Wait a minute, Mr. Postman

MD2 1300hrs, Zenya's Room
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Jim had written a little Visual Basic (yuck!) program to automatically search and rank the 'phone numbers used by Mr. Ted to connect to his post box. He seemed to connect frequently. Jim looked at the results with increased frustration. He may be explicit online, but the guy was no fool. All of the connections were made from a series of numbers, but Jim believed them to be false trails. It looked as though the guy was routing his connections through other 'phone lines to avoid detection. It did mean that another thing to add to the profile was that he was, perhaps, a computer technician or software engineer. But how useful was that?

'Not very', he concluded. Jim began to realise that the only way he would get a location on the guy was to try to get the BBS admin onside. If he could get them to allow a trace, then perhaps they could follow the trail. He managed to find one of the admin in a chat room. Not the most professional place to conduct business. He requested a private chat, and got it.

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**And I am President Clinton, USA. What can I do for you Agent Reaper?**

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**SEP ;-)) ** NRPG: Somebody Else's Problem

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**No can do. BBS is for the world, not to trap crim's**

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Jim knew he wouldn't. As a Comp Sci himself, he knew the BBS principles of open access and freedom and agreed with them in general.

**Sorry....**

!!WizWord has left the Chat Room!!

'Damn it!!' he cursed silently. 'If you won't help me, I guess I'll just have to help myself...'

He decided to place a monitoring program on the BBS. The only thing he would have to do is provide a sequence of messages which would be posted every so often, otherwise the BBS software would terminate his connection. That didn't take long, and with the tracing software afforded him by the Bureau, he knew if the guy would just connect and stay on long enough, he would get him. The only other addition was an alert which would e-mail his cellphone with a 'phone number for Mr. Ted, all being well.

There was nothing much else he could do. He set the screen saver to tell anyone who looked at the laptop not to tamper with it. With not a lot else to do, Jim decided to go for a poke around at the house where Leo and Zenya were almost incinerated. He didn't suppose he'd find anything, but with nothing else to do, it was worth a try.

As he pulled up to the remains of the house, he began to realise how stupid it was to come here. It was a heap of ash, and he wouldn't find anything. Still, he was here now and so got out of the car and walked up the path. He stepped through what was once a wall, with only some charred beams remaining. It really was a mess inside and Leo and Zenya were lucky they got out in time. He scuffed the ash around with his shoe. Nothing. Then he saw a china doll, almost totally intact. 'They should build planes out of this stuff,' he thought. 'A doll always seems to survive a plane crash.' The doll seemed to have lost its hair and dress, but the body was intact. As he picked it up, part of the back fell off. The doll's back had been used as a compartment and contained some papers. Looking closely, he saw that most of it was bad poetry and stuff about love and being a miserable teenager. He took out a plastic evidence bag and dropped it in anyway. Leafing through the rest, he came across a couple of 'photos. One was of a woman, probably Rebecca's mother and the other was some old wood cabin. Remote. Isolated. Just what they might need right now...

Even if he had a knowledge of the local area, Jim doubted he would be able to pinpoint the cabin exactly, but the photo was a start. Perhaps the Sheriff would be able to tell him of a holiday retreat or something where the cabin might be. Instead of going around to the Sheriff's straight away, he decided to go to the Hospital and meet up with Vanessa.

He arrived at the hospital just in time (not!). He saw Vanessa and Zenya disappear into the autopsy bay. Since he was there, he supposed he had better attend. Besides, if they caught him waiting outside, that wouldn't do anything for his hard man reputation!!

NRPG:

This post is mainly to provide another possible investigation route (the cabin) and to get Jim back involved with the others so, sorry if it is a little vague.

Respectfully submitted,

FCO Ensign Olivier Patru, USS ORION NCC-1997, Starfleet.
Private Eoin McDonald, Ranger, TEAM LEO, Ragnarok.
Special Agent-1 Jim Reaper, X-Files Division, FBI.
Ar'Aman Bowright and Darar, Daere Warren, DragonLands.

aka Peter Shillan.