I Don't Mind a Reasonable Amount of Trouble

The crisp air and the full moon worked together to dampen Detective Joe McCalment's spirits, as he pulled his collar up tighter around his neck, and tugged his stocking cap down over his ears a bit further. He blew into his hands as he approached the vehicle, opening and then climbing into the passenger side.

"Sheesh, Matt, turn the car on so we can crank the heater," Joe said to his partner, Detective Porcelli, who was sitting behind the wheel, brow furrowed and lips pursed in thought. Joe puffed breath into his hands again.

"I can't put the pieces together, Joe... I mean, we both have known Dave forerver. You'd think we'd easily be able to figure out where he's disappeared to." Matt laced his fingers behind his head, and twisted his back a bit, stretching. "You get anything useful?"

"Probably not. Just some more thirdhand information." Joe opened the glove compartment, took out a small spiral notebook, then closed it. "Let's go over the details again. Maybe we've missed something." Matt reached behind him and grabbed a file off the backseat. He turned on the interior light, and opened the file up.

"OK," Matt said, scratching at the 2-day stubble on his chin. "We know he grabbed a few things and left in a hurry..."


"Dave rarely ever leaves the house, so we can assume there must be trouble..."

"His puns are really bad; that's bound to catch up with a guy after a while," Joe said, checking his notes. "It says here he was spotted out at his construction site in the countryside..."


"We all called him crazy, but it looks like he's really going to finish his lego house after all," Joe continued. "It is cold! Turn on the heater already!"

"Here, this'll warm you up," Matt said, rocking to one side and firing off a nice ripe one.

"You sick pud." Joe opened the car door. "Come on, we need to focus here. Where was he seen after that?"

Matt stopped chuckling and checked the next page in the file. "Well, after that, he was spotted in town at the tattoo parlor..."


Joe snatched the photo out of Matt's hand, smiling. "Cool, he finally got his tat finished. That thing cost him a fortune." Handing the pic back to Matt, he said, "Dang, Matt. Carne asada again for dinner?"

"With a bit of the habanero salsa as well."

"Nice." Joe closed his door again, apparently deciding air temperature outruled air quality.

"After he left the tattoo parlor, he was spotted down at the Fetid Stool." Matt flipped through the pages, pulling one out and handing it to Joe. "Apparently, they're still doing that dance he created..."



"They're still dressing like him as well, I see." Joe handed the page back. "Did you check his IP activity, to see if he was online at all?"

"Yeah, he was online for approximately 45 minutes yesterday, updating his Wagnervana site, adding tons of videos to the video section." Matt let another small one go. Joe wasn't phased.

"Finally! He had that same handful of clips up there for months now."

Matt shrugged his shoulders and continued. "Seems he even broke the videos down into individual pages... funny clips, animal clips, sports clips, music clips and just plain old cool clips."

"Anything new?" Joe asked, stifling a yawn.

"Nah, most of it has been on his blog at one point or another. Still, it's nice to see them all in one place." Matt sifted through the file some more.

"Is that all he updated?" Joe was not impressed. "Lazy turd. He had all these grand plans for his site. He barely has anything up there."

"Too many distractions, I guess," Matt said, a sadness in his voice. "Anyways, he was then spotted at a local Target. Seems he got mad at some lady and let her have it..."


Joe glanced at the pic. "Dang. Did they get that off?"

"Eventually. By that time, Dave was long gone." Matt closed the file. "What about you? What did you find out out there?"

Joe leaned back. "Well, we know he watched Cloverfield again last night. Thinks it's clever, apparently. He also hit up Starbucks today at some point, blowing off his latest attempt to quit caffeine. Oh, and he had what he felt was a really good idea for this year's Christmas play at church."

"Well, that must mean he's planning on sticking around." Matt tossed the file back into the rear seat, let another moderately-sized beefer go, and sighed. "Well, not sure what else we can do at this point. We've got his home office bugged, his family bribed, tracking devices on bags of beef jerky all over town, and satellites on constant scan, looking for his methane footprint."

"Yep, I guess all we can do is wait. He has to update his blog sometime today. When he logs in, we can triangulate the signal and track him down."

"Unless he's using the signal scrambler again." Matt started up the car and flicked on the heater, much to Joe's appreciation. He reached up to turn the interior light off, but paused. "Hey, lemme see that baby picture of Dave again..." Joe handed it to him.


"Man," Matt said, shaking his head. "It's no wonder he turned out bad."

Matt handed the pic back to Joe, put the car in gear, and drove off into the night.