Liar, Liar

by Winter Austin

  “Yes on Donovan, no on Pamela. The toxicology isn’t back for her yet.”

  “And what did you learn from Donovan?” Con asked.

  “Well, Sheriff, that would have been nice to know that Detective O’Hanlon was there,” Drummond snarked.

  “It shouldn’t surprise you.”

  “Stubborn cuss,” Drummond snarled. “Donovan’s screens were clean. He didn’t have hep C or any other blood-born disease. And before you ask, I can neither confirm or deny if he was sexually active with men.”

  Con let out a whistle. “Guess we can suspect someone else as Gene Avery’s extra lover.”

  “What about Derek Schofield?” Shane demanded.

  “Clean. The only thing that killed the kid was a good old-fashioned bullet to the heart.”

  “Do you think Pamela was the one who walked into the club to kill him, and then shot you when you got too snoopy?” Con asked.

  “Why would Pamela kill him? He was cheating on his wife, but what did she care?” Shane leaned forward. “Did you talk to Emily?”

  “Extensively. She knew about the cheating, but she swears she was at her in-laws’ when he was killed. Apparently Annabeth had summoned her daughter-in-law for a little meeting with her. Emily was particularly livid about that, but wouldn’t say what it was over.” Con held up his hand. “Don’t bother to ask. Annabeth refused to tell me what it was about, too. Claimed unless I got a judge to make her tell me, it was none of my damned business.”

  “If Annabeth in a roundabout way vouched for Emily, then who would have that kind of motive? Where’s the blood drop I found out in the field?” Shane asked.

  “I have it, actually,” Drummond said. “And the news is good and bad. I tested it against Pamela’s blood type, and it’s a match. It’s a 90 percent chance she was the one who shot you, Sheriff.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “Any evidence that could have further proven she was there was burned in Agent Bartholomew’s car. She was going to bring me what she found in Pamela’s vehicle.”

  And Liza never got to it. Someone knew where Liza had been storing it and wanted it gone. Someone with a taste for fire.

  “How do we prove any of this?” Con asked.

  “By asking the hard questions.”

  “Must I be on the phone for you two to discuss this?” Drummond piped in.

  “One last thing, Doc, and we’ll let you go. Since Gene and Donovan were killed the same way, can you determine if it was the same person who did it?”

  “Short answer, no. Complicated answer, if you had more to go on, it might be possible. But as it stands, you have nothing. And DCI can’t wave a magic wand and tell you exactly who did it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have living patients to see.”

  Shane hung up after Drummond disconnected the call. He spotted Jennings hovering in the doorway. “And?”

  “He put up a fight, sir, but he’s coming after I threatened to have Nash drag him in.”

  “Good.” Shane’s gaze slid to Con. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see him as a killer.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Chapter Thirty

  When Liza walked in the door, Quinn went crazy with excitement. Kurt sulked in the living room, refusing to look at her. Screw him. His attitude was enough to make her keep her resignation to herself. Quinn dragged her to his room, showed her all the things that happened while she was gone. Then he demanded she show him his new rock.

  Oh God, it was in the rubble of the burned out shell that had been her car. Lie, quick.

  “Hey, buddy, I left it at home. I was so excited to come see you I totally forgot to bring it with me.”

  Quinn stared at her with a cocked head. What had to be going through that mind? Eventually he shrugged. His way of saying, that’s cool.

  Praise God. She got a reprieve. Note to self: do not forget to find another geode for him.

  He took hold of her hand and dragged her out of his room and back to the living room where Kurt sat on the sofa. Liza was propelled around the furniture, and Quinn pointed at the seat next to his father. Liza looked between the two, and when she didn’t move fast enough for Quinn, he circled around her and pushed her onto the sofa. And with that, he disappeared.

  “Guess he’s trying to tell us something.”

  “Guess,” Kurt said with a sore tone.

  They sat in silence, neither able to look at the other. Last stand at the OK Corral. Geesh, where was this Old West cowboy stuff coming from?

