Chapter 11
As Mara drove from the Police, she thought of what she would need to take for her stay at her mother’s. She felt good about the suggestion of Detective Taylor’s to find a safe place to stay. Since her mother lived in New Hampshire, that put a little physical distance between her and anyone who might be willing to do her harm.
Detective Taylor. Dell. What kind of a name was that? Actually she rather liked it. It probably was short for some aristocratic European family name. Like many people, he probably didn’t even like it that much. “Be realistic” she told herself. Why was she thinking of him instead of the issues at hand? She did note the absence of a ring, in fact, she didn’t see any jewelry on him except the watch. What was with her and older men anyway? Not that he was old, probably eight years or so older that she. Could he realistically solve this case? Would he give it enough priority or was she simply another witness in another long day of ongoing investigations? Did he think her story and suspicions were reasonable? Or just the troubled musings of a paranoid nutcase. She had to put him out of her mind and focus on what she needed to do.
She was still baffled as to what really happened to Chris. Even though knowing that he likely was dead from a logical sense, she still needed to understand what happened. She couldn’t let what little unrealistic hope she had for his safe recovery to die just yet.
As she approached her neighborhood, the thought dawned on her that she should make a stop at the office. She should probably let Will know what was going on, if she could find him. Plus, today would be the day the e-mail restore of her deleted messages would be available. If she didn’t look today, the messages would simply get deleted again tonight. Also, she had no ID card. She could go in through the front door past the receptionist during the day. Once she got to her office, she could get a replacement ID card. For once a benefit to working in Human Resources. They were the ones who issued ID cards, so it would be relatively easy for her.
So, she turned around and headed the other direction back to the office. She parked in the small lot in the front of the building reserved for visitors and went in through the front. Getting past the receptionist wasn’t too hard since she vaguely recognized Mara. When she got off the elevator, someone was just happened to be coming through the double doors that led to her area so she could just breeze right through without needing an ID card to gain access.
Once she arrived at her section of the floor, she set about making a new ID card for herself. The security cards could be replaced on a temporary or permanent basis. Permanent cards took longer as a Photo of the employee was needed and an entirely new account was created. This was because the old account associated with the old card had to be deleted to prevent one finding the old card from gaining access to the facilities. Temporary cards simply were that. Someone who forgot their card could get a temporary for the day which was simply a duplicate of the regular card minus the photo and only good for a limited time.
She accessed the employee database and went to the section where the ID card details would get loaded to the card printer. She did not even have access to create new cards. Someone at her supervisor’s level had access to more sensitive data and would be needed to authorize the creation of a new card. But she could create temporary cards for existing employees. She put a blank card in the security card writer which then created a temporary for her with an expiration of the maximum of one month. She had to log the card as issued. All temporary cards were reviewed regularly to be sure the employee found and began using their regular card. She didn’t expect to get her card back, but she would worry about a permanent one later. This would be fine for a few days.
She got back to her desk and started up her computer. While it was booting, she went through her voice mail messages. She had more than she had hoped so it took a while longer than she anticipated.
Anxious to get to her e-mail she opened the e-mail in tray by selecting the icon. She noted there were several new messages. But she wanted to see what was in her ‘deleted’ folder. She knew that the messages that ‘Vince’ restored to this folder last night would only be available for today. There were several more messages in the deleted folder. These would be the messages that were deleted today as well as those put back in from last night’s deleted restore from last week. Since she had not yet deleted anything today, these were all messages from last week. There among the messages from various people and departments within the company was one ambiguous message listed as:
[email protected] She selected it for read and waited a second or two for the contents to display. As she began to read the message, fear and excitement mixed to give her an almost surrealistic sense of extreme alertness. The message read:
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] (Mara Chandler)
Subject: Anonymous Mail Relay
Message: Mara, don’t worry about how you got this message, No choice. Important! Tomb of Rivest discovered at Viiradium! They know I’m here! I have to go...
Chris.
She could kick herself for not reading this message the first time she had it before deleting it. She didn’t understand the message, but it seemed that he was into something after all! What the hell was the ‘Tomb of Rivest’ anyway? It’s at Viiradium? That doesn’t even make sense. The part about ‘they know I’m here’ sounded pretty foreboding, like he was in some kind of trouble. Why didn’t he simply e-mail her the message instead of using this surreptitious anonymous relay technique?
Obviously, now more than ever, it seemed that Viiradium must be somehow involved. She had to get this printed onto paper and then delete the message again. She selected the print function and walked directly over to the department printer to wait for the output. She didn’t want someone else accidentally picking up her print with theirs. After retrieving it, she stuffed the printed copy into her purse. Now she had to decide how to deal with the e-mail message itself. She reconsidered deleting it because if she deleted it, it would not really be deleted until later tonight as she was now familiar after talking with Vince. She wondered what would happen if she deleted it from the “deleted” folder. Probably nothing. So she decided to move it from the deleted folder into one of her many project folders.
From here she could “protect” any file by assigning a password to it, so she selected the protect function and entered “fr33Ze” as the lock word. This fit the principle rules of password selection: easy to remember, hard to guess. She simply thought of the password as ‘freeze’ but by using 3’s instead of e’s made it much harder for someone to stumble or hack their way into something private. The protect function actually encrypted the original message itself so at least it would be a little more difficult for someone to find and decipher this way.
She felt even more urgent about getting out of here now. Something was definitely going on. She intended to find out what it was. But she did not have any intention of disappearing like Chris did. For now, however, leaving seemed the best choice.
She logged off and shut down her computer, collected her temporary ID card and temporary purse and headed out. She took a detour by Will’s office and ran into him just coming back from a meeting in the hallway.
“Will!” she began, “I wondered if you could do me a favor. I need to be away at my mother’s a couple of days and I don’t want to deal with my boss with explanations and such.”
“Is everything OK?” His concern showed through his response.
“Sure, it’s just with all that is going on, with Chris and all, I just need to help her a little”. This was a bit of a lie, her mother didn’t even know Mara was coming.
“No problem, I’ll let her know for you. If you need anything just give me a call. I really hope this thing with your Brother works out, especially knowing what you must be going through.” They parted with a quick good bye and he gave her a brief squeeze of the shoulder which is about all one could get away with in a business office environment these days.
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br /> She left the building through the main reception area since her car was in the front visitor’s lot and once more, headed back toward her place. As she drove through her neighborhood, her fear and apprehension heightened as events of the other evening came to mind. What if someone was still waiting? If they were watching, they no doubt knew she had visited the police. She decided that she had money and the only thing at her place she could get was some clothes. She had some clothes at her mother’s place and she could always stop at a drug store to pick up any personal items so she drove right on by her place and headed toward the main highway that would eventually take her to Ashbury New Hampshire.