Back at the apartment I got Cokes for both of us. In the office Rachel started tracking down the website while I worked on researching Charles Moreland.
“Don’t you have work to do?” I glanced over my shoulder. “I mean, thanks, but you mentioned a landing page and—”
“Well, you’re not getting paid for this either.” She tapped her keyboard. “And if we’re looking for demons from another dimension, the LP can wait a day or so.”
I swigged my Coke.
Moreland Research had a website. The cover page showed row of computer servers, with an image below of a 60ish guy with gray hair, a round nose, and a thin beard. The top line read MORELAND: SEEKING NEW ANSWERS.
The page was full of more techno-nonsense. I got the idea that Moreland was selling advanced data services for sales, marketing, and PR, with a side order of health care and HR. Maybe Rachel could make sense of it, but it flew right past me, and I know a little bit about AI and SEO.
So I clicked on “About Us” to find out more about Charles Moreland.
Born in New York, went to Yale, graduate degrees in various computer-science related fields from CalTech. Worked for Microsoft and Oracle, then at different IT consulting firms until founding Moreland Research three years ago. Why did he move to Chicago from the West Coast? No indication that I could see.
The website only listed two other people: Victoria Moreland, with a degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and another impressive résumé of tech work. The photo showed a woman in her thirties with short black hair and sharp eyes behind glasses. Maybe his daughter, probably not his wife.
The other staffer was David Mahoney, similarly degreed and talented. He was from Ireland.
Then I went to the web. Moreland showed up pretty quickly, once I separated him from the other Charles Morelands on the internet.
He was 63. No wife mentioned, but Victoria was definitely his daughter. It looked like he’d been fired from Oracle, but I couldn’t get any juicy details. I kept looking—LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and some other social media sites. Nothing but marketing materials. A few reviews, ranging from five stars to “Stay far away.” That’s typical, though. I try not to do a vanity search on myself too often, but when I do, I get a wide spread of sentiments from clients—from “He saved my life” to “He’s an idiot.”
I leaned back and stretched. “You got anything?”
Rachel grunted. “The demon site is hosted offshore. I’m trying to dig through whatever source code I can find, and some of it looks like it might link to the Moreland site, but I can’t be sure.”
I sighed. “Thanks. Keep digging.”
I dug some more too, looking up whatever I could find about Victoria Moreland and David Mahoney. They turned out to be married, their wedding date a year before Moreland had founded his company. Did that mean anything? Maybe not.
I realized I’d been putting off the obvious, again. So I took a deep breath and a swig of Coke and picked up my phone.
“Moreland Research, how may I help you?” The voice sounded you, female, and slightly bored.
“Charles Moreland, please.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Moreland is unavailable right now. May I take a message?”
“When do you expect him back?”
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t—I really don’t know. Message?”
“How about Victoria Moreland?”
“Vickie? Let me see . . . please hold.”
A moment passed. Two. Then: “Vickie Moreland.”
“Hi, Ms. Moreland.” I’d planned my approach. “My name’s Tom Jurgen. I’m a private detective. My friend Chip Shannon was apparently doing some research into Moreland Research, but he’s dropped out of sight, and I’m concerned. Can you tell me if you’ve had any contact with him?”
She hesitated. “I’m sorry, Mr.—Jurgen? I don’t think I’ve heard of any Chip Shannon. What kind of research was he doing here?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Like I said, he dropped out of sight right after calling me. There were some—disturbing videos on his phone.”
Rachel swung in her chair.
Vickie’s tone grew guarded. “What kind of videos? What is this? Are you trying to blackmail me?”
I turned my phone to speaker. “No, no, not at all. I apologize. I’m just worried about my friend. I wanted to speak with your father, but he’s apparently unavailable, too. The videos were . . .”
I glanced at Rachel. Go ahead, she mouthed.
Yeah. Might as well put the truth in the lead. “The videos are demons. Fighting each other. I can’t tell where they came from, but Chip had them on his phone and a link on his computer, and he called me, because . . .” She didn’t know me, or my reputation for getting involved in supernatural doings. “You can look me up. I know about this stuff.”
“Wait a minute . . .” I heard fingers tapping keys. “Okay, there you are. Wow, there’s a lot of stuff about vampires and zombies and stuff. You look like some kind of crackpot.”
