CHAPTER SEVEN
When we got to the station, Billy Ray Bummel didn’t tarry long; he sallied forth to terrorize other suspicious residents of Mirabeau. Teresa Garza said she needed to head back to Austin and asked Junebug to give her a call if he needed more help or if another prank occurred. “Thanks, Teresa, for coming out here,” Junebug mumbled. He seemed suddenly embarrassed, and I noticed Sergeant Garza was smiling at him in an enigmatic way. The air was charged between them. I stood there in glee, watching Junebug redden slightly under my gaze. Teresa Garza gave his hand a quick squeeze, thanked me for my time, and headed out the door. We watched her drive off. “My, what was that all about?” I inquired. “Nothing,” he said, “let’s go inside and talk.” This was simply too good to resist and in many ways I’m a slave to my lower drives. “Why, Junebug, one might think you were setting off these charges yourself, just to get her down for these little visits-I mean, investigations.” “All right, Jordy. I’ve known Teresa for a long time. She requested this assignment because she knows I need the help. Besides, the Austin Bomb Squad provides assistance to several surrounding counties. And don’t tease me. You know better than anyone that these bombings aren’t any laughing matter.” We went back into his office and I watched him try to putter away his embarrassment by shuffling large piles of papers. “She has lovely eyes,” I observed to myself. One pile of papers tumbled into further disarray. “Damn it,” Junebug muttered under his breath. “I always end up paying for being your friend, don’t I?” He hadn’t called me a friend in years and I sat for a moment, enjoying it. Men aren’t always big on acknowledging who their real friends are when they’re sober. I decided I’d tortured him enough and stopped short of asking him to bring Teresa to have dinner with Candace and me. “You wanted my help with something?” I asked. He scratched his brown burr and gave me a look of utter resignation. “You know a lot about computers, don’t you?” “I guess. I mean, I know how to use one and most of the common software packages. I can’t write programs, though. Why?” I leaned back in my chair. “Well, I don’t know diddly about computers. Nelda and Franklin use one for office administration, and we got the TLETS system tied in with DPS, but I’ve never learned much about ‘em. I need your help. I didn’t want Billy Ray to know about it because he just got a home computer and he’s been bragging plenty about how much he knows about ‘em.” “They haven’t yet made the computer Billy Ray can figure out,” I said. “It would have to have buttons for chimp fingers and a built-in drool cup. What do you want me to do, teach you the basics? What kind of computer does Nelda use, or do you want to learn a different one?”
“What I want,” Junebug answered, “is your help and your silence. I want to find out what was on Greg Callahan’s laptop computer.” It took longer than I would’ve imagined it would. Namely because I had to explain to Junebug each and every step. He knew a little more than he gave himself credit for, but not enough to make himself useful. We started off in his office, with the door shut. Greg’s dark laptop and the pile of 3.5-inch diskettes that I’d seen in Greg’s room sat there.
“Can you find out what’s inside all this?” Junebug asked. “Well, let me ask you a question. Have you dusted the keyboard?” “No. Franklin Bedloe, one of my deputies, he knows about them, he said we’d damage the hard part.” “Hard drive. The fingerprint dust might very well do that. But I need to type on the keyboard to see what’s inside. Why don’t you want to have Franklin or Nelda do this anyhow?” “Because I told ‘em I’d do it,” Junebug snapped back. He usually talks in this languorous drawl so you forget he has a temper. “I’m gonna catch the son of a bitch who killed that poor man that awful way in my town.
Anyhow, you can teach me the basics while you do this. Kill two birds with one stone.” I shook my head at his foolish pride. “Okay, so how do I avoid getting my prints on the keyboard?” He left and returned with evidence gloves, those clear kind you see cops handling the murder weapon with on TV. I slipped them onto my hands. “Damn, they’re tight. Of course my hands are enormous anyway.” “Bull. You got the hands of a hamster. I never saw such a tall man with such little hands, and you know what they say about men with little hands.” “Yeah.
