The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  At nine, Amy Tang phoned. “Tasia’s autopsy is this morning. Medical and psychiatric records might be with you this afternoon, but full tox and blood work will take days. Her next of kin will meet with you at ten A.M.—her sister, Vienna Hicks.”

  Jo wrote down Hicks’s phone number. “Did you know that police sources are talking to the press about me?”

  “As I told you, this is a cheap thrill ride, not the Pirates of the Caribbean. But I’ll remind people to keep their mouths shut.”

  Jo looked again at the photo of Tasia and Robert McFarland, young and in love. She didn’t know how Tasia had gotten from there to writing, But Robby T is not the One / All that’s needed is the gun. She wondered if Tasia’s sister could tell her.

  12

  SHORTLY BEFORE TEN, JO DROVE DOWNTOWN. THE STREETS OF THE Financial District were packed with cars and delivery trucks. The sidewalks bustled. The sun flashed from skyscraper windows, and wind funneled between the buildings. Jo pushed through a door into a coffeehouse where silverware clattered and the staff wore facial piercings and protest buttons pinned to berets. Vienna Hicks waved from a table against the windows.

  Jo worked her way through the crowded room. Hicks stood and clasped her hand. “Dr. Beckett. I’m Vienna.”

  Vienna Hicks stood six feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds. Her ash-blue suit was impeccable. Her red hair looked like a runaway fire.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” Jo said.

  “I was downtown on business. I’m a paralegal at Waymire and Fong. They’re handling Tasia’s estate, and they’ll tackle any lawsuits that get filed against it.”

  She sat again, solidly. Her physique looked too grand for the tiny table. She had the forceful gaze of a grizzly bear. She eyed Jo up and down, and didn’t look dazzled.

  “Psychiatrist. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. They’re running on empty, aren’t they?” she said.

  “The police?”

  “They don’t know how to label Tasia’s death.”

  “The police are searching for an explanation. I’m here to help them find it.”

  Vienna tapped manicured nails on the table, patently skeptical. “This place is stifling. Let’s walk.”

  She stood and headed for the door, parting the crowd around the counter like an ocean liner. Jo hustled after her. Outside, Vienna threw a crimson scarf around her neck and strode along the sidewalk toward the Embarcadero Center. The scarf whipped in the wind like a crusader’s banner.

  “You want a label? The media gave Tasia enough of them to carpet the streets at a ticker-tape parade.” She put on a pair of oversize sunglasses. They barely contained the force of her gaze.

  “Starlet. Mouseketeer. Pop tart,” she said. “Loser, reality show contestant, drug addict.”

  She headed toward the waterfront. “A-list dropout. Fame whore. Presidential reject.” She glanced at Jo. “Manic-depressive.”

  “Was that officially diagnosed?”

  “By a board-certified psychiatrist. Rapid-cycling Type One bipolar disorder.”

  Vienna’s cat’s-cream skin was nearly luminous in the sunlight. Her red hair flew about her head in the wind.

  “You want to know if she killed herself? Fully possible. Her major depressive episodes were deeper than a bomb crater.”

  “When did she begin showing signs of the disorder?” Jo said.

  “Her teens. It became obvious in her early twenties. During her marriage.”

  “Was it a factor in her divorce?”

  Vienna’s jaw cranked down. “You’d have to ask him.”

  Him being the man who got 67 million votes in the most recent election, whose face graced the cover of every news magazine on the rack, and whose voice echoed from the television every ten minutes, day and night. Piece of cake.

  “You don’t speak to Robert McFarland, I take it,” Jo said.

  “I don’t even speak of him. And I never speak out about him. Tasia did that enough when she was off her medication.”

  Jo nodded. Ahead, she saw the clock tower at the ferry building, the bay, and Alcatraz.

  “Besides,” Vienna said, “you don’t need to hear my opinion on Rob. There’s plenty to go around. Read the Vanity Fair profile, the one that described Tasia as a hopped-up, bebop Bunny wannabe with her gleaming eyes on the prize.”

  Jo kept her mouth closed. If Vienna wanted to talk, she wanted to hear it.

  “I presume you’ve got the whole IMDb-of-crazy database that lists Tasia’s greatest hits of conspiracy theory,” Vienna said.

  “I’ve seen a few clips.”

  “Fox News?”

  “Talking about the Second Amendment. Assault rifles for all. Homeland Security putting tranquilizers in the water supply,” Jo said. “The YouTube rant against the Federal Reserve.”

  Vienna’s mouth pursed. “The vitriol was clinical paranoia, and yeah, it was embarrassing as well as frightening. But in her defense, she was off her meds then. In recent years she got much better treatment and good med management. The political rants stopped.”

  They paused at a corner. Palm trees stood sturdy against the breeze, fronds cutting the air. A tram rolled past, orange and yellow, one of the mid-twentieth-century electric trolleys recently resurrected by the city. When it stopped, Jo half-expected to see Humphrey Bogart climb off, fedora rakishly cocked.

