Chapter 16

I was surprised that Capt. Earl had scheduled my first day on a Friday, but I didn't argue with him. I just set my alarm clock to wake me at 5 AM. I was out the door for my morning ride by 5:15. It was a good six mile an hour bike at its worst, so I expected to make it to breakfast by roughly 6 AM. I would have to eat in a hurry, but I should be able to do it.

I ordered a breakfast biscuit and left with it in the bag. I ate it sitting on the bike so I could get a quick start. I choked it down because I had to be at the office at 8 AM. It had been explained to me that normally starting time was 7 AM, but training began at eight since Capt. Earl didn't show up for work until 8 AM sharp. At least that is what he said.

I had time for a quick shower, then time to slip into the clothes I had been given the day before. I had to admit the outfit looked pretty good on me. I had seen three other security people and none of them looked as good in their uniforms as I did. I put on the belt I found in the bag with the uniforms. The lady at the store must have guessed at the size since I never tried it on.

I was all dressed and out the door by 7:30. I drove into the almost empty parking lot at 7:45 and was pressing the button for entrance to the lobby door at ten minutes till eight. I was buzzed into the lobby, but not permitted past the day guard until Capt. Earl arrived to sign me in. It really looked as though they had pretty good security. It might take a while to crack it.

I thought all that while I sat waiting for Earl to show up. When he finally did, he said, "I need to get you processed. I'm going to send you to HR first for an ID card and a manual."

"Okay," I said.

"When you get through there we will get you a locker and a set of procedures broken down by post. I want you to learn the front door post first. Today you can watch what happens on a day watch, then tomorrow you can see what happens on the weekend," the captain said. "Read your procedures for each tour. They are all different and you need to know them all. I am going to be using you as a relief guard for a while. You could be working any of the tours at any time."

"That's fine with me. I have no life anyway," I said smiling. It was true at that moment.

"What no husband, or boyfriend?" the Capt. asked.

"An ex one of each," I said following the biography. "This is a new start for me in Capitol City."

"Well I for one am glad to have another old cop," he said.

"In case you didn't notice, I'm not old," I said with a smile.

"Oh I noticed, but I'm not about to go down for sexual harassment," he said.

"Good then we understand each other," I said.

"Today you sit at the desk with Trish. She will be your mentor today. When you aren't busy read your procedure manual. You will really find everything you need in it. The things we do will make a lot more sense, if you read it first," Earl said.

"Right boss," I replied.

"Technically the boss is the lady who interviewed you. We all work for HR. Somehow they got put in charge of security for the office plaza," Earl advised me.

"You are my direct supervisor aren't you?" I asked.

"I make the schedules and make any decision that isn't covered by the HR manual. Otherwise I'm just like you. They like to introduce me as Head of Security, but I'm not really. I am more the Head Clerk is all," he said.

Okay, well if I'm going to be working all shifts, I have a lot of reading to do," I said. Before I made waves I needed to know what the manual covered. If not then I just get what I needed. Failure was never an option with the Controller. Morris was a much less likable person than Mission had been. But in reality they were all the same, results or back to the pen.

The first thing I did was to learn the security camera procedures. There were lots of cameras for us to monitor. The person monitoring cameras signed in visitor as well as keeping an eye on the cameras.

I learned how to sign in visitors. Visitors basically had to fill out a field interrogation card. I was surprised that I recognized it as a FI card, since I had never been a cop. I can only guess that I had a few filled out during my misspent youth.

After the visitor told us all we might need to know if the bank's vault got robbed, I gave them a temporary ID card on a neck chain. At that point I had them call a sponsor to come escort them to their destination. "We allowed unescorted visitors to enter only one building on the campus.

"It is a retail office supply warehouse big box store," Trish said while teaching me how to sign in the visitors.

"Is that because they have walk in customers from the community?" I asked.

"Exactly, they are open to the public at large. We simply monitored their alarms. They have a holdup alarm and an alarm on the loading door. The loading door and the cashiers were also recorded. There were cameras on each exit as well. More to keep the employees honest I expect, than to catch thieves," Trish explained.

Trish was probably a fifty year old retired lady. She had once been employed by the County. "I took my twenty year pension and ran like hell. I saw that there were a lot more jobs with no pressure out in the world. I didn't need to be getting all that abuse from my clients," she said.

