A/N: Italics are Duncan's internal monologue.
December 21, 2005
7:01am
Veronica and Duncan left very early in the morning and headed over to Selkirk's place, parking across the street. Selkirk's building was an eight-story postwar apartment building, of the kind with a single unit per floor, without a doorman.
"So what are we waiting for anyway?"
"For Selkirk to leave for work."
"How do we know he'll be going to work? I mean, maybe he has off for the holidays or something."
"Well, if VenTech is in a race with Kane Software to get this killer app to market, do you really think they'd have their top programmer taking off for the holidays?"
"Good point. I remember my mom telling us how she barely saw Dad for the three months they were finishing the development of streaming video."
"Uh, yeah."
"Oh man, you're right. I just realized. I have to go wash my brain out now."
"Save me some bleach."
"Wait, I think that's him."
"Yeah, but he's walking his dog, so he's probably not heading to work just yet."
"Wait, if he has a dog, isn't that going to be a problem as far as getting into the apartment?"
"Leave that to me."
"I knew you were going to say that."
"'Who is the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?'"
"Ha ha. Let's just hope the force is with us."
7:32am
By this point, Selkirk had returned from walking his dog, and was just exiting the building.
"Okay, he's getting into his car, so we'll go as soon as he's out of sight. Okay, let's move."
As they crossed the street, Duncan asked "so are we just going to try buzzing up to random apartments and hope someone let's us in?"
"No, we'll just unlock the door."
"Do you have a key?"
Veronica just snorted. "Just stand in the doorway and try to block the view from the street, so just be as wide as possible."
Once they reached the doorway, Veronica fished her burglar's tools out of her purse and, in only about a minute, picked the lock.
"Do you think anyone saw us?"
"No, I was pretty wide."
"Okay, let's go. We'll take the stairs, less likely to run into anyone that way."
Once they were inside the stairwell, Veronica handed Duncan a pair of surgical gloves and put another pair on herself.
"Why didn't we put these on before?"
"Because it would have been like carrying signs that said 'burglars.'"
"Of course."
Once they reached the sixth floor, Veronica examined the door to Selkirk's apartment.
"Crap. Medeco."
"Medeco? What's Medeco?"
"Medeco locks. This guy's got a deadbolt and a regular latch, both Medeco."
"Okay, I still don't know what that means."
"Regular locks, like the one on the door downstairs, consist of a cylinder you have to turn to open the latch, but there are pins through the cylinder that block it from turning. There are gaps in the pins that will allow the cylinder to turn, but each pin is a different length, so you have to push each one down just the right amount to turn the cylinder, which is what the key does."
"Or what you do. So what's up with Medeco locks?"
"Medeco keys," said Veronica, fishing her own keychain out of her pocket to demonstrate, "are cut with angles in the teeth, as you can see."
"Sure."
"That's because the pins are angled. So you don't just have to push the pins the right distance, you have to push them at exactly the right angle, which is all but impossible without the key. Makes Medeco locks virtually pick-proof. This guy is serious about keeping people out of his apartment."
"How inconsiderate of him to try to protect his property. So what do we do then?"
"I said virtually."
As Veronica began working on the deadbolt, the dog began barking from within the apartment.
"Aren't you worried someone'll hear the dog barking?"
"What if they do? They'll probably just figure he found a mouse or something. Barking dogs are like car alarms. No one pays any attention."
8:04am
The deadbolt clicked open. "Yes, finally!" Veronica wiped her forehead on her sleeve and, putting down her lock picks, she interlaced her fingers and pushed her hands away from her body, cracking her knuckles. Shaking her hands out, she asked Duncan "so how long was that anyway?"
"About half an hour."
"Not bad, if do say so myself."
"The regular latch will be easier, right?"
"Nope. The only difference between a latch and a deadbolt is that the deadbolt pretty much has to be picked, a latch you can just drill through. But since we're trying not to leave signs that we broke in…."
"Right."
8:41am
Veronica turned the latch. Just as she opened the door a crack, the dog, who had been barking the entire time, began nosing her way out the door, trying to bite the intruders.
"Duncan, take the knob, don't let the door close again."
Veronica began fishing in her pocket for a small plastic bag. Removing a few brownish cubes from the bag, she instructed Duncan to open the door just a crack, and then tossed the cubes inside. A few minutes later, the dog fell silent. Duncan gave her an inquisitive look.
"Liver treats, Backup loves them. Of course, I don't usually lace his with quite so much temazepam."
"Temazepam?" Duncan asked as they crept into the apartment. "Where'd you get that?"