I’d heard that before. “Hang on a minute. What’s your email address?”
I picked up Chip’s phone, accessed his email account, and sent the photos and video to Vickie. Then I used my computer to send her a link to the other website. “You should see these soon.”
“I’m busy here! I don’t have a lot of time to—okay, wait. You’ve got 30 seconds, and then . . .”
She fell silent.
After a moment: “Okay, this could just be bad CGI. Or at least fairly good. What are you—”
“Check out the link. Tell me if you recognize it.” I waited.
A full minute passed. “Hello?” She’d either hung up, or—
“It worked.” Vickie gasped. “David! Come in here and look at this!”
Rachel and I shared a glance. “I think she sees it.”
Moreland Research was on the northwest side of Chicago, in a small gray building next to a vacant lot. We parked across the street in front of a Mexican restaurant. The smell of burritos and salsa made me hungry. Maybe later.
The receptionist inside, a young Asian woman, looked at my card and made a call. Rachel and I had barely made ourselves comfortable with magazines—ComputerWorld, Fast Company—when the door opened. “Mr. Jurgen? I’m David Mahoney.”
He had brown hair and thick hands. I introduced Rachel—he checked her out in her T-shirt and jeans and boots, of course—and he led us through a cubicle maze where workers tapped their keyboards and talked in whispers. At the back he knocked and opened a door marked “Victoria Moreland.”
Vickie Moreland scowled as we entered. The sun shone through the blinds behind her desk. She had short black hair and glasses, like in her profile pic, and a round nose like her father’s in his profile picture. “Mr. Jurgen. Are you working for someone?”
“Chip Shannon is a friend of mine. He’s disappeared, after sending me what I sent you. I don’t need a client to investigate. And I’m not looking for any money from you.”
“That’s right.” She crossed her arms. “Since you’re here—”
“You invited us here.” Rachel sat.
Vickie narrowed her eyes. “You’re—who?”
“Rachel.” I sat too. “She’s my associate.”
David stood behind us, as if guarding the door.
Vickie sighed. “I asked you because it looks like you might have some expertise that can help me.” She opened her desk draw and pulled out a checkbook. “Is $500 enough as a retainer?”
I tried not to blink. “It depends on what you’re retaining me to do.”
David took a step forward. “Vickie—”
“My father has disappeared too.” She scribbled on the check. “Last night sometime. He was . . .” She tore off the check. “David, can you explain?”
David pulled up a chair and took a breath. “I’ll try. Uh, Charles is sort of an investigator too. But he was looking into—using quantum computing to—try to find other dimensions.”
“He got fired from Oracle for hijacking their systems for his research.” Vickie sat back. “He tried the same thing at Microsoft before that, but he managed to resign before getting terminated. So he came here, because I live in Orland Park, and set up this.” She spread her hands around the office.
“Wait a minute.” I leaned forward. “Rachel’s the computing expert, but even I know you can’t mount a quantum computing operation in a storefront like this.”
“Yeah.” David looked at Rachel. “We’re not CERN. We outsourced some of our work to other sites, but Charles used—other tools.”
What kind of tools? “Wait.” I shook my head. “What was he investigating?”
David and Vickie looked at each other, as if daring the other to answer first. Finally Vickie sighed. “Hell.”
I waited. Until I realized that she wasn’t just swearing. “You mean—”
“He became obsessed with demons.” David ran a hand through his black hair. “And angels, but mostly demons.”
“It started a long time ago.” Vickie sighed. “My mother, uh, died when I was 14. I went to live with my aunt here. I didn’t talk to him for a long time. Then he wanted to start a company here. It was totally legit.” She glared at us, as expecting an argument. “Helping companies with SEO and CRM—mostly small companies, but we do good work here.” She pointed at her computer monitor. “I can show you the sales figures, the testimonials—”
“What about the demons?” Rachel turned to David.
He looked at the floor. “He kept working on that. Like I said, obsessed. When he couldn’t use actual quantum computing, he went to, uh—” He glanced at his wife.
“Alternate sources.” She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.
Uh-oh. “What kind of sources?”
“I don’t know. He’s very—secretive about it. I didn’t really know what was going on until a few days ago, when he was holed up in his office for 12 hours. I knocked on the door, and . . .”
She shoved her chair back. “It’s better if I show you.”
Dads. They do crazy stuff.
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