• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

‘‘Great,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We get to go over it?’’

‘‘That could be a problem,’’ said George. ‘‘The lab folks want their experts to do it, in case there’s any crypto stuff, and messages might be destroyed if we pry . . .’’

‘‘I don’t think,’’ I said, ‘‘that Herman’s able to cope with anything complex . . .’’

‘‘But do we want to take the chance?’’

Normally, I wouldn’t want to take a chance on destroying evidence. But George told us that it would be about three weeks before the information would be back from the lab.

‘‘Your lab, the FBI lab, right?’’ I asked.

‘‘Sure.’’

‘‘And they won’t give us shit,’’ I said. ‘‘If there’s anything concerning the P.M. organization, for instance . . . it’ll be classified because it’s part of an ongoing investigation, and we’ll never hear about it. Right?’’

George didn’t say anything.

‘‘And no matter what’s there, it just might as well be destroyed as far as our little investigation is concerned. Right?’’ I asked again.

George had kind of a pained look on his face. ‘‘Probably.’’

‘‘And even if your people,’’ I said, turning to Hester, ‘‘had rights to the stuff, they’d just hand it over to Eff Bee One.’’ I used the derogatory term for the FBI. Well, one of them.

‘‘Sure,’’ said Hester. ‘‘No administrator can take the hard decision. Even if it kills the investigation. He’s still ‘done the right thing.’ ’’ She shrugged. ‘‘That’s a lot better than trying to explain why you permanently screwed up the evidence.’’

It was quiet in our little room.

‘‘Well,’’ said Sally, ‘‘that’s terrible.’’

It was quiet again, for what seemed like a minute.

‘‘Are we agreed,’’ I asked, ‘‘that there’s likely to be stuff on those machines we need to see?’’

‘‘Oh, sure,’’ said George. ‘‘No doubt.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Probably quite a bit. For all the good it’ll do us.’’

‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘do we agree that Herman is probably not a computer genius?’’

We did.

‘‘And even if his wife is ten times brighter, he’s still going to have to be able to run it without screwing it up too bad if he makes a mistake?’’

We agreed about that too.

‘‘So just how heavily encrypted can this be? Just a simple password, probably?’’

Probably would be. We agreed on that too. In fact, we also agreed that it wouldn’t be too complex, and would be something that Herman couldn’t possibly mess up.

‘‘Like,’’ said Sally, ‘‘his name?’’

I’d almost forgotten she was there. But she was probably right.

It was silent for a few seconds more.

‘‘Is it time to eat supper yet?’’ I asked.

‘‘That all you think of?’’ asked George.

Eighteen

THE PLAN WAS THIS: When the two agents from the lab crew got in, they’d have several priorities. First of all, they’d be thinking both about supper and about their motel room. Fine. George, as the resident agent, would offer to take them to a good restaurant. Actually, the only restaurant. But, given the press being all over the place, they surely couldn’t leave their evidence in their car. Nor, given the sensitivity, could they very well leave it at their motel. Especially after George would explain that we thought we’d seen some known extremists in the area. Where would they store the evidence until they could get it to the lab? Why, at the Sheriff’s Department, that’s where. Where else?

George was really funny, saying things like ‘‘I can’t believe you’re actually going to go through with this,’’ and ‘‘I can’t believe I’m going to be a party to this,’’ and things like that. His own curiosity, however, was the deciding factor. He was totally suave with the lab guys.

I didn’t do too bad myself, writing out a receipt for each separate component of the computers they’d brought in: a tower, a desktop, and a laptop. Two monitors, one printer, and one external modem. And one external 5¼-inch disk drive.

‘‘Must have been running old software,’’ I said, writing the serial number of the drive on my sheet.

The youngest of the lab agents glanced at me when I said that. Suspicious of people, he wasn’t too