"The pharmacy."
"Have you been having trouble sleeping?"
"No, why?"
"How'd you get a prescription for temazepam then?"
"I just lifted a few sheets from Dr. Levine's prescription pad at my last checkup."
"Of course you did. You also forged his signature?"
"Oh, that was the easy part. See, he pressed down hard enough on the previous sheet to leave an impression of his signature on the next sheet. I just traced along it, hard enough to make another impression on the sheet below that."
"Brilliant. How'd you know you'd need temazepam?"
"I got a couple of different medications. You never know what you might need, so it pays to always be prepared."
"You're like a girl scout. Is the dog going to die?"
"Don't be silly," answered Veronica, leaning down to stroke the now slumbering terrier mix behind her ears. "She's just going to have a nice long nap." With that, she headed further into the apartment.
"So do you think he's just got the file open on his desktop?"
"Well let's have a look," answered Veronica, sitting at Selkirk's desk. Duncan leaned over her shoulder. Selkirk had left his computer on, but in sleep mode; Veronica moved the mouse to wake it. Examining the programs menu, she said "This isn't very encouraging. Kane software was working with the algorithm in C, but I don't see C or any other programming languages here. No C, no Assembler, nada. Let me try looking in the hard drive."
"If there's nothing there, try the documents menu; it might be there if he's worked on it recently."
"Hmm, mostly just mp3s and porn."
"Lovely."
"I'm going to take a wild guess that he mostly just uses his home computer for entertainment, email, and web-browsing. Let's try checking his email though."
"I doubt it'd be there."
"No, but we might something else useful. Rats. I had hoped he had one of those things where the program automatically remembered the username and password, but no such luck."
"Well, you should be able to get the username easily enough."
"Sure," answered Veronica, reaching into her purse for a manila folder. "Part of the file your dad gave me was various emails Selkirk had sent. Ahh, here we go."
"But how do we get the password?"
"Let me show you a trick a little blue-crested birdie taught me."
"Opening up the keyboard buffer?" Duncan asked as he watched what Veronica was doing.
"Exactly. I'm impressed."
"I do happen to know a few computer experts."
"Let's see, it looks like his password is 6lg0d$q. And we're in."
"Anything promising? Doesn't look like there's anything unread."
"No, but here's one from I guess that must be his sister Linda."
"What's it say?"
"'Cal, please be careful. I'm really worried about what you're doing. I read in the papers about this Jake Kane, and that goon of his. You don't get to be as rich as Jake Kane without being pretty ruthless, and I'm worried he might send someone after you. He probably has plenty of pretty rough customers working for him.' Did you hear that? I'm a 'rough customer.'"
"Everyone's afraid of you."
"That's how I like it."
I'm getting to be afraid of you. You pick locks, you forge prescriptions, you drug dogs. You're like a criminal or something.
"Nothing here that really looks useful. Some work-related stuff, but they only refer to the project—if that is what they're referring to—in the most vague terms. His web-browser history isn't much help either."
"More porn?"
"'Fraid so." Veronica put the computer back to sleep.
"Now what?"
"Well," said Veronica, as she got out of the desk-chair and crouched down by the side of the desk to begin rummaging through the garbage can, "We could try tapping his phone line."
"I don't think his phone line is in the garbage can."
"Really? But his phone bill might be. See?"
"What?"
"There's virtually nothing on it. And look, the phone's practically buried under a pile laundry."
"Practically everything in this apartment is buried under a pile of something."
"Yeah, but the point is, I get the distinct impression that he uses his cell phone as his primary, maybe even only, phone line. So there's probably not much sense wasting a bug on his land line." Veronica went back to rooting through the garbage. "Ah, see, here. His cell phone bill. Much more informative."
"Whom did he call?"
"That's not what so interesting. Look."
"So he gets Bluetooth. That's hardly surprising for a computer programmer."
"No, but it's very helpful for a private eye. Come on, we've got we need. Let's head over to his office."
10:37am
On the drive over to Palo Alto, Duncan glanced over at Veronica, who was staring out the window.
When did you become like this? This whole badass super-spy detective thing, it's so, so different. I wonder how much of it's my fault. If I hadn't dumped you, if I'd been there for you after Lilly died, if I had defended you when everyone started trashing your reputation, if I hadn't run off that morning, maybe you'd still be more like you used to be. I guess a lot of it's my fault. If, if, if. I love you so much, but I was such a lousy boyfriend. So much for love being all you need.
"So, what are you thinking about?" he asked her.
"Just making a plan for when we get there."
To be continued….