“Look, Steve,” Hamilton replied. “I didn’t do anything. I have no idea what she could have found on my hard drive. If she says she found something she probably planted it there herself.”
“Okay. I’ll let you know what I find out.”
Steve told the young man at the reception desk that he was there for a four thirty appointment with Dr. Babbage and Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Turner. The man hit a buzzer, and both women soon came out to greet Steve.
Dr. Babbage came over and shook his hand. When their hands touched, Steve felt that familiar jolt and once again he got a little balsa in his pants. He wondered if she felt something, down there, too.
“Nice to see you again, Dr. Babbage,” Steve said while trying to keep his cool.
“You can call me Emily, and it’s nice to see you again too,” she said with a knowing smile.
All three of them walked back to the computer lab where Emily worked. Once in the lab, Steve saw Hamilton’s computer on a workbench. Emily walked over to his client’s computer and sat down, pointing to the chair next to her. “Sit over here where you can see the screen.”
Steve readily obliged and scooted the chair up near her.
Emily began typing on the keyboard and working the mouse. “You see, unless you expertly whitewash your hard drive, nothing you delete ever completely goes away. The computer just moves it to a different section on the hard drive.”
Steve watched the incomprehensible data stream flow by on the screen and asked, “So, what’s that mean?”
“In layman’s terms, everything that is ever typed into your computer stays on the hard drive somewhere, forever,” Emily explained. “When you drag an icon to the trash or delete something, the information doesn’t magically disappear. Instead, the computer labels the information ‘deleted’ and then it knows not to worry about those files. The process allows the computer to complete search requests faster than if it had to look through everything that had ever been typed into it, but the computer never truly erases anything from the hard drive itself. Does that make sense?”
“I think so. Do you mean that when I am typing a letter or document, if I type a word, then hit backspace and change the word, all of that is stored somewhere?”
“Yes. Every time you strike a key on the keypad, a record is kept. So, if you typed the letter ‘I’ and hit backspace once and then typed the letter ‘A,’ I could find the record of all three of those actions. This is called metadata. Another example is the FBI going through Hillary Clinton’s servers to see what emails were sent and received using it. All that information remains on your hard drive, someone just has to know how to find it.”
“So that’s metadata… I see.” Steve could already guess where this was going.
Emily smiled at him. “Unfortunately for your client, I have the training and experience to locate all the files he thought he had deleted. I have thoroughly examined his hard drive and found several files that Mr. Hamilton never wanted anyone to see.” As she continued to speak, her smile widened into a wicked grin. “At least, not anyone from law enforcement.”
Emily began to show Steve the evidence she had found. There were files that showed Hamilton had written checks for fake invoices. Other documents proved he created the fake invoices. Most damning of all, Emily had found a ledger that Hamilton maintained, showing all the money he had embezzled over the past five years from the company.
Emily pointed to the screen. “This Excel sheet details an embezzlement operation that has been going on much longer than your client’s company originally thought, but in the last year, he started taking much larger chunks of money. The bigger amounts are what eventually raised red flags in the accounting department.
“The last part here proves the old adage that pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered,” Emily said. “If he had just kept taking amounts less than a thousand dollars, like he did the first few years, he probably would have gotten away with this forever. Once he started taking thousands at a time, it was just a matter of course that he would get caught.”
As Steve mulled over all of the information Emily had managed to pull from Hamilton’s own computer, Turner looked to Steve and said, “I am still willing to work out a plea deal for your guy wherein I will only take into account the current charges which amount to $52,347 in stolen funds. If your client doesn’t want to plea-bargain, I will add new charges based on the total amount of $123,478 that Mr. Hamilton’s spreadsheet shows he has taken. That will not only affect the sentence I think a jury would give him, but it would also be the amount of restitution the court will require him to pay back to his now former employer.
She paused before continuing, “However, I believe the most important issue here is getting some of the victim’s money back. If I send him to prison, there isn’t much chance of that ever happening. So, if your client will agree to waive his preliminary hearing and plead, I will reduce the charges to a misdemeanor and put him on five years’ probation with the understanding that he has to pay back the fifty-two thousand and change during that timeframe. If he pays all of that back, he will never have to spend a night in jail, let alone prison, and he will only have to pay back half of what I honestly think he took. You need to make sure he understands that is one hell of a deal.”