They have to help their friends with little peckers figure out computers,” I answered. “Okay, why don’t we see what’s on these diskettes first. Have you dusted these?” “Nope.” “Okay. I’ll make copies of the diskettes so you can dust the originals.” I thumbed through Greg’s diskettes. “Oh, this is interesting. One’s marked LOUDERMILK FILES 2. What do you imagine could be on there? And where’s Loudermilk files 1?” “That’s what I want to know,” Junebug said, sounding just a tad impatient. I glanced through the rest There were six diskettes in all, three unmarked, the one marked LOUDERMILK FILES 2, another labeled MIRABEAU PROJECT ESTIMATES, and another titled FINANCIAL. Junebug followed me like a puppy while I found some blank 3.5-inch diskettes in a box in the supply office. He seemed calmed when I pointed out that Greg’s diskettes were made by one manufacturer and were colored blue, while the station’s were colored tan. No danger of getting them confused. On Nelda’s machine, I quickly formatted my disks so they could receive data, then copied Greg’s six disks. I carefully labeled each of the copies so it matched the original.
Junebug watched, fascinated by this simplest of computer tasks. He slid the originals back into an evidence bag as I finished with them.
“Okay, let’s snoop,” I said as I loaded up the first of the copied disks, choosing LOUDERMILK FILES 2. Nothing. I tapped keys, then turned back to Junebug. “Sorry. It looks like the disk is blank.”
“What did you do wrong?” he wailed. “No, listen. I didn’t do anything wrong. There’s just no information on this disk. Zilch.” I sat back in the chair, rubbing my arm. I’d taken it out of my sling to type faster, and it felt rebelliously painful. Better than yesterday, but still not well. “Maybe he’d labeled it but didn’t format it. It might have been that he was planning on putting files on it he hadn’t created yet.” “Or maybe it was erased,” Junebug mused. “Can you tell that from the disk?” “Someone probably can. I can’t. If they just erased the stuff on the disk, it would still be formatted to receive information. Or, they could have formatted over the information. That would completely destroy whatever was on the disk.” “Crap. Can you tell if someone reformatted it to ruin whatever was on there?” Junebug asked. “There’s probably a way, but I don’t know it,” I confessed.
“You’d have to send the original to a business that specializes in data recovery. They have programs and means of getting back stuff that gets accidentally-or maybe on purpose-deleted. But there’s only so much they can do.” Junebug gave a long sigh. “Let’s check the others.”
The story repeated itself five times. Each of Greg’s diskettes was blank. “So what happened to them?” he said, half to himself. “One, Greg or someone put these labels on perfectly okay blank disks but never put information on them. To me, that doesn’t seem likely. I never label a disk until I’ve put information on it. Or the disks did have stuff on them-at least the ones that were labeled-and someone has either erased or destroyed the information.” I stopped and turned to him. “But if someone wanted to get rid of the information, why not just steal the disks and destroy them later?” “Maybe they didn’t want them on their person. And if they can destroy them by using the computer, they don’t need to steal them.” “There might be the risk that the data could be recovered, though.” I scratched my nose with one plastic-sheathed finger. “But, like I said, I don’t know how much the data-recovery folks could do. Maybe it was enough to destroy the stuff on these files.” “You said that there would also be information on the hard disk on his machine,” Junebug said. “Let’s look at that.
God, I hope it hasn’t been erased.” “I can copy what’s on the hard disk onto diskettes, if you like, or we can look directly onto his hard disk.” Junebug considered. “Better make the copies.” I did so.
There were plenty of files on the hard disk, so at least it hadn’t been erased. We both confessed to skipping lunch, so Junebug called the Dairy Queen and ordered two country baskets, with strips of fried chicken, peppered cream gravy, buttery Texas toast, and french fries.
Cholesterol’s not something we worry about, what with all the fresh air we get. I finished up the copying while we waited for the food to arrive. (Dairy Queens don’t usually deliver, but Junebug’s a special customer, what with being the law.) When the food came, we wolfed it down like a couple of good bachelors. The feeding frenzy completed, we took the several disks that held the contents of Greg’s hard drive and went back to Nelda’s computer. I slid the first disk in and accessed its contents. There were a lot of spreadsheet files and word- processing files, and I went to those first. “You’re sure we’re not breaking the law by doing this?” I said. “I mean, if you find evidence in here, you’ll be able to use it, right?” “Yes. Don’t you worry about it, just don’t erase anything.” He leaned over my shoulder as I typed. “Unless he’s passworded the files, I should be able to see everything here,” I said. “If he’s put a password on any of them, they’ll be locked.” He made a noise in his throat, and I got to work.
The first files I looked at were word-processing files; I preferred to deal with language over numbers first. The files were organized into directories: LETTERS; MEMOS; REPORTS. I peeked first in LETTERS and looked at the contents, then began opening each file to read it.
