MAN NAPPED - SANTIAGO (CHAPTER 02)

Day one (Saturday) – 15 hours after emergency alert

“What do we do now?” Daniel looked at Rachel, some trepidation in his eyes.

“Now we go to his house, for proper inspection.”

“What happened to breaking and entering?”

“We won’t be breaking anything” Rachel smiled as she talked “You have the key, besides, this is a serious issue now.”

They drove off towards Daniel’s home. When they got there, Adams opened the door with the key he had. The house had no gate; it was a three bedroom flats with an adjoining library. The sitting room looked as intact as it had been the previous night. There was no sign of breaking in.

They scanned the sitting room, nothing seemed out of place. Adams only had a key to the guest bedroom. However, he knew where Daniel kept his keys. Rachel wondered how Daniel would keep his keys in his house, Adams said it was because Daniel worried about losing the keys, if that happened, he would only have to break the main entrance door at the sitting room.

They moved on to each of the bedrooms and searched each room, again, nothing was out of place, other than a glass of drink on the dining table. Rachel took a sample of the drink to check if Dr Daniel had been sedated with the drink. Then they went into the library.

Rachel scanned the whole room, noticing the way the books were arranged. She felt something suspicious, like someone had gone through the books, then she called out to Adams.

 “Would you say Daniel is rough and hurried or neat and meticulous?” she asked.

“Option B” he replied.

“And does he leave books on the table after reading?” she said looking at the books on the reading table.

“No, I highly doubt it” Adams replied, noticing the books too. Then his attention shifted to something else on the floor.

Rachel went over to the books and flipped through the pages, the book was about the Ebola virus. She found nothing suspicious in the book. She looked into the computer on the table.

“Hey! Check this out.” She called out to Adams. “It’s password protected” she told him when he came closer.

Adams worked some trick for a while on the computer and in a few minutes, he motioned for Rachel to have a look “Here, it’s unlocked.”

As Rachel made to start sorting through the computer, Adams showed her what he found “Here, look at this. It’s his key bunch”

Rachel took the keys from him and looked at it. She felt something strange. She counted all the keys on the bunch. There were about eleven in total, his car keys weren’t part of the bunch.

“Does Daniel keep all his keys in one bunch?” She asked Adams.

“No” he replied and then said “He has three bunches, his car keys are a part of another whole bunch. The other bunch is a bunch of keys that open several rooms in this house. I have a copy of each of the keys on the bunch; except for the car keys of course. I’m the closest to family he has, I once lived here and that’s why I have the house keys. The third bunch is a bunch of keys to the places he has access to on campus.”

“Can you identify these keys?” Rachel asked.

Adams looked t it, some of them yes; others, I’m not so sure. He looked at the keys; he pointed out the keys and mentioned what they were for. Three of the keys only had a copy each on the bunch, Adam couldn’t identify them. He pointed one of the keys out and said “I think this key opens his office.”

“Good” Rachel said. “It’s the one that worries me.”

“Why?” Adams asked.

“My guess is these three single keys are each keys to a certain padlock” She pointed out the keys and continued “now, there are these two identical keys which are the same as the one you used to open the front door, meaning they are keys to the front door. These two you say you can’t identify. However I’m worried about these identical four.”

“You still haven’t told me why”

“You see, these keys come in fives. As to the front keys, you have one copy, there are two here, probably there are two others on the other bunch or maybe…”

“There’s only one on the other bunch. I’m sure of it” Adams said.

“And there’s no one else he could have given his key to?”

“No, no one else he held that close. He isn’t in any relationship that I know of.”

“Good, then my theory could account for it also. Daniel’s PA told us that no one else had access to Daniel’s office, right?” Adams nodded. “Which means no one else could have the key, from the pattern here, I think this bunch should contain all of the keys, instead there are just four here out of five. Or do you know if any of these keys are present on the other bunch?”

Adams shook his head and asked “So, what are you implying?”

“Listen, once in a while someone can enter Daniel’s office if permitted by Daniel. If you gain access into a room from which you probably wanted to steal something very important; something that would probably take a lot of time. What would you do first?”

Adams nodded his head in understanding “I would ensure I had more time.”

“You can do that by stealing a copy of the keys when you know the owner wouldn’t probably notice for a while. Now I know you said Daniel was very meticulous with certain things but if he had a very busy schedule and he needed to haste, would he count the keys on his bunch?” Adams shook his head. “I’m assuming there were twelve or thirteen keys on this bunch. The absence of two wouldn’t be enough for you to notice the difference in weight especially if you’re stressed. What do you think?”

