Devil's ClawJ

by J. A. Jance

  Joanna passed the disk along to Frank Montoya. “Mr. Montoya happens to be my department’s resident nerd,” she said with a smile. “Do you mind if he tries taking a look at it?”

  “Not at all,” Sister Celeste said. “I hope he has better luck with it than I did.”

  Taking the disk, Frank left Joanna’s office for his own, leaving the two women alone together. They sat in silence for the better part of a minute, regarding one another, each sizing up the other.

  “Are you aware that Lucy’s mother’s funeral will be held this afternoon?” Joanna asked at last.

  Sister Celeste nodded. “I knew about it and told her, but I don’t believe Lucy has any interest in attending. She and her mother weren’t especially close.”

  An all-time understatement, Joanna thought before asking her next question. “What about Catherine Yates? If nothing else, shouldn’t Lucy go to the funeral for her grandmother’s sake?”

  “I think Lucy should do what Lucy thinks she should do,” the nun replied coolly.

  Joanna was sorry to see that Sister Celeste’s initial case of nerves had obviously been put to rest. Sitting across from Joanna as silent and impassive as a carved Buddha, the nun seemed totally unperturbed. Another curtain of silence settled across the room.

  “Are you aware Lucy Ridder is armed and possibly dangerous?” Joanna persisted eventually.

  “I know she has a gun,” Sister Celeste answered. “For protection.”

  “Protection from whom?” Joanna asked. “From my officers?”

  “From the people who killed her mother,” Sister Celeste returned.

  At that juncture, Frank Montoya reentered Joanna’s office. “It’s encrypted,” he said at once, spinning the flat disk across the smooth surface of the desk. Joanna caught it in midair before it had a chance to fall to the floor.

  “I can’t do anything with it,” Frank continued. “But I’ll bet I know of someone who can.”

  “Who?”

  “I was talking to Rich Davis, one of the local POs the other day—”

  “PO?” Sister Celeste asked. “What’s that?”

  “Probation officers,” Frank explained. “Rich told me about one of his new parolees who was recently released from a federal prison up in Oregon. His name is Fred Woodworth. He was sent up for two years, having helped himself to other people’s money by using the Internet to hack his way into their accounts. He’s evidently quite an expert in his chosen field. If I remember correctly, he also broke into several Federal websites—places like the FBI, for instance, and military installations where they don’t take kindly to unauthorized visitors. He got some time taken off his sentence by serving as an informant on a few of his former cyber pals.”

  “Great,” Joanna said. “Sounds like a great guy. What’s he doing here? How did Cochise County get to be so lucky that he ended up in our backyard?”

  “He’s taking art classes down at Cochise College,” Frank said. “The Feds relocated him here because Bisbee is a long way from all his former known associates.”

  “Isn’t that a little naive?” Joanna asked. “If he’s a computer hacker, all his friends are just a point and click away. Physical distances mean nothing.”

  “True, but one of the conditions of his probation is that he’s not allowed to own or have unsupervised access to a computer. But I’m guessing that if we showed him the files on this disk, he could give us some idea of what they contain even if he couldn’t come straight out and decode them. On the other hand, if we wanted to dink around with this thing, I could probably go up to Tucson and find someone at the university who’d be willing to take a look at it. Depends on how much time you want it to take.”

  Even without Frank saying it aloud, Joanna knew exactly what he was thinking. There was every chance that the encrypted files on Sister Celeste’s disk might be the key to unlocking everything that had happened. Sure, they could go through channels and pull in other people to help them on this. No doubt, Bill Forsythe would be thrilled to put his own stamp on the effort. But time was of the essence, and Sister Celeste hadn’t brought the encrypted disk to Sheriff Bill Forsythe. For whatever reason, she had delivered it into the hands of Cochise County’s Joanna Brady.

  “What are you proposing, Frank?” she asked.

  “That we give Rich Davis a call and have him bring Woodworth in right away to take a look at this stuff. That’s all.”

  “If the parolee works with us on this, won’t he be breaking the terms of his probation and running the risk of getting in trouble again?”

  “The Feds weren’t above using his computer talents when it suited their purposes,” Frank replied. “And I believe the operant word here is ‘unsupervised.’ We’ll have him look at the disk right here in the department on one of our own computers. Before he even touches the keyboard, I’ll take the computer off-line and out of our intranet. He won’t be able to do anything we don’t let him do.”

  “Call Rich,” Joanna said. “See what you can do.”

  Nodding, Frank left the office. Once again, Joanna and Sister Celeste sat facing each other across the shiny expanse of Joanna’s polished desk. “What changed your mind?” Joanna asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The last time I talked to you, you weren’t willing to give me the time of day,” Joanna said. “Today you walked into my office with a ready apology. And, if you hadn’t been prepared to trust me, I’m sure you never would have handed over that disk. What happened between then and now?”

  “I talked to a friend of mine,” Sister Celeste answered. “He spoke very highly of you.”

  “And his name is?” Joanna prompted.

