Chapter 1

Alice Clark had thoroughly enjoyed her association with Bruce McLoud/David Smith and wanted to continue working with the investigative side of his organization. Being a receptionist was OK, but she craved the action associated with actual investigations and crime-busting.

She realized that Bruce was right, she needed to establish at least two alternate personalities, one female and one male. She figured that it would be easier for her, for obvious reasons, to develop the female persona first. She needed to start out with a name and a physical appearance. She wanted to make the persona as unconnected with any existing people as possible, so she picked a name out of the blue: Janet Jones. There must be hundreds of women with that name, but no one she knew, so it should be safe. She decided that her body should be average in every way, pretty, but not beautiful. She chose a White skin for the convenience of not having to worry about racial stereotyping among the majority of US citizens. For the fun of it, she chose a birthday of February 14th, 1925; it was easy to remember and it tickled her fancy.

She would have to get a driver's license and show a history of attending school. She would also get a college degree, probably in business. She would have to be an orphan so that she didn't need to exhibit any parents. She would find an orphanage that had its records destroyed in a fire or flood and claim to have lived there since she was too young to remember any thing about a family. That should be enough to satisfy the FBI when they checked on her. Anything else, she would fix as it came up.

Her male name would be Harold Anderson and she would adjust her appearance to pretty much the same standards she had selected for Janet Jones. This time she chose a birthday of July 1st, 1924. She would do the records of Harold's life the same way she did for Janet.

Alice jumped to the house in the EU and practiced shifting her body into the two new shapes she needed. She was not surprised to find that she had more trouble assuming the male body; she had to chuckle that she had the most problems getting the penis and scrotum right.

It took her several days to get all the records falsified for the two new personae, but she finally got it all done, including the private investigator licenses.

Now that she had done all that, it was time to test her acting skill. She jumped back to her office the moment after she had left and called the Atlanta FBI office.

"Hello, this is Alice Clark of David Smith, Investigations. May I speak to Agent Jones or Agent Williams, please."

"Agent Jones speaking. How are you, today, Mrs. Clark?"

"Hello, Agent Jones. I'm doing right well. Mr. Smith would like to speak to you for a minute. Please hold on."

Alice switched to the voice Bruce used when speaking as David Smith. "Hello, Agent Jones. I have an associate I'd like for you to meet. She's Janet Jones. She's highly competent and has my full confidence. I'm going to be out of town for a few weeks to a few months and I'd like to recommend that you contact her for any work that you'd normally pass on to me. I'm catching a plane out of town in a few minutes, so I won't be here to introduce you. When would be a convenient time for you to meet her?"

"How about tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM? Will that be convenient for her?"

"She's in the office with me right now; I'll ask her... She says 10:00 AM will be fine. I've got to run or I'll miss my plane. I'll see you later. Goodbye."

The next morning, Alice TPed to the EU and changed into the Janet Jones persona. She put on a suitably conservative outfit and TPed to the hall outside the FBI office. Janet walked up to the receptionist and said, "Good morning, I'm Janet Jones. I have an appointment at 10:00 with Agent Jones."

"Certainly, Miss Jones. Please be seated and I tell him that you are here."

The receptionist dialed a number, spoke for a moment, and said, "Agent Jones will be out in a moment, Miss Jones."

"Thank you."

A very few minutes later, Agent Jones came through a door and approached Janet. "How do you do, Miss Jones? I'm Agent Jones. Amusing coincidence with the names, isn't it?" he said, with a grin.

Janet smiled and said, "Yes, it is. But Jones is a common name."

"True. Follow me, please. We'll use one of the conference rooms in back."

"Ah, here we are, Miss Jones. Please take a seat."

"Thank you, Agent Jones. I think you know why I am here."

"Yes, I do. You picked an excellent time to call, since we have a case we wanted to discuss with Mr. Smith. There was a bank robbery in Macon about five weeks ago that we would like for your agency to look into. We'll pay Mr. Smith's usual rate.

"You probably read about the case in the newspaper. Two people were killed during the robbery: the guard and a teller. Approximately $740,000 was taken. We don't have much in the way of clues and we hoped that Mr. Smith could come up with something."

"I'll be happy to look into the case as see what we can come up with. May I see the file on the case?"

"I hoped you would say that. Here is the file. Take as long as you need to examine it. I've written my extension number there, please call me when you are ready to leave. There is a phone on that stand."

"Thank you, I'll start reading now."

Agent Jones left and Janet started reading. There wasn't much hard information in the file, besides the inconclusive ballistics report of two different guns being used, both .38 caliber.

The witnesses agreed that there were three robbers, all of whom wore cloth sacks over their heads as masks. They wore white tee shirts and jeans. Judging from their hands and their voices, they were all White men.

There was a lot of verbiage, but little information, in the file beyond that. The names of all the witnesses were listed and Janet committed them to memory. She knew that she would be judged by how long she spent studying the file, so she sat there for a while longer looking at the file, but actually thinking about how she was going to do the investigation. She finally read in Agent Jones' mind that he thought that she had spent long enough with the file, so she called him, saying that she was ready to leave.

Janet left the FBI office and TPed back to EU to change clothes and return to her office in Atlanta just the moment after she left. She had hardly gotten settled in her chair when the phone rang. It was a woman wanting to know if they handled divorce cases. Alice told her no and she recommended another agency that had been used by one of her friends a couple of years ago. The caller thanked her and hung up.

Alice thought some more about the case and decided that she should become Janet again and TP to Macon for a closer inspection.

Janet walked into the bank and looked around. It looked pretty much like a standard bank lobby, sort of financial-institutional-modern with a dash of Old South sloppiness. At least, the blood stains had been cleaned up. She could understand why the guard had been shot, but why shoot the teller? It suddenly dawned on her: why was she here? She could gt a lot more information if she POVed the crime in progress!