by Diana X Dunn
The tone of her voice clearly indicated that the receptionist thought it was very unlikely that she actually could help Julia in any way. “I wanna see Bobby,” Julia slurred at her, keeping her eyes half shut to mimic the effects of the drugs she was pretending she’d used.
“I’m sorry, but no one sees Mr. Barnard without an appointment,” the receptionist told her in haughty tones.
“I gotta a ‘ppoint…ment,” Julia answered. “I’m Star…he’s ‘pecting me.”
The receptionist frowned and picked up an old-fashioned telephone receiver. Such devices were hard to find and very expensive to maintain. Julia wasn’t surprised that Bobby was showing off with such a system. Behind the scenes the whole thing was probably connected to a simple computer system, but at the front desk it looked classy and old school sophisticated.
After a moment of waiting, the receptionist spoke into the phone. “There is a woman called Star at the front desk who says that Mr. Barnard is expecting her.”
Her tone was dismissive and Julia figured that she’d called security, rather than Bobby’s office. Julia kept her eyes at half-mast as she felt the security cameras do a full body scan.
After several long minutes, the receptionist stiffened and then turned back to Julia and asked, reluctantly, for some identification.
Julia grinned to herself. Even the worst job sometimes had a few fun moments. She dug in her bag and found the laminated identity card that identified her as Star Smith, an employee of Downtown Escort Services.
The receptionist clearly didn’t want to touch to card, but she took it reluctantly and read off the information to whoever was at the other end of the phone. After a moment she handed the card back and told Julia that someone would be right with her. Julia enjoyed watching her struggling to wait until Julia was gone before breaking out the sanitizing spray for her hands, desk and probably the entire lobby.
A moment later, a huge security guard exited the nearest elevator and headed toward the front of the building.
“Come on, then,” he gestured toward Julia. Julia muttered a “thanks” toward the receptionist as she wobbled in her heels after the guard.
“You’re supposed to use the back door, stupid,” the guard ground out at her, as they stood crammed together in the small elevator. “We don’t want people to get the wrong idea about the boss.”
“Ooopsy,” Julia giggled, seemingly heavily drugged. “Sorry.”
The man looked at her for a moment and then touched her cheek. “Maybe I won’t mention your mistake to the boss, and you’ll throw in a freebie for me on your way out?” He leered at her.
“Maybe,” Julia told him, lurching sideways away from his touch. It was easy enough to agree. It wasn’t like she was going to deliver.
The elevator doors opened into the massive penthouse suite. The guard stayed on the elevator as Julia staggered out and took a moment to look around. Nothing much had changed since the last time she’d been here. The huge desk in front of the glass windows was still completely bare. Bobby didn’t actually do any work at that desk, but it was good for show. The other side of the room contained a bunch of couches and chairs, with a few low tables. That was where Star was expected to do her work.
Bobby had gotten fatter, Julia noted. His flesh spilled out over the sides of the couch that he was lounging on. His hair was still a dark artificial black that was cheap to buy and looked it. His eyes were blood-shot from an excess of something, and he was nearly naked already, anticipating her arrival.
Julia was suddenly overwhelmingly grateful for her job. Other girls with her background hadn’t been as fortunate. While such things were meant to be carefully monitored, the reality was, that in the early days of ex-utero baby making, a lot of babies slipped under the radar. Men and women were eager to take advantage of the new technology, but without any controls over it, more than one baby ended up reach full-term without any parents waiting to collect him or her. Julia knew a lot about the subject, because she was one such unclaimed baby. More than one unclaimed baby girl had ended up in the legal sex trade. Undoubtedly there were some trapped in the even seedier illegal sex trade as well.
“Come on then,” Bobby shouted at her. “I don’t have all day.”
Julia staggered toward him, memorizing every detail that she could for the report she would write back at the office. He wasn’t looking very well, and Julia wondered if he was healthy enough for the sexual encounter he thought he was about to have.
Obesity had all but disappeared with the rise of FADS bars and other food substitutes. Real food had grown relatively scarce and fairly expensive. Most people didn’t bother with it very often. Manufactured foods were carefully prepared to provide exactly what people needed in terms of nutrients and calories. Only the very wealthy had the opportunity to get fat and only the very greediest people allowed themselves to get into the sort of condition that Bobby was in.
Julia stopped at the bottom of the couch and looked at Bobby from under her lashes. “Hi.”
“Hi?” Bobby frowned. “You aren’t here for conversation. Get naked and get busy.” Bobby turned his head away from her, clicking away at his computer screen, clearly expecting her to get to work.
“You know, maybe not.” Julia told him.
His head swung back toward her, greasy curled locks swinging behind him. “What?”
Julia laughed. “I’d love to say that it is nice to see you again, Bobby, but I don’t like to lie unnecessarily.”
