Page 16

Fifteen

The arrangements by local authorities were extensive, well-planned, and excellent, Jude knew, and while St. Augustine itself was a historically significant and popular tourist destination, it might have been surprising, since it did not have the population of a Miami or Ft. Lauderdale. But it was just south of Jacksonville, a major player in size, home of federal offices, and a FDLE regional office.

When they arrived at their new destination, it appeared they might be walking into any apartment complex, neither poor nor ritzy, but one the average working man or woman could afford.

But the door opened into a large living area where in this instance, there were desks, tables, computers, scanners and printers, anything that might be needed or desired for a work environment, especially in the cyber world. To the left was a large kitchen with a dining table, divided from the central room by a broad archway. From the living room a long hallway stretched toward the rear of the “apartment.”

And, of course, when they entered, Cary and Aidan were at their computers.

“You’re back at last!” Aidan said.

“And you’re still working,” Vicky noted.

Aidan glanced at Cary and sat back, letting out a deep sigh. “AI,” he said. “The most wonderful stuff in the world—and the most terrifying. I’ve been looking at some of the dangers facing us now—foreign powers accessing huge grids that control water, electricity, and communications. All they need is one inside person at many a facility and we are in serious trouble. Someone accessing our armaments—ships with serious capabilities and weapons. I have been worrying. This person is good. We believe that they do have access to the law firm especially because of the connections and, of course, the elevator situation. What if it’s not just a murder machine? What if all this is just practice for a major hack on national systems? All right, sorry. That’s something I’m sure we’ve all worried about. Cary and I have spent the last few hours working with the team in DC to see that our own systems have been revamped, new firewalls, encryptions, you name it. Because someone got into something to discover where we were before. But…”

“We’re so grateful that you and Cary are okay!” Jude said.

“Which makes me think!” Vicky said, walking around to take a seat at the giant worktable by Aidan’s side. “The electric grid was like a sideshow or something. Perhaps a way of showing that they can do what they want. The electricity at the house, causing the stove fire…that was a mistake.”

Aidan frowned. “You mean they didn’t mean to do it?”

“I mean they messed up. They were successful with Marci’s house, but that’s because everything in it was set up to be managed by AI. Not the place we were in. The man sent to check out the finale told us that it was supposed to burst into flames and burn to the ground, taking whoever was in it with it. But you put out the fire. Miscalculation.”

“One that makes me very glad!” Cary said lightly. “And, grateful that Aidan was with Clover and me and knew right where to find the fire extinguisher and how to use it quickly. And, of course, we all ran out immediately, too, as you said. But hmm, true. I guess that the house was supposed to burn down—with us in it.”

“Someone brilliant with AI, but not so brilliant when it comes to physical realities,” Jude said thoughtfully.

“And so I wonder,” Vicky murmured, “if we need to be as worried about a coordinated strike on national security as we need to be concerned about this whole thing taking flight on its own.”

“AI becoming far smarter than any of us is something that troubles the minds of our greatest techs out there,” Aidan said. “There have been so many amazing minds leaving companies and warning the world, but…we just don’t know right now what the hell is going on, and our theories are theories, except that I do believe we’re on the right path.”

“Barton Clay,” Jude said.

“You have him stuck in your mind,” Vickie warned.

“Well, we’ll stay on him, on his finances, on his work record, we’ll just keep looking and looking,” Aidan promised.

“Yeah, we are about to call it quits for the night,” Cary said. “Oh, and we put your things in the back. King bed, the works.”

“Um, whose things?” Jude asked.

Cary and Aidan looked at one another and burst out laughing.

“Both of your things, of course! And don’t worry, we only know what’s going on because we’re all here together. We see you two as nothing but perfectly professional at all times and in every situation!” Cary said, laughing.

“Hey, guys, go for it!” Aidan told them. “This is a rough world we live in. You risk your lives daily. Make moments count.”

Vicky groaned, lowered her head, and laughed softly.

“Cool. You guys gave us the best room. Thanks!”

“Just the best for two people,” Cary said. “I took the single with the whirlpool bath!”

“Yeah, I got just a regular room,” Aidan said. “What I won’t sacrifice for friends!”

“Okay, then, it is tomorrow, so…”

“All right,” Aidan said. “I’ll start. Good night!”

He headed down the hall and Cary hit a few keys and rose as well. She waved and headed off to her own bed.

Vicky looked at Jude and said, “Well, let’s go see our room.”

