Grums. Maybe I shouldn’t do this and maybe Veronica would be angry if she knew, but I don’t like this. If I was a cop, I’d want this information. I don’t trust any of these people.”
“Seems like a bit much,” Scott said.
I closed the site and then clicked out of the Internet. The desktop appeared. It was filled with photo icons. These were labeled by name: Susie, Sharon, hundreds more. Turned out Mona was not the only site Edgar perused nor were her pictures the only ones he saved. Further icons on the desktop showed pictures of downloaded videos from porn sites. They were alphabetical. Above Mona were Mandy the Randy and Luscious Laura. Good to know idiot porn names knew no sexual orientation. I took my flash drive and fitted it into the USB port.
“Are you sure about doing that?” Scott asked.
“In the middle of all this other crap, somewhere on here could be financial information. We can look at it later. The cops could take it away any moment. I’d rather be careful.”
“Are you supposed to take another guy’s data?”
“Two things. He won’t care. He’s dead. Plus Veronica asked us to help.” I highlighted all the desk top items and then dragged them to the zip drive. I had 64 GB space on the drive so I wasn’t too worried that everything on the computer would fit. After I downloaded all these I would check the documents folder and move everything there over.
I concentrated on Edgar’s computer for a few minutes. Data began to transfer. While the computer and flash drive made friends, I said, “I don’t like it when cops don’t act like what I know cops usually act like.”
I watched as Scott established the wireless connection on our laptop. He clicked over to Google and called up the Milwaukee papers. Huge election news headlines proclaimed the candidates to be within twenty votes of each other.
Useless, I thought. If it was close, the Republicans would know how to steal it: think Florida in 2000, or the special election for judge in Wisconsin. We liberals knew how it worked. You either won by a whole lot, or the Republicans would find a way to fuck you over.
Scott found one breaking news squib outlined in yellow about a possible tragedy at the governor’s campaign headquarters, no details.
EIGHT
Wednesday 7:26 A.M.
I pointed at the door Veronica had indicated. “We should start with the stuff in there that she asked for help with. She said she needed money. I can give her some for now, but she claimed she didn’t know about the family’s finances.”
Scott said, “In this day and age? That sounds kind of medieval.”
I shrugged. “She said she didn’t know how she was going to pay for the funeral. There’s not much else to do at the moment. I might as well start now.”
“I’ll help,” Scott said.
We used the key Veronica had left me.
I was reasonably familiar with end of life details: insurance papers, powers of attorney, and that kind of stuff. Years ago Scott and I hired a gay lawyer who was familiar with what needed to be in a gay couple’s wills, and with all the things a gay couple needed to have to ensure each other’s future in case one of them died. There were a lot of legal papers to go through and sign. Including simple things like power of attorney for medical decisions, power of attorney for financial decisions, pre-paying for our funerals, investments, who inherited precisely what, who was the beneficiary of every single thing. Scott was listed as the person for me in all these matters as I was listed for him. We especially made sure we had the kinds of things we could wave in the face of legal and medical personnel if they gave us hassles about end of life decisions.
We entered the room. It was a size between a regular closet and a walk-in closet. A tiny desk in one corner had a straight-back wooden chair in front of it. Except for that space and a few feet between them
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley