The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  9

  TANG DROPPED JO AT HER HOUSE ON RUSSIAN HILL. SHE HANDED over a thick manila envelope.

  “The concert video, photos of the scene, witness statements from the stuntman and stage crew. And Tasia’s ‘in the event of my assassination’ recording.”

  Jo paused. “Using her ex-husband’s gun is a huge statement.”

  “No kidding, Sigmund.” Tang pointed at the envelope. “Figure out what she was saying.”

  The car grumbled away.

  The night air was cool. The cable car tracks hummed with the sound of gears and cables ringing beneath the road. Jo climbed her front steps.

  Her small house sat across from a park, surrounded by grander, brighter homes painted building-block colors. Hers was a fine San Francisco Victorian with iron-red gables. The front yard was a spot of grass the size of a paperback book, bordered by gardenias and white lilacs. Inside, her Doc Martens sounded heavy on the hardwood floor. Her keys echoed when she dropped them on the hallway table.

  Jo never would have chosen the house for herself. She would have struggled to afford it. But her husband had inherited the home from his grandparents. He and Jo had redone the place. Knocked out walls, sanded the floors, installed skylights.

  When Daniel died, his absence from the house had been excruciating. Early on, Jo had moments when she was overcome with an urge to shatter the windows and shout, Come back to me. Daniel’s parents would have loved for her to sell it to them. But she’d made it her home, and now couldn’t bear the thought of giving it up.

  She went to the kitchen and fixed coffee. The magnolia in the backyard was laden with flowers. Under the moon they shone like white fists. Music from a neighbor’s house floated to her, a Latin tune with sinuous horns. She felt jacked up, like she’d spent the evening strapped to a rocket sled.

  She heard a sharp knock on the front door.

  She answered it to find Gabe Quintana standing on the porch, hands in the pockets of his jeans. One look at her and his eyes turned wary.

  “Maybe I should have called first, ” he said.

  “The concert ended with the star and a stunt pilot dead, fans trampled, and me signing up for a case from one of the more exotic rings of hell.”

  “Want me to come back another time?”

  His black hair was close-cropped. His eyes had a low-burning glow. Right, Jo thought. He didn’t believe for a second that she’d kick him out.

  “Some day I’ll actually say yes. Just to keep your self-confidence under control,” she said.

  His smile was offhanded. “No, you won’t.”

  Laugh lines etched his bronze skin. He leaned against the door frame, his gaze rakish.

  Jo grabbed him by the collar of his Bay to Breakers T-shirt and yanked him through the doorway. She kicked the door closed and thrust him against the wall.

  “Watch it. I can push your buttons and bring you to your knees”—she snapped her fingers—“like that.”

  “Promise?”

  She held him to the wall. “I haven’t seen you for twenty- four hours, and it’s your fault that twenty-four hours feels like a long time.”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist. “My buttons. Yeah, I’m the one whose control panel is blowing up here.”

  He kissed her.

  Sometimes he seemed as still as a pool of water. Sometimes he seemed reserved to the point of invisibility. She knew that the surface reflected little of the turbulence beneath, that it hid his intensity and resolve. He was an illusionist, a master of emotional sleight of hand.

  His cool served him perfectly as a PJ, a search and rescue expert for the Air National Guard. He came off as affable and reassuring. But sometimes, when he was challenged or threatened, his attitude changed, and Jo glimpsed the warrior he had been.

  And was about to be again.

  One day gone, eighty-seven left. Gabe had been called up to active duty. At the end of the summer, he and others from the 129th Rescue Wing had orders for a four-month deployment to Djibouti, to provide combat search and rescue support for the U.S. military’s Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. He’d be back at the end of January. After that he’d remain on active duty for another eight months, but thought it possible he would serve much of that time at the Wing’s headquarters, Moffett Field in Mountain View.

  But as always when reservists were called up, Gabe’s life was getting blown to the wind. He wasn’t just a pararescueman; thanks to the G.I. Bill, he was also a graduate student at the University of San Francisco. Deployment was going to tear up his academic schedule. But his first priority was his ten- year-old daughter, Sophie. He was a single dad. His ex-girlfriend lived in the city but on the fringes of competence, and saw Sophie only twice a month. Gabe had gone to painful time and expense to modify his custody arrangement so that Sophie would live in San Francisco with his sister and her husband while he was deployed. Sophie wasn’t happy that he was going. But she knew it was his job. She’d been through it before.