He nodded and grinned, and they walked down the length of the hall together.

Aidan and Cary were right; the room was nice. It offered a king bed, walk-in closet, and a private bath.

“Well, since the gig is up,” Vicky murmured. She turned to him and grinned. “I must take a shower. It has been…”

“A long, long, long day again. Let’s go for it.”

She grinned. It was almost a pity the room was so neat—their clothing went flying everywhere, laughter rose softly between them, and the feel of the water was nearly as sweet as that of his hands. But the shower was swift. And still, they were new enough to being lovers that the shower led to intimacy that was almost as quick that night, but urgent, searing, ending with them curled together, still in one another’s arms, the feeling of just being there, touching, holding…

“What are we going to do?” he whispered.

“Interview everyone at that flipping firm!”

He smoothed the silk of her hair from her face. “About us!” he said softly. “Because I don’t think that I can let you go.”

She lay against his chest, and he felt her lips curl into a smile.

“Thank you!” she whispered.

“Oh?”

“I was worried about that myself. Logically, we have known each other such a short time. And yet I feel as if I’ve been waiting for you all my life. I know. I’m crazy. You’re crazy. Some might say we’re just both desperate because we don’t really have lives outside of work, but…maybe it’s true, too, that there are people who seek things in others that are like a list of needs and suddenly, you find… Never mind, I’m getting crazier.” She started to laugh. “Wait! We may be crazy, but not as crazy as reality TV, so I guess—”

“Wait,” he teased, “you think that reality TV is real? We may need to rethink this!”

They both laughed. He smoothed her hair back. They didn’t need to talk, then; it was a perfect ending and the reality of their lives was that the light of the already long day would be coming soon enough.

The intimacy of body and souls was a sweet segue into sleep for what they had remaining of the night.

And, as always, the alarm rang too soon. Cyber sleuths had been working through the night at the main offices, but there were no new directives.

“Coffee, coffee, coffee,” Vicky said.

As they headed to the kitchen, Clover—who had, of course, moved to the new headquarters with them—sat up and went into attention mode. He began to bark, racing toward the door.

Jude glanced at Vicky, and they drew their weapons, heading toward the door.

“Stop!” Aidan called from the hallway. “I have an app that shows me who is at the door and near the complex, but this place is all cops, so…hmm. No one at the door. But there were people walking by down below, and Clover didn’t like something about someone. There are cops all over this building, though, someone up at some time…”

“Clover, heel,” Jude said. He didn’t need a leash for the dog; Clover would obey him. He was the perfect law enforcement officer, just a retired one.

“I’m going to reroll the footage from the past minutes,” Aidan said.

“You can do that?” Vicky said, surprised. “The app shows me the front door, but—”

“There are some things I know that you don’t,” Aidan said, smiling.

“Call when you’ve got something. Whoever it is may be long gone.”

Jude headed out the door with Vicky right behind them. They walked out onto the street.

There were only a few people up and about, but one of them, leaning casually against a car as if waiting for someone, was a cop Jude knew, Steven Knight.

“Hey, did you see anyone around here who shouldn’t have been, who was acting suspiciously in any way?” Jude asked him.

“Hard to say what is suspicious these days. Saw a kid—sorry, not really a kid, maybe a young man, eighteen or so—walking by and dropping papers on the street. I would have given him hell and told him to pick them up, but I don’t leave my post. I pay attention when people head toward the building,” Steven Knight told him.

“Just dropping trash,” Jude murmured.

Clover growled softly.

“Dog has great instincts,” Vicky murmured. She frowned, looking toward the sidewalk where the papers had been discarded. She shrugged and walked over to retrieve them, Clover protectively at her side. She looked back at Jude and then reached into her pockets for a pair of gloves.

The papers were probably nothing.

But they might have been something.

There were three sheets of paper. She picked them up and shrugged as she looked at the first two. But at the last she turned back to Jude.

“Clover does have great instincts,” she said.

“That kid was someone doing something wrong besides littering?” Steven said, surprised and straightening with a frown.

“Well, I think this is a message intended for us,” Vicky said.

“What does it say?” Jude asked her.

She looked at him, shaking her head and reading, “‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.’”

“And the others?” he asked.

“Blank,” she told him.

Jude turned to the officer. “This was about ten minutes ago now?” he asked.

