The Perfect Liar

by Brenda Novak

  “Is Tatiana there?”

  She’d been hoping it would be Kalyna. That her sister was calling to say she was driving back, after all. Tati wanted to believe what Kalyna had told her earlier, but the way the police had acted, and her father…she was beginning to have some serious misgivings. If only Kalyna would arrive soon and prove that she’d had nothing to do with whatever happened this morning. Then Tati could focus her pain on the tragedy of losing her mother and stop worrying that the situation was about to get worse. But it was a man’s voice on the other end of the line. “This is Tatiana,” she said.

  “Tati, this is Mark Cannaby.”

  Tati’s first thought was to catch her father. Maybe Mark was going to confess. Maybe all their questions would be answered right here, right now, and she could feel good about her sister again. But something in his voice made her cautious. She walked toward the door, even opened it, but didn’t rush out to stop the van. Instead, she waved her father off. “How dare you call here!” she said into the phone when Dewayne was gone.

  “I don’t know what the hell Kalyna is telling you, but I didn’t do it,” he responded.

  “Then how do you even know what ‘it’ is?” she challenged.

  “How do you think? The police were just here! Detective Morgan said someone murdered your mother and asked me where I was last night. But I was home sleeping, where I always am that late at night. They’re coming after the wrong person.”

  “No. Kalyna told me, Mark.” Tati had been mostly dry-eyed since talking to Kalyna. But the confusion and loss she felt now brought a fresh flood of tears.

  “She told you what?”

  “About the hitch—” her voice snagged on a sob “—hitchhiker you—you killed ten years ago. The one you cremated after you were d-done.”

  “It’s not true!” he insisted. “Even if you believe I’m capable of such a thing, do you really suppose Kalyna would keep quiet about it all these years?”

  He had a point, but Tati didn’t want to acknowledge it. Kalyna loved to shock others, loved to gossip. And she trusted Tati with everything. At least, she used to. “She has the girl’s necklace,” she said. “I’ve seen it in her jewelry box.”

  “Oh, yeah? What does it look like?”

  This took her by surprise, but she was determined to convince him she knew what she was talking about. “It’s a floating diamond on a gold chain. A piece of jewelry she could never afford herself.”

  “You saw her with it?”

  “I saw it in her jewelry box. No way would she wear it. She watched you take it from a girl you murdered!”

  “I have something to show you,” he said. “Can I come over?”

  “No!” Tati wouldn’t feel safe. She’d never liked Mark to begin with, didn’t trust him.

  “Then give me your e-mail address, and I’ll send it to you.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  Tati was sitting in front of her parents’ computer when his e-mail arrived. “Here’s your sister showing how horrified she is by what I did,” it read.

  “What?” Tati downloaded the attachment. It turned out to be a picture. But it was so large she couldn’t see the entire image at once, or even figure out what it was.

  After typing in a few commands, she got it to fit her screen. Only then could she tell what she was looking at. It was a picture of Kalyna at maybe…seventeen. She was sprawled on a bed, completely nude, laughing as if carefree. And she was wearing that necklace.

  23

  Ava was at Luke’s apartment. He’d dropped her off so she could get some work done, then he’d left to get groceries and run errands. But even with him gone she couldn’t concentrate. Just being in his space was enough to distract her.

  She forced herself to finish checking the phone records on the Beeker case. Then she opened her laptop, typed out a few letters she planned to print later and tried to return some e-mail. But after reading one particular message three times without comprehension, she gave up. She was no longer getting anything done.

  With a sigh, she got up and wandered around the room. Luke’s apartment was plain but clean, and she had to smile at the various masculine touches that put his stamp on the place—a bike propped against the wall behind the couch, skis in the corner, Sports Illustrated magazines on the coffee table and a giant TV against one wall. There was a picture of him with his family on a shelf—taken at Christmastime—and several other photographs, mostly snapshots of various buildings or landforms as seen from the air. Luke obviously loved being a pilot. She’d bet he was a great one.

