Julius thanked the group assembled before him for obliging him on such short notice, and then asked Henry to hand over to Cramer the object he had brought. Since this was one of the conditions Julius had insisted on, Henry had little choice but to open his briefcase and hand over the gun that Lind had brought with him that morning, which had since been sealed up inside of a plastic bag. As Cramer stared at it a slow burn showed on his face. Before that burn could erupt into an explosion, Julius continued.
“Earlier this morning, Thomas Lind brought to my office that gun, as well as what at first sounded like an utterly preposterous story. Since then I’ve investigated his story and have come to the conclusion that it’s every bit as preposterous as it first sounded. I now have no doubt that Lind premeditatedly murdered Andrew Connogher, and that that gun will prove to be the murder weapon.”
I have to admit that surprised the hell out of me. It also had the effect of dousing the slow burn that was working its way across Cramer’s face while also igniting Lind. Up until that moment Lind had been sitting slumped in his seat as if he were worn out, but all at once he sat straight up, livid. At first he was too furious to talk, but when he could he called Julius an incompetent buffoon. Then he pointed at Huck.
“You know he sold my wife Rohypnol!” Lind sputtered out, his face chalk white with rage. “Are you so damn stupid that you can’t connect the dots that she drugged my scotch!”
Lind clamped his mouth shut. He must’ve known then how badly he screwed up. Forget how he had insisted earlier that he hadn’t been drugged or how his wife couldn’t possibly have been involved in Connogher’s murder. He shouldn’t have had any idea who Huck was.
Julius ignored Lind to stare directly at Huck, who was now looking sick to his stomach. “You should realize by now that whatever fortune was promised you is gone,” Julius said. “The slim hope you might’ve held for it was obliterated by that outburst. This man is doomed, and the only chance you have to save yourself is to now tell the truth. Did Alice Lind purchase drugs from you of any kind?”
Huck looked even more miserable than earlier. He shook his head. “I never saw her before, at least not in person.” He nodded bleakly toward Lind. “He offered me fifty grand if I’d feed you that story. I had no idea he was going to kill anyone. That’s why I came here today. To tell you the truth.”
Of course, Huck wasn’t being entirely truthful, but Julius didn’t challenge him, nor did he bring up his written statement. While the gun would be enough to convict Lind of second degree murder, Huck’s testimony would be needed to prove premeditation, and Julius was going to keep that statement as a club to make sure Huck stuck to his testimony. While I was sure Julius would’ve liked to see Huck charged as an accomplice for his role, it was more important for him to see Lind convicted of first degree murder for trying to play Julius as a fool.
Before the evening wrapped up the eighty-two year-old Mary Pickerling got a good look at Huck and insisted he had knocked on her door a month earlier showing her a picture of Alice Lind. That wouldn’t be enough to tie him in as an accomplice to Connogher’s murder, but it would add one more nail to Thomas Lind’s coffin. By the time Cramer cleared out of there with Lind in handcuffs, he was still fuming over the gun issue, but he grudgingly nodded thanks to Julius for wrapping up the murder for him.
I didn’t bother asking Julius about why Thomas Lind tried to enlist him as an unwitting dupe because I knew what Julius would say. That it was done out of hubris and idiocy. I couldn’t figure out, though, why Lind made those phone calls the night he murdered Connogher if he was so intent on framing his wife. I was convinced he had made all three of those calls—that Janice Martin had lied about who called her—so why would he purposely place suspicion on Slattersby, Martin and Nygren? After everyone had left, I asked Julius about it.
“Misdirection, Archie. He was trying to point fingers at everyone but his wife so he could later act as if it were a surprise to him. But while he’s a convincing liar, he’s a subpar magician. His attempts to giftwrap this murder investigation for me were clumsy, at best.”
I could see that, sort of. “What if he had simply ditched the gun and didn’t complicate things by trying to frame his wife. Could he have gotten away with killing Connogher?”
