Chapter 5

Oliver and Caroline work on the drive by themselves when Oliver makes a discovery that kicks off their first real lead.

Chapter 5

It had been a long night, hell, a long week. Far too many sleepless nights for Caroline to reliably count. She could recall a few moments when she was not awake, but she could not remember when or for how long. At this point, she was sure that more coffee and Red Bull flowed through her veins than actual blood.

Things were getting fuzzy, the details of the previous days were getting harder and harder to remember and they all seemed to blur together into one protracted moment.

After she left Oliver’s place, Caroline spent the first few days trying in vain get into the files Devon had locked, she gave up on recovering the corrupted files the first day. She was not sure what Devon did to the files, but what she had found out was that a normal password would not work, at least not by itself. Had Devon really been that paranoid, would he really lock vital information away from the people that he trusted?

What made it worse was that Devon actually included the key or at least something that was meant to be a key. Caroline discovered a program called key.exe buried in a folder on the drive, but in a cruel twist of fate, it had been one of the corrupted files, so she was back to square one, only this time with the solution mocking her at every step.

It was getting harder and harder to justify working on the case. She was not getting anywhere and Devon was not making it easier for her. On top of that, on the rare occasions, she left her apartment to buy more provisions or to go to work�"class would have to take a back seat for now, besides, what is better than on the job training�"she did not feel that she was being watched.

The reasons to help were getting more and more blurry. What is the worst thing Howell could do? In reality, she had been bluffing when she told Oliver that she had seen what Howell was doing. Devon knew, but he kept the reality from her. But not even he knew what Archie was working on, not concretely anyway, that was what the raid was for. 

Devon knew something was up and he was getting close, which was why he left the park. The higher ups blocked his access to certain floors, that was when he knew they knew. Devon had been working by himself up until then.

She recalled the first time he showed up to her place since the break-up. It was right after he left his job, he started banging on her door at the ungodly hour of three in the morning--something she would slowly get used to over the following months--and like most times after that he had a manic look in his eyes as if he had been out chasing ghosts before he got to her. Which he probably had; not actually chasing, god no, he was much too unhealthy for that. No, that special internet version of chasing leads: trolling obscure forums, scoring the web and having encrypted messenger conversations with other crazy people were some of Devon’s regular go-to’s.

He claimed to be on to some “grand conspiracy” involving the “upper echelons of the world’s biggest corporation” and that they were “on his tail”. It was your general crazy person babbling, but she listened to him, partly because she knew him and partly because she was too tired and confused to argue.  Caroline let him say his piece and crash on her couch for the night, something about this place being “buggier than a Bethesda title”, and he could not go back there ever.

He was gone before she woke up the next morning, Caroline thought he must have never slept and just work through the night. She didn't clearly remember what he told her and assumed it was a onetime thing. Then a week later it happened again and the day after that. Eventually, it became a thing and the next Caroline knew she was playing getaway driver and being an accessory to grand larceny. Heady crimes for someone training to be a detective. She knew she checked.

That was a long time ago, and Devon was the driving force behind the whole thing. Quitting started to look like a legitimate possibility.

Caroline shut her laptop, leaning back on her couch to give her eyes a break. It’s time to stop, she thought to herself. She rubbed her eyes and laid her laptop next to her. She had to work tomorrow and she already used up every favor and vacation day, it was either show up tomorrow or find a new job and Caroline wasn’t ready to live in her car like Devon. For one because she had a tiny a Toyota Camry and because she still had some standard of living.

She went to bed silently hoping everything would sort itself out in the morning.

 

…

 

 

Oliver’s advantage over Caroline was the personal investment; at least, that was what he liked to think.

It was just a mild curiosity that drove him to look through the drive. However, he was starting to lose his patients. Damn near everything was locked or broken. There was no point in continuing, but here he was over a week later combing through the few files he could view. He was measured with his approach he thought, every day he would go back to it for an hour or so, get frustrated, and stop.

There were terabytes of data on the drive, something this small with this much space must have cost Devon a fortune. Most of it was useless, blurry photos of banners depicting Wally and other Howell characters advertising some sort of major event. To his knowledge, Howell Park did not have any big event in the works, granted, he did not know about the break-in so he was willing to admit that he was behind the curve on a few things.

The rest of what he could see was just old bank receipts to businesses he has never heard of, and innocuous, to him anyway, conversations between an executive and various talent agencies and vendors. Nothing conspicuous, perhaps those businesses were shell corporations and Howell was using them to dodge taxes and make an extra buck. Again, nothing evil, shady sure, but definitely not nefarious.

