by Diana X Dunn
“So she cheated on you.”
“Yeah, not all the time, or so she said, but once in a while. I don’t even know now why I put up with it. I should have walked out as soon as I knew. But I did love her, a lot. She even encouraged me to have affairs, keep our relationship open, she said. It wasn’t really for me, though. Then I met Peter and realized that she was actually falling in love with him. That was when I finally got out.”
“So it wouldn’t surprise you if I told you that Cassie and Peter were both having affairs?”
“It would surprise me more if you said they were both being faithful.” Alex admitted. “Peter was in a legal partnership when he met Cassie, but that didn’t last long. Cassie always said she would stop being with other men when we decided to try for children. Maybe she was trying to get me to agree to children, I don’t know.” Alex looked down at his plate of food.
“Suddenly I’m not so hungry,” he told Julia, pushing the plate away.
“Eat anyway,” Julia urged. “Let’s talk about something pleasant and focus on dinner for a little while.”
She started an innocuous conversation about the weather. Alex joined in reluctantly. After a few minutes, he picked his fork up and began to eat. Julia deliberately kept the conversation meaningless until Alex had cleared his plate. She stuck all the dishes and pots and pans in the sanitizer and tidied the kitchen quickly, prattling on about the best place to buy light fixtures and other nonsense. By the time the kitchen clean up was finished, Alex looked much better.
“Let’s go and sit in the living room,” Julia suggested. “It’s more comfortable and has a better view.”
“I’m quite happy with the view right here.” Alex told her quietly, staring into her eyes as he stood up from the table.
Julia ignored the remark and led him back to the comfortable couch. “I know you don’t like talking about her,” she began as she settled into one corner of it, “but the more you can tell me about Cassie the better.”
Alex shrugged as he dropped into the opposite corner. “I don’t know that there is much I can tell you. I barely knew her anymore. The five-year-old girl that I fell in love with grew up into a woman I didn’t like very much.”
“How strong was their relationship, if both Peter and Cassie were having affairs?” Julia asked.
“I have no idea. I barely knew Peter, and Cassie had changed. He said they were talking about having a baby, but I don’t know if that is true. She certainly didn’t want a divorce, for whatever reason. I just don’t know.”
Julia leaned over and patted Alex’s knee. “I am sorry, I know it’s difficult. I’m trying to understand Cassie so I can figure out who might have wanted to kill her.”
As she felt a shock race through her from the innocent touch on Alex’s knee, Julia wondered if she would ever understand a woman who had Alex in her bed every night and had looked for lovers elsewhere.
“I wish I could help.” Alex answered, taking her hand in his. “I really don’t have any idea who might have wanted Cassie dead or why.”
Julia settled back in her corner, sitting at an angle so Alex could keep a hold on her hand.
“So let’s talk about you instead,” she suggested, grinning at him.
“Me?” Alex looked uncomfortable. “What about me?”
“Start by telling me about your writing,” Julia prompted him. “What sort of books do you write?”
Alex frowned and Julia could almost see him struggling with the sudden change in direction. No doubt this was information that he’d intended would come out during a long and romantic courtship, not during an interrogation. “I suppose I should just tell you,” he said eventually. “You can find out all about it on the police computers, can’t you?”
Julia didn’t answer. Where appropriate, she had unlimited access to a shocking amount of information about every person on the planet. Admitting that to Alex would be confessing some of her own secrets and she wasn’t ready for that.
When Julia didn’t reply, Alex continued. “You know the Twentieth Century Tales? I write those.”
Surprise flashed over Julia’s face. She had little time for reading for pleasure, but even she had read a few of the books in the most popular series in the modern world. There must have been forty or fifty books in the series, written by various authors. They were all about life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and were famous for their realistic depictions of life between the 1950s and the turn of the century.
“Which ones do you write?” Julia asked curiously. One author wrote old-fashioned detective stories set in the sixties. Another wrote thrillers set in the earliest days of the Wars of Religion, before anyone had any idea what was coming. There was even a line of romance novels, set in the nineties and full of as much historical detail as romance.
“All of them,” Alex answered.
“But there are lots of different authors.”
“No, there are lots of different pen names. I write them all. In between writing them, I travel around the world doing research.”
“Is that why you were in Pennsylvania, where you met the mysterious Sienna something-or-other?” Julia asked.
“Sienna Madison,” Alex corrected with a laugh. “Yes, the church there, St. Mary’s has a huge collection of old mass books from the late 1990s. There are books from a number of different denominations. No one is sure how St. Mary’s got them, but they managed to hide them during the Religion Ban. I spent hours going through them, taking notes on how the various services used to be conducted. It will add a lot of authenticity to what I do.”
“Fascinating,” Julia commented.
“I spent a lot of time talking to Reverend Snow as well.” Alex added. “He was the minister for St. Mary’s. What happened to him is still such a shock.”
“Why?” Julia’s face gave away nothing but curiosity. “What happened to him?”