Bobby squinted up at her for a moment and then recognition struck as he met her eyes. He collapsed back against his cushions and groaned. “Not again.” He shook his head. “Every time I order a girl I worry that it’s going to be you. My security team has at least two hundred video images of you plastered around the place and they still don’t recognize you. This is a new look, though….” Bobby studied her for a moment. “I like the short hair.”
“Ah gee, thanks,” Julia grinned. “Your opinion means so much to me.”
Her sarcasm made Bobby frown again. “Hell, things had been going so good. What the hell do you want now?”
“Just a quick message from my boss,” Julia answered him. “Nothing else.”
“Well, I guess that’s something.” Bobby sighed, clearly relieved that it wasn’t anything more serious. “Go on then, what does the boss want?”
“Stay out of Middlegate,” Julia told him.
Bobby turned three shades from pink to bright red, anger erupting from him.
“Get the hell out of here,” he told Julia, “and tell your boss he can go to hell.”
Julia grinned at him. “Always a pleasure Bobby, take care of yourself.”
As she climbed into the elevator she could hear Bobby screaming into his fancy old-fashioned phone. As the doors slid shut she watched as a small table was sent crashing across the room, a victim to Bobby’s volatile temper.
Julia sailed through reception with her head held high, all pretenses now dropped. She ignored the receptionist and quickly hailed a private transport for the trip back to the office. No need to suffer through another journey on a public transport carrier.
Back at the office she was glad to wash off the layers of makeup before heading back to Michael with a quick report.
“He is fatter and nastier than ever,” she started. “Lots of show, but no real substance.”
Michael nodded, and Julia continued.
“Security did a full body scan, but it was superficial with no recognition software.”
“You sure about that?” Michael queried.
“I’m sure they did the scan and I’m sure they didn’t recognize me.” Julia qualified. “If they have software it isn’t doing its job. I made no modifications to my appearance at all, just piled on the cosmetics. Any quality recognition program should have been able to see right through that.”
Michael nodded. “And what did Bobby say to the message?”
“He said you can go to hell,” Julia grinned.
Julia burned with curiosity. She had no idea what Middlegate was or how Bobby or the agency were involved in it. She knew better than to ask questions, though. She would be told only what she needed to know. That was how her entire life functioned.
“Great job, as ever,” Michael told her as she finished her report. “I’ve had our team take a quick look over the neighbors on Lilac Court and there’s a preliminary report in your inbox. Why don’t you use the systems in room 204? Your usual passcodes will access the necessary information. Have a good look at what we found and do some digging of your own. Whenever you feel the need, stop by and we can talk about what you find.”
Julia gave him a quick hug, before she headed out to the small office down the hall. She logged into the computer system and quickly typed up the formal report on her morning assignment. Then she started flipping through the preliminary reports on the Lilac Court neighbors that had been generated by the research team.
The touch of a few buttons generated a seemingly endless stream of highly personal and confidential data about Mrs. Virginia Duncan. Most of the information barely registered, as Julia scanned for anything that looked out of place or unusual. The woman had married and then divorced in a very short space of time, but that wasn’t all that unusual during the chaos of the last century. Besides, Julia grinned to herself, Virginia Duncan didn’t seem like she would be the easiest person to live with. The team hadn’t noticed any red flags in the woman’s history and they were trained to be suspicious of everything, so Julia was fairly confident that she hadn’t missed anything as she moved on to her next suspect.
Blake had taken a good look at John and Jane Lincoln during their interview, but now it was Julia’s turn to study their computer records. She had access to quite a bit more information than Blake had at his disposal. Even knowing that the records for Jane Lincoln were manufactured, Julia really had to study them. They were exceptionally well done, with nothing obvious to give them away.
Julia went through Jane Lincoln’s entire life, line by line, watching for discrepancies or anything that made the forgery obvious, but the work had been very skillfully done. She shook her head. She knew who was responsible for the fakery. She’d seen his work before, but she hadn’t realized how good he could be. The Lincolns had obviously paid very well for his services, and he had clearly given them their money’s worth.
The team hadn’t noticed anything suspicious in these records either, which worried Julia. She went back through the records again, tagging the few slightly shadowy areas that she could discover. She knew she was cheating, that she wouldn’t have suspected anything if she had just looked over the records, without knowing the woman, but she knew she needed to mark everything that might help the agency spot a similar forgery in the future.
After she had thoroughly studied Jane Lincoln’s records, she spent a few minutes tagging and marking Jeannette Hanks’ as well. Nothing she was doing could be seen by anyone outside of her own agency, but the two files would now be forwarded to the agency’s identity experts so that they could study them. Outside of the agency, Jane/Jeannette’s secrets would remain that way.
Julia was determined to help Jane keep her past buried. She’d requested that Blake “forget” parts of what he had heard in the interview with the Lincolns. His official record of the interview stopped just before Jane’s revelations. While Julia trusted Blake, the police department was a vast organization and information from investigations could be passed around through numerous departments. Unless it turned out to be vital to the murder case, this information would remain confidential.
