The First to Lie

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  On the upper right corner, a photo of Lydia Frost was held in place by a red pushpin. She was ice to Kaitlyn’s fire, her image professional, impeccable, not a blond hair out of place, not a blemish or a shadow on her elegantly composed face. A thin strand of gold necklace embellished the stark black of her sleek suit jacket; her shoulders were square and her lips glossed red. Her red pushpin was attached by a thread to a matching one on the map, its edge almost touching the blue one: the site of Lydia’s accident.

  At the lower right corner of the bulletin board was a row of green pushpins, attached to nothing. Above that, yellow ones. These unused pins sent an unnerving message. Perhaps they represented unknown victims. Or potential future ones.

  “So you think they’re connected,” she said. “How? Why?”

  “Some connections are apparent,” Monteiro said. “It’s simply a question of whether those connections matter.”

  Ellie looked closer at Lydia’s picture. “That’s her Pharminex photo.”

  “She had a company ID,” Monteiro said. “How we identified her. We contacted her employer, and they provided the photo. Ms. Armistead’s we obtained from her husband.”

  Something rattled through Ellie’s consciousness. She stood, shrugged off her coat. Not taking her eyes off Kaitlyn’s photo. “Did you see other photos of her?”

  “I’ll play,” Monteiro said. “No, Ms. Berensen. James Armistead didn’t give me any other family photos.”

  “You said ‘family photos.’ Does Kaitlyn have children? I mean, did she?”

  “The husband said they had two. Little ones, I take it. Like I said, I didn’t see pictures, but he seemed worried about them.”

  “She told me she couldn’t have children. That’s why she had been going to the doctor.” Ellie tried to untangle who’d been fooling who and about what. “She told me her husband was critical and unkind, taunting her about not being able to have kids. That’s why she was so unhappy.”

  Monteiro’s face changed, his sarcastic expression evolving into curiosity. He frowned as he picked up the manila file folder he’d brought with him. Flipped through the pages.

  Had Kaitlyn lied to her about infertility? Why? Ellie lifted her chin, trying to catch a glimpse of what was inside Monteiro’s folder.

  “I can’t show you this,” Monteiro said, without looking up. “But yeah, the transcript indicates he said two kids. Be pretty interesting if that wasn’t true.” He closed the folder.

  “Or I suppose—” Ellie pointed at the photo. “Maybe they’re not her biological kids.”

  “I’ll look into it.” Monteiro clicked open a ballpoint, made a note in the file then closed it, and cocked his head at the board. “That your only reaction to this?”

  “Obviously not.” Ellie walked to the bulletin board, leaned forward to squint at the pins on the map. The accidents were less than a mile apart. “Do you think the same thing caused both accidents? Or wait—you didn’t say ‘accidents.’ You said ‘crashes.’ Does that mean you think someone caused them?”

  Ellie’s phone buzzed with a text. Meg. “Sorry,” Ellie said. “My office. Can you confirm Lydia Frost? And are you saying ‘accident’? On the record?”

  Monteiro looked at his watch. “It’s two o’clock. Tell them media relations will release the official info at two-fifteen. Lydia Frost, yes, still under investigation. That’s it for now.”

  “Thanks.” She texted the name to Meg, fast as she could, feeling Monteiro’s eyes on her. “So?” she asked as she hit send. “How are they connected?”

  “That’s where you come in.” Monteiro picked up a yellow pushpin, stabbed it into the bulletin board between the two women’s photos. Then he opened his file folder and pulled out a photograph, though it seemed as if he was making sure Ellie could not see whose picture it was. He pulled out the yellow pin and attached the photo to the board between Kaitlyn and Lydia, but face down.

  “Is there another victim?” Ellie asked. “Oh, no. Who?”

  “We need your help, “Monteiro said. “The person in this photo isn’t dead, and we know their identity. That’s not why I’m asking. But there’s only one person we found who connects Kaitlyn Armistead and Lydia Frost. And it seems like the people they contact, the people they create relationships with, get killed in car accidents. Suspicious ones. I don’t mean to be overdramatic, but you’ve investigated for what, a few weeks now? So what’s your suspicion—best guess—of who this might be?”

