Hearts of Fire

by L.H. Cosway

  Quiet elapsed, and a tension filled the space. Jack’s arms tightened around me, and I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking. That I could have fallen victim to this sicko if I had been in our room that night instead of Lola. Jay paused for a moment to let everyone absorb the information, and there were a couple of grumblings amongst the gathering. I heard Pedro swear and ask how Jay, an outsider, thought he could come in and begin pointing fingers at people. His argument made me wonder, and not for the first time, if he was the man we were looking for. His behaviour in the past certainly indicated a slight deviancy, but did that mean he had the ability to rape and kill? I wasn’t quite sure. In the end Marina stood, her voice booming loud around the tent.

  “Now, you all need to listen up and listen good. I agreed to have Mr Fields here today, and so long as you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about. So please, can you all shut up complaining and let the man get on with his job?”

  Her reprimanding tone worked to hush the grumblings, and Jay sent her a look of gratitude before giving her a dashing little bow. “Thank you, Marina.” She dipped her head to accept his thanks, and then Jay began to pace.

  “Now, I’m going to go around the room and ask each one of you a set of three questions. These questions will consist of the following: What is your name? Where were you born? And what is the name of the street you grew up on? Of these three questions, I want you to give me two correct answers and one lie. You can lie on any one of the questions you wish, but do not, under any circumstances, tell me which one. Everybody got it?”

  Once Jay’s instructions were understood by all, he walked to the far right of the room and fired off his three questions. The first person to be asked was the stuntman, Raphael.

  “What is your name?” said Jay.

  “Raphael Suarez.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Brazil.”

  “What is the name of the street you grew up on?”

  “Rua Santa Teresa.”

  I noticed that after each question was answered, Jay took a moment to stare at his interviewee. When he was done with Raphael, he moved on to the man sitting next to him. It was a long and tedious process, truth be told. Jack and I were sitting on the opposite end from where Jay had started, so it took about a half hour for him to reach us. He smiled at me warmly and asked me the questions. I decided to lie on the second one. I knew from my accent that my lie was probably obvious, but hey, just because I sounded Irish didn’t mean I was born in Ireland.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lille Baker.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Argentina.”

  Jay give me a little grin before asking the final question. “And what is the name of the street you grew up on?”

  “Fitzgerald Street.”

  “Thank you, darlin.” The way he spoke to me gave me a warm feeling in my tummy, like he held an affection for me already, and he barely knew me. He only knew that I was in love with his brother, and that seemed to be good enough for him. He moved on to Jack next, and soon he was done asking everyone the same three questions. I had no idea what he was up to, but the glint in his eye told me he had a plan.

  “Have I gotten everyone?” Jay asked, and there were a number of yeses from the gathering before a noise sounded from the back of the room. I twisted in Jack’s lap to see King had knocked over a chair while trying to stand up. “Ah, not everyone, I see,” said Jay as he hopped off the stage and strode towards King, who glowered at him and rubbed his temples like he was suffering from a headache.

  “Hey, there,” said Jay, eyeing King closely. Jack and I shared a look. We both knew that King was a wildcard, and there was a good chance he’d say something rude or insulting.

  “What do you want?” King griped, and tried to move past him, but Jay did a suave little sidestep.

  “I want to ask you some questions. Will you play ball?”

  “Piss off.”

  Jay chuckled and took another step closer to King. I watched him as he tilted his head, taking a moment to study Marina’s brother, and he seemed intrigued. “I bet you could tell me some stories,” Jay observed almost absently.

  “I need a smoke,” King grumbled, and moved to walk by Jay again. He was clearly growing impatient.

  “I’ll tell you what. You come sit up the front, let me ask you some questions, and I’ll buy all the cigs and booze you could wish for.”

  King eyed him suspiciously, then finally nodded his agreement. “You better not be lying.”

  “Cross my heart,” said Jay, swiping his finger over the left side of his chest in an “X” shape before gesturing for King to go sit up at the front. King stumbled by him and took the seat on the other side of Matilda, who looked at him sadly when she saw how uncared for he was. Jay came to stand before him.

