by Matt Doyle
“Sure. If you send me a shot of yours, I’ll keep my eye out here too. I don’t suppose you caught the wolf documentary last night?”
I smile. “I’m not as obsessed with the Wet Coast as you are, but yeah. It’s good to see the population recovering. My grandfather was terrified of them, but I used to love watching them moving in and out of the shadows on a clear night.”
“Ah, so you lived near the outskirts?”
“Nah, I think there was just a small pack that was desperate enough to follow the foxes into the urban areas.”
“Maybe once things have settled down you could go and take a look, then? Bring back some memories?”
“You trying to get rid of me?”
“Nah.” Devereaux laughs. “I think it’s a shame that you don’t visit the place, is all. Home is home, eh?”
“That’s…complicated,” I say, and hand back the tablet, forcing as pleasant a smile as I can.
Devereaux shrugs. “I still can’t believe how easy it is for PIs to get warrants here.”
“There are more of us working in the city than you think, Will. You just won’t see most of them because there are only a few of us that have earned the right to easy access. Or in my case, was ballsy enough to just walk in on my first day.”
He laughs again. “Well, good luck, Tam. I’ll have these processed for you in about five minutes.”
I nod my thanks, and we part with a smile. It’s nice to have a little piece of Vancouver here in the city, but it hurts too.
WITH MY WARRANTS cleared and ready to go, I make my way back to the theatre and request to speak to whoever would be in charge of releasing security footage for review. The slightly bored teenager working the front desk puts a call out for the building manager and, after a minute or so of waiting, Mr. Patternoster, a man as stern as he is beyond retirement age, greets me with a wary handshake.
“Miss Tam, is it? I understand that you’re some sort of investigator. Police, is it?”
“Private, I’m afraid. My father was a cop, though, and I do work with the police when I can.”
“I see,” he says, making no effort to hide how unimpressed he is. “And what can I do for you today?”
“I was hired by Kitsune,” I say, trying to deflect the old man’s mood with my best help-me-I’m-nice smile. “They had a dog with them when they arrived at the venue a week or so back, but something happened two days ago, and the dog has gone missing. I’m trying to find out if the dog ran away or if it was taken. That being the case, I was hoping to take a look at your CCTV footage if I could. I have a warrant if you need to see any paperwork.”
Mr. Patternoster holds my gaze and sniffs loudly. “Yes, well, any fool with a modicum of tech skills can fake a warrant these days. You’ll forgive me if I find this all a bit dubious, Miss Tam. There are plenty of people who would like to see Kitsune without their regalia, and their manager, Mr. Smitt, has tasked me with ensuring nothing is done that would risk this happening. That being the case, I am afraid I simply cannot help you. I don’t hold with the more prying members of the press at the best of times.”
Now, that’s a problem. Even if I serve the warrant on him, Mr. Patternoster clearly has no intention of taking me seriously. Ordinarily, my response would involve either a fist, a gun, or Bert. Given that he’s just an ordinary guy trying to do his job though, I’d rather not resort to that. Let’s try a different approach . “Kevin Smitt, eh? Yeah, he got me to sign a waiver when I took the case on.”
Mr. Patternoster simply crosses his arms and glares at me with all the patience of an incredibly angry hand grenade with the pin pulled.
“OK, look,” I sigh. “You clearly aren’t going to listen to anything that I say, but maybe you’ll listen to Mr. Smitt and Kitsune. Call them, either one, and they’ll confirm the situation.”
“Fine then,” Mr. Patternoster replies and points a bony finger at the young girl behind the reception desk. “If they cannot verify your identity, however, that one is going to call the police.” He turns to the girl, and asks, “Do you understand?”
The girl counters his glare with a yawn, and I try not to smile at the old man’s grumbles about kids these days , and staff respect . She clearly doesn’t want to be here, but she’s doing a much better job of dealing with the curmudgeonly building manager than I am. Speaking of whom, he has now pulled his mobile phone up to his ear and is busy grumbling away to some other unfortunate soul. Is it too much to hope it’s Kevin? I’d pay to see those two have a grump-off.
Eventually, Mr. Patternoster hangs up and turns to me. And says nothing.
“Now what?” I ask.
“Now, we wait.”
After a moment, a tetchy looking Kevin Smitt appears at the end of the hall. Score one for me .
“This is the woman, Mr. Smitt. Should I have her escorted out?”
“Hi, Kevin,” I say. “Sorry about this.”
Kevin sighs and says, “She’s fine.”
“So, you really did hire a detective? For a missing dog?” Mr. Patternoster growls, turning to unload a full round of angry facials at Kevin. “Perhaps, Mr. Smitt, you may consider telling me if you’re going to do something like this? It would save an awful lot of hassle, don’t you think?”
Kevin, not one to be outdone, winds up a scowl of his own and fires back with, “Perhaps, Mr. Patternoster, you may consider hiring some night security. That would prevent the need for us to incur such expenses, hmm? Just give her what she needs. And don’t bother with checking the paperwork, we’ve had enough delays today thanks to that hydraulic platform of yours. I trust you’ve followed the correct legal procedures?”
Spotting that the last question was directed at me, I smile sweetly and say, “Of course.”
