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Despite the meeting, Julia continued to be silent and thoughtful as they headed down the freeway toward Palm Springs. As they passed the wind turbines again, Mason tried to engage her in conversation.

“Did you spend a lot of time in Palm Springs when you were younger?”

Julia nodded. “There was a time when Jonathan and I were here a lot. We had a house here; everybody did. It seemed very far away from Los Angeles, while having the advantage of not being literally all that far away. Two or three hours is just long enough to unwind from on-set antics, studio politics, etc.” She laughed. “And long enough for the drugs to kick in or wear off, whichever you need.”

Mason grinned. “Or for the first lot to wear off and the second lot to kick in.”

“Exactly.” Julia shrugged. “Makes me wish we hadn’t sold the house, but I sold it while I was in jail and wasn’t sure I was even going to come back to Los Angeles once I was done.”

Mason shot her a look. “But you did.”

“I did. Because my life had always been there, my friends were all there, and of course my enemies. I really thought I was going to come out and wreak revenge on Tony and everyone else who hadn’t helped me when I needed them. But by the time I was out, I was kind of over it.” She shrugged. “I was in prison for a little over fifteen years, and that’s a long time to nurse a grudge. I don’t have the stamina for it. Besides, I needed all the grit I had to persuade the California Bar Association that I was fit to be admitted. They let ex-cons become lawyers, but they’re sticky as fuck about it. It took several years, but they finally got tired of my not getting tired, I guess.”

“Plus you didn’t do it.”

“According to the law I did, I just also did the time the crime required, and got parole before my sentence was up. I maintained my innocence, but a lot of people do.”

There was silence for a few minutes while Mason tried to decide how to ask Julia for more information without upsetting her. But Julia took it out of her hands.

“You know, going to prison for something you didn’t do is pretty much one of the worst things I can imagine. It was terrifying, being arrested. I was working that day, on another movie for Repercussion. They came and took me from set, did you know that? Tony was there. Casper was even there, visiting. Jonathan had gone missing for a couple of days, which wasn’t itself all that unusual, but I knew something was wrong. Someone always knew where he was, or heard he was partying somewhere, or with some girl, or whatever, but that time no one knew where he was and no one saw him anywhere. I’d ignored it for the first day, but after three days I reported it to the police and started hunting in earnest. I’d had to go to work, I almost welcomed the distraction, but I was having a hard time focusing, and Tony was actually, literally in the middle of yelling at me when the cops showed up. They’d found Jonathan’s body on the hillside under the house. He’d been close to home all along.” She looked out of the window, and sighed. “They took me to the morgue to identify his body, and something had eaten his ear; I remember that very clearly.”

Mason swallowed. “Well, it would kind of stick out.”

Julia laughed dryly. “Insofar as it was no longer sticking out? Sure.”

Silence again, for a moment.

“I was beside myself. We’d been fighting a lot, and he was seeing someone on the side, and so was I. It was par for the course, though; neither one of us had any intention of leaving the other. It was just the way we lived, back then. So when the cops came back a few days later and arrested me, I couldn’t get it through their heads that just because I was an unfaithful wife, it didn’t mean I was a murderous one. They assumed I was jealous, probably drunk, and enraged, and had pushed him off the deck in a blackout. That was their case.”

“That’s what killed him, the fall from the deck?”

“That was the assumption. His neck was broken, and forensics weren’t as advanced then as they are now, not by a long shot. I got a little crabby with them. There were plenty of witnesses to the very public fights we tended to have, and no other suspects. It wasn’t a long trial, but it was as public as the fights had been.”

“And you lost.”

“In many senses. I lost the case, I lost faith in the system, I lost friends, my career was over, my life ended as I knew it…I was completely powerless, and when I got out I promised myself I would do whatever I could to help anyone else avoid the same experience. I didn’t kill Tony, Becky didn’t kill Sam, and neither of us are going to jail.” She looked out at the turbines, spinning lazily far above them. “I always worry that birds get killed by those things all the time.”

“You would think they would be able to avoid them. They’re pretty unmissable.”

“Sometimes you can see things coming but still can’t avoid them.”

Mason didn’t think Julia was talking about the turbines anymore.