Outline: Part IV

15. Wednesday, November 15: Sleeping with the enemy
    
    1. Waking to a dream
       Dag wakes up Wednesday morning consciously feeling a warm body pressed against his in the bed. He takes inventory of his surroundings and discovers that Margaret is pressed up against him. He is in her apartment.
    
    
    2. Getting the story
       Dag discovers that he has been in her bed basically since the dowsing in the river on Monday. He tries to get going, but she convinces him to stay. She confesses her part in the scheme to get his computer, but that the thugs who rule the waterfront promised her he wouldn’t be hurt. He finds out she pulled him out of the river and got him to her apartment and has nursed him through the fever of the past day.
    
    
    3. Getting the girl
       Dag asks if they had done anything, alluding to sex, and she tells him that he’s been in no condition for that, but that she hasn’t given up hope. He tells her that she doesn’t owe him for betraying him to the thugs, and she’s repaid her treachery by nursing him back to health. She tells him that she doesn’t pay debts with sex, but that she does know when a treasure drops in her lap, so to speak. They take all day making love and Dag falls asleep in her arms.
    
    
16. Thursday, November 16: Snowjob
    
    1. Alone again
       Dag awakes this time to find that he is alone. His clothes have been laundered and there is a note from Margaret. She tells him that the door will lock automatically when he leaves and says simply, Thank you.
    
    
    2. Catching up with reality
       Realizing that he has gone three days without communication, Dag heads for a cellular store and immediately calls Riley. She is beside herself and tells him to call Silas immediately. Dag finds out that she sent Silas after him when his GPS went in the river. She is furious that Dag hasn’t called. He explains and asks her to get him a ticket home.
    
    
    3. In the airport
       Dag picks up a new computer and GPS transmitter on his way to the airport and catches the flight to Seattle with a connection in Minneapolis. When he is waiting for his connection he sees Angel get off a plane and head for the train. He follows her to the Mall of America and watches her shop all afternoon.
    
    
    4. Catching up to Simon
       Dag follow Angel to the charter terminal and there encounters Simon. Simon says he knew Dag would find him, but Dag is finding it harder and harder to concentrate. He realizes he is falling and asks Simon for help.
    
    
17. Friday, November 17: Charter
    
    1. In-flight movies
       Dag is aware that they have become airborne and wonders where they are en-route to. Eventually Angel comes to tell him that they’ve been re-routed and will land in Atlanta instead of Jamaica. She has booked rooms for them at a hotel and as soon as the weather breaks they’ll continue the trip. She says that Simon (flying the plane) has told her that he has depended on Dag finding him since he started this adventure.
    
    
    2. The philanthropist thief
       At the hotel, Simon tells Dag all about his crimes (embezzling funds from the partnership with Bradley) but that it was after he discovered that Bradley was using the operation to launder money from drug deals with Smiesen. So, finally Simon had skimmed off an entire month’s profits from the drug dealer and fled and was determined to give it all to charity and to go to a remote location to live the rest of his life with Angel. Dag asks why he didn’t go to authorities and Simon says that it would be tantamount to a jail sentence for him since he wasn’t innocent of all financial mis-handling. Then he wants to know if Dag has his computer.
    
    
    3. Collaboration proposition
       Simon proposes that Dag help him give away the funds (all except a small amount for him to live on) and disappear. Dag agrees to give Simon a decision the next day. He talks about where he would give money away if it were his and what he would do with it.
    
    
18. Saturday, November 17: To Die or Not to Die
    
    1. Not in a hotel room
       Dag wakes up in pain so intense he can’t call for help. He swears he will not die in a hotel room in Atlanta. He talks about it not being clean and how bad it would be for business for the hotel.
    
    
19. Sunday, November 19: I made my first mortgage payment when I was 26, and my last one two months later
    
    1. The child bride
       Dag tells the story of how he married Brenda and then she ran off with his best friend Simon. We discover the long history between them of wanting to change the world. They had even talked about stealing drug money to do good. Dag knows and understands that he is going to join Simon’s scheme.

Outline: Part III

12. Sunday, November 12: All That Jazz
    
    1. Babysitting Maizie
       Dag considers taking her with him, but discards the notion all together and drops her off with Mrs. Prior. Mrs. Prior talks about how worried Maizie gets if Dag doesn’t call her and talk each day. She wants to be with him.
    
    
    2. Jet travel
       Dag boards the plane to Chicago and thinks he sees a familiar face, but it takes a while to realize it was the person with the laptop earlier that week. He settles into his seat and sleeps all the way to Chicago.
    
    
    3. Calling home
       After checking in at the Blackstone, Dag makes calls to Riley (waking her up and telling her where he is) and to Silas. Riley is furious that Dag left without telling her, but he tells her just to monitor him on his GPS. He’ll keep it active for her. Silas is concerned that Dag is going in without backup and tells him he could be there in 24 hours. Dag pooh-poohs the idea and insists that he’ll be fine. Then he calls Maizie and puts her mind at ease.
    
    
    4. Out on the Town
       Dag goes to the Palmer House for a steak (even though he knows it is bad for him). Then he finds the jazz club Bradley recommended and settles in. It happens to be the type of club that starts out slow, but as things pick up, people just start dancing. Then a young woman sits down at his table. She apologizes and talks about needing to sit for a while and there being no other tables. She comes alone because at this club you don’t need to be with someone to have a good time. They make arrangements to meet for dinner Monday night.
    
    
    5. Musing about Margaret
       After their conversation, Dag returns to the Blackstone and muses about sitting with the young woman and what it meant to him. He talks about enjoying the company of women and how it makes him feel. Etc.


13. Monday, November 13: Wet Welcome in the Windy City
    
    1. Dag elects the direct approach
       After looking up the information on the import/export company that he is going to visit, Dag cases the scene. He is a little disconcerted by the roughness of the Chicago waterfront along the river. Thinks again about calling Silas for backup, then goes in.
    
    
    2. Talking to Smiesen
       Dag thinks he’s seen the same person on the plane again, but dismisses the idea. His conversation with Smiesen is under the guise of being a representative for Simon and he pushes for information on the books. He is stonewalled, but when he gets out his computer, it seems to be of major interest.
    
    
    3. Putting clues together and tearing them apart again
       Nothing seems to be going right for Dag. He overhears Smiesen talk about a shipment coming in tonight. Dag figures that he’ll hang around and wait. He keeps coming around to the clues that he had and how they don’t add up as Simon’s kind of business deal. Dag spends the rest of the afternoon gathering data on Smiesen’s business.
    
    
    4. Dag goes for dinner
       Dag picks up Margaret in a taxi for dinner and they head out to another quiet jazz café that she recommends. They have a good time talking and listening to the music. Then Dag drives her home in a taxi and they go for a walk along the waterfront. Dag is surprised she lives so close to the river.
    
    
    5. In the drink
       As they are walking along, they are mugged. Two men grab Dag’s laptop case and then in the struggle, they push him into the river. He hears Margaret scream and another splash. He muses that the cold of the river should have given him a heart attack, but he’d probably drown first. The last thing he remembers is a hand catching his arm and pulling him upward.


14. Tuesday, November 14: My midlife crisis hit the day I realized 33 was half-way through my life expectancy.
    
    1. The Mustang and the Girl
       Dag talks about his party days. We discover that he was terribly afraid of his own mortality. He realizes that in his current condition, he may well have overestimated his life expectancy. He explains, also, his realization of how age plays a part in relationships and how there always seemed to be an ulterior motive when a young woman and an older man get together.
    
    
    2. The Girl in the Bed
       Dag has waking dreams of being snuggled next to a woman and believes that he is once again next to the girl in the Mustang. He allows himself to wallow in those dreams, eating what was fed to him and understanding that he is not fully conscious.

Expert Advice on the Law surrounding my case

What a great service you all are providing for those of us stumbling around in detective mysteries resulting in legal battles. Thank you. I believe I have questions for various of your specialties.

1. Disabilities. If a person with an extremely well-trained dog discovered they had a medical condition (heart failure) that required possible calls for aid, regular medication, etc., how difficult would it be to get said dog certified as a helper dog?

2. Estate disposition. If said person dies intestate and has no immediate family, how far is a search made for relatives before the estate is liquidated, and once liquidated, what happens to it?

3. Estate disposition. If said person dies with a will leaving a blanket statement of "all worldly possessions to go to X", will that person have any difficulty in simply taking over the deceased's estate? Should there be an executor named? If they were in business and he is leaving the business to her could she keep it active while the will is being settled? Would any other person (like an ex-wife) be able to make any claims against the estate?

4. Search warrants. If there is reason to suspect a cyber-crime has been committed, let's say embezzlement, can the authorities (police? FB I? FINCen?) get a search warrant for the contents of a computer? If in the act of searching for evidence of said crime, they find evidence of a different crime (say child porn) can they bring additional charges based on that discovery even though they had no reason to suspect that crime when the original warrant was issued?

Thanks to all of you and any who respond to these questions. I hope I haven't gotten myself into plot-hell with setting up these situations!

friendof:
(Disabilities) This is the only one I know a little something about (took a class on it in law school... hopefully I am remembering correctly).

Fortunatly for your story, it's really whatever you want. Not only is each state different, each city can be different if the state is silent on the issue (and I believe most are). A condo association that tries to keep the person from moving in or a store that seeks to block the dog from coming in can't stop a service animal (doesn't even have to be a dog) under the ADA . So what makes an animal a "service" animal? At least one court has said that the city ordinances can require "training" but can't require what form of training and can't require certification. Either way, it's a fairly new area of law... so I say go with whatever you want for your story. (If you want huge conflict over the issue, make the dog a pit bull in a city that's banned pit bulls!) :)

BLAH BLAH LEGAL DISCLAIMER THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVISE THIS IS JUST SOME GENERAL KNOWLEDGE BLAH BLAH.

wayzgoose:
Thank you. I'll check to see if there are any local ordinances in Seattle. Funny you should mention pit bulls. Maizie, in my story, is a cross between a pit bull and a dachsund. (Don't ask.)

friendof:
Honestly, I would be shocked to hear that Seattle doesn't have an ordinance involving pits and, sadly, pit mixes. If you want the dog to be able to get into places, you may need to change breeds (or have the vet write that it's a "dachsund mix" with no one any the wiser...). The second you mention pit bull, the city's interest in protecting citizens is likely going to outweigh any ADA requirements for reasonable accomodation. Some cities (like Miami) have banned pits completly and that's in people's private homes... allowing a pit bull service animal (even a mix) is even more of a risk to the public. Just something to keep in mind........

saraswati:
I am going to have to respectfully disagree with the previous poster (friendof) who gave info on service animals. This is my area of legal practice, so I might have a little bit more specifc info that may be helpful for you.