“Just about,” Steven told him. “Hey, I never thought—”

“It’s all right, you did what you’re supposed to do, kept your eyes on the building,” Jude said. “What did the kid—or young man—look like?” he asked.

“About five-eleven or six feet even,” Steven said. “Almost shoulder-length, reddish hair, messy-looking, but the way boys or young men that age wear it. He had on a sweatshirt that advertised a band, a new group, the Claymores, jeans, and sneakers.”

“Clover, let’s go. Toward the west?” Jude asked.

Steven nodded. And with the dog, Jude and Vicky quickly hurried off in the same direction.

“He could be in a car by now or he could have grabbed an Uber or slid into a house or be almost anywhere. He could have started running once he was past the house,” Vicky said as they hurried along.

“Clover is on the trail,” Jude said. “Yes,” he added, looking over at her. “I’m going to be optimistic!”

“Clover seems optimistic enough,” she agreed.

And she was telling the truth. The dog was on the scent, nose to the ground. He moved along swiftly, and they had to move themselves to keep up with his pace.

Luckily, it was still early. The school and workday hadn’t begun and they could follow Clover without knocking others over.

Clover got excited by a doughnut shop, stopping in front of it, wagging his tail and barking. Jude looked inside the plate-glass window.

There was a young man standing in front of the counter; his jacket advertised the band that Steven had mentioned, his hair was long and reddish and shaggy.

“Clover’s optimism paid off!” Jude informed Vicky.

She rolled her eyes at him. “He doesn’t have a service tag so Clover needs to stay out here. I’ll be on dog duty. You go get the litterer!”

“On it,” Jude said. “Oh, should I get some doughnuts?”

“Knock yourself out,” she said. “Large coffee with a shot of espresso!” she added.

He grinned. It was unlikely he’d be able to get anything—depending on the mood and nature of the young red-haired man.

He walked in. The fellow had gotten his doughnuts and coffee and moved to one of the cocktail-style tables by the front of the shop.

There was a free chair across from the man. Jude sat in it, startling the man who looked up from his cell phone.

“Um, hi,” he said.

“Hi, yourself. My name is Jude Mackenzie. Special Agent Jude Mackenzie.”

The redhead frowned. “What does that mean?” he asked.

“It means that I’m with the FBI. And I’m going to start off by warning you that it’s a felony to lie to a federal officer.”

“You’re just messing with me, right?” the man asked. “Who put you up to this?”

“One more time,” Jude said, cautioning himself against impatience. He produced his badge and credentials. “My name is Jude Mackenzie. Special Agent Jude Mackenzie. My partner is outside with the trained police dog who tracked you down for us.”

“Why?”

“Start off with your name.”

“Linc,” he said, and then seemed to give himself a little shake. “Sorry. Lincoln Adison. And I don’t know why—wait! The FBI. You’re going to arrest me for—for littering? No, man, it wasn’t anything like that, really. The dude in the car said that his friend was coming out to get the papers, that it was a game they were playing, but that he had to be cool because cops watched the area. It was just a game!”

“A game. Two blank pieces of paper and a warning? ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet?’” Jude asked.

“Yeah. I guess they play tricks on each other or something,” Linc said.

“Who plays tricks on each other?”

“The two guys.”

“Okay. Two guys. So. Who was the ‘dude’ in the car? And who was the friend who was supposed to come out and get the papers?”

“I, uh, I don’t know,” Linc said, wincing and looking down.

“You don’t know? You were dropping papers from one dude to another but…you don’t know the other guy, either?”

“No. I… I just got laid off from my job! I was working at the pool for the hotel down the street, but they’ve had it closed now for a month because one of the chains just bought the hotel. I’m a lifeguard, a good one, I swear it. But I haven’t found a new place to work—a lot of people are scrambling. I’m supposed to go to the university in Gainesville in the fall. I even have a scholarship but not enough if I don’t supplement my income.”

“So, you did this because someone paid you,” Jude said.

“Yeah, I was shocked. Figured rich people can afford to screw around big-time, but…he gave me a hundred bucks just to drop three pieces of paper! What idiot would say no to that?” Linc asked, sounding desperate as he studied Jude’s face.

“All right. So, you don’t know his name—”

“No, I’m not even sure it was a ‘him.’”

“Start at the beginning and explain that statement.”

