Chapter 03

Velma was quiet on the P-Car ride back to Detroit from the meeting with Amanda. She spent most of the time looking through her notes and organizing and reorganizing which was a surefire clue that something was running through her mind. They got out of the P-Car at the hotel and made their way to the room. She immediately pulled out her computer to get a larger screen, pulled up those same notes, and stared at them.

Shaggy knew that talking aloud helped her to think but she would not start it on her own, "What have you got going on in that brain of yours?"

"Dogwalker." She said.

"Okay. The dogwalker. That probably explained the calls Scoob made to a burner phone here. He was coordinating with the dogwalker… but…"

"Exactly!" Velma was nodding, "How did the dogwalker get the burner phone?"

Shaggy scratched his chin where the goatee used to be so long ago, "I'm stumped. If Scooby had provided it, then it would have been recorded on his computer, but he left that and you went through it with a fine-toothed comb. Could you have missed anything?"

The glare she gave him answered that question, "No, I couldn't have missed anything unless…"

"Why do you always do that?"

"Do what?"

"Stop a sentence in the middle on 'unless' and wait for me to say unless what?"

"Dramatic effect. Well?"

"Fine. Unless what?"

"Unless there was a second computer."

Shaggy slapped his palm to his forehead, "Of course there was a second computer! Why didn't we think of that before?"

"Because we're morons."

"True enough about me, but what's your excuse?"

"I just didn't think of it. We checked to see if Scooby had used a burner phone. But a burner computer?"

"He outsmarted us."

Velma nodded, "Yes, he did. But that's not important. What's important is whether this will help us to find him now."

"Is that possible?"

She was now typing frantically on her computer, "The Cloud."

"The Cloud? Oh... Right. I had forgotten about The Cloud. Was that still going on when Scooby left?"

"Yes, and for a few more years after. It wasn't until computer speeds started getting faster and The Cloud's constant syncing couldn't keep up that people starting getting tired of it. Then when hackers were able to start stealing data directly from the cloud around 2027 or 2028, it was abandoned."

"Is all that data still somewhere?"

"It's the internet. Everything is somewhere."

"Do you think you can find Scooby's burner computer?"

Most of Velma's mind was on what she was doing, "I don't know. But I'm sure going to try."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Feed me and force me to go to the bathroom and sleep. This is going to take a while."

And take a while it did. Shaggy would order room service. When it came, he would place the plates, glasses, and cups next to her. And then he would remind her to keep eating until she had consumed enough to count as a meal. When that phase was complete, he cleared the plates and the trolleys took them away. Making her get up from her work was harder. Shaggy had to reach in through all of her holographic projections and place his hand directly on her A-Eye, threatening to take it away and turn it off. She only physically swatted his hand once before giving in and heading into the restroom. The hotel room was small and, for his own benefit, he added showering and toothbrushing to her list. When she got out, it was late night and he had locked her A-Eye in the room safe with a random password and would not give it back to her until she slept. He then wrapped his arms fully around her in bed (not unusual) which kept her from getting up without disturbing him. She was Velma and even a random password would only hold up so long.

Surprisingly even to her, she had slept well. As she dozed, her mind stretched out looking for the different threads of the mystery and trying to weave them into a coherent tapestry. No matter what she had said through the years, she loved solving mysteries.

"Sun's up." Velma's voice roused Shaggy. She had awakened about an hour earlier but did not believe that she could convince Shaggy to give her her freedom in the dark. She needed the dawn.

"Say what?" Shaggy's voice was groggy and he smacked his lips. The breath needed work.

"Sun's up. It's tomorrow. I can get back to work now."

Velma's deadpan delivery struck him as funny, but he didn't laugh. She pulled his arms from around her and rolled over to go back to sleep, "The password is 4852."

Velma thought for a second, "That's not random. It's a checkmark on the keypad."

"Yes, and you would have given it lower priority because it wasn't fully random. Probably would have gained me as much as twenty minutes."

"I always forget how good you are at deception."

"That's me." He went back to sleep after some more lip smacking.

The next day passed much like the last. Shaggy got bored and called Sarah and Nan. It was during the workday and the conversations were short and distracted. They both expressed interest that he and Velma were starting their retirement off in Detroit. But the interest was casual and neither of them was suspicious that their parents were doing anything other than choosing an odd vacation location. Their parents were boring people and, in their memories, always had been.

As the sun was setting, Shaggy was lying on the bed reading a new novel. He had a little trouble following it since the new novels ran at 40,000 words and had revived the 2010's style of non-chronological storytelling but with a vengeance. The latest style was to keep the reader from knowing what was happening until the very end when it all came together. Very artsy but tough to read. Or maybe Shaggy was just becoming a curmudgeon who didn't like new things.

"Shaggy?" Velma was staring at her screen.

He said "Close book" to his A-Eye and the holographic book disappeared, "You need something?"

"No, but I might have found a clue."

He jumped up from the bed and bent over next to her, "What is it?"

"I found a collection of folders on a server in Canada that has a 72% match rate with my list of search terms. The dates and other metadata work."

"72%? Is that good?"

"The best I got before now was 8%. It's pretty good."

"Let's open them up and see what we've got."

She typed quickly as she spoke, "Not quite there, yet. Searching within folders is one thing but actually opening them is another. Since these were Cloud files, there is going to be some form of encryption… and it's going to be 35 years old which will be relatively simple by today's standards… and… we're in!"

The screen filled in with numbers.

Shaggy looked at the scrolling numbers, "Just numbers. What format are they in?"

