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Mason—in common with many drunks and addicts—was pretty hard to surprise. If you black out a lot, you tend to swim to consciousness at random times, and literally anything could be happening. You could be on the bus. You could be in jail. You could be in Safeway with your hand on a fruit you barely recognize, about to make a purchasing choice you never would sober. But despite dozens of those experiences, Mason ground to a halt just inside Julia Mann’s office and goggled.

Whatever it was she had filed under “office” in her brain was going to need revision. Architecturally, Julia’s office was the same as the living room, but the similarities ended there. Yes, it was a long, rectangular room fronted by an unbroken run of glass, but these windows were covered with deep orange curtains, cooling the temperature of the room while making it feel like the kind of nightclub Mason used to get thrown out of. The walls were lined on two sides with deep bookcases, including the long back wall. Thousands of books, each marked on the spine with a catalog number. Folders of magazines and printed material. Piles of film canisters, DVDs, even video cassettes. Computers of all kinds, hard drives, laser disc players, classic turntables and other tech Mason didn’t immediately recognize. Brilliantly colored rugs in shades of amber and honey were layered and piled over the polished cement floor. An enormous sectional, persimmon velvet, faced the far wall. And on that far wall? The biggest screen Mason had ever seen outside of a movie theater, surrounded by enormous speakers. It was a combination of NASA, the Smithsonian and the bedroom of a wealthy but reclusive teenage boy with hoarding issues.

Julia’s tone was sharp. “Come all the way in and sit all the way down, for fuck’s sake. I want you to get up to speed on what I already know.” Julia faced the big screen and started working her wireless mouse like a fifteen-year-old gamer from Seoul. “One of the few things we know is that it wasn’t me that killed Tony Eckenridge, tempting though it would have been to shoot him if he’d shown up at my house unannounced.”

“Do you own a gun?” asked Mason, settling down on the sofa and starting to fold her legs up under her.

“No, boots off—were you raised in a barn?”

“Close, Berkeley,” replied Mason, bending to undo her boots. “Was it normal for him to show up at your place?”

“Not at all. We haven’t spoken since the restraining order.”

“That tracks,” said Mason, curling up like Alice’s caterpillar. “I guess the restraining order didn’t prevent him coming near you.”

“Well, it literally did, but it was only a temporary restraining order. I essentially got over my temper tantrum with Tony once I started keeping other people out of jail. When I woke up and discovered the dead guy clogging my pool filter was Tony, no one was more surprised than I was.”

“Well,” said Mason, “you know, apart from him.”

“True. I could almost see him coming over to kill himself in my pool, just for the gesture of it—directors are like that, you know, grandiose and controlling, plus he’d love the visual—but not by shooting himself in the back of the head with a rifle.”

“Not that grandiose?”

“Not that flexible. Anyway, I started looking into what Tony did with his last few days on earth. The day before he ended up here, he spent the morning at the studio and had lunch with his ex-wife. Nothing exceptional.” She clicked on the Hollywood Reporter , displaying the headline: Eckenridge meets Eckenridge on possible Codex remake , then clicked over to TMZ, a celebrity gossip site, and pointed out a photo of Tony leaving a restaurant with a vivacious-looking woman. “That’s his ex-wife, Helen. She wrote much of the original Codex , shared writing credit with my late husband and walked home with the Oscar. Didn’t do her a hell of a lot of good; an Oscar too early in your career can do that.”

Another click. Coroner’s report. “The day he died, Tony had a board meeting at the studio, with a catered lunch that included an ungodly amount of sushi, and then he came here and got shot in the head. Not sure what he did in between. We’ll have to find out if the cops haven’t already.”

“Did he drown?” Mason asked.

“No, he was dead when he hit the surface, no water in his lungs at all, brains all over the place. Estimated time of death, ten p.m. And he can’t have gotten here all that much earlier, because Claudia didn’t leave for the evening until nearly seven.”

“Pity she missed it.”

“Not really. She might have gotten shot, too, and then who would cook for me?” Julia navigated to another window. “His second-in-command at the studio, Christine Greenfield”—she clicked on a profile in Angeleno magazine, showing a short, dark-haired woman—“got into a fender bender that afternoon and was at Cedars-Sinai hospital with her passenger, the actress Jade Solomon.” Click. People magazine, Most Beautiful People number 7, two years earlier. Mason wondered if Jade still made the top 50. That category had a lot of churn.

“Luckily,” continued Julia, “her lovely face was unharmed, although brain damage can’t be ruled out until they find an actual brain.”

“Meow,” muttered Mason.

“Oh, please. Tony’s assistant Cody Malone was at Cedars helping Christine, and here are all three of them leaving the hospital that evening.” TMZ again, Jade Solomon’s smile broad, her outfit unwrinkled, Christine with her head down, Cody focused on getting them into the car.

“And of course”—Julia still wasn’t done—“according to his obituary in the LA Times , despite a forty-year career in one of the meanest, most cutthroat businesses there is, he swam in a sea of holy water, handing out prizes to one and all. Not an enemy in the world.”

Julia had pulled up the obit, and Mason didn’t mention the fact that along with a large and flattering portrait of Tony, there was a smaller photo of him with Julia and his wife, on the night they’d all won Academy Awards for The Codex . She looked at Tony curiously. He was one of those men who had aged well, the lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes serving simply to direct attention to their sapphire sparkle, his smile confident and practiced. Charisma that came through the screen. His face wasn’t familiar to her, but she realized she’d decided to like him, even though she would never meet him in person. Maybe that was what Julia had mentioned, his ability to make everyone feel special. Even from a picture. Even from beyond the grave.

Julia sat down on the other end of the sofa, curling her legs under her like a cat. “Which leaves the police with very few people to suspect, apart from yours truly. They lack imagination, that’s their trouble.” She threw the remote mouse across the room into a drawer, making the shot easily.

Mason pretended not to be impressed and spoke without thinking. “Yeah, not to mention you threatened his life before, fled the crime scene and already went to jail for murder once.”

Silence is rarely absolute. However, at Mason’s comment, a silence of inkily velvet completeness quieted the room like a quilt settling on a distant bed. There was an immeasurably subtle sense of withdrawal, and Mason realized she might just have put her foot in it. Possibly up to the thigh. She decided, as usual, to go on the defensive.

“Hey, look, everything I just said was public record. I’m sure you’re innocent.”

“Listen up, buttercup.” Julia Mann’s voice was smooth. “Here’s what I know about innocence. One, it’s no defense against conviction. Two, once you’re convicted, it’s no defense against incarceration. And three, once you’re incarcerated, it’s no defense against anything. I watched the innocent get eaten alive every day, and I watched the innocent turn and bloody their teeth with the rest. I am not going back to jail, and the only way to make sure of that is to catch the person who killed Tony and throw them to the wolves in my place.”

Mason swallowed. “I get that. What are we going to do first?”

Julia opened her mouth to answer, but was interrupted by the office door opening and Claudia making an appearance. She closed the door quietly behind her and cleared her throat.

“Julia? The police are here.”

“Oh yeah?” Julia shrugged. “What do they want?”

“I’m pretty sure,” replied Claudia, “that they want to arrest you.”