  “Someone from Pharminex,” Ellie said. Might as well put her cards on the table. Whatever game this was had turned deadly. Lydia’s death made Kaitlyn’s into a pattern, not a random tragedy.

  “Kaitlyn told me she was deeply bitter about what happened to her because of a drug called Monifan. And told me she yelled at her doctor about it, threatened to call the media. If that’s true, and Pharminex knew, and suspected she’d go public, they couldn’t have been happy with that.”

  “Unhappy enough to keep her quiet?” Monteiro asked.

  How much should she tell him? She was Ellie now, she had to remember.

  “How do I know? But it’s not like pharmaceutical companies never hurt their customers. Want me to start naming examples? We’ll be here all day.”

  Monteiro nodded. “I hear you. But Lydia Frost worked for Pharminex.”

  “Exactly. And that could go either way.” Ellie tilted her hand back and forth, maybe this, maybe that. “Maybe she was some kind of corporate spy? I know it sounds unlikely, but one conversation we had, that’s all she could talk about. And I know for sure that Pharminex hires people—” She paused, deciding. “To go undercover and report the transgressions of employees. You know, like you have with internal affairs.”

  Monteiro put one hand over the photo, holding it in place, then pulled out the pushpin. “Ms. Berensen? Do you recognize this person?”

  He flipped over the photo. Stabbed it with the yellow pin. And took his hand away.

  CHAPTER 38

  ELLIE

  In the beat before seeing Monteiro’s photograph, Ellie had a flare of an idea that the picture might be Gabriel Hoyt. Or Meg Weest.

  But now Ellie was looking at a grainy surveillance photo of Nora Quinn.

  Three women in a row across the board: Kaitlyn, Nora, Lydia. Two of them were dead.

  “You think that woman’s in danger?” Ellie asked.

  “You want coffee?” Monteiro checked his watch. “We should keep talking, but let’s head to the caf while we do. You can leave your belongings. It’s safe here, God knows.”

  “Sure, but—” Ellie took a deep breath. She could use some coffee, and if Nora Quinn was in danger, she was also probably safest here at the state police headquarters.

  The dim hallway, mustard-painted cinder block with a tiled drop ceiling, smelled of dust and paperwork, like stepping inside a file cabinet. Ellie imagined the people who’d walked this hall before—victims, suspects, terrified witnesses or grieving families. Everyone with a loss or a fear or a secret. Or an agenda.

  The corridor was wide enough for them to walk side by side, though Monteiro took up more than half the space. Ellie had left her shoulder bag and phone behind as Monteiro suggested, but now she regretted it. Not because someone would steal her wallet, but because she felt incomplete without her phone. She tried to remember if her bag contained anything incriminating. Nothing she could do about it now.

  “So?” Monteiro was saying as they walked. “Do you recognize her?”

  “That’s a fairly indistinct photo,” said Ellie. “Surveillance, right? Was it taken…” She pictured it. “Here in your headquarters lobby?”

  “It’s distinct enough.” Monteiro opened a half-windowed door to an otherwise windowless room, revealing two long tables on a utilitarian-tan linoleum floor, a television flickering silently on the wall and tall aluminum coffee urns on one of the tables. Hand-lettered signs hanging from black spigots indicated regular, decaf, and hot water. A stack of upside-down paper cups and a jar of
red stir sticks. A bin of pastel sweetener packets jumbled chaotically in a Tupperware. Paper napkins piled on the counter marked with familiar golden arches. Apparently someone had appropriated them from the fast food place.

  “Not fancy, but coffee is coffee.”

  Ellie dared to draw a cup of regular, to give herself time to think as much as for the caffeine. “We staying here?” Ellie hoped not.

  “Sure.” Monteiro rummaged in the sweetener bin, then scraped out the chair across from her, its rubber-tipped legs stubbing across the linoleum. He sat, organizing his coffee stuff, napkin and stir stick.

  On the table in front of Ellie, someone had scrawled a phone number, the ballpoint pen lines smudged but indelible. She stirred her coffee, staring at it. Trying to figure out if this trip to the café was a trap.