“I love to come here for coffee and doughnuts—I can walk from my place, which is down another few blocks. So, I’m walking, and a car pulls up and someone calls out to me. I almost ran. There was only one person in the car, the driver, and I thought it was some kind of a freak or a murderer or a whacko at the very least, but they started laughing and saying, ‘Hey, wait! I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to see if you’d like a quickie job for good money.’”

“What made you think that the person was a freak or murderer or whacko?” Jude asked.

“The mask!”

“This person was wearing a mask?”

“Yeah, like one of those things from the movies. The one worn by the killer every time he stabs someone to death.”

“Okay, a person driving down the street in a theatrical mask called out to you. You thought you should run, but you were offered big money?”

Linc nodded solemnly. “I told you. I need money.”

“All right. What kind of a car?”

“A black one.”

Patience! Jude reminded himself.

“What kind of a black one?”

“I didn’t notice the make or model.”

“Okay, a van, a sedan, a truck, SUV?”

“Like a little SUV, I guess.”

“If I were to show you vehicles, could you pick out the kind, at least?”

“Um, yeah. Probably. I mean, when someone is wearing a mask like that while showing you a hundred-dollar bill, you’re just not paying that much attention to the car!”

“Speaking of which, you still got the hundred-dollar bill?”

“Um, no. I just bought coffee and doughnuts with it. Mr. Bellini is a really nice guy. He says no one buys doughnuts with a bill like that, but for me, he’d dig out the change. And if it will get me out of trouble, I can give you the change!”

“I don’t want the change, and you’re not really in trouble—unless you want to give me a hard time now,” Jude said pleasantly. “I’d like you to come back to that building with me. I’m going to pull up pictures of cars and you’re going to try to give me a better description of this ‘dude.’ Give me a minute.”

“May I finish my doughnut?” Linc asked hopefully.

“You may.”

“Oh, man, Mr. Bellini is a good guy. I don’t want to get him into anything bad—”

“Don’t worry. I’ll give him a hundred for the hundred, okay?”

“Cool. Thank you. Look, I swear, I never imagined that I was doing anything bad, really. I mean, rich people, you know, they don’t mind spending a fortune on a trick.”

“You’re not in trouble. The littering fine for that kind of trash is a hundred dollars, but no one is going to charge you for the littering—as long as you help. Finish your doughnut.”

Jude looked out the window. Naturally Vicky was looking in. She stood by Clover, her hand set gently on the top of his head. She arched a brow to him.

He gave her a sign that he’d be just a minute and she nodded, turning her attention to Linc, who was finishing his doughnut.

He walked up to the middle-aged man behind the register, smiled, and tried not to be intimidating in any way as he flashed his badge.

“That kid just paid you with a hundred. Do you still have it?”

The man, Mr. Bellini, according to Linc, frowned. “Was it stolen?” he asked. He seemed completely stunned and confused that that might be the case.

“No, no, nothing like that. I’m assuming you do still have it. I’ll trade you a hundred for the hundred if I may. And no, that fellow didn’t do anything wrong,” he assured Belliini.

Linc was watching them, worried, chewing as he did so, but managing an anxious expression in spite of that.

“Yes, of course, I have it!” Bellini said. “I mean, who the hell tries to use a hundred? No one even uses cash much anymore!”

Jude dug in his wallet for the money, produced it, and then remembered to say, “Hey, can I also buy a large coffee with a shot of espresso?”

“Uh, sure, of course. No, no more money. It’s on me. I have a feeling that you could have confiscated that bill as evidence or the like, but…never mind. I don’t want to know!”

He produced the bill.

Jude realized he’d need to send Aidan or Cary back to get the man’s fingerprints for elimination, because he didn’t have any equipment on him. He used a napkin from the counter to accept the bill and slipped it into an evidence bag as he returned to the table.

With the bill.

And Vicky’s coffee.

“Let’s go.”

Outside, he introduced Linc to Vicky and Clover.

Clover was suspicious at first, but Linc evidently liked dogs and made that apparent to the shepherd/mastiff mix.

Clover decided to accept his presence and they started back, Jude explaining the conversation they’d had in the doughnut shop to Vicky.

“So, wait! You don’t even know if it was a man or a woman?” Vicky said incredulously.

“The mask thing—it made the person’s voice all weird. It was almost as if…”

Vicky looked at Jude. “A voice changer incorporated in the mask. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest then that it was someone who would be recognized, someone we’d know if we were able to get a description,” she said.

“What is going on? What did I do?” Linc asked, perplexed.

