by Tina Gower
Becker coughs. “Lie.”
She glares at him. “I will not continue this without my lawyer. I demand you allow me to pass. This is ridiculous to be discussing this here. Of all places. Why—the disrespect.”
“What would be disrespectful, Mrs. Morrison, is if you had made some arrangement with a third party to exchange Jared’s life for your daughter’s. Was that it? Did the fates demand a sacrifice?”
“No! I’d never have asked had I known—” She cuts herself off and clamps her jaw shut. She straightens, hands covering her elbows, as her nose goes into the air. “That is a horrible thing to accuse anyone of, especially a Fae. We respect and value the oracles and the will of the fates.”
I could think of dozens of historical examples that begged to differ, but it wasn’t worth getting in deeper with her. Bottom line: she’d done something to assure Alana’s safety from her prediction.
“Mrs. Morrison”—I hold up both hands, patting the air, like I’m stroking a fluffed, ready to fight cat—“you’ve obviously been in contact with someone who promised you a way out of Alana’s forecast. Any information to find this group would be helpful. Jared isn’t the first victim. We believe they’ve targeted others. We’ve reason to believe they’re directly linked to a group who tried to kill several oracles a few months back.”
“Oracles?” Her eyes soften. “But why? They can’t help who they are. What they do.” She fiddles with the foxglove and lavender in her hand, glancing down with a surprised expression as though she’s wondering why she’s still holding it. She sets the arrangement on a table of offering near Jared’s picture. “My brother is an oracle, over in Paradise Springs, Finance, mostly Real Estate.”
Becker pulls out a chair and motions for her to sit. “We understand that you did what you did to protect your daughter. You were misled to believe that there would be no consequence.”
“It was terrible, what happened to this young man.” She sits, facing the photo of the man who took the place of her daughter. She’s quiet for some time and then she sighs, dropping her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” She looks from me to Becker. “I made a phone call. It was a number given to me by a friend. I can’t betray her confidence. When I saw the news and what happened to this boy…” She shakes her head. “I tried to call them back. The line had been disconnected. I was devastated. I didn’t want Alana to know what I’d done. I didn’t want my family to know.” She points to the photograph. Her face goes hard. “I murdered that man. I killed Jared Walker.”
“Not true.” I glance at Becker. He steps back so I can bring a chair close to Mrs. Morrison. I face her, our knees inches from each other’s. “The people behind this are the murderers. If you come to the station with us and make a statement, we can catch them. We can keep them from fooling others into thinking they can play with the fates. It’s only a matter of time before they do damage that is irreversible.”
Her eyes widen. “What kind of damage?”
I don’t know if I can answer that, so I wait for Becker.
He crosses his arms, legs wide. He pauses a beat before laying down the news. “They want to bring down the oracle net. We believe they’re anti-fate, but severely disorganized. The information you could provide would help us pin down the leader.”
Mrs. Morrison rubs her arms as she analyzes Jared Walker’s picture. “I don’t have much. I’ve already tried to find the people whom I originally contacted, but they’re gone. If it will help, I’ll give you what I can.”
Becker starts the line of questions. “Who gave you the phone number?”
“A friend. I don’t want to drag her into this. She’s not connected.”
“You understand we need her name. If the phone number is a dead end as you say, then we’ll have to trace the chain of communication through your friend. If she’s innocent, then she won’t be taken into custody or booked. We just want the information.”
I cross my legs and lean my elbow against the back of the chair. Becker doesn’t want to make a case and he’s going to do this all off the books. He must suspect what I do—that we have several leaks in every department and until we plug them we can’t trust our own people.
“Her name is Julia Quinn. She’s been through so much. I don’t want to put her in trouble with the law as well. We’ve known one another since grade school. A few years back she’d met me for drinks at the resort, not the ugly one, but the one they built a few years back that all the more athletic skiers attend?”
Becker narrows his eyes and nods like he knows what she’s talking about, but I can tell from the tilt in his head that he doesn’t know.
“Demon Falls,” I say.
Mrs. Morrison snaps her fingers. “That’s the one.”
I pull out a notebook, jotting it down.
She leans forward. “Julia’s husband had just been served a fairly high Traffic accident prediction. It would be because he’d be speeding. I’d given her my condolences and she waved off my concern. The prediction never came to be. She claimed it was through the help of their insurance company that Cornelius slowed down while driving and avoided risky situations. It didn’t add up. Cornelius never changed his habits. Why, he even sped right down the resort driveway to pick her up after our luncheon.”
“And she later admitted to you what really happened?”
She shakes her head.
“How did you know to call her? That she would have the name of someone to contact?”
“I didn’t. I took a chance and called her that morning after Alana called to let us know. I threatened to reveal what I knew. I was very convincing. Julia hushed me and hung up. A few moments later I got a call. It was Julia. She told me to grab a pen and call the number and ask for a quote. ‘I’d like a quote for a cleanup.’ It had to be those exact words she said. Then she hung up.”
I’m writing fast to keep up with her story. Becker paces, scratching his stubbled jaw.
