She dragged the tip of her finger across the touch-pad to highlight the email, then gave it a quick double tap. A new window opened on cue. The body of the electronic communication was simply, “HEAVY SYMBOLISM OF THE SEASON. MERRY XMAS.” Below the body was an attached file, the name of which was a series of seemingly random letters and numbers.
Constance drew her finger around in a circle on the touch-pad, making the cursor slowly orbit the file name on the attachment bar along the bottom of the email window. Pausing, she picked up her cell phone and scrolled the text message onto the screen again. Nothing helpful. Just “CK PRSNL EML.”
Looking back at the computer screen, she rested her finger on the touchpad and began to circle the cursor around the attachment again. Last minute assignments, documentation missing from a case file, cold shoulders from colleagues, weird houses, strange rural cops with something to hide, and now this… Things were turning a little too cloak and dagger for her liking. Office politics were bad enough, but this seemed like something more.
She stopped and picked up the cell phone again. She thumbed through the numbers in the personal phone book until she reached the entry belonging to her SAC. Something was definitely wrong here, and as much as she hated the idea, she feared some of her fellow agents might be involved. As she highlighted the number and allowed her thumb to hover above the TALK button, she once again took notice of the pearlescent pink manicure that graced her nails courtesy of Merrie.
She brought her free hand up and inspected the lacquered tips of her fingers. Sheriff Carmichael’s stern remark from the previous day echoed inside her head. “ I’ll do whatever it takes to protect our little girl… So will anyone else here in Hulis. And just so you know, that’s not a threat, sugar; it’s a promise.”
The words definitely weren’t empty. There had been something in his tone that told her as much. And for some reason, at this very moment she was feeling just as protective of Merrie Callahan as any actual resident of the town, including Carmichael.
Constance chewed on her lip for a moment, then looked back at the cell phone in her hand. Shifting her thumb, she dropped it down on the END button and cleared it back to the home screen without making the call. Laying it aside, she returned her attention to the notebook computer and slid the cursor over the top of the file, then quickly tapped twice on the touch-pad.
As it opened, her anti-virus software blipped onto the screen, announced that the file was clean, and allowed it to open. She heard the disk drive whirring, then the installed media player automatically loaded. A few scant seconds later, Burl Ives was belting out Silver and Gold from the built-in speakers.
Constance stared at it for a handful of seconds, then puffed out an annoyed sigh and fell against the back of the chair. A damn Christmas song. What kind of a joke was this? Did the email even have anything to do with this case? Maybe she was starting to have hallucinations brought on by the exhaustion, and her brain was just leaping to conclusions that it wouldn’t otherwise. Maybe the email was just a greeting from a friend who was playing with her, and that was all. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“But what about that date?” she mumbled, thinking aloud.
She checked it again. Then she double-checked herself just to be sure. It still read “12/25/1975”, and that just couldn’t be a coincidence.
She slid her fingers up through her hair and brought her hands to rest on the back of her head. The knot where she dinged her scalp was still tender, but she didn’t care at this point. She simply held on as her chin drifted toward her chest. Then she let loose with another sigh.
Maybe the date really was just a bizarre fluke. Could it be that she was reading too much into all of this? Not just the date on the email, but everything?
“ Lex parsimoniae, Constance…” she mumbled aloud. “ Lex parsimoniae deus damnat…”
The law of parsimony. Occam’s Razor. She needed to step back, look at the simple explanations first, and then work her way forward from there. Don’t make it complicated unless it proves itself to be so. She was allowing the fact that she was feeling spooked to turn some clerical oversights, a conversation with a jerk agent, and a hyper-observant small-town sheriff into a rampant conspiracy theory of her own making.
She knew better than this.
She knew she knew better than this.
She closed her eyes and contemplated her faulty reasoning. Burl Ives was continuing to croon in her ears, but she wasn’t really paying attention. However, her internal focus on self-recrimination was diverted by an unexpected noise.
She listened closely, and then it repeated. Her stomach was rumbling. No big surprise. Except for the slice of “apology pie” from the sheriff, she hadn’t eaten at all today.
Maybe that would help. She knew from experience that you could think much better with something in your stomach, so she did a quick mental inventory. There were some emergency energy bars stashed in her suitcase; she knew that for sure. She never traveled without them. There should also be a military surplus MRE in there too. She always kept one in her “go kit,” because you just never knew where you would end up, or if you’d have access to food when you needed it.
Her gut gave another low growl. It was telling her that an energy bar wasn’t going to do the trick. It wanted something more substantial, but the MRE didn’t sound very inviting. You could easily live on one for two or three days if you rationed it out. That’s what they were designed to accomplish. However, whether or not your taste buds would survive was a different story entirely. Besides, tomorrow was Christmas Eve and she was going to be stuck on surveillance here in Hulis. Those vitamin-enriched, preservative-laden military rations could very well end up being her Christmas dinner, as unappetizing a thought as it was.
Surely something was still open. It was dark outside, but it was still relatively early. She should probably head out now before the snow became too thick, not to mention that this was a small town. They probably rolled up the sidewalks right after the evening news.
Her stomach issued yet another gurgling pang, so she decided to give in. She didn’t recall hearing the end of the song, but Burl had finally stopped singing to her about silver and gold decorations, so now was as good a time as any to just get out and clear her head.
“You need a vacation,” she told herself aloud as she sighed, then dropped her hands, lifted her face, and opened her eyes.
That was when she saw it.
The media player was paused, and in the center of the screen was a small, rectangular window. Inside its borders was a winking cursor, and above it a string of text that said, “ENTER ENCRYPTION KEY.”
She blinked just to be sure and then continued staring at the screen. Maybe Occam’s Razor was a little dull this time after all. Now she just had to figure out what the encryption key was.
Behind the newly opened window she could see the original email. The text still read, “HEAVY SYMBOLISM OF THE SEASON. MERRY XMAS.”
She was sure that was a hint, but at the moment it wasn’t much help.
She reached out and rested her fingertips on the home row of the keyboard, keeping her touch light. She thought about the tune that had played when the file opened and then tapped out SILVERAN; however, the DGOLD wouldn’t fit. The field was only allowing eight characters, so the song title probably wasn’t it. It was too easy, anyway. She backspaced and pondered some more. A pair of false starts later she typed in SLVRGOLD. Maybe too easy was where she needed to start. After a bit of trepidation washed over her, she hit enter.