Free Here Be Monsters (Tyler Cunningham) by Jamie Sheffield Page B

9/6/2012
     
    I parked in my spot behind the building, and snuck in like a ninja, using ambient light to find my way upstairs and in through the door; once I was inside, I switched on a small working light at the desk I have by the bookshelf. I could see the end of what I had to do, and was already past the beginning, but had no clear idea on how to get from where I was to where I needed to be at the end of the process; the middle was entirely unknown to me. I knew what had happened, not with enough certainty to satisfy the police, but I wasn't the police, so that was OK. I knew why it had happened, and who had done it ( within reason... I didn't know exactly who kidnapped Cynthia, but I knew who ordered it done ). I didn't care much how they had done it. I had to find out where they were keeping her, and how to extricate her. A coke from the coke-fridge helped both chill and improve the function of my brain as I settled into the different “quiet” of Smart Pig at night... the hum of the fridges, buzz of the light, pipe noises of the old building moving heat and water around, the occasional creak or pop of wood and metal and glass expanding or contracting at different rates.
    By the time I finished my second coke and gotten a third, noting that I should call Alek ( my Canadian Coke Connection ) to see if he could bring a couple more cases the next time he went through town, I had zen-ed down enough, listening to the sounds of the Smart Pig Building, to have a couple of ideas float through my head; a few bad ones, a few horrible ones, and a few slightly less bad ones. I had to restore balance to my life and world, and doing that would require shifting the balance of other peoples' lives and worlds. I would need to adjust George Roebuck's cost/benefit equation for his life and work in such a way that harming either Cynthia or me was perceived as being more costly than releasing her ( and leaving us alone ). I was not more powerful than him, but I needed to find a way to exert sufficient force over him to force a change in his behavior that went against his previous inclinations. Altering his world, and/or his perception of the world, and/or the way that he interacted with his environment, in such a way that he would choose to release Cynthia and also leave both of us unharmed at the end of the day required either a highly complex or a really simple solution; as always, I tried to work out a simple solution.
    At some point in every investigation that I undertake, I get reminded by things that pop up, or that I miss ( and later wish had popped up ), that I don't really understand human emotions and motivations as well as I should ( especially in my line of sometimes dangerous work ). I can track information and actions, and draw conclusions based on what I've seen and heard in the past, but I often end up being surprised by what people do. I don't understand their actions, even when/if they explain it to me later. People often don't act in their own best interest, and worse still, sometimes they act differently under similar stimuli based on mood or greed or sexual drive or sleep-deprivation or any of a thousand other factors that I don't seem to have installed; or that are installed differently in my operating system than in other people’s.
    My first idea was to talk to George Roebuck directly, explain what I knew, and that I had no interest in sharing my knowledge with anyone provided he return Cynthia to her ( and my ) life unharmed, and post-haste. On the surface this might seem like a stupid plan, but I think there's an underlying wisdom in the simplicity of a bull in a china shop approach; a lack of subtlety implies a lack of guile, and hopefully the chance for trust and a straightforward resolution to the issue ( hopefully without violence or upset ). I like plans that can be explained to a six year old without graphs and charts and maps; based on the KISS principle ( Keep It Simple Stupid )... if something can go