Dave

2:41 – yoo i took a nap
2:41 – wanna play minecraft?
2:41 – actually i need your help with something
2:41 – what
2:42 – just come over
2:42 – kk i gotta shower


Dave knew stuff about computers. Don’t let the being high all the time fool you, he was the smartest guy in our friend group. And he was the most chronically online. He showed up on his bike 20 minutes later.

“Yo,” I yelled to him across the lawn.

“Dude what’s up? You look rattled”

“My mom is missing and she isn’t answering her phone. Then I tried to track her on the car app, but somebody changed the e-mail.”

Dave came inside the house (I locked the door behind him) and opened his laptop at the kitchen table. I messaged him the VIN, and he tried the reset e-mail again but on the website. Same result. Same skinner666

“What did the e-mail used to be? Do you have access to that account?”

“Yea,” I brought up the password to bakerfamily43@gmail.com on my 1Password and Dave logged in on his laptop.


We saw like 15 e-mails notifying that account details were changed for various services. Ranging from 2 to 3 am last night.

Most interesting was the first e-mail. It was from Google saying they blocked a login attempt to this account. From Atlanta, Georgia.

Dave explained, “They probably tried to log in to the gmail, but when it didn’t work, they changed the e-mails on other services to an account they controlled”

“From Atlanta? Who’s in Atlanta? They got hackers down there?” I was imagining…well never mind, you know what I was imagining.

“It’s probably a VPN, hang on, I’ll check the IP.” Dave copy pasted some numbers from the Google e-mail into the terminal. “Yea, NordVPN exit node.”

“What’s a VPN?”

“No wonder you can’t find hookers on the Internet.” I’d asked Dave about this once. He was high. I didn’t think he remembered. “Even Brian knows what a VPN is.”


“You think we should call the police,” I asked. But I already knew Dave’s answer.

Dave hated the police more than all of us. Back before the suicide, his mother would take him to Black Lives Matter protests. And as dumb as it was, those were probably some of the best memories he had with his family. It was a day outside, there were people, there were food stalls. And his mother was happy. Or maybe angry? But not depressed.

“Fuck 12,” he mumbled.

It wasn’t just the politics. After Tom’s suicide, the cops harassed his family. Well it wasn’t the police, it was child protective services. It became standard practice to investigate all cases where young people who still lived at home killed themselves. Nothing ended up happening with the investigation, but to Dave, one government mooching pig was the same as the next, and none of them were on his side.

“Okay, no police. I don’t like them either. You think my mom is okay?”

Dave thought for a minute, “I think I know how to find her car”


As the number of sensors on the Internet grew, the availability of data about the real world skyrocketed. Tons of people were willing to put cameras outside their house or dashcams on their car to earn a couple dollars. There were news articles predicting that this would end all crime. But of course this isn’t what happened. Ending crime was always more a question of will than a question of ability. And most people never made back the money they spent on the camera, the data wasn’t all that useful and not that many people bought it. But if you knew where to look, you could access it.

“Do you have the license plate number of the car?” I didn’t know it, but I went back upstairs to get the title. I also grabbed the Triangle Trust document.

Dave typed it into website billing itself as the world’s data marketplace. “Search millions of dashcams for a license plate” was one of the options, along with a bunch of other video search options, including “search millions of CCTV cameras for perky nipples.” It seemed like there was a whole Internet that I didn’t know about. $0.78 for the query. He typed in his credit card. I offered to pay him back. He thanked me for the bagel.

“Three hits in the last 24 hours” It was $8 each to download the video clips. One of them wouldn’t download, it said “Dashcam Offline.” It still took his $8 for that clip though. He downloaded the other two and dragged them into ChatGPT. No point in watching them manually.

Clip 1

Timestamp (overlay): ~5:36:12 PM, Sat Jul 12
Location (inferred): Manhattan Bridge lower roadway, westbound into Manhattan. Overhead signage OCR fragments: “CANAL ST / CHINATOWN”; steel truss pattern matches the bridge; skyline and arch glimpses align.
What’s visible: Mercedes (body/DRL signature consistent) in center lane, moderate traffic, dry pavement, dusk light. No notable tail vehicle persists across frames.

Clip 2

Timestamp (overlay): ~11:29:47 PM, Sat Jul 12
Location (inferred): Sheepshead Bay corridor. Streetfront OCR: “EMMONS AVE,” “BAY DELI,” and a marina awning; sodium-vapor lighting; parked fishing boats visible for 2–3 frames.
What’s visible: Mercedes eastbound along Emmons Ave, signals right at the next intersection and turns toward a residential side street (likely Knapp/Bragg area; exact street name unreadable due to glare). Traffic light cycle and storefront shutters consistent with late-night return.


I pondered, “That doesn’t make sense. That second clip is right by our house, but I got home an hour after that and she wasn’t here. What’s the third clip?”

“It won’t let me download it. Because of how this marketplace works, the video file isn’t uploaded to them until somebody buys it. If the user’s device is offline, we can’t download it.”

“Do we know anything about it?”

“Not really. Sometimes the user has a profile, but all he has is a username. It’s liducksfan”

For once, I could actually be useful. “The Long Island Ducks! I went to a game once!” I wasn’t actually that useful, Dave had already Googled “liducks” and that was the obvious first hit. “So she was on Long Island?”

“You’re the true crime guy. I’m just the tech guy.”


I had a hunch. I think she came home around 11:30, something happened here, either she saw something or met someone, and she left again and went to Long Island, all before I got home.

I looked around for James Reese’s business card. I couldn’t find it.

However, in plain sight, there was a note from my mother on the refrigerator. I guess it had been there the whole time; wow I’m a bad detective. “Met a guy. Going to the Hamptons. Might be out of cell service.” and then Mom in a heart. She always signs her notes like that.

I showed the note to Dave. He shrugged and asked if he could have one of the bagels that Anne left. Sure. Was this just me being paranoid, or is that the exact note my mother would leave if she didn’t want me to worry and that’s not at all what happened?

Who logged into her accounts? Who was skinner666?