  Monteiro had opened a yellow sweetener packet, stirred it in.

  Monteiro, a trained cop, had seen her as Nora, and now was seeing her as Ellie. And he was giving her way more time than necessary to answer his question. Maybe giving her just enough rope. Maybe this was his style. Or maybe—and this was the fear—he’d recognized her. And was testing her.

  Ellie felt herself sink into overload, trying to fight her way out of a maze with too many options and not enough answers. But she’d brought all this on herself. Too late to change it now. She took a sip of coffee, then wished she hadn’t.

  “Her name is Nora Quinn,” Ellie said. “She works for Pharminex.”

  Monteiro stopped, put down a third yellow packet.

  “Last I heard,” Ellie said.

  He took out his notepad and a Bic pen, wrote something. Looked up at Ellie. “Yeah. Let me tell you this. Off the record? I’d called Ms. Quinn after Ms. Armistead’s crash. Ms. Quinn led me to believe she was a medical patient, had the same doctor as Ms. Armistead, but according to that doctor’s records, she wasn’t. So I had to wonder what she was doing in that office. The two women had been on the phone together at the time of the crash—what’re the odds? And now Quinn’s not answering her phone.”

  True. Just because she had seen his calls come in didn’t mean she had to pick up.

  “And she gave the desk officer here a fake address,” Monteiro said. “But we’ll find her. What does she do for Pharminex?”

  When his cell phone buzzed, he snatched it up, narrowing his eyes at the screen, then slid it into the side pocket of his uniform jacket.

  “Can you hang on a second?” he asked Ellie, sounding vaguely annoyed. “I’ll be right back. Get more coffee if you like. Two minutes.”

  Ellie watched him hurry away and longed for her own phone, worlds away in that room down the corridor. Now she was trapped in coffee hell with no method of communication. Like being in custody.

  She stared at a blank wall. If she continued to pretend she’d met Nora in her Pharminex research … She squinted her eyes, trying to play out that story. At some point, the ruse would fall apart.

  Just as it had with Gabe.

  CHAPTER 39

  ELLIE

  Ellie tossed her half-full coffee cup into a plastic-lined bin, yanked open the café door and walked out into the hall. Imbuing her posture with confidence and conviction, she strode back up the hall toward the conference room, where her lifeline phone awaited her. She hoped.

  “Screw it,” she muttered under her breath. “Ridiculous for him to park me in that stupid room.” She bet she’d missed calls from Warren and Meg and probably Gabe. If he called her at Channel 11, would Meg have answered too? Ratted her out? She could just hear that woman’s voice—oh, Ellie’s at the state police HQ, looking into Lydia Frost’s car accident. She closed her eyes. Meg.

  “Ms. Berensen?” Monteiro’s voice came from the hallway behind her.

  She turned, all smiles. “Hey. Great. I needed my phone, so I—”

  “For what?” He wasn’t smiling.

  “To call my office.” She put all the sarcasm she could into her tone without sounding hostile, and continued toward the conference room. Monteiro’s footsteps behind her sped up, and in an instant he’d passed her and blocked her way, all stocky shoulders and crossed arms.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Hey!” she said, skidding to a stop. She knew it. He was well aware she was Nora and had lured her into this deception, testing her to see whether she’d own up to it. And now that she’d lied to a cop, every word she said would be suspect. She should have told the truth in the first place—but then again, she’d done nothing wrong. She hadn’t hurt anyone. There was no harm in impersonating yourself.

  They stood face to face in the empty corridor, fewer than two paces apart. Cop and reporter. Or cat and mouse? Maybe her conscience was in hyperdrive again.

  “Are you blocking the way to my phone?” Ellie tried humor, holding out her arms in front of her, palms up. “Wanna handcuff me?”

  Monteiro’s eyebrows went up, questioning, and he gestured toward the open conference room door with his file folder. “All I mean is, we haven’t decided what you’re going to tell your boss. We need to clinch our deal before you go making calls.”

  Was it her ongoing guilt that made her second-guess everything he said? Her brain processed on two parallel tracks now, along her two different realities. She juggled, constantly, to understand the game and who was playing.

