I knelt. Two good-size unopened boxes—one low-slung, longer than it was wide, much like the one Velda’s VCR had come in; the other was a cardboard cube with something heavy inside. Both were from Radio Shack.

“Tandy 1000 TX,” I read from the lower-riding box. “Computer?”

“Yeah.” Chris was kneeling too. “And that’s a monitor to go with it. I think the keyboard’s in the box with the computer.”

“The packaging looks new. Did Shannon know how to use one of these gizmos? Velda has a word processor at the office.”

Chris nodded. “Yeah, he had one at work, too.” His brow furrowed. “You know, if Casey’s file was on a floppy disk, all that material would be in Pat’s hands by now. I think we’re on that fool’s errand we talked about.”

I glared at the boxes. “Let’s get in these things.”

We hauled the boxes out, popped them open, but it soon seemed obvious this was their first trip out in the wilds. They were covered in taped plastic, which we removed. We wrestled with the things, but they were new, all right. Even smelled new.

And there were no floppy disks at all.

“Okay, kid,” I said, as I slid the boxes back in the closet. I stood and closed the door on our great discovery. “We better get out of here before somebody calls the cops.”

“Mike…do you think anybody would mind, if…” He seemed embarrassed, suddenly. “No, I shouldn’t. But…”

“Shouldn’t what?”

He walked over, tentatively, and pointed to the framed photo of Reagan on the wall above the file cabinet.

“Casey said, after he was gone…he wanted me to have that picture. Said his boys are a couple of know-it-all liberals and…” He swallowed thickly. “You think it’s okay if I take it now?”

I was over there quick. “Take it down.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

“Save your thanks. Get that thing down for me.”

He reached up and plucked the framed picture off the wall and, puzzled, handed it to me.

I turned it over. Looked at how the back was sealed up with brown paper. It didn’t look tampered with, and the seal was tight. I was probably on another fool’s errand. But I tore the paper off anyway, getting another confused frown out of Chris. A piece of gray car,dboard backing was inside. I pried that out with a thumb nail.

There, behind our president, was a 3½-inch unlabeled floppy disk.

I grinned. “Thank you, modern technology. Here, kid…you take Dutch’s picture, I’ll take the file we been looking for.”

That was when the lights went out.