  Jo hadn’t. But, holding him, she set that aside. She tried to stop the ticking in her head.

  He brushed her curls from her face. “You okay?”

  “Once I saw Tina, I was great.”

  His face looked sober. “It was only a close call. But I know that’s too close.”

  She suppressed thoughts about any dangers involved in his deploying to the Horn of Africa. And she knew she was far more head over heels for this man than she could ever have imagined.

  “What part of hell does your new case come from?” he said.

  “I’m going to perform a psychological autopsy on Tasia McFarland. It seems I’m going to ride the tiger.”

  His eyes widened. “Excited?”

  She had to think about it a moment. “Yes.”

  “Ready for the predators to come at you out of the tall grass?”

  “Undoubtedly not.”

  “You really are a thrill seeker, aren’t you?”

  Sharp guy, Gabe Quintana. She put her hands on his shoulders. “I am. How long can you stay?”

  He smiled and pulled her against him. And his cell phone rang.

  Jo leaned back. He answered the call.

  “Dave Rabin, what’s up?” he said, and within five seconds she knew that thrill seeking of a radically different kind was on his agenda.

  “Sixty minutes. I’ll be there.” He flipped his phone off. “Merchant tanker five hundred miles off the coast, reports a fire in the engine room. They’re adrift and down at the stern. Multiple casualties.”

  Jo reluctantly let him loose. A buzz seemed to radiate from him. He put a hand on her hip and kissed her again.

  “Bring ’em back,” she said. “Be safe.”

  He ran down the steps toward his truck. She hung in the doorway and watched him go. She didn’t want to close the door, to turn back to Tasia McFarland and the unblinking certainties of death. She watched him go until he was out of sight.

  10

  NOEL MICHAEL PETTY THUDDED UP THE HOTEL STAIRS, SWEATY AND winded, cradling the artifact inside the fatigue jacket. The hallway was dank but empty. Petty rushed inside the hotel room, slammed the door, and leaned back against it, breathless. Nobody slammed the door, and leaned back against it, breathless. Nobody had followed. Nobody had even noticed. Not at the ballpark or anyplace along the route to the Tenderloin.

  That’s because, when you hover like an angel, you become invisible.

  Quick, latch the chain. Clear a space on the table. Shove aside the scissors and the news cuttings. Let the tabloid articles and glossy magazine photos flutter to the floor. Take a breath.

  Carefully, ceremoniously, Petty pulled open the fatigue jacket and removed the artifact. It was a piece of turf from the baseball field, a lump of grass and earth about the diameter of a compact disc. Petty set it on the table and ran a hand across it, stroking the grass like a baby’s soft hair.

  Victory is mine.

  Stepping back, Petty pulled off the green watch cap and turned on th
e television. Tonight’s events were historic. It was vital not to miss a moment, not one beautiful second.

  There—news. Images sparkled on the screen, familiar and thrilling. The smoke so black, the blood so messy, Tasia’s hair so thick, fanning around her head in a gold comet’s tail. People screaming, fleeing from her body. Tasia had terrified the crowd, dying like that. What a cow.

  Bursting through the crowd came Searle Lecroix. Petty grimaced.

  Too late, Searle. She’s gone. She can no longer suck the love from a man’s bones. We’re free.

  Free. Petty glanced at the artifact. It was a memento of deliverance, like a chunk of the Berlin Wall.

  Lecroix shoved his way past the ravenous onlookers on the field, gawky strangers who wanted a piece of Tasia McFarland, who wanted a chance to say, I was there. But they were only about celebrity and sentiment. They would never understand. Tasia’s death was not an accident. It was a triumph.

  On-screen, Lecroix dropped to his knees beside Tasia’s body. Petty cringed.

  “Searle, you fool.”

  The death of a cow should not affect a man so. It was a painful sight. It diminished the victory.

  If you believed the gossip, Tasia had lured Searle Lecroix into her bed. But he couldn’t have known her. He couldn’t have given himself to her and received back in turn. Not from an unhinged, half- lunatic fame-whore who had fucked the president to get where she was.

