Late Nights

By Faith Ersland

I had promised my wife, Olivia, I would be home at five, yet as the clock ticks past seven, I still haven’t left my office. But I can’t help it, I love my job. I would tell you exactly what I do for a living, but it is quite classified. Lucky for me I am good at solving any problems, including facing my wife who expected me to be home two hours ago. Olivia believes I just work for a tech support company, so I told her that our servers were down, and I had to stay late to fix them. You know, honey, lots of companies are counting on me to get things up and running. She believed my fib since this happens a lot in my line of work. You know. Late nights.

I am not alone though. Joe Enza, my partner, is here too, working the case. Not surprising since he is just as much of a workaholic. In fact, Joe gave me a run for my money on the whole dedicated-to-what-we-do thing. He always sees the job through to the finish, no matter how hard the case is to solve, although his inflated ego can drive me nuts. But we all have our faults, and I appreciate Joe. I worry he is running out of time and won’t have any hair left by the time he gets serious about settling down.

“Are you going to stare at me or help me figure this out, Doyle?” Joe cracks a half smile on one side of his face like he is trying to hide his amusement. “Just admit that you can’t think of anything I haven’t already thought of on this one and that I’m miles ahead of you. Miles and miles.” Really neither of us has anything. A crime that we can’t tell you about and no clues on any suspects. Okay, I think it’s safe to admit something had been stolen. A secret. But that’s the most you’ll get from me on that.

“So whoever did this broke into the lab after hours and made out with the laptop. Foreign agents? The code books were stolen too. Motive? To sell on the black market?” All right, but that is it! I won’t tell you anything else about what was stolen.

“Doyle, only someone with insider access could know the weakness of the office.” They move off-camera and into the shadows. Joe brushes his long hair back and wipes his bald spot. He always sweats excessively when he gets agitated. “And most damning of all, they have a code to open a door. How?”

“More like who, Joe. There aren’t many people who even know this place exists.” I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling, closing my eyes to concentrate.

“Well, if we were surrounded by morons, by a bunch of lazy slackers, we wouldn’t be surprised someone let this happen.” Joe squints his eyes as he concentrates. I chuckle, thinking about how Joe characterized our office. Not the fairest assessment in the world. But, well, maybe a little true as well.

“A bird probably swooped in and picked up someone’s code book. With your luck, that seems likely.” I shouldn’t tease him about the birds. No one in the world has more problems with birds than Joe. Once, a bird literally dropped on his shoulder while he waited for a perp to pass, left a mess on Joe’s shoulder, and flew off while the perp got away, with Joe cursing the bird’s existence.

“Right, Doyle. A bird. Next, you’ll tell me that a mouse pulled the cord for the camera, which is why we lost the footage when they got to the one place the camera completely covers.” I had to laugh to myself. If there was one thing that caused Joe more grief than birds, it was mice. Joe once had a handwritten witness statement half eaten by mice during the night. They must have thought it would be something interesting to read in their nest. What luck, to be cursed by two different types of animals.

“A mouse…”  I can tell Joe is pondering something. “Doyle, what did you do with the old security system? The one that had that old computer with the terrible mouse?”

Odd, I hadn’t thought about that system in forever. “I took it home. I set the camera up to see if raccoons were getting on our deck, moving my grill stuff around.”

Joe’s face paled. “Weren’t the plans for this place on that computer? If someone accessed those, they would know exactly how to sneak in and out of here unnoticed.”

My eye starts to twitch. “My place is secure. No one gets in without me knowing. Let alone a spy for another country.” My heart races, telling me everything is okay, that it can’t be possible.

“How long has Olivia worked for the insurance company?”

My voice is barely audible. “Eleven years…”

“How long have we suspected a leak? Ten?” He is right of course. Ten long years of this or that going wrong. “Doyle, can you access the footage from your home the night the laptop went missing?”

With sweaty palms I open the file for the footage of that night. There I was, going to bed. There was Olivia, leaving the house. And finally, there she was, returning in the middle of the night holding a bag with a laptop sticking out of the top. How could I not know after all these years? How could I miss the signs?

“Oh Joe… I don’t know what to do!”

Joe knows. He is already dialing the police.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Faith Ersland is a Junior at The Lutheran High School of Kansas City. She enjoy sports, the outdoors, and is a Volunteer and Junior Caretaker at the Kansas City Zoo. These are also topics that she enjoys writing about.