If you want to go back to the Table of Contents, this link will take you there. If you don't want to go back to the Table of Contents, that link will take you to Mount McKinley's gift shop. Choose carefully.
An old college professor I never had, or met, once drunk tweeted me the motto I'd live the rest of my days by. The message read "Atttentoin 2 Dtail iz thf mstresss ofg Tha Czrc7oNNimststs :)". I have it framed in my office even though the phone's battery ran down months ago.
I never figured out what that last word was supposed to be, but attention to detail separated the crocs from the gators. And in the field it could mean the difference between a dead man and a man whose name happened to be Deadman; although to be fair, once he actually died those details wouldn't exactly make for the best example.
Miss Nomer's story had omitted several details that a trained eye like mine could spot miles away. Now that she was miles away, I noticed she had neglected to mention what she wanted from me. Was she hiring me? Playing me for a sap? Did she just want to hang out sometime? I could have just walked away and never looked back, but since this was where I lived I was already in too deep.
It takes a sharp mind to see the big picture before you have any of the pieces, but I knew exactly what I needed; someone with a sharp mind. I knew just the guy, Vincent "the weasel" Smith. He'd tried for years to build a respectable reputation. I was the one who gave him the idea to stop telling people his middle name was "the weasel". Now Vinnie was the senior record keeper at the What's-His-Face Memorial Hospital. If anybody could take a wild guess at how to track down Miss Nomer, Vinnie could; and he owed me a favor. I intended to find out what for.
"Vinnie!" I called as I walked through the door. Pity he wasn't in that room and the people in the board meeting were less than receptive to my charisma. I had to search the hospital for a few hours, but I finally tracked down the front desk clerk and she got me pointed in the direction of the parking lot.
I never found Vinnie, but as I made my way across the street I got this peculiar sensation I was being followed. I glanced behind me and saw nothing but a huge crowd of suspicious looking characters. I started walking.
Yeah, there it was. A string of footsteps keeping perfect pace with me. I stopped. My shadow stopped. I took one step forward and the tail followed suit. I did a hop shuffle ball change buffalo, matched by the synchronized steps behind me. I checked my posture to see if I was leaning really far forward and just hearing my own feet. Nope. Definitely someone there.
I had a decision to make. It was a long time ago and I didn't like it. Now I had another one. Would I whirl around and face my culprit, or would I shrug it off and go do the yard work I'd been avoiding? A third option entered my head. It was technically illegal and required one of those paddle ball toys with the elastic string, and I didn't feel like waiting in the long line at the convenience store across town.
But I had a thought. My shadow was likely a puppet. Not a shadow puppet, but the other kind of puppet, with strings, and someone else pulling them. Who was a shadow. Actually just forget about the shadow metaphor altogether. If this puppet had a puppeteer then those strings would lead me right to him. But how to get my shadow to lead me -I mean the puppet to lead me to the puppeteer when the puppet was clearly shadowing me?
Simple. I walked backwards.
That could have been my fatal mistake.
Obviously it wasn't, but it could have been; that's the point I'm making.
Chapter Two is available, but it's still getting over a serious breakup.
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