Slugtectives Gary and Larry the Leopard Slugs
Investigation
The light ahead turned from green to yellow to red and he stopped to wait for it to turn green again. He was part way out of the city but still in the urban area and as he sat waiting for the light to turn the phone started ringing in his pocket. The sudden sound and vibration startled him and he reached down and tried to fish it out. He managed to slide it out and he held it up to see Vivian calling. He hit the call button and said, “hello?” as he put the phone to his ear.
“Oh good I was able to catch you. Have you left the city yet?” she asked with relief.
“Uhm, no,” he said confused, “how are you calling me now, I’m in my car at a stoplight?”
“Huh? Oh I guess you’re on an open wifi nearby. Anyway I need you to stop by and see Ashir, he’s the programmer I told you about,” she told him quickly.
The light turned green and he started to feel the slight bit of panic rise in his stomach and he looked to the right in the intersection and saw a temporary parking spot and quickly pulled into and parked, the car puffing smoke as it idled.
“Sorry, had to pull over while I had the signal. So where am I going?” he asked.
“It’s okay. His apartment is at 2120 Lark Avenue, number 7. He’s aware you might stop by if I was able to get a hold of you. He has some information and some questions for you,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll figure out how to find it, I was on my way out of the city right now. What side of the city is he on?” he asked as he shrunk a little at the prospect of having to drive across the city.
“He’s in the south part of the city, not far out of your way,” she replied.
“Okay, thanks. I’ll find it. I’ll talk to you later,” he said as he ended the call and tossed the phone on the seat next to him. He reached over and opened the glove box which popped open to reveal a space crammed full of various papers and items. He pulled the mass out onto the passenger seat and sifted through it to find a folded map of the city. He spent a couple of minutes locating the street and figured out how to get to it, he was only a mile or so away.
He tossed the map on the seat into the pile and after getting his bearings drove through the semi urban southern part of the city to a mid sized apartment building on Lark Avenue. He drove around the corner of the building then down the street before he could find a parking spot. He parked and turned off the car in a puff of smoke. He climbed out and slammed the door shut before walking back around the building to the entrance.
He found the elevator doors open as he entered the foyer, he paused and looked at the directory on the wall and noted the second floor was his destination. He quickly stepped to the now closing elevator doors and slipped inside. He rode to the second floor and stepped out to a brightly lit hallway, turning and walking down it to number seven. He composed himself, took a breath and as he let it out raised his hand and knocked on the door twice.
He heard the sound of motion towards the door then after a pause it opened and a slim dark haired younger man stood before him. “Hi, Vivian sent me?” he said.
“Ah, yes, come in. Good to meet you. I’m Ashir,” he said holding out his hand.
The man shook his hand and said, “I’m —NEED NAME FOR THE MAN--good to meet you”.
Ashir motioned into the apartment and he walked inside, the door closing behind him. A few steps down a hallway and they turned into the main room which was scattered with electronics, books, and computer monitors. One wall was a book shelf stuffed with books of all sizes. At a desk sat a row of monitors in an arc around a pair of keyboards and Ashir motioned towards it.
“So Vivian told me about what happened, about the raid. She said you were targeted because they thought you were the one who leaked the Bollinger names, which now seeing you seems pretty outlandish,” Ashir said as he sat in the chair at he desk. “Here, come around and see,” he said motioning towards the monitors.
The man walked around the desk and Ashir quickly slid a stack of books and papers from a small chair before he sat and looked at the monitors.
“I don’t know how much you know about how social media works or how the internet in general works, but when the list was leaked it created a tidal wave. The post was shared so quickly and to so many different platforms that it was impossible to wipe from view,” Ashir explained.
“Okay, I guess it what, went viral?” he asked.
“Yeah pretty much. It exploded. So the thing with the web is we have sites that cache the current state of the various sites around the world wide web and store them, so we can go back and look at the state of a page at any point in time. So with the initial post we can go back to the time it was posted and that gives us an easier time of narrowing it down,” Ashir said as he tapped his mouse and moved windows around the screens to bring different ones to the front.
The man watched and listened, nodding his head in semi understanding.
“The problem being the obscured name in the screen shot. Since it is an image of a blurred out image there are no forensic techniques to remove the mask. But I was able to write a script to crawl the caching sites for the content of the post which gave me this,” Ashir said as he opened a window to fill the center largest screen in the arc.
On the screen was a post with a link to the report followed by “Here is the proof!” and at the top the user was Lardog4242. Below was a long string of number on words run together. “What’s that?” the man asked pointing to it.
“That’s the meta data of the post, it shows all the background details about it. That’s what I think is the key. I dug into the records for your old service provider and was able to find your old ip address. Look at the meta data closely, you see?” Ashir said expectantly.
Looking between the large screen and the one next to it he read the address to himself as he went between them. It was his and he sat back in confusion. “How did that come from my ip address?” he asked.
“I’m not sure exactly but if you look at where this was posted to, Slimer. I’ve never heard of that social media site before so I did some digging and it seems to be a slug centric site. I’ve seen others similar in the cosplay world,” Ashir replied.
“But how would it have come from my place? I didn’t even have a computer to do anything like this,” the man asked.
