The next morning, as always, the sweet, sweet smell of coffee drew me out of bed and to the breakfast nook.
"Morning honey. How soon till we can get started?"
"The decryption should have finished during the night. I'll set up a program to do the preliminary analysis as soon as the courier gets it here. It'll finish running long before we get back. Then we can get to work on it.
"I'm not counting on much, if any, of the video being intact, given that the thief got in at all, but there's some that they probably didn't find."
"Ah, right, your sensors that weren't part of the official design Jane?"
"Right Mama. Those operate on very low power at several frequencies that you'd normally not find with a frequency scanner. The actual data storage is over 60 feet away in a locked closet in the back of a storage room for obsolete equipment. The dummy one is in with the servers for their computer system."
"Let me see if I got this straight Janie. You have two separate video systems?
(Oh God! I'd done it again, because I was groggy. Instructor mode incoming.)
"Yep. Just the primary one runs ordinarily, but when there is interference of some sort, as in part of the 'official' network going offline, the secondary video system is activated. It has miniature video cameras in the key offices and storage areas, and sends the video to a hard drive in a nearby office. It's the primary system that I'll bet that the thief found, if he or she was any good at their job.
"The secondary cameras are very small and hidden rather well, as is the hardware that stores their video. Even if our thief is paranoid enough to suspect a second system, they would never have time to search every room on 12 floors to find it.
"So... what I expect is that we'll have the normal 1 hour video loop from the main storage being blacked out at some point. Then the secondary cameras will have run until the alarm was tripped. Our thief should be long gone by then so there's no use to keep sending blank video. Once that happens, we turn off that system remotely and transmit a signal to copy all data that is still intact to a portable drive that is then retrieved by one of our employees."
"Geez Janie, that sounds way beyond James Bondish. That's a lot of hardware, not to mention what is probably about a couple days to install."
"We don't do that kind of installation except for the very nervous, and well heeled I might add. Even so, our actual costs are almost always under $3500, and we charge them between $15,000 and $30,000 depending on how big the company is. Most of them consider it...ah....I think that the term is 'chump change'.
"You know Mama, 'chump change' is an interesting phrase. It appears to be of African-American origin and first appeared in written form as early as, possibly earlier than, 1967. It's derived from..."
About then I could feel my eyes glazing over. No, I'm NOT going to ever mention it to Jane. If I did, she'd probably try to tell me about the origin of that phrase too.
"ENOUGH! STOP! Geez Janie, my brain is on overload already. I don't need to know that much. When I do need more than the general details, I'll ask, OK honey?"
Jane sighed. "Yes Mama, I know. That's what you say every time, but I can't help it. It's all so interesting!"
As usual she was bouncing up and down with excitement,and seriously ticking off Tigger who was herself, as usual, warming up in Jane's lap.
I suppose that her boundless curiosity and general excitement at sharing things with others is a good part of what made her so many friends. Like most teens, she behaved a lot better around them than around me. Peer pressure is a pretty awesome and potentially horrible thing. Fortunately she'd always had a sixth sense about those who tried to use peer pressure to manipulate others, and had stayed away from them as well as, somehow, making sure that her friends didn't get caught in that trap either.
Now that I think about it, it's probably one of the things that made all her friends love her so much. Knowing that someone is looking out for you, and also knowing that it isn't because they want something from you, is a pretty powerful attractant.
While we waited for the data processing to finish, we each called our people and explained that, no, we would not be personally getting involved in these cases. We were out of town dealing with another problem and had no idea when we'd be back.
I heard Jane telling her client that of course, the security system would be restored completely, at no cost to the client, as per policy. In fact, the crew she'd dispatched should be there within a few hours at most.
<
As soon as she hung up the phone, "Oh feldercarb!"
"What is it Janie?"
"Why don't people ever understand what a security system is for? It's not supposed to catch thieves, it's supposed to deter them. If your average thief, heck even your professional, knows that there's a high level security system on a building, they'll usually just find some equally lucrative target that doesn't have one.
"ARGH!"
After she'd cooled down a bit, Jane also let her FBI contact know what we suspected about the thefts. I could see her relaxing during the call. In fact she relaxed a lot. Probably because he'd told her the same thing that I had. You know words like "trap" and "fishing expedition" and such.