He wasn’t convinced.

Devon was clearly convinced, and he managed to sway that Caroline chick too. There had to be something he wasn’t seeing. It had to be in one of the files he could not see. That was where the majority of his time was spent.

There were folders and sub-folders and sub-sub-folders to everything on the drive, Devon was clearly thorough in his insanity. Something had to be hidden somewhere. He had found what he thought was a key, but it turned out be broken, like everything else he saw. He was stuck and started to think that it was time to get angry. That was when he came across a file that was unlocked. It was simply labeled “where to go from here”. In it he found one text file called “READ ME”. Oliver opened it.

hey, so you found this file, awesome.

thanks again for doing this caroline it really means the world to me.

i know i sound crazy most of the time

but i know what im talking about. howell is bad,

i hope i was able to convince you of that.

if youve spent anytime looking through the drive i gave you then you might have noticed

that i locked most of it away, it was just a precaution, really.

you may not know everything either, that wasnt because i didnt trust you

it was because i didnt want you to become like me.

you should be better than that, better than me.

i dont want my obsession to become yours.

hopefully youll never have to read this and we could sort this whole thing out together.

if you do see this, then im probably not around anymore and there isnt anything i can

do to convince you to stop

if thats the case then heres what you are going to need:

as2oijavdf*(*()*&) 098734 *(& 0(*()*(_+@#!#R

 

“Goddammit Devon!” shouted Oliver as he whipped the drive at the wall.

This is stupid even for him. Only something he made could have s**t the bed in such a cliché way.

Oliver scratched the back of his head and reach for his cigarettes. He could feel his blood pressure rise and he needed to take the edge off. He took a long pull on one and let himself calm down. Why did Devon always leave f*****g messages, Oliver thought. Couldn’t he just talk to someone like a normal person? 

He looked over at the drive, which shattered against the wall. Caroline was going to be pissed. He walked over and picked it up.

Upon closer inspection, he noticed the damage wasn’t too bad. The plastic shell of the lighter had broken on a seam leaving it in two neat pieces with the board as a convenient third. He might actually be able to put it back together. Oliver tried mashing the two pieces of the shell together, but it looked like they were only meant to go together once, probably just some cheap adhesive holding them together, he thought.

He went back to check the board to make sure he didn't miss something that could help him hide his outburst when he saw etched into the fiberglass “custom board by _d43da1us_”.

There it was, he knew there had to be something. Devon was eccentric, and he clearly didn’t read into where he bought things, but he had something to go on, a lead.

A cursory search didn’t reveal much or anything. Whoever this guy was you didn’t get in touch with him on Twitter. He must have been someone Devon met online somewhere. He was going to need Caroline.

…

 

Caroline got up the next morning refreshed. She did her best not to think about Devon, Oliver, or the drive. She was taking the day off. Work helped, it was busy one of those special days where everything went wrong at once. The computer system went down, the cashier didn’t know how to make change, and the store was out of everything. It proved a nice distraction. The day flew by.

Everything was great, except she kept getting calls from some random number. At first, she thought it might have been someone from Howell telling her that they were on to her and that he hit squad was on there way. She thought the most prudent course of action would be to ignore the calls and hope they went away.

The calls kept coming and she was getting annoyed. Hit squad or no hit squad she was going to let the person the other line know how badly they were ruining her day, possibly a few choice expletives.

She answered the phone and before she could get a word out the person on the other line started talking.

“Have you been looking through the drive?” asked the voice. Caroline could have sworn it sounded like Oliver, but how did he get her number?

“Oliver?” she asked looking around to make sure she wasn’t being punked or stalked, “How did you get this number?”

“The drive, hello, haven’t you done anything since you stormed off?” asked Oliver, condescendingly.

What right did he have, Caroline thought, to talk down to her? He was the one who didn’t what to do anything. Now he was talking down to her. “You didn’t answer my question.” She replied.

“Uh, yeah, I did.” said Oliver, “Yours, Devon’s, and my number was on the drive. He probably put them in just in case any combination of us got offed. You didn’t know that?”

She didn’t know that; all she was able to find were things she already knew or contributed to the drive herself. She started to feel a little ashamed of herself and more than a little stupid. This was her thing; Devon left the job to her. She should have a better grip on the situation than some random jackass who just wandered in.