  Lecroix gripped Tasia’s hand. He begged, “Help her.”

  Smarting, Petty turned away. But Tasia’s face followed. She stared down from the walls of the hotel room. Hundreds of photos, her beautiful face, her filthy gaze, her dark inner light, staring, knowing.

  Petty stared back. “But you didn’t know what was coming. You refused to listen.”

  Tasia had snubbed NMP. Then ignored NMP. She’d had the gall to rebuke and disregard NMP.

  A smile squeezed Petty’s lips, full of pain.

  Stop that. You are not a fat, weak- kneed fan. You are a righteous guardian and protector of the truth and the Good Ones. Petty scratched an armpit.

  The hotel room smelled stale and fuggy, like a cheap costume for a stage play. But that’s what this Tenderloin dive was—a disguise. Nobody would look here for a hovering angel.

  The news switched to a White House press conference. Robert McFarland was praising Tasia. He was waxing melodic about her talent.

  The thrill of victory subsided. Petty sloughed off the fatigue jacket and sat heavily on the bed. Generosity of spirit . . . was McFarland joking? The president of the United States was beatifying Saint Tasia, the Holy Cow.

  Slut, thief, liar.

  A heart as big as the sky. Letting out a moan, Petty thundered to the table, grabbed the artifact, and threw it at the television.

  This was insane. It was . . . a spell. The vixen had bewitched even the leader of the free world.

  All Petty’s work had been in vain. The king rat of politicians, a man of the smoothest tongue, a hypnotist, was spreading the lie. People would buy it. Heart as big as the sky would become conventional wisdom. It would twist people’s minds, turn them into Tasia- lovers. It would burrow under the skin of people who needed protection. Tasia, thief of hearts, would steal yet again, just as she’d stolen from NMP, but this time from beyond the grave.

  Her death hadn’t ended the battle. It had only intensified it.

  Petty heard a voice, a whisper, a promise. Don’t tell. You’re my eternal love. Shh.

  Deep breath. It was time to slough off Noel Michael Petty. Time to put on the camouflage that kept the Protector safe and anonymous. It worked on the Net, where nobody knows you’re a dog. Now, offline, Petty needed to assume the guise. Full-time, with no slipups.

  Going into the bathroom, Petty faced the dingy mirror. From now on, you’re not Noel. You’re not a sweaty fan who follows the tour around the country. You’re him. NMP.

  Tasia hadn’t seen the end coming. Neither had Searle Lecroix, though he’d been onstage, staring at her. And judging from the news footage, Lecroix still didn’t see. Tasia still held him in her thrall. And now the president was hypnotizing the public into believing the same thing. Somebody had to stop it.

  Somebody needed to expose Tasia once and for all. End the love affair with her. Get proof, and make noise, and shut the liars up for good.

  You are NMP, the archangel, the big bad bastard. You are the sword of truth.

  You’re the man.

  11

  IN THE MORNING JO WOKETO THE RADIO. “. . . investigation into the death of Tasia McFarland. A police source tells us that a psychiatrist has been hired to evaluate Tasia’s mental state.”

  She sat up.

  “Our source believes that the police are working on the theory that Tasia committed suicide, and want a psychological opinion to back it up.”

  She reached for the phone. Saw the clock: six twenty. Too early to harangue Lieutenant Tang about departmental leaks.

  She heard the foghorn. She kicked off the covers, pulled on a kimono, stumbled to the window, and opened the shutters. Fog skated across the bay and clung to the Golden Gate Bridge. But uphill, the sun was tingling through the clouds. The magnolia in the backyard looked slick in the early light.

  The news continued. Not a word about a merchant ship on fire and down by the stern five hundred miles off shore. Not a word about the 129th Rescue Wing. Accidents at sea could entangle rescuers in disaster, and she listened, shoulders tight, for the words Air National Guard. Nothing.

  She grabbed her climbing gear and drove to Mission Cliffs. She found a belay partner and spent forty-five minutes on the gym’s head wall. It soothed her. Hanging fifty feet off the ground, with nothing but a void between her and a broken neck, always cleared her head.

  She was at her desk by eight. She’d finally cleared out Daniel’s mountain bike and Outside magazines, and turned the front room into her office. She kept gold orchids on the bookcase and her favorite New Yorker cartoon framed on the wall—where a drowning man yells, “Lassie! Get help!” And Lassie goes to a psychiatrist.

