Leave Her Hanging: A Noir Thriller

Chapter Twenty-Two

I hurried out of the library, took the tunnel running under Symonds Street to the old Human Sciences building, and smuggled myself and Malcolm’s laptop into the darkest corner I could find. Only then did I flip open the laptop and snap it out of sleep mode.

My first check was the battery charge. Not a problem; it said it had at least three hours before it died. Plenty of time for me to snoop around. I glanced around at the empty corridors and started surfing through the computer.

Malcolm had left his Internet browser open at his personal Gmail account. I flicked through the last few emails in his inbox: a couple of Facebook notifications, some newsletters from Amazon and a few other online stores, a handful of emails from friends. I went to the friends’ emails first, but nothing stood out. Just chatting, sharing holiday pictures, general inane bullshit. If Malcolm was conducting drug deals through his emails, they were doing it in code that was too smart for me to crack. Judging from the online store newsletters, Malcolm liked to buy sports shoes and books online, but there was nothing suspicious there either.

I flicked back through a few pages of his inbox and outbox. Same bullshit. I even checked the spam folder, but there were only a few dozen Nigerian princes and a bunch of ads from suspiciously incoherent Mexican pharmaceutical companies. Trash was empty. I checked his bookmarks and recent history—nothing out of place, not even any porn—then minimised the window and went on to search through the hard drive.

There were all the usual folders: Documents, Pictures, a section for all his uni assignments. Sixty or so gigs of pirated movies and TV shows—nothing low-brow, mostly stuff that’d be shown in art cinemas or on one of those specialist channels on Sky TV. No games aside from Solitaire and the standard ones that get bundled with the operating system. Looked like Mr Barker had no time for trivialities.

I dug for twenty more minutes before I ran into a brick wall. The folder was buried deep in his hard drive, one of several folders within the program files for a graphic design program, and the only name it bore was audvid_backup. Curious, I gave it a double-click, figuring if this wasn’t something, this whole scam had been for nothing. But instead of an open folder, I got an angry window popping up, beeping obnoxiously at me, saying, audvid_backup is encrypted. Enter 16-character key.

Huh. Well, that was unhelpful. Sixteen characters. I tapped the laptop with my fingers, thinking. Who the hell went to this much effort to encrypt their files? Malcolm was a uni student, not a high-powered businessman carrying corporate secrets. Had I found his porn stash? Seemed like a hell of a lot of trouble to go to just to keep his mum or girlfriend from seeing what he jerked off to.

I checked the file size. 3.7 GB. Too big to be Word documents and spreadsheets. Something to do with Ella? No way of knowing. Crap. I wasn’t leaving here without that file, but I couldn’t go lugging a stolen laptop around with me all day. If Malcolm hadn’t already got Campus Security after me, he wouldn’t be waiting much longer. I needed to ditch the laptop and get gone.

A thought occurred to me. I put the laptop aside and dug through my bag. Did I bring it? I upended the bag, ignoring the looks I got from a passing blonde Arts student, and sifted through my books. Nothing. I unzipped my pencil case and emptied that as well.

Got it. I blew the pencil shavings off the little black thumb drive and plugged it into the USB drive in Malcolm’s laptop. I’d forgotten I even had the thing. Sometime since I’d put it in my pencil case it’d developed a thin scratch along the plastic. I opened up the drive, cleared the handful of old school documents I had on it, then set it to copy audvid_backup to it. The transfer started. One or two minutes to complete.

I checked the time. 1:52. I was getting antsy. I pulled up the browser window again, and at the same time, it bleeped and nearly scared me out of my skin. A chat window had opened up in his Gmail account.

JK: I have that package you ordered. Can you talk now?

I stared at the flashing chat window for a few moments. My heart jumped up and down a couple of times. This was it. This was my in. A package. Did that mean drugs? It had to, right? This JK must be a supplier, and Malcolm was somewhere further down the chain. I clicked inside the chat window and rested my fingers on the keyboard. What the hell did Malcolm sound like on chat? Did he use chat speak, or did he write in full sentences like he did in his emails? I had no idea. I could only hope I didn’t do anything to get myself found out. I started typing.

Malcolm: Good. I can talk.

A few seconds later, the reply popped up.

JK: It’s a good package. I’ll have it prepped by 3:30. Meet at Taylors.

Who was Taylor? Crap. I couldn’t ask him what he meant. The real Malcolm would obviously know. My palms had started to sweat again. I’d been so damn close!

The seconds were ticking away. I couldn’t figure out a way to string more clues out of JK without giving myself away. He might be growing suspicious while I delayed. I tapped the laptop nervously, trying to think. Then finally I gave in to the inevitable.

Malcolm: OK. I’ll be there.

JK: See you then.

A moment later, the bottom of the chat box said, JK has signed out of chat.

Damn it! How many Taylors were there in this city? Come to think of it, was he referring to a first name or a last name? Maybe it wasn’t someone’s real name at all, maybe it was an alias.

I had to work with what I had. audvid_backup had finished copying to my pen drive. I disconnected the drive, stuck it in my pocket, and gave the laptop another quick once-over. Nothing else to speak of. I closed the lid, stood up, and stretched. My stomach was rumbling so hard I could barely hear myself think. I figured I’d grab a pie and a Coke for lunch and hitch a bus back to school. There was still time for me to catch Megan or Raj leaving school. Maybe one of them knew a Taylor.

I ditched the laptop near the Arts department reception, stuck my hands in my pockets, and walked back out to Symonds Street. I rolled the USB drive around in my fingers as I walked. I’ll find out your secrets, Malcolm Barker. One way or another.

~~~

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