  “I’m going to ask you three questions. I want you to answer two correctly and lie on one of them. Got it?”

  “Yeah, yeah, two true, one false. I’m a drunk not an idiot.”

  “No, I imagine you’re far from it,” said Jay, his brows drawing together in what looked like concern. “So, the first question, what’s your name?”

  King coughed his pained cough and answered, “King. Oliver King.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “London.”

  “And what is the name of the street you grew up on?”

  King seemed pained as he considered his final answer. “Molesworth Street.” I wasn’t quite sure why, but I felt like his third answer was the lie.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Jay before turning to address the gathering again. “Okay, so this is where things start to speed up. Now I’m going to ask you all one question. I don’t want you to lie here — I want you to tell the truth. The answer will be a simple yes or no. Once you’ve answered, I’ll either tell you to move to the back of the tent or to stay where you are. I repeat, I do not want you to lie to me.”

  He began to the right again with Raphael, shooting off his question. “Did you attack Julie Young last night?”

  Raphael seemed appalled by the very idea and answered immediately. “No.”

  “Thank you,” said Jay. “You can go to the back of the tent.”

  Raphael rose and walked down the aisle before sitting in the very back row, folding his arms as he lowered himself into a seat. Jay moved on to the next person and then the next, asking everybody the same question in rapid-fire succession. Sometimes, if he wasn’t happy with the answer, he asked twice. He even asked Julie herself. She furrowed her brow at him.

  “How on earth can I attack myself?” she complained.

  “Just answer the question, darlin.”

  “No, I didn’t fucking attack myself,” she deadpanned.

  “Okay, good,” said Jay, raising a hand. “Stay where you are for now.”

  In the end, both Jack and I were at the back of the tent with almost everyone else. He ran his hands soothingly up and down my arms, which worked to rid some of my restlessness. I wished Jay would speed things up and discover the culprit already. The only people left at the front were Julie, Pedro, King, Luan, Aiden, and Antonio. Jay asked all of them to stand in a circle around him. He paced a moment as they watched, and then began asking them all the same question again, though this time it was phrased slightly differently.

  “Are you the attacker?” he asked Julie.

  “No.”

  “Are you the attacker?” This time, Pedro.

  “No.”

  “Are you the attacker?” Now it was Luan’s turn.

  “No.”

  Jay continued asking his question, and again he asked some of them twice, even three times. Each time every one of them answered no, and they all seemed to be growing irritated. Pedro swore in Portuguese, while Luan’s cheeks grew red and Julie pulled a strop.

  “This is a joke,” she griped, and stared daggers at Jay. “Seriously, do you even know what you’re doing?”

  Jay put his
finger to his lips to hush her, and quiet descended. He bowed his head for a moment, as though trying to think, then whipped it up and pointed to Antonio and Pedro. “You both can go join the others at the back.” There was a light in his eyes now as he studied his final four suspects, and a chill came over me, because something told me Jay had finally decided who the guilty party was. Jack must have seen me shiver, because he pulled me close and wrapped both his arms around my shoulders. I sank into his hard, sturdy frame, seeking comfort as I listened to Jay speak.

  “So, I should probably explain my method here. Otherwise, I can hardly go pointing fingers, now, can I? I asked everyone the same three questions, asking for two truths and one falsehood. This was to get your baselines. Most everybody has a tell when they lie. Therefore, if you were telling me two truths and one lie, the odd reaction out is the lie – the tell. You,” he began, and pointed to Luan, “are typical. You look to the left when you lie. You’re a very reliable liar. You look to the left every time. This transparency indicates that you’re probably quite an honest person. However, you’re also nervous under interrogation, which made you slightly more difficult to read when I asked the final two questions.” Jay paused and took a breath, while I felt like I was holding mine. “Luckily for you, though, you aren’t the one I’m looking for today. You can go to the back with the others.” Luan seemed beside himself with relief as he ran a hand down his face and walked to the back. Lola immediately pulled him into her arms when he reached her and gave him a long hug.

