Hawk Moon (13 page)

"Let's go sit down and eat lunch. Nobody is keeping you away from our table."

Our table.
As if he and his buddies owned it. "I'd rather talk to you here, alone." He looked at Paige, hoping she'd cooperate.

But she held her ground. "If it's about Myra, I was her friend too, you know."

"Suit yourself." He turned to Claude. "Why didn't you tell me you were going out with Myra last summer?"

Claude shrugged. "It wasn't any big deal. I figured she would mention it when she started seeing you again. We just went out a couple of times. Did Taylor tell you about it?"

"Yeah, and she told me you wanted Myra to take the Chill with you."

Claude's expression turned sour. "No way. I don't think I'd even heard of that stuff back then."

"But he knows about it now," Paige said and laughed.

"Have you tried it?" Will asked, even though he knew the answer.

Claude shrugged again. "A couple of times. So what?" He glanced toward the lunchroom. "Any more questions, Will? I'm getting hungry, smelling the food."

"Yeah. C'mon and join us," Paige said. "You know we're all pulling for you."

"That's right," Claude said. "No one wants to see you in trouble."

Will hesitated, not certain what to do. Then he saw Charlie Baines standing off to the side, looking intently in his direction. "You guys go ahead. I'm not very hungry right now."

He watched them walk into the lunchroom, then turned to Baines, who looked as unkempt as ever. He was wearing a different shirt today, one with a gaudy yellow and orange design with a green T-shirt underneath it. Part of his shirt was tucked in, and part of it was hanging out. His hair was mussed as always, and a thick strand fell over one eyebrow.

"What's up, Charlie?"

"Well, in case you're interested, we found out the source of your E-mail."

"Who is it?"

"It's a little complicated. Can you come to the lab? I want Corey
Ridder
to explain it to you. She's the one who figured it out."

R
idder
was sitting in a cubicle in front of a glowing monitor and eating a peanut butter sandwich. She wore jeans and a baggy red sweatshirt that reached to her thighs. Her curly hair was tied to one side of her head, which gave her a slightly comical look.

"Here he is," Baines said. "I didn't tell him anything yet."

Ridder
nudged her round eyeglasses further up the bridge of her nose as she slowly turned in her chair. "You're a football player, right?"
Ridder
asked without looking directly at him.

Will nodded, not greatly encouraged by her opening remark. No greeting, just a dumb question.

"Okay, three years ago, before any of us were here, there was a scandal about steroids being used by the football team." She still hadn't looked at him and he wondered why she was avoiding his gaze.

"I heard about it. What's that got to do with these messages I'm getting?"

Ridder
raised her head, her large brown eyes finally meeting his. He realized that even though she was usually in the lab when he was here, he'd never looked directly at her. There was something sensual in the flare of her nostrils and the curve of her mouth. At the same time there was a sense of depth about her.

"Everything," she said, softly.

She turned back to the computer and typed something on the keyboard. A list of names, each one followed by a series of numbers, appeared on the monitor. "Take a look."

Will recognized the names of players who'd been on the Aspen High football team while he was still in middle school.

"These are the guys who were involved. You getting this now?"

Will shook his head. "Not really. What are the numbers?"

"All right. These are all the E-mail codes that the players used. They thought they were real smart. They were buying and selling steroids via E-mail so they never had to talk about it."

She pointed to a name. "This guy handled the steroids." Her finger slid down the list. "And this one collected the money."

Will recognized the names of the two players who had been kicked off the team. But he didn't know anything about the electronic part of the transactions.

"A real team effort, you could say," Baines said. "See you guys later. I'm going to lunch."

A momentary look of panic crossed
Ridder's
face as she looked after Baines. For his own part, Will felt vaguely uneasy being left alone with
Ridder
, as if he might need a translator in order to understand what she said. Even if she was a computer wizard, she was still one of his classmates and he should have some things in common with her. "Corey?"

"Yeah?" She sounded wary.

"Is your name really Corey?"

"
Corina
. I hate it," she said without looking away from the monitor.

"So where did you get this information? I'm really impressed."

"Oh, that. I went into the administration's database and pulled it out."

"You can do that if you're a sysop?"

"Not really."

"You mean you hacked into it."

"That's one way of putting it."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

Ridder
shrugged, unconcerned. "There are different degrees of danger. Say if you paid me a hundred dollars to change a grade from a C to an A, I'd say, yeah, that's on the high side. But just to take a quick look and get out without altering anything is on the lower scale."

Will peered at the screen again. "Corey, I'm sorry, but I still don't get what this has to do with the E-mail I've been getting."