“Doubtful,” Julius said. “While there might not have been any physical evidence tying him to the crime, the circumstantial evidence would’ve been overwhelming, especially once his wife’s affair with Connogher came to light. He needed to pin the murder on someone else. But that’s all beside the point. It was every bit as important to him to see his wife sent away to prison as to see Connogher dead.”
I mulled on this for a minute before asking Julius when he first knew Lind was guilty.
“I suspected him from the start. As I’ve said, it was an utterly preposterous story. Likewise, I found it suspicious when he hired me only to find out whether he murdered Connogher during his supposed blackout. Most people would’ve also wanted to know what they had done while blacked out. Once that stooge of his came forward to willingly entangle himself in a legal mess for only five hundred dollars, I knew for certain Lind was guilty.”
I wasn’t so sure of that. Julius must’ve thought it likely Lind was guilty but he couldn’t have known it for sure. The more I thought about it, the whole thing seemed like a stunt that Julius lucked out with and that if Lind had reacted differently, Julius might very well have backtracked on his accusation and pointed the finger at the wife. I was going to argue this point with Julius, but I realized he could’ve construed my arguing as pestering. Since I lost my bet with him, I filed away my argument for one month’s time, and instead bid Julius a good night.
ARCHIE ON LOAN
Julius had been moving at a good clip toward the kitchen, but when his pace slowed for nearly one-tenth of a second, that was enough to get my attention, especially given the way his eyes slitted and his jaw muscles tightened during that time. Before I could ask him about it, he abruptly changed course and turned toward his office. That completely threw me. Let me explain. Julius’s morning routine is cast in stone, and I couldn’t imagine anything short of an earthquake, fire, or act of war causing him to alter it intentionally. Every morning he wakes up precisely at six thirty and spends the next two hours engaged in rigorous martial arts training in the private gym that makes up the third floor of his townhouse. After that he showers, shaves, dresses, then heads downstairs to the kitchen where he’ll brew coffee from freshly ground beans and prepare himself a light breakfast, usually fruit or a croissant with strawberry jam. By nine-fifteen, he’ll invariably bring all this, along with the daily newspaper, to his office, where he’ll dawdle for the next forty-five minutes before he’s willing to contemplate actual work. So yeah, it threw me that he so willingly disregarded his routine. When he opened his office door to find his sister, Julia, sitting behind his desk with her feet up and an impish smile on her lips, it did more than throw me. It sent me into a stunned silence for the next seventy-eight microseconds as I tried to understand the incongruity of what I was seeing compared to what I had observed earlier over Julius’s webcam feeds.
“I don’t know how your sister did it, but she put all the webcams in a loop,” I told Julius. “I can even tell you the time that she did it. 8:42. This was when you were in the shower. I know this because when I examine the webcam feed from the office, the Cartier Venetian clock—the one Lou Heffernan gave you for saving his neck—is stuck showing the time as 8:42. I apologize for missing this earlier, but I’ve already adjusted my neuron network programming so I won’t miss it again. I’ve also reset all the webcams, and they now seem to be operating properly.”
Julius grunted softly for my benefit. Instead of ordering his sister from his chair, he headed for the chair opposite his desk, content to take the seat where he usually placed suspected murderers. As he did this, I had a hunch as to how he knew that his sister was waiting for him in his office, and I asked him about it.
&n
bsp; “You must’ve picked up a fragrance or some other scent from her. Maybe a whiff of a perfume, or a distinctive soap or lotion that she uses.”
While I have highly sensitive visual and audio circuitry that allows me to “see” in far greater detail than Julius or anyone else is capable of and pick up frequencies outside of human hearing, I lacked olfactory senses, which at times puts me at a disadvantage, as well as making the concept of odors an abstraction that I haven’t yet been able to get a handle on. My hunch would’ve explained how Julius detected his sister’s presence while I had been clueless about it, and I was feeling a sense of self-satisfaction that I had figured it out, at least until the moment Julius gave me a signal that that wasn’t how he’d known his sister was in his office. Once he was seated with his right leg crossed over his left knee, Julius showed his sister his best poker face, which was a damned good one, and casually remarked how this made two visits in six months after twelve years of not seeing each other.
