Thursday, May 5, 2011

The Mystery of Black Box by Alysa Castillo

The Mystery of Black Box

On a bright summer morning I opened my blinds to let in some sunshine. Just then

I noticed a tall man, a little over weight with dark black hair, wearing an all gray sweat suit

jogging. In my mind I just thought that he was trying to get in shape for the summer season to

impress the ladies, but then I saw something strange. He man the man was wearing fancy shoes

like the kind you would wear with a suit. “How could you jog in dress shoes?” I asked myself.



Now that I noticed this, the man seemed to be nervous like something terrible was about to

happen. Suddenly he looked up at the window where I was standing. “Oh shoot! He saw me!” I

ducked down and slowly peeked again, he was still looking straight at me. He took a little black

box out of his pocket and set it down on the curb. It was like he wanted me to see him put it

there. I nodded my head trying to tell him that I understood that he wanted me to go get the box.

After he saw me nod he looked a little bit relieved. The man continued his jogging down the

street and stopped about two houses down, where there was a blue and gray house. He looked at

his watch and just then a car came zooming by, picked him up quickly, and zoomed away. “What

in the world just happened?” I said to myself. I went down stairs and out to the front yard where

the man had left the box. i picked it up, and examined it; the box was solid wood and the lid was

super glued shut. I’m not exactly sure what I should with the box so I seek guidance from my

friend’s uncle who is an intelligent detective and often solves many mysterious cases.

“Hi Mr. Larson!” I said while walking into his office.

“Hello Alysa, what brings you here?” asked Mr. Larson.

I told him what had happened that morning and showed him the black box I picked up.

“Hmmm, it seems like someone didn’t want anyone to mess with the contents of the

box.” Mr. Larson gave it a quick shake and I could hear that something small was rattling around

“Do you think it could be a ring inside of there?” I curiously asked.

“Well there is only one way to find out, hand me that tool box please there should be a

little saw in here somewhere. Oh! I found it, okay hand me the box again.” He sawed the lid

right off and inside was a flash drive. Mr. Larson examined it closely and I could tell he was

onto something. He plugged it into his computer and nothing but random letters and numbers

showed up. “I knew this would happen, it’s okay I’ll just take it to my friend Henry and he’ll be

able to help us.” We drove towards a small motel in the middle of Marina. It looked lonely and

“Henry will be in here?” I asked.

“Yes, I’ll be right back, stay here in the car.” So I stayed there in the passenger seat

humming a song to myself but I had a weird feeling like someone was there watching me. I

looked around and didn’t see anything but in the bush about ten feet away I thought I heard

something move. Just then Mr. Larson walked back to the car. “Okay, come on, I want you to

meet Henry.” We walked into the room 143 of the motel and sitting in the desk chair was a

shorter man with gray hair which was slightly thinning.

“Well, as you can see here,” said the man in the desk chair, “this flash drive is highly

encrypted; it may take me a little longer than usual Larson.”

“That’s fine, we’ll wait, oh and this is Miss Alysa, my niece’s friend who found the flash

“Nice to meet you Mr. Henry,” I said.

“Ah yes, very nice to meet you as well, okay well I figured it out, these are stolen

government documents! Where in the world did you even get these?” I told him about the

strange man who had been jogging by my house earlier and that he left the box on the ground for

me to get. “Hmmm, so you say he looked a bit nervous? What do you think about all of this

“Well, I think it is logical to say that the man who left the box on the ground is not a bad

guy but being forced to do a bad crime. You see, he looked nervous probably because he knew if

he was caught with this flash drive he would be put in jail in an instant. I’m guessing the people

forcing him to retrieve these documents are black mailing him somehow, maybe threatening his

family. He was jogging in a sweat suit, which means he knows how to exercise but the fact that

he is a little on the heavier side suggests that he is married and doesn’t have too much time to

exercise anymore. The fact that he was wearing dress shoes still puzzles me but we must find

this man soon, before his black mailers find out that he left the documents. Look through

everything else on that flash drive; it may give us a clue as to where this man is.”

“I found something, it’s a picture of a birth certificate, the child’s name is James

Wallaster, the mother is Victoria Wallaster, and the father is Nathan Wallaster. It says this baby

was born in 2010, which means Nathan Wallaster could be the man who left the box.”

“Great, hand me a phone book, I’m going to look up his name, there isn’t too many

Wallaster families around this area. Found it! Okay, write this down ‘908 Crescent Ave, Marina,

CA.’ let’s go pay this house a visit.”

When we got there Mr. Larson knocked on the door and a woman with a worried look

opened the door, “Hi, you have the wrong house,” said the woman. However she slipped a piece

of paper to Mr. Larson that said “Help! Bad men, armed and dangerous, holding us here, my

husband in trouble, get help!” We drove off like nothing had happened, but there was a black car

following us so Mr. Larson pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot. The black car parked on the

side of the street by the tree and stayed there. “Larson! What do we do?” asked Henry. “We’re

being followed and there is a family in danger! Let’s go get the cops.”

“If we get the cops they might take Nathan Wallaster and put him in jail for breaking

through the government files and stealing some, we need the bad guys to be caught with the

documents. I have a plan; this guy following us is probably one of the wingmen for the head guy

so he reports back to him. If we ‘dropped’ the black box as we were walking into McDonald’s he

would pick it up and take it back to the house to report back to his boss. So by then the bad guys

will have the documents in their possession and that is when we will call the cops. Quick write

down the guy’s license plate so we can report his car to the police.” We walked into the

McDonald’s and Mr. Larson pretended like he didn’t notice the box fall from his pocket. We saw

a guy wearing black with dark sunglasses on walk this direction. He gave a homeless guy a

dollar and picked up the box. Mr. Larson suddenly ran towards the door and yelled “hey! You

come back here!” but the man ran to his car and raced down the street. “Now he will think that

he got away. Quick call the police! Give them his license plate number.”

We drove back by the house and there were cop cars surrounding the place. The police

were walking out three men in hand cuffs; they were all arguing and blaming each other for

getting caught. “Excuse me officer, can you please tell me what is going on here?” I asked.

“See those three guys? They stole government property and are being put in jail for that;

the people who live in this house were being black mailed by the threatening of killing their

“Hey! Aren’t you the girl I saw in the window? Thank you so much! You saved my

family, I knew if I wore dress shoes while jogging somebody would notice. I couldn’t get

people’s attention without getting caught any other way. Thank you for helping me,” said Nathan

“No problem, I couldn’t have done it without Mr. Larson and Henry though, they did

most of the work.” And that was the ending of another mystery solved by Mr. Larson and Henry.

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