"They're IP addresses. Let me try a reverse domain name look-up."

As soon as she typed in a command, a bright red placard appeared in the air in front of her screen with an exclamation point on it. An A-Eye bot voice began reciting the following message:

Warning: The website which you are accessing has been associated with criminal activity. The laws of the United States and Canada do not make it illegal to access these, but you are being officially informed that you will be tracked for the entire duration of the time that you have them open. This warning is provided by the United States and Canada Joint Task Force on Internet Crime. Do you wish to reply?

Velma looked up at the flashing exclamation point, "Yes."

Please state your reply.

"I am a private detective working a case and have a listing of sites which I must access. Many of them are likely to be associated with criminal activities."

Please state your name and license number.

"Velma Dinkley, 774809642."

That is a valid number and your statement will be noted. Please state your understanding that your activities will be tracked.

"Understood."

Thank you for your assistance in keeping the internet safe from criminal activity.

The red placard disappeared, and Velma and Shaggy looked at each other. Shaggy looked back at the screen, "Well, that was something."

Velma nodded, "Yes it was. The main thing we just found out was that Scooby was on the Dark Web."

"Scooby? He wouldn't even know what the Dark Web is?"

"Since I believe that these are his files, then that assumption is in error. Our Scooby did know what the Dark Web was, and he used it."

"But Scooby Doo isn't a criminal!"

"Not everyone who used the Dark Web was a criminal. Some people use it to hide their trail. It's very complicated to track someone through the Dark Web retroactively. After 35 years, it will be nearly impossible. That's why the Supreme Court reinterpreted Amendment IV of the Constitution to consider Dark Web access as probable cause and allow real-time tracking of an individual's Dark Web activities."

"So, we can't track Scooby's actions through the Dark Web."

Even without emotion in her voice, Velma managed to sound offended, "I said 'nearly impossible'. I didn't say 'impossible'. Now step back and watch me do my thang."

"Your thang?"

"Damn straight."

Shaggy stepped back and watched his wife do her thang.

Which was not nearly as interesting as it sounded. He returned to the book and decided that it was not only incomprehensible but also boring. Then he tried watching some holos but there was something about watching shows during the daytime which just seemed odd. He had trained himself through the years that watching holovision was something done at night.

He told Velma that he was going for a walk around the hotel. She didn't reply. She was totally in the zone. As always when he visited one of his hotels or restaurants, his walk started with the kitchen. He missed the days when a kitchen was a place of hustle and bustle filled with people and yelling and steam. Lots of steam. A small team of chefs still remained and oversaw the preparation but so much of the mundane tasks of cooking such as chopping and peeling were now done robotically. Human hands did not get involved until the final ingredients were being put together. Many restaurants now did not even have that much human involvement but turning the cooking completely over to robots required mathematically defining what was meant by a 'dash', or a 'pinch', or a 'splash'. At that point, Shaggy believed they were no longer cooking but simply processing food. He would not have it in his restaurants.

A younger sous-chef looked up, "Can I help you, sir?"

Shaggy smiled, "No thank you. I'm just looking around."

The sous-chef was about to say something else when the head chef interrupted, "Shaggy! It is great to see you again."

Shaggy met with all of the head chefs in his restaurants, but he didn't remember all of their names. He discretely pressed a button on his A-Eye and the names of everyone within ten feet of him were whispered into his ear by the device. The first name rang no bell and must be the sous-chef. The second name he recognized.

"Hello Henry. It's good to see you again, too. How are things going here?"

"Everything is fine. But I wanted to speak with you about the Vegan menu."

Shaggy tilted his head, "Vegan? Are you bringing that back?"

"God no! But since we discontinued it, we no longer order cacao nibs and I used to cheat the cacao nibs into some of our other dishes. Most specifically, the Skyline Chili recipe. It is just not the same with baking chocolate. It's your recipe, would it bother you if I ordered the cacao?"

Shaggy smiled broadly, "I don't think that changing out baking chocolate with cacao violates the integrity of the original recipe. I approve."

"I hoped you would say that. They were delivered this morning."

This made Shaggy laugh out loud, "Good man! Easier to get forgiveness than permission. And now you have both."

Shaggy then walked through the restaurant. He didn't bother any of the diners by going up and speaking to them about their meal. That just wasn't done anymore. But two sets of people recognized him and asked to take his picture. He spoke with them until the conversation began to fade and then made his excuses and left. He had done his part as the face of the company and now felt that he had earned the free accommodations.

When he returned to the room, Velma was leaning back in her chair and not typing on her holocomputer.

This was not what he expected, "Are you okay?"

"Yes. Just resting my eyes. I'm not as young as I used to be."

"Any progress?"

"Of course. I confirmed that they are Scooby's files and also confirmed that the law firm he called on his phone in Los Angeles was working for him. They, of course, refused to talk with us before which means that your talents are now required. Meanwhile, I'll keep digging." She turned back and started to work again.

Shaggy now had his own task and that was to get a meeting with a law firm that had categorically stated that they would not assist in any way. A plan was needed which included deception. This was his thang.

He lay back down on the bed, shut his eyes, and thought through options. He needed to fool trained legal minds long enough to get in the front door and then needed something which might make them assist. The first plans he came up with involved elaborate costumes, fake accents, and lengthy rehearsed lines. But, as he went over the plans in more detail, they simplified until it all came down to getting the help of one or two people. A call was made, and the plan was on its way.

"Velma, pack everything up. It's time to go to Los Angeles."