Touch Of The White Tiger. Julie Beard

the charges dismissed after the fact. The case has to work its way through the courts.

      Suddenly the Diva appeared. Her long blond hair hung in braids. Red lipstick brightened a smile so welcoming that I found myself resisting the urge to smile back. I suspected the program had been designed to relax and disarm. That was doubtless another reason the programmer had used the image of a woman. I would have to stay on my guard.

      “Hello, Angel,” she said in a rich, melodic voice.

      “Hello.” I tightened my grip on the arms of the cushioned metal chair.

      “I want you to get comfortable,” she said, and my chair tilted back a few inches via a remote-controlled hydraulic system. “Straps will hold you in place, but they shouldn’t be too tight. Are you comfy?”

      “I guess so.”

      “Good. The constraints are simply there to keep you in the correct position. Now, Angel, what were you doing at the Cloisters?”

      I squinted to see through the hologram and briefly spotted the camera lens recording my eye movements. The Diva seemed to notice. She moved her head and focused her large, heavily lined eyes more intently on me. The distraction worked. I forgot about the lens and did my best to make my case.

      “I was there to help my colleague, Roy Leibman.”

      The Diva smiled sympathetically. “Did you know him well?”

      I tried to nod, forgetting that my head was strapped in place. “Yes. He was my mentor.” A surge of emotion clogged my throat and I let out a deep, pained breath. “He…he taught me everything I know.”

      “Then why did you kill him?” Rather than being accusatory, she seemed genuinely curious.

      Trying to mimic her calm, logical attitude, I said, “I didn’t kill him. When I arrived, I found Roy already wounded. Victor Alvarez was already dead.”

      “You know Victor?”

      “Yes.”

      The Diva frowned, and I sensed her sympathy slipping away. This was a very sophisticated program. The interrogators who were running the show behind the mirror had the power to supply the Diva not only questions, but emotional reactions as well. I waited, but she remained silent. Why? What was the big deal about me knowing Victor? Then it hit me.

      “Oh, come on. Are you implying that my association with Victor makes me more suspicious than anyone else in this building? You think this was somehow premeditated on my part? I’m just being honest. I could have said I knew who the victim was because everyone at the crime scene was talking about him, which they were, or because he’s frequently seen on television, but I told you the truth. I have nothing to hide.”

      “You call it a crime scene,” she replied. “So you admit a crime was committed.”

      “Yes. Obviously. But not by me. Roy called me and said he needed help. I think he’d already been shot when he called, but I didn’t realize that until I got there.”

      “He called you?”

      “Yes.” When she raised a brow in doubt, I added stridently, “Check the phone records. Go ahead. I have nothing to hide.”

      “If you didn’t kill them, Angel, then who did?”

      I paused just long enough to feel a trickle of perspiration itching its way down my right temple. I wished like hell I could scratch it. “I don’t know. Perhaps it was a random execution by drug dealers. Wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time kind of thing.”

      “So your gun just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time as well?”

      “My gun?” I repeated blankly. When she nodded, I said, “That’s impossible. My gun is locked up in a bank. I’m…semiretired.”

      The image of the Diva faded to black and in her place I discovered a 3-D projection of a crime scene photo. A hand gingerly held a dangling semiautomatic weapon emblazoned with a lapis lazuli dragon imbedded in a pearl handle. There was no question that it was my gun.

      “Where was this photo taken?” I demanded. “It could be anywhere.”

      “True enough,” the Diva’s voice replied from the ether. “How’s this?”

      Another photo appeared, a wider shot of the same pose. It was Marco holding the gun for the camera. Behind him you could see Victor Alvarez’s body.

      I closed my eyes, wishing they could stay that way. Forever. What could I say to refute this photo? my mind frantically wondered. Deeper inside, I thought, Why didn’t Marco just cut my heart out with a knife? It would have been less painful than this. Clearly, he wanted me out of his life. Putting me behind bars was certainly one way to do that. Had he planted my gun at the crime scene?

      “I don’t know how my gun got there,” I forced myself to say, though I felt like a dead woman walking, or rather sitting. “Contact my bank. Someone broke into my deposit box and stole it.”

      The Diva threw her head back and laughed, her double chins shaking as her voice ran the musical scale from top to bottom. She finally settled on me with twinkling eyes. “Come now, Angel, you don’t expect me to believe that.”

      “You seem like an intelligent woman, Diva,” I replied, daring a bit of reverse psychology with my computerized interrogator. “Surely you’ve figured out by now that sometimes people are set up for crimes they didn’t commit. Do you really think I would be stupid enough to risk an interrogation with you if I’d used my gun at that crime scene?”

      “Someone used that gun.”

      “But not me.”

      The Diva looked back over her shoulder and appeared to be talking to someone, though no one else was projected in the hologram. She turned back to me with a look of grave doubt.

      “Angel, Lieutenant Townsend informs me that his men have already run a computer check of your lapel phone records. There was no call from Roy Leibman.”

      “That’s a lie!” I shouted.

      Her expressive eyes couldn’t quite conceal a gleam of triumph. “Take a look for yourself.”

      The Diva faded to black and an image of my phone records flashed in front of me. I squinted to make out the numbers that had come in over the last twenty-four hours. Not only was Roy’s call absent, there was no evidence of any incoming calls after 10:30 p.m. The only registered conversation was the one I had made when I called for emergency help at the Cloisters.

      “This isn’t right!” I called out. I tried to look at the two-way mirror, but the padded clamp around my forehead stopped me cold. I moved to yank it off, but the straps around my wrists merely tightened. “There’s a mistake in those records.”

      The Diva reappeared, fading in on a bubble like Glenda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, though her change in demeanor reminded me more of Glenda’s evil sister from the east.

      “What do you have to say for yourself, Angel?”

      “I talked to Roy,” I said as calmly as I could. I had to remember that I wasn’t trying to convince the Diva. She didn’t exist. I was trying to prove to the camera lens hidden behind her image that I was telling the truth. “Roy asked me to come.”

      “Is that so?” the Diva replied, all frowns and pinched lips. “Did Roy Leibman ever ask for your help before?”

      I paused. “No. And I’m sure that in Lieutenant Townsend’s little logical manual on law enforcement that means it’s unlikely Roy would have called on me now. Am I right?”

      “I’ll ask the questions, missy,” the Diva hissed. “Isn’t it true that you came to the Cloisters because you were jealous that Victor Alvarez had chosen Roy Leibman as a Certified Retribution Specialist instead of you?”

      “What? No!”

      “You wanted