JULIA

It took a while for Julia to gather her senses. Kathryn did a final sweep of the room for any other clues to what had happened. J. Q. King had been murdered, obviously, but by whom? When? Why? Or was it suicide? After concluding her search, Kathryn walked to where Julia was kneeling. She held the knife--the murder weapon--and a small, black piece of plastic. She held the plastic thing up for Julia to see more closely. It wasn't just a piece of plastic. It was an electronic device cased in plastic. "What is it?" she asked.

"A bug," Kathryn replied. "I found it clinging to the underside of his desk."

"You mean one of those things that can listen in on someone?" Julia asked quietly.

"That's exactly it," Kathryn said, examining it with her lips twisted in disgust. "I think whoever did this has been listening, too. They probably heard everything that's happened in this room ever since it was planted. The question is, when was it planted? How much did it hear?"

Julia turned white. "You don't think...." she started shakily. She swallowed to fight down the lump that was rising in her throat. "The murderer was listening when we met with J. Q. King?"

Kathryn turned the bug over in her fingers. "Probably."

Julia groaned. "Great. A murderer's been listening to us."

Kathryn's eyebrows deepened into a furrow. "I wonder why," she said, half to herself. She stopped talking, but her expression didn't change. After a minute of silence, she rose to her feet, dropped the device to the floor, and crushed it under her heel. Seeing Julia's confused expression, she explained, "Just in case they're still listening."

The color had almost returned to Julia's face, but now it drained away again in only a second. Of course, she thought. Of course they'd be listening. In her mind she reviewed what she had said in the past few minutes.

Kathryn walked to the door. "We need to go," she stated. "We should gather the students and tell them what happened."

Julia scrambled to her feet. She glanced at J. Q. King. "We're going to leave him here?" she whispered. She knew that Kathryn had destroyed the bug, but she couldn't help but feel that someone was still listening.

Kathryn seemed reluctant, but she nodded. "There's not much we can do. The best thing right now is to let everyone know." She opened the door and stepped through.

Following behind, Julia had another thought. "Kathryn," she said. "What if...one of the students is the murderer?"

Kathryn stopped and turned to Julia. "I thought of that. It's possible, but we're going to have to trust each other anyway. If we avoided all possible suspects, I couldn't trust you. You could be the killer just as easily as any other student."

Julia didn't like it. But Kathryn was right. She couldn't trust anyone, so she just had to trust everyone. Before they kept walking, a question popped into her mind. "What about the maids?" she asked. "Should we tell them?"

Kathryn thought for a while, then shook her head. "I don't think they would help much. We don't know anything about them, and they can't talk to us."

The girls set out together, finding students, not the maids, and telling them to meet in the library. Some protested, but when they saw the urgency in Kathryn and Julia's eyes, they agreed. Within a half hour, they had found every student, and all of them were now in the library.

The room was a bustle of noise. Off in her own chair, Star was complaining loudly about the injustice of having to be in such a shabby, dusty place with uncivilized hooligans. Dwain was arguing that he wasn't a hooligan. Madison and Lara were whispering urgently to each other from their seats on the floor, near the chair where Nathan sat. He was speculating with James and Heather about the purpose of the gathering. Amanda was sitting in a corner by herself, cradling her head and covering her ears, her face pinched as if she had the worst headache in the world. Roy and Rick were on opposite sides of the room, throwing each other dirty looks. Stewart, of course, was completely silent. But he still looked as confused as everybody else.

Julia gave Kathryn a desperate look. Talking to everyone would be hopeless. But Kathryn looked around the room, steel-faced. "Students," she said firmly.

Nobody listened. If anything, the chaos increased.

Kathryn took a step forward. "J. Q. King is dead," she said loudly.

Silence fell. Every face turned to Kathryn in shock, speechless. What had she just said?

Kathryn spoke again, although not as loudly. "You heard me. J. Q. King is dead. Julia and I found him in his office. He was stabbed with a knife."

The students looked at each other, horrified. There was not a sound, not even breathing, as if everyone were collectively holding their breath.

"We found a bug," Julia said, her voice much less steady than Kathryn's. "The murderer's been listening to us. We don't know why they did it. We don't know who they are. But we did find this."

On cue, Kathryn reached into her pocket and pulled out the joker for everyone to see.

MADISON

Madison jumped to her feet, Lara following closely behind when she saw what Kathryn was holding. Everyone was intensely silent, but that didn't hold back her outburst. "You found that?" she exclaimed.

"Yes, in his coat pocket," Kathryn replied, visibly surprised by Madison's reaction.

Amanda and Roy glanced at each other, at Madison, and then back at Kathryn. "Really?" they questioned in unison. Madison and Lara eyed them, wondering why they would react. Kathryn and Julia and the rest of the students were looking the same way at all the people who had reacted.

Kathryn looked between them. "Do you know something about this?"

