“At the end of the day, I got in the plane with my instructor and a couple of other classmates—all of whom had gone through the class with me that day. We got to put on jumpsuits, and then I strapped the parachute on my back and climbed into the belly of the plane. We flew up to a little over one thousand feet above the ground. I happened to be the last one to jump, so I had to sit and watch my five classmates jump out of the plane one by one before I got to do it.”
“Were you scared?”
“Definitely! Once it was my turn to jump, my instructor linked a carabiner hook to the static line and my ripcord. Anytime someone goes on their first jump, any reputable jump company will connect a static line. The static line is attached to you on one end and the fuselage of the airplane on the other end. Its purpose is to ensure the ripcord is automatically pulled as you fall away from the plane. It is set up to save those people who might otherwise panic and forget to pull the cord as they plummet to their death.”
“For our first date, let’s try to keep the topics light and stay away from dying. Okay?” Emily said jokingly.
“Sorry about that. Other than my poor attempts at humor, there is no death in this story. No one dies, I promise,” Steve said, sharing another laugh with her. “The scariest part was when I had to get out of the plane. The plane had a propeller on the front of the fuselage. The wings were on top and there were two struts, or bars, sticking out from the under the wings connecting down to the bottom of the fuselage.” As Steve described it, he made the outline of the plane and wings with his hands.
He continued, “I had to lean out, hold onto one of those struts, and then shimmy out away from the plane, hanging on with just my bare hands and with my feet literally dangling a thousand feet up in the sky. I had to scooch out far enough from the fuselage that I would not fall back into the side of the plane. Once I was three or four feet out from the plane, the instructor told me to let go. It was scary as all get out, but I let go and fell back from the plane.
“Thankfully my chute opened immediately. I also didn’t have any trouble with twisted ropes or have to pull my secondary ripcord or deal with any of the other emergency situations they had gone through with us in the training. My chute opened perfectly, and, after that, I just floated for a while.”
“Wow, that is crazy!” Emily leaned forward. “It also sounds extremely exhilarating. Did you love it?”
“It was honestly one of the coolest things I have ever experienced in my life. Just floating down to earth. It was very peaceful and quiet up there,” Steve recalled, before he grinned. “A friend of mine asked me to do one thing for her when I was up there. So, as I floated, I screamed, ‘Excuse me while I kiss the sky!’ and puckered up to the air.”
Emily chuckled at the mental image of Steve parachuting with his lips puckered. Her arm brushed against his as she set her drink down; they shared a smile.
“All right, your turn,” Steve said. “What is the craziest thing you have ever done?”
“Me?” Her face flushed for a moment. Steve figured that she was doing the same drill that he did before telling his “craziest thing ever” story. He wondered what she wasn’t ready to tell him about yet.
“Well, I’m not sure if this counts as crazy to someone who has jumped out of a perfectly good airplane,” Emily said, “but for a computer forensics geek, it tops my list. The graduate program I was a part of, the University of Tulsa computer forensics, is one of the top three in the nation, so there were people from all over the country attending school with me. Not sure if it was like this in law school, but in every class, there was always one jackass who sat in the front row and tried to outsmart the professor.”
“Definitely had those in law school too,” Steve said with an eye roll and a smile.
“Well, the one in our class had spent a year at MIT. When he showed up the first day of class, he actually thought he knew more than the professors at ‘podunk’ Tulsa University. He was so annoying! Anyway, as I am sure you can imagine with a bunch of computer nerds, we all took notes on our laptops and used them for everything in class.
“One of our classes was about computer security—firewalls, restricted access protocols, etcetera. The assignment was to create a firewall for your own laptop, and the professor would grade you on its functionality. I figured out a back door to the brainiac’s firewall and secretly downloaded a virus to his laptop. Needless to say, me breaking through the firewall he had created for his assignment didn’t help his grade much.”
Emily’s smile widened into a mischievous grin. “But that is not the crazy part. The program I created caused his computer to make fart sounds whenever he hit the enter key. I inserted the virus one day during class using the school’s Wi-Fi system we were sharing. It took him about three strokes on his enter key to realize he was the one ‘farting’ in class. Once he understood what was happening, he got super mad and stormed out of the lecture hall. Everyone died laughing as he left. I’m pretty sure I even saw the professor crack a smile as the door shut behind him.”
“Did he drop out?”
“No. But he stopped acting so pompous to everyone. Not sure if that counts as crazy compared to skydiving, but all of my classmates loved it.”
“Of course, it counts. That’s a hilarious story!” Steve said laughing all the while.
As dinner continued, Steve and Emily shared many more anecdotes from their lives. When the sopapillas hit the tables, Steve’s phone buzzed. It was another random Snapchat.
“Duty calls?” asked Emily.
“It’s a Snapchat from an unknown number.”
“Do you regularly get Snapchats from unknown numbers?” Emily asked, curious.
“I have been getting some weird ones recently. My website has my work cell number on it, so I often get calls or texts from unknown numbers.” He flipped his phone back over and turned his attention back to Emily. “I’ll look at it later. Even if it’s a new client, the courthouse is closed until Monday; there is not a lot I can do at eight o’clock on a Friday night for whomever it was, anyway.”
After dinner, they walked across the street for a few drinks. Steve opened the door for Emily to go in first. Inside, they saw a wooden bar which ran down the length of the place on the right, and there were probably a hundred beer taps lined along the wall behind it. Eight tables with four chairs each were positioned along the left wall. Most of the tables were occupied, but they found an open one in the back corner. Emily sat down, and Steve went to the bar and got them each a beer.
When he returned, Emily looked anxious. “As an investigator, I have to tell you that your unknown Snapchat is driving me mad. Although I appreciate you putting it aside for our date, would you mind checking it for my sanity?”
“Sure,” Steve said as he picked up his phone. He leaned over and held it in front of him so they could both see the screen. He opened the application and began to press play.
Emily pushed the phone toward him gently and said, “I know I’m not the first girl you ever went on a date within your life. That might be an old fling trying to get your attention. I don’t want to see it. I just want you to check it and tell me what it is, if it is not too personal.”
Steve turned the phone screen toward himself and pressed play.
Emily saw his face turn from happy to ashen in an instant. “What was it?”
“I don’t want to say,” Steve said.
“You look like you just saw a ghost. Was it some crazy ex who stalks you or something? Do I need to be concerned?” she said while jokingly looking around the room and crouching down as if someone was going to jump out at her any second.
“No. You have nothing to worry about,” Steve said, smiling faintly at her antics. “I don’t know who it was from, but it wasn’t about you… I think it was a death threat.”
Emily sat up straight, completely serious now. “What? What do you mean? You think? What was it?”
“Let me show you.” Steve started turning the phone toward her.
“No.” Emily put her hand over his, stopping him. “You know you can only play a Snapchat message twice, and then it’s gone forever. Don’t show me. Just tell me. If it is what you say it is, we can take it to my lab where I can work my magic and save a copy that will give us the ability to re-watch it as many times as we want without them knowing we saved it. Plus, I might be able to determine who sent it.”
“Wow! Really, you can do all of that?”
“Yes. Now tell me what it was,” Emily said.
“It was a video of a huge pig being slaughtered,” Steve said, grimacing as he remembered what he’d just seen. “The animal was hung upside down by its feet, and a butcher sliced its throat to drain the blood from its body. The words ‘the only good lawyer is a dead lawyer’ were written in red on the screen.”