Yes, there are specific laws that vary from state to state (I can give you CA law specifically if you need it, but I don't have info on any other state), but the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and case law does explicitly define what a service animal is, and what it must do to qualify as a service animal. So there is actually a very clear answer to your question.

(what friendof may be referring to is that there are no set limits right now on what kind of animals can be considered service animals. People have claimed monkeys and snakes and things like that are service animals, and sometimes it sticks. Also, there is still some vaugeness in what "tasks" a service animal performs for someone who is claiming a mental illness as a disability. But for physical disabilities, the law is pretty clear. )

To be considered a "service animal", the animal must be trained to perform a specific task that relates to the disability. However, here is some more info. Not all medical conditions are "disabilities". In order to be a disability under the ADA, the medical condition must severely limit a daily activity, such as seeing, hearing, moving, walking, showering, etc. So first of all, your character's heart condition must be severe enough that it affects their daily life and keeps them from performing basic life tasks. If the heart condition is so severe that they can't get around without a walker or wheelchair, or that they are prone to severe dizzy spells, fainting, or can't drive. Then it might be a disability. Usually disabilities under the ADA are mobility based (paralysis, wheelchair, cane), sensory-based (blind, deaf), general auto-immune based (HIV, Lupus), nervous system failures, or mental illnesses.

Bottom line, if the heart condition leaves them frail enough to qualify under the ADA, they are going to have some severe limitations in their daily life.

Now under CA law, you don't need to be quite so ill, but that's CA law.

Second, any animals that you want to qualify as service animals must be trained to do specific tasks that alleviate the disability in question. So, for example, seeing eye dogs do tasks assisting with blindness. And hearing dogs alert their owners to sounds (like a doorbell or phone or siren). So I'm having trouble imagining what your character's dog is trained to do? I don'[t think dogs can be trained to call 911 in a heart emergency, or to give medication. If you can give me an example of what the dog is specifically trained to do, and what the person's limiations are, I can tell you if it would legally be considered a service animal or not.

If you want to create a situation with a service animal, is it possible to give your main character a different disability? If it doesn't impact the story. Or, if a heart condition is needed, can the character also have a sight condition? or something else that would require a service animal? I am assuming that for some reason in your story you want an animal with the right to accompany it's owner everywhere it goes. Here is another possibility, your character could be training a seeing eye dog, then it would have the same rights as a regular service animal. All your character would need is some experience as a dog trainer and a license from the state to be an official seeing eye dog trainer.

Also, it is true that under the ADA only seeing eye dogs need to be trained and certified by specific licensed trainers. All other kinds of service animals can be trained by anybody to perform the specific tasks, including the owner themselves. (many deaf people train their own hearing dogs).

Let me know if I can help you solve your quandry.

good luck and I hope that helps

friendof:
I stand corrected... I actually only meant to say what you said above about not having to be certified or specifically trained but you've explained it and said it much better than I! :)

saraswati:
No worries, friendof, we are all on the same team :) Hopefully my response didn't come across as too "territorial". I'm really glad you are here to answer stuff too. thanks!


Aggie80:
2. Estate disposition. If said person dies intestate and has no immediate family, how far is a search made for relatives before the estate is liquidated, and once liquidated, what happens to it?

Many places have a limit of how far they will search, usually within 3 degrees of relation (no laughing inheritors). They are typically not going to look at anyone aoutside the country if it is US. Without an heir, the estate will go to the state.

3. Estate disposition. If said person dies with a will leaving a blanket statement of "all worldly possessions to go to X", will that person have any difficulty in simply taking over the deceased's estate? Should there be an executor named? If they were in business and he is leaving the business to her could she keep it active while the will is being settled? Would any other person (like an ex-wife) be able to make any claims against the estate?

First step is to open the estate with the court. The court will almost always appoint an executor, (there are a few exceptions, but they are for very small estates). If there is a will as you mentioned, they may very well appoint them as executor. The executor will be responsible for maintaining and preserving the value of the estate, including continuing to run businesses. Yes, an ex-wife may be able to make claims against the estate and can surely file against it, success will depend on many factors.

wayzgoose:
I appreciate the estate information. Can the business owner make his employee a joint tenant with right of survivorship without her knowing? Would that circumvent the inheritance problem?

Aggie80:
Can the business owner make his employee a joint tenant with right of survivorship without her knowing?

Creation of a Joint Tenancy can be tricky. Certainly not without her knowing about it. For it to be done, both parties must acquire their interest at the same time, in equal shares. If the owner didn't set up the business as a Joint Tenancy, he can't 'give' half of it away. There are ways around it, but they do require costs for multiple title transfers and filing and taxes, etc. And both parties at that point would be fully responsible for their share of expenses, taxes and liabilities. And it is important to realize that Joint Tenants own real property, i.e., land or cash. Businesses are not held by Joint Tenants, thought the real property associated with a business could be. They could be partners with survivorship rights, but certainly not without knowledge. And the value of the business could get included in the estate.

Would that circumvent the inheritance problem?

Yes. The survivor simply files a copy of the death certificate to obtain a new deed or title.

Analise:
4. Search Warrant--From what I remember in my computer forensics class and my time working for a state attorney general's cyber crime office (and, of course, this is based off of couple-year-old memory and I don't claim to be an expert but thought I might help):

Many judges err on the side of being careful when it comes to computers. Therefore, when writing out a warrant, not only do you need a lawyer and a police officer, you also need someone who understands computers. Not only that, but you have to be careful of what you say you're searching. If you're looking for things that only should be found in say, the My Documents folder, but you search the entire computer, and your warrent says you were only looking in My Documents and you find evidence stashed away in some obscure folder somewhere, that might not be permissible, since you didn't specifically say you were searching the entire computer in the warrent.

Same goes for, if you go to seize the computer and there are disks right next to the computer (or one in the drive), if you only said you were searching the computer, that would mean the hard drive. You would need to have enumerated floppy/flash/cds/etc to be able to search those as well.

And as for the first question: I'm under the impression it would be just like any other search, if there's reason to believe it's a computer crime (ie. a crime committed either against/to a computer or a crime committed with the use of a computer, which embezzlement often is) then, yes. However, it might be difficult to prove that the evidence resides on their home computer (where that evidence of another crime might be) since that would involve work computers. Unless they somehow did it online, or kept a record of the embezzling on their computer (old emails with a confederate, spreadsheets detailing the money info), or perhaps a second set of "books" showing their "real" cash inflow.

Also, when searching computers, you need to keep in mind investigators have to be very careful about how they go about looking for evidence. They don't just crack the computer open and go to town, because even turning the computer on, or looking at a directory listing of files can change information about files that might useful and then the defense attorney could argue there's no way to prove that they weren't tampered with at that point. Instead, you have to use hardware that allows you to make a bit-for-bit copy of all the contents of the harddrive (or better, yet, make two or three, one to work with, one to give the defense, and one to save as backup) that you can search around to your heart's content.

Hope this helps? A little?

Expert Advice for Computer Forensics

My MC works in Computer Forensics. In essence, he has a warrant to search a laptop computer. The laptop has been connected to a corporate system and the user had high-level administrative privileges on the network. He is in physical possession of the laptop and can start it, slave it, remove the HD and examine it remotely. The one thing I really don't want him to do is physically work on the laptop in any way other than his initial set-up, in other words, put it in an environment where he can get to it via a VPN from his own device and keep it firewalled from infecting his systems if it is contagious.

1. What kind of protection of files will my detective encounter when he cracks the laptop?
2. What tools would he typically use to gain access to passwords or other secure information?
3. How would he identify various security protocols (like encryption or file fuzzing) and how would he break through them?
4. How long would it take to gain access to the corporate network if he had the laptop in range to access the corporate wifi net?

The answers to these will undoubtedly bring up a number of others, but I've found your previous answers to questions to be most informative and enjoyable. Thank you for sharing your expertise!

KarenRei:
If he's removing the hard drive, he has no reason to ever boot up the laptop. Use it as a secondary drive in another system, and everything is his, assuming it's your typical windows or mac box (and even most unix boxes). Only the rare system indeed has an actually encrypted hard drive.

What sort of passwords are we talking about here? Passwords to online sites? You could look through the browser cache or use the default methods (trojans, social engineering, dictionary attacks, etc). Passwords to encrypted files? The only good way to get those are the default methods. If you want to scan the entire hard drive for information that might be out there (deleted or not), I personally would use 'dd' and grep the output for a string that I expected to be near the given type of password that I'm looking for.

Note that with many things, a password is far from the only way to get into a system. Unexpired session information, for example, can do the trick.

Most encrypted files are quite obvious that they're encrypted. That's the difference between encryption and steganography -- encryption is out in the open but algorithmically scrambled. Steganography is covert encoding of information into data so that one doesn't know that the data is there. Cracking good, modern encryption (none of this 40 bit nonsense) is essentially impossible. However, there are always "tricks" for a given situation.

