by Raven Snow
“Ben found an e-mail to Darren. Apparently, Jerry was planning on blackmailing him with footage of you and your boss together.” Rowen had no qualms about telling Julia about the e-mail. Given its nature, she doubted Julia was going to do anything with that information.
Julia sighed. It was obvious that she didn’t much like the fact that Rowen knew all this. There wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it now, though. She sat in a chair across from Rowen and Rose. “I heard. I got a similar e-mail.”
Rose raised her eyebrows at that. “Did you?”
“You didn’t give it to the police?” asked Rowen, not surprised but a little disappointed.
Julia immediately looked like she rather wished she hadn’t admitted that. “I didn’t think it would help find the murderer.”
“That’s nonsense,” said Rose, not letting her get out of this one. “You and Darren talked this over and decided you just didn’t want to risk getting into any sort of trouble.”
“Do you still have the e-mail?” Rowen asked before Julia had a chance to get too offended by Rose’s little outburst.
Julia glared at Rose, but that didn’t last long. She looked back to Rowen. “I might still have it,” she said. “But I really don’t think it’ll be any good to anyone.”
“Let’s let the police decide that, why don’t we?” asked Rose, reaching for her phone.
“Wait,” said Julia.
“Wait,” Rowen echoed. She still had a few more questions for Julia. “What did your e-mail say exactly. Do you remember?”
Julia shrugged. “Just that he had footage he felt I wouldn’t want being released to the public. He wanted to meet up and have me deliver cash to him. It never actually came to that.”
“Were you going to?” asked Rowen.
“I had considered it,” Julia admitted. “I talked about it with Darren. He was willing to let all of it come out. He refused to give into blackmail, which was all well and good for him. He would have been fine. I don’t think my career could survive a scandal like that.”
“You were going to pay him,” said Rowen. It wasn’t a question, but Julia’s shrug confirmed it anyway. “Where were you going to meet him?”
“I didn’t meet him,” said Julia. “He died before I could.”
“But where?” Rowen insisted. She had an idea here, and to follow up on it, she needed that location. “What can it hurt to tell me?”
“In the park,” she said. “Near where he took the video of us. There’s a tacky little museum at the edge of the park. Do you know it?”
“I know it,” said Rose, sounding mildly offended. “I like that museum.”
“Well, do what you will with that,” said Julia, waving a hand as if she wanted them out of her house now. “You’ve gotten what you need. I would appreciate it if you didn’t drag my name through the mud after this. I know you’re all better than that.”
“Are we?” asked Rose, standing.
Rowen couldn’t help but smile at Julia’s stricken expression. “If I were you, I would go to the police. Tell them what you told us about the e-mail.”
“They asked already,” Julia began. “After he was murdered they questioned me, and I-”
“Lied,” Rose finished for her. “Or you omitted something you knew you should have mentioned. Either way, it’s going to reflect poorly on you. Trust me, though. It’s going to look even worse if you don’t tell them before we do.”
“Fine.” Julia was looking off into the distance, deep in thought. She hurried after Rose and Rowen as they approached the door. “You won’t put any of this in your paper, will you?”
Rowen was about to assure her that they weren’t a tabloid. Rose managed to respond before she could. “I don’t know. It would make a good story, wouldn’t it?” She gave her a smirk. “We’ll sit on it for a while, maybe. It’s the kind of story that’ll keep, I think.”
“Are you trying to blackmail me now?” Julia asked, wearily.
“Oh, no,” Rose assured her. “Think of it more like a cold war.” With that, she continued out the door.
Rowen followed close behind her. “You’ve gotten mean,” she said with a chuckle.
“It’s just Julia Martinez. It’s not like she hasn’t done plenty worse stuff to us.”
“Fair enough, I guess.” Rowen got back into their car. “Just be careful. I think we might need to ask her a few more questions before all of this is over.”
“Why?”
“Just a feeling I have.”
It was dark by the time they got to the park. That meant there weren’t many people, at least. Rowen didn’t see anyone as she parked on the road across from the museum. It was closed by now. Rowen just hoped the elderly couple that ran it had left. They probably wouldn’t appreciate a couple of Greensmiths poking around out back.
Rose shoved her hands in her pockets as Rowen paced, trying to decide where she needed to go. It looked like Rose had already resigned herself to the idea that she wasn’t going to be much help. She wandered a bit, looking at the ground, waiting.
Rowen tried to clear her mind and get a feel for the area. Had anything bad happened here? It was difficult to tell. This place got a lot of foot traffic. It was host to a lot of different emotions. Rowen tried to sort through them and find the ones she was looking for. Easier said than done, unfortunately.
“What makes you so sure something happened out here?” asked Rose. “You think he was murdered here, right?”
Honestly, Rowen wasn’t sure. “Maybe. It was just a gut feeling, to be honest. I like to try and listen to those. I could have been wrong this time, though. Or maybe it’s just been too long. I’m not… I’m not feeling anything.”
“I found something,” Rose said, suddenly.
“What?”
“I found something,” Rose repeated, sounding more sure of herself this time. “Well…” She trailed off, that confidence faltering a bit. “Maybe I didn’t, but come look and tell me what you think.”
Rowen walked around the side of the museum and immediately saw what Rowen was talking about. There was a sharp drop where the foundation of the museum rose above the base of a hill in the park. It wasn’t a huge drop, maybe fifteen or twenty feet at the most, but there were sharp rocks at the bottom. “They said Jerry’s cause of death looked like a fall, right?”
Rose nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”
Rowen looked carefully at the cement lining the foundation. She didn’t see any blood or places were the dirt or grass had been disturbed in any meaningful way. She did feel something, though… Something negative. “Oh,” said Rowen, closing her eyes to try and hone in on that feeling. Yep, definitely negative emotions. The ones that were loudest were anger and jealousy, maybe even a little regret. Was it murder, though? She couldn’t be sure.
“Did you find something?” Rose asked the moment Rowen opened her eyes.
“Maybe.” Rowen didn’t want to get Rose’s hopes up, but she was feeling quite a bit of excitement already. This felt like it. It definitely felt like she was on to something. “I need to go down there to make sure.”
“Well, go around. Be careful.”
“Like I was going to take my chances jumping down there? Come on.” Rowen led the way down the long way, crossing into the park and jogging down the hill. She stumbled a couple of times in the dark, but still made it to the base of the wall. The ground was hard and peppered with rocks embedded in the hillside. Rowen took out her phone to shed some light on them, and Rose did the same.
“There.” Rose was the first one to spot it. She pointed. “Does that look like blood to you?”
Rowen dropped to one knee, leaning in closer. She saw the dark spot Rose was pointing at and brought her phone nearer to it. “I’m no expert, but… Yeah. Yeah, that looks like blood to me.” It was a bit brown, but that’s what blood looked like when it dried, wasn’t it? “Take a picture. Send it to Ben.”
“That’s a good idea.” Rose angled her pho
ne to do just that.
“Tell him I have an idea. If he can, keep this on the down low. Don’t alert the media or anything yet… Especially not the media.” Rowen still felt confident that the murderer was someone who worked at Channel 2.
“That’s probably his plan anyway,” said Rose, not taking her eyes off her phone. Her fingers flew as she sent the message. “What are you going to do?”
“Call Julia.” Already Rowen was doing just that. She still had the number Benji had given her.
Julia answered, sounding apprehensive. “Hello?”
“It’s Rowen.”
Julia groaned. “How did I know it was you? How did you get this number anyway?”
Rowen didn’t dare sell out Benji. That poor kid had been through enough on their account. “Look, did anyone at work have a crush on you?”
“What?”
“Aside from your boss,” Rowen added. “I mean, did anyone else seem really into you?”
“Sure, I guess.” Julia sounded more apprehensive than ever. “A lot of the guys I work with seem to have a thing for me. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a rather attractive woman.”
