Finally!

So I finally finished New Job which morphed into Memory Lane! Now I am FINALLY free to move on to other things and write about...

Umm...

I'm sure I was bursting with ideas just last week.

Wait...there was...oh or....hmmm...maybe...

Dammit.

It's always like that isn't it? It's like shopping. When you have no money or you are in the middle of losing weight all of the clothes are super cute and you want them all. And as soon as you're flush with cash and your weight is stable...nothing. Nothing at all.

Is it that our brains just crave distraction or variety? So if we are trying to focus on one thing it's like, "Oh look over here!" but when we are free to wander it's like, "Nah, I'm good. Let's just rest."

I did have a few ranty type things last week that would pop up and I would "write" while I was out walking. But then when I would sit down to write them I'd get distracted or couldn't muster up the right frame of mind to do it and it would fade away. You have to be in the right mood to tilt at those windmills.

Next week is the Mueller testimony so I'm hoping that sparks some change in the national conversation. I mean, I doubt it, you have people defending Trump this week saying that he didn't say something racist because....well...reasons! So they aren't going to shift from NO COLLUSION! NO OBSTRUCTION! even though the Mueller Report is like, yeah...so much obstruction.

Maybe I'll read through Memory Lane and see where it falls apart and spin that into another story. I mean, probably not...but sparks need to happen somewhere. I'm sort of feeling a love story being the next one. Maybe even a play it straight one. Since Memory Lane was REALLY not the type of story I normally tell maybe another one that is totally different will be good. It worked for Wonky Tower as well. I think the ones I'm not good at end up being the longest because it takes me so long to figure out what I want to say...

Okay, well I brain dumped. Sunday blogs are often just brain dump blogs. Let's see if that opens it up for next week. :-)

To my liberal ladies on the beach...have so much fun you start a new progressive movement!
To my fellow Mueller testimony watches, pay attention, it should be good.
To the rest of you reading, have a great week and, you know, post an idea about what you want me to write about in the comments. It's always appreciated. :-)

Gratitude...

Okay, I'll make it a triple header...

Doing Prompt of the Day this month. Basically I took the Picture of the Day list from Fat Mum Slim and turned it into Prompt of the Day instead. It was a good list of things I thought I could work with so I decided not to pass it up.

Today's prompt was "I'm grateful for..."

Yeah, I laughed when I saw it too. I do a Daily Gratitude post on Facebook already, and I've been a gratitude practitioner for as long as I can remember. Practitioner of gratitude? Is that better? Overtly grateful?

However you want to phrase it, I'm a grateful person.

I can tell you that it started when I was very young. And it was tied to my religious beliefs at the time. Or I guess spiritual more than religion. It wasn't something the church said I should do, I just felt like it should be done. See, everyone prays when they need something but I felt like that was kind of wrong. I mean you know how you feel about people who only call you when they need something right? So I would make sure to do short little prayers of thanks. See a beautiful sunset? Thank you for this sunset and the way the orange color fades into the pink. Run into a friend unexpectedly and have a nice visit? Thank you for putting Lisa in my path today. And on and on.

It was a habit. A thank you habit. A gratitude habit.

And even years after I left the church I found myself doing it. Driving down the road, Thank you for the AC in my car and the reliability of my transportation. Sitting by the ocean, Thank you for the sound the waves make when they hit the shore. But the difference was I wasn't addressing them to God anymore, I was just sending out a general thank you to the world. I left the church but I didn't leave my gratitude practice. It had just changed.

Eventually it shifted to those random thank yous during the day and then a last of the day thought process of "I'm thankful for this..." and then I would go to sleep. I think I must have picked that one up during my Spiritual Searching in the 90s. Gratitude Journals were a thing, and even though a blog is really just a journal, I was lousy at journaling. Always had been. So it was just a bedtime ritual. Think a positive thought about the day or about my life right before sleep.

Then came Facebook and one year I saw someone do a Thirty Days of Thanks thing. Everyday in November they would post one thing they were thankful for, tied to Thanksgiving. I really liked the idea and started doing it every year.