  Normally she began a psychological autopsy by reading the police report and the victim’s medical and psychiatric records. But those weren’t yet available. To determine NASH—whether a death was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide—she needed to assess not only the victim’s physical and psychological history but also his or her background and relationships. Jo interviewed family, friends, and colleagues, and looked for warning signs of suicide or evidence that anyone might have intended the victim harm. She built a timeline of events leading up to the day of the victim’s death.

  Since she didn’t have records, she read press accounts of Tasia McFarland’s psychiatric history. It was sad and brutal. And Tasia hadn’t hesitated to talk about it.

  Tasia had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder at thirty-two. But she’d whipped between mania and depression for years before that. Volcanic highs and hideous lows had played out in public—tantrums, car wrecks, drug binges, and flights of creativity—as she veered from teen singing sensation to washed-up party animal to comeback queen. In short, as analyzed by Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and People magazine: sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.

  But bipolar disorder was a devastating diagnosis. The DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, defined the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, defined Bipolar I Disorder as the occurrence of one or more “Manic Episodes or Mixed Episodes,” though people often had major depressive episodes as well.

  During a manic episode, people didn’t need sleep and didn’t feel tired—for a week, a month, two months. They felt on top of the world. They might learn new languages or take up a new instrument. Their extraordinary energy and sense of power came on spontaneously, without being triggered by any outside event, such as graduating from college or winning an Oscar, that could generate euphoria.

  Jo wondered about Tasia, revved into the red zone on the night she sang a hi
t song to a stadium crowd in her hometown.

  Manic people could be gregarious and entertaining. In fact, physicians training in psychiatry were told: If you’re highly entertained by a patient, consider mania as a possible diagnosis. But while manic people could be lovable, they could also be exhausting.

  And when patients dropped into depression, they crashed. Guilt and hopelessness overwhelmed them. Suicide was common.

  And mixed episodes were the roughest of all: A person’s mood disturbance met the criteria for manic and major depressive episodes simultaneously. Mixed episodes were difficult to diagnose. Jo believed they were the state in which people were most likely to commit suicide.

  She thought about the way Rez Shirazi, the stuntman, had described Tasia: hyper but dismal.

  She got herself a cup of coffee. She needed Tasia’s prescription records and toxicology results. When well medicated, people with bipolar disorder could be accomplished and creative. They became physicists, computer scientists, artists. A number of famous classical composers had been bipolar.

  But people often went off their meds because they loved feeling manic. They loved the explosion of creativity brought on by mania.

  “Art and madness” was a cliché. But Jo had attended a med school lecture series on the mind and music. Strong evidence existed that Schumann had bipolar disorder. Gershwin may have had ADHD. And composers’ mental states influenced their compositions. Bipolar composers, she recalled, loved repetitive melodic motifs and sometimes became obsessed with particular sounds or tempos.

  Jo listened again to “The Liar’s Lullaby.” Her musical ear wasn’t sharp enough to pick out clues buried in the melody, but the lyrics were disturbing enough. You say you love our land, you liar / Who dreams its end in blood and fire. The third verse was less eerie, but nonetheless sad.

  I fell into your embrace

  Felt tears streaming down my face

  Fought the fight, ran the race

  Faltered, finally fell from grace.

  She tapped her fingers on the desk, wondering if the verse referred to Tasia’s marriage.

  Few photos existed of Tasia and Robert McFarland together. But online she found an old, and vivid, magazine photo essay. Tasia had met McFarland while performing for the troops, and several photos showed her mingling with soldiers. McFarland was prominent among them. He looked young, handsome, and sure of himself. In one lighthearted shot, McFarland and a bullet-headed officer Jo recognized as K. T. Lewicki, now White House chief of staff, had hoisted Tasia onto their shoulders. In another, taken soon after the McFarlands’ marriage, they brimmed with energy—seemingly from being in each other’s presence. Tasia looked like a saucy cheerleader, ready to single-handedly rouse the army to victory. McFarland looked like he believed himself the luckiest man alive: confident, swimming in love, and unselfishly proud of his talented young wife. They were laughing as though the world had revealed its secrets, and was beautiful.