Mr. Patternoster harrumphs loudly. Without even turning to me, he snaps, “This way, if you please,” and starts stalking up the hallway.
It doesn’t happen often, but I do sometimes wander into the odd conflict like this. The type that gets resolved by other people moaning rather than me hitting something. It makes a nice change when it happens. Who needs combat sports PPV? This is far more fun .
WITH THE ENTERTAINMENT portion of the morning done, the actual work slots into place without any need for a caffeine boost. Instead, I can just make my way through the camera files for the day in question. Opening up the synched files on my phone and skimming through what Kitsune’s written in the Case Tool, the potential dognapping took place around three in the morning. Around is a clear sign I should probably allow for some error with that, so I start the files at two forty-five.
The multi-screen feature on the security system is quite useful here, as antiquated as the concept is, as it allows me to scan all four sides of the building at once. By the time a black van pulls into the screen on camera two, it’s already likely the other three cameras will prove useless. The van is plain black, has tinted windows, and no licence plates. It also came in at a sharp angle from the left side of the screen, which means it drove there through a residential area rather than a camera-heavy retail sector. Unless that was just a coincidence, they’ll probably leave the same way.
I enlarge the screen for camera two and watch as a man steps out. He’s about average height, with little build visible through the loose-fitting black clothing, and no face on display thanks to the old school balaclava. He pulls something out of his pocket, braces himself with one hand on the nearby wall of the building, and throws it towards the camera, causing a mist of static to cloud the screen. So, he knew where the camera was, exactly like in Devereaux’s cases.
I can still sort of see him through the static, at least enough to know when he walks out of shot and presumably towards the tour bus. Nothing happens for a while, and the snowflakes on the screen seem to have gammed up the audio too, resulting in a layer of hiss that almost entirely masks the single bark of Fish in the background. The fuzz starts to fade, and the man dashes back across the screen to throw what I’m hoping is an unconscious
Fish over the driver’s seat and into the back of the van. He jumps in himself, slams the door shut, and pulls out at speed, turning back the way he came, and effectively blocking me from tracing his movements without checking every camera in the city.
OK , let’s see if we can get something useful here.
I roll the video back and step it through the moment after the man got out of the van frame by frame. After a little jumping back and forth between frames, I manage to freeze the video just before whatever he threw at the camera detonated, and zoom in. The item he threw is, unsurprisingly, a small metallic ball. The sheer length of time the static lasted means it definitely wasn’t the withdrawn toy. Devereaux may have been right that it could be a derivative, though. If I don’t turn up anything myself, I’ll have to check with him in a day or two to see if he found anything.
Moving the shot down, I can see the man in the background, bringing his hand up quickly to cover his eyes. Jumping forward a few frames shows a small white glow on his gloves, both on the top of the fingers and open palm on the hand guarding his eyes and on the fingers of the hand he has pressed against the wall.
That seems familiar , I think. I’m pretty sure I saw something similar the last time I visited the city’s Mall. It looks kinda alternative, so that narrows it down to one store if I’m right. I pull out my phone and load up the webpage for The Devil Wears… , New Hopeland’s one attempt at forging a local fashion enterprise for those who like things darker than the big-name designers manage. A quick tap down to the gloves section takes me to the current top sellers: thick black things with steel-look patterning on the top and bottom of the gloves. The description says that they combine design work from two of the most studied subcultures of the early twenty-first century by using a motocross style glove base but a sleek metallic patterning that would have fit in with certain parts of the cybergoth movement.
I sit back and cross my arms behind my head. “Well, there’s a crossover. So, I’m looking for someone who looks completely average and owns fashionable gloves. I could warrant the store for receipts, but that would only cover local purchases, not online ones, and there’s going to be a lot of those.”
I sigh, save some screenshots, and make a copy of the relevant section of video. Looks like I’ll be relying on someone being too obvious in how they were watching Kitsune on his rounds.
SOME DAYS, THINGS just don’t go my way.
Retracing the route that Kitsune had detailed meant my first stop was Northfleet Apartments. There were no visible external cameras and a quick check at the desk confirmed that the only outward facing one is on the door panel at the front of the building. There are plenty of cameras inside, and each and every room has a lock-down setting, so there’s no real point in reinforcing the outside, apparently. Meanwhile, the cameras on the various traffic crossings are all road-facing, meaning that they’re designed to catch speeding lumps of metal, not regular people, their dogs, and their potential stalkers.
Cross Street stretches on into the distance from there, and most of the stores have their own security measures. As it is, Seventh Son Music, which uses an animated sign on a large video screen to openly describe itself as New Hopeland’s number one retailer of music and instruments, is the only one to which Kitsune will have been close enough to offer any potential value. While my client may not have noticed the two-building-wide shop on the corner of the street, its cameras certainly noticed them. Unfortunately, given the lack of specific details in terms of the description of the suspect, the best I could do with over an hour of video-watching was rule out about three people out of every fifty who were heading the same way.
