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The first thing I saw in Dusty’s desk was a card key badge with a blank space where the photo should be. I surmised it must be her access into the building. In her haste to get out Dusty had left it behind, but I couldn’t decide if I should be equally hasty to snatch it up.
I then spotted some sticky notes containing long character strings written in pen, consisting of letters, numbers, and special characters. What else could they be but passwords?
I pulled out my phone to snap a photo of the passwords, then contemplated whether I should pocket her key badge too.
On one hand, if Dusty came back from this experience unscathed, she would know exactly who had stolen it. I would be the only suspect. Although I was certain she would never get police involved, she could have people at her bidding who might do me worse than law enforcement.
On the other hand, the way Dusty pivoted smoothly from sophisticated thief to assassin made me pretty sure she had killed before. The mixture she gave me certainly wasn’t Gatorade powder, meant to replenish the poor, overworked, dehydrated mailman’s electrolytes. That concoction was intended to murder him, and most likely had done her in too.
With that thought, I felt pretty sure Dusty was never coming back, so I seized her badge.
To test my assumption about the gadget I let myself out, let the door shut behind me, then put the badge against the reader. A green light went on and I pushed the door back open. I had unlimited access to her office now, at least for the time being.
I went back to my student apartment, stretched out on my meager bed with its mattress that smelled faintly of urine, and thought about how dull normal life seemed now, after taking my leap up the ladder of crime. Could I continue as a college student? Following the head-rush of committing an act that most likely amounted to murder, could I stay focused on my studies?
I popped open a beer and drank a toast to my Mother. Then I drank a toast to my previously unknown sister. After one beer quickly became five, I threw one down for my newfound Father as well. Somehow the discovery I had not been spawned in a petri dish, but had a viable, biological sire, made me finally feel I belonged to the human race. As such, I was a qualified participant in the other race so eagerly engaged in by hominids, the one for money and power.
As the suds went to my head I pondered my next move. What exactly was I planning to do, now that I had Dusty’s badge and passwords at my disposal?
At that exact instant my telephone rang, as if my thoughts were being monitored from afar. Without so much as a polite hello, a female voice spoke on the other end.
“Good job, brother. Have you been paying attention to the local news?”
“How did you get my number?” I asked, trying to sound pissed off, though I felt secretly pleased to have an ally in life, a kindred spirit.
“I don’t have anything to do all day except hack people’s files, and I found your contact information in your former boss’s things, right there on your application. So have you or haven’t you? Something tells me what happened isn’t exactly an accident.”
“No I haven’t seen any news,” I admitted.
“Tsk tsk brother, I expected better of you,” she said, but in a way more teasing than critical. “I’m sending you a link right now.” And with that my sister hung up.
I immediately saved her number, then looked down at my phone. The link was to the Snowmist Sentinel, a local newspaper’s website that reported on things like restaurant openings, dog shows, girl scout jamborees and the like. But the dull fish-wrap also covered local crimes, which were almost always minor, as well as public emergencies and accidents. My sister’s link led to one such smashup, on the corner of Hall and Spencer.
I knew the intersection, out toward the I-25, about three miles away from the dogwalking business. It was located on a wide, three lane stretch of road with few stop lights. At less than peak traffic, it was very tempting to put your foot down and gun the motor like hell on wheels out there. This is exactly what high-testosterone young men did, racing their fast and furious rice burners late at night, when they sometimes flipped over and went airborne into a ditch. In their oil-slick wakes they left a profusion of colorful roadside crosses, blooming like daisies along the roadway.
Not that commuting motorists in broad daylight were any more law abiding. Colorado leads the nation in aggressive driving and speeding violations, and we’re fifth in road rage. We do reckless driving right in the Centennial state, at full moon or high noon. We’re proud of it.
Under normal circumstances, the anonymous driver on my sister’s link would have added to this collection of prairie-madness-induced roadside crosses, if anyone cared enough to erect a monument to her. Even total degenerate scumbags have someone who mourns them somewhere, but in this case no roadside shrine ever appeared.
The Snowmist Sentinel was mum about the identity of the individual who had veered off the road at high speed, struck a light pole, then been thrown from the car through the windshield, apparently not wearing her seat belt. Tsk tsk. The collision injured her severely, but the paper wasn’t reporting death yet. I suppose they would wait until next of kin was notified. All the Sentinel said was that she was female. That’s a stretch, I thought with a grin, as the beer foam sizzled in my skull.