“The day after I left, he turned himself in to the police. Apparently he was really some eco-terrorist that was still wanted for crimes during the Eco-Wars.”
Julia looked amazed. “And he turned himself in?”
“Yep, he confessed to everything and even named names and fingered a few accomplices. From what I’ve heard, the authorities were able to round up about half a dozen men and women from the most wanted lists after he talked.”
“Really?”
“And it gets even stranger. Less than a week after he finished his big confession some historian doing research in the police archives discovered that all of the DNA evidence that they had for the guy was corrupted. If Reverend Snow had waited a little bit longer, he could have told everyone his real identity and they wouldn’t have been able to charge him with anything. Now he’s looking at spending the rest of his life behind bars, which is probably good, because a lot of the people that he fingered aren’t too happy with him.”
“Wow,” Julia sat back in her chair, her face a picture of wonder. “I’m glad he turned himself in then. If he was really an eco-terrorist, he deserves to be punished.”
Alex studied her closely. “I thought maybe Sienna Madison had something to do with his sudden decision to turn himself in.”
Julia smiled. “Maybe you had something to do with it,” she suggested. “Maybe all your talk with him about church services in the past made him think about his own past?”
Alex stared at her, seemingly unsure of how to reply. She knew he suspected her of keeping secrets and wondered if he still thought she was Sienna Madison.
“Let’s just relax for a bit.” she suggested, suddenly tired of watching her every word. She believed Alex when he’d insisted that he didn’t know who had killed his wife. Now she just wanted to forget about murder for a while. “I’ll pop on an old movie and we can just chill.”
Alex was quick to agree. “I love old movies, and they’re part of my research, as well.”
Julia found a collection of old classic cartoons on screen. She moved over to a chair near the video
screen where she could more easily control things, not totally trusting herself on the couch with Alex. They watched two movies, one after the other, neither of them speaking more than was polite. As a fairytale princess and her prince rode off into the sunset together, Julia noticed that Alex had fallen asleep.
He had stretched out on the couch sometime after the start of the second film, and now he was fast asleep. She thought about waking him up, but decided against it. He really needed the sleep. She covered him with a blanket and turned off the video player. In her own room she slowly got ready for bed. Just before she went to sleep she sent a quick message to Blake.
Alex came over for a talk and has fallen asleep on my couch. He will probably still be there in the morning. Didn’t want whoever is watching his movements to get the wrong idea.
As she pushed the send button, Julia wondered why she felt she had to explain things to Blake.
Thirteen
Julia’s wrist-con buzzed her awake moments before her alarm rang. She hadn’t slept well but she hadn’t felt secure enough to take anything while Alex was sleeping in the next room. She was fairly certain that she could trust him, but she’d been wrong once before about a man and she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. Alex would have to earn her trust. She grabbed her M-ped and checked the display.
The early bird catches the worm.
The message from Blake made her frown. Clearly he was already at work. Why he felt the need to message her first thing in the morning, she wasn’t sure. The light knock on the door suggested one reason why Blake might be feeling grumpy this morning.
“Come in.” Julia sat up and pulled the covers around her to make sure that she was completely swathed in the heavy comforter. The door opened slowly and Alex stuck his head around the door.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he began as he hesitantly came into the room, “I made some coffee.”
He held out a cup of steaming hot liquid toward her and Julia was again reminded of the last time she had worked with Blake. He’d loved getting up and making a fresh pot of coffee for her each morning.
Normally Julia wouldn’t have bothered. She would have grabbed a quick shower, popped an instant energy FADS, and been good for the morning. What was it with men and coffee, she wondered as she accepted the cup and took a cautious sip.
“This is good,” she smiled at Alex. “Not what I expected.”
Alex laughed. “I know a few tricks when it comes to brewing coffee,” he told her. “You have all the right equipment, but I don’t think any of it has been used in a while.”
“I don’t normally bother.” Julia admitted. “Thank you, though.”
“I’ll get out of your way, then,” Alex preempted her next words. “I need to go home and get a shower and do some work. At least I can pretend my life is perfectly normal.”
Julia nodded. “That sounds like a good idea. I’ve got to get up and get moving as well.”
Alex looked back at her from the doorway. “I’d love to have dinner with you tonight,” he told her.
“I’ll message you later. I’m not sure how my day is going to turn out, just yet.”
Alex looked disappointed, but he merely turned and left. In the quiet apartment Julia could hear him putting on his shoes and then she listened as her front door opened and closed. She set down the coffee cup and leaned back briefly against the pillows. For several minutes she just let her thoughts ebb and flow, then grabbed her M-ped.
But the lazy bird gets coffee in bed.
She fired the quick message back to Blake, grinning to herself. Okay, she was being childish, and she would probably pay for her impulsiveness later, but at the moment it felt really good to have a little jab at him.
Once showered, Julia debated with herself over her next move. She wanted to talk to all of the neighbors again, which might be difficult on a Monday morning. She also wasn’t really in the mood to spend another day with Blake. Yesterday had been strange for her, and the range of emotions buzzing through her, caused by both Blake and Alex, were an unnecessary complication in her life.
