“Cormier’s thumb drive. We’re in. You available to scan faces?”
“Sure, but—”
“Need a ride?”
“I can drive.” I checked the clock: 8:13.
“Time to make yourself useful, princess.” The old Ryan.
“I’ve been up for hours.” I looked at Bird. The cat looked back. Disapproving?
“Right.”
“I was online until three-thirty.”
“Learn much?”
“Yes.”
“Surprised you could stay awake after such rigorous physical activity.”
“Cooking pasta?”
Pause.
“You OK with last night?” Ryan’s voice had gone serious.
“What happened last night?”
“Headquarters. ASAP.”
Dial tone.
Fifty minutes later I entered a conference room on the fourth floor of Wilfrid-Derome. The small space contained one battered government-issue table and six battered government-issue chairs. A wall-mounted chalkboard. Vertical-slat blinds on one dingy window.
The table held a cardboard box, a phone, a rubber snake, a laptop, and a seventeen-inch monitor. Solange Lesieur was connecting the latter two pieces of equipment.
Ryan arrived as Lesieur and I were speculating on the provenance of the serpent. Hippo was two steps behind. Bearing coffee.
Seeing me, Hippo frowned.
“Brennan’s good with faces,” Ryan explained.
“Better than she is with advice?”
Lesieur spoke before I could think of a clever rejoinder. “No coffee for me.”
“I brought extra,” Hippo said.
Lesieur shook her head. “I’m already stoked.”
“What’s Harpo doing here?” Sideswiping the reptile, Hippo placed his tray on the table.
Lesieur and I exchanged glances. The snake’s name was Harpo?
Everyone sat. While Lesieur booted the laptop, the rest of us stirred powdered cream and/or sugar into the opaque brown sludge in our Styrofoam cups. Hippo went with two packets of each.
“All set?”
Nods around.
Lesieur inserted Cormier’s thumb drive. The PC
“Cormier was security-conscious but amateur.” Lesieur’s fingers worked the keyboard. “Want to know his system?”
“Talk quick, this stuff is lethal.” Ryan pounded a fist to his chest.
“Next time get your own freakin’ coffee.” Hippo flipped Ryan the bird.
Ryan fist-pounded his chest.
I recognized the jesting for what it was. Morgue humor. Everyone was on edge, jittery about the images we might soon see.
“The best passwords are alphanumeric,” Lesieur began.
“Sheez.” Hippo doing derisive. “It’s the jargon not the coffee that’s gonna take us out.”
“An alphanumeric password is composed of both numbers and letters. The more random the combination, and the more characters included, the safer you are.”
“Don’t rely on your puppy’s name backward,” I said.
Lesieur continued as though no one had spoken.
“Cormier used an old trick. Pick a song or poem. Take the first letter of each word of the opening line. Bracket that string of letters with numbers, using the date of the password’s creation, day at the front, month at the back.”
The Windows screen opened and Lesieur entered a few more keystrokes.
“Generates a pretty good encryption chain, but a lot of us geeks are wise to the trick.”