  “Please,” Sister Celeste said. “Don’t ask me that right now. First let’s see what’s on the disk. I’d really like to wait that long, if you don’t mind. If it turns out to be what I think it is, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “Including where to find Lucy Ridder?”

  She nodded. “Most likely,” she said.

  Although Sister Celeste seemed prepared to sit quietly with her hands folded and wait indefinitely, Joanna was feeling the siren call of all the paperwork she had not yet completed. It struck her as impolite to work on it with someone sitting there watching, but she was too short on work time to squander any of it.

  “Would you like anything?” Joanna asked in an effort to be polite and at the same time pry the woman out of her office. “We have coffee, water, sodas?”

  “No,” Sister Celeste returned. “Nothing. I’m fine. In fact, I’m glad to have the opportunity to chat with you for a few minutes. I remember when you were elected, Sheriff Brady,” she added after a time. “It was all over the news up in Tucson. All the nuns at the convent were quite proud of you.”

  “Really. How could they be proud of me? They don’t even know me.”

  Sister Celeste smiled. “Maybe not, but what they were seeing was someone knock down another male-only barrier. Some of our more liberal sisters see every change as a step in the right direction. They’re convinced that as one job after another is made available to women, that it’s inevitable the priesthood will eventually follow.”

  “What do you think?” Joanna asked.

  “I’ve been a nun for more than thirty-five years,” Sister Celeste responded ruefully. “I’m lucky to have worked my way up to be principal at the school where I’ve taught for twenty of those thirty-five years. It’s progress, I suppose, but very slow progress. I’m afraid, when it comes to something as deeply entrenched as the priesthood, I don’t see that kind of fundamental change happening in my lifetime. You’re much younger than I, and it probably won’t happen in your lifetime, either.”

  Joanna’s phone rang. When she heard Frank Montoya’s voice, she turned on the speaker so Sister Celeste could listen in as well. “We’re in luck,” he said. “Rich said Fred Woodworth should be out of class by now and back home in Upper Bisbee. Rich is going to go see him. If he can find him, he’ll try to bring him
here to the office.”

  “You told Rich what we needed?” Joanna asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Just what I thought. As long as it’s done under supervision, he doesn’t think having Fred use one of our computers will be a problem.”

  “And what about Woodworth himself? Does Rich think he’ll go along with the idea?”

  Frank laughed. “He says Freddy Boy misses his computers so much that he’ll be thrilled to do anything in order to lay hands on a keyboard again. That’s how the FBI talked him into working for them earlier, when he was locked up at Club Fed.”

  Sister Celeste stood up as soon as Frank got off the phone. “Look,” she said, “I can see you have work to do, and this could take time. Why don’t I go outside and wait until your deputy’s pet hacker gets here.”

  “Thanks,” Joanna said gratefully. “That would be a big help.”

  It was another forty-five minutes before Kristin called in over the intercom once more to announce the arrival of Rich Davis and Fred Woodworth.

  “Put them in the conference room, Kristin,” Joanna told her. “And then let both Frank Montoya and Sister Celeste know they’re here.”

  Joanna had met Rich Davis on several occasions. He was a beefy fifty-year-old with thick glasses and a vestigial sense of fashion. On that particular day he was wearing a bright red plaid flannel shirt along with a food-stained and not-quite-matching blue silk tie. The probation officer’s young charge was a baby-faced twenty-five-year-old with a peach-fuzz goatee. He looked more like a high school student than an ex-con. Fred Woodworth wore his hair in musty dreadlocks. His T-shirt was shot full of holes, and his stained, raggedy jams looked as though the addition of a single ounce of weight to the pockets would send the pants plummeting around his bare bony ankles, which stuck out of worn emerald-green high-topped sneakers.

  Woodworth barely glanced at the people ranged around the conference room table as they were introduced to him. Instead, he stared greedily—almost hungrily—at the laptop computer Frank had set down on the table nearby.

  “Has Mr. Davis explained the situation to you?” Joanna asked once he was settled on a chair.

  Fred nodded, but said nothing.

  “You do know that even though you’re cooperating with us in this instance, we have no power to change the terms of your parole?” Joanna continued.

  Fred nodded again. “Rich told me that. But, hey. What the hell? I’m glad to help.” He glanced in Sister Celeste’s direction. “Sorry about that, Sister,” he said. “Please excuse my French.”

  She smiled. “That’s all right,” she told him.

  “So can we get started?”

  Frank switched on the computer and passed it to Fred. Frank did it so carefully, so gingerly, that he might have been a nervous first-time mother passing the care and keeping of her precious newborn into the hands of a baby-sitter she didn’t quite trust. As for Fred Woodworth, when he put his fingers on the keys and began making a series of rapid-fire typed commands, the rapt look on his face was almost sexual in nature.

  After several minutes, Fred asked if he could download a program from the Internet. Frank plugged in a PCI modem and plugged the other end into a wall receptacle. Then, with Frank logging on and doing the keyboarding, they took ten minutes to download a file. Only then, when the computer was disconnected from the Internet, did Frank once again give Fred Woodworth access to the keyboard.