"I left a county job, but I left before there was any retirement to speak of," I explained. She had no doubt been filled in on my problems with the recently deactivated Brevard County Sheriff's office. Since the SBI was taking over lots of rural law enforcement, I expected I would be using them for cover quite a bit. The geek had access to their records. He could doctor them any way he wanted.

My bio convinced the HR manager I needed to work. I also needed to work all the overtime I could get. So the Controller wanted me alone in the building at least now and then. I could scout out the CCTV coverage while I ran the visitor desk or while I watched the monitors. Too bad there were a hundred other details I would need to discover in order to do a clean theft of the contents from Mike Gold's computer.

I would just have to be patient. The thing I learned from the Commandant at Church Camp was never ask a direct question about your prey. You just never know who will be suspicious. Just look and listen give it a chance, if it doesn't happen call the Controller for help.

Day one all I learned was how to log in visitor and what areas were monitored. Actually that was quite a lot for one day. "Trish can I carry the manual home? I would like to get a head start on the learning curve," I explained.

"That my dear is a no no. They act like we are guarding a nuclear reactor or something. It's a fucking office park full of paper pushers," she said with a laugh.

"Well, I guess I can read tomorrow. Surely no one will come in on weekends?" I asked.

"You will be on the desk alone usually on weekends, but tomorrow you will be with a mentor. There will be some employees to check in. The CCTV has to be monitored. Those are all the weekend desk person's responsibility. There is also one person on roving patrol. You will get checked out on both jobs this weekend," Trish said.

"So both of my weekend shifts are day shifts?" I asked.

"You will have to ask Earl but I think so," she said. "My first days were all days. After two weeks the advanced training starts, if you last."

"I need the job so I'm going to give it my best shot. Looks like I made it through the first day without doing anything too monumentally wrong," I said as Captain Earl approached the desk.

"Yes you did. So tomorrow be here at eight again. You will work the first four hours with Edith on the desk, then work the roving patrol with Roy. I will try to stop by and evaluate your progress."

"Good enough, any chance I can work Sunday?" I asked.

"Sorry our week runs Sunday through Saturday. I want to save your time next week to schedule you more training. I plan to use you to fill in on all the shifts till something comes available," Earl said.

"Fair enough," I said.

"Here comes our replacement," Trish said. "We run over fifteen minutes every day to fill them in on what, if anything happened. Since we can only work four days a week, it is not overtime."

"Oh I was hoping to get some overtime," I said.

"Train on all the shifts you can, so you can fill in at the last minute. You can make some time that way," she said.

I had learned something and I had let it be known to Capt. Earl and Trish I needed money. It was a profitable day. I stopped for dinner on the way home. Lunch for me had been a pack of Nekot crackers and a diet coke. So for a change I was hungry.

I almost went to a nice steak house, but I got side tracked by an omelet restaurant. It had never heard of Mr. Egg, so I thought I would give it a chance. I probably should have waited till breakfast, but hell I could still eat again tonight, I thought.

It turned out to be a chrome and glass franchise thing. The one thing about those places was you usually didn't get food poisoning from them. That was the upside to the slightly cardboard omelet. Also on the upside it looked pretty as hell. On the down side it looked much better than it tasted. I think it was cooked in either an omelet maker or in a convection oven. It just had no butter taste to it.

When I walked in the door, I removed the computer from my safe spot. I checked that it hadn't been tampered with, then I went to the refrigerator to remove the cover to a container of cream cheese. As you might guess there was no creme cheese. Instead there were three flash drives. Two for use with my computer, and one to use when I cloned a computer. I removed the two I used when checking my mail from the Controller.

I made a pot of coffee while the drives warmed to room temperature. They didn't need to be warmed, but I felt better doing it anyway. After my coffee I plugged in the flash drive with the Linux operating system and the Ram I planned to use. It was super slow to use a flash drive as ram, but it kept everything in the flash drive including my history.

While it set itself up, I drank my coffee and assessed my first day. I learned a lot about the office complex. For one thing it was a lot larger than I had expected. There were three security people on the first shift. One monitored the cameras and checked in employees. One dealt with visitors, which is what I was being groomed for eventually, and the third was on constant foot patrol. I considered the foot patrol the worst one of them all. It also had the most potential for allowing me to devise a plan. To steal Michael Gold's computer without his ever knowing it was taken.