Example: During the early 1980s, American encryption was essentially impossible for the Soviets to crack. That didn't stop them. I had a friend who worked in SIGINT at the time, and they started realizing that the Soviets knew what was going on in US encrypted channels during American war games. How did they do it? They ignored what data they were seing. Instead, they payed attention to the patterns in transmissions -- when they started, how long they lasted for, what the back and forth was, etc. From that, they could deduce what was being sent. ;)

How long to gain access to a corporate network with a laptop that used to be on the network? Instantly, if they can log in. ;) Even easier, with WiFi, you often can just sniff passwords and/or spoof MAC addresses; it's often very poorly secured. Even if they use WEP, there's programs like AirSnort. You really need WPA or WPA-2 to have any sort of decent security. Security conferences have been known to post the passwords of people who connect to WiFi during them. ;)

Lets pretend that it's a secure wireless network. If the laptop is a "home edition", or isn't configured well, the administrator password (safe mode) will be blank by default, so they could easily use that to log in. Lets assume it's not. You can do things like replace logon.scr with cmd.exe or explorer.exe. Or you can use one of the half-million tools to get/change user account passwords .

Did I mention that Windows is really insecure? ;)

The only way to get an actually "secure" laptop out there is to use a Unix distro that has an honest-to-god encrypted hard disk. Most unix systems, by far, don't do this. Only the most paranoid actually have encrypted partitions. I once kept my mp3s and videos on an encrypted partition. It was a pain; I decided it wasn't worth it.

If the hard disk itself is encrypted, you're in trouble. You need to go back to the aforementioned possibilities -- trojans, social engineering, dictionary attacks, getting passwords from other sources and seing if they work on the hard drive, etc.

crossmagus:
@Wayzgoose - This is not very different from a forensic project that I am working on right now. The main thing is that if any of his findings are to be used as evidence in court, then he will need to assure the courts that nothing he did has changed the content of that drive. So in all likelyhood, he would remove the drive and attach it to a write-block device - usually they act as IDE-to-Firewire devices but they proevent anything from writng to the laptop drive. He would make at least two copies of the drive, evidence bag the laptop drive and also one copy. Then he would make multiple copies of his second copy and use those for his analysis.

If he needed to run the executable code on the drive, he would probably do it from within a VM sandbox. Using a virtual machine that has limited connectivity it can't infect anything else. There are tools that would change the hardware drivers to allow the image to work well with the virtualized hardware.

This is if his data is going to court. Now this sort of analysis does not require a warrant - that is used to grab the system and bring it to him. The case i have now we are investigating an executive, but obtained the image of his drive without his knowledge. This did not require a warrant, but rather the permission of the owner of the laptop - the employing corporation.

For quick work like that, I like to use a bootable Live Linux CD based on Knoppix or Slax. Helix is an example of a forensic toolkit of open source tools that is free and very useful - I can attach a USB drive and copy the image to the USB drive wthout ever booting the laptop's os (it booted from CD). If he's a professional and/or law enforcement he is most likely to use EnCase or The Forensiscs Toolkit (TFK) as his primary analysis tool and Helix supports both their native formats. If not, Helix has a batch of tools itself.

Helix used to have a set of tools for lifting tha SAM and other password-realted files, but recent versions have removed those tools. I use another live CD called Backtrack to do that sort of work and copy them to the USB drive for later password analysis. I can crack the passwords with a dictionary attack in a short while (about 85% of the paswords) but more and more for really complex passwords, i can subscribe to a Rainbow cracking service or have the database locally - these are essentally databases of the hashed passwords to compare with what s on the disk so I just find the matching hash and I know the password. depending upon complexity, these databases can run up to a terabyte (1024 Gb) or more. These are widely available to download off the web or there are even web services that rent you the computer and database. My local law enforcement forensics lab just keeps a set on a system just for that purpose.

As to encryption, that is an interesting question. I had a chance to talk about a major FBI sting operation with some of their forensics specialists and i was curious as to how much encryption they were running into from the collected computers they were analyzing. Their answer shocked me - none at all. In this case, the criminals didn't want anything to get between them and their content. In a different case the man in Seattle accused of murdering the parents and raping and killing the brother of the girl that was rescued was a self-styled computer expert and the clipping I read had him boasting that they will need decades to decrypt the data for his possible involvement with other victims.

While not computer related, recently a mob boss was found to have used a "ceasar cypher" thousands of years old to encrypt his paper notes - not realizing how easily it could be ed today. Bruce Schneir wrote about it a while ago.

Just some extra data for you....

KarenRei:
Interesting to know that people working in computer forensics use Knoppix! Quick question: if you're making a complete disk image, why do you need to have tools to lift the password with you? With an image, it seems you could do that back in your office when there aren't as strict time constraints.

Heh, I got a good kick out of the Bernardo Provenzano case when I first read about it, too. ;) That's what you get when you try to use a principle that you don't understand. Really, though, most people wouldn't know how to even encrypt a file if their life depended on it, let alone to use an encrypted loopback filesystem.

Outline Part II

6. Monday, November 6: Billie the Kid
   
   1. Conversation with the Doctor
      Dag goes to see his doctor on Monday morning for what we find is a routine visit, but also find that he has not reported the incident. He has a lump on his head, however, and scrapes on various parts of his body. The Doctor warns him that he has to avoid “falls” like that. Right now he’s in good shape for a heart transplant, but frankly the heart is failing fast and it is a race to get a donor in time.
   
   
   2. Meeting the kid
      As Dag leaves the doctor’s office (at the hospital) he meets Billie coming in. She is eight years old and a little tiger with a sharp sense of humor. She asks Dag if he has a bad heart. Anyone seeing this particular doctor has a bad heart. She blatantly says “Mine’s going to kill me if I don’t get a new one soon.” Billie’s mother tries to hush her, but Dag is fully engaged and when the nurse takes Billie back to be weighed, he talks to the mother to find out about Billie. Here’s where we have to answer some of the basic questions about waiting for a heart transplant, statistics, likelihood, etc.
   
   
   3. Stoney silence
      Riley picks Dag up at the hospital and takes him home in silence. Dag realizes she is still angry with him. We discover that Riley picked Dag up and took him home after he was hit Saturday night. When they get to Dag’s house, they pick up Maizie from Mrs. Prior and find that she is wearing a yellow jacket as a helper dog. Mrs. Prior explains that she can carry Dag’s medicine and that this way they can catch a bus whenever they want to.
   
   
   4. Footwork for Riley
      In order to appease Riley, who will not let Dag return to the office for the rest of the day, Dag tells her about his meeting with Angel and suggests that she drove off just before he fell. He asks Riley to try to find her and make sure she “got home okay.” Riley heads out and Dag collapses into his easy chair to rest.


7. Tuesday, November 7: Just the Facts
   
   1. Visit from FinCen
      Dag is in the office looking up additional records when Silas comes in. Silas wants to know what Dag has found and we discover in the process that Silas is on the trail of a major money laundering scheme that points to Simon’s company. He stops short of saying Simon was involved, but suggests that any information that Dag uncovers would be of interest, including Simon’s location.
   
   
   2. Another client
      After Silas leaves, a “walk-in” comes in with a laptop that has been dumped in water. The client says he’d really like to recover his files from the hard drive. Dag agrees to do his best and asks what kind of files he is looking for. After suggesting several types, the client says his e-mail and “those favorite thingies.” Dag tells him to come back at 5:00.
   
   
   3. Just a travel agent
      Acting on Angel’s tip, Dag starts to track down travel records for Simon. He can find no ticket purchases in any of his financial records or credit cards. Puzzled, he calls Brenda about Simon’s travel plans and where he was going. She says he took the jet, of course. It is news to Dag that Simon had a private jet and he begins tracking down its records and flight plans. He discovers that it did, indeed go to Singapore and return, but that US Customs has no record of Simon having been on the plane.
   
   
   4. Angel has a boyfriend
      When Riley returns, she brings Maizie in with her and comes with the news that Angel lives with a man who is reputed to be violent and possessive. Not only is he her boyfriend, but he works at Stocks & Blondes. She says he has been known to assault clients who were too friendly with Angel. Dag begins to suspect that it was the boyfriend who attacked him, and might be the cause of Simon’s sudden disappearance.


8. Wednesday, November 8: A Partner Calls
   
   1. Put up or shut up
      Riley comes into Dag’s office to talk and becomes provocative. She makes another proposition to him and Dag tells her to put up or shut up. They get their coats and Dag walks her down to Pier 56 where they engage in a number of video games and pinball, ride the merry-go-round, get fish and chips, and head back to the office.
   
   
   2. Maizie on guard
      Bradley Keane, has come in while they were gone, intent on stealing the computer. When Dag & Riley return, Maizie is sitting on Brad in Dag's office growling. Brad tells Dag that Brenda had no right to give him the computer and that if he doesn’t get the data from the computer, their client will be furious. Brad is revealed to be sneaky and blustery, but unable to take a punch when Riley kicks him in the stomach. Bradley is the type of person who would leave all the dirty work to someone else. (Possible clue: Dag may spot a thumbdrive on a chain around the partner’s neck when he is putting himself back together after Maizie took him down.)
   
   
   3. Information please
      A subdued Bradley turns to charm and cooperation as he spins a story of a partner who has wronged him. He believes his partner has embezzled funds from one of their clients and wants to get the information from the computer. Dag leads him on, telling him that if he finds anything he’ll be sure to let Bradley know. He even offers to put the computer back together if Bradley can show that the company owns it and not Simon personally. Bradley backs off and it is suddenly okay to just be kept informed. He spends some time trying to get into Dag’s method for recovering the data and Dag may throw him some bones.
   
   
   4. Riley on a mission
      After they talk for a while, during which Dag comments on Riley’s martial arts skills, Riley is sent back to the library for more information on Simon and Bradley’s business. Dag lies down to nap. He awakens to the phone and Riley tells him that she has some info. The info proves to suggest that Simon and Bradley are highly diversified, including investment funds from hidden corporations and a tangle of holding companies. Dag is ready to get back to work, but finds that after he takes Maizie out he is too tired to walk home and stretches out in the office to sleep. Out the window he can see an office building with a light in a window that is in his eyes no matter how he shifts his position.


