Chat - Archer Mayor [71]
In tune with the metaphor, their captain rapidly began typing commands onto the keyboard before him, still speaking. “I guess you know by now that I do this a lot for the police,” he said, his eyes on one of the screens. “Locals, state, even the odd fed, now and then.”
“So I heard,” Les commented. “I might have guessed, too, from the way your wife and daughter introduced themselves.”
Leppman laughed. “Yeah. Cops are in here all the time. This has become a bit of a passion, ever since I realized you guys didn’t have the equipment or the money to compete with the bad guys out there.”
Lester simply nodded.
“Not to mention,” Leppman added with a self-deprecating snort, “that I’ve even become a member of the family, if you stretch things a little. I’m the new town constable, and a part-time certified police officer.” He cast a sideways look at his companion, adding, “Not that it means much around here, and certainly not to you guys, but it’s fun and interesting to do.”
“Every bit helps,” Lester commented supportively, although constables—or, more precisely, the vague controls overseeing them—made him nervous.
Leppman was back running the computer, his fingertips flying across the keys. “Anyhow,” he continued, “it was more of a gesture. This is where I can really help, and certainly Tim’s been great about using me whenever he can.”
“Internet predators mostly, I heard,” Lester said conversationally, watching two of the screens before them come alive.
Leppman tilted his head equivocally. “Mostly, just because of the volume involved—I helped identify eight men in three days about six months ago, and that was only in a twenty-five-mile radius around the PD. But I do other things, too. I did a wire transfer embezzlement case not long ago for a bank that didn’t want any bad publicity. And there was a drug deal using e-mails that I just helped Tim and his guys with.”
Lester nodded toward the screens. “That’s what got us going with this. The sheriff’s department is running with it, but the guy had pictures of the stuff and everything.”
Leppman shrugged. “It’s a shame, really. Chat rooms and the Internet are mostly wonderful outlets—real extensions to how people naturally mingle, while easing the potential social burdens of appearance or social awkwardness. People can be so much more honest there, plus, you can get information, products, services, a few laughs, and even find that special someone. Sad that it’s mostly the bad aspects that attract all the headlines.
“Still,” he added with an incredulous look, “when people do screw up online, they certainly can do it with style. It’s amazing to me—everyone thinks they’re all alone when they’re on the Net. Totally crazy. I tell people it’s like taking your clothes off in a crowded room and thinking you’re by yourself just because your eyes are shut . . . Okay, here we are.”
Spinney sat straighter in his chair, recognizing the contents of the garage’s hard drive. He worked with computers routinely, was young enough to consider them a standard piece of office equipment, and played with them with his two kids at home. They were as natural to him as a typewriter was, or used to be, to Joe Gunther—just as Leppman had been saying.
But this was different—a freeze-frame, forensic snapshot of an entire hard drive’s moment in time. It was the computer equivalent of stopping a stage production in mid-motion and then wandering among the motionless, mute actors from all angles, studying their positions relative to one another and the audience, including angles that wouldn’t be otherwise available.
Of course, instead of actual people and a stage, here you had screen-mounted data, only some of it readable. But to Spinney the impression was similar, and he sat transfixed as his host moved the cursor among the serried lines of type.
“This is the main chat room,” Leppman was saying. “It’s going to be a bit messy. The data is overwritten all the time, kind of like conversations are at a noisy dinner party. What did you say the name was we’re interested in?”
Lester paused before