Then a few years ago I went to a continuing education seminar about happy people. What to do to be happy, what to do to stay happy. Science based. Surprisingly Be Denise wasn't one of the things BUT one of the things that was talked about was daily gratitude. And specifically sharing that daily gratitude. Brian King (the speaker and also a friend of mine) challenged everyone to do a Daily Gratitude post for a week (I think it was a week) but post 3 things about your day that you were grateful for and to share it on Facebook and to tag him and whoever else you wanted to. But the sharing and tagging was important because being grateful helps your own happiness but SHARING that gratitude helps other people's. He wanted tagged so he could get a little of that happy shine as well. And I'm sure that because accountability to someone else means more follow through and the advertisement for his seminar probably didn't hurt. Getting paid and having food on the table adds to happiness as well. ;-)

I didn't do it. I mean after all I already had my own daily gratitude practice so why do another one for seven days? Good idea to get someone jump started though, who might need it. Just not for me.

But as he toured the country I read a lot of gratitude posts from strangers. Because everyone who did do it, and followed the rules, tagged him so that meant that as a friend of his it showed up in my feed. I saw the standard grateful for family posts. The grateful for my house. Grateful for my job. Those things, but I also saw grateful that I am 6 months into remission. Grateful for my year sober chip. Grateful for getting the bigger piece of cake. Grateful that there was enough cream in the fridge for my coffee. Big and little gratitude and they all made me smile. One because they were familiar to me. The things I would send little thank yous out for. And two because people were genuinely grateful for some big deal things. And some little daily pleasures. Well...look at that. Public gratitude, even for an old hand at it, works.

So that year when I did my Thirty Days of Thanks I tagged him in the first one. Then came 2016 and I decided in an election year we could all use a little more gratitude so I took my Daily Gratitude public for the year. Now I still didn't follow his rules, exactly, I'm grateful that I don't feel obligated to follow rules after all...I didn't do three a day, some days I had three, some days I had more, some days I only had one, I didn't tag him or anyone else, but they were on my feed so all of my friends could see them. I posted things I was thankful/grateful for every day that year. Holy cow, it got hard in November, but it was really important to me to keep showing gratitude even though I was feeling less than gracious right then.

That's the thing with Gratitude, it gets hard to find when you need it the most. But there's always something there. If it's the way that your favorite t-shirt fits, that totally counts. If it's that you didn't succumb to screaming profanities at the world that day, that totally counts as well. You might have to look for it, but there is always something.

After 2016 I went back to just random gratitude postings and my Thirty Days of Thanks. But then last year as I approached my 50th birthday and made the decision to not treat it like a dirge but a celebration #FiftyisNifty I decided to add back in my public Daily Gratitude posts. Some of them deal with aging and how I'm grateful for a lot of things that go with that, but not all of them. Some of them are really big deal things. But not all of them. Some are stand alone grateful for this one thing. But not all of them. Some are repeats. I'm just as grateful for a great book today as I was 6 months ago, even if it's a different book.

And they make me happy.

And I have had friends tell me that they appreciate them, that they inspire them, that they are happy to see them. All of the good things that a public daily gratitude practice was said to deliver it did.

So today I'm grateful for my gratitude.

I'm grateful that it's part of me.

I'm grateful that Brian convinced me to take it public and share it with you.

Gratitude.

Memory Lane (Part Twenty)...

"This is Greg Garison reporting to you live. We are as close to the site of the massive explosion that rocked downtown earlier as we can be. Firetrucks and Natural Gas workers have cordoned off a 4 block radius. Reports are that three stores were completely destroyed. No word yet on casualties..."

-----------

"Ms. Dunning, we understand this might be difficult for you but we do need to understand this more."

"I wish I could answer you more clearly than I already have. I don't know why all of the systems were affected. I don't understand why the central computer..." Gloria trailed off  "I don't understand why the central computer being destroyed would wipe out all of the linked systems. I've been told it had something to do with the update that was happening at the time. That somehow being in the process when the system..." she took another breath, "when the system crashed caused a chain reaction."