  “Being Tasia’s sister must have been difficult—”

  “Eight years of medical training for that insight? You went to public schools, didn’t you?”

  “—but you must have felt both angry and protective of her.”

  Vienna’s Afrika-Corps-size sunglasses hid her eyes, but she radiated heat. The light changed. Vienna plowed across the street toward the waterfront.

  “And helpless,” Jo said. “As if she was being taken from you by a host of banshees, and you were powerless to stop it.”

  Vienna walked on for a few seconds. Then she turned to Jo and pulled off the shades. She let out a slow, barely controlled breath.

  “People feasted on her like vultures. And she enabled it,” Vienna said. “She was so passionate about performing—so talented, so needy for an audience, so . . . panicked about the idea that all the attention might go away. She practically staked herself out on the ground and called them down to tear chunks from her flesh.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Jo said.

  “Thank you. Tell me it was an accident. Please.”

  “That’s why I’m talking to you.”

  The wind blew Vienna’s scarf skyward. “I know.”

  “Did you know she had the gun?”

  “It always worried me.”

  Jo surmised how Vienna felt: In a perverse way, the fait accompli was a relief. The dread she had lived with for years, the fear that her sister would suffer harm, had come to pass, and brought with it release from the awful pressure and anxiety. None of that lessened Vienna’s grief. But the grinding worry that never went away . . . had now gone away.

  “Did she ever threaten to shoot herself?” Jo said.

  “Not in so many words. ‘What’s the point?’ she’d say. ‘Who’d miss me? Would people treat me like Kurt Cobain if I played his final verse?’ ”

  “That must have been awful for you. Did she ever attempt suicide?”

  Vienna’s lips parted, words seemingly on the tip of her tongue. Tart words. Then she checked herself. “Maybe he can tell you. Or at least supply her medical records from the army hospital.”

  Superb. Intra-family feuds, with a guy who had round-the-clock Secret Service protection.

  “Any attempts you personally can tell me about?” Jo said.

  “Half-hearted, twelve years ago. Southern Comfort and a dozen ibuprofen.”

  Vienna glanced at the bay. A windsurfer scudded along atop the whitecaps, his lime-green sail a shark’s fin.

  “She also said she pictured herself going out like fireworks on the Fourth of July,” Vienna said. “Did you know she was writing an autobiography?�
��

  “No. Did she leave notes? A draft?”

  “Notes, photos, lots of recorded ramblings. She wasn’t writing it herself.”

  “Ghostwriter?”

  “Man named Ace Chennault.”

  Jo took out a notebook and wrote it down. “Know how I can reach him?”

  “He’s around. He’s a music journalist, was on the road with her for the last few months, gathering material.” She smiled briefly, a flash of teeth. “There’s family, and then there’s entourage.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to your sister?”

  “Yesterday morning. She called to make sure I’d gotten the tickets she sent.”

  Jo stopped writing. “I’m sorry, I should have known you were at the concert.”

  “Yeah.”

  The clipped syllable sounded like pain itself.

  “How did she sound?” Jo said.

  “Soaring, but agitated. Sort of . . .” She tilted her hand side to side. Comme ci, comme ça. “Disconcerted. Fizzing like peroxide.”

  “How long had she sounded that way?”

  “A few weeks. But she could swing from mania to depression within days.”

  Rapid cycling indicated a deteriorating psychological condition. It meant the bipolar disorder wasn’t under control. Rapid cycling could result from the disorder’s progression over many years, or from poor medicating, self-medicating, or a patient going off her meds.

  “Did she ever have mixed episodes?” Jo said.

  Vienna frowned. “Not as far as I know.”

  “What was she like when she was hypomanic?”

  “Like a Saturn rocket. Full throttle, roaring straight for the sky. Incredibly creative. She’d write songs and record all night. Funny and outgoing.”

  “And when she experienced full-blown mania?” Jo said.

  “Challenger. Blast off, screaming for outer space, ka-blooey.”

  “Did she engage in dangerous behavior?”

  “She’d hit the sack with every man in arm’s reach. Snort cocaine, even out the coke with vodka-and-OxyContin smoothies, cool off by driving the Pacific Coast Highway, headlights off, hundred miles an hour. Surely you’ve seen her mug shot online,” she said. “I posted her bail.”

  She stared at the whitecaps on the bay. “Listen, I’m venting here. But the last few years, Tasia worked at managing her life. She quit the drugs and the booze binges. Stopped being promiscuous. She didn’t crash into the dark, dark holes like in the old days. She didn’t have weeklong sleepless jags where she rewrote the Ring Cycle as an epic about stock car racing. She was stable.”

  “Did you see her often?”

  “No. She has a house near Twin Peaks, but she’s been touring.”

  “Did she talk to you recently about ending her life?” Jo said.

  “No.”

  “Did she seem to be making any preparations—had she given away any of her possessions? Made a will?”

  “Wrote a will ten years ago. Otherwise, no.”

  “Did she have any enemies?”