The Sentinel article included a photo of the crash site. Apparently, incautious words can get you into deeper shit than imprudent pictures. There, on the driver’s side door of the black Lexus ES, I could see a magnetic decal reading “Dusty’s Dogwalkers,” alongside Bruno’s caricatured, cartoonish canine face.
Cartoon Bruno was creased and battered atop mangled metal. The hood of the car undulated like an accordion, and there was a big bloody hole in the windshield.
Yep, that’s Dusty, I said to myself, my reaction completely devoid of feeling.
How was I supposed to feel? Triumphant? What had I won, snooping around her desk? Why had I stolen her key? What would happen if I behaved like she was dead, then she came out of the collision still breathing? What would happen if I showed up at Dusty’s office tomorrow, acting like I owned the place, and employees suddenly came out of the woodwork to accost me?
Well old boy, you’ve talked your way out of deep shit before. Certainly you could talk yourself out of that.
I decided I didn’t have much to lose. Alive or dead, Dusty wasn’t coming out of the hospital anytime soon. So I cut myself off on the beer, resolving to get up early and continue my exploratory raids before anyone could stop me.
I arrived at Dusty Dogwalkers at 6 AM, where Dusty’s badge flashed green and I let myself in, then got poor Bruno out of the van and took him into the office. He could shit on the rug for all I cared. No more living in a cargo compartment for him, he was family.
That done, I sat behind Dusty’s computer and began trying the passwords on her sticky note, one by one. Certainly that bitch must keep the main password in her head, I thought, who would be do dumb to keep it out in plain sight? But I guess the saturated fats from all that junk food had smothered Dusty’s brain. I unlocked her computer with the second password from the top.
From there, all I had to do was check her history, email accounts, etc., to figure out where she guarded her ill gotten gain, like evil Smaug sitting atop his pilfered treasure pile. This took a little more password probing, which worried me, because I know bank websites shut you down after three or four unsuccessful attempts, after which I would probably have to do a reset over the phone. Calling in on some random device would probably set off alarm bells over at the bank.
But my luck held out. Or dare I say fate had willed it? Whatever the case, I hit paydirt on try number two, when Smaug’s golden mountain of Erebor opened before me, minus smart-assed, fire-breathing reptiles.
I gave myself a mental fist pump, then unleashed a gasp when I saw the quantity Dusty had in the vault. From his resting place on the floor Bruno saw my shock, and looked up at me inquisitively.
“That’s a lot of dog biscuits, boy,” I said, scratching his head.
Greed immediately tried to hijack my good sense. My first thought was to transfer funds to my own account, in the event Dusty came back hale and hearty. Then I started thinking long-term.
If you do that, the bank will shut this shit down right away.
The important thing was gaining access to Dusty’s misappropriated money. I had control over her entire world, basically. As I sat there with Bruno placidly napping at my feet, I scrolled through her emails, unraveling how the whole slimy network worked. I uncovered the names and numbers of her other “Dog-walkers,” plus the credit-card number grabbers, plus the people who picked up the illegally obtained merchandise at the scattered landing pads. The operation stretched north-south from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, east-west from Greeley to Boulder.
Reading Dusty’s communications, I learned where she conducted her operations on the dark web. I soon found the Tor onion icon on her Start menu and was able to log in quicker this time, now that my plundered password list had been whittled down. I knew there was no search history in Tor, but Dusty had incautiously bookmarked a few places. From that I was able to find her OnionMail, leading me to the site where she marketed the merchandise.
I had basically everything I needed now, to either blow the lid on the operation or rob Dusty blind, depending whether she came back or not.
Browsing through her files randomly, I came across another folder marked “D.” Such a cryptic name had to hide some good shit, so I clicked on it.
It didn’t contain much, just a handful of PDF files. I opened the one on the top left and saw it was a death notification, published in the Snowmist Sentinel, dated three years ago.
The obit was for one Derrick Wilson, who had passed away at the tender young age of 35. The cause was listed under the very vague umbrella of natural causes, which could have been anything. It had all the usual boring blah blah blah – how the dude was survived by his loving mother, brothers and sisters, the funeral arrangements, etc.
Derrick meant nothing to me. What I found interesting was the black and white photo accompanying the snippet.