"But our own experts say that isn't possible."

Gloria reached the end of her patience, "Well all of my experts died in the explosion so I don't know what you want me to say."

------------

"This is Jenna St. James with Action Six news. Tonight as part of our "Whatever Happened To?" series we are following up on the murder of Samantha Johnson. Our faithful viewers will remember that Alicia McGovern was sent to Saint Stephens under a psychiatric hold after insisting that she was the real Samantha Johnson. When we tried to schedule an interview with Ms. McGovern we were denied access to her. After some expert investigative reporting we discovered that Ms. McGovern was no longer being held at Saint Stephens. But where is she now?

That's a good question, viewers. A good question indeed."

-----------

James sat at the computer reading the post trying not to completely lose his shit. Those fuckers. Who does something like that? But here it all was. "Alice" and "Claude" had just been in it for the lolz. They had come back on and written a post about what an idiot he was. "We put his phone in a baggie and told him it was blocking government spying!" They hadn't actually said that, they had just implied it. The whole post was exaggerated and made to make him look like an idiot. Well even more of an idiot. He had really honestly believed they had some information about where Joanna went. But now? Now he was sure he was just a loser who had been left in the lurch. And now a loser left in the lurch and mocked.

Fuck them all.

He read the post three more times before he could convince himself to shut the computer down and walk away.

He guessed it gave him some sort of closure afterall. He was an idiot who had been left by an ex-girlfriend who he thought he was closer to than he was. That's all. It was time to move on.

--------

Gloria called home after the hearing, "I should be back tomorrow morning. I'm sorry that I have been gone. How are the girls?  Good...that's good. Yeah....really tired. I'm not sure why they needed more hearings....our systems are destroyed. Dane is...Dane is gone, all of his research is gone. Experience It! was out of business before the gas line explosion at Memory Lane and Remember the Time! hadn't yet finalized the deal with Dane for their systems so they never even got started. There is no more technology for them to regulate...I just don't know why they made me come out here."

--------

"This is Greg Garison reporting on the LOCAL CONNECTION to last night's massive subway crash in DC. Though the situation could have been much worse overall; for one local family the outcome was a cruel twist of fate. After surviving the gas main explosion that killed 6 of her coworkers local woman Gloria Dunning was one of the four fatalities reported. We reached her husband for comment...."

-------

Miranda woke up with her heart pounding. It was the same nightmare she had had over and over again. She wasn't even sure why she found it so terrifying.  In the dream she was leaving a room, or a house, or office, she was never clear exactly where she had been but she was calm in the dream, thinking about a conversation that she had just had, something about calling her Commander to get back up (her Commander?) when she would reach in to her pocket and grab her phone. And that was when the panic would hit, she would think, "MY PHONE! I left my phone in my pocket the whole time we were talking! I forgot to leave my phone behind!"

And then she would wake up in a panic. Why was she so scared of having her phone in her pocket? What harm could that cause?

---------

Memory Lane (Part Nineteen)....

Alice and Claude met back up with Detective Green to share the information they had received from James.

"We asked him if he would be willing to meet with you as well. I'm sure there are things you might want to follow up on."

Marsha nodded, "Thank you. I need to go through these notes and then I think that would be a good idea. What about the other missing person, Steve? Right? Were you able to find out his friend's contact information?"

Claude shook his head. "No, I've tried to reach out to him on the boards but haven't gotten any response. And I can't track the user to a person. It's been bounced around and masked. Honestly I don't know anything about Steve's friend at all. I keep using he, but for all I know they could be a woman. It's really hidden and they've been really vague about who they are."

"Why would they do that?"

"It's normal for these types of boards on this part of the web. I mean, you would have be to really good at what you do to be able to ever track my username back to me. There really is no point in having a hidden part of the web if you weren't hiding right?"

Marsha shrugged. It went against something in the very core of her being. The hiding. The avoiding. It felt like a crime was being committed just by being secretive. "But James was different?"

