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Chapter 22

I HURRIED TO THE BEDROOM, FLOUR-COATED HANDS HELD AWAY from my body.

“Find something?” Chenevier asked.

“In a canister. Better shoot it in situ then dust for latents.”

Chenevier followed me back to the kitchen. Scribbling an evidence label, he photographed the bowl from several angles. When he’d finished, I extracted the object, tapped it on the rim, and laid it on the counter.

Chenevier snapped more photos, then checked for prints on the object’s outer surface. There were none. Twirling a finger, he indicated that I should unroll the plastic. I did. He photographed every few inches.

Within minutes, a baggie, an eight-inch length of clear plastic wrap, and a thumb drive lay side by side on the Formica. None yielded prints.

“Got something,” I called into the living room.

Ryan joined us. Floating one brow, he brushed flour from my nose.

I narrowed my eyes in a “don’t say it” warning.

Ryan handed me a towel, then scanned the small assemblage beside the bowl.

“USB flash drive,” I said. “Sixteen gigabytes.”

“That’s massive.”

“You could store the national archives on this thing.”

Ryan indicated that I should bring the thumb drive to the computer. Chenevier returned to the bedroom.

I passed the drive to Lesieur. She thumbed a button, and a USB connector slid from one end.

“We got paper for this?”

Ryan nodded

Reaching under the workstation, Lesieur inserted the drive into the CPU tower.

The computer ding-donged, then a box appeared requesting a password.

“Try using Cormier,” Ryan said.

Lesieur shot him a “you’ve got to be kidding” look.

“Try it.”

Lesieur typed C-O-R-M-I-E-R.

The screen changed. A new box stated that a removable device had been detected, and that the disk contained more than one type of content.

“What a bonehead.” Lesieur hit several keys.

Columns of text appeared. Folders. Files. Dates.

Lesieur opened a file. Another. Ryan and I leaned in for a better view of the screen.

“I’ll be at this awhile.” As before, her message was not subtle.

Ryan and I returned to the kitchen.

Several cabinets and a silo of cereal and cracker boxes later, Lesieur spoke. Ryan and I went to her.

“OK. Here’s my take. Everything looks innocent enough on the surface. Tax returns. Business files. But I think your guy’s got another whole layer buried in the unused space of his thumb drive.”

Ryan and I must have looked blank.

“Some of the newer encryption programs provide plausible deniability by creating two layers. The user stores some innocuous files in the first layer. Tax returns, business contacts, information a reasonable person might want to encrypt. The second layer is a disk volume hidden in the ‘unused’ space of the drive.”

“So Cormier uses a simple password for layer one because he doesn’t really care about those files,” I guessed. “It’s a cover. He’s really concerned about layer two.”

“Exactly. With this type of setup, if someone starts poking around, they see some files, some open space, everything looks copasetic. When they view the open area of the disk byte by byte, all they find is gibberish.”

“That’s not suspicious?” Ryan asked.

Lesieur shook her head. “Operating systems don’t normally delete deleted files. They just change a marker that says, ‘This file has been deleted and can be written over.’ Everything that was in the file is still on the drive until its space is needed, so if you look at the unused areas on a normal disk drive, you’ll see bits and pieces of old files. Remember Ollie North?”

Ryan and I both said yes.

“That’s how Irangate investigators recovered information Ollie had deleted. Without those chunks of old files, whether plain text or recognizably patterned computer data, pure gibberish stands out for what it lacks.”

Lesieur cocked her chin at the monitor. “The giveaway with your guy is that I’m finding megabyte after megabyte of gibberish.”

“So you suspect there are encrypted files, but you can’t read them.”

“C’est ça. Your guy’s running Windows XP. When used with a sufficiently long and completely random password, even the tool that comes with XP Pro creates encryption that can be a bitch to crack.”

“You tried typing in ‘Cormier’?” Ryan asked.

“Oh yeah.”

Lesieur checked her watch, then stood.

“A mondo thumb drive stashed in a flour bin. Double-layered encryption. This guy’s hiding something he sincerely doesn’t want found.”

“Now what?” Ryan asked.

“If your warrant allows, confiscate the hardware. We’ll get whatever it is he’s snaked away.”

At one, Ryan and I left Chenevier and Pasteur to finish and lock up. I drove straight to Cormier’s studio. It was like moving from the cool of the arctic to the heat and grime of the tropics.

Hippo was wearing another aloha shirt. Red turtles and blue parrots, all damp and wilted. He’d finished two more cabinets.

I told him about the thumb drive. His response was immediate.

“The guy’s into porn.”

“Maybe.”

“What? You think he’s storing church music?”

Since images and videos require a lot of disk space, I, too, suspected porn. But I bristle at knee-jerk reactions.

“We shouldn’t jump to judgment,” I said.

Hippo blew air through his lips.

To avoid an argument, I changed the subject.

“Ever hear of an island called Île-aux-Becs-Scies?”

“Where?”

“Near Miramichi.”

Hippo thought a moment, then shook his head.

“What does the name mean?”

“I think a bec scie is some kind of duck.”

Something rolled over in my hindbrain.

Duck Island? What?