“Of course I knew about that.” she lied.

“Oh, good, so then you know about Daedalus.” He said.

Caroline thought about lying again but realized that Oliver would definitely call her out if she didn’t get every detail right. She thought about her response a bit longer and came up with “Uh…”

She heard Oliver sigh on the other end of the line. “Where are you now?” he asked exacerbated.

“At…work?” she said.

“Ditch and come to my place. I’ll show you what I found.”

“No.” Caroline said without thinking, “You come to my place and show me what you found.” She wanted to take control of the case again; she wouldn’t let herself get shown up by some rookie. Caroline had no idea how to do that, but she thought the best start would be to get the home field advantage.

“Fine.” He said in a clear attempt to mollify her, “Where do you live?”

“Sheltered Grotto.” She said, “Be there, twenty minutes.”

“Whatever.”

Great, she thought to herself, now I have to figure out how to get across town in twenty minutes.

…

Oliver hung up and got ready to leave.

Sheltered Grotto.

He remembered Devon talk about that place once. Something about he knew a girl there. She seemed nice; the kind of person you’d be proud to bring home to your parents, that is, if you had any, he admitted. Devon wasn’t really the type of person to talk about his problems, at least not to Oliver, but he seemed happy with this girl. Oliver felt nothing but animosity towards him when Devon confided in him, but that was when Oliver and Kassidy were on the outs. Devon never really was the type of person who read the room, or he just didn’t care.

Oliver was confused about Caroline. When he called her he didn’t expect her to be so clueless about the drive. Surely she spent as much time with it as he did. In fact, she should have called him about Daedalus. Maybe she thought he was a lost cause.

Oliver certainly considered himself ambivalent towards this whole thing, but now he was beginning to have his doubts. Was he actually part of this case now? It certainly wasn’t his choice. If it weren’t for Caroline shoving her nose into his life he’d still be happily miserable at Howell until the day he died.

He was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice his neighbor Nate and walked into him.

“Oof, sorry.” he said

“Don’t mention it!” said Nate with a well-meaning smile. 

Nate wasn’t a bad guy Oliver thought as he continued walking to his car. He lived in the apartment across from him. He was a part of Sanitation and Oliver would occasionally see him wandering around The Tunnels. Off hours he was actually pretty fun for a guy in his early sixties, back in the day Oliver and Kassidy would go out with Nate and his wife Trisha, it was Kassidy’s idea. But like most things post-Kassidy, Oliver cut them out of his life completely. He heard through the grapevine a few years ago that Trisha died. Oliver wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what, plus it was too hard. It just brought back painful memories.

Oliver has never been to Sheltered Grotto himself, but he knew about it by reputation. It wasn’t the nicest place to live. The wiring was old, the plumbing needed replacing, and from what he heard, the landlord was a bit skeevy, to say the least. Definitely wasn’t the type of place he’d expect a woman like Caroline to live. Not that he’d known her long, but he got the sense that she was way more uptight than she leads on.

When he made it to her place he instantly felt at home, it was weird. Everything he’d heard about the place was true, but at the same time, he never felt more at peace. Caroline buzzed him in without saying a word. Same thing when she let him in; Oliver wasn’t sure what was going on, but he had a feeling she was gearing up for a “look who’s come crawling back” gloat. He couldn’t blame her, hell, he’d do the same thing. The two just stood in her living room, or rather her living room/kitchen/bedroom, it wasn’t a big place. Caroline had her hair up in a tight ponytail and she smelled faintly of deli meats. It made him hungry.

“Are we doing that thing where we size each other up?” he asked to break the silence.

“What are you talking about?”

Oliver reached into his back pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes.

“You’re not smoking in here.” She said.

Oliver chuckled to himself; just like he thought, stuck up. He opened the pack and retrieved the lighter drive. He stuck it in his pack of cigarettes partly to keep it together and to force the pieces back together by sitting on them while he drove to her place. It didn’t work.

“Relax, this is just where I kept the drive.” He waved it around to prove it to her.

“Great,” she said “But I don’t need the drive; I copied all the files over before I left.”

“Let me see them.”

“Why?” she asked incredulously.

“Just grab your damn computer,” replied Oliver “I need to check something.”

Caroline went over to her couch, grabbed her laptop, and opened up the files before handing it over.

“No wonder you weren’t getting anywhere.” He said as he plugged in the original drive. “All the files are fucked up.”

“Yeah,” replied Caroline, “we figured that out when we first used the drive.”