“I called right away, of course. How could I not? My baby needed me and I thought it wouldn’t hurt anyone. I asked for a quote and was transferred to a man. He explained that I’d need to wire a certain amount of money into seven different accounts. I’d need to label each one very specifically. Exterminator, art show, dress shopping, shoes, tailor, dry cleaning, charity. I did as he said. I can show you my bank statements so you can see the amounts. Each one was different. He instructed me to buy a ticket to the charity art show this weekend. I assumed I wouldn’t be going, that this was all a ruse to explain where the money I’d paid them went.”
Becker catches my attention. Yeah, I understood. Oracles read intent. They were coaching her not only on how to establish the perfect cover for her payment, but also to avoid a prediction.
If she did receive a forecast, buying a ticket to a charity that you didn’t plan to attend would be filed under inconsequential or irrelevant prophecy. Most likely it would never even require paperwork to be filed. Keepers were trained to cut back on paperwork and not file predictions that didn’t appear to affect society on a larger scale. It’s not like seemingly irrelevant prophecies happened all the time, but it was one of those flukes nobody really focused on.
Individual predictions were allowed through to receive a probability if vivid enough and deemed necessary. Death and Health had the highest paperwork issues because of this. We let more forecasts through than any other department.
Becker stands behind me and leans into the chair with his weight on his palms. “We’re going to need the account numbers and access to your phone records. And Julia’s phone number and address.”
“I’d rather not involve her. She asked that I never speak with her again after what I did, threatening her. We had a falling out, and if she’s now part of an investigation, it will ruin me among my friends. I either tell the truth and they know what I’ve done, or they see I’ve turned in a good friend to save myself.”
Becker pushes off the chair. “Or we let Julia go and she’s part of this—she’s an acco
mplice to tampering with a prediction without notifying the proper authorities, which is a serious offense.”
“Alleged tampering,” Mrs. Morrison corrects.
Becker and I both pin her with a look and she sinks back into her chair.
I clear my throat. “This case is ongoing and requires delicate handling. It’s very low profile. It’s likely if we contact Julia that what we discuss will not go beyond me and Officer Becker.”
She releases a breath. “That would be best.”
“Please…” I turn to a fresh sheet in my notebook. “Explain again exactly what the person on the phone said to you and what happened when you attempted to follow up.”
She launches into her story again. Becker glances at me with a slight nod. She’s telling the truth, but it’s not much information to go off of—we know why the prediction changed, but we still have no clue how they did it, who was behind it, and if this was connected to the Jack Roberts case from a few months ago.
My instincts all pointed to yes.
Julia’s house is decorated, or I should say non-decorated, in all white. The countertops a white-and-grey marble. The cupboards, white. The carpet, white with a cream throw rug—maybe to break up all the white. White bookcases to shelve white figurines and white covered books.
She serves us tea, in white cups and saucers of course.
She offers me a bowl of sugar cubes. “I’m sorry, I’m not much help. I simply forwarded a phone number I’d found on a pamphlet on the street in the Alchemy district.” She glances at the photos of witches again. “No, none of these faces are familiar to me, but then again, I’m not good with faces and it was so very long ago.”
The binders of witches are open and laid out on various flat surfaces, but Julia doesn’t recognize any of the photos Ali has tagged. She doesn’t even recall any of the other faces. Becker’s quiet acceptance of her word lets me know that he doesn’t smell any lies in her story.
I wave her sugar offer away. “Remember, Mrs. Quinn, this is off the record. If you cooperate we do not plan on pressing any charges for tampering with a prediction. And you’re facing a minimum of seven counts.”
Becker looked up her file as we drove over to conduct our surprise visit. Her husband had at least a dozen questionable predictions in the last two years that had been circumvented. Sure, lucky people existed, but it’s a stretch. We hinted at evidence, although we had none, with the information provided by Mrs. Morrison and a hunch. Thankfully, Julia took the bait.
She demurely sips her tea. “Well, goddess, I have nothing but the flyer.” She sets her cup on the white coffee table. “And that’s worthless now, thanks to Beatrix.” Her words aren’t laced with anger, just disappointment. As though she’s been waiting for this moment, but hoped it would never come.
We’d called the number on her flyer and got a number disconnected message. It wasn’t a shock. The accounts Beatrix Morrison had transferred money to had been closed as well.
“Did you seek them out to change the forecast? Please tell us about the first prediction you were able to tweak into your favor.”
Becker closes the binders, stacking them up on the table and setting them aside.
Julia folds her hands into her lap, staring at the way her thumbs cross. “It’s righting a wrong really.” She squirms in her seat. “That’s what the woman said who handed me the flyer. I was in the area for a Fae event. Our organization had volunteered to pick up trash in the area. Beatrix was there. We went to the same alma mater and we’re still part of the same cultural groups. Private Fae school. The best really for what Angel’s Peak has to offer. If I had children I’d never send them to those dirty public schools.” She shivers.
I roll my eyes at Becker. I went to a dirty public school. Witches and gremlins as playmates weren’t that bad. Not as bad as stuck-up Fae obviously.
“That’s all the woman had said, but I knew what she meant. We’d had a run of bad luck that started with a forecast Cornelius had not originally been a part of.”
