Ockham's Razor: A Deductive Riddle

Chapter 25

Ian waved goodbye to Lauren a bit shocked at what he had just seen. There were not that many houses nearby, so he thought about offering the two of them a ride to wherever they needed to go. The two women started walking away from the van and Ian noticed a bus stop within a minutes walk. Besides, Lauren was in self defence mode, and she would not divulge any information about her, to protect herself. But she had. Interesting.

As he was driving back towards downtown, he did a quick assessment of his own ability to read people. This was something he had never really done about himself. It took more than a moment to think about this. Was it because he was always surrounded by the same type of girl? Most of the women with whom he cavorted were young, university aged women, who were really on their own for the first time of their lives. They were recently rebelling against the yoke of parental control, and all of a sudden had a complete lack of oversight, and they exploded into a vortex of debauchery and frantic expressiveness. Kate was an odd departure from his normal method of operation, too. Maybe he was tiring of the young, party crowd and looking for something more. Whatever he was needing, he realised that Lauren was not it. And he misread that one. The one thing he could count on was that he did not permanently damage himself or Lauren. Live and learn.

He stopped at a red light near the downtown. He looked at the buildings around and he saw that he was in Chinatown. Deciding that this was as good a time as any, he called into the back of the truck to Dean.

"Hey, Dean. Get up. Where do you want me to drop you off?"

"Uhhh, where are we?"

"Main Street, in Chinatown."

"I need to get to the rail yards. I'm coming up."

Ian cursed under his breath. The best way to get to the rail yards was behind him. That would mean spending some more time with Dean than he would have liked.

The light turned green, and he accelerated into the intersection. "I'm going to go through downtown by the Trib to get to the rail yards. Any problems with that?"

"Ah, not really. I live down by the east end as it is."

Not wanting any further conversation, Ian turned on the radio and set it to a talk radio station. He gave Dean the look like he wanted him to know that this was for news of the bank robbery. Dean did not look like he was too concerned about the noise. It was overtly apparent that he did not like Ian as it was.

As they were crossing the bridge to get into the east end, a news report came through the radio.

"Earlier this afternoon a daring daylight robbery took place. Three robbers held up a bank in the 800 block of Kingfisher Avenue, stole thirty-five thousand dollars and made off on bicycles into Oxbow Park. They are described as two men and a woman, all in their early twenties and travelling on mountain bikes. Anyone with any information is encouraged to call the Saint Barbara Police Service or Crime Stoppers."

This sent chills up Ian's spine. Despite the vagueness of the suspect descriptions, the three of them were perfectly described. He would be dumping the bicycles later, after returning the van. The three things he could count as blessings were that they were described as escaping into Oxbow Park, when in reality they did not get anywhere near there, the fact that as soon as Dean was gone, he would never be seen with the others, and that even though it was reported that they had taken a huge amount of money, in reality, they had grabbed nothing.

Ian was getting tired. The adrenaline from the robbery, escape and the other activities had long ago worn off. He needed to get rid of Dean, drop off the bikes and then get the van back. At that time, he would be done and he would sleep for a week.