“I’ve noticed.” Rowen rolled her eyes. “Did any of those people really stand out to you?”
Julia gave an aggravated sigh then fell quiet, presumably considering the question. “Well, there are the guys I work with.”
Rowen had been afraid of something like that. “Which ones? All of them?”
“I guess. One of them was leaving me flowers for a while. I had to put a stop to that. Put out a notice about sexual harassment and it stopped.” Julia didn’t seem to know who it had been specifically.
“Thanks.” Rowen hung up.
“What’s up?” asked Rose, eager for an update.
“Hang on.” Rowen was already dialing Willow. She had a bad feeling about this.
Willow answered on the second ring. “Hey, Rowen,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Where are you right now?” asked Rowen.
“With Benji.”
“And where’s that?”
“Channel 2. We’re just chilling. I’m trying to convince everyone to head to a movie after this. You wanna come?”
Rowen cringed. She tried to keep the concern out of her tone. “Yeah, sure. I’ll meet you there, all right?”
Willow didn’t respond at first. She hesitated, her silence heavy. Like maybe she sensed Rowen’s emotions right now. “Sounds good,” she said at last.
Rowen hung up. “Do you want to wait here for Ben?” she asked Rose.
“Are you kidding?” Obviously, Rose didn’t need powers to sense what was going on here. “I’m coming with you to Channel 2.”
Chapter Fourteen
There weren’t many people in the Channel 2 building at this hour. It was mostly interns and behind the scenes workers who kept to their offices to do late night editing and such. Of course, Rowen couldn’t get in on her own. She had to park around back and wait to be let in by Benji. He looked apprehensive when he came outside with Willow. He had every reason to be. Rowen wasn’t sure there had been a single time she had interacted with him that she hadn’t demanded something.
Willow might have suspected something was up. If she did, she was keeping her mouth shut. As much of a ditz as she could be on occasion, the girl had a decent head on her shoulders. “So, I vote horror movie. But Benji here doesn’t like horror movies.”
“Violence makes me queasy,” said Benji with a sheepish shrug.
“So, comedy maybe. I don’t think there’s one out that I want to see, though. What do you guys think?” Willow looked back at Rowen and Rose as she led the way back to the editing office.
“I’m fine with whatever,” said Rose.
“Same,” said Rowen, distracted. She was shooting off another message on her phone letting Eric know that they had arrived at the station. She had brought him up to speed on the way over. He hadn’t liked that she was doing this without him, but there was no way around it. Rowen wasn’t going to leave her cousin alone with a potential murderer. Besides, she was impatient to put a lid on this thing. She didn’t think the killer, whoever he was, was a dangerous person. There had been regret at the scene of the crime. Granted, it had been amidst anger and a lot of other really nasty feelings. Rowen still thought the regret communicated that the entire thing had been an accident, though. Knowing who her suspects were, that seemed a whole lot more likely than one of them being a cold blooded murderer.
Eric texted back immediately that he was still on his way. He’d given up his stakeout. This sort of took precedence.
The door to the office opened. Frank and Craig were still inside seated at their respective stations. Frank was going through footage, and Craig had a large pair of headphones on. He didn’t look up when they came in, but Frank glanced over his shoulder. He raised his eyebrows, not looking thrilled with more company. “Just what we needed, more guests.”
“So, you decide on a movie?” Willow asked, taking a seat on the table in the center of the room.
“I think I’m going to pass,” said Frank, turning back to his work.
“Fine,” said Willow. “Who needs you? What about you, Craig? Craig!”
Craig jumped when she shouted his name. He removed his headphones and turned to see what she wanted, his eyes wide.
“You coming to the movie?” Willow asked again.
“What? No,” he said reflexively. He seemed to notice Rowen and Rose were there then, and his face went a little red. “I mean that I don’t think so. I have to finish this up by tomorrow. The audio is all muddled on this, so…” he trailed off awkwardly.
“Well, at least I have my cousins to come with me,” Willow said with a sigh. She looked at said cousins with a smile.
