I.
"Who's this asshole?" Snickers followed and the squeak of serviceman shoes on clean linoleum joined in as the uniforms try to keep some composure.
Two hundred and thirty pounds of stink, rye stink, pointed my way. He made no indication that he cared that I heard him. I didn't flinch. I was used to the description. Folks didn't care much for me. I didn't fit in their worldview. I am the asshole in the car, the asshole in line at the market, the asshole buying gas. I'm sure my mother used to call me it...not affectionately. As much as I heard it, or felt it in the air, I have not attenuated to it. Although I haven't reacted to it for years.
I ignored Rye and his ilk and visually swept the CPUs again. They, in their drab beige boxes, stood in varying poses of disrepair. With their paneled spacers missing, they looked like their mouths were agape. They were dead in most respects. Out of nine of them, the molex plugs were yanked out the side of the computer. The remainder were much older rigs and seemed to be untouched. They also had obnoxious red day-glo stickers on their face. Dead patients.
"Looks like they were here to steal memory. Maybe a few laptops. That's usual." Rye stood next to me and I could smell more of him, "Don't know how these mom-and-pops stay in the business to begin with." I turned with him as he looked at the pathetically non-secure glass displays. The locks weren't even used. The perps cracked the front door with a crowbar, hit everything they needed within five minutes top. They left crap even an opportunity robber would've left.
"Is that what you think?"
"Sure." He pointed it out as he spoke. "They came in through the front. They opened the cases, they were wearing gloves, no prints, and they took the high-value crap. Not much. I'm going to guess 2-K for the netbooks and a couple of bills for the memory." The police were going to log this under 'who gives a fuck'. It didn't blip at all.
"So, Detective," I started. "Why is it they called me?"
"Oooh," he looked around for an audience and his kind always found a few, "Considering they weren't the smartest business owners, I figured they wanted to spend their kids' college money on a private investigator who could tell them the same thing I will. But..." He stopped because he wasn't dumb. "...you're going to enlighten us some more and what we don't know." He walked out of the store with a snort, two of the officers in tow. That left me two that were first on scene. Doesn't matter, as they'll write the report. Rye walked out because he knew I knew more, he just didn't give two fucks to hear it.
"Are you guys in to what I have to say?" They were young, probably early twenties. They still cared...a bit. "On top of what Robbery said, they also took hard drives out of these rigs. Looking at these receipts over here, now don't touch them yet, these guys knew the rigs were going to be here." They started writing things down in a reporter's pad. I shook my head slightly at the need.
"Out of the nine drives they stole, over half belonged to a company down the street. They're called McMillan Circuits. According to the pink slip, they were here on a virus clean-up. This entire set of rigs, probably most of which were the owner's personal ones, are here...sans hard drives." They wrote very quickly, not sure what they needed to write down. "If I were a betting man, I'd go in that the virus and the theft of drives were not..."
"Incidental?" I nodded like a Zen master. This wasn't rocket science, trust me. I took a few pictures as I scanned everything again. I didn't want to save these sleuths anything, so I didn't point out the camera and wifi security set-up was taken too.
"Sir?" I turned to the younger one. "What's your name?" I told him. "Well, Mr. Guest, can we have you contact us if you find anything else?"
"Probably not. This is my racket, kid. Plus this is basic robbery for you. They'll never find what the shopkeepers are looking for, they'll get dispersed online in a few days. No one'll be able to track it."
"Then why'd the storekeep hire you?"
"Who said the storekeep hired me? You said that."
"You're working with McMillan."
"They just had proprietary information stolen that is worth more than thirty of these stores. McMillan just had his whole professional life stolen from him. You'd hire someone to figure out who did it." I walked out before they had time to stop me. I parked a block and a half down so they couldn't readily take my license down. It was 3am and they lost sight of me in a half a minute anyway.
Now I had to temper my information to McMillan before calling him. He had just lost 2 million dollars worth of data. He was frantic when the storekeep called him after they found out they were robbed. How can I keep the meter running on this gig, when that data was all but mined, wrapped and dispersed on the tubes.
It was gone alright. But, he had some money in his pocket and maybe he wants to see justice. And justice costs.
