Once again the time-stamp on the email was off; it seemed I’d sent my reply to the alleged officer three hours sooner than I actually had. Where on earth is he now? I scanned through our last several communications to find the one where he’d adverted the distance he’d gone on his trip. Aha! “Roughly 3k farther west.” Oh-kay. For some stupid inexplicable reason the gray matter in my head managed to convert that into 300 miles farther east. Well if you’re three hundred miles east of Virginia, ya’d better be a helluva swimmer ‘cause it’s right smack out in the flippin’ ocean! I ascertained this when I explored Google maps expecting to turn up the State he may be in or, you know, land. From there, my magnificent brain offered up two possibilities: either he’d lied to me or I’d been wrong about… the direction. Maybe he meant north. Yes, I know, I know, I was having a low-IQ day. Hold on; it gets even more ridiculous.
My I HeArTE JADE web tracker, which I keep close tabs on, had been informing me that during these same dates I was writing to an out-of-the-area “DJ Vox,” my site was being frequented by a visitor at a hotel in Philadelphia, PA. It just so happened that I suspected Eric Kudro, a policeman from Albemarle County I’d been Internet-ly poking fun at, was possibly in Pennsylvania for personal reasons. And it just so happened that where he supposedly was, as my query to the map program proved, was, you guessed it! Roughly 300 miles north of Virginia.
Could it be my unknown correspondent is Eric Kudro mocking me as payback? But how to find out for sure?
I logged-in to my stats page and got the name of the motor inn the Pennsylvania IP address belonged to. I typed the name of the lodge into an online telephone directory and got its number. I punched the digits into my cellular and asked the clerk who answered to put me through to Eric Kudro’s room, please. After four rings, the front desk picked up once more and inquired if I wanted to leave a message. I politely declined and said I’d call back later. I disconnected taking the fact that I’d been transferred as confirmation he was staying there.
Fortunately -- or the outcome with “Dj Vox” might’ve been very different -- I wasn’t satisfied. I waited a few hours and tried to reach Mr. Kudro again. I dialed the same place, only, this time, when my call was served, the woman declared there was no guest by that name there. Huh. Really?
We had some back-and-forth, with me furnishing particulars about Mr. Kudro and the reasons he would be in that locale and she trying to recall if anyone fit the descriptions.
Finally…
“No ma’am, I’m sorry, I don’t believe he’s here. I have no record of him checking out recently either.”
“Oh. Well. Thanks for helping, anyway.”
“But --”
“Yes?!”
“We do have another location nearby. I could give you their number if you’d like.”
“Yes! Please!”
The employee at the second overnighter also denied Mr. Kudro presence. But when I gave her the same elaborate story I’d told her associate moments ere, she recognized a detail and rattled off a familiar name -- a relative of Kudro’s. Then she broke the bad news to me: that family has departed.
Grr… I’m no better off than before. The thing was, after this entire endeavor, I was reexamining my speculation. I’d heard Eric Kudro is a flirt. But I’d gathered he’s kinda the “class clown” type. The philandering gentleman writing to me could never be mistaken for a goofball.
Before my intelligence level fell to rock-bottom and I yarfed up any more dumb things, I decided my only chance for victory was drop another unique link in an email to “DJ Vox,” hope he, as prior, took the bait, and see what panned out.