“There’s been a lot going on,” Jude told him. He hesitated, glancing at Vicky. “Someone has been using the internet to kill people.”

“What?”

Linc stopped walking, his expression horrified.

“Oh, my God!” he gasped out. “Then…man, am I mixed up in this, too, now? Is this scary dude going to try to kill me now?”

“Scary dude has no idea that we found you along with the papers. In fact, we would not have found you if it hadn’t been for an observant cop and Clover,” Vicky said. She glanced at Jude. “If you’re worried—”

“Worried? I’m terrified!” he said.

“We can keep you safe,” Jude said. “At least you won’t need to miss any work right now,” he added dryly. “Come on, we’re going to need to get to Aidan. With any luck, we may be able to pull fingerprints off the bill. We need to try, anyway.”

“And there’s something else,” Vicky said quietly.

“What’s that?” Jude asked.

“They know about this place, the police building. And if they know about it…”

“Let’s get in,” Jude said. “Come on!”

They hurried back. In their apartment, they found Aidan and Cary tensely glued to their computers.

Aidan looked up, frowning as he saw that they’d brought a guest, but intense as he told them, “There was a cyberattack on this place. We managed to get in to subvert it, but we’re working with others, desperately changing codes and so on. If there’s anything else…”

“No. Keep at what you’re doing. Vicky, I want to show Linc cars.”

“The room, head to our room, out of the way of these guys, and I’ll open my laptop and then we can get Linc parked in front of a television or something—” Vicky said.

“Stay here? I should stay here?” he asked.

Aidan looked up, a question in his eyes.

“Ah, no, Vicky. We’ll take him with us. I’ll get to the lab to get help on the bill. All right, we’ll get out of your hair,” Jude said.

“Leave the dog!” Cary begged.

“Of course,” Jude assured her.

“I’ll still grab my laptop. I can sit in back with Linc and get on the car pictures,” Vicky said. “And Aidan, Cary, if anything seems to threaten you—”

“No, there’s no AI that can get us, we’ve seen to that. And a SWAT crew is going to be outside on the street. We’re fine, just go!” Aidan said.

They did. As they left, Jude could see that the building would be well guarded. There wasn’t just a police presence on the street.

There was a visible police presence.

Jude drove. As he did so, he listened as Vicky brought up pictures of cars.

“There!” Linc said suddenly. “That’s it. I mean, I think. They all look a lot alike. You know, I mean, in the shape of the body of the car. But, hey, I think I saw that logo thing on it, too.”

“Okay, I’m calling it in, along with a few other models,” Vicky said for Jude to hear.

“Got it. Good. Get a crew to the local PD station, too. We’ll get the bill there, between them, they can get someone out to the doughnut shop and start on the fingerprints. And we can…” He hesitated. “And we can leave Linc there, safe at the station.”

“You want me to just sit in a police station?” Linc said.

“They have a break room. Play phone games,” Jude told him.

“Hey. You’re the one who is scared,” Vicky reminded him.

“Yeah, but… Uh, never mind! I’ll play phone games!” Linc said.

They arrived at the station; a crew from the Jacksonville office was on the way down. Jude handed over the bill. A search would go on for the car.

They were informed as well that the building that housed the law firm would be reopened for the businesses it housed the following day. If they were going to interview Nancy Cole, they would need to find her at home. With the address in hand, Jude and Vicky were ready to head out.

But before they could leave, the desk sergeant stopped them.

“This car you’re looking for—the black SUV?”

“Yes, you found something?” Jude asked.

“I just got a report in. A car matching that description was just found abandoned in a grocery store parking lot. Seems it was stolen yesterday. Guy was missing his phone—which had an app to find and start his car. Phone and car missing. Phone still missing. Car found,” he said.

“Great. We need a forensic team on the car, see if anything at all can be learned from it,” Vicky said.

“Copy that!”

They left the station at last.

In the car Vicky murmured, “That was a stupid and senseless prank. Risk stealing a phone and a car, dressing up in a mask, and just grabbing a guy off the street. For what? To taunt us?”

“I thought for the longest time that it was a money thing,” Jude told her. “Now…”

“Now?”

“I’m beginning to think that it’s something different. That someone has something to prove.”

“And that’s why they taunted us?”

“Possibly. Dennis Rader, the ‘BTK’ or Bind, Torture, Kill murderer, loved to write letters to the police. Berkowitz, the ‘Son of Sam,’ sent a letter to the daughter of one of the detectives on his case, promising to kill her. Then, never caught, Jack the Ripper. That just names a few. Twisted minds cause a person to do twisted things.”

