I promised Eddie we would have that dinner very soon, then hung up and dialed again.
“Benny? I need the crime scene report on a disturbance last night at the Marietta home of Michael Honeycutt, banker. The address was Fallgood Road. Yes, yes, I know it would have been Cobb County but didn’t you once say computers were born to talk to each other?” His response was definite and inflammatory. “Well, I’m sure you and NCIC between you know how to persuade them. And when you do, look for any reference to fingerprints and blood typing…. Yes, yes, I know Cobb County has to input the information before you can access it. I’ll wait…. Well, how about a full pass to the Atlanta Film Festival next month?”
Eventually he agreed. He always does.
When I got up to the fourteenth floor, the Lyon Art office smelled just as strongly of coffee, the air was bright with noise, but this time Annie Miclasz knew my name.
“Aud!” Her look of surprise was swiftly hooded. She nodded back towards Julia’s office. “She didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“No,” I agreed.
She studied me, then made up her mind. “You’ll want it with cream again, no doubt.” She beckoned me to join her as she poured and added and stirred.
“How is her schedule?”
That hooded look again. She carried my coffee to her computer. I followed. She pulled up a screen of calendars and deleted all but Annie and Julia. She studied the mosaic, then with a few keystrokes she moved several chunks around, one from Julia to Annie, and one to tomorrow. “It looks pretty uncrowded for the next hour or so.”
I smiled at her. “Isn’t that lucky?”
Her voice was round with approval. “I imagine you remember the way. She’ll probably want some coffee, too.”
I carried both mugs in one hand to Julia’s door, knocked, and went in.
She was at her desk, brilliant with the sunshine streaming through the big picture window, staring out at the Atlanta skyline. In quarter profile I could just see the tip of her right ear and the glint of gold at the lobe. A lavender shirt collar softened the grey silk suit. Her head was very still.
“I’ve brought coffee.”
She swung around. “I thought you were Mrs. Miclasz.”
There seemed no point responding to that so I just put her mug on the desk. “No sugar, no cream. Annie doesn’t approve.”
“No.” She ignored the mug.
“I brought you an invoice.”
“You could have left it with Annie.”
“The thing is, I don’t think we’re done. There are a few more things to be said. To be considered.”
“I have a lot to do this afternoon.”
“I took the liberty of checking with Annie. I believe you’ll have time to talk for a few minutes.”
She picked up the phone. “Mrs. Miclasz? What do I have on my plate this afternoon? I see. Thank you.”
I sat down in the sofa near the window and assumed an unthreatening pose, legs crossed at the knee, hands folded in my lap. She watched me, like a bird with a broken wing backed into a corner.
“I’d like to talk to you.”
“So talk.”
“I’d rather know you were listening. Perhaps you’d like to tell me what is disturbing you.”
“You. This is my office.” She seemed to realize that did not make much sense. “You walk in here, cool as glass, you conspire with my staff to rearrange my schedule…. This is my office.”
“When did it happen, Julia? Who was in front of that theatre?”
She looked at me as though she hated me.
“You’ve spent the last few years preparing yourself for this. It happened. You responded. You did the right thing, only now you’re not sure.” She said nothing. “Maybe you should have let him hit you after all, then run back upstairs and help his friends to finish me off.”
“He was running, trying to get past me. I should have let him.”
“He might have killed you—”
“You don’t know that!”
“—his friends were certainly trying to kill me. One of them had a knife. Very sharp, very businesslike.”
She shook her head stubbornly. I sighed, put down my coffee, and unbuttoned the bottom of my shirt. She stared at the bandage.
“It’s a knife wound.” I unfastened the safety pin.
“Don’t.” Her face was dirty white. “I don’t…”
“No. I want you to see. I want you to see what might have happened to you if you hadn’t hit that man.”
She watched, mute, as I unrolled the bandage. When I peeled back the gauze, she stood, took a half step, then slumped like a melting column of ice cream onto her knees. Her eyes were black, but whatever she was seeing, it wasn’t me.
“It’s about four inches long. If I hadn’t moved, it would have slipped right into my stomach. You can bet they wouldn’t have called an ambulance. I would have died, Julia. If you hadn’t been there, ready to hit that man, he might have come back upstairs before I could disable the other two.”
“My brother,” she said. “My brother, Guy. I was nineteen. He was knifed to death in front of a Cambridge theatre. In the middle of the day.” She stretched out her hand.
“No. Don’t touch it.” I started to cover it up again.
“Please. I have to see.” She crept closer on her knees, like a child; so close I could feel the heat of her breath on the cut. “It’s so thin.”
“It was a very sharp knife.”
“Guy was stabbed eleven times. My mother wouldn’t let me see his body. His face was all cut up. There were no cuts on his arms or hands, and it was only later that I realized what that meant, that he hadn’t even tried to defend himself, and I promised I would never, ever let someone do that to me. Never just stand there and let them hurt me. But I never knew what it was really like….” She settled her weight back on her calves and looked at her hand, open on her thigh. “I can still feel the shape of his face on my palm. I think I might have broken his nose. And I liked the fact that I had hit him. I knew I wouldn’t have died without fighting if I had been in front of that theatre. I really knew. And I spent all night wondering—why people do this in the first place, why Guy didn’t fight, what makes me capable of violence and not him. Part of me wants to feel like a bad person because I could.”
“Was your brother a saint?”
She blinked. “Guy? Not even close. What’s that got to do with anything?”
I laid the gauze back over the wound and starting winding the bandage back around my waist.
“Tell me what you—Please, let me do that.” She wrapped me gently, started to pin the bandage neatly at the back.
“I won’t be able to reach that.”
She repinned it. “You should get it stitched.”
“It’s already healing.”
She accepted that with a nod, then kept nodding. Eventually she said, “I understand, I think.”
And I think she did. Being capable of using violence to defend yourself did not make you a bad person. Being dead because you couldn’t did not make you a good one. I buttoned up my shirt and she waited for me to lean back and get comfortable, handed me my coffee, then trundled her desk chair over to the sofa. “You said it wasn’t finished.”
“I think you may still be in danger.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
“No. Think. Did you get a good look at the face of the man you hit?”
“Yes. Ah. He probably got a good look at me, too. If they find out I’ve been pursuing this…”