Ockham's Razor: A Deductive Riddle

Chapter 9

Ian settled in for his three-hour flight back to Great Plains. He had counted his money at least five times in the airport while killing time for the flight. By lucky break, he was alone on his row of seats, as the flight was quite empty. Taking the opportunity, he took his note and opened it up. Before he read the note, he decided to do a bit of an examination of the note itself.

The paper was a relatively high-quality rag paper. He had little to no experience with paper, but he could readily recognise quality paper. He held it up to the light, but there was no watermark. The printing job on the paper looked like a standard LaserJet print job onto paper. For the most part, this letter was nearly completely anonymous. It would undoubtedly take a police specialist to determine more from this letter, and there was no way that the police were going to get involved with this letter.

He settled in to read the letter. It was just as formal as his last letter.

"Mr. Goel,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support in my endeavour. The benefits of doing what we are doing will become evident before too long.

Your particular role in this is simple. You are the 'getaway' man. You colleagues, Lauren and Dean, will conduct the work inside, and you will be responsible to ensure that the three of you avoid any reaction to what we are doing. You have carte blanche for your options for escape. I shall not interfere with your decisions there but for two caveats; first, nothing is to be taken, and second, under no circumstances whatsoever is anyone to be harmed. In addition, I must stress the importance of not having any failures in this regard. The location of our party is on the 800 block of Kingfisher Avenue in Saint Barbara.

I wish you good luck and Godspeed in your task.

Sincerely,

The Benefactor"

Ian noted that the letter was sanitary enough that it could be interpreted as anything from a university prank, through a PETA protest, to a bank robbery. It insinuated that no crime is to be committed, but an apparent crime will be. This would give both him and the Benefactor some plausible deniability if things became compromised. This was going to be a simple job. He already had thoughts on how to start laying out routes and schemes to evade capture. He was surprised that he was to travel to Chicago to receive instructions for a job in Saint Barbara, the little city across the Oxbow River to the southwest of Great Plains. But applying Ockham's Razor, he could see that somehow his reputation for bike racing the streets was significant enough to garner him favour with the Benefactor. He was to be the escape man in Saint Barbara. He smiled a large, ear to ear smile. This was, after all, old hat for him.