“If Carrie’s still alive you can imagine the black eye the Bureau gets.” Janet pushes the point.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN if?” Lucy says to her.

“I didn’t mean to imply …,” Janet starts to say.

“But you did imply it. You said if,” Lucy confronts her.

“Well it’s hard,” Janet says as I envision the recording I watched moments ago, a recording that is gone. “I’ve not seen Carrie. I’ve not seen a recent picture or a video. I’ve seen absolutely nothing that would prove she’s alive. Only what you’ve said. Only what Kay says she saw.”

I look at Lucy sprawled in a chair, a sliver of her flat belly showing between the hem of her shirt and the waistband of her gym shorts. I think of her dragonfly and what it covers, and then I think about the FBI and other possible motives it might have to raid Lucy’s property, seizing her weapons and electronics.

“Let’s talk about motivation. Is it possible that what they’re really after is access to the CFC database, to all of our records?” I voice that concern, and Donoghue stops tapping her pen. She starts writing again. “Lucy is certainly a conduit into every state and federal case I’ve ever worked.”

“What might they be after that they couldn’t get in a less convoluted fashion?” Donoghue is jotting notes in her loopy scrawl.

“There could be a lot of things.”

“And how do you know the FBI isn’t already in your database?”

“I would know,” Lucy says, and I’m struck by her nonanswer.

Saying she would know if someone has violated our database isn’t the same thing as saying it hasn’t happened.

“Something’s going on with my e-mail. There’s been snooping,” she adds.

“Snooping? That’s a mild way to put it,” Donoghue says.

“I know that some of the time it’s Carrie.”

“And you’ve condoned it?” Donoghue’s tone turns sharp.

“She can’t go anyplace I don’t let her. Think of it as a rat in a cyber maze. She just keeps running into my firewalls. And so what if she sees e-mails I want her to see? But the CFC electronic case records are a different story.” Lucy doesn’t answer that question either.

She continues to speak ambiguously when asked if the security of the CFC database has been breached. She’s simply saying she would know if it were true. She’s not saying it isn’t.

“And the FBI?” Donoghue taps her pen for emphasis. “Could they get into the CFC database, into its sensitive records through the networks here on your property?”

“I’m sure they believe they can.” Lucy continues to be cryptic.

“Then that might be the real reason they’re here. They want to use you as a portal.”

“They may think that’s what they’re going to do.”