Detective Arcole
Page 6
The ordering booth was by the entrance. It was a long counter recessed in the wall. Arcole and Natalie grabbed their coffees and sat down at one of the tables. The tables were bare wood, solid and wide. There was a lot of space between the chairs, which gave ample room for each individual to work. Across from them, a young artist was busy on his pencil sketch. Around them, people were busy chatting, working, or just sitting by themselves, reading. It was busy but not too crowded.
Natalie looked around and appeared worried. “How can they snatch away her laptop? She’s going to have time to shut the lid.”
“Maybe they’ll approach from behind,” Arcole suggested.
“Yeah. That’s possible,” Natalie conceded.
There was a message from Raymond. “Lizbeth is back. Director’s office immediately.”
They scrambled back to the FBI office.
The director was pacing the floor. “Do we have all our assets in place?” he asked.
“We do,” Raymond said. His eyes were locked on the tablet in his hand. “She’s coming out,” he said.
“Tell everyone to get in place,” the director said. “You.” He pointed at Natalie. “Come with me. You’re getting her on the chat message. It’s the tricky part—can’t screw that up.”
Arcole was not sure what role he was playing. He hesitated then asked, “Where do you want me?”
The director thought for a second. “Cafe entrance. In case she tries to flee.”
Arcole rolled his eyes. The useless old man, he said to himself.
Natalie went with the director, while Arcole made his way to the cafe.
He walked inside and looked around the cavernous place. Lizbeth was sitting in a corner, where the walls met. She had a sandwich and a coffee in front of her, and her laptop was open to her left side, next to the wall. She was reading something. Between readings, she would take bites from her sandwich.
Across from her sat a young Asian girl with a soda. She was rapidly typing on her large phone with a pink Hello Kitty cover. A bearded old man with a tablet in his hand was in the chair next to Lizbeth.
Arcole got himself a coffee and settled on a high stool by the entrance. He took out his phone and pretended to read something. He wondered what was going on in the van.
Then he noticed Lizbeth sit up straight and look around. Natalie has probably started chatting with her, thought Arcole.
Lizbeth hunched over and rapidly typed on her laptop. Two women passing by her table suddenly started screaming at each other and got into a fistfight. Arcole watched the next few moments unfold in slow motion. Lizbeth raised her head to look at the fighting pair, her attention distracted, and just then, the young girl reached across the table and grabbed her laptop. In a split second, Lizbeth turned toward the girl and scrambled up on the table for her laptop. But it was too late. The girl had already passed the laptop, like a baton, to the man behind her. That man was Raymond. He took the laptop, open and logged in, and headed for the exit. He flashed a big smile as he passed Arcole.
TWENTY-ONE
IT was another lunch-and-learn session at the police station. The lunchroom was packed because it was Arcole and Natalie presenting their famous digital-partner case.
“Excellent work,” someone said from the crowd. “Good presentation.”
“Thanks. We’ll take questions now,” Arcole said to the crowd.
“So they found the entire chat history?” someone asked.
“Yes,” Arcole said. “It painted a picture of a bitter and vindictive person.”
“In fact,” Natalie added, “when Gabriel was standing on the bridge, he actually chickened out. On Lizbeth’s instructions, Vinur screamed at him to climb back on and finish the job.”
“It had such control,” said a voice in the crowd.
“Gabriel was emotionally fragile, and his digital partner knew him intimately. It knew what it needed to do to get him to jump,” Natalie said.
“What a vile and disgusting person. What was the motive?”
“Power. Revenge. Her belief that no one would find out,” Natalie said. “Lizbeth’s initial idea was to spy on Gabriel and Nancy. That’s why she suggested he try Vinur for his depression. But when she realized how easily she could influence Gabriel through his digital partner, her goals changed. The power made her vicious. That’s when she hatched her plan to ruin their life. She had always lived under Nancy’s shadow—she was a beautiful, smart, assertive woman who walked all over her. This was her revenge.”
Someone raised a hand. “Yes,” Arcole said.
“I’m interested in knowing what led to the slipup. Why did she get in touch with Vinur without hiding her IP?”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” Natalie said. “She had booked this trip with a guy she was dating at the time. And the night before they were to leave, Nancy and Gabriel had a big fight. I guess, in her haste to find out what happened, she couldn’t wait for an encrypted channel.”
There were no more questions.
Arcole turned to the crowd and said, “This is Natalie’s last day at the office. She has finished her internship and will be going back to finish her studies.” He felt tears well up in his eyes, and he choked up a little. “I’ll miss her.”
Natalie gave him a big hug.
Later, in the office, Arcole didn’t feel like doing anything. He didn’t even feel like playing his card game. He was thinking about going outside for some fresh air when Natalie showed up at the door.
“Okay. I’m leaving. Stay in touch,” she said. “Oh, I have something for you.”
“You do?” Arcole stood up and came out from behind his desk.
Natalie handed him a paper note. “Melodia’s contact details. Now you have no excuse not to call your daughter.”
“How did you find them?”
“I’m a detective, Martin,” Natalie said. “What’s important is that you call her.”
Natalie gave him a quick hug and disappeared. Arcole stood in the middle of the office and looked at the piece of paper. Then he went back to his desk with determined steps. He had an important call to make.
**
A word from the author
Thanks for reading this story. Hope it was well worth your time. If you enjoyed it, I’ll appreciate it if you could leave me a brief review on the website. A line or two would be more than enough. I’ll get invaluable feedback, and other readers with similar taste might find it useful.
If you’d like me to write more stories in the “Detective Arcole” series, then please consider joining Arcole readers group. It’ll help me gauge interest and I’ll use the email only to announce future book releases in the series.
Rigel βlu
Copyright © 2017 by Rigel βlu
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, organizations and events in the book are fictitious and a product of author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First Edition: 2017
Table of Contents
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Copyright
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