"That's because you haven't realized yet how those football players were caught."

"So tell me."

Ridder
closed the file and the screen went blank. Then she turned away from the computer and looked down the row of cubicles in each direction to make sure no one was within hearing distance. "That's the interesting part," she said, lowering her voice. "You see, when the principal who was here then got wind of what was going on, he told the sheriff, and detectives started arranging buys from the sheriff's office through E-mail."

"How did he do that without making the players suspicious?"

Ridder
smiled. "They were allowed access to all active E-mail files and student codes. So they were not only able to find out who was making buys, but they also actually used players' codes to set up buys. That's how they caught the dealers."

"I wonder why I never heard about this E-mail stuff."

"Think about it. There weren't any trials, you know. The parents and their lawyers and money got involved and everything was settled behind closed doors. So, the methods that the sheriff's office used in their investigation were never revealed."

"You're saying that the sheriff's office was hooked into our computer system here?" Will was still confused about how this revelation connected with his problem.

"Not 'was', is. They are hooked in."
Ridder
spun around and began typing again. "Take a look at this." She pointed at the screen and moved out of the way. Will leaned over for a closer look.

TO: PCSO

FROM:
AIlS

RE: 1996-97 LIST OF STUDENT COMPUTER CODES

Below it was a long list of names followed by numbers. The school had sent the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office the E-mail codes of every student. "Are you telling me cops can read our E-mail?"

"Not only that, but they can create E-mail using your code. And someone did just that."

"A cop sent that E-mail to me? I can't believe this," Will said.

"It knocked me off my chair, too,"
Ridder
said. "But how do you know for sure that it's coming from the sheriff's office?"

Corey quickly explained how she'd found an extra digit in Will's private code and realized that it meant the messages had come from outside the school's computers. "That's when I went into the administration's system and found the list."

"But maybe someone else got hold of my code."

Ridder
pushed her glasses up on her nose again and whispered. "No. I got proof. I snuck into the PCSO database."

"The sheriff's office? You're kidding."

"I've been there before, so it wasn't hard getting inside. I did a global search for your name and found all the letters that were sent to you."

Will was impressed, but he remembered that he'd told Detective Olsen about
Fanz
and the letters. "Maybe they just got copies of them."

"Yeah. That was a possibility. Except, I got lucky. I found a new one that
Fanz
had just written. It was in the PCSO system, but when I checked the school system, it wasn't here yet. It didn't arrive in your E-mail until five minutes after I'd read it in the PCSO system."

"Wow." Will's voice was barely audible.

"Yeah. Hope you didn't mind that I downloaded it."

Will's stomach knotted as he realized the implications of what
Ridder
was telling him. Not only was someone in the sheriff's office sending the E-mail but also that person was somehow involved in Myra's disappearance and probably her murder.

"What's the new message?"

Ridder
reached down to the floor and picked up her purse. She found an envelope and took out a folded piece of paper. She handed it to Will.

So Burke's still got you fooled.

Too bad. Just too bad, Will.

Hate to see you go down for his deadly little Chill.

Your
Fanz

Will's hands were shaking. His head was spinning. He didn't know what to do, what to think. "Any idea who in the sheriff's office sent it?"

She shook her head. "I have no way of finding out who has access to the school's codes."

"Maybe I could ask Detective Olsen?"

"What if she's the one?"

He recalled seeing her last night with the same two men Burke had been talking to outside the Ute City
Banque
. "I hadn't thought of that."

"So who's Burke?"
Ridder
asked.

Just then Baines rushed into the room, out of breath. "Hey, Will, there's trouble on the way."

"What's going on?"

"A couple of sheriff's deputies opened up your locker a few minutes ago. The word is they scraped up traces of the Chill from the floor of the locker."

"That's impossible."

"Whether it is or not, they're looking for you right now."

Ridder
grabbed Will's arm. "Go out the delivery door. You can get to it through the supply closet in back."

Will hesitated, surprised by
Ridder's
quick thinking, but uncertain what to do. "I don't know. I don't want to run."

"Someone's setting you up, Will."

She was right. He had to get away to think about what he should do next. He could always turn himself in later, maybe with his father at his side. "Okay, where's the door?"

"C'mon."

He followed her to the corner of the lab where she unlocked the supply closet. They hurried into a long room with steel shelves that were stacked with boxes of paper, printer ribbons, and pieces of equipment. At the far end,
Ridder
opened another door. To the right, ten feet away, were double doors painted red.

He turned back to
Ridder
. "Thanks a lot, Corey."