7days7authors

Saturday - A & J inc. Part iv - Jacob Martinez

The next morning I showed up to the office dressed business casual, as per J’s request and joined he and the others in his office.
“Fantastic, you look great,” J said, and then proceeded to go over the plan on last time.
“I’ve been in contact with the manager of our victims office, and told her we would like to take a look around there. Mr Jones and I will take care of that. Now Linda, you are the real star of this show, you’ll be wearing this,” J held up a small black object, “It’s a camera that you’ll wear on one of your buttons, the footage will be fed to me live on my phone and I’ll be able to see what you see. You and I will communicate via our earpieces.”
“Gadgets? I freaking love this job!” interjected Edward.
“Yes, I’ll show you the rest when we get back Mr Jones.”
“Why am I doing this, don’t you think Addison is a little more experienced?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, Addison only has Happy Bunny T-Shirts, it makes her infiltrating a corporate office kind of noticeable.” responded J, after which he deftly looked away and missed Addison’s death glare coming from the corner.

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We arrived at the office, Addison staying behind to man the fort and watch T.V.. Inside the building I split away from the two guys, and J began giving instructions through our earpeices.
“Keep walking straight, I’ll tell you when you’ve reached it. OK, now, stop and turn right. This was the victims desk, sit down in it, open a drawer take a piece of paper out, pretend to work.” I followed his instruction and doodled on the page and turned on the computer.
“Good, keep it up. Mr Jones, you take that row and work your way towards me, I’ll start from this end.” J and Edward then began “questioning” the victims co-workers one by one a few rows ahead of my cubicle.
“OK, Linda are you listening?” J asked, and I responded in the affirmative.
“I need you to pan around the cubicle, look for separations or gaps in the walls that you can look out of.” I rotated my chair as I looked, keeping in mind that the camera was attached to my chest and not my head, and sure enough, the left hand corner of the cubicle’s walling had a gap about an inch and a half wide, just large enough to see outside and across to a cubicle diagonal to mine.
“Can you see it?” I asked J, and he said that he could. Edward and he had now almost met in their row of cubicles, and Edward was about to move to the cubicle visible from the gap in mine when the man inside stood to leave but was intercepted by J coming from the opposite direction. I listened as J questioned the man.
“Excuse me sir, headed somewhere?” J asked.
“It’s my lunch break,” the man responded.
“Well then you won’t mind if my associate and I ask you a few questions.” J and Edward maneuvered the man back into his seat.
“OK, but can we make this quick?”
“Sure thing Mr?”
“Henry, Ericcson.” he responded.
“Mr Ericcson, can you tell me how long you’ve been employed by this company?” asked J.
“This is my 6th year.”
“And what is your current job title?”
“I am the ‘Head Sector Analyst’ of this division.”
“And since you’ve had this job title have you always sat at this cubicle?”
“Yes I have.”
“Approximately how many years has that been?”
“Not even a year, just about 8 months now.”
“So in that time were you friends with Miss Richards?”
“No, not really, we talked every once in a while whenever we ran into each other, but that’s about it.”
“OK, Mr Ericcson, thank you very much for taking the time, I’ll let you go eat your lunch now.” Mr Ericcson got up to leave, but J stopped him and added, “I see you are a fan of the steampunk,” pointing to something on his desk.
“Oh that thing, yeah it was a gift, not really that big into it, I don’t make anything myself.” and with that he got up and left, J and Edward followed behind him and looked as though they were leaving also. I waited at the desk a few minutes longer until I heard J’s voice in my ear.
“Linda, get up from your desk and go to Mr Ericcson’s please.” I got up and went over, and saw the thing that J had pointed to. It was an antique looking bronze pocket telescope, mounted on a stand.
“Take the telescope and point it at the gap in the cubicle and look through it.” I did as he told me and was greeted by the face and waving hand of Edward, who was crouched in the victims cubicle looking out through the crack, however, I could tell that this device wasn’t used as a form of cross room communication, but rather to catch a short skirted glimpse of our victim.