Here's a hint for you. If your kids have hobbies, use terminology from that hobby to explain things to them.
What? You don't know any? Well you'd darn well better learn. If I'd gone to Jane and told her that the thief's employer had instituted a plan to track us down by using multi-level deception, even her eyes would have glazed over, right after she rolled them at me.
But as soon as I said: "Fishing expedition," she understood immediately. Obviously she didn't quite believe me until the phone call to the FBI, but, even then, it never would have worked if I hadn't sown the proper seed in her mind.
Yes, raising children is work. Accomplishing anything worthwhile is work, and raising a child well is more worthwhile than anything else on Earth.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
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The data arrived, Jane went into her workshop, did something esoteric with her computer, then left the workshop and closed the door.
"What are you doing Jane? We need to see what's on the video."
I knew that I'd screwed up royally when she not only rolled her eyes, but flipped her hair AND snorted at me.
"Well, what?"
"Mama, humor me for a second. What's the date today?"
I huffed back at her, it was one of those days. "It's the 15th of course, so what?"
Jane turned and banged her head on the wall of the hall. Softly of course, she obviously didn't want to leave a dent. "Oh gods above. What did I ever do to deserve a mother this dense?"
She was wailing quite dramatically and, for a change, almost entirely sincerely -- at least as best I could determine.
"Look Jane, forget the drama and just tell me. I'm feeling kinda grouchy and sore today, OK? I was de-stressing on the training room last night and I sorta overdid it."
<
"Oh, OK Mama. Why didn't you say so earlier?" She smiled at me sympathetically, for real this time.
"Well, I suppose that it's my fault too. So what's the problem Honey?"
"I'm sorry Mama, I'm just so wound up with this coming on top of everything else that just happened. And I did only tell you once, and it was over a week ago. My graduation at OSU starts in 2 1/2 hours, and I have to be there, in the building, 45 minutes ahead of time. The traffic will be pretty nasty, so it will probably take a full hour to get there and find a place to park. So we have to leave in about 45 minutes."
I whacked myself on the forehead. The next I knew, I found myself leaning on the wall with stars in front of my eyes. Sometimes I forget that you shouldn't do that to yourself if you're unusually strong. At least I didn't, quite, knock myself out.
"Ow! Dang it. Ok Jane. I'll get the cats set up and you do whatever you need to do with your hardware. That'll give us about 35 minutes to get beautiful. Let's boogie!"
I'll tell you this once and only once. High School graduations can be sorta fun, or at least that's what I hear. I missed most of Jane's remember? They aren't incredibly long, so the boredom factor isn't all that bad. But, don't ever let yourself get roped into going to a graduation ceremony for a major university.
Was it bad? Is the sky up? No I'm not going to describe it. I'll probably have nightmares about it as it is.
We dragged ourselves back into the house late that afternoon. We pulled off our dresses and hung them up. We had ANOTHER graduation the next day at PSU. Oh joy!
Everthing else got tossed into the washing machine. Then we both headed for the showers and some comfortable grubbies to wear when we got back to work.
I was drying my hair when Jane called me into her workroom and we got started.
"OK here are several possibles for our thief in the primary video, 2 males and 1 female. Let me scan...ah OK, good. Primary system is offline, secondary is on. Time stamp: 8:07 PM, so the building was still open."
"All right, sneakysuit in the office, hmmm frequency scanner in his/her hand from the look of it....and, yep, there go the secondary systems. Good!"
"Good? Jane honey, all I can see is a black screen."
"Patience Mama, patience..
"There we go!"
I saw what looked like a small safe door opening from the inside. it was extremely jerky, but Jane had said only 2 frames per second.
"Hah, surprised them. They didn't expect a camera inside the safe."
"And there goes that camera." Jane laughed for several seconds.
"OK Jane, what's the giggling for, you lost your picture...again."
"Geez Mama, didn't I ask you to be patient?"
Jane fiddled with the controls on her computer a bit and suddenly the image was way zoomed in and I was looking at a big eyeball. "Got it! A perfect retinal scan!