  Oh, you know.

  “Did you close that case?” Kurt asked.

  “No,” she said softly.

  Kurt shifted on the sofa to face her, tucking his leg under his knee. “After all the excuses and you didn’t even do that.”

  “I didn’t come here to get into another fight with you.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  She could hear the echoes of Shane’s protests earlier, telling her to not give up. But she had walked away. After a long discussion with both the FBI director for the Iowa division and Montrose, Liza had convinced them of how serious she was with her resignation. Pretty certain Kurt’s reaction would be on the opposite end of that spectrum.

  “It all fell apart.” She pinched her fingers together and rolled an imaginary crumb between them. That crumb of an idea that she could be somebody, do good wherever she was. Be better than her past. Just a crumb. Now nothing more than a speck of dust. “I resigned today.”

  Silence.

  From his bedroom, Quinn banged plastic containers around. When he was happy, he rearranged and straightened up his things. Liza ached to hear that boy just say one word again. Any word. Anything to let her know what he was thinking. Let him change the world.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  She met Kurt’s troubled gaze. “I thought you’d be thrilled.”

  He blinked. “I thought I would be, too.” He left the sofa and wandered to the old-fashioned wet bar Stephanie had found at a junk yard sale and refurbished. For Kurt, it had become a shrine to his deceased wife. He picked up the purple lanyard she’d left behind the day she died and fingered the trinkets she’d kept on it. “What will you do now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet. Right now, I just want to process everything I’ve been through and relax.” Liza pushed to her feet. “I’ll stay with Quinn, for however long it takes for that job. It’ll give me time to figure out where I go next.”

  Kurt set down the lanyard and turned to her. “What happened to the woman who wanted to save the world?”

  What happened to her? She died the day she walked onto the scene of that horrific warehouse fire and learned people had perished there.

  “That woman is gone, Kurt. Long gone.”

  • • •

  “Are you out of your mind? I had to explain to my CEO why I had to leave, because he demanded it, and it was highly embarrassing.”

  Shane pinned Neil Lundy with a droll look. “Not as embarrassing as telling him why I dragged your sorry ass in here.” He slapped the sheet Jennings had printed from Lundy’s file. “Explain yourself out of this one.”

  Scowling, Lundy picked up the page. As he read, his face turned a ghastly white. “Where did you get this?” His gaze flicked to Shane, and in that second, Shane saw the abject horror.

  “The FBI got this.”

  “This was never to be released.”

  Shane leaned back, crossing his arms. God, that hurt, but it didn’t matter. Not when he was closing in on the prey. “Why’s that?”

  Behind Lundy, Con prowled the floor, waiting for his chance to pounce. They had both agreed this would be Shane’s show, but it didn’t stop Con from chomping at the bit.

  “This was a complete misunderstanding. All the charges were dropped.”

  “Things like this don’t go away so easily.” Shane itched to curl his fingers around that liar’s neck and squeeze. “Never that easily.�
�

  “Whatever you think happened didn’t. I was lied to about the defendant’s age, and it was consenting. His mother was the only one who had a problem with it because she was some religious nutcase.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Con snapped. “My mam is religious, and she’s nowhere close to being a nutcase.”

  “As long as I’ve been in law enforcement, that’s the same piss-poor excuse I’ve heard from every pedophile I’ve run into.”

  Lundy shrank in his seat, the page crumpled in his fist as it landed in his lap.

  “So, Neil, explain to me how your situation is any better,” Shane said.

  Like a cornered mouse, Lundy’s head swiveled back and forth between Con and Shane. Lundy’s once haughty posture shriveled into hunched shoulders. This was a man whose backbone had been made of uncooked spaghetti; add boiling water and he flopped.

  “What do you want?” he croaked.

  “Were you and Gene Avery having an affair?”

  Lundy’s head snapped up. Red lines popped in the whites of his eyes. This had to be some kind of interesting information. “How? . . . It’s . . . how?”