9. Thursday, November 9: Day in court
   
   1. Maizie goes to camp
      Dag drops Maizie off in the morning with Mrs. Prior to go to day camp. Mrs. Prior has something to say about how Maizie worries about Dag. Riley picks up Dag to take him to court and Dag suggests that she find out the name of Simon and Bradley’s WiFi Network
   
   
   2. Dag goes to court
      Dag talks about being an expert witness in a trial in which an employee is accused of theft. Dag has deconstructed the employee’s computer and testifies that there are files that incriminate the employee. While waiting for his case to be called, Dag conducts text message conversations with Riley and proceeds to use his VPN to tap into the network. He does this with his laptop, VPN to his network, to Riley’s laptop (in the women’s room), to Bradley’s network. In this way, Dag downloads all the company’s critical financial data to his network and starts sifting through it. Riley also sees Bradley coming and going from the office and sees Brenda come for a visit.
   
   
   3. Partner in court
      While in court, Dag meets Silas. None of what Dag has learned is admissible, so Silas suggests that Dag investigate the source more fully, possibly leading to a suggestion to go to Chicago. There is a question as to whether Silas is telling Dag everything, but Dag puts the idea into his hopper.
   
   
   4. Maizie comes home
      When Riley drops Dag off at home, he picks Maizie from Mrs. Prior. Maizie has had a big day and won a costume contest. Some other silliness.


10. Friday, November 10: Partners in Crime
    
    1. Maizie the pirate
       Maizie and Dag walk to the office together with everyone exclaiming about her costume, which she has refused to take off since the dog day the day before. Dag is long-suffering about his sissy guard dog. It doesn’t help when Riley gets all gushy in the office.
    
    
    2. Uncovering the nasty business
       Dag works on unravelling the accounting records and discovers a spiderweb of shell companies and holdings and at least three sets of books. It is impossible to know who owns what and how it is managed. In addition, Riley is doing research on the businesses as Dag uncovers them and discovers that Stocks & Blondes is one of their businesses.
    
    
    3. Brenda takes a vacation
       Much to Dag’s surprise, Brenda calls to tell him she is going to be gone for a week on vacation. She wants to know what progress Dag has made and Dag chooses not to tell her the truth of what is going on in the investigation. Brenda reiterates that it was Simon who said she should go to Dag if anything ever happened, much against her better judgment. She is as emasculating as possible.
    
    
    4. Planting suggestions
       Dag calls Bradley and tells him that Simon’s computer has some accounting anomalies on it that suggest that Simon may not have been playing above board. He’s thinking he should turn it over to the Feds. Bradley goes into an immediate sales job on why Dag should keep it and pursue the leads. In fact, Bradley is willing to increase Dag’s fee that he’s getting from Brenda to keep trying to locate Simon because that is the only way that Bradley will get his name cleared. Bradley suggests investigating a business that Simon had in Chicago.


11. Saturday, November 11: I learned the secret of life the day after my 42nd birthday
    
    1. The workload at the office.
       Dag talks about having been a loyal employee of a major accounting and consultancy firm for 17 years. How on that day he had handled problem after problem errorlessly and that when the day was done he realized that he knew everything except why he was in this job. The dream had always been to have his own business. So he quit.
    
    
    2. Going back to school
       Dag tells about how Lars greeted his suggestion and took him on as an agent for the three years that it took for him to establish himself as an independent investigator. He talks about this time as the time that he met Silas as well. There was always something special about the relationship of the three of them, but Dag could never bring himself to trust the relationship fully. He’d had friends before.
    
    
    3. Advice from a mentor
       Dag remembers a conversation with Lars that says “If you open the floodgates, you have to wade in the water.” It was his way of saying that if you really got into a case, you would get dirty from it. Dag uses the advice to make the decision to go to Chicago and books his tickets.

Learning new things

Things I learned about Deb Riley

So I gave Deb Riley a 70-question interview and she's posted half of it in her journal, then had to run off to watch Battlestar Galactica. I learned some things about her that are very telling. She is a real loner, but with at least one good friend. The friend, Teri, will have to be developed in a future work if I take Deb further. There are interesting things that have come out regarding her childhood. Her mother was a real nut-case and she related to her father mostly. But it doesn't sound like either one of them are around anymore. And the photo thing about all her photos of places she's been were taken in photo booths... I imagine that if you walked into her apartment and saw a picture of her with her parents it would be a very carefully photoshopped image of two people who look like they should have been her parents with one of those photo booth photos airbrushed into the picture. And suddenly there were the keys on her keyring. Two keys for her apartment (building door and apartment door), two for her beater car (trunk and ignition), the office key, and a key her father gave her telling her it was to a treasure chest and she should keep it in case she finds the chest! My god, there's a whole story right there! She also made an off-the-cuff comment that made me think she might be bi- or at least open to any possibility.

Things I learned about Dag Hamar

Now about Dag. I really haven't posted too much about Dag lately because a lot of the notes I've made could be giving away parts of the actualy story. I don't know why that makes a difference, but I've been shy about telling the actual things that would happen and spoiling the story for anyone who reads it. I don't know why I expect anyone here to actually read it, but... So one thing has been bugging me this evening: I have one scene planned (an entire, very short chapter) that is mostly profanity. I mean vulgar, disgusting, don't say it on TV and don't put it in public, I didn't know the human body could do that kind of thing invective. Dag thinks he is dying in a hotel room in Georgia and goes through anger, humiliation, despair, and mourning, all while swearing at himself and forcing himself to keep breathing no matter how much it hurts. I don't know in my mind how better to express this. He isn't a religious man so he's not going to go through prayer or a religious conversion. And he's not going to sit for a chapter in silence moaning.

The only reason this becomes an issue is because I might have an opportunity to post the blog in a very public forum that has asked for G-rated content. It is really the only scene that the language would be hard in. Even when he's in the private strip-club the content isn't all that racy. A little suggestive, but probably way over the head of anyone young enough to be offended by it. There are a couple scenes where someone undresses or is partially undressed in front of someone else, but there's no overt sex, no matter how suggestive Riley is. Dag will ask Riley why she calls Brenda a muffin-top and Riley will make some gestures and say she packs a size 12 body into a size 8 dress and needs someone to do a bra fitting for her. I think that's still G. My daughter would read it, but of course, she's 13 now.

Another thing I discovered is that at the end of the story, Dag checks himself out of the hospital (or just leaves) and goes home to be with his dog and die. There won't be any mad rush of doctors as the heart monitor flatlines. Dag will be truly dead. That may be more than can be said for the victim in the story, but that will be for Riley to discover in December.

I can't believe that I'm planning the sequel that Riley narrates in December before I've even started writing the story, but here is the thing: NaNoWriMo story is "Security & Exchange" and I've opened the blog for it. The name of the story for December, which I expect will simply be posted on debriley is "Municipal Bondage". So it's real enough in my mind now to actually have a title. Can I maintain the pace of writing a chapter a day through the month of December? I'm not going to tell my wife!

I saw Deb Riley Sunday.... I think

I'm pretty sure it was her, though she looked a little younger than I imagined. Also a little blonder. But she had lots of curly hair and a big smile. She was with a friend eating at the Taj Palace in Bellevue. Don't know what brought her all the way to the east side, but maybe she was slumming. She ate the Indian food with gusto.

A Dangerous Woman - A Dag Håmar Story

I've finished another Dag Håmar story and have posted it on my Security & Exchange site. This is the second mini-mystery in which Dag resolves a mystery and brings a criminal to justice. In this story, Dag has to deal with a possible murder in the family as he visits his cousins in Sweden. Enjoy.

What is the picture?

Just a quick question about Dag that I need some help with. In his home there is a picture that he especially loves. A painting, I assume. It is his private "vacation" spot. If he needs peace, he is irresistably attracted to the picture which he sits in front of and stares at for hours.

What is the painting and who is the artist?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

jisatsu_crisis:
I'd say the Starry Night Of Vincent Van Gogh, or other, maybe a bit lighter, by the same artist :)

wayzgoose:
I love Van Gogh, but the practical side of me says "too expensive" or "too tacky". He couldn't possibly get the original of Starry Night even if he could afford the millions for a VanGogh, and I just don't see Dag having a poster. It could be a serigraph or a screenprint, limited edition type thing, but I don't think a picture of a famous painting would do it.

a_belletrist:
I saw graphite sketch of a lake or cove on one of the San Juan Islands, that has faint color tints washed over focal points. It was rendered by a friend of his who Dag helped out one time. Dag took it as trade.

So mostly black and white, with occasional bits of subtle color.

wayzgoose:
I like this. Especially that Dag took it as trade or that it came as a gift. The description of the local scene is also good. It may need to have more vivid color. Dag is colorblind, but at a significant moment near the end of the story he is overwhelmed by seeing the colors in the painting.

cloister27:
Two thoughts. One--and this is a personal issue of mine--I can't stand Starry Night, and I can't see it working for Dag. Partly it's because that painting has become so cliched that I can't really imagine Dag taking any solace from it.

Two, it's probably better if the painting is NOT something famous or by a famous artist. I mean, you can't really drop names like Degas and Gaugin without, well, sounding like a name-dropper. And whatever famous piece you pick, some readers will like it, some will hate it, and some will think you're just trying to make Dag sound more urbane. I'm in agreement, in a sort of tangential way, with A Belletrist. It should be a picture with some kind of sentimental connection to Dag's past. Maybe his ex-wife painted it, and even though it isn't very good, it's nice enough to look at and reminds him of happier days. Or maybe his college sweetheart painted it and gave it to him as a present because at the time they were both too broke to buy real presents. And while he lost touch with her after she went to New York to study art, Dag never could bear to part with it.

