“We got into his desktop system and found nothing much of interest, other than that after a certain date, when he told his few friends he was going hunting, it hadn’t been accessed.”

“Okay.”

“So he’s got the 8. Now they’ve got the 8. They’d have to take it, because he’d no doubt downloaded his ballistic app into it, I’m guessing FirstShot. Anyone smart enough to use the rifle at highest capacity would know that that’s the best. Anyone taking the rifle would take the iPhone and use it to set up his really long shots. Juba would have to have it.”

Bob nodded. Seemed right so far.

“Here’s the issue. The later iPhones—the 8 and the X—are really a bitch to crack if you don’t have the code. Those fuckers at Apple are smart, you can bet on it. One of the things they’re selling is security. When one comes up in a case—say, recovered in a drug raid—we can’t even crack it. It has to go off to one of three or four high-tech computer labs, where the engineers can diddle with it for weeks before they can finally get in. And I’m guessing next that Waters was the kind of guy who shut down every night before he went to bed. So if they plugged him and they need to get in, how do they do it?”

“You don’t think they’d take him?”

“No, because if he’s alive, all sorts of complexities are added to what is already too complex. Security, support, interrogation, the fact that they would assume someone like this tough-ass, high-IQ Texas oil engineer wasn’t going to give up his secrets easily, which generates another major headache and more drama for them. No, they’d probably cap him and trust they could crack it by their own devices.”

“Could they?”

“As I said, there’s a handful of labs that could do the work. But they’re not going to a lab.”

“Of course not.”

“So they’d go into crime world. And, as it turns out, there are about three guys in that world capable of cracking a late-gen iPhone. They don’t hang out in small towns like Toad Lick, Mississippi. One’s in Boston; one’s in Seattle, obviously; and one’s in Dallas. We know all of ’em, have for years. Sometimes they help us so that we will leave them alone. Putting them in the slammer is of no use at all. Plus, we get tips from them on stuff they hear.”

“You’re guessing it was the Dallas guy.”