  “I’d never call anyone without clearing it with you.” Ellie went full-on cooperative—Ellie, the good reporter; Ellie, doing what the all-powerful police suggested. Monteiro needed something from her. Fine. She’d give it to him.

  “Right.” He drew out the word, sarcastic. “Reporters are always so accommodating. Let’s move on, shall we?”

  He ushered her into the room, table and chairs unoccupied, where the photo of Nora—of her—was still pinned front and center on the bulletin board. A quick assessment showed her coat and muffler and gloves still in a pile on the table, and her belongings plopped on two folding chairs just the way she’d left them. As much as she remembered. She unzipped her bag and pulled out her phone, partly just to make sure it was still there. One text buzzed to life.

  From Gabe. Where are you?

  “Don’t answer that.” Monteiro opened his manila folder and stood, holding it, reading something inside. He talked to her while looking at the papers. “Not until we have an agreement. Take a seat. Give me two seconds.”

  She sat in her metal chair again. Looked at the text again. Gabe.

  Who’d pretended to be two people. Gabe and Guy. Beyond coincidental, she’d often thought, that he’d latched on to both of them. Both of her.

  Was Gabe the Pharminex spy? And then, on a mission to infiltrate her life, he’d tried to entice her—both versions of her—with romance?

  She worried her lower lip, trying to find the hole in her own story. Monteiro was focused on his paperwork. Ellie wondered if he was waiting her out, trying to make her nervous.

  But Gabe was the key. Had to be. Gabe connected them all. But whose side was he on?

  “Sorry for all the interruptions.” Monteiro closed his file, perched again on the edge of the conference table, the pin-and-picture bulletin board to his right. “I hadn’t expected you today, so I needed to rearrange my schedule. Anyway. About Nor—”

  “You were saying Nora Quinn was the only one who connected the two traffic accidents.” Ellie stood, walked closer to the bulletin board, peering at Nora’s surveillance photo. It was so blurry and pixelated, she decided, there was no way for him to compare it with her and make a connection. “But how do you think that person caused two separate traffic accidents?”

  “Caused? Did I say ‘caused’?”

  She straightened. “Oh. Well, okay then. If not caused, then you don’t suspect her of whatever it would be. Motor vehicle homicide or…” She shook her head. “You lost me.”

  “We think she could help us find out why those crashes happened.”

  “Crashes, not accidents.”

  Monteiro nodded.

&nbs
p; “So you think they’re connected.”

  Monertio nodded again.

  “So—?” She prompted him.

  “So. Here’s our proposition. Since you’ve been in contact with Nora Quinn, we’d like you to help us find her.”

  Ellie felt the quicksand encircling her ankles. “But you can find her yourself. I told you she works at Pharminex.”

  “What’s her job?”

  “You’d have to ask her,” Ellie said.

  “Yeah. But, if we try to contact her, we’re afraid, frankly, she might run. Apparently she has a somewhat checkered past.”

  Ellie started to answer, then stopped. The quicksand had reached her knees.

  “And by checkered I mean nonexistent. I talked to Pharminex while you were having your coffee. Her résumé is phony. So there isn’t really a Nora Quinn. There’s only someone pretending to be Nora Quinn.”

  “Did Pharminex know the reason? Who’d you talk to there, anyway?” He was law enforcement, Ellie reasoned, so maybe he’d been transferred right to the top. Nora had signed a confidentiality agreement with the company, so they weren’t allowed—whatever the parameters of allowed meant, she’d left that to Gabe—to discuss their current agreement. Or the abused-wife past that Nora had concocted for them. “Why’d they hire her if she has a fake résumé?”

  “They were somewhat…” Monteiro shrugged. “Evasive. It doesn’t pass the sniff test, right?” When Ellie didn’t respond, he continued, “Either their HR department sucks…” He winced, as if regretting his word choice. “Or they’re hiding something. They wouldn’t give me her address without a warrant. Which I could get, but it’s an escalation I’d rather avoid. As long as I can.”

  Ellie was at a loss for the proper response, but Monteiro didn’t seem to notice.