Amanda was the first to speak. "I was in the forest. A tree branch fell on my head, and the next thing I knew, I was in the nurse's office. She said someone had brought me there anonymously. They left a joker just like that one," she said quickly, gesturing to it with her hand.

Roy nodded. "Yeah, a joker. She showed it to me when I went to the nurse for a...." He slowed down. He shot Rick a bitter look. "A black eye." The students noticed what had passed between them, but they had no time to think about it. Madison spoke before they had the chance.

"There's a basement floor in Murray Mansion," she started. She thought it wasn't the best idea to tell everyone about her dreams. But she could tell them where she and Lara had found the card.

For some students, the basement was no secret. But surprise lit up the features of the students who hadn't bothered to explore much. "Lara and I went down," Madison continued. "We found a bunch of boxes filled with junk. But one box had that in it." She pointed to the joker.

Lara nodded. "We also found something else...."

"A birth certificate," Madison finished.

Most students didn't react. Birth certificates weren't that strange. But Amanda looked like she had been hit in the back of the head. Her eyes were wide, but she didn't speak, so Madison continued. "We weren't really surprised at first," she said. "But you wouldn't believe whose it is."

"Who? J. Q. King's?" Star sneered.

Madison glanced at her. "No."

Star smirked and leaned back in her seat. "Then whose is it?" she asked, flicking her hair.

"J. Q. King's son," Madison said, slowly and deliberately. "Louis King."

Everyone looked confused. Star flicked her hair again to hide that she was also astounded. "J. Q. King has a son?" she asked, trying to sound skeptical instead of curious.

"Are you sure?" Kathryn asked.

"Positive," Madison answered. "I saw the paper with my own eyes."

"Me too," Lara added.

"How are we so sure that you actually saw this document?" Star demanded. "We haven't seen it. How do we know it actually exists?"

All eyes turned to Madison. A few whispers pervaded the room. They wanted to see it. But Madison shook her head. "I don't have it."

The room broke out in murmurs. Star grinned smugly. "So how are we supposed to believe you?"

Madison's sighed. "I promise, and Lara does too. We saw it."

"Sure," Star said, pretending to believe her.

Lara's soft voice pierced the air. "I have it."

Everyone looked at her as she pulled a folded up piece of paper from her pocket. "I know that I probably shouldn't have folded it," Lara explained quietly as she peeled the folds apart. "But I didn't have time to do anything else before Madison and I left for class."

Nobody seemed to care that the document was creased. They just wanted a look at what was inside. Once Lara had flattened it out as much as she could, she held it up for everyone to see.

"She's right," Heather said, squinting at the words. "And he's our age."

Star blinked at the paper as if it were poisoning her eyes. She hated being wrong. But this time she was. She slumped back into her chair.

Madison didn't look at the birth certificate. She had already seen it. Her eyes were on Amanda. She had been standing eerily still, her eyes wide. But when Lara had held the paper up, she had snapped out of her trance. As Madison watched her, she cried out, "I remember!" She turned to Roy. "I remember what I forgot! The branch, the concussion....I remember what I forgot!" Roy seemed to understand what she was babbling about, but no one else knew.

"I found something!" Amanda continued. Then she gasped. "The door!" She turned and ran toward a flight of stairs in the corner of the library. The students waited for an explanation of her behavior. Only moments after she had disappeared, she reappeared holding a pile of papers. She rushed to the center of the circle of students and stopped, panting.

"What are those?" Madison asked.

After pausing to catch her breath, Amanda smiled. "Take a look."

As invited, Madison walked forward and took the papers from Amanda. She rifled through them, skimming them quickly. When she was done, she looked up. "These are impossible," she said in a half-whisper.

Other curious students came closer. Soon, everyone but Stewart and Star were crowded around Amanda like insects drawn to a light.

"No way," James said, pulling a paper out of the pile to examine more closely. "This is a certificate of adoption...for me."

Nathan shot him a quizzical look. "I didn't know you were adopted."

James shook his head. "I'm not."

"Maybe you were adopted when you were young," Lara offered helpfully, "but your parents haven't told you."

"Then how do you explain this?" James jabbed his finger at a line of print on the document. "According to this date, I was adopted this year. I don't remember that. This is just crazy."

"Oh my," Heather said. It was her turn to be amazed. "There's one for me, too. Almost the same date." She looked up, searching the group's eyes for answers. "I don't remember either."

The other students dug searched for things about themselves. Even Stewart and Star drew closer to look. Amanda, Star, Rick, Kathryn and Dwain found their school records and IDs. James found another thing--a flier for a computer science convention that he had been to. Julia found a homework assignment that had gone missing, and Lara found her lost library card. Nathan and Madison found newspaper clippings about their contributions to music and sports. Roy uncovered a cut-out article. He reached for it and held it up to read. Then he froze.