Justine’s cell phone buzzed. She stiffened as though a high-voltage shock had gone up her spine, and opened her eyes, ready to fight. She recognized the sound and rolled over in bed to reach in the direction the sound had come from, and at the same moment remembered why she was in this strange room. She had been crying about the death of Ben Spengler for most of the night until she was too tired to be able to think clearly, and she must have dozed off with her clothes on. On her phone was a text message from Janice Fortner, night shift supervisor of communications at Spengler-Nash.
Justine was pretty sure she knew what this was going to be. Janice was undoubtedly getting in touch to say she was sorry that Justine had been fired.
There had already been about a dozen of those. All had included compliments, and some had offered to serve as references. Since some of the older ones had titles like shift commander or director of international operations, the offers were not worthless, but she was not thinking about her next job. She was thinking about staying alive until the end of the week.
She noticed her phone screen said 8:21 A.M., which meant it was too late to go back to sleep anyway. She had a vague memory of noises in the hallway hours earlier, which hadn’t been annoying enough to bring her to full consciousness, but now she was awake. She touched the screen to read the text. “Justine, the security cameras in the garage picked this man up watching at shift change the night after Ben was killed. Maybe trying to find you? We’re not supposed to communicate with you, but you need to see these.”
Justine touched the symbol of the attachment and saw the first picture appear. It showed a man trying to stay in the shadows behind the last row of parked cars. The garage was dimly lit, but the security cameras made him clear and sharp. There were other pictures, but she wanted to answer right away. She typed, “Got them. I owe you. Take no more chances. Love, etc.” Janice was the last person in the world to make a mistake like using a Spengler-Nash account or a piece of company equipment for personal calls, but her job gave her legitimate access to the security recordings.
Justine looked at the first picture. She remembered that when Ben had ordered the newer cameras installed, he had said that they were to protect company clients. If someone was planning to stalk a client, one way to do it would be to track the car of the client’s bodyguard to wherever the client was. Ben would never admit he was also trying to protect the bodyguards, but he was still protecting her now.
Justine looked at the next few pictures. The man was white. His hair was light, but not light enough to be blond. It was straight and short. His face had a chiseled look, maybe partly because he was straining to see something in the parking garage. His eyebrows were drawn together and jaw muscles tight. He seemed to be in his midthirties to early forties, not a kid waiting to break a car window in a lot to steal something. He was too well dressed to be down on his luck and sleeping rough—creases in his pants’ legs, a dark, well-fitted jacket, a baseball cap with no logo. She realized she might very well be looking at the man who had shot Ben Spengler to death two nights ago.
She wished Janice had sent the shots to the police too. They might recognize him or have his car on a license plate reader near Ben’s house. She was almost positive Janice hadn’t sent them, though. Sending them would bring the police back to Spengler-Nash asking more questions, and if Ben’s siblings learned she’d been in touch with Justine, she might be considered disloyal, and she’d lose her job too.
Justine looked at the pictures again to try to discern anything she could. One of the shots showed the man standing by the stairwell door. She knew that the doorway was seven feet, and he seemed to be about a foot shorter, but he was ducking his head, so he could be slightly taller than six feet when he stood up straight. He was trim, but not thin, with a flat belly and upper arms that looked thick.
In the end, what she could tell about him was all bad. He was ordinary looking for Los Angeles. He was mature but not old. He was in good physical condition and patient enough to stand for at least an hour or two doing reconnaissance. She kept thinking about him, looking at each of his pictures again and again, but there was a block between her and what she wanted to know. He might as well be a statue of a man. Nothing about who he was or what he was thinking could be gleaned from any of the pictures. She had a panicky feeling that she was letting herself waste time sitting in this hotel room while the day went by. She needed to put her phone down and get ready to use these pictures to start trying to find Ben’s killer. She went into the bathroom to take a shower.
She turned on the water, let it run long enough to adjust it so she wouldn’t get scalded, and stepped in to let the water soothe her. She found herself thinking about Justine Poole.
The name had happened near the beginning of her second summer at Spengler-Nash. Ben had begun her training for the part of the business that wasn’t done in an office. He had come to her desk and said, “I want you to think up a nom de guerre. Everybody here has to have one.”
“Why?”
“A bunch of reasons. It’s like an actor’s name, the right name for the image you want to project. Good ones are simple and comforting. They make clients remember you. If somebody wants to bitch about you, they only know a fake name. They’ll complain about Lisa La De Da or whoever. If the complaint sticks, we make up a new name for you. Sometimes female agents get noticed in the wrong way. You’re young and not as ugly as you could be, so you might get stalkers. You’re not completely incompetent so you’ll make an enemy or two. They want to come after Lisa La De Da? Let them. She’s gone, moved on.”
“I’m kind of used to being Anna Kepka.”
“Oh, and the other reason is that I told you to. Bring me a good name before end of shift. Write it down so we both spell it the same.”
The name she had invented was Justine Poole. It sounded like the name of a woman whose family had come from a place along the Thames, not the Volga or the Danube. It was short and easy to remember. When she had handed him the name he had nodded and typed it on a form in his computer.
Two days later he brought her the plastic identification card that said she was Justine Poole and showed a picture of her like the others all had. Eventually she had one that carried all of her professional information on it—the number of her concealed carry permit and the firearms she was authorized to carry—9 millimeter, .40 caliber, .45 caliber. It noted that she had completed a defensive driving certification, CPR and lifesaving certification, and martial arts training. That was all for the benefit of clients, an easy way to reassure them that she was qualified. It also said she was a level 4 protection agent. There was no level 1, 2 or 3. After that he never called her anything but Justine Poole, and nobody else did either. Anna Kepka faded and became a bit of private history. Over the years she had used “Justine Poole” more and more often, so her real name got to be like an alias.
As she stood in the shower she thought about Anna Kepka. The surname was already a shortened version of her family’s name, an abridgment her grandmother had done so it would be easy for Americans to say and accept. Her grandmother had told her that Americans were impatient people who resented having to memorize long or difficult names from other languages, so she had decided not to irritate them. When Anna had asked her what the long version of the name had been, she’d said, “You’re an American too. Use your America name and be grateful. You’ll only need this one until you’re married and he gives you his nice new one anyway.”