  God, he loved it when they wet themselves. Shane slipped off the corner of his desk and towered over the man. “Did it all go wrong? Did you take things too far? Or did he decide it was over, time to move onto greener pastures?”

  “No! It was . . . I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I want a lawyer.”

  Shane shrugged. “That’s your right. We haven’t actually charged you with anything, but we can wait for a lawyer. Honestly, I don’t know why you would, unless you’re actually guilty. What do you think, Detective O’Hanlon? Should we let him wait for his lawyer? Maybe in a cell?”

  With each threat, Lundy’s panic grew until he was panting. “No. No jail.”

  “I’m sorry, but once we charge someone with a crime, that’s where we hold them until a judge tells us otherwise.”

  “No, I won’t go back there.”

  “Mr. Lundy, you’re not understanding me. Yes, you would have to.”

  Lundy bolted onto his feet. “I won’t! Ever! Again!”

  Jennings appeared in the doorway, his hand settled over the butt of his weapon. Shane signaled him to leave. Con would have the crazed man tackled and on the floor cuffed in seconds if Lundy tried anything.

  “Help me out, Neil. Tell me what happened with Gene.”

  “Nothing, nothing happened. There was nothing wrong with us. Everything was good.” The once cool and collected engineer fidgeted like a teenage boy about to have his first “turn your head and cough” exam. “He . . . he was the aggressive one.”

  “Did you ever use a cattle prod for fun?”

  “Never.” Lundy’s face screwed up in disgust. “That’s barbaric.”

  “When was the last time you two were together before he died?”

  The floor, the ceiling, the walls—Lundy looked anywhere Shane or Con didn’t stand. “We met up at our usual spot, the day he died.”

  “And where’s the usual spot?”

  “His house. He knew when his wife was gone it was our safest place.”

  “Did she know about it?”

  The fidgeting turned into a full-out junkie tremor. Lundy couldn’t stop moving, picking at imaginary lint, rubbing his palms on his streaked khakis. Jerky movements could be mistaken for a puppet master wrenching at the strings. He mumbled.

  “Come again?” Shane inclined an ear the man’s way.

  “I don’t know,” Lundy whispered.

  “Agent Bartholomew mentioned that you had called Roslin Avery to ask her questions about her husband’s job. Was that the only reason?”

  Lundy could not look Shane in the eye.

  “Answer him,” Con barked.

  Lundy jolted. “No.” That was it. He clamped up tighter than a forty-year-old virgin.

  “Waiting.”

  “This is badgering.”

  “You’re willingly giving us information; there’s no badgering to it,” Shane said. “What did you ask Roslin?”

  His body finally gave out, and Lundy collapsed into the chair. With that came the blubbering. “I alluded to his not being all she thought he was.”

  “And what did she say?”

  Lundy looked up, his red-rimmed eyes pleading. He really thought Shane gave two shits about the man’s life. The only thing he gave a damn about was if the man was his killer or not.

  “She laughed. And it wasn’t just some nervous twitter she’s known to do. It was . . . evil.”

  Shane’s gaze clashed with Con’s. As Con opened his mouth, a horrific screech of metal on metal and shattering glass sent them bailing from the office. Rounding the corner, Shane came to an abrupt halt.

  A bright blue F250 sat halfway inside and outside the front of the department building.

  “Holy mother of the saints.”

  “It’s Emily,” Shane said and began scaling the carnage to get to the driver’s side door.

  Teetering on the crumpled front counter, Shane braced against the truck. Emily was slumped over the wheel, facedown, her body convulsing. “Shit!” He grabbed the handle.

  “Sheriff, don’t,” Jennings hollered. “Let me.” He climbed up next to Shane.

  He moved aside so the younger man could haul open the door. Jennings reached in and dragged Emily out. Hoisting her over his shoulders, the deputy picked his way down the rubble, Shane following. Away from the damage, Jennings laid Emily on the floor. She continued to convulse, white bubbles forming in the corners of her mouth and spilling down her chin. Blood seeped from a gash over her eyebrow.