A message from Michael made up her mind. “Can you come in to the office today? I have a quick job for you. Dress very casually.”
Julia grimaced at the last part of the message. Michael’s idea of “very casual” was usually just one step up from what a homeless person would wear. Today’s job didn’t sound like a fun one. Still, if it was a quick job, once she’d finished it she might be able to use the office computers to gather more information on Cassie’s neighbors. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that the answer was there, on that suburban street. She quickly messaged Blake that she was going to be tied up for the morning and then got dressed.
Her slightly tattered sweatshirt and matching pants were an almost attractive shade of blue. A few old and slightly faded stains on the shirt and a small tear in the knee of the pants completed the look. Julia combed her hair into a something that looked messy and incomplete and threw her makeup into her bag. Once she knew what the job was, she could do her face appropriately.
Michael greeted her arrival with a grin at the atypical outfit.
“How’s the murder investigation going, then?” he asked.
“Well, I met the neighbors,” Julia frowned. “They seem a strange group. They weren’t really what I was expecting in an expensive suburban neighborhood.”
“You should never have expectations when you start an investigation.” Sometimes Michael sounded exactly like a training manual.
Julia rolled her eyes. “Anyway, they’re mostly unpleasant and I’m pretty sure many of them are guilty of something illegal, immoral or dishonest, but I also have some sort of intuitive feeling that one of them is the killer.”
“So what is your next move?”
“I’m not sure,” Julia admitted. “I really shouldn’t even be involved in this. Agents don’t go around investigating murders just because their friends are involved.”
Michael grimaced. “That might just be because most of our agents don’t actually have friends,” he pointed out.
“That’s true,” Julia agreed. “Our lifestyle doesn’t exactly lend itself to making friends, at least not long term ones.”
“But you consider Alex a friend?”
“I don’t know what he is,” Julia sighed in frustration. “I feel like I need to help him, though. I’m sure it’s against the agency’s rules, though.”
“The agency’s rules are very flexible,” Michael reminded her. “I have no problem with authorizing you to continue to work with Blake on this investigation, just this once.”
“I’m going to take you up on that, just this once,” Julia repeated the phrase gratefully. “Now I just need to figure out where to take the investigation next. Standard practice would be to investigate her co-workers and any family members we can track down. Then it would be a matter of retracing her movements on what turned out to be her last day on Earth, but I can’t shake the feeling that the murderer is one of the people I met yesterday.”
Michael considered her thoughtfully. “You’ve been trained to be especially perceptive toward people,” he reminded her. “There aren’t many people that can truly trust their instincts, but you have better cause than most.”
“But,” Julia started to interrupt, but Michael held up his hand.
“I say that advisedly,” he told her. “I wouldn’t include Alex Knight in that category. Your feelings toward him are complicated by powerful sexual attraction, and that can override everything else. But if you have suspicions about the others, maybe we can do some research here on your behalf and try to find out more about them.”
Julia smiled at him. “This isn’t agency business,” she reminded him.
“You’re agency business,” he replied, “and you’re one of my best agents. I don’t want you distracted. I’ll have a few scans run for you while you’re out doing this little job for me. By the time you get back we might have something interesting for you
.”
Julia grinned. “So what is the little job?” She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know the answer to that question, but she knew she had to ask.
“I need to you to get a message to Bobby the Beast.”
Inwardly Julia flinched and her heart sank, but her face remained completely composed. “Again?” she allowed herself to ask.
“You’re the best we have at getting through his defenses. And the message is important.”
“It always is,” Julia shook her head.
Michael knew this wasn’t going to be an assignment she would enjoy, but he also knew she would do it quickly and efficiently.
“I’ll try to have something good for you when you get back,” he promised, trying to soften the blow.
“Great,” Julia muttered as she left the room.
She glanced down at her outfit and had to admit she’d dressed perfectly for the job. She ducked into the nearest bathroom and stared into the mirror. Maybe it was time to stop being so good at her job, she thought grumpily as she dug out her makeup case. Twenty minutes later her face was caked with layer upon layer of cheap looking cosmetic enhancements.
The makeup appeared to have been piled on by an inexperienced hand and the final effect was to make Julia appear much younger than her actual age. She took an extra minute to work a few spikes into her short hair, rubbing in enough hair products to make it look as if her hair hadn’t been washed for a few days. She ducked into the huge wardrobe department and traded her comfortable shoes for a pair of unbelievably uncomfortable spiked heels. She transferred everything she needed from her own handbag into a tiny cross body bag that almost matched her outfit and only had a few small holes in it. Then she teetered down the hall and back out into the street.
A public transport took her the ten blocks she needed to cover and she emerged totally in character. She stopped for a second to take the in the huge glass and steel structure in front of her, a landmark in rebuilt New York, before heading into the building.
An immaculately dressed receptionist looked down her nose at Julia as she made her way through the front door of the building. “Can I help you?”