  This time Jay brought his attention to Julie. “Now you, my dear, are an interesting one. When you lie, you show almost no tell at all. But I have an eye for detail, and I did notice that you press your lips together ever so slightly when you’re telling a fib. It’s practically imperceptible, but what can I say? I have a talent for this.”

  “For crying out loud, will you just get to the point already,” Julie complained, arms folded in a defensive posture.

  “You’re not the attacker,” Jay answered her curtly. “Go to the back.”

  Julie shot Jay a sharp look that was all, I told you so, then strutted her way over to stand with the rest of us. I locked eyes with Matilda, and she gave me a tiny smile before whispering, “He’s scary good at this, isn’t he?”

  I nodded, then only realised Marina was standing behind us when she added, “Your husband has a flair for the dramatic. I wonder if I could tempt him to come and join the circus.”

  Matilda smiled at her, shrugged, then returned her attention to the stage, as did I. King and Aiden were the only two men left standing, and a feeling of dread claimed my belly as I remembered Aiden’s behaviour with Bea earlier this morning. He’d been rough and abrupt, and he clearly hadn’t been taking proper care of his little girl. But did that make him a killer? Certainly not.

  And then there was King. Such a mystery. Such an enigma. I’d heard so much about what a success he’d been once upon a time. Surely, to be so successful and then end up a homeless drunk meant something really bad must have happened to him. Or maybe he was the one who did the bad thing. Maybe he was the killer. I hated to admit that in an odd way I’d grown fond of King, and I didn’t want it to be him. At same time, I didn’t want it to be Aiden, either, because that would mean Bea would be left without a parent.

  God, this was awful. Jay’s attention rested on King for a moment before moving to Aiden, then went back to King.

  “Your tell, Mr King, is that you don’t have one. In fact, you really don’t care at all if I know whether you’re lying or telling the truth. Perhaps you’ve lied about far worse things than murder and rape in the past. But then, what’s worse than that? No, I think you’re an example of apathetic nihilism at its finest, and I would love to know the reason as to why. I’m still not even sure if you misled me at all on those first three questions. And this is where the rub lies, because if you don’t have a tell, I can’t determine whether or not you’re lying.”

  Jay went silent, eyes flicking back and forth between the two men as he stopped pacing and stood in front of them, feet shoulder width apart and arms folded.

  “Fortunately for you,” Jay said while pointing a finger at King before swiping it to Aiden. “Aiden here has quite a spectacular tell. It’s like a big, angry, throbbing vein that pulses in the forehead when a person is angry. Yes, when Aiden lies, he moves his jaw and his left eyebrow shoots right up to heaven. Quite frankly, it’s glorious.” Jay gestured wildly with his hands. “A mentalist’s wet dream, because I barely have to look at you to know you’re lying. You are as transparently deceptive as Luan is transparently honest. And when I asked if you attacked Julie, what happened?”

  Aiden was breathing furiously, his eyes narrowed to slits as he adopted the posture of a man being branded with a guilty stamp. Emotion clutched at me, not because I cared about the man, but because I cared about Bea, and I had no idea what was going to happen to her now.

  “You worked your jaw and raised your eyebrow,” Jay finished.

  Aiden stomped forward and pushed at Jay, almost knocking him over. “You’ve got it wrong! You don’t know anything!”

  “I know that you did it,” said Jay confidently, dusting himself off. He didn’t appear at all ruffled that Aiden had hit him. And when Aiden looked like he was about to flee, several stocky men who worked as labourers for the circus came forward and blocked his path. He had nowhere to run. “I also know,” Jay began, pronouncing his words loudly and steadily so that everybody could hear, “that you didn’t act alone.” Now there were several shocked and surprised gasps from the crowd. I moved closer into the warmth of Jack’s body, spooked. No one else in the world made me feel safe the way he did. And what did Jay mean, Aiden hadn’t acted alone? It wasn’t long before I found out.