  “Damn it, she’s doing the same thing Pamela was when we found her,” Con said. “There’s nothing we can do for her. She’ll be dead in minutes.”

  Shane grabbed his friend’s arm and jerked him around. “Don’t you dare give up on her. Jennings, med kit.” Now that he could see what was going on, Shane had a strong feeling he knew what had poisoned Pamela and now Emily. “Con, I need liquor.”

  “What? This is no time for a drink.”

  “Not for me. For Emily.” He looked his friend in the eye. “There’s a bottle of whiskey in the bottom right-hand drawer of my desk.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Con, get it. We’ve got to do what we can for her. She’s been poisoned by methanol or ethylene glycol.”

  Con let loose with a string of nasty Gaelic as he ran into the office, slamming into Neil, who was blocking the doorway.

  With less care than sense, Shane dropped to the floor next to Emily and tipped her to the side to hopefully get the fluid and vomit out of her throat. She continued to seize in his arms. Con returned with the bottle, screwing off the cap as he hit the floor on his knees.

  “How do you propose we get this in her system?”

  “By IV.”

  Con’s eyes widened. “Is that even safe?”

  Jennings handed over the IV bag and began prepping Emily for a line.

  Shane took the bottle and a syringe from the med kit. “I’ve done it before.”

  The medics would be here faster than they had been for Pamela, but Shane wasn’t taking any chances. He worked in tandem with Jennings as he got the line into Emily’s wrist. Once the IV was going, Shane plunged the needle into the whiskey and filled the syringe, then jabbed it into a port and slowly injected the alcohol into the line. During this, Emily threw up again, and her body continued to convulse. She was wheezing and making desperate sounds, all signs they hadn’t lost her yet.

  “Her pulse is all over the place,” Jennings said.

  “Come on,” Shane ground out, reaching for the bottle for another syringe full. “Don’t you die on me, girl. Con, get on the horn with the EMTs and ask them if they have fomepizole.”

  “Sheriff, are you even sure that’s what happened to her?” Jennings asked.

  “It’s the only option I’ve got. If I’m wrong, then she was going to die anyway.”

  He had suspected this angle
when Murdoch told him about Pamela’s actions and how the woman was found before she died. He’d kept his suspicions to himself, because he wanted the proof, needed the proof from the blood tests.

  “Shane, they have it,” Con called from the half-destroyed dispatch station.

  “Tell them to get it ready.” He brushed back the damp blonde hair from Emily’s face. “Hang on, Emily. Hang on.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Shane’s body was all twisted and mangled from the stress of the last few hours. When he spotted Drummond striding down the hall toward them, his muscles contorted.

  Let her be alive.

  Drummond entered the waiting room, fatigue dragging on his features, aging him. Hell, they all looked like they’d gained about fifteen years in the last three days.

  “I don’t know how you knew, Sheriff, but it was ethylene glycol poisoning. Your unorthodox method worked. Emily has a long way to go to recover, but she’ll live.”

  Groans of relief came from Shane and Con, and Emily’s mother-in-law cried out. Annabeth rushed Drummond, asking a million questions, her husband trailing, pausing next to Shane.

  “Sheriff.”

  Waves of grief rolled off the elder Schofield. He had lost his son and almost lost a daughter-in-law, and he was about to lose his entire farming operation with no one to inherit it. Holding out his hand, he nodded to Shane. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Don’t thank me, sir, this isn’t over.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He took Shane’s hand anyway and squeezed. “You’ve been nothing but a post for people to beat on these last few years, with all the troubles that have fallen on this county. But you know what, you’ve done a far better job than anyone else in your position. Thank you.”

  Blinking, Shane allowed the man to finish the handshake, and then gaped at his back as he walked down the hall to join his wife and the doctor.

  “He’s right, you know,” Con said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “No one could have handled it better.”

  “I’m also right when I said it’s not over. Emily’s attempted murderer is still out there.”

  “Of all the people involved with this whole fiasco, only two are left.”