  She went into the tiny kitchen and checked a few cupboards. He’d told her to help herself if she wanted anything to eat but she wasn’t hungry; she was bored.

  He had canned goods, a whole shelf of vitamin supplements and a large container of protein powder. The fridge wasn’t any better stocked. The fruit-and-vegetable bin contained one apple and a few carrots. On the shelves, she found milk, sour cream, jelly and a package of hot dogs. He probably ate out a lot.

  From there, she walked down a short hall to his bedroom and poked her head through the doorway. His bed was made, of course. His closet door was shut but she didn’t need to see inside to know that his uniforms would all be neatly ironed, with his shoes shined and organized beneath. Remembering the first time she’d seen him at the door of The Last Stand wearing jeans and a T-shirt that’d been pressed, she chuckled.

  Some free weights lined the wall and a giant model plane took up most of the space on his dresser—what was left by a second flat-screen TV. There was another bathroom off the master bedroom. She knew it would be as clean as the one she’d used when she arrived—

  A knock at the door brought her immediately back to the living room. “Hey, Trussell. You home? Open up!”

  Ava answered to find two men there. One was every bit as tall as Luke, the other only five-nine or so, but both were dressed in muscle shirts, gym shorts and tennis shoes and were sweaty enough to suggest they’d been exerting themselves. Their haircuts would’ve told her they were military, even if she hadn’t been able to see the dog tags hanging around their necks.

  “Who’re you?” the tall one asked.

  “Ava Bixby,” she said. “I’m a friend of Luke’s. And you?”

  The short one spoke up. “I’m Sergeant O’Dell. This is Captain Fewkes. Also friends of Luke’s.”

  Ava recognized the sergeant’s name. He was the one who’d gone to the Moby Dick with Luke. She was glad to meet him. “Would you like to come in?”

  They stepped into the living room and Fewkes closed the door, but they didn’t sit down. “Where’s Luke?” O’Dell asked, glancing toward the bedroom.

  “He’s running some errands.”

  “Oh.” The two men looked at each other. “He knows you’re in his apartment, though, right? You’re not friends with Kalyna Harter or anything.”

  She laughed. “No. I’m with The Last Stand, a victims’ charity in Sac. I’m trying to help him with the Harter situation.”

  “Oh, I remember now. He’s mentioned you. So what do you think of Kalyna?”

  “I think she’s trouble.”

  “You know I was with Luke at The Moby Dick, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Jonathan Stivers is my investigator. He spoke with you this past week.”

  “That was your guy?”

  “He has his own agency, but he works with us a lot.”

  “Did he tell you I said Kalyna’s lying?” O’Dell asked.

  “He told me. Now we just need to prove it.”

  “This might help.” He jerked his head at his companion. “Fewkes ran into her in mid-May. That’s why I brought him over. She said some weird sh-stuff to him at a bar. I thought Luke should hear about it.”

  “What kind of weird stuff?”

  “When I asked her to dance, she said she couldn’t get near me or her fiancé would go ballistic. I said I didn’t see a ring on her finger, and she sai
d it was because they hadn’t picked it up from the jeweler’s yet.” He imitated the expression and body language he’d used that night. “I said, ‘It’s just a dance.’ But she insisted that her fiancé was this insanely jealous animal. I told her I could handle myself in a fight, and she said I wouldn’t stand a chance against Captain Luke Trussell.”

  “Did you know Luke?”

  “Not really. I mean, we’ve played a couple pickup games over at the basketball court, so I recognized the name and had enough respect for him to back off. I mean, I’m not out to force a girl to dance with me if she doesn’t want to, you know? But after I moved on, Kalyna wouldn’t quit messing with me. She’d sidle past me, brushing her breast against my arm or touching me in some other way. Or I’d catch her staring at me from across the room and she’d give me a ‘you know you want me’ kind of smile. It was weird. I got the feeling she was trying to tempt me into approaching her again, even though she’d warned me off.”