It showed a smiling Derrick – a tall, thin, but otherwise non-descript white guy with dark hair, standing next to the same van I had spent the past couple of weeks working out of, except its side read Derrick’s Dog Walkers. A much skinnier Dusty stood next to him, holding Bruno on a leash. She looked bored and annoyed, like she didn’t particularly care for Derrick, but was forced to pose for this publicity photo. Judging by his sneering, smug smile, I didn’t think Derrick’s family was grieving too much either. He looked like he had a big bug up his ass. Bruno was the only one there who appeared of genuine good heart.
“That’s you boy!” I said, and the dozing dog’s eyeballs flinched a tad, making me wonder what dogs dreamed of. Do they dream with their noses instead of eyes, sniffing out trails they only fantasized about in real life, like those in an unrestrained meadowy Eden with all the she-dogs they could hump? Or are they tormented by nightmares of fighting against the leash, enslaved to some twisted human’s evil intentions?
Dusty’s conniving expression in the photo told me exactly what kind of natural causes killed Derrick. Holy shit, the Star Wars references in this story were getting out of control. Help me Obi Wan fucking Kenobi! The dog walking chain of command operated like the Sith – one master, one apprentice. You only moved up from apprentice by killing the master.
Natural causes my ass. The bitch murdered him.
I opened up a second PDF, another article from the Snowmist Sentinel, reporting a porch piracy ring throughout the growing suburban bedroom communities along the Front Range, Snowmist in particular. The thieves were snatching Amazon and other packages from front porches, targeting the homes of the elderly and those lacking doorbell cameras. Sound familiar?
So when Dusty took over, she had the good sense to get the dog walking operation away from that crude criminal model. She created a much more sophisticated and profitable network, stealing credit card numbers to buy expensive merchandise which was dumped on front porches, then marketed on the Dark Web. I had to give the bitch credit for the brains to take it to the next level.
And now the next Sith apprentice had murdered the master, and would take this thing even higher.
Before I could do that, I had to verify Dusty was never coming back.
The computer read 2 PM on the dot when I shut it down. “Come on Bruno let’s go,” I said to the big dog, who emerged from his bitch-humping dreams and scrambled to his paws eagerly. But just then someone banged on the door.
Bruno pointed toward the entrance with one paw in the air, but muffled his barking to a couple soft woofs. He was well trained in the clandestine nature of this dirty business.
Who the hell could it be? Obviously somebody who didn’t have the key, meaning either cops or Dusty underlings, who didn’t get the memo the bitch wasn’t coming to work in the near future.
I waited quietly to see who showed up, hunkering lower in my chair and keeping still, stroking Bruno softly to calm him down. A couple minutes later, a phone rang.
It wasn’t my Turquoise Hexagon Sun ringtone by the Boards of Canada, but just a generic boilerplate jingle, like that of my own Dusty-issued burner phone. Who the fuck was calling?
The ring came from behind. I looked back to see four flip phones charging on a power strip. I decided to pick up.
“Yeah what’s going on,” I said, acting like I owned the place, which it looked more and more like I did.
“Where’s Dusty?” an indignant male voice on the other end said.
“Dusty’s not available right now. I’m filling her chair while she’s gone. What do you have?”
The caller got all tongue tied, reluctant to talk to a stranger.
“I want to talk to Dusty.”
“I told you she’s not available right now.”
“When’s she coming back?”
“I’m not sure. She’s away for an extended period.”
“Well that fucking sucks! Who the hell are you?”
I didn’t like this punk’s attitude at all. He sounded barely off the teat, but was barking orders at me. I decided to go on the offensive.
“Was that you pounding on the door a minute ago?” I asked, raising my voice.
“Well, yeah,” he said, sounding embarrassed, losing some of his bravado.
“Didn’t Dusty tell you not to come here unless ordered too? Especially not raising a ruckus like you were doing out there?”
I could hear the teen squirming in his skivvies on the other end.
“Yeah, but…I kind of had to. It was an emergency.”
“What kind of fucking emergency is so important you’re banging like a goddam gorilla on the door? Were you about to shit your britches, or what?”
The kid had suddenly become repentant of his sins. “Uh…no. I forgot my Flipper there on the desk when I came in to pick up my packet.”
The Flipper was his card skimmer. I had already learned the terminology, sitting in the command chair.
“Why don’t you say it a little louder, idiot, so everybody can hear you?” I could get used to this boss thing.
I had completely shamed the poor boy into silence now. While he collected his thoughts, I searched the desk top. Buried among the junk food wrappers I spotted a little white box that looked something like a video game controller.