“And as you said, Jack the Ripper, never caught. BTK—eluded police for what, a decade? We can’t let that happen now, Jude. We can’t!”

“We won’t.”

“You still think that it might be Barton Clay?” she asked.

“I can’t help it. I do. When you put all the pieces we have together, he always seems to come out in the center of them all.”

“But nothing other than the fact he’s a cheating slimeball has come out of everything we’ve researched,” Vicky reminded him.

“True. But we haven’t found anything else that implicates anyone else—except for Celia Smith and she’s dead. Via an elevator system that went haywire. Hmm. Hacked,” Jude said.

“Well, we’ll see what Nancy Cole has to say,” Vicky told him. “There. That little house is hers—we’re here!”

Jude parked the car.

“What if she doesn’t answer?” Vicky asked. “With all this going on, I’m not so sure I’d answer my door!”

“I’m not so sure I’d feel safe in my house. We’ll identify ourselves, of course. And if she doesn’t answer, we’ll spend some quality time alone with Mr. Barton Clay a bit early.” He smiled. “We’d need a reason to break down the door.”

“What if we heard screaming?” Vicky asked.

“You’d lie about that?”

“No. What if we really heard screaming?”

“Then we’d break down the door,” he assured her.

They knocked at the door and rang the bell. Nothing. Jude looked at Vicky.

“Nancy! Special Agents Tennant and Mackenzie!” she shouted. “We need to speak with you. Please, come to the door. We will just keep coming back!”

A second later the door opened a crack. Nancy Cole, in a casual housecoat, looked out at them trepidatiously. “What?”

“May we come in? Please,” Vicky said.

Nancy Cole unhappily opened the door farther. They walked into her small, but pleasant, living room. The house was more of cottage—reasonable living, Jude knew. A group of these bungalow-type places had been built in the 1920s for workers doing repair work on some of the aging buildings and road systems in the city.

“Um, sit, I guess,” Nancy said.

They took the sofa; she sat in one of the armchairs by its side.

She looked miserable. No help for it.

“Nancy, we understand that you’ve been having an affair with Barton Clay,” Jude said flatly.

It appeared that every ounce of blood drained from her face.

“We know it to be true,” Vicky said gently. “It may not be particularly moral, sleeping with a married man, but it’s not illegal.”

“Oh, my God! You didn’t…you didn’t…tell her, did you?” Nancy whispered.

“No. It’s not our business to destroy or repair marriages,” Jude told her. “But murder is illegal. And Marci Warden was murdered. The next day, you were in her chair.”

“You think that I—that I killed Marci Warden?” she asked horrified.

“Did you?” Vicky asked.

“No! No! She was gone. They needed a receptionist. I’d met Celia Smith before and I’d even met Nathaniel—”

“Through Barton Clay?” Vicky asked.

“Um, yes. He suggested that I go in and fill out an application. I—I don’t have a college degree. I’m not…well, I never did well in school. But I know how to be polite, and I like people and he thought that there might be a position for an assistant somewhere in the future and… I never wanted anyone to die so that I could have a job! I swear it!” She hesitated. “Oh! And I barely know how to use social media, anyone can tell you that! She was killed by her house and you think that someone rigged the house—that person couldn’t possibly have been me!” Nancy swore.

“What about Barton?” Vicky asked.

Jude thought that Nancy was silent just a second too long.

But she shook her head vehemently. “No, no, he and Marci were friends. He certainly didn’t hate her! That’s just it—no one hated Marci. All right, he was frustrated with her, talking about her frowning about him taking some kind of action with a client—”

“What client?” Vicky asked.

“I don’t know! We, uh, didn’t talk a lot about his business because…”

“Because,” Vicky pressed.

“Because we were usually busy doing other things!” Nancy spat out. “But Barton… No, no, no! He didn’t kill anyone. He sure as hell didn’t kill her to get me a position at the firm because Celia had already talked about taking me on as one of her assistants!”

“You have no idea what the argument was about, or which client might have been involved?” Jude asked.

“I swear I don’t!” Nancy vowed. “But…”

“But?” Vicky pressed.

“He didn’t do it! I know that Barton didn’t do it! He couldn’t have. He was… He had snuck out for a few hours. He was…sleeping with me the evening she was killed!”