  “What do you think she was up to?” Ava asked.

  “Playing head games?” he said with a shrug.

  “I think she was living out a fantasy,” O’Dell suggested. “I saw how she acted with Luke. She’s obsessed with him. She’d love nothing more than to be his fiancée and have him care enough to be as jealous as she claimed he’d be. She was enjoying the danger and excitement of flirting with Fewkes as if she really had something to worry about from Trussell.”

  Knowing Kalyna, Ava could believe it. She expected Luke to return at any moment, so she poked her head out into the hall. But it was empty. She was under the impression that the men in these apartments didn’t stay home for much longer than it took to shower and change, at least during the day. They were single and active—this was just a place to bunk at night. “You haven’t told Luke about this?” she said, closing the door again.

  “I didn’t know about it until today,” O’Dell said.

  “And I didn’t see any point,” Fewkes chimed in. “If she was telling the truth, it’d only piss him off that we were flirting with each other. If she was lying, I’m not planning on seeing her again so it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t until I was lifting at the gym today that I heard O’Dell here talking about how some chick was claiming Trussell raped her. The name jumped out at me—because Kalyna had mentioned it. Made me wonder what the hell was going on. She told me he was her fiancé, yet she was telling everyone else he raped her?”

  “Neither is true,” O’Dell said.

  “She must be a nutcase,” Fewkes added.

  O’Dell nudged him. “Tell her the rest.”

  “There’s more?” Ava said.

  “Wait till you hear this,” O’Dell chortled.

  “Later that night, when I passed her on my way to the bar,” Fewkes continued, “I felt her grab my ass.”

  Ava couldn’t imagine many women being quite that bold. But this was Kalyna, after all. “More teasing?” she said, incredulous.

  “I guess, because when I asked her what was going on, she said she wanted me, just didn’t dare act on it. So I asked her what would happen if we got caught, and she said her fiancé would kill us both.”

  “How’d you reply?”

  “I didn’t believe her. Like I told you, I don’t know Trussell very well, but he seems too coolheaded for that. So I said, ‘Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?’ And she said, ‘Hell, no. I’d do the same if I ever caught him cheating on me.’ When I started laughing, she said, ‘You think I’m joking, don’t you?’ I said, ‘I think you’re drunk.’”

  Ava could tell he was leading up to a bigger climax than this. “And?”

  “And then she leaned forward to show me a knife she had in her purse and said, ‘I’ve done it before.’”

  Chills rolled down Ava’s spine. This incident definitely made it easier to believe that Kalyna might’ve caused Norma’s death. “What’d you do?”

  “I left. I was done with her.”

  “Do you think she was serious about having killed before?” Ava asked.

  Fewkes’s nod was emphatic. “Serious as a heart attack. And I’ll testify to that.”

  His story revealed a frightening cold-bloodedness on Kalyna’s part. Because of that, Ava thought Fewkes’s testimony might be important to both cases—Luke’s and Norma’s. “You just might have to do that. Give me your contact information,” she said, and after they left she called the Mesa police.

  The door opened while Luke was trying to move all his groceries to one arm so he could reach the knob. “Sergeant O’Dell and Captain Fewkes stopped by,” Ava announced, stepping back to admit him.

  He carried his sacks in and deposited them on the counter. “Who’s Fewkes?”

  “A guy you’ve met playing basketball a time or two.”

  Luke didn’t recognize the name. “Why’d he come here?”

  “To tell you that Kalyna isn’t stable.”

  “As if that’s news.” He stowed the milk in the fridge. “How does he know?”

  While Ava explained what Fewkes and O’Dell had said, Luke put away the rest of his groceries. By the time she finished, he felt as much relief as concern. The number of people who stood on his side was growing. No court-martial would find against him with the details that were coming to light.

  But he still had no idea where this would end. He felt confident that he could take care of himself, and doubted Kalyna would attack him physically. But obsession-motivated murder didn’t happen only in the movies.