"Yeah, he wasn't trying to hide who he was. The username he was using and the direct line in to the boards was more like a beacon. He wanted help and he wanted people to be able to find him and see who he was. He was hoping that if he was open someone who knew something would trust him enough to share."

"So, the basic tendency in this world is to be secretive but the way to gain trust is by being an open book? That doesn't seem like it makes sense."

"And because of that for a lot of people what James did would have scared them off. Being too open looks like a trap. I actually tracked him in other areas for awhile before I ever showed the information to Dane or to you. So yeah, being really open doesn't make sense, unless you are really desperate."

"And did James seem desperate to you?"

Alice shook her head, "When he was first posting he was, but not now. He seemed resigned to me. He even said he had accepted that Joanna was probably dead. That she wouldn't have just stopped contacting him. I think whoever recruited her didn't pay enough attention to the relationship with James. They assumed no current boyfriend, no living family meant no strong social contacts. She was a loner. James said that aside from him all of her social contacts were really superficial. That nobody else in her life would have noticed that she left town and never contacted them again. She didn't have close friends like that. But she was close to James. Very close. And I think the people who screened her didn't realize that."

"You say recruit and screen, did James have information about that?"

"No, and I don't actually know that's what happened, but it makes sense. She told him she was getting a chance to work in the neurology field. Working with memory and storage. She was going to have a job that paid for her to go to college as she worked with them. There would have been a screening process. It would have looked like a typical job application, interview system, right? But they would have been looking for people with an interest in this field, along with no strong social ties. That fits with JJ and with the brief description of Steve that we found."

"Why though?"

"Want my best guess?" Claude asked. "I think they were running experiments using Dane's technology. They needed people who were interested in the field so they would be more willing to work with them and they needed people with no ties just incase things went bad."

"Or went exactly how they wanted them to go." Alice interjected.

"What?" Marsha asked.

"Think about it, what if the experiment they were running was how effective a complete wipe and rewrite of memory could be? They recruit people with no ties, erase and reset, then place them in another part of the country. Sort of a witness protection, but the protection is for whoever wiped their memory in the first place. It's what Dane was worried about when the CIA first came calling. That they'd try to use the technology to extract a confession and then wipe any memory of how they got it. Enhanced interrogation, torture, with no represcussion."

"But why would they then send JJ to you? That seems like a bad idea."

"I don't think they did. Not on purpose. They 'created' Jean by overwriting Joanna, but Joanna was still there. Memory is part of who we are, and it's like shorthand, we tell people things about us by what we remember, but you did those things for more complicated reasons than just the memory reveals. Like I go and get chocolate ice cream every July 3rd. If I were to share with you a memory of that day, you would see it's a tradition. But why is it a tradition? What started it? And if you erased every memory I had of getting chocolate ice cream on July 3rd, would I still go get ice cream?"

Claude was nodding along, "Ask yourself, why are you on the police force? What memory led you there?"

Marsha thought for a little bit. "I don't know that I can point to one thing. I've sort of always known that this is what I wanted to do. I want to help people, I want to answer questions, I want to be a force of good in the world, yes, I know it sounds corny, but that's the truth."

"Right. And JJ would have had the same drive. They took away her memories, but they didn't take away who she was. Not really. So when she saw the ad for Memory Lane she would have found the idea interesting. I think it was an oversight on their part that she came to work for us."

"But who are they?"

"That's the big question isn't it?" Claude shrugged.

"We should probably fill Dane in on all of this. See if he has any ideas."

Memory Lane (Part Eighteen)....

James walked out of work and ran right into a woman racing down the sidewalk. She ended up sprawled on the ground with a stack of books spread around her.

"Oh my god, I am so sorry. Let me help you! Are you okay?"

He started to gather her things back up and placed them on top of the mailbox outside the door.

"Oh no it was my fault. I was in a hurry and didn't see you coming out the door. Thank you." She held out her hand for him to help her stand up.

James felt the paper between their hands as she grasped his, she stumbled forward just a bit as she got to her feet then she whispered to him through clenched teeth, "Do me a favor and don't open that note until you're a few blocks away."

