Fred Forchelli - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 – The Hints

Fred did not bring the manila folder home with him that evening. He wanted to get started on his investigation in the morning. But that did not stop him from thinking about the case. As he lay in bed waiting for sleep to overcome him, he considered not the “what” about had happened in this case, but the “why” – in particular, why had he been selected to investigate this mystery. Who was behind it, and why did she think him worthy.

With that thought, Fred stopped abruptly and opened his eyes. He had just classified his client as a “she”! The piece of paper and the message from the so-called operator at McCloud’s had been anonymous. And he did not recall any female associations from the cover letter – just the pronouns “I” and “my”. So why did he so automatically presume that the client was a “she”?

Was it just because his name on the piece of paper and the manila envelope and the signature of “A Friend” on the cover letter were in such flowing script? Fred considered others who had such bold signatures. There were several of his fellow investigators/lawyers who had similar styles of writing – and many of them were men like himself. Their bold script just matched their bold and confident personalities.

Or was Fred presuming that his client was a victim of these perpetrators – if that’s what they were – and victims were often women? Why did the idea of his client being a woman flow so easily from his semi-conscious mind?

As Fred considered this question, his eyes again closed, and the excitement of the day having given his mind such a workout, he fell asleep with no solution to his “why”.

 

Fred arrived at work early the next morning. He was almost taken aback when he opened his office door as everything was so neat – it had probably been a couple of years since it had been in this shape. He mentally challenged himself to see how long he could keep it this way. Fred got his laptop out of his briefcase. He also plugged in the power cord. He would need to do some detailed investigation through the power of the Internet so he’d leaved it plugged in all day.

But he also pulled out a new pad of yellow lined paper from one drawer of his desk. While he liked the power of the computer for doing research, he still preferred taking notes the old-fashioned way. But, unlike many of his fellow lawyers, he used 8.5x11 pads instead of the 8.5x14 “legal” pads. His recycled Goodwill desk only accommodated the smaller format in 9x12 manila folders. Another few “why” questions – of many that would occur in the coming days – crossed his mind. Why are 8.5x14 pads called “legal” pads? And why did lawyers, alone among all the professions, continue to use them?

Thus prepared, Fred began his review of the “hints” from the envelope he had received yesterday.

 

He began by re-reading the cover letter – looking for clues, not about the identity of his client, but clues about the case. The second paragraph was quite telling with phrases such as “right some wrongs,” “bring some perpetrators to justice,” “misdeeds,” “need to be stopped.” It was obvious that his client was referring to some sort of illegal activity – but of what kind? It could be fraud, blackmail, even murder. The comment in the next paragraph about possible danger to himself suggested that the latter was a possibility. And why did his client worry about the damage to her [there was that pesky feminine attribution again!] career? Fred made a few cryptic notes about the feelings that he got from the cover letter. Then he removed the paper clip and started reviewing the pages of “hints”.

There were a total of six pages – four copies of newspaper articles, one copy of a police report, and one grainy picture. Ignoring the urge to put the newspaper articles in chronological order as he felt his client may have had some “method in their madness” in putting them in the order she[?] had, he began reading the first one.

This article was a report in the local section of the paper about the annual Chamber of Commerce recognition event from a couple of years ago. It was a long article, so his client had cut it in two and laid the two sections side-by-side in the copier. There were awards being given for “Local Change-maker”, “Community Ambassador”, etc. Some of the awardees and the companies they worked for were familiar to him, but others were not. Not knowing what he was looking for, Fred decided to so some high-level investigation on each one. He used his laptop to see if the individuals were still employed at the same companies in the same positions or if they had moved on. For the ones he did not recognize, he looked up their past history, if they were new to the area or long-time residents. He came away with a renewed sense of pride about the city and the many great people who lived here.

The second article was totally different. It appeared to be cut from one of the “society pages” from about a year ago with a whole series of short articles on marriages, engagement announcements, births, etc. But the job of cutting it out of the newspaper seemed a bit sloppy. The left-hand cut was a slight bit too far to the right and the first character of each line had been partially cut off. And the bottom cut of the center column had sliced right through the middle of one of the announcements. Because there were so many announcements and so many names of individuals – all unfamiliar to him – it took him nearly two hours to look each one up, finding contact information or addresses for each one, and diligently recording all that on his pad of paper.

But his timing was good as just as he was finishing writing down the last of his findings, there was a knock at the office door. With his new infusion of funds from this client he had decided to splurge and have his lunch delivered from the fast-food place on the next block instead of walking there himself. After paying for it and giving a tip to the young man delivering it, he cleared a space on his desk and began eating. A six-inch sub, fries with one of those ketchup packets, and, of course, his typical large diet Pepsi. It was not only refreshing but gave him a chance to rest his mind (and his fingers) from the intense research of the morning. He was no closer to knowing where all this was going, but he had a lot of raw material to work with. Wiping his mouth and his fingers with one of the overly-generous pile of napkins that had come with his meal, he cleared the wrappers off his desk and started on the next article.

It was a business feature article from several years ago. There was an old, abandoned farm several miles outside of town where oil had been discovered. With the renewed interest in fracking, it was then going to be profitable. Fred had driven through that area on several occasions and had seen all the equipment, but had not been aware of the history of the place. The reporter in this article was primarily interviewing the two men who had acquired the large farm and who were just getting started with drilling operations. They both had long unpronounceable last names that appeared to be of Eastern European origin. There was also a rebuttal from some local “green” organization who did not like the idea of drilling for oil.

Fred did some checking on all the names in the article. The men with unpronounceable last names were no longer to be found and the drilling/fracking company was now owned by a sizeable corporation. The local “green” organization was also not to be found and Fred surmised that they had been absorbed into some other protest group.

Finally, Fred got to the fourth article. It was extremely confusing as it consisted of several small advertisements and partial articles, many of which had been truncated by the process of cutting out that section of a page from the paper. As he puzzled over what to make of it, there was a knock at the door – the second one of the day.

Opening it, he found a delivery person, a young woman, from Amazon who was carrying the box containing the fan that he had just ordered the previous day. Marveling at this one-day service, Fred took the box from her and thanked her as she took a picture of it for their records and left. Getting a pocketknife from his top desk drawer, he opened the large brown box, then the smaller fan box inside, and extracted the fan. Setting it on the windowsill, he plugged it in, turned it on to the low setting and reveled in the cooling effect of the breeze on his face. Yes, he thought, that was an extremely wise investment. He wondered why he had not done it sooner! Saving the instructions and warranty, Fred temporarily put the two boxes on the visitor’s chair in the corner. He’d dispose of them later in the large recycle bin behind the building.

Turning back to the fourth article, Fred looked closely at it. Since newsprint is fairly thin, by looking at the areas in the copy that did not have writing or shading, one could detect that there was printing on the other side of the paper. It was not readable, but one could tell where lines started and ended. He than had an epiphany – the individual who had copied the article had put it upside down on the copier. What he was looking at was the back side of that cutout piece of paper! What a colossal mistake – or was it deliberate?

Turning back to the second article that had also bothered him he examined it closely. Because the printing was so dense and there were few white spaces, it was more difficult to make out, but it appeared that this copy as well was of the reverse side of the intended article. Had he wasted all those hours this morning (and all those pages in his pad of paper) investigating individuals who played no part in this case? His day was a lot farther from done than he might have thought!

 

< Prior Chapter | Next Chapter >