45 days ago the dog-in-charge bought a used Dell PowerEdge T330 server for $100, a decent machine with 16GB RAM, a RAID controller, eight hard-drive bays, and no hard-drives. So the same day he bought a 2TB hard-drive from a guy on Facebook Marketplace. He sent me to pick it up.

We met at night in the parking lot of the local shopping mall underneath the Regal Cinemas sign. He rode in on a black motorcycle–not the noisy kind–dressed in black, with a black helmet that had a camera mounted on the chin. Do you mind if I record this? he asked. No, I didn’t mind. He gave me the drive and said to message him if I had any problems.

I left before he did and ended up at a red light just outside of the parking lot. I sat waiting for the light to change. I turned my head just in time to see him drive off, going about 50 in a 35, with all the lights on his motorcycle turned off.