She dusted herself off and picked up the stack of books James had created. "Sorry again. And thank you."

James slipped his hand into his coat pocket and started his walk home. He wasn't sure what had just happened, but playing along for a little bit wouldn't hurt he didn't think. If nothing else it might make for a good story.

When he was a few blocks away from work he reached into his pocket and pulled out the note.

 I need to ask you some questions about Joanna. 

Please meet me in Lincoln Park by the fountain. 

I'll return your cell phone when you get there. 

When he read the last line he reached into his other coat pocket to grab his phone and sure enough it was gone. Son of a bitch, how had she done that? And Joanna? She wanted to talk about Joanna? Now his mind was reeling. He had already become paranoid about her disappearance. There had been too much around it already, but now this? Well if he wanted his phone back he guessed he needed to head to the park. And honestly just mentioning Joanna would have been enough. 

He spotted her sitting on a park bench near the fountain. She was reading one of the books she had been carrying. Not looking at all like the mugger she was. 

"Do you mind?" he asked.

"Oh no. Go ahead have a seat." she smiled at him. 

"I meant, do you mind giving me back my phone?"

She handed him a small bag. "Your phone is inside and if you don't mind I'd like you to keep it in there while we talk. Just to be safe."

"Who the hell are you?"

"Oh, right, sorry. I'm Dr. Alice Boxman but you can call me Alice."

"Okay, Alice, what do you know about Joanna and why is my phone in a bag?"

She raised her hand and waved it. "I'm bringing over my friend Claude, together we can explain a little bit more. But what we really need from you is information. I'm hopeful we can patch together what we know and what you know and maybe figure out what happened."

"What happened?"

"That's what we are trying to figure out. Hello, James, I'm Claude. Alice and I worked with Joanna, though we knew her as Jean. I found your missing persons notice on...well online and thought we should chat."

"You knew her as Jean? Why was she using a different name when she worked with you? And where is she now?" As soon as he asked he saw the answer in Alice's eyes.

"Oh."

She reached out and patted his knee, "I am so sorry."

He shook his head, "I honestly figured she had to be. I mean she would have contacted me by now if she wasn't. It's been too long. She would never have just abandoned me not even for a job. Especially not for a job. So tell me, what is it you do? I mean you must be something in the government with all of the spy moves right?"

Alice laughed a little, "Not exactly. We're just a little paranoid about being followed. Claude had the idea to block your phone just incase you were being tracked. That's the bag. It blocks your GPS. You can keep it if you want."

"But you got my phone in the first place."

"Oh that was easy. In college one of my professors wanted to show how easy it was to manipulate what people think they are seeing, and what they remember seeing. He used magic tricks. Misdirection. I thought it was great and so learned some tricks myself. Pickpocketing is all part of the show."

"A professor taught you how to pickpocket in college? What sort of Dickensian Institute did you go to?"

Claude laughed at that, "Nice. I think Johns Hopkins should add that to their brochures."

Alice smiled, "I'm a neurobiologist."

"Wait, what?"

"Neurobiologist, it's a person who..."

"I know what one is. That's what Joanna wanted to study. That's why she was so excited about this new job. She would be working in the field and they promised her tuition help."

"I thought you didn't know where she went to work? The police report said you didn't know."

"You tracked the report?"

"You posted about it on the board. It was easy enough to find."

"Right. Okay, so you are one of those that doesn't just use the boards, you hack the world."

Claude shrugged, "A little of this, a little of that. I'm not full time in research, I dabble. But it keeps me entertained. The information in the world is like the neural pathway in the brain. Just little jolts of electricity storing everything we need."

"Right, now you sound like Joanna again. She was always talking like that."

Alice and Claude exchanged a quick glance and she nodded, "Tell us everything you know."

Memory Lane (Part Seventeen)...

Detective Marsha Green looked around the room as Dr. Dane Lane shut the door behind her. She briefly wondered if she should be more worried than she was, after all she was in a strange room with two men she barely knew, who had made her leave her cell phone outside before letting her come in. But then again, they didn't make her leave her gun behind, just the phone. She felt like she still had the advantage.