Becker shifts on the white couch. He sits on the edge as though he’s as uncomfortable with the cleanliness of the room as I am. “And you believe the woman who handed you the flyer was righting a wrong. Did you know what she’d been talking about?”
“Oh, right away. I’d always wondered what would have happened had events just occurred the way they were supposed to, but it’s a horrible thought, because the event in question saved several lives. It only complicated ours, but Cornelius was never in danger. Not for his life. Not then anyway.”
I prompt her to continue.
“When she’d handed me the flyer, Cornelius and I were still recovering from our bankruptcy. He’d been rescued in a construction site disaster ten years before. We were newly married, world at our feet, and bam. High probability prediction that several employees he worked with would be severely injured when a beam would fall from an unsecured crane—although at the time we were given very little information and it was forecasted to happen within hours. Later we found out that something had happened to shift the prediction to the workers. Cornelius had never been in danger. The company didn’t have the proper insurance for that kind of forecast and the insurance company dropped us. Even though the prediction wasn’t about Cornelius. Dropped us like that.” She snaps her fingers.
The story jogs a memory. “Wait, wasn’t that the Simon and Son’s Disaster? But it had been solved. They were able to track the cause and circumvent the prediction. Hundreds of lives were saved that day.” I’d been in college at the time, watching the newscast. I still remember Michelle Kitman’s breathless interview after she’d reportedly rushed onto the scene screaming for the construction to halt.
Kitman had explained that she’d gotten several individual predictions, none saying where the event would occur, but was able to piece enough of the information together to narrow it down. The main issue was teasing out what forecasts were part of the event and which were not. There had also been a mining incident a few miles outside of the city that had fooled a few other investigative actuaries into believing they’d solved the case. The cases were similar. Two events with accidental deaths. Kitman had a hand in solving both.
It’s pretty much when I went from casual admiration to worshiping her. Along with thousands of other actuaries around the world.
Becker interrupts my fan-girl moment, scrolling through his phone, having looked up the event. “The case had been solved, but a number of employees involved had their insurance suspended for a few weeks while they investigated the incident.”
Julia sighs. “And Cornelius had been in a car crash a few days later. A truck rear-ended him. He suffered a major head trauma and spent seven months in rehab. He couldn’t work. We didn’t have insurance and the case got tied up in court. We received a settlement, but by then we were in too much debt for it to make a difference and Cornelius had no job. The only blessing was that it afforded me an opportunity to go into graphic design and my business flourished, but we never had the two children we’d been projected. Seventy percent chance at one, a boy. Fifty percent chance at two, another boy. When I went to the seer after the accident, those percentages went down to the single digits. We still tried, but nothing.” She flips her hand toward the empty rooms of her house, her gaze casting off to the corner of the room. The space fills with a heavy air.
Becker motions to the door. He’s right. We should go. We can call back or come back with more information. She’s not a flight risk or he wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving her just yet. She’s given us all we’ve asked. She’s cooperating. I nod my agreement and Becker packs up the binders.
I set my card on her coffee table. “Please let us know if you’ve thought of anything else, Mrs. Quinn. I’ll be calling with more questions.”
She continues to focus on that corner of the room. I wonder if she sees the two children she’d thought she’d have wrestling there. Becker’s feet don’t make a sound as he guides me to the front door. His hand goes
on my back as we leave. I glance back one last time to see Julia’s eyes filled with tears. I look away before she notices I witnessed her pain.
Chapter 16
Beatrix’s written confession, signed, and filed, puts an end to my initial investigation. It was enough for Gretchen to remove the mark on my file and allow me to open another case to find out who’d been tampering with predictions. And more importantly, how many others had been tampered with? I’d made sure to voice my suspicions about Miles’s accidental death/traffic case being a possible ripple and cover-up as well.
I hope Miles doesn’t mind me honing in on his cases. I’d only worked in Accidental Death for a few months, and although my coworkers didn’t appear to hate me, I didn’t want to give them any reason by making them believe I’m aiming to increase everyone’s work load because I have a diva complex. Maybe since it will mean a mark will be removed from his file over the suspicion of tampering, Miles at least will be okay with it.
I fiddle with the flyer Julia gave us, holding it between my fingers, opening and closing it. Reading, and re-reading the simple information.
For clean up call…
There’s a mistake on one of the names and it’s crossed out in several intersecting diagonal lines. My attention zones in on those lines. Lines. Scratches that look like a mistake.
I dig in my purse for the marking Mica gave me. He’d said someone sent Jack a vase of herbs and this symbol on a card. The symbols look similar. Scrolling through my phone, I come across the photo of the watermark I saw on the bus schedule. Also intersecting diagonal lines. Huh. I redraw it larger on a notecard. Study it.
“Does this symbol mean anything to you?” I hold it up for Becker.
He squints. “Not really. I’ll send it to our research department and see what they can find.”
Becker kicks off his boots and sits back on my couch, flipping through the information he’s gathered so far. He lets out a low frustrated grunt. I stop updating my case notes on our system to look up, expecting him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. I don’t exactly know what to do with the relationship-confused werewolf in the middle of my living room.
