Ockham's Razor: A Deductive Riddle

Chapter 45

Ian waited two days before he thought about contacting the rest of his gang. It was two days where he worked at the gas station, but as soon as he was off work, he was with Kate.

His feelings for her started to develop. He felt her reciprocate. He was happy.

On Monday, Dave sensed his buddy fading away. "You've been distant. You ok, pal?"

"Yeah. Got things going on. I've been pre-occupied."

"You got a girl, wut. I can tell."

With a smile, he looked at Dave. "You guessed it."

"Do I know her?"

"Actually, you do. Remember the girl from that race last year at Trailhead, the gorgeous one?"

Dave nodded vigorously. "Her? The one who wanted to analyze you?"

"Her!" Ian could not lie to Dave about this.

With his secret out of the bag with Dave, Ian felt the relationship was much more legitimate.

But Tuesday, he decided to let the others know. Pressing the Bluetooth, he spoke. "Hey, everyone. This is Ian. I have some developments. When can we meet?" He expected to hear nothing, but immediately he got a response.

"Ian, it's Rab. I can meet you tomorrow at three. Where? That diner?"

"Ian, Bill here. I can be there then." That was two right away.

"I can be there too." The female voice needed no intro. "I'll get hold of Moussa and Dean and make sure that they are there."

Ian was curious about that. She was in contact with those two? If he was not with Kate now, he'd almost be offended that she was spending all her time with those guys. But, he needed to think now about how to introduce Kate to the group.

The following day, Kate met Ian for lunch. Despite his fear of her being so expensive that she was high maintenance and had expensive tastes, she was quite happy to sit in a park and eat soup from a plastic container.

"You ready to meet the rest of the gang?"

"I'm nervous. I have not been a direct part of the team. I've not been the one risking their freedom for the Benefactor. My studies have always pointed to those who bonded in situations of trauma, or excitement, and I've not been part of that."

"But you have been on the periphery. And you share the same goal as us. Getting the Benefactor to leave us alone." He smiled at her trying to instill a bit of confidence.

At three sharp, Ian and Kate walked into the Sunshine Diner. Ian, knowing that they would be sitting in the booth. He turned left right away. And five sets of eyes of everyone sitting at the table were locked on Kate. Ian felt that explaining everything right away was the best approach.

"Hi. Thanks for coming. I want to introduce you to Kate. She is the Courier, who delivered all the messages to us. She is also a researcher at UGP who the Benefactor used to recruit us. Like us, she has been recruited and manipulated into doing the Benefactor's bidding."

Everyone's gaze kept hopping from Ian to Kate and back. Lauren, trusty Lauren, made the first move. "It's a pleasure to meet you Kate. Please, sit here beside me." Ian could have hugged Lauren that moment.

"How the hell did you find the Courier, Ian?" Bill was the curious one. Ian just knew that Bill had failed in his attempts to discover her.

"You won't tell me how you work things on the computer, Bill. Leave me my little secrets, eh?"

That elicited a little smile from the group around the table. But Ian was here to do more than introduce Kate.

"OK. The reason I called this meeting is that we now have a conduit to communicate with the Benefactor. Kate can pass messages to him."

Rab had a question for her, 'Have you met the Benefactor, Kate?"

"No. I haven't. At least not that I know of. He contacts me via my phone."

"Can you contact him?"

"Not directly. I put a specific message on my Facebook page and he contacts me via phone very shortly afterwards."

"So, you have no idea who the Benefactor is?" It was half statement, half question.

"No. I don't." Rab settled into his seat, looking at Ian with a bit of contempt.

"Hey, Rab" Ian responded. "This is further along than we were three days ago. At least we have a way of talking to the Benefactor without involving Smooshface and the Bulldog."

Kate looked puzzled. Ian explained, "The two cops that work for the Benefactor. Collins and Dumont." Kate nodded.

"So, we can push a message to the Benefactor to let him know our demands, without compromising ourselves directly. Sure, the Benefactor might ignore us. But this channel is at least an option."

Moussa nodded in agreement. "I suggest that we keep that as a backup. We need something to get better, direct access to the Benefactor." This suggestion was met with nodding heads from around the table.

Bill threw out the obvious question, the proverbial elephant in the room. "How can we even figure out who the Benefactor is if we don't know what he does."

That lit up a light in Ian's brain. "But we know one thing he did."

The others looked at him. "He caused the robbery. Someone was the victim for that robbery. Someone lost something in that package."

"What will that prove?"

"Let's apply Ockham's Razor. Look at all the circumstances and see it from either a personal vendetta as option 1 or an industrial espionage as option 2. There was a fortune in cash spent on the six of us getting that package, and what would be the benefit for personal gain given that cost? Industrial gain, if that package contained industrial secrets, the costs could be dwarfed by huge profits. Simplest solution says it is an industrial theft. We can find out who owned that box, and what they claim was stolen."

Bill lit up then. "I can get onto the bank networks to see what they claim was lost and cross-reference insurance claims from the same time frame. This should be able to reduce the names to a few contacts. The claims would be able to be compared to what we expect an industrial claim to be by who owns the box. Jim and Sally Smith, not likely. ABC Industries, probable."

Ian liked the way Bill thought. "How long can we wait until you know?"

"I've got a way to check the bank, but not the insurance company. It will take time. Give me a week."

A week was fine. A week was more time with Kate.

And the Benefactor was soon to be exposed.