Anyway. Being an imaginary piece by an imaginary artist also means that you get to _describe_ the piece, rather than just _name_ the piece, which has to make for better writing. That whole "show, don't tell" thing again. Tell us about the painting, and let us fill in the details. I guarantee, letting the reader imagine the art from a description will produce something in the reader's mind that is in accord with the reader's own artistic tastes.

wayzgoose:
Yes. My question of who is the artist and what is the painting of are more searching for the story of the painting rather than looking for an actual piece of art. I should have been clearer on that, but perhaps I wasn't clear in my head yet when I posted. I like the girlfriend idea. It fits with some of the "teen years" reminiscence. I see several places where it fits with the story. I just need to describe the scene, style, colors, etc.

cloister27:
The girlfriend idea also ties in nicely with Dag sorting out his feelings for Reily, who is presumably of an age similar to the artist woman in his memory...

What is going to happen on Sunday, November 26?

This is driving me slowly crazy. I though I had it all figured out, but the reasoning all seems so flimsy.

Riley is in danger and Dag rescues her, killing Bradley in the process, then having a heart attack while running away from Smiesen.

It all sounds so simple. But what danger is Riley in (linked to the whole embezzlement and death of Simon and what's on his computer) that would move a man awaiting a heart transplant to risk himself, that he could do without dying on the way, and that is sufficiently motivated to be believable in the story? I thought Bradley was holding Riley hostage until Dag gave him the computer, but I figure there are easier ways to get that. I thought she was being held in a sixth story apartment that Dag could see from his Pier 61 office. I thought that Dag would scale a fire-escape up to said sixth floor window, listen with a high-tech device, and crash through the window, knocking Bradley over (who shoots himself accidentally), then racing out of the building with Riley and up Union where he has a heart attack on the Harbor Steps. Only problem is that given this scenario, Dag would die at about the third floor on the fire escape and Riley would be lost.

I need better motivation and a plausible rescue scenario that doesn't leave Dag dead before he has a chance to rescue Riley.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
crasi:
What's wrong with the apartment's elevators? Dag could recieve a call from an upset Reily, and had to quickly go over to apartment to prevent her from doing something stupid, like harming herself or confronting/contacting Bradley. He arrives in time to save Reily and escape using the elevator.

Or you could just move the apartment down to a lower level, or even have the exchange occur in a more public place.

cloister27:
Not all heart attacks are super-deadly. Having never head a heart attack, I can only go by what I've read and such, but I gather they're tremendously painful, even a minor one. So rather than a full-on killer M.I., Dag could just have a little heart attack that hurts like hell, makes it really hard for him to breathe, and makes their getaway more dramatic. Basically, have Dag, who probably believes this is the end for him, fighting to stay conscious long enough to be sure Reily is safely away. Once they're in the clear, he says something appropriately maudlin/sappy/sentimental, believing them to be his last words, and then of course wakes up later in the hospital.

With Dag's weakened heart, I can totally understand your worry that just about ANY daring-do would do him in, but consider also that when ER doctors are trying to get people's heart's going, they often use adrenaline to do it. Surely Dag's adrenal glands would be working overtime in that situation, which could keep his ticker going long enough to get the job done, but leave him on the door of collapse by the time they get out of there.

wayzgoose:
It's a really fine line. Dag has more than two heart episodes in the story, and I'm not keen on overdoing it, but want it clear that it's killing him. It's the connundrum we talked about early in the design of this story. How many times is the guy almost killed without being finished off? I'm having to look carefully at where and when the episodes occur in the story and make sure that they are enhancing the storyline and not dragging on to the point of being ridiculous.

Room to Read, NaNoWriMo, and After Hours

Where to begin... I just got back from a presentation by John Wood titled after his book, "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World." A few years ago, John left Microsoft to establish Room To Read, a not-for-profit organization that builds schools, libraries, and provides scholarships in developing countries. Not surprisingly, an organization that encourages people to write also encourages them to give with a portion of the proceeds going to endow libraries in those countries through Room to Read. Here is a great statistic to chew on. Room to Read has built 3,000 libraries so far. For reference, Carnegie totaled 2,900 in his great library building phase in this country. Add to that the fact that all Carnegie's libraries were empty. Room to Read's libraries are fully stocked with bi-lingual books!

...and we helped.

After NaNoWriMo.org (now a not-for-profit called the Office of Letters and Light) meets its expenses through the generous donations of those who donate to the organization, half of the remaining funds are put aside to fund the costs of the next event, and half is donated to Room to Read to build libraries. Yay! for all of you who donate to Office of Letters and Light!

Three of us at Microsoft completed NaNoWriMo in 2005 and decided to try to do something good with our efforts. We've published them together as After Hours, an anthology of NaNoWriMo winners. Through our own checkbooks and a generous donation from our group VP, we have purchased 100 copies of the anthology. During the annual Giving Campaign that starts October 1, we will send a copy of the book to any Microsoft employee (up to 100) who donates at least $25 toward the library fund at Nano. The donations will be matched by Microsoft now that Office of Letters and Light is officially a 503c corporation. If we get enough donations to give away the whole run of 100 books, it will mean that we can donate a total of $5,000 to the Nano campaign. That's endowment for two libraries in Viet Nam.

The book is also for sale at www.lulu.com and we have committed to donating al the proceeds that we receive to the fund. Our cut on individual orders is about $9.40, so if you buy a copy of After Hours at Lulu, you can know that is how much will be added to our campaign and matched when we give it through Microsoft.

We are excited and psyched. And the stories aren't half bad! Chris Baty is coming to Microsoft on October 17 to talk about Nano and autograph copies of No Plot No Problem, and help us promote the anthology to our colleagues. Keep your fingers crossed that we'll be able to get the 100 $25 donations that will enable us to endow two libraries!

After Hours is also available at After Hours on Lulu.

Snappy Comeback Request...

...because I'm not really that snappy. I'm looking for the ten top comebacks that a crusty detective would snarl at a person who asked if he was who he was. Here's the setting. Woman walks into Dag's office and says "Are you Dag Hamar?"

And he responds....

"Who's asking?"
"Is this Wednesday? I guess so."
"Do you have a subpoena?"

What else? Come on guys. You are all clever. What could he respond?

apocalypsegrrl:
"Unless you owe me money- no."
"No, I'm just sitting in his office every day until he comes back."
"No, I'm the Pope. Just left the hat at the Vatican today."

cscottd:
"Sure, if the price is right.
"That depends. Were you in Vegas back in '92?" (replace with city and year of your choice)
"That's what it says on my licence."
"If I'm not, my mother's got some explaining to do."
"Not if he owes you money."
"For you? I'll be anybody you'd like me to be."
"No, I just like hanging out in his office."
"Well, these are his clothes..."

khesretitui:
"Nope; I'm Mann K. Wrench. Hamar is across the way."
"Last time I checked, yeah."

metafrantic:
"Let me check my underwear. No, apparently I'm Calvin Klein."

tapestry01:
"That's my name, don't wear it out."

kirylin:
"That's what it says on my door."
"And what if I am? What's it to you?"
"..."

hetzakoatl:
"Arrr, no miss, I be the dread pirate Roberts. I be standin' in for Dag "the Cap'n" Hamar, 'tis his turn t'cap'n the Queen Anne's Revenge."

virusq:
"That depends, are you free for dinner?"
"That's what my mother used to curse."
"No, I'm Dag. What brings your beauty to this neighborhood?"
"No, I'm here to rescue you."
"No, I just work here. Alone."
"...are you the one with the missing cat?"

bototo:
"Are you DAFT?"

hellixe:
"No, I'm the janitor. Just felt like rifling through the paperwork."

harpoholic:
"No, I'm his evil twin."
"No, I'm his imaginary friend."
"Philosophically speaking?"
"Do Vampire Squids eject clouds of bioluminescent mucus when threatened?" (Or any other random fact whose truth the woman would have no way of knowing)

Alternatively:
Woman: "Are you Dag Hamar?"
Dag: "Are there purple birds flying in circles around my head?"
Woman: "So you're not Dag Hamar."
Dag: "Oh, I am. I just wanted to check."

And of course, there's always: "Nope."

dr_pretentious:
The birds are really promising.

cloister27:
"Only if you're Ed McMahon"
"How should I know. Does anyone really know who they are?"
"So you're telling me the $95 I spent for the sign on the door was a waste, then?"
"No. Didn't you hear? They passed a law so now we all just go by our social security numbers."
"Yeah. I tried getting a replacement, but nobody else wanted the job."
"Not for long" <- extra bleakness points for that one. ->
"No, I'm Guy Noir, and you're on the third floor of the Acme building. Got one of life's persistent little questions for me?"

clairebunny87:
"Only between the hours of 6 and 10."
"No, I'm his mild-mannered alter-ego."

airycat:
"Let me check." Pick up a mirror and looks at himself. "Yep. And you are...?"

bookbatkat:
"Usually not until I've finished my drink."

sacredbean:
"No, I'm Santa."
"No, I'm your mother."
"I don't know, wait a second while I check."
"Nah, my names Eumorahn, I'm just wearing this nametag for fun."
"O RLY?"
"Are you alive?"
"No, the plaque on the door got there by mistake."

quitereasonable:
So mine is more nerdy and snarly than the rest, but...

"Are you Dag Hamar?"
"51% of me wants to tell you no and to go away. Another 33% wants to say something slighty sarcastic, like ."


"And the other 16%?"
"And the rest?" Or she could not notice the missing percent.>

"The other 16% wants to point to the name on the door and the nameplate on the desk next to the picture of me and my niece and ask you who you think would be sitting so comfortably at Dag Hamar's desk?"


sforzie:
"No, I'm just his hot secretary. Would you like to leave a message?"

When I'm at work and someone askes me if I'm me (er, my name), I usually look down at my nametag and say "Well, I'm wearing her nametag today."

london_setterby:
"That depends. Are you from the IRS?"
"Only on certain days of the week."
"No, I'm Hamar Dag. Dag Hamar is on the other side of the hall."
"No, I'm his doppleganger."
"Only if you're hiding a bottle of scotch under that coat."

The Plot/Action Calendar

I've been talking in various forums about the new technique that I've started using to prepare for writing Security & Exchange for NaNoWriMo this year, so I thought I'd give a little sample of what the mapping on this calendar looks like. First, let me tell a little about S&E for those who haven't heard what I'm doing this year.