  You’ve been seeing her, haven’t you!

  The accusation ringing through her statement showed that Kalyna viewed them as a couple. And she’d already told him what she had planned for any love interest of his. Was Ava in danger?

  He thought she might be. No one even knew where Kalyna was, but if she’d murdered her mother, she could be on a rampage. And she had military training, familiarity with weapons.

  “You’re quiet,” Ava said when he made no comment on Fewkes’s story.

  He folded the sacks and slipped them onto a shelf in his small pantry. “I’m wondering what to do.”

  “About what?”

  “About you.”

  “I’m not your problem.”

  Then whose problem was she? He doubted she would’ve been embroiled in this had she just dropped the case and walked away as she’d initially tried to do. It was her affiliation with him that put her at risk. She’s working for me now, he’d told Kalyna. He’d all but painted a target on Ava’s forehead. What had he been thinking?

  That Kalyna was like other people, like him. That she’d respond to the news of Ava’s defection by realizing she was losing any advantage she had. That she’d back off. But she wasn’t like other people. The deeper he got into this, the more he understood that.

  “So you’ll be safe on the houseboat?” he asked. “I mean, she has no way of finding it, right?”

  “No. No way. She knows how to find this place, though. She could come here, shoot up your apartment—shoot you—and it would all be over in seconds.”

  “She’s not going to shoot me.”

  “You don’t know that. You can’t stay here.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “To a friend’s place.”

  “My friends have roommates and no extra beds. And I’m not leaving the comfort of my apartment unless I’m happy with where I’m staying.”

  “Which means what?”

  He grinned. “I’m happy at your place.”

  “No way. You’re not coming home with me.”

  “Why not?” Maybe her clothes were as ugly as ever, but she was pretty in spite of them, far prettier than the day he’d first met her. Why she seemed to have changed so much in such a short time, he couldn’t say—except that her personality somehow pulled the entire package together. “You have a comfortable recliner.”

  Her forehead rumpled. “You’re kidding, right? Don’t you have to work in the morning?”

  “I can make a call, leave a messag
e for my superior officer. I have so much leave coming, he’ll give me the whole week. It’ll save him from having to think up things for me to do now that I’m grounded.”

  “So you want to come home with me.”

  “I think it would be safer.” Luke hid a smile. He didn’t need to stay anywhere. He had a 9 mm in his dresser drawer. He could protect himself, but the image of Ava in that thong flashed before his eyes for probably the millionth time, and staying home—or anywhere else—just couldn’t compete. He doubted Kalyna could find the houseboat, but he didn’t want to risk being wrong and seeing Ava get hurt. In his mind, this was more about protecting her, and there was no harm in that. “What do you say?”

  “I’ve used the boat as a refuge for my clients before,” she mused. “And I’ve got an extra bedroom and everything.”

  You should watch the sunrise from my bedroom…He had no interest in her guest quarters. And he felt it was only fair to warn her. “Just so you know, if you do have me over, it’s asking for trouble.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What kind of trouble?”

  Stepping closer, he lowered his voice. “The kind of trouble that comes with getting naked.”

  She licked her lips nervously. “You’re not attracted to me, remember?”

  “I might’ve overstated the level of my disinterest.”

  “No, you were right.” She backed away. “We’re a mismatch. Completely different, ill-suited, worlds apart.”

  “I keep telling myself that.”

  “But…”

  “I still want you.”

  She cleared her throat. “Absolutely not. Forget it. I won’t be getting naked with you,” she said. But when he packed his bag, he took the condoms from his nightstand, just in case.

  The woman who’d welcomed Kalyna to Help for Women, a free clinic in Reno that was open twenty-four hours seven days a week, stood in the doorway of the small exam room where Kalyna had been waiting. She was smiling, which boded well. “Great news,” she said.

  Kalyna’s heart jumped into her throat. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. The AIDS test showed no antibodies. You’re clean.”