“Well,” Steve said, “I’ll talk to my client, but I can’t give you a final answer until then. As you know, it’s his case, so it’s also his choice.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You defense lawyers tell me that every day. ‘Always the client’s decision.’ I’ll give you till our preliminary hearing to give me an answer. If you waive, you get the deal; if you don’t, I will file more charges.” Turner shrugged. “Now, enough business. It’s five fifteen, and I’ve been hard at it since eight this morning. I could use a drink, and I imagine you could too after what you just saw.
Steve simply nodded in agreement.
“I’m sure that forty-five minutes ago, you actually believed your client was innocent. You young defense attorneys always believe those lying clients. Trust me, you will get over that in due time.” She turned to Emily. “Would you like to join me and Mr. Naïve here for cocktails at The Empire Bar?”
“I would love to,” Emily responded with a smile on her face. “Let me just close up this place, and I will meet you two there shortly.”
CHAPTER 10
The Empire Bar had been pouring Guinness and serving drinks in Tulsa for over twenty years. When Steve and Turner walked in, they saw people in suits, like themselves, who apparently had just arrived for happy hour. But the guys shooting pool wore T-shirts and looked like they had been there all afternoon. By eight thirty or so, the suits would mostly have trickled out, with the local college students taking over and a band playing later in the evening.
One reason Steve loved living in Oklahoma was the occasional “summer” day in the middle of winter. Oklahoma always gives its residents a couple of sunny, over-seventy-degree days to break up the chill of the coldest months. Today was one of those days, so Steve and Turner each ordered a drink at the bar and went outside to the patio.
The two of them found a table on the lower tier and began discussing different cases each had been involved with to date. Shortly after, Emily approached their table with a Hoegaarden in her hand. Everyone exchanged greetings again, and she quickly joined in the conversation.
Turner had been around long enough to know Steve had only been in private practice a short time and kindly gave him some advice about dealing with different prosecutors in her office. After a while, Turner said she had reached her two-beer limit for driving, and she needed to get home to her family in south Tulsa. As she excused herself, she smirked at Steve and said, “I felt like a third wheel around the two of you anyway.”
Steve and Emily ordered another round. All things considered; Steve felt like the two of them were genuinely hitting it off.
Emily started talking about the last time she had been to The Empire Bar. “It was almost two years ago during the 2014 World
Cup…”
The Empire Bar was one of Tulsa’s top spots for soccer fans. Several local fan groups of different English Premier League teams met at the bar every weekend, during the season, to watch games. The Liverpool group was probably the biggest in town, but Man City, Chelsea, and even Everton had supporters in Tulsa; of course, everyone hated Manchester United.
“I came here to watch the U.S. game against Portugal,” Emily said. “This place was packed with all kinds of crazy soccer fans. Everyone was dressed in red, white, and blue. There were even some people who had painted their faces and bodies. It was so much fun.
Then she raised her drink and shimmied her free hand as a nonverbal exclamation point at the end of her statement. Steve could truly see the joy in her this memory produced and it made him smile.
“The inside was people, wall-to-wall, and they had set up extra TVs outside, so it was packed out here too. Everyone was drinking Pabst and singing pro-America songs. When Clint Dempsey scored that goal, putting us ahead so late in the game, the whole place went nuts. People who didn’t know each other were hugging and high fiving everywhere.” Emily grinned at the memory. “I even hugged some guy I never met. A total stranger and I just exchanged a big happy hug.”
“Sounds like you had a great time that day. I remember that game; I watched it at home with some friends. We went nuts when he scored, too. It was a real bummer when Portugal tied it up at the end,” Steve said. “Are you a big soccer fan?”
“No, that day was more for the experience and supporting the American team. I’ve only really watched World Cup games. Oh, I did see the women play last summer and thought it was so awesome that Abby Wambach finally got to win that trophy.” Emily leaned forward. “And you?”
“Yeah, I’m a big fan. I played in college, and at one point, I even thought about being a high school soccer coach and history teacher. But ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a lawyer. I had some stuff happen when I was a kid that made me want to fight for the little guy in court.”