Security & Exchange is a first person narrative Detective mystery set in Seattle and other locations during the month of November 2006. I will be blogging the entire novel at Security & Exchange during November, and each day's entry will be the detective's narrative that is associated with that day, what has happened on his case, what he's experiencing, etc. This creates several challenges. First, detective stories often (dare I say usually) take place in a very short period of time. This is so you can keep the action consolidated (an old Greek theater term called Unity of Time, Place, and Action). So one of my challenges is to keep the action moving and interesting over a full month without such great conventions as "a week later I found out..."

In order to facilitate this, I have to consider what else is going on in my detective's life. As he progresses forward through the month and his investigation, he also progresses through the final phases of heart disease that is killing him. Periodically through the month he jumps backward through the decades of his life, reviewing scenes that become strangely relevant to the investigation and the culmination of his life.

In order to cope with the unique challenges of this novel, I need to keep track of a lot of surrounding data that is not necessarily in the direct storyline. In order to do that, I've created an Excel spreadsheet that charts the days of the month across the columns, and all the characters who appear in my story in the rows. For every day, there is some entry that tells what is happening to that character on that day. Here is a two-day cut from my spreadsheet.



Feel free to comment on this and to use the concept if you think it will help in planning your story. What I divide up in days you could map to hours if your novel takes place in a shorter period, or months if it takes place over a longer period. It is especially useful if you are trying to make sure that two characters can get to the same place at the same time for an interaction. It also helps me to highlight visually in the spreadsheet what parts of this action are being exposed to the reader in the narrative, what parts are being exposed to the narrator that he's not passing on to the reader yet, and what parts of the action the narrator hasn't discovered yet. It is possible that I will be able to impart clues to the reader, as well, that have not surfaced in the MCs mind, but that can be deduced by the clever reader. We'll all know how well this works when November 30 rolls around.

I know who dunnit! and how!

I just figured out who killed Simon and how. Now I know something that Dag doesn't know. No, this is something I'm not telling you either. Read the book!

I've also figured out the secret to the tattooed code on Simon, Bradley, and Angel, and a secret that Dag is going to die not knowing. (Leave something for Riley to uncover in the next book.) It is actually a 512 bit encryption key (very secure). The thing is that each person knows part of the key, but no one knows the whole thing. And even when you have all the pieces, you still have to figure out how they go together. It is possible that Simon knew the whole code. It could be that it is something Dag designed in his youth when he knew Simon and Brenda. You'll just have to read the sequel to find out!

Finally, once you know the code, you don't know the code. Each piece is a 128-bit key to something completely different. No wonder it has taken Dag a month to break this thing. If he had a Cray super-computer, he might be able to do it a bit faster, but you wouldn't trust that kind of thing in the hands of the guys who run Cray supers!

I've also just about nailed down where the money is coming from that Simon is laundering, and how he gets it. But I've also figured out how Bradley is making money without Simon knowing it and is laundering it through Simon's transactions. It is when Simon finds out where Bradley's money is coming from that he suddenly gets religion, so to speak, and starts giving it all away.

Now, if I can just figure out what happens on day 11, I'll be a lot happier than I am at the moment.

x-posted to and .

Death on Ice - A Dag Hamar Story

The sun dawned bright in a clear sky over the Columbia River announcing that by mid-afternoon it would be hotter than hell in the Tri Cities. I don't usually do field work, but my old friend Tyler Robinson asked me to come out from Seattle to audit the books at the sports arena. Tier two hockey and basketball teams share the arena and it is used for community events from concerts to car shows. I was out on the weekend as a favor to Tyler and finished the audit Saturday night.

A Figure Skating Competition was taking place on the small ice that weekend and I'd noticed the crowds watching the spinning and jumping girls. I was to meet Tyler at noon to give him the results of the audit, some with which I was pretty sure he wouldn't be pleased. I decided to go over early and watch some of the competition.

It was none of the stuff you see on television. There were a hundred Michele Kwan wannabes ranging in age from about 7 to 17. The intermediate, novice, and junior freeskates were on the event list for the morning along with a number of showcases. It would be a fun (and cool way to spend the morning). I settled in with a cup of coffee for warmth and enjoyed the show.

I don't know much about figure skating, but if I were a 12-year-old boy, I'd be all over that sport. I grant you its a tough sport, but it has limited competition. While there were over a hundred girls signed up to compete, there were less than 20 boys. No boys event had more than four competitors. You just about have to get a medal. But watching the events showed that the 5 to 1 ratio of girls to boys could also be something to skate for. The girls watched the boys events and screamed for their favorites (which were all of them) and greated them with hugs and kisses as they came off the ice. I saw a few boy-boy hugs and kisses as well. It seems that this is the place to be no matter which way you swing.

There was some fine skating and more than a few falls on the ice. You put together a hard slippery surface, sharp objects, and speed and it's a wonder any of those kids lived to see puberty. I yelled for every successful jump and gasped at every fall. I was totally into the ice mystique. The announcer called out a 15 minute intermission while they resurfaced the ice. It was nearly noon and I figured Tyler would be meeting me in the lobby soon. I turned to go find another cup of coffee as the zamboni drove onto the ice. I was nearly to the door when a single scream pierced the air. It was quickly followed by a chorus as parents and skaters stampeded for the exit. I turned and saw the zamboni halting half way across the ice. Behind it, a body was being dragged leaving a crimson stain on the ice behind it.

My friend Tyler had been well and truly iced.

I had 911 on the line on my cell phone before the zamboni had slid to a stop. By the time I made it to the ice my heart was pounding threateningly and I could already hear the sirens outside the building. They tried to stop me from walking out onto the ice, but I flashed my PI license and started shouting orders to line up the ice crew keep them from moving the body. Sometimes all you need to do is flash something that looks official and if people are confused enough they obey you whether they need to or not. I was lucky. Tyler was not.

I could tell without touching that he was dead. There's no way to survive a slashed throat like that. I shuffled across the ice toward the gate through which the zamboni had enter the rink. I was looking for a murder weapon and clutching at my chest where my heart was threatening to explode. My vision was blurring and I stumbled. I forced myself to take slow measured breaths. This is not where I'm going to die, I told myself. Breath, damn it!

I stumbled around a rolling toolbox and almost into my last chapter. A figure arose and slashed at me with a blade in a huge white fist. I ducked and heard it clang against the toolbox. I don't carry weapons, and I'm not a strong man, but I came up fast with both hands clenched into a hammer fist and caught him under the chin. My assailant went down hard and I fell on top of him.

The next thing I knew, I was being pulled off by men in blue and rolled onto a gurney. I opened my eyes to see that the man I fought so valiantly was a woman, and the bloody blade she swung was attached to a white figure skating boot. Tyler had been killed by a skate blade. She stared directly at me with a look of hatred that I hardly felt I deserved. But I knew from the audit who she must be. The skating director of the arena. The last desperate act of a cornered embezzler is to strike out at those who have discovered her.

Tyler paid the full price.

I got a discounted ticket.

Detailed Chapter-by-Chapter Writing Outline

1. Wednesday, November 1: She’s a Man-Eater


1. Brenda blows in
   
   Dag is in his office when Brenda addresses him and he automatically rises to the occasion. She begins with condescending remarks about his office.


2. Maizie to the rescue
   
   Maizie sticks her nose in the back of Brenda’s knee and she collapses into a chair. Small talk about what kind of dog is that?


3. Why are you here
   
   Brenda explains that Simon’s instructions were that if anything happened to him she should come to Dag. Why? Because Dag could take Simon’s computer apart and save him. When did he say this? Within the past year. Simon has become more and more distant and secretive.


4. Identity theft
   
   Dag explains the dangers of giving a person your computer. He will know everything there is to know about Simon, maybe about Brenda as well. Will Dag steal their identity? No, he likes who he is much better.
   
   
5. Riley rushes in
   
   Brenda is snide about Dag’s little squeeze. Brenda would assume they were having sex even if Riley were a nun. Require a down payment for the computer forensics of $5,000, if field work is needed, there is a daily fee of $1000 plus expenses. Riley is given the check and told to cash it quick.


6. Invitation to dinner
   
   Brenda tries to get Dag to take her out to dinner. That’s not included in the fees. Riley is surprised to find out Dag is taking her to Jazz Alley that night.


2. Thursday, November 2: I’ve got a secret


1. Good morning Maizie
   
   Dag gets up and walks to the office with Maizie. We learn that the walk is about the limit of what he can do. He stops for coffee and is given decaf. Mutters about Riley having gotten to them.


2. Dag and Riley plot the course
   
   A lesson in forensics. Dag sends Riley to get information in more conventional ways about Brenda and Simon. Riley makes a snide remark about Brenda’s “muffin-top.” They list what they know and what questions they are trying to answer.


3. The Vault
   
   With Riley off on her mission, Dag opens the vault and disassembles the computer. We get a tour of his secret chamber where he keeps his own server and valuable data. We find that he operates from a remote computer on a VPN. He begins to open the files on the computer.


4. Riley reports
   
   Dag is so wrapped up in what he is doing that he fails to see the sun go down. Riley arrives back with her report. She makes suggestive comments to Dag who plays them down. He took her to Jazz Alley the night before to be rid of Brenda. Tonight he needs to get home. Riley takes Maizie for a walk and then takes Dag home. They finish by talking about money moving and Simon being in the middle of it.


3. Friday, November 3: Stocks & Blondes


1. Waking up dreaming
   
   Dag wakes up with a start thinking about money moving. He has been dreaming a fantasy when it took a turn and the date kept turning off with the message to deposit fifty more cents. He can’t shake the feeling that there is more to Simon being missing than a runaway husband.


2. Dissecting the inanimate
   
   We find out that Dag names his computers and talks to them as though they are human, or in the same tones that he talks to Maizie. While he talks to a computer, Maizie covers her ears near the window. We emphasize again the big windows along the side of Dag’s office overlooking the water with a view of Rainier on a clear day. He starts looking for banking transactions and discovers frequent ATM withdrawals in the hundreds of dollars at a particular location.


3. An invitation
   
   Dag describes Stocks and Blondes as a private club where money hangs out. He makes some calls and gets an invitation to join a member that evening. He is told to wear a tie and jacket and bring money. How much? $500 should do for an intro.


4. Tipping for information
   
   Dag discovers that Stocks & Blondes is a private gentlemen’s club in which a number of young women work topless and for tips with less. While there are areas that cater to private dances, there are also areas where there is casual conversation between the men who have gathered and the women, or just among the men at bridge, poker, etc. Dag fishes for information and a girl suggests that he come back to talk to Angel tomorrow night.


5. Busted
   
   Dag is on his way home when a car pulls up and a voice encourages him to get in. He finds his old friend Silas Grant in the car and they talk about money movement from Seattle. Silas asks what Dag is looking for and he says, missing person. Silas suggests that if the person went missing with several million dollars, he might also be interested in finding him. Dag says he’ll let him know.


4. Saturday, November 4: Angel in the Rough


1. Maizie Day
   
   When Dag gets up on Saturday, it is to the sound of Mrs. Prior, his landlady, knocking on the door calling for Maizie. It is late (8:00) and today is Maizie Day: She is being groomed. Mrs. Prior (an animal psychic) talks about how Maizie loves to get pretty. Dag lets her take Maizie and asks her to keep Maizie overnight as Dag expects to be back quite late.


2. At the Swedish Center
   
   Dag goes to the Swedish American Center in Ballard to play cards in the afternoon and has dinner with old friends there. When the dancing starts at 9:00, Dag makes excuses and leaves to go back to Stocks & Bonds. He catches a cab.


3. At the Club
   
   Dag is admitted on his guest pass (good for a weekend) and begins chatting up various girls as well as the men at the card tables. The girls come by each offering to take him for a private dance. When Angel shows up, he accepts. There is some banter between them during which he brings up Simon. Angel is cautious but won over. She asks him how much money he has. She gives $300 to the bartender and leaves with Dag.


4. Midnight coffee
   
   Angel and Dag go to an all night café where they talk about Simon and where he might be. Angel is worried about him because he was her “special client” and he hasn’t been in for over a week. Dag finds out that Simon was taking the private jet to Singapore, but that he should have been back long before. When Dag leaves with Angel, someone yells, “not another one” and hits him over the head, knocking him out. He hears Angel scream as he loses consciousness.


5. I was fifty-five when I decided to become an acrobat


1. The nouveau circus
   
   Dag tells about how inspiring it is to see a cirque show. How he figures maybe it is not too late to get himself in super shape and fly like the acrobats fly. He goes off on a treatise about how he is not letting age get him down and that he will be the youngest old man at the health club.


2. Picking up a tail
   
   Dag talks about why he was in Vegas for the geek convention (spy show). He meets Riley and finds out she has been set upon him by his old friends Silas Grant and Lars Anderson. Lars is Riley’s teacher. Dag typically meets Lars and Silas at the show for dinner. This time they bow out and send him out with Riley.


3. In the casino
   
   Riley asks again if Dag wants to get lucky and when he expresses mock outrage she points at the roulette table and asks him to teach her to play. He tells her to bet her age and she puts a token on 28. After a look at her, she moves it to 27. He places his bet on 25. When it hits 25 they celebrate and as Dag turns from the table he has a heart attack and collapses. The last thing he remembers is having an aspirin stuffed in his mouth.

Fun Money Laundering Facts

According to "Information Technologies for Control of Money Laundering" a government publication, $1million in $20 bills weighs 111 pounds! In $5 bills, 444 pounds. That means in $100 bills it would weigh $22.2 pounds. Federal agencies estimate that as much as $300 billion is laundered annually, worldwide. Somewhere between $40 billion and $80 billion is drug profits made in the U.S. Most drug transactions are done in $5 and $20 bills. That means that somewhere between 2000 and 5000 tons of paper money has to be converted into other instruments ($100s, T-Bills, Cashier's checks, and wire transfers) every year in the U.S. alone!

The next piece I'm making up, but by my estimates, $1 million in $20 bills would take about four banker's boxes to fill. That means that we are talking about somewhere between 160,000 and 350,000 banker's boxes full of cash that have to be changed into other instruments each year. This is several semi truckloads! (I'll have to figure out how many later.) It is absolutely mind-boggling!

Monday, November 30: My third year in kindergarten, I learned that all stories have a happy ending

First, he explains why he was in kindergarten for three years. First year, too young. Second year, just right. Third year, Rheumatic Fever, hospital, and missing so much school that he couldn’t catch up with his classmates, so he kept going to kindergarten.

But that year he learned to read. He loved books. He read every story in the kindergarten classroom and was way ahead of the level of his peers. Until the day that he found a book in which the last few pages had been torn out in a rage by a much younger classmate. Dag was furious that he couldn’t read the last page of the book. But then his mother explained to him that all he had to do was imagine the ending of the story. He could make it any way he wanted. Did he want a happy ending? A sad ending? He could make up multiple endings if he wanted to, and no story ever needed to have an ending that wasn’t happy if he wanted it to be happy.

It took Dag a few years to get it fully engrained, but eventually he got in the habit of not reading the last chapter of any book. Instead he would make up the ending that suited him.

Dag reviews the main events of the story. His ex-wife hires him to find her husband, his former best friend. He finds the former friend by way of the friend’s current mistress, who’s boyfriend knocks Dag unconscious. Dag’s office is ransacked by the former friend’s business partner, who happens also to be the ex-wife’s lover. Dag discovers that the former friend has been laundering money for an unknown client operating through a shady syndicate of thugs that tries to kill him by shoving him in the Chicago River. When he catches up with the former friend, he discovers that the friend has embezzled millions from the unnamed client and is in the process of giving it all to charity. Dag enters into the scheme but before he can follow through the former friend is murdered. Dag checks into a hospital to await a heart transplant, but is called by the thugs who have kidnapped Dag’s partner, Riley, and are holding her for ransom of the laptop that belonged to the former best friend. Dag discovers that the ex-wife’s lover is in on the kidnapping and breaks through a window knocking the lover over. In the process, the lover’s gun discharges and he is critically wounded. Dag flees with Riley, but the thugs are closing in on him when a friend from the FBI shows up with help. Dag ends up back in the hospital, but sacrifices his position in line for a heart-transplant so that a kid can have the heart, which happens to be donated by the lover. In the aftermath, Dag distributes all the former friend’s assets to the ex-wife, the mistress, and a number of charities, but never finds out who killed the former friend or who the mystery client is. Dag has sent Riley to find a possible key to the mystery in the form of a hexadecimal code tattooed to the wrist of the lover.

But now Dag is really tired. He really wants to solve this mystery. In fact, however, he is too tired just now to keep narrating, so he asks the readers to imagine their own “happy ending,” as he is imagining his.

End Chapter Thirty
End Book

Sunday, November 29: Legs

Dag wakes up with tubes in his nose and a weight on his chest. He discovers that the weight is Riley curled up on the bed beside him. He watches her for a long time, then transfers all his biometric codes to her. When Riley wakes up, she tells Dag that he had a pretty bad night and she was afraid she was going to lose him. She isn’t going to say goodbye to him.

Dag tells her that he needs a pair of legs, and she offers hers to him in several ways. Ultimately he tells Riley that there was a hexadecimal code tattooed on Simon’s wrist and that Angel had one, too. Dag believes that they are part of a code that will unlock more of the mystery of who the unknown source of funds was. That might in turn lead to Simon’s murderer. But he believes the code is incomplete. She needs to check Bradley’s corpse to determine if he has a piece of the code as well. Then she would need to feed it into Simon’s computer correctly and track down the real money and the criminal mind behind it all.

Finally, Dag gives Riley his little computer and tells her that she’ll find that she is administrator enabled. The job is up to her to complete. He gives Riley the command that will get her into his server and tells her where the codes for the vault are to be found. Then he sends her out to do the work.

When Riley is gone, Dag sees the kid. It has now been three days since her transplant and she is up and moving. She stops to see Dag and tells him she was afraid he was dead. He tells her that she doesn’t need to worry. All stories have a happy ending. If she ever needs anything, look up DH Investigations, and she’ll be taken care of. The mother thanks him as well and they leave.

End Chapter Twenty-Nine

Saturday, November 28: An Angel Gets Her Wings

Angel visits Dag in the hospital to see what the results are of his funds distribution. When Dag tells her all the funds have been distributed, she asks to see the list. She checks it and is unhappy that a particular charity that was a favorite of Simon’s was not on the list. Dag reveals that he knows that the specific charity that she is referring to was a front and that money contributed to it would, in fact, go to Simon for future expenses. Angel breaks down and says that it was hers. Simon promised her he’d take care of her.

Dag tells her that he transferred title of the house in Croatia to her, and that she would find one million dollars in a Swiss Bank account for her, the amount that Simon had indicated he was keeping "to live on." In order to get access to anything, however, she will have to expatriate as she would have to deal with the IRS if she brought anything into this country. Dag assures her that she is on a watch list with the FBI and they would have her if she ever moved back to the US or brought money into the country. But before he gives her the account numbers, Dag wants to know more about Angel. He drags out of her that she has a boyfriend (waiting in the hall) and that Simon was no more than a bank account to her.

She insists that she allied herself with Simon because of his high goals. Dag wants to know if her boyfriend killed Simon. Angel just replies that Simon was old. He was going to die soon anyway. Before Angel leaves, Dag spots the tattoo that matches the one Simon had. He manages surreptitiously to memorize the Hexadecimal number. When Angel leaves, Dag's FBI agent friend steps into the room and congratulates Dag on distributing the funds, but is disappointed that two critical pieces are still missing from the puzzle. First, they don’t yet have Simon’s murderer. Second, they don’t know what the source of the funds was. All Simon’s business seems to have been legitimate except that he embezzled money from the source. But the source isn’t stepping forward to file charges, so there is no crime. He’s pretty disgusted that Dag failed to get a confession or locate the source.