"They couldn't take the camera out, it was superglued to the back of the safe -- so they had to get the memory card out. I positioned it so it was possible to get at it, but really, really hard to do. They probably figured that I'd planned on retrieving the memory card."
"But you didn't, right?"
"Right Mama, the camera was glued to the back of the safe so our thief couldn't find the transmitter connected to it from behind."
"The other good part is that we should have a clear set of fingerprints."
"Huh? What are you talking about? She was wearing gloves!"
"Of course she was Mama, surgical gloves. Keeps random fingerprints off of things and they're thin enough not to interfere with manipulating her equipment and such."
"BUT!" Jane paused, seeing if I'd take the bait, but for once I kept my mouth shut and just glared at her.
"Oh darn..." she muttered. "All right Mama, no more suspense."
"Gloves will ordinarily keep you from leaving fingerprints behind, but not always. This particular safe was four feet off the ground and over two feet deep. To get at the memory card slot on the camera most people would have to turn sideways and stretch. You have to brace your body to do that. And the most natural way to do that is to put your other hand right on the front edge of the inside of the safe and press down to hold your body still.
"That alone might not leave any decent impressions, but it will if you've lined the bottom of the safe with a material that is ever-so-slightly compressible if you put more than 10 pounds of pressure on it.
"It looks just like wood, and matches the rest of the lining I had put in the safe. Makes it look like a vanity thing for the rich client and all that.
"However, the FBI should be lifting at least 2 or 3 good prints off of it. Combine that with the retinal scan and there's a good chance of IDing the perp."
"If she's not on file, it will take longer of course, but eventually she'll be spotted."
Jane and I seemed to have the same idea right then. This time she looked at me and said; "Your turn this time Mama."
"Thanks ever so much sweetie." When she didn't respond, I suddenly realized that that level of sarcasm never bothers her any more. I've probably overused it over the years.
So I just cut to the chase: "We're both referring to the thief as 'she'. There's nothing really obvious on the video, but if we both think so, it must be. You'd better call the FBI again and let them know about that before you send over the retinal scan.
"You do have some secure way of sending the image, don't you?"
The glare I got that time would have stripped rust off a ship hull at 100 meters.
"Ah, yeah, right...anyway, I'll just be heading down to my room for a bit while you get those details wrapped up Jane."
I fled to my personal sanctum with as much dignity as I could muster seeing as I'd just made a total fool of myself.
After a couple hours I figured that it was safe to go back to the lion's den, so that's what I did, and found her watching the video again.
"Trying to spot some more details about our thief?" That sounded innocuous enough and not insulting. Good way to restart the conversation, right?
"No Mama, I'm watching the second thief, the one that stole the security codes. You didn't forget that there were two thefts, did you?"
"What me, forget something important like that, heck no! How could you even think that?" Regretted that last phrase as soon as I said it. It was a dead giveaway that I had.
What? Give me a break. I can focus just fine when I'm doing my usual kind of work, but this cerebral computer stuff gives me a headache. My brain must be more wired for activity than sitting still...well, unless there were books involved, but just then there weren't.
"So honey, what did you find?"
"Different person for sure, male this time, and the theft was at 11:16, after the building was closed up for the night. No break in, so he must have hidden in the building before closing time and then waited for the police to leave after the first robbery. You have to go into an entirely different part of the building to access this particular computer system too.
"Unfortunately, this thief was more tech savvy. No visuals of much use, other than body build, and no record of exiting the building on the computer logs.
"Not bad work, not bad at all, but we should still have fingerprints."
I decided that not talking right now was a good thing, so I just looked my question at her.
"He had to move an equipment rack we put in front of it to get access to the right computer. There was a pressure sensitive material lining the inside of the uprights of the rack."
Jane giggled again. "Nerds rarely think of physical traps, they're too keyed in to those in software.
"Actually, if I hadn't met you Mama, I wouldn't have thought of it either."
An admission that a parent had a good idea is to be treasured forever, so, in order to not destroy the moment, I just said: 'Thanks sweetie;" and left it at that.
Jane typed furiously for a few seconds and then hit "enter" with a flourish.
"There, everything sent off to the FBI as well as to my private archive. We're done for now.
"And, speaking of which Mama, what do we do next?"