"Detective Green? This is Dr. Claude Lauzon, he is the one who found the information about Jean not being who we thought she was."

"Nice to meet you, please call me Claude. I only use Doctor Lauzon when meeting friends of my mother."

"Then please call me Marsha. Since I'm working off the record right now that seems appropriate."

"And I'm Dane. So now we're all squared away. Claude? Will you show Detect...I mean Marsha what else you've found since we put together the folder."

Claude walked over to a workstation he had set up and opened a webpage. "This is the board that I first found information about JJ's disappearance."

"JJ?"

"Yeah, sorry. I've started thinking about Jean as JJ since her real name seems to have been Joanna and calling her Jean/Joanna didn't seem efficient."

"Gotcha." Marsha motioned that he should continue.

"So this is the board. You can see the address here," he pointed to the printout he had made for Dane and Marsha. "But if you look now, that whole thread is gone."

"Okay...."

"This board has a strict no delete policy. A lot of alternative sites do it. It's to keep people honest. You agree not to delete what you've posted to keep down the incidents of gaslighting. No gaslighting, less fighting, more transparency, less bullshit. This is a strict no deletions board."

"But they deleted it?"

"The OP didn't and the board owners say they didn't. Here." Claude handed them each a print out of a new thread. It was discussion about the deleted post. "This is gone now too."

"So somebody is deleting these posts."

"They haven't found these yet though." Claude closed the window he had been showing them and opened another one.

"Who is they?"

Claude shrugged, "Best guess? The government. But really nobody here knows either. There are a few theories, most of them are not worth following but this is interesting."

Claude highlighted a response thread for Marsha and Dane to review. It seems like JJ wasn't the only odd disappearance. There was a photo of a young man who had sent word to a friend that he was starting a new job in his city and that he wanted to get together for drinks or dinner soon. His friend had never heard back from him, which he wasn't too suspicious about at first. It happens, people say let's get together and then never follow through, but when he tried to contact him about another mutual friend he got nothing but bounceback messages from his email. Then he tried calling and his phone had been disconnected. He tried backing in to his old home address and he had moved out as scheduled, but there was no forwarding information left with the landlord. He had tapped into the post office records and found they didn't have a forwarding address for him either. Then he posted on a missing persons board. And his post was deleted. He posted again and it was deleted again. Over and over.

"So missing persons who somebody wants to stay missing?"

"Yeah. JJ and Steve here have a few things in common, no family, only tenuous ties to friends, an ex-boyfriend in JJ's case and a casual friend in Steve's. And a recent new job. So nobody to look for them, or notice they are even gone."

Dane rubbed his face, "Well that's not creepy at all is it?"

"Back up just a bit for me. This guy here was able to tap into the Post Office records?"

Claude smiled at Marsha, "This isn't like a Facebook group. To be able to even find this part of the web, let alone post on one of these boards, you have to be pretty well versed in computers and the internet. And how to find things."

"So you're all a bunch of hackers?"

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Well..."

Claude smiled again. "I see from your point of view that it might be. But there are a lot of people in the world who don't like closed doors and so they work to open them. It's why Dane and I became doctors, and it's how Dane became really stinking rich. Opening doors. I just branch out, not just neurobiology but a little of this as well..." Claude motioned toward the computer screen.

There was a knock on the door.

Dane glanced at his watch, "That would be Alice."

Claude got up and opened the door, "Alice, have you met Marsha?"

"Yes, we met briefly when Jean was...well...yes. We've met. Detective." Alice nodded toward Marsha.

"Please call me Marsha." she turned toward Dane, "Is there anyone else that you've brought in to this loop?"

"Gloria knows what I know, well except for what we just learned. And my wife knows that there is something troubling about California and Jean but nothing specific."

"Okay. So what next?"

"I think we need to contact JJ's ex-boyfriend."

"I think you're right, Alice. Claude what do you think? On this board?"

"No, I think someone should meet him in person. Intercept him at work, not prescheduled, not posted about, no heads up given."