End of Chapter Twenty-Eight

Friday, November 27: An Ex Is Paid

Brenda visits Dag in the hospital at his request. She is wearing black and Dag asks if it is for Simon or Bradley. He confronts her with the fact that she’s been sleeping with Bradley, which she doesn’t deny. Dag asks her how it feels to be rid of two emotional entanglements in a week. She responds that she is going for a hat-trick.

Dag explains the distribution of Simon’s estate and Brenda throws a fit. She knows there was more. Dag calmly tells her that when he caught up with Simon, he had been giving away all the funds he’d stolen. Apparently he had succeeded before he died because by the time Dag got the keys to the accounts they were all empty.

Before she leaves, Dag asks her point-blank if she killed Simon. He recites the time-tables of her plane in and out of Minneapolis to meet Bradley. She tells Dag that they were married over 25 years. She loved him to death. Then she stalks out, turning at the door to warn Dag that she is going to get what is hers, even if he has to pay her.

When she leaves, the FBI guy steps out of Dag’s closet and they talk. There is not enough evidence to pin anything on Brenda and Dag failed to elicit a confession. The agent wants to know if the accounts are really empty. Dag tells him that all but one are and gives him the key to it so he can monitor Brenda’s activity. The agent thanks him and they part.

End Chapter Twenty-Seven

Thursday, November 26: Thanksgiving

In the hospital, Dag is working on his computer and pulls up the hospital data list for heart transplants and discovers that he is next in line. He also looks up the record of Billie the kid and sees that she is next, but is failing fast. He edits the list and bumps her up ahead of him. When the doctor arrives to tell Dag that a heart donor has just been located and that they will be in to prep him shortly, Dag confides to the doctor that he is not next in line. The doctor says that Dag might not make it until the next one was available, but Dag says he’ll have to take his chances. The doctor agrees to take the little girl first. Dag sees her trundled past on her way to the operating room.

The FBI agent comes in to brief Dag on how the action went down after Dag passed out. It turns out that after 30 hours of attempting to save him, Bradley died from the gunshot wound when Dag broke through the window. The heart going into the kid is coming from Bradley.

Dag tries to pry out of the agent what the result was for the murder of Simon. He says they’ve booked the two guys from Chicago on it, but he is doubtful if it will hold. They are still no closer than they were at the start to finding out who the guy is behind the original money laundering. Dag asks about Brenda and Angel, but the agent says they both seem to be telling the truth and if Dag can’t come up with anything better they’d just go back to waiting patiently for something to break.

Riley brings Dag Thanksgiving Dinner. They discuss the next steps in Dag’s investigation. He tells Riley that he wants to see Brenda the next day, and even though Riley bristles at it, she agrees to get her into the hospital.

End Chapter Twenty-six

Wednesday, November 25: When I was 16, I knew I would never love anyone like I loved Paula

Dag reminisces about his first love. It was never consummated. It was a sweet and innocent love that was highly charged with sexual hormones, but never crossed the line of sexual activity. He talks of the first touch. Holding hands. Dreaming dreams. And of how he knew that once he made love to his girlfriend it would never be the same again. He knew that he would never be in love like that again.

Then there was Riley. Their relationship had all the same hallmarks of being sexually charged, but unconsummated. And he knew that he had a second opportunity in his life to experience a love like Paula’s. He talks about what being with Riley has meant to him since she first met him. Ultimately, he tells why he never acted on the suggestions, or made a pass at her. It all goes back to telling her she was safe with him and how finding her in danger had caused everything inside him to rebel against the situation and protect her.

End chapter twenty-five

Tuesday, November 24: Rescue

After trying to reach his FBI contact, Dag leaves a message and decides to go in. He starts by going back to his office and pulling the blinds down. Then he uses a peep hole to train his new telescope on the building he located earlier. He sees clearly that there is a telescope trained down on him, and that it appears to be Smiesen’s crew that are working it. He watches for any sign of Riley, but from this angle he can’t really see in unless they are at the window. After watching for a long time, he sees Bradley come to the window. That’s when he calls the FBI. He is told that the agent is in the air from Chicago to Minneapolis.

Dag moves to a new vantage point as he is waiting for the call on his cell phone. He goes to the top of the building that they are in and sets his ropes to come off the rooftop to the window he has identified. Once he has established a view into the window, he sees that Riley is tied to a chair and that there is an argument underway. Using surveillance devices that he has, he attaches a bug to the window and listens as Bradley tells the gangsters that they have to kill Riley, too, because she can identify him. Dag is desperate to rescue her. The gang members leave Bradley with a gun to guard Riley and go out to make the exchange with Dag. Bradley makes the call to arrange the switch. He goes to the telescope to watch Dag’s window while he calls him and just out of sight Dag talks to him, then comes crashing in through the window.

The impact knocks Bradley back and the gun discharges. He falls to the floor and Dag unties Riley and rushes from the room. They reach the street and see the gang members running toward the building. Dag and Riley run up the hill into town, with Dag gasping for breath. They are nearly caught when the FBI agent steps out and jumps the bad guys. Dag collapses and Riley catches him.

End Chapter Twenty-four

Monday, November 23: Ransom

Dag wakes up in the hospital when his cell phone rings. Riley is on the phone. She is calm but stressed. She tells him that she is being held hostage and that they want Simon’s laptop. A voice comes on the phone and tells Dag to get the computer and wait for further instructions. There will be an exchange made at midnight tonight. They tell him they willl be watching him. Dag tries to tell the guy that he’s in the hospital, but the phone goes dead.

Dag explains to his doctor that he has to go. The doctor makes it very clear to him that if he leaves the hospital, he will very possibly lose his postion in line for a heart transplant. He is at or near the top right now. Dag makes the decision to leave anyway. Something the kidnappers said about watching him doesn’t quite seem right. If they were watching him now, they would know he was in the hospital. He takes an evasive action and leaves the hospital, then instead of going to his office he grabs a pair of binoculars at Washinski’s and then heads for Pier 56 (where they played video gtames). He goes to the arcade and takes the stair to the roof of Pier 56. From here Dag starts triangulating possible places where someone could see into his office window on Pier 61. He realizes at the last minute that the place he’s chosen to stake out could have been one of the possible places.

Ultimately, however, Dag sees a movement in a window above the viaduct and realizes there is a telescope trained on his office. He weighs his options and decides to move in on this one himself. He goes back to Warshinski’s and buys some rope and climbing supplies. Then waits for dark.

End Chapter Twenty-three

Sunday, November 22: Philanthropy

Dag starts recording this day as if it is Saturday. He talks about getting up late, but feeling somewhat better than he did earlier. He decides to go down to the office and takes Maizie. He takes the key that Angel gave him and have a go at the laptop again. He also figures that he’d better make sure that he has everything set for executing Simon’s will.

Dag discovers that the encrypted files contain the bank accounts and access numbers for where Simon hid 30 million dollars and where he intended to distribute it. It appears he intended to leave Brenda only what he legitimately had in his accounts. Dag starts transferring funds to various charities and decides to sweeten Brenda’s share just enough that she won’t be encouraged to look any further for it. Then Dag hides all records of anything else that Simon might have stashed away, and transfers the house in Croatia and a substantial account to Angel. Dag feels he’s done a good day’s work when Riley calls and asks him what he’s doing in the office on Sunday.

Dag is stunned. He’s lost a day. He has spent the day thinking it was Saturday and realizes that he is getting worse. He checks his medications and discovers that he has taken the correct number of doses, but he can’t remember anything that happened on Saturday. Is there a missed Dr appointment here? That could trigger Dag’s awareness that things are getting bad and he’s really dying. Does the doctor hospitalize him right then?

End Chapter twenty-two

Saturday, November 21: Day in Bed

No entry will be made on this day. Dag will start talking Sunday as though it were Saturday.

End Chapter Twenty-One

Friday, November 20: Guardian Angel

Riley returns to the hospital and tells Dag that she has checked him out of the Hilton and that they have tickets back to Seattle that afternoon. Dag’s doctor wants to see him the minute he gets back to town.

Dag tries to tell her that he can’t go without trying to talk to Angel and Riley just tells him that she has also checked out and is gone. The doctor comes in and tells Dag that he’s releasing him into the care of his private nurse (glancing at Riley) and that if it were not for the agreement of his doctor in Seattle, he’d ship him down to the Mao Clinic for tests and possible transplant procedures. Dag says he’d much rather be home, but he is very slow getting up from bed. Riley helps dress him and they leave for the airport.

When they board the plane, Dag expects Riley to sit next to him, but she sits across the aisle. Then Angel boards the plane and sits next to Dag, much to his amazement. They have the trip back to Seattle to talk to each other and she tells Dag her theory that Smiesen caught up with Simon. When Dag asks her for the evidence, saying that he saw Angel with Simon heading for the witch’s hat. Angel says Simon sent her to a coffee shop while he finished some business before they left. She started to feel uncomfortable after about twenty minutes and went back to the tower. She didn’t know Simon had fallen from the tower, but went up the stairs. She found Dag passed out on the stairs and called 911. When they got there, they found Simon.

Dag suspects that Angel may have had something to do with the death of Simon and suggests that she got what she wanted from Simon and pushed him to his death. Dag reaches across to Angel’s neck and pulls Simon’s thumb drive out of her cleavage. Angel says Simon gave it to her because he was afraid that if anyone got hold of him they’d kill him for the drive, but she doesn’t really know what’s on it. To prove she’s okay, she gives Dag the drive.

Dag want’s to do some work on it right away, but when they land in Seattle, Riley is true to her word and takes him to Swedish Hospital to be checked out by his doctor. The doctor reluctantly lets Dag return home instead of admitting him, but warns him that he needs to lay low and that he needs to be on best behavior for the next available heart. On the way out of the hospital, Dag sees the kid who, when he didn’t show up for group was sure Dag had died and they wouldn’t tell her. He reassures her and goes home.

End Chapter Twenty