John Lincoln’s record looked clean, and Julia couldn’t even find an odd shadowy area to flag. The man appeared to have led a perfectly normal life, well within the law, before he’d met his high-priced hooker. She thought about them both for a long time. Their comfortable life together, their new baby, it was all in jeopardy if Jane’s secret got out. And Cassie knew that secret. That was certainly a very strong motive, but at the same time, murder was a big step up from buying some forged computer records.
There was no evidence that Cassie was blackmailing anyone about anything, even though, undoubtedly, she was keeping quite a few secrets thanks to her job. Public clinics like the one she worked at were not just for the poor and unemployed. People who had reasons to avoid regular medical treatment centers frequently used them. At standard treatment centers, identities would be recorded and records would be kept.
Julia frowned. She hadn’t really given Cassie’s job a lot of thought, but it threw open the list of suspects to a much larger pool. Cassie’s job put her in a position where she would constantly meet people who lived on the fringes of society. People who had secrets and wouldn’t welcome anyone prying into them. Maybe she should be at the clinic with Blake talking with Cassie’s co-workers and finding out more about exactly what Cassie had done there.
She grabbed her M-ped and buzzed Blake.
Finding out anything interesting at the clinic?
Only a few moments later she had an answer.
Not a thing. I talked to fifteen people who all insisted that Cassie was wonderful, no one would ever hurt her and that certainly no one from the clinic could possibly be involved. All the staff and all the patients loved her.
Julia chuckled. Yeah, right! What did they really think of her?
“Most of them felt she was too dedicated to “doing the right thing” and not dedicated enough to actually doing anything. She would have been a lot more useful if she had finished her degree and been an actual doctor, but apparently she did okay. Patient contact is strictly monitored and she never seems to have crossed any lines in terms of giving or taking any personal information. Staff knew she was married and most thought she was married to Peter because she brought him to events, but her relationship with everyone there seems to have been quite superficial.”
Julia considered Blake’s words.
Gut feeling?
The clinic is a dead end. The neighbors are looking more likely.
Julia grinned and quickly thanked Blake and moved back to her computer searches. Charles and Mary Halpern were next. The buzz of her M-ped interrupted before she’d gotten very far.
I found another one.
The message from Alex was cryptic and Julia felt a flash of annoyance as she messaged him back.
Another what?
Another dead body. I’ve called the police but thought you might like to know too.
Julia sighed deeply. Where are you?
The Woodford.
She quickly sent messages to both Blake and Michael before she headed out.
The Woodford Hotel was New York’s finest. Julia had traveled all over the world, and she’d stayed in some of the most expensive and luxurious hotels it had to offer, but even she caught her breath as she entered the sumptuous lobby. The hotel had been built only a few years earlier, with a stunning disregard for expense that had been shocking in a city still recovering from its own recent history.
Walls were covered in silk wall hangings that depicted the history of New York City and softened the crystal chandeliers and marble floors. It was a highly sanitized history, of course, where only the glorious and good were shown. Nothing on the walls hinted at the darker periods in the city’s past. Several small clusters of overstuffed chairs and leather couches around central tables dotted the enormous entry space. To one side of the space, a small, carved granite slab stating simply “Information” marked a discreet counter.
Julia grimaced as she approached the counter. The man behind it had already studied her outfit and appearance and decided that she was not the sort of clientele the hotel was interested in cultivating. She didn’t care enough about his opinion to regret her decision not to change out of her old sweatshirt, but she realized that it m
ight not have been the best choice for the way the day seemed to be turning out.
“Can I help you?” The man’s tone suggested that he hating even speaking to someone so far beneath him.
Julia bit back several possible replies before responding simply. “Can you direct me to the police investigation?”
The man drew back as if she’d slapped him. “I’ve absolutely no idea what you are talking about,” he told her in imperious tones. “We do not have any police working in this building.” He sniffed at her and tossed his head.
Julia struggled to suppress a laugh. Really, where did the hotel find this guy? Maybe he was related to Bobby’s receptionist. He had be making little more than the legal minimum wage, but he acted as if he was a multi-millionaire who’d just found himself behind the desk.
Before she could contradict him, the lobby door’s swished opened again. Julia could tell from the shocked look on the hotel clerk’s face that whoever had just come in was not what he had been expecting. She glanced back and saw exactly what she’d been expecting.
A couple of uniformed officers were escorting a crime scene team through the lobby. Blake was only a few paces behind them. Julia resisted the urge to say, “I told you so” to the man behind the counter and fell into step with Blake.
“Any idea what we have?”
Blake shook his head. “Your message arrived about thirty seconds before anyone figured out that I had an interest in this particular dead body. I was on my way here when the official report from the first on scene arrived on my M-ped. So far I’ve only read as far as the room number involved.”
Julia nodded. Blake would rather have a chance to see the scene himself before he read the reports. He’d want to form his own opinions before he saw what others had to say about the scene. Julia understood this because she worked the same way. Everyone crowded into the elevator and fell silent as it slowly rose to the twelfth floor.
Fourteen
