Devil’s Claw

“That’s certainly big of him.”

“Right,” Joa

Just then Joa

Joa

“Is this the disappearing nun the Double Cs have been trying to make an appointment with for at least two days?” Frank asked.

Joa

“How about if I scoot out the back door,” Frank suggested, nodding toward Joa

“That’s not necessary, Frank,” Joa

Seconds later, Kristin opened the door and ushered a tall, spare, horse-faced woman into the room. Wearing jeans, sweatshirt, and hiking boots, the woman looked as though she might have been an extremely physically fit phys-ed teacher in her late fifties or early sixties. She held out a strong, lean-fingered hand and shook Joa

“Sheriff Brady,” she a

“This is Frank Montoya, my chief deputy,” Joa

Sister Celeste smiled. “I suppose when you heard a nun was outside, you expected someone in a habit. I do wear mine at work during the school week, but now that habits are optional, the rest of the nuns at Santa Theresa’s and I have taken to having dress-down days occasionally. Sort of like casual-dress Fridays in the rest of the world. And the truth is, there are times when jeans and sweatshirts make a lot more sense.”

“Yes, there are,” Joa

Sister Celeste appeared to be on edge about something, and Joa

Joa

“Yes,” Sister Celeste admitted. “Lucy did call me that morning.”

“And you spoke to her for some time,” Joa

“That, too. About fifteen minutes or so, I’d say. She was very upset.”

Perhaps she had just shot her mother, Joa

“I know, but I can’t say,” Sister Celeste returned. “Or rather, I won’t say. There’s a difference.”

Joa

Sister Celeste leaned back in her chair. “I am aware of that,” she said. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“Why?”

Sister Celeste merely shrugged and said nothing.

“If you can’t or won’t say, why are you here?” Joa

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 Joa

“What’s on it?” Joa

“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.”

Joa

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

Taking the disk, Frank left Joa

“Are you aware that Lucy’s mother’s funeral will be held this afternoon?” Joa

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, Joa

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

Joa

“Are you aware Lucy Ridder is armed and possibly dangerous?” Joa

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

“Protection from whom?” Joa

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

At that juncture, Frank Montoya reentered Joa

“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,” Joa

“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?” Joa

“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.”