  Vienna turned her head slowly, and gave Jo the remorseless grizzly bear gaze. “The police played her ‘I’m going to be assassinated’ recording for me. It was . . . shocking. But I have seen no evidence that anybody killed her. If you have any, tell me. I mean now, Doctor.” The gaze didn’t relent. “I want the truth.”

  Jo knew that Vienna didn’t simply want the truth; she needed it. Without it she would live like a wounded animal, bleeding and pain-stricken, burdened with doubts and guilt her entire life.

  Jo hoped she could help provide her with it. That’s why she did the job.

  “I don’t yet know what happened, but I’m trying my best to find out. Could anybody have wished your sister harm?”

  Vienna fought her emotions. “Real harm, not conspiracy theory bullshit? People are saying she took a bullet meant for Searle Lecroix, or that the stuntman shot her—he has a Muslim name, Shirazi, so it’s a jihadist plot to destroy country music. Or she was given hallucinogenic drugs that made her shoot herself.”

  That, Jo thought, was actually an interesting possibility.

  “She made enemies right and left. She was a diva. Ninety percent were showbiz rivals or family members she antagonized. But did people hate her enough to what, secretly load bullets in a gun she thought was unloaded? How preposterous is that? How many people had access to that gun? Not many.”

  Vienna looked at the windsurfers on the bay, their sails iridescent in the salt spray and sunshine. “The medical examiner’s expediting the autopsy. They’ll be releasing her body, and I have to plan the memorial service. I need to bury my sister. You understand that, Dr. Beckett?”

  “Perfectly.”

  She looked at Jo. “Did somebody kill her? I have no idea.”

  13

  These are the times that try men’s souls.

  —Thomas Paine

  THE CURSOR BLINKED ON THE SCREEN. HIS FINGERTIPS TINGLED. HE typed the words that transformed him.

  Call me Paine.

  His thoughts pulsed. When he spoke aloud, people found him clumsy. An awkward white guy, soft around the middle—human mayonnaise. But when he sat before the glowing computer screen and reached into the minds beyond it, he became fluent and convincing. Power surged through his fingers.

  The jackal in the Oval Office is playing games with us. Legion is plying us with lies. He thinks we can’t see his ass hanging out.

  Beyond the rooftops, downtown San Francisco gleamed in the morning sun. The Transamerica pyramid was a lustrous white edifice, the waters of the bay deceptively smooth. The postcard view disguised the degenerate reality. Whores, addicts, gays. And everywhere, coming out of drainpipes and cracks in the sidewalk, illegals. The ROW—the Rest of the World—a seething mass infecting the nation with their leprosy and laziness.

  The city was a magnificent arena. What exquisite irony that the end game should play out here.

  Watch the video footage from last night’s concert. Not the film shot by the official camera crew—that footage has already been altered to depict the story the gubmint wants sheeple to believe. Watch videos shot by concertgoers. Raw footage of Tasia’s death. It reveals the shocking truth.

  He wiped his palms on his jeans. He was logged on through an anonymizer, a tool that stripped out identifying information about his computer and made his activities on the Net untraceable. Supposedly.

  The discussion boards at Tree of Liberty were heaving. Thousands of comments. Battle cries. Pledges to fight to the death. The passion was unbelievable. His people, the online rant- ’n’-ravers, loved Paine. They needed him. They bought him. The stock he owned in ammunition manufacturers was going to shoot through the roof. And some commenters were more than mere armchair insurgents. Tom Paine had real volunteers out there.

  But these were nerve-racking days. Tasia was gone, and time was desperately short. To save himself from a full-blown attack, he had to act now. Fear touched the back of his neck with a dry heat.

  The truth, despite what the more excitable members of our community believe, is that the shooter did not execute Tasia from the stunt helicopter.

  I know what some of you think—Look at the stuntmen’s names. Shirazi. Andreyev. And yes, Shirazi is a Muslim name. Andreyev is Russian. These men come from enemy stock, but the facts are indisputable: Neither shot Tasia. The angle of fire is wrong.

  In the hall beyond the door, people passed by, laughing and chatting. Paine pulled his hands from the keyboard. His heart was racing.

  He was a jack of many trades, but he was a master of persuasion—written, emotional, and political. He hated the word prankster. Intimidator suited him better. He was the rock in the gears, the sugar in the gas tank. He stopped things. Or kicked them off. Politicians talked; Paine turned propaganda into deeds.

  He picked up a matchbook and flipped it between his fingers. He needed to stoke the fire.

  Analyze the videos. They’re blurred and shaky, but look. Her murderer fi
red a single shot from a high-powered rifle from the stage rigging in centerfield.

  The gubmint will use Tasia’s murder as an excuse to confiscate our firearms. Expect the second amendment to be suspended within the week. National Guard checkpoints will be erected after that. We’ll be stopped, arrested, and interned. Be ready, people.

  Yeah, that was good. He was getting warmed up now. His blood heated his hands.

  The police investigation into Tasia’s death is puppet theater. The SFPD will never produce the bullet that ended Tasia’s life. Doing so would prove, incontrovertibly, that she was killed by a round fired from a military-issue sniper rifle, not a Colt .45.