“What were you two up to today?” asked Benji, forcing small talk.
“You know,” said Rose, forcing a smile of her own. “This and that.”
“Did you get in touch with Julia?” Benji seemed to regret asking the question as soon as it left his mouth. As desperate as he was to make small talk, he probably didn’t want anyone knowing he had been the one to hand over Julia Martinez’s number.
“Oh, yeah,” said Rowen quickly, hoping no one picked up on that. She was out of luck.
“What’d you have to do with Julia?” asked Frank with a chuckle. “She was just complaining about you Greensmiths today. Are you collaborating on something or…?”
“Yeah. We’re in talks with Mr. Hawthorne to--” Rowen began.
“No, we just needed to ask her a few questions about--” Rose began at the same time.
“Ask her a few questions about what?” asked Craig, still turned away from his work.
“About the murder, I imagine,” Craig said when Rose and Rowen both struggled with producing an answer. “That one’s dating the Chief of Police.” He pointed to Rose. “And the other one consults with the police. At least, she says she does.”
“I do, but…” Rowen wasn’t sure how to talk her way out of this one. It seemed easier to just come clean and try to downplay everything. Catching all of them off guard like this was too valuable an opportunity to pass up anyway. “Keep it to yourselves, but we found a new piece of evidence. I can’t say what, but… Well, the police should be questioning Julia by now, I guess.”
“What?” Benji looked at Willow, his mouth hanging open. “Seriously? She’s not a suspect is she?”
Craig laughed. “Yeah, right. Julia’s not a murderer. How could a woman that small murder a guy like Jerry Borowski?”
Rowen shrugged. “Well, I mean, Jerry wasn’t that big and the cause of death was probably a fall. It could have been an accident. Things got out of hand, he fell, and the rest is history.”
“But she’s not a suspect, though… Right?” Craig’s smile fell, as if he was only now starting to take the idea of Julia being a suspect seriously.
“I’m afraid we can’t say,” said Rowen.
“But how could she be?” asked Benji. “She would have to move the body, right? That’s hard, isn’t it? How would she move the body?”
That was a fair point. “We’re not saying she didn’t have help,” said Rose.
“We’re not saying she’s a suspect at all,” corrected Rowen.
“But if she was, you couldn’t tell us,” said Craig.
Rose gave a helpless sort of shrug. “I guess not.”
Frank laughed, destroying the tense atmosphere. “Listen to those two, pining over that woman.” He rolled his eyes dramatically.
“Really now?” Willow looked at Benji, her eyebrows raised. “You have a crush on Julia Martinez?” Rowen could tell that she wasn’t angry about it, more bemused and eager to tease him about it than anything else.
Benji didn’t pick up on that. “No! No, of course not. I mean… no!”
Frank snorted. “Please, you asked us if we thought you had a chance at least a dozen times.”
“That was… That was just out of curiosity.” Benji scrambled for an excuse. He motioned wildly for Craig, eager not to be the center of attention anymore. “What about him? He liked her way more than me. He sent her flowers!”
Craig’s face went redder than it had been when he spotted Rowen. “I did not.”
“Well, they weren’t from me,” muttered Benji.
“And they weren’t from me,” said Frank, turning back to his work. “I don’t date coworkers… Or women.”
So that ruled Frank out. Rowen looked at Craig. She didn’t peg him for someone that likely to lose his temper. Then again, she wouldn’t expect that from any of these guys.
Craig shrugged, trying his best to look uninterested and failing miserably. His face was still a bright beet red, and he couldn’t keep eye contact with anyone. “Maybe it was Jerry.”
“Not a chance,” said Frank, his back to them all. “Jerry was into that weird girl from the library. He talked to me about the ladies he liked all the time, and she wasn’t one of them. Don’t use a dead guy as a scapegoat, Craig. It’s not right.”
“I’m not!” Craig snapped. “It could have been him. I mean, it wasn’t me. It could have been Jerry. He didn’t tell you everything. I mean, he didn’t tell you about all those pervy videos he took.”