“Probably someone using your wifi signal. It could have been someone driving by that sent it, most likely. Otherwise whoever it is has to be close enough to pickup the signal. Do you think any of your neighbors were using your wifi?” Ashir asked.
“No, if anything I’ve used theirs over the years,” he replied.
“Well, that’s as close as I can get you I think. Unless you can find out who Lardog4242 is…” Ashir trailed off.
“At least this explains why they raided my house and why they thought it was me who leaked the list. If that was sent from my address then it was easy for them to find me. But why me?” the man said as he shook his head.
“Vivian said you were OSI? Maybe there is a connection there?” Ashir offered.
The man looked over at him stone faced for a moment as Ashir clicked around the screens to the side before saying, “yeah, maybe”, before standing up and saying, “thanks for the information. Not sure what I’ll do with this but at least I know now.”
Ashir stood and reaching under one monitor he pulled out a business card and handing it to the man said, “here, if you need anything all my contact info is there.”
The man looked at the card quickly before slipping it into his pocket then said, “thanks, I might need it.” He turned and walked around the desk and Ashir followed him to the apartment door.
“Good luck, hope you can figure out who posted that. Pretty shitty getting raided,” Ashir said as he held the door open.
“Thanks for your time,” the man said as he walked out the door, Ashir closing it behind him.
He was lost in thought as he walked back to the elevator and then to his car. He sat in the driver seat staring forward for minutes before snapping himself to and reaching over for the map. He scanned it for his route and soon was back driving towards his house.
Entering the town of Lakeside he drove through the downtown area and as he neared the jail he had a thought and pulled into the parking lot. He got out of his car and walked to the front door of the sheriff’s office that held the jail behind and opened, stepping inside to the sounds of office commotion. He took a few steps in and suddenly the town’s head sheriff was walking in front of him.
“Sheriff?” the man asked to try and catch his attention.
The sheriff turned to him and said, “yes? What can I do for you?”
“Uhm, hi. I’m not sure if you remember me or not, I was held in one of your cells after the raid on my house?” he asked.
“Yes, I remember you,” the sheriff replied.
“So, I was wondering if you could give me any information about the raid. I’m trying to figure out why exactly I was raided and who did it. I keep getting shot down elsewhere and was hoping you could shine some light on it for me,” he asked.
The sheriff stood and his face showed his thoughts processing before he answered, “I’m not positive why you were raided but I can tell you that it was Backwater’s people who performed the raid. We were never made aware of it prior and only found out when they demand our holding cell.”
“You didn’t have to let them use it for me did you?” he asked.
“We weren’t going to but I was over ruled,” the sheriff sneered.
The man caught his tone and took that to mean someone in the government had made him. He held out his hand and said, “thank you sheriff.”
The sheriff shook his hand and said, “sorry we couldn’t be more help.”
“That’s fine, you given me confirmation of what I had suspected,” the man said then turned and walked back out the door.
He climbed back into the car and started it with its signature billow of smoke and roar of the engine and drove across town to his house. As he pulled into the yard and parked he watched as the rats and mice scattered from view atop the debris on the plastic. He shut the car off and grabbed the phone from the passenger seat then slammed the door as he got out.
As he walked to the front door he couldn’t stop thinking about the post being sent from his wifi. He stopped on the patio and turned around and looked around the yard and at the others houses around. He shook his head and turned and went in the house.
This section I wrote and inserted into the prior chapter mid way as I forgot that I needed to get back to Gary and Tendra going to eat.
Tendra and Gary worked their way slowly through the grasses, stopping often to let Gary rest his swollen foot. At each rest there would be a small morsel of something to nibble on and as they progressed the small morsels became larger. After a while of pauses and movement they came to the edge of the plastic where the man had piled the debris from the house. Around the edges was scattered pieces of various food stuffs that had been thrown from the plastic by animals digging through it.
Tendra stopped next to a mound of mold and tapped at it to test before taking a bite and chewing while she waited for Gary to catch up. He limped his way along and slowly made his way next to her. He stopped and see her chewing took a bite from the same mound. They sat in silence chewing their mouthfuls and in the background they could hear the sounds of rustling in the debris on the plastic. An occasional squeak of a mouse or the scratching of nails on the plastic burst out from the rustling.
Tendra spoke first saying, “sounds like it’s pretty busy up there. At least they are kicking off a good amount of food”.
Gary finished chewing and said, “they can stay there. Just the sound of those nails are giving me flashbacks.”
Tendra look at him and could see the visible fear in his body as he trembled slightly. She looked around at the various piles around them and then at his trembling form again and said, “Why don’t we go back. I’m sure we can find food on the way back to your hole.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I’m ready for this yet. It’s still all too real for me and my head can’t take this,” Gary said as he turned away from the looming sheet of plastic.
Tendra followed behind him and stopped at piles to take bites then she would hurry back to catch up. Gary stopped at a few of them to rest before they made their way to the grasses and soon Gary was limping towards his hole.
They were within sight of Gary’s hole when they heard the man come out of the house and get into his car. They got to the entrance to his hole and Tendra said, “go try and rest your foot, maybe tomorrow we can go try again.”
“Thanks, at least I’m not hungry anymore,” Gary said then entered his hole.
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