Not So Hidden Treasure

Thanis McGuffin presses the round plastic power button on his PC and blows the steam off of his coffee cup as the monitor lights up. He sips the cup apprehensively and swears out loud at his impatience. His lips sting with the burning sensation from the ghost of boiling coffee past that is not upsetting his stomach. As the sensation returns to his lips, he begins to taste where the scalding has now past his tongue and reaches for another packet of cream.

Dumping the small cup of cream into his mug, he spills a few drops on the keyboard as he attempts to login while attending to his coffee. He feigns a sense of confidence as if he does this sort of multi-tasking all of the time even though no one is watching him. The status bar slowly ticks towards 100% loading as he thinks to himself how much he needed a newer computer if this job pans out. He glances at the post-it note on his desk with the name Gregory Larker. A study of the last name gives him more comfort as it is not a common sounding last name and it looks American enough not to be a common name with which he is not familiar.

The speakers shriek a triumphant, high pitched tada noise causing Than to nearly knock over his coffee onto the stack of papers on his desk. The papers don't have any meaning, but the mere sight of them legitimizes him as a private detective with experience and plenty of cases to show for it. He couldn't let the man in the $1,000 suit not cut quite wide enough to conceal the bulge of what he assumed was a gun that had shown up that morning think he was a rookie. He had been fired from his job as a computer lab monitor for abusing his computer rights and ignoring his responsibilities. Coincidentally, he was caught while printing out the certificate for completing the at home private investigation online course. He had aced the forensics question and was able to correctly guess what Occam's razor indicated. The certificate was now hung in his office with a phone notary seal he made with sunflower seed impressions and a pin.

Than clicked on the small blue icon to launch a web browser. He thought about how much easier the PI business would have been 50 years back if they could have googled their suspects to find them. After the search results for Gregory Larker asked him if he meant Gregory Parker or the Gregorian Lark, a web page from an old geocities space came up. The page listed itself as the home space for Gregory Larker of Bulmot, Massachusetts. This was turning out to be easier than he had imagined. The site had no pictures, but listed a link to his facebook profile.

Than clicked the link and watched as the picture loaded showing a man in his mid-twenties with curly black hair and a day's worth of facial hair. He listed his hometown as Bulmot, but he had himself listed under the San Francisco network of contacts. Even his bio matched perfectly and then some to the story told to him be the gun toting suit he met that morning.

"Greg was a pharmaceutical lab assistant working on a breakthrough cure for various forms of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma when his lab caught fire taking all of the data and research in the lab. Luckily, Greg held onto the backups of the research, but went into hiding when he discovered the fire was set intentionally. I am currently in hiding and can not be found anymore. I will continue my research outside of the reaches of those wishing me harm. My cell is 510-833-6868 if you need to reach me."

If only every case could be this easy, Than thought to himself. Jumping onto the Southwest.com site to book a cheap flight to San Francisco, Than began mentally packing his bags and shopping for a new laptop.