In hot pursuit of clever pursuits
February 24, 2009 8:24 PM Subscribe
Any clever ideas (based on truth, fiction or anecdote) of how a resourceful character might potentially track down someone who's fled the country?
posted by np312 to Grab Bag (19 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
For a story I'm writing: a father leaves the country in haste via plane. The following day, his exceptionally clever and estranged son wants to find out where he went, and as a civilian, only has access to his father's property and computer. What are some clever ways the son might track down the father?
I'm thinking more than one trick, but several in a row (A leads to B leads to C type deals.) But one really smart one would do.
I myself am not exceptionally clever, and though I imagine the son could sort through his father's garbage cans to find receipts of purchase, check a google cache to see where the plane ticket was purchased for and hotel reservations, etc. But I am hoping for something more interesting and challenging than that.
To clarify, I'm looking for something along the lines of, having the son see the indentations on a memo pad underneath where the father had written a phone number for a hotel, the son dusts it with some chili powder or something to "reveal" the phone number that was pressed into the bottom sheet. But I suspect that trick's been used a million times already, and it seems like a bit of a stretch.
I don't watch cop shows so I'm not well versed in this stuff, therefore I am mining the hive mind. What interesting tracking methods, that don't involve the police or super technology, might a clever but regular Joe use to track someone who doesn't know he's being followed?