I already knew the park cameras were dealt with by one of the local government agencies, so I skipped over looking for someone to talk to there and headed straight for Cartwright’s. Partway up Dunstone Avenue, I noticed an old client entering one of the houses on the residential side of the street. Given they used a key, it’s a safe bet they live there, so that explains why the place seemed familiar. If I get desperate, I’ll give them a knock and ask if they saw anything.
The staff at Cartwright’s were helpful insofar as they remembered Kitsune. Or rather they remembered Fish and were mortified to hear he’d gone missing. They were more than happy to let me view the necessary footage, which led to several hours of reminding myself that the problem with looking for an average-sized man with little else to go on is almost everyone is average sized these days. Much like with Seventh Son Music, I got to save a bunch more photos of random people, safe in the knowledge it was unlikely any of them were involved at all. Unless the regulars of Cartwright’s were even more enamoured with Fish than the staff were, of course. I did get a free blueberry muffin and some sort of hazelnut latte, though, so that was nice, if not overly useful.
The next stop was the Local Government Key Building. While the online goings-on in the city are primarily dealt with by two Governmental Monitoring Offices, the real-world stuff is all based in a non-public-facing high rise that was given the name of a “Key Building” because it’s key to the safe and continued running of the city . Yes, that’s the sort of mindset I have to deal with whenever I head over there and start brandishing warrants. There’s also the issue of the staff apparently having to take a course in the art of being higher up the paranoia scale than most PIs. That meant on top of needing to ensure my paperwork was immaculately completed, I also had to put up with a supervisory worker whose job it was to not only ensure I was only checking what I needed to, but to be as annoying as possible so as to make the idea of going there again as uncomfortable as possible. Unfortunately for them, I am well aware that my continued visiting as and when needed in spite of their attempts to put me off is even more annoying for them than their best nuisance-makers are for me. A word to the wise: annoying me then giving me an opening to annoy you more in retaliation is borderline idiotic.
I probably sound a little anti-government there, or at least a bit antagonistic. What can I say? Having a senior official kill your father can do that to a girl. And besides, when the staff are helpful, like they are at the Governmental Monitoring Offices, I’m more than happy to play nice. Inhibitive suits with nothing better to do than make my job more difficult? They can deal with my wrath. And I have so many different forms of wrath that I can pull out, depending on my target.
Long story short, another couple of hours wasted switching between watching some incredibly boring footage and confirming that yes, I am only checking time periods likely to be relevant to the case, revealed some less than startling results. I did learn that there are a few well-hidden cameras facing the open fields, but neither these nor the nature trails revealed any potential suspects on first viewing. I’m also pretty sure that the customary checks of my saved data took longer than they needed to. I guess my temporary shadow didn’t have any other unfortunates lined up to torment and just wanted to make sure that he did as thorough a job of winding me up as possible.
After that, I headed back home and set myself up on the table that comprises my office. I shot a quick message off to Lori apologising that I was going to be a little late and promising to make it to hers around nine, give or take. Then I started running through a number of checks I knew would be far easier here than at the various locations I’d visited. First, I set my tablet to copy the files and rig together some single video files covering each journey to and from Cartwright’s. Even with time signatures, that wouldn’t be too easy if I hadn’t given the saved copies of each individual location a standard naming convention. The machine may be old, but it can handle piecing together files titled Day 1 A, B, C and so on in order.
With the computer working on that with the copied files, I moved onto the originals and loaded a few up at once in a panelled view similar to the shots at the theatre. While this did show that one or two men did indeed follow the same route as Kitsune, none of them fit the size of the van driver.
I was left with four possible conclusions. One, the van driver wa
s working alone and either already knew about Fish or had spotted him at a different time, and so didn’t need to do any trailing. Two, the van driver was assisted by someone else, but only so far as them spotting the dog and noting where he came from. Three, anyone doing the reconnaissance was as well acquainted with the camera positions in the area as the van driver was with those at the theatre and so knew to stay out of the way. And four, several people were assisting the dognapper, and so almost everyone in the photos and videos is a legitimate potential suspect.
By half eight, the glamorous life of a PI on a missing pet case with little to go on and too much material to be useful had gotten to me and I decided to call it quits for the evening and head on over to Lori’s. One cab ride later, and I was ready for some conversation that didn’t involve one-sided ranting about the state of paid transport licensing since the new officials had been nominated and voted in. Sorry, Mr. Transporter, but I have my own job-related nonsense to deal with, so my sympathy well has run dry for the evening.
In the end, I made it to Lori’s just before nine.
I GIVE THE doorbell a quick press and take a step back to admire the serene feeling exuding from Lori’s bungalow. Hell, Foster Street as a whole is like that; all the new-build homes here are decked out in the old-world trappings of a typical all-too-perfect suburban hideaway. From my limited experience with the neighbours, it’s a nice, peaceful area that’s well suited to the older generation looking to settle down. It’s an odd way to think about it because at twenty-four, Lori is three years my junior, and I’m not exactly nearing retirement age. Still, she likes it here, so good for her.
Lori opens the door, decked out in a baggy green and black striped jumper, a pair of black boot cut jeans, and a fluffy pair of slippers in the shape of alligators that open and shut their mouths as you walk. I can’t help but smile at that, and Lori returns my smile, albeit a bit more nervously than normal. I guess we’re both well aware how this could go.