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was made of computers, and they did nothing but try to crack the message, there wouldn’t be enough time in the life of the universe to do it.”
    He thought about that, then laughed. “You’re bullshitting me.”
    “Nope.”
    “Why would anybody encrypt something that deep?”
    “Because they can. It’s easy. So why not?”
    “Okay. But still, the idea of calling in the feds is scary,” he said. “I hate messing with those guys. If we only knew what was on the laptop. . . .”
    “That’s the problem,” I agreed.
    “Maybe, as a security thing, Bobby kept all the good stuff on the DVDs.”
    We bumped across a set of railroad tracks. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I was lost. I did a U-turn and headed back the way we’d come. I picked up on John’s suggestion: “I don’t think so. Accessis too slow. No computer guy wants to thumb through a stack of DVDs and then wait for ten seconds for something to load when he can get it in a half-second. That’s just the way it is. He’d keep the good stuff on the laptop.”
    “Then maybe he backed up the laptop on the DVDs, so we can figure out what’s on it, without finding it.”
    I shook my head. “There are what, seventy DVDs? That’s a huge amount of stuff. You could probably put the Library of Congress on those things. There’s so much stuff that we won’t even have time to read the indexes, if there are indexes.”
    “I could take some time off . . .”
    John used to work on a law firm’s computer system, and he was about as far into computers as a typical high school teacher. He didn’t have any notion of what I was talking about, and I struggled around to find an explanation.
    “Look,” I said finally. “A few weeks ago, I put the Encyclopaedia Britannica on my laptop, since I had lots of space. Okay? That’s seventy-five thousand articles, thirteen hundred maps, ten thousand photos. That’s what the advertisement says. Something like that. It sucked up about 1.2 gigs. That means you could put about, uh . . .”—I did some quick calculation—“something like thirteen Encyclopaedia Britannica s on one DVD. And we have seventy DVDs. They might not be full, but if they are, that’ll be like paging through what, sixty-seven million articles and eight million pictures, looking for your name or your picture. You don’t have enough time left in your life to do it.”
    “Then what use are they?”
    “Bobby didn’t look piece by piece. He knew what he had. I’d bet he’s dumped whole databases to the DVDs and the index ison the laptop. It’s like a hacker’s reference library. When he needs something, he can look it up.”
    >>> WE FORDED a couple of low cross streets and came up to a well-lit intersection. I took a left on a major street, no idea what it was. John had been silent for a few minutes, then said, “So we gotta get the laptop.”
    “Yup. Or destroy it.”
    “But we gotta get the guy who killed Bobby, too. That’s just as important—to me, anyway. The local cops won’t do it. I think we’ve got to call in the feds.”
    “Yeah,” I said reluctantly. Then, after a few more minutes, “I wish there was some way to get the feds interested in Bobby, without them knowing that he’s Bobby. Some way to get them chasing the killer. Like seriously on the job.”
    More thinking, then John half-laughed, looked at his watch, and said, “Well, I know one way. If we got the time.”
    John’s a smart guy. When he told me his idea, it made me laugh, as it had made him laugh, the heartsick sound you make when somebody presents you with an insane proposition that would probably work, and that you’re probably gonna do.
    After a little more talk, I said, “Ah, boy.” I couldn’t think of anything nearly as good. I told him so, and added, “Or as fuckin’ nuts.”
    >>> WE FOUND an all-night convenience store where I bought some cookies and candy and a couple of cans of motor oil andtwo gallons of spring water from a sleepy