled, he opened the box, then opened the bag and set the bottle on the table, handling it with a dish towel.
He went to his desk in the living room and got out a fingerprint dusting kit and set about checking it for prints. It had been wiped clean. “This just keeps getting weirder.”
He sat for a minute staring at the bottle, leaning on the table with his chin resting on his hand. The thumb drive could be someone’s vacation pictures, or it might have nothing. Andy found it hard to believe it wasn’t damaged by the moisture. And there was the smudge of red on it.
A while back, Andy read a book about this scientist who created a virus in his basement, then mailed it to Ireland to avenge his wife’s death from a random car bombing. The virus ended up spreading around the world, genetically engineered to kill all the women. It was brilliant premise—the guy sent the virus to Ireland in a package of infected cash. Vince liked to call Andy a technological dinosaur, but still he knew this drive might have a virus that could wipe out his machine.
“Aw shit. It’s probably blank,” he said popping the cork and dumping the drive on the desk. He took a swab from the red spot then brushed it for prints. It was clean as well. He blew on the components to clear sand or dust particles, took a deep breath and pushed it into the USB port on his laptop.
It took a minute for his computer to recognize the removable drive, then a dialog box came up asking if he wanted to open the files. The cursor hovered over the ‘OK’ for a second. He took a deep breath and clicked the mouse.
Inside there were eight file folders labeled with the year going from this year back. He clicked open this year’s. It continued three more folders labeled: Manhattan, New York, and St. Louis. He opened St. Louis.
His screen opened thirty or more thumbnails of what looked, at first glance, like a bunch of naked women draped with red. He reached for his glasses and leaned in to get a closer look, then double clicked to open the first one and arrow through the slide show. He recognized all of them but one.
He leaned back in his chair letting the breath out of his lungs like a deflating balloon. “I’ll be damned,” he said taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, surprised his hand came away wet.
jmlandon 