  “Well, at least you didn’t plan the act alone. I don’t mean to insult you, but you don’t possess the intelligence, the flair, to cover up a killing, Aiden. Yes, you have the strength and indeed the fucked-up psychology to do it physically, but you don’t have the shrewd mental acumen for a cover-up.”

  A hush came over the gathering, and a chill ran down my spine. I caught movement to my left and saw Julie hurrying through the crowd. In an instant, I recognised that she was trying to slip away before anyone saw. A moment later, Jay began walking towards us, calling out, “Oh, Miss Young, can I have a word?”

  It was almost like a spotlight had landed on her, because she stopped dead in her tracks, and all forty-five pairs of eyes went to the beautiful red-headed gymnast. “What do you want?” she hissed, low and furious as she stared at the floor, refusing to meet Jay’s gaze. Jay walked through the gathering, and people parted to let him by. A moment later, he was right in front of Julie. He reached out and caught her chin, tilting it up to make her look at him. She reeled away from his touch, her hatred clear as day in her bright blue eyes.

  “When I told you that you’re not the attacker, it was the truth. However, when I told you that you have a tell, I lied. In fact, you have two. You purse your lips when you’re telling an outright lie, but you touch your index finger to your thumb when you’re being deceptive. And when I asked you if you were the attacker, every time your body shouted your deceit. You were involved in Aiden’s crime from the start.”

  “I wasn’t,” Julie hissed, but there was a waver in her voice, a solitary tear running down her face as she looked to those around her for support. She found none. Not even from her sisters, who looked positively broken at what they were hearing. “He’s lying! You all have to believe me. We don’t even know this guy. He could be anyone.”

  “Oh, please,” Lola cut in as she moved through the crowd, hand in hand with Luan. “Jay Fields is fucking famous. We all know exactly who he is. He’s won awards, for Chrissakes. Now, what I want to know is how the hell you’re involved in all this.” Anger slowly seeped into her voice as she pointed to Aiden. “That man almost raped me, Julie, and I want to know what exactly you had to do with it.”

  “I ha
d absolutely nothing to do with it,” Julie replied vehemently. “This thing about tells is all bullshit. The guy is trying to fuck with our heads. Aiden is the guilty one, plain and simple. Other than almost becoming one of his victims, this has nothing to do with me.”

  “You lying little tramp,” Aiden fumed, lunging forward as three or four men held him in place. “She’s been blackmailing me for years! Ever since she caught me burying Vera’s body, she’s been holding me hostage, forcing me to do her bidding or else she’d go to the police. I went to Lola’s room that night because Julie told me to. Lola had slighted her in front of everyone, and Julie wanted payback. And since you’ve all been hating her ever since she attacked Lille, she made me rough her up so that you’d all see her as a victim and not the cold bitch that she really is.”

  “Shut the hell up, Aiden. Nobody believes you,” Julie spat at him. Her face was red with fury, her hands balled into fists. Her sister Molly let out a pained cry before Mary took her into her arms. They were both shattered at what they were hearing and obviously had no clue what their sister was capable of. I couldn’t say the same myself. Ever since the night I heard her say those cruel things to King in the gazebo, I knew her pretty face masked a rotten core. And then after she attacked me with her own two hands, I was pretty certain she was mad.

  I’d been so wrapped up in watching everything unfold that I forgot Jack standing behind me. His hold on my shoulders had tightened further, almost to the point of pain. I twisted around and glanced up at him, taking in his agonised, contorted features. It was difficult for him to hear all this, I could tell. He’d been with Julie sexually with no clue of her true nature.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “Stop that. There was no way you could’ve known.”

  “I should have, though,” he ground out. “I should have sensed something.”

  Julie had begun yelling and screaming like a crazy woman, proclaiming her innocence, but there didn’t seem to be a single person present who believed her. She’d done too much to prove that she was capable of bad things, and now it was all coming back to haunt her. I’d like to say I felt vindicated, but I didn’t. Yes, I was angry that she very well could have killed me when she hit me over the head that time, but mostly I just felt sad that any of this had happened in the first place.