“Can I come get it?” he said sheepishly. I really had him by the balls.
“No, fuck no,” I said. “We’re under lock down for a while. Call back day after tomorrow. And don’t be so fucking careless from now on, or that’s it for you.”
The kid hung up all butt hurt from my dressing down, then Bruno and I left the building and set the alarm. Crooks always set the goddam alarm. My slobbering fur baby partner in crime had spent his entire life inside Dusty’s van, and at first he required a little coaxing to get into my cramped jalopy. I resolved to upgrade my wheels to something more respectable, to both dog and man, pending the outcome of the little errand I was embarking upon. Yes, the stupid pun was deliberate.
“I promise we’ll go see sis after this,” I told him. It felt weird to say sis, but satisfying too. Yeah, my family was all fucked up, but at least they were family.
I drove to the UC Health Snowmist Hospital, where I put on Bruno’s fake comfort animal vest, then took him inside to inquire about Dusty at the visitor’s desk.
Bruno was mobbed like a rockstar in there. Kids and old ladies rushed him to gush and scratch his skull. He lapped up the attention, and with this kind of cuteness in her presence, the information desk lady couldn’t exactly say no to me.
She asked if I was family.
“No, just a good friend,” I lied.
The info desk clerk was a fifty-somethingish, pudgy, graying blonde woman, one of those smiling great souls who was foolish enough to do a tough job on a volunteer basis in the name of Christian charity, while the corporation she slaved for raked in triple digit millions by ignoring Christianity altogether. She was probably a person who saw goodness in everybody, and must have seen something resembling sincerity in my eyes. Of course, Bruno’s real puppy dog eyes carried the day. He didn’t have to act.
“Your friend has checked out,” she said softly, “Permanently, I’m afraid.”
Kurt Cobain said that the finest day he ever had was when he learned to cry on demand. My own eyes were glistening with tears as I leaned over the desk, where the volunteer clerk was putty in my hands, totally convinced of the depths of my sorrow. She even handed me a tissue.
I went away from the hospital that afternoon feeling empowered.
The next morning I sat upon my new throne. I was Lord of my domain, with a pile of money beneath my feet, and the thunderbolts of Thor at my command. It looked like Dusty had run the racket by herself. I was on my own, with no usurpers waiting in the wings. Even if someone did challenge my succession, they would be fighting an uphill battle against my divine right, upheld by the information empire I had access to. My electronic tentacles spread across the Front Range, controlling a vast network of operatives who answered only to me.
“Let’s go walk the dog,” I said to no one in particular as I logged into my empire. This would remain my favorite corporate catch phrase in the years to come.
My own destiny would not be leashed. Henceforth, I refused to bark up trees for any self-appointed masters. Nor would I be content with the table scraps of low level theft. I intended to steal on a massive scale, and do it legally. Why risk my freedom running some petty racket, when I could commit robbery with the full blessing of the law?
I didn’t squander the pile of loot I sat upon, but invested it shrewdly, in fields that had varying degrees of risk, from coin to bonds to standard stock market fare. In this way DW Corp gradually evolved from a money laundering, strip mall pet care firm, into a mighty brokerage house that took care of the money of big billionaires, especially those involved in marginally legitimate foreign dealings, where the profit potential is lucrative but the underworld know-how is slim.
Just as I had been able to sniff out the potential of a front porch, I had a nose for back doors too. Back doors yield you much more than going through the front, if you do it in the light of day, with the full blessing of corporate oligarchs and their political puppets.
This writing has not been the typical motivational speech I give at corporate conventions. I deliver a highly sanitized version there, about how I scraped myself off the ground like so much dogpoop and then, through hard work and diligence, became an entrepreneurial visionary in the dog eat dog industry of canine care, then beyond.
At events attended by hundreds of fawning flunkies, I make it sound like heaven will scratch you behind the ears if you just work a little harder and a little longer, as if Franklinesque self-determination always results in the fulfillment of the American Dream. Those boot-licking dupes howl in delight, none realizing I’m walking them like dogs. They might do five to ten in some state pen, but I’ll never spend any hard time locked in a kennel.
At the climax of my sermon, just as I’ve got them walking down the aisle on my own leash to come to Jesus, I add the other take-away from my dog walking experience, minus the dirty details that nobody needs to know except me. When life throws you a bone, you’ve got to grab it.
THE END
