The phone rang several times before it was answered.
"Jason McCarthy here." The voice answered sounding like the speaker's main focus was something other than the telephone.
"Jason. This is Tad Wentworth. How've you been?" I said, probably breaking his train of thought on what ever else he was working on at the moment.
"Tad. It's good to hear your voice. It has been quite a while."
Over the years, Jason and I had worked on several projects for Intercontinental and had also collaborated on some academic research. It had certainly been a while since we had talked, but Jason and I were the kind of friends that the passage of time does not diminish. In detective work and research, it is your blind spots or the things you don't see that are often the most critical. And no matter what you do, it is impossible to see your own blind spots. When Jason and I worked together we had no blind spots between us. I would always see what he was missing and he would always see what I was missing. As a team we couldn't be beaten, which was why we had worked on so many Intercontinental projects together. When we got together to solve a problem. It got solved.
Frank Haggerty had listed Jason McCarthy as one of his dissertation advisors. On the strength of that alone I became a strong advocate for Frank during the hiring process. I had meant to call Jason and get some background, but I knew that if Frank had been Jason's student, then Frank had to be first class. Jason would not have kept him otherwise.
"Jason, I'm doing a little follow up on one of your old doctoral students. Some funny things have happened and I need a little background."
"What did he do, Tad, hack into your computer." Jason kidded.
"No. That's not it." I said, not completely sure that he hadn't. "He disappeared under some unusual circumstances."
"What's his name?" Jason asked.
"Franklin V. Haggerty." I answered.
There was a silence at the other end for a moment and then Jason's voice came across, cautious and deliberate, the way he sounded when we were piecing together a puzzle.
"Franklin Haggerty wasn't a doctoral student, Tad." He began, slowly. "Shit, this is going to get complicated."
There was a pause and then Jason said "Tad, I need to check out a few things. I'll have to call you back."
"Jason, can you give me a hint?" I asked, badly wanting something to go on.
"I don't want to say anything until I have some facts," he said. "I'll get back to you just as soon as I can."
With that he hung up. I sat back in my chair trying not to think about all the possibilities. I felt like I might be under siege so it was time to circle the wagons. The first thing I needed to do was to see if Angel had reset the passwords.
Angel was enjoying having Frank's office all to her self. She had put up a poster depicting a scene from the Bhavagad Gita with a Sanskrit caption. Next to it was poster of Woodstock with the caption - Summer of Love. And clap, I thought to myself, but didn't say anything.
She was busily organizing all her administrative papers. Frank was organized, but Angel was compulsive. It made me feel better because if we were going to be under siege, having a compulsive systems administrator was one of the best protections.
"Angel, did you change the Administrator passwords?"
She looked up at me and said, "You asked me to didn't you?"
"I know I did, but I have to make sure. I think we might be targeted by some hackers."
"I changed them." She said with calm confidence.
"And did you deactivate all the user accounts."
"Yes. Just like you said."
"Good. Let me know if anything suspicious happens. Anything at all."
She paused. "Well there is one thing that stuck me a little odd. I don't know if it's anything important."
"What is it?" I asked, my heart jumping into my throat.
"I got an email. It sounded like it was from one of those fortune cookie programs. The odd thing was that it didn't have a return address."
"What did it say?"
She retrieved the message and read it. "You are good to your guests. They are welcome any time."
She looked up at me. "I don't get it. Does it mean anything to you?"
"No." I said. "You're right, though. It does sound like a fortune cookie."
My mind was racing trying to create patterns and match them against other patterns. One of the biggest risks you face when trying to piece together a puzzle like this is getting drawn off the track with false leads. I was thinking - fortune, good fortune, bad fortune - cookie, cookie files. I wondered if the note had something to do with the project we had just finished where we used pilfered cookie files to order goods on the web. But the note just sounded like a fortune cookie. It didn't actually use the word cookie. I made a mental note of the possibility and dismissed it from my mind. Good detective works requires you to be open to all possibilities without dwelling on any of them. It takes a lot of mental discipline and emotional perseverance. I felt that both were going to be taxed to the limit before this was over.