“I mean more of the files are broken on your version than on the original. Here, look.”

Oliver opened up two versions of a news article. On Caroline’s version, the text was garbled and unintelligible. The pictures were low-res and burry. The original version wasn’t much better, but you could tell that the article was about some big event it the works at the park.

“What happened?” Caroline asked, squinting at the screen.

“Haven’t you ever heard about making a copy of a copy, imagine doing that with a fried drive,” explained Oliver.

“You mean you broke it?”

“No, I didn’t break it!” said Oliver angrily, “Like you said the damn thing didn’t work when we got it.”

“Sure it didn’t work when I saw it, who knows what happened before I got there.” Replied Caroline accusatory.

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, maybe crushed it with your giant ogre hands.” 

Oliver was starting to get pissed and decided to leave. “Y’know what, f**k you. You deal with this, I’m done.”

He was halfway to the door when he heard Caroline let out a sigh. “Fine, sorry.”

Oliver paused, his hand hovering over the doorknob, “What was that?”

“I said sorry, are we good?”

Oliver turned around.

“I just, I haven’t been sleeping well lately,” she said, “That damn drive, it’s the only thing we have and to find out that it was broken was crushing. I guess the idea that you were having an easier time was frustrating to me.”

“Accepted.” Oliver went back to the drive.

“So you opened the key file thing?” Caroline asked.

“No, the files on here were shot. So I got the idea to break open the drive to check the board and I found this.” Oliver popped the drive apart and showed Caroline the signature on the board.

“Custom board by…Daedalus?” she read, “What does it mean?”

“It looks like that’s the person who made the board. This drive is huge. There is way more storage on it than your average flash drive.”

“How much?” chimed in Caroline.

“I don’t know, maybe six or seven terabytes.”

“Is…that a lot?”

“For what we’re dealing with, yeah, it’s f*****g huge. Devon had to have gotten this specially made. And that,” Oliver pointed at the signature, “is the person who made it.”  

 Caroline turned the board over in her hand she couldn't make heads or tails of it, it was just some green and slab to her, “Why would they put their name on it?”

“Must’ve thought themselves an artist and wanted to sign their work.” wagered Oliver.

“Because Devon would not have allowed this to be on here. He was way too cautious to allow something like this happen.”

“I guess he didn’t think to check there.”

“Do you know who this Daedalus person is?” asked Caroline.

Oliver shook his head, “Thought you might.”

Caroline groaned and walked over to her fridge.

“Got a beer in there?” asked Oliver.

“No,” said Caroline from inside the fridge. She came out with one of those fancy Italian waters, the disgusting carbonated kind.

“Really?” asked Oliver incuriously.

Caroline took a sip and looked at the bottle. “Got hooked on 'em at work.”

“Is that your excuse?”

“Nope, just like’em.”

“God,” she said after a moment of silence, “it’s like he doesn’t want us to figure this out.”

“He really didn’t tell you anything?” asked Oliver.

Caroline took another sip and pursed her lips as she looked down the bottle, “Not a damn thing. Nothing he didn’t deem absolutely vital to the investigation.”

“What does that include?”

“Let me put it this way,” Caroline set the bottle on the sink, “I didn’t know why we robbed Howell, hell, I still don’t and from what it sounds like, I might never know.”

“Then why did you help him?”

“I really don’t know.”

The pair sat there in silence.

Caroline broke the silence, “How do we find this Daedalus person?”

“That’s going to be the hard part.”

“Will they be able to fix the drive?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” admitted Oliver “It’s possible.”

“I’m used to being in the dark. Where do we start?”

“Well,” started Oliver, “We’re going to need to scorer the Dark Web, and you are going to see some s**t.”

“I’m game.”

 

Author's Note

I had a hard time keeping this chapter focused on one character so I jumped between the Oliver and Caroline for the first half. Is this a good or bad idea?

Any thoughts on the rapid-fire dialogue at the end?

Reviews

[E.R Parker]

I started on Chapter One today and have to make myself quit reading because I have things that need to be done. Aside from a few spelling errors and a few grammar adjustments it's great. I am enjoying the story and am now just a curious as Caroline and Oliver about what's on the drive. I like the back and forth with Caroline and Oliver it brings more live to it by talking the individuals would talk when face to face. Really enjoying it but have to stop for today.

[Chris M.]

Thanks for reading my work!

Much appreciated, and I'm glad you're enjoying it so far!