“Seems pretty farfetched” Adams said.

“My theories are right 80% of the time” Rachel said, making a face at Adams.

“Alright, so where does that lead us?”

“First, we need to know when the key went missing. I think the only way is to see recent pictures of him with the key”

“Believe me, you’re talking to the right person” Adams said beaming. “I designed the network at Daniel labs.”

“Good.” Rachel said, cocking her head. “I still think we might learn a lot from this computer.” The both of them looked at one another for a while and shared a mischievous smile. They started packing up the computer into a carton and they carried it outside into the waiting car.”

******************************

In the car, Adams and Rachel agreed that they needed to gain entrance into Daniel’s office if they were to make any progress.

“I think you should go on a date with Janet. She’s pretty much into you.” Rachel suggested. Adams nodded and smiled in understanding.

“Don’t you think we should bring in the police?” Adams asked.
“You don’t think I’m good enough to solve the case?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just that we might be dealing with some very dangerous people here.”

“I’m sorry to break this to you, but we don’t have a valid case here to report. You said it yourself, the message you received could have been an error. The personal assistant has a message which was sent to her this morning from him stating that Daniel is out of the country. Now we both know better but would you give the police the explanation you gave me? They wouldn’t take it serious. See, wasting police time is a very serious issue, for all we know, he could really have travelled. He probably sent the message through the internet because that was the easiest way available to him. It is not unlike him to travel without informing anyone…”

“So you don’t believe me. “ Adams said

“No, of course I do believe you. I’m only presenting the arguments from the standpoint of a police officer. We both know there’s nothing they can really do. See, neglecting the fact that Janet received a message this morning, you are the only person closely related to him; there are no fights he’s known to be involved in. You are going to be the major suspect. See, I have resources in the force and I will seek their assistance when I need to. However, for now, we stay silent. You might not realize, but it’s not looking good for you here. The Police have a lot on their hands and they don’t like wasting time digging too deep into tough cases. We’ll bring in the CID when we have to, but for now, let’s try to go as far as we can on our own until we can entirely wash off your hands from this okay?”

Adams nodded grimly and brought out his phone to call Janet.

“Hey” he said…

******************************

Janet was very excited to have a date with Adams. She had been trying to make a move on him ever since she set eyes on him. That was about six months ago when he came with her boss to the lab. Then there was the time when he came to set up their computer network. That had been a chance for them to work together. Damn, the guy was just so good at everything.

They had arranged to meet at Tantalizers, close to campus. It wasn’t her first time being there; after all it was right beside her house. Her heart was beating rapidly as she entered the place, various aromas washing over her as she stepped him. About ten feet away she saw him sitting there smiling at her. She walked confidently over and sat opposite him.

“Hey” Adams said brightly, smiling at her.

“Hi” she replied, smiling in return.

They ordered some drinks and snacks and they chatted for about thirty minutes, talking about things that have happened in their separate lives since they first met.

After a while, Janet said “So, when are you going to get to it?”

Adams looked confused for a while and Janet said “The real reason why we’re here. You show up at the lab today with a lady asking for Dr Daniel and behaving strangely, you didn’t notice me even then. Almost three hours later, you call me to set up a date. Do you expect me to believe you suddenly realized I liked within those three hours or were you just so desperate to talk to someone?” she looked at Adams, he was smiling, otherwise his face betrayed no expression. She continued “Did someone ask you to try me out or something? Was it the lady?”

Adams shook his head.

“Tell me, Dr. Daniel is in some sort of trouble, isn’t he? You were suspicious about the message he sent me, you don’t think he sent it.” Her voice was rising and shaking “please tell me, what is wrong with him? Where is he?”

Adams cleared his throat and started “You’re right, Daniel might be in some sort of trouble. We think he has been kidnapped.”

Janet moved her chair behind and would have screamed if Adams hadn’t covered her mouth with his hand.

“I’m sorry” she said when his hand came off “But… What do you mean? When...? How?”

“Take it easy, the lady I came with in the morning is a private detective, she’s also my very good friend. We’re trying to find him.”

“Shouldn’t we report to the police?”

“Not yet, the detective has her views…”

“I don’t care what she says. My boss is missing, we should bring in the police.”

“Calm down. She’s the best detective you can get around, you can count on that. However, there are certain reasons why we shouldn’t report to the police yet. For now, we’re on our own. We just need your help in finding him.”  He looked into her eyes and said “I need your help” placing emphasis on the I.

Janet looked at him and said “what do I need to do.”

“You’re with us?” Adams asked.

“Why not?” Janet replied.

“Good” Adams said and called Rachel.

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