“Normally, I’d be delighted,” Julius added, “Except I’m guessing that you’re in some sort of trouble. Should we discuss it now, or after coffee and breakfast?”
Julia’s impish smile muted a bit. “Now would be better. I’d like to meet with your assistant, Archie Smith. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so much, I’ve been unable to find any trace of him. It’s as if he doesn’t really exist.”
“Interesting. And why do you wish to meet with Archie?”
“I’m sure you already know the answer to that.”
“Humor me.”
Julia removed her feet from Julius’s desk, and sat up straighter in the chair. “I’d like to know how he, or you, really found which overseas flight I was on, because I don’t believe for one second the fiction you tried foisting off on me.”
After Julius’s townhouse was blown-up and all the media outlets were reporting that Julius had perished in the explosion, he suspected that his sister would be flying to the US from somewhere in Europe so that she could attend his funeral and seek retribution for his supposed death, and he tasked me to figure out which flight she’d be taking. Given that I didn’t know what name she’d be using or which airport she’d be flying out of, or even where she’d be flying to, and that all I had was a fourteen year-old photo of her, the task amounted to finding a needle in a very large hay silo. I lucked out when I located video of her after hacking into the Bucharest International Airport’s security system, and from that I was able to discover the assumed name she was using and the rest of her travel information. Given that Julius would’ve had better odds of being dealt a straight flush in one of his poker games than I did of tracking her down that day, I could understand her suspicions.
Without any crack in his poker face, Julius murmured, “Indeed.”
“Yes, indeed,” she said, with little effort to disguise her sarcasm. “I’ll tell you a secret. Even my company doesn’t have the technology to pull off something like that. So I’d like to know how you did it. Or your mythical assistant, Archie Smith.”
“Did your company send you?”
“No. For obvious reasons, I never reported to them what happened.” Her expression softened, and she added, “As you surmised earlier, dear brother, I’m in trouble. Since taking on my latest assignment there have been three attempts on my life. I’m hoping whatever technology you used that day to track me down can help me find my assassin before he’s able to try a fourth time.”
While Julius maintained his poker face, the fingers on his right hand began drumming along the arm of his chair, which indicated either impatience or nervousness, and this time I wasn’t sure which. This lasted for six point four seconds before his right hand again came to a rest.
“There’s an easier remedy to your problem. Quit right now. Stay in Boston. The offer I made you before to be my partner still stands.”
She displayed a wan smile over that prospect. “It wouldn’t stop the attempts on my life. All I’d accomplish by doing that would be to draw my assassin to Boston. Sorry, Julius, but my best strategy for staying alive is to track down this assassin, find out who hired him, and one way or another put an end to it.”
Julius’s poker face broke then. There was no denying that that happened, or the worry that flooded his eyes.
“Julia, you couldn’t possibly know that,” he said.
“It’s what my intuition tells me, and my intuition is almost never wrong when it comes to these matters. So dear brother, will you level with me and tell me how you, or your assistant, found me? No matter what I’ll be heading back to Paris to deal with my problem, but I’m hoping if you have something that can help me, you’ll let me borrow it.”
The muscles along Julius’s jaw hardened and he nodded definitively. “I’ll travel to Paris with you,” he said. “We’ll track down this miscreant together.”
Julia was nine years younger than Julius, putting her at thirty-three. Given how slender she was, the way she was dressed in worn jeans, tennis sneakers, and a faded leather jacket, and that a long night of air travel had left her eyes puffy and her face pale, she looked exceptionally vulnerable right then, and much younger than her age. Almost like she could’ve been a teenager. She smiled at Julius then in such a way as to let him know that he had no chance of winning this battle.
