Starfall

Chapter 9 - Deep Water

After the hustle and bustle of the day the Oregon Coast aquarium seemed almost eerie as soft waves lapped at the sides of the tanks and the soft wind blew idly outside. Dipper watched a school of mackerel as they swam by, their shimmering silver forms reflecting the soft light of the tank brilliantly. The effect was soporific. Dipper shook his head and took a sip of the coffee Ford had bought for Dipper and himself.

Ford had spent almost an hour talking with the guards getting as much information as he could. Dipper tailed along and took notes diligently. The thief, while they had been caught on camera many times, had never allowed his face to be seen. He was always wearing an elaborate outfit that shrouded his face and figure from sight. He rarely strayed from the shadows and had a knack for finding unsecured access points. This had earned him the name 'The Shadow'.

Other zoos and aquariums nearby had a detailed list of the escape artist's feats. All of them were recent, and mostly nearby. One of the sharks that had been stolen had been taken from a tank that was clearly visible by five cameras including the two that overlooked it from the mezzanine. Right before the cameras went offline, in a cloud of static, a strange high pitch sound could be heard as it crescendoed in a deafening screech. All cameras in the tank room went offline. The doors and windows had been locked and secured as well as monitored. Nothing got in or out that way. Somehow the thief had found a point of entry no one could think of. It was intriguing, to say the least.

Dipper found himself chewing his pen, but spit it out hastily. He had been trying to break that habit for years. Unfortunately when he got excited his hands seemed to have a mind of their own while he pondered and riddled away.

One of the sharks had even been taken from a fifth-story highrise apartment in Portland. The owner was a business partner of the CEO of Exxon Mobile. Dipper only had limited knowledge, but from what he knew the company was one of the top twenty companies by largest revenue and a heavyweight in the business world. So the man had money, but it still seemed weird to have a shark in his apartment, even if it was a ritzy home away from home.

Somehow the building's security system went haywire, but rather than calling the cops like it was supposed to the system had a meltdown before the power was cut. The weirdest part was there was no trace of forced entry or digital trail of some kind of elaborate hack. Something got into the apartment and somehow stole a two-hundred-pound shark and escaped without being noticed. It seemed so unlikely and bizarre, but someone or something had pulled it off.

Once again the culprit stayed in the shadows most of the time. The few times he was captured by the camera it was always as he was slinking through the shadows. You could tell he was short, roughly just over five feet. The outfit he wore shrouded his body but doubled as camo in the shadows making him not only difficult to see, but also making it hard to judge his approximate size shape, and weight. He wore what appeared to be some strange tribal mask, but in the low lighting, it was impossible to tell if had any color or not.

Dipper tapped the pen rapidly against his fingers as he mulled the facts over. The thief could enter in ways that no one expected. They had a way of somehow disabling the camera systems clustering secure areas. Tonight the thief would most likely try and disable the systems watching mover the tanks. Perhaps this was Dipper's ace in the hole. Everyone would be watching the tank, but who would be watching the security systems? Dipper had learned that the closed-circuit TV cameras were secured within a room just inside the security checkpoint. It was a great place for a secure area.

Dipper had asked questions about the system and was filled in on what he inquired about. The system was completely hard-wired. The only access points were for power and data routed in through the cement floor and out into the tank areas under the cement. They were buried in cement all the way out to the point where they would surface on long poles reaching the surveillance cameras at very difficult-to-reach locations usually within the tanks or the exhibit enclosures. But Dipper learned that about two years back some 'genius' decided to place a central maintenance hub nearly halfway between the passage of the deep tanks and the security office. This hub was within the Turkey Vulture enclosure. Someone had placed a hub to tap the hardlines at that location. Dipper was counting on the thief to know that.