I chose a cabinet and began pulling file after file.

Kids. Pets. Couples.

I found it hard to concentrate. Was I really championing judicious thinking? Or was I in denial? Cormier a pornographer. Cormier a photographer of women and children. Were the implications simply too awful?

And why the heads-up from my subconscious? Duck Island?

Partly heat. Partly hunger. A headache began organizing on the right side of my skull.

Ryan was to have bought lunch and come directly from Cormier’s apartment to his studio. Where the hell was he? Cranky, I continued plowing through folders.

It was two-thirty before Ryan made his appearance. In lieu of the salad and Diet Coke I’d requested, he’d gotten hot dogs and fries from Lafleur’s.

As we ate, Ryan and Hippo discussed the thumb drive. Ryan agreed that Cormier was probably hiding smut. Hot, irritable, and stuffed with greasy wieners, I played devil’s advocate.

“Maybe Cormier got sick of dealing with this disorganized mess.” I waved an arm at the cabinets. “Maybe he was scanning all his old images and files.”

“To a thumb drive stashed in his flour bin.”

Ryan had a point. It irked me.

“OK, so it’s porn. Maybe Cormier’s just a perv trying to hide his dirty little secret.”

Both men looked at me as though I’d suggested anthrax was harmless.

“Think what you want.” I bunched my wrappers and shoved them into the greasy brown bag. “I’ll wait for proof.”

Cabinet twelve. I was looking at a photo of an exceedingly unattractive baby when my cell phone chirped.

Two-eight-one area code. Harry.

I clicked on.

“You certainly were up early this morning.”

“I’m up early most mornings.”

“How’s that French buckaroo?”

“If you mean Ryan, he’s a jerk.”

“I just spoke to Flannery O’Connor.” Harry’s voice was jittery with excitement.

“I’m listening.”

There was a pause.

“Are we having another cranky pants day?”

“It’s hot.” I placed the ugly baby on the stack of finished files, and opened another.

“This isn’t even close to hot.”

“What did you learn?”

“You want hot, you try Houston in August.”

“O’Connor House?”

“The business folded when Flan and her husband went splitsville. She goes by Flan. I didn’t ask if she’d changed it official or not. Anyway, Flan cut bait after catching hubby au flagrant with a guy named Maurice.”

“Uh-huh.” The new file was labeled Krenshaw. The subject was a cocker spaniel. I closed it, and selected another.

“She’s a hoot, Tempe. We talked for over an hour.”

I could only imagine that conversation.

“What did you learn about Obéline’s book?” I opened another file. Tremblay. A very fat lady posed with a very fat child. The Tremblays went onto the stack.

“Following the divorce, Flan kept all the O’Connor House records. Client names, book titles, number of pages, number of copies, what type of binding. ’Course we’re not talking Simon and Schuster here.”

“Obéline’s book?” Keeping Harry on track was like herding sheep on uppers.

“During its existence, O’Connor House printed twenty-two poetry collections. Six of the orders were placed by women.” I heard paper rustle. “La Pénitence, by Félice Beaufils.”

What Harry did to the French language was truly remarkable.

“Lie Down Among the Lilies, by Geraldine Haege. Peppermint Springtime, by Sandra Lacanu. Un besoin de chaleur humaine, by Charlene Pierpont. That title means something about needing human warmth.”

I opened another folder. Briggs. Blushing bride. Done.

“The other four had no authors. You know, the poet preferred to remain anonymous. Ghostly Mornings. Flan thought that was a literary club project. A woman named Caroline Beecher handled the transaction.”

The headache was banging at the back of my eyeball. Using a thumb, I rubbed circles on my temple.

“Parfum was paid for by Marie-Joséphine Devereaux. Fringe was paid for by Mary Anne Coffey. Each of those books was about fifty pages in length. Each print run was a hundred. Beecher and Devereaux had Moncton addresses. Coffey lived in St. John—”

“Obéline?” It came out sharper than I intended.

Harry allowed me several moments of dead air.

“I’m sorry. I know you’re working hard on this. It’s just a little too much information for now.”

“Mm-hm.”

“What did you learn about Bones to Ashes?”

I opened a new file. Zucker. Three kids wearing plaid.

“Virginie LeBlanc.” Curt.

“LeBlanc placed the order?”

“Yes.”

“Did O’Connor have LeBlanc’s address?”

“Post office box.”

“Where?”

“Bathurst.”

“Any other contact information?”

“No.”

“Did you try tracing LeBlanc?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

Sulky silence.

I rolled my eyes. It hurt.

“Look, Harry. I’m sorry. I do appreciate what you’re doing.”

From across the room, I heard a phone, then Hippo’s voice.

“Gallant.”

“Can I buy you dinner tonight?” I asked Harry.

“Quand? Où?” Staccato questions in the background. Where? When?

“I’ll be here,” Harry said.

“Bon Dieu!”

“You pick the restaurant,” I said.

I heard a soft grunt, then footsteps clumping my way.

“You can give me a full report on everything you’ve learned.”

Harry agreed. Coolly.

I clicked off.

Hippo was standing over me.

I looked up.

Something was dreadfully wrong.


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