  For Joanna, the entire process seemed mesmerizingly boring. At last Fred Woodworth stopped typing. Folding his arms behind his head and leaning back in his chair, he stared at the screen. “I guess it’s a good thing you’re all cops,” he said at last.

  “Why do you say that?” Joanna asked. “What’s on it?”

  Fred gave her a lopsided grin. “It’s code, all right,” he said. “I don’t know where you guys got this, but if the Feds knew you had it, they’d probably shit a brick. Excuse me, Sister,” he said again, eyeing Sister Celeste. “I keep forgetting.”

  “What is it?” Joanna asked.

  “It’s military code,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing they use for command and control procedures. And even though it’s out of date, I’m sure it’s still classified. They don’t like to let any of this stuff out because inevitably, one set of encryption codes is built on top of another. If you have one of the base codes, you can usually extrapolate from there and figure out what’s going on.”

  “So,” Frank asked. “Can you tell us anything about this?”

  Fred Woodworth smirked and shrugged. “Some. Compared to where we are now, this is pretty primitive stuff. I’d say these files date all the way back to the late eighties or early nineties. I can’t say which branch of the service the files are from, but since Fort Huachuca is right next door here, my first guess would be army. If you want to know anything more about this, I’d suggest you call them.”

  Across the table from Fred Woodworth, Sister Celeste let out a long, audible sigh. “It’s true, then,” she murmured.

  “What’s true?” Joanna asked.

  “What Lucy Ridder told me.”

  Joanna held up her hand. “Wait,” she cautioned. “Don’t say anything more right now. Mr. Woodworth? Mr. Davis? Thank you so much for all your help, but I believe that’s all we need for right now. If there’s anything more, we’ll let you know.”

  Now it was Fred Woodworth’s turn to sigh. Closing the lid on the laptop, he ran one finger regretfully and lovingly across it. “It was a pleasure,” he said. “I’ll be glad to help out anytime. Just give me a call.”

  He and Rich Davis stood up. Frank Montoya escorted the two men as far as the conference-room door. As soon as they stepped over the threshold and out into the reception room, Frank closed the door behind them and turned expectantly back to Joanna and Sister Celeste.

  “What did Lucy tell you?” Joanna was asking.

  “That her mother was a spy.”

  “A spy?”

  “She said her father told her that Sandra Ridder was providing top-secret information to our enemies. I’d guess that would have been the Iraqis during the Gulf War.”

  For a second or two, both Joanna Brady and Frank Montoya were struck speechless. Before either one of them could comment, Sister Celeste stood up. “I’m sure you’ve heard enough,” she said. “Now, if you’ll be so good as to come with me, I’ll take you to Lucy right away.”

  “Where is she?” Joanna choked, finding her voice at last.

  “At Holy Trinity Monastery over in Saint David,” Sister Celeste said. “The prior, Father Mulligan, is a good friend of mine, and I understand he’s a friend of yours as well. He promised me he’d take care of Lucy and keep her safe and out of sight. Lucy Ridder is convinced that the man who murdered her mother came out to Cochise Stronghold that night looking for the computer disk. She’s afraid that eventually he’ll figure out who must have it. Once he does, he’ll come looking for her as well.”

  “Wait a minute. Are you saying Lucy knew someone killed her mother?” Joanna asked. “How could she?”

  “It’s perfectly simple,” Sister Celeste answered calmly. “Lucinda Ridder saw him do it.”

  CHAPTER 22

  With Frank holding the door for her, Sister Celeste brushed past him and out of the office. For a time, Joanna made no move to follow. When she didn’t, Frank pulled the door shut once more. “Do you want me to come along?” he asked. “To Saint David, I mean?”

  Joanna shook her head. “I don’t think so. I want you to get Detective Carpenter to tackle the Fort Huachuca situation ASAP. Tell him I want to know everything possible about Sandra Ridder’s position when she used to work on post—who she worked for, what she did, how much money she earned, everything.”

  “Wait a minute,” Frank cautioned. “If this really does turn out to be a legitimate spy case, won’t we be stepping on jurisdictional toes?”

  “Look at how old this case is, Frank,” Joanna said. “It’
s been around at least as long as Sandra Ridder was in prison and probably a whole lot longer than that. What makes you think we’re the first ones to discover it?”

  “You’re saying there may have been a cover-up?”

  Joanna shrugged. “It could be. Look at what happened at Los Alamos. Let’s solve Sandra Ridder’s homicide before we send out for reinforcements and before we go jumping through any unnecessary bureaucratic hoops. If, in the process of doing that, we come across real evidence of espionage, then we’ll pass it along to the Feds so they can follow it up. In the meantime, we’re operating on hearsay eight-year-old evidence from a fifteen-year-old runaway and on the shaky technical assumptions of a convicted computer hacker. Talk about leaning on a pair of bent reeds. If we tried to call in the FBI based on what we have up to this point, they’d laugh themselves silly.”