Marsha scowled, "Just blindside him?"

Claude nodded, "Yeah, I would bet he's been tagged. I mean, look at this, they stopped the police looking in to the missing person's report he filed, they've tracked his web presence enough to find him posting on the other site and deleting those, you know they have to have tapped his phone and are possibly following him as well. I think we send one of us to him and try our best to have a conversation with him that isn't tracked."

Marsha just shook her head. She wasn't sure how she had ended up in a spy thriller but here she was. "So who do we send?"

Dane held up his hands, "Probably not me, I'm too recognizable as the head of Memory Lane. I wouldn't think you, for the same reason, your face is known as the investigating officer. Gloria might be a good choice but she's got a pretty packed schedule with the kids. Claude? Alice? One of you?"

Alice nodded, "I think both of us. Claude can speak this type of geek more fluently than I can. He can explain how we found him and why we want to talk to him. But I think I would be less suspicious in first contact. I don't think I've been on anyone's radar."

"Claude? You okay going?"

"Hell yeah. I would have insisted if Alice hadn't suggested it. Let me do a little back tracking here to lock in his schedule and then we will go."

Masha scowled again, "Do I even want to know how you are going to do that?"

Claude smiled, "Probably not."

Memory Lane (Part Sixteen)...

"Why are you bringing me this information? I was under the impression that you didn't much care for me." Detective Green watched Dr. Lane's face as he answered.

"I believe the feeling was or is mutual?"

"Fair enough. But again, why are you bringing me this information then?"

"Because I think you don't like me for all the right reasons."

Detective Green raised her eyebrows at that. "Excuse me?"

"I mean, I believe that you don't like me because you think I had something to do with Jean's death. Or if not something to do with it, I bear some sort of responsibility for it. And for the death of the woman in California."

"Samantha."

Dane looked confused, "Samantha?"

"Her name. The woman in California. The California case. Her name. She has a name. She had a life. Her name was Samantha."

Dane nodded, "And that's why I'm bringing you this information."

"Okay, and now my next question. Why are you bringing it to me here?" She gestured out at the park.

"I want you to be able to look this all over. I want you to see what you think. But I don't necessarily want it to be in your office. Or to have been transmitted by email. Or by phone. I want YOU to see this. Not anyone who might be watching you."

"You think I'm being watched?"

"I don't know if you are or if you aren't. But I think I am. I think my office is. I think there is someone out there that is working to bury all of the information they can about this. I don't think you're part of that, but I'm not sure about everyone you work with. So we meet here."

Detective Green nodded. She wasn't sure if Dane Lane was paranoid, but she also wasn't sure that he wasn't right. The fact that an agency had taken over her investigation without even a courtesy call, let alone a briefing had not been sitting well with her. It wasn't the way things were done. She opened the folder and began looking through the information.

Dane watched her reading for a moment then started scanning the park. They had picked this meeting place at the last minute. He didn't think there would be anyone here listening in, but Claude had made him feel a little exposed.

"Have you contacted this boyfriend yet?"

"Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first. To see what you thought."

"I think I want to be there when you contact him. I think I want to bring him in for questioning. I think I want to know why Joanna came to you thinking she was Jean. I think I want to know why this case was dropped. And I think I want to talk to Claude."

Dane smiled then.

"What?"

"I just like to be right. Especially about people. There is a post it note on the last page in the folder with an address and a time. We will see you then."

And with that Dane got up and walked away.

Marsha opened her phone and called the precinct. "Yes, this is Detective Green, patch me through to the commander please. Thank you.... Charles? Yes, it's Marsha. I'm going to need to take a few days off to deal with some family issues....Okay...no...nothing right now. The Memory Lane case was my only responsibility and since...yeah...Federal Assholes right?... Okay....Okay...yeah...A week? ...no, it's nothing to worry about, I don't think, I just need to see to some things...You know how it is...Thanks."

She picked up the file and looked around the park. Then she took a different route back to her car from the one she took to get here. She wasn't saying she was paranoid, but she wasn't saying it wasn't the right thing to do either.