“Why?”
Sister Celeste merely shrugged and said nothing.
“If you can’t or won’t say, why are you here?” Joanna demanded.
Sister Celeste leaned down and opened the large, satchel-like purse she had placed on the floor next to her chair. Rummaging through it, she pulled out a three-and-a-quarter-inch computer floppy disk. “I came to give you this,” she said, handing the small blue diskette over to Joanna. “I’m hoping it will provide all of us with some much-needed answers.”
“What’s on it?” Joanna asked.
“I have no idea. According to Lucy, this is the reason her mother died. I tried looking at it myself on my computer at school, but it didn’t work. I can see there are files. In fact, I tried using my disk utilities program on the thing. It told me that the disk is full, but I wasn’t able to open any of the files, and I wasn’t able to view them, either.”
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.”