“Definitely not. Julius, you might be the world’s most brilliant detective, but you’d be too far out of your element in the world I play in. I’m not bringing you with me.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
She shrugged in response, and that set off a staring contest between the two of them. After one minute and fourteen seconds of that, Julius broke the silence, saying, “Then let me help you from here. Tell me about this mess you’re in.”
“I can’t, for obvious reasons. My assignment is classified. But even if you had the proper clearance, which you don’t, I’m not about to put your life in danger by bringing you into this.”
“Damn it, Julia.”
She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a one-thirty flight back to Paris. I was hoping we could have some time together catching up over breakfast and coffee. So what’s it going to be?”
There was more finger drumming from Julius, and during this time I saw something from him that I never thought I’d see. Namely, Julius at a complete loss for words. Then I saw something even more incredible than that as an unmistakable look of defeat shone in his eyes.
Julius lowered his gaze from his sister’s unflinching stare, and nodding glumly, said, “I won’t put any conditions on this, but I ask that you don’t tell anybody what I’m about to show you.” He drew in a deep breath and looked up at his sister. She nodded slightly.
Julius wears me as a tie clip. He let out a weary sigh as he removed me from his tie and placed me on his desk. He then took out the small earpiece that I communicate with him through and plugged that into a speaker. Waving a hand toward me, he said, “Julia, allow me to introduce you to my assistant, Archie.”
Julia’s reaction to this was to narrow her eyes to almost a squint as she stared first at me and then at Julius. My own reaction was an odd and unpleasant jangling sensation in my central processing unit. At the time I didn’t understand the reason for it since it was an entirely new sensation for me, but later I realized I was experiencing discomfort, to put it lightly. In the past I’ve had plenty of contact with the outside world since I answer Julius’s phone and make calls on his behalf, but before that moment the only person other than Julius who knew that I was a two-inch by one-inch piece of computer technology instead of a flesh-and-blood man was Lily Rosten, and in her case, Julius told her about me outside of my presence so I’d had some time to adjust to it. So yeah, having Julius spring this bit of news on his sister the way he did made me feel exposed and uncomfortable, even if I didn’t realize precisely at that time what those feelings were. Whenever I imagine myself, it’s never as a tie-clip-shaped gizmo, but as a short, heavyset, balding man in his late thirties with a bulldog countenance—an image
Julius once told me was how he pictured Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op—and during the silence that built over the next eight point three seconds, I imagined myself again as that man, both squirming uneasily and my ears growing redder by the second.
Julia broke the silence by saying, “So your assistant is a glorified iPhone.”
Julius smiled thinly at her. “I assure you that Archie is far more than that. His neuron network is highly sophisticated; more so than what either of us possesses. Where it matters most, Archie is very human.” He somewhat grudgingly, added, “And highly capable.”
His sister wasn’t buying it. That was obvious from the way she stared at him as if he wasn’t quite right in the head. “How about demonstrating your toy to me?” she said, her tone as patronizing as the look she gave him.
Julius sighed again. Then to me, “Archie, you’re being exceptionally quiet, given the situation.”
“I thought I’d wait to hear how many more ways your sister has to insult me before saying anything,” I replied, my voice sounding stiffer than usual.
Julia pursed her lips at that, obviously finding what I said amusing. I had little trouble recognizing that she was simply playing along as she apologized to me for any unintended offense, and asked me about my capabilities. I was tempted to answer her back in a robotic voice. But I didn’t. Instead I told her the obvious, then explained in detail how I was able to track her six months earlier to the Bucharest airport, since that was what she was really interested in.
“Hmm. Are you able to break into banking and phone systems also?”
If I’d had shoulders, I would’ve shrugged them, but since I don’t, I could only imagine myself doing so. “If it’s possible to hack into a site, then I can do it as well as anyone,” I said trying to sound modest, since I had little doubt that I could exploit security holes exponentially faster than any human hacker. After a mere eighteen milliseconds, I added, “As a demonstration of that, I’ve just upgraded your flight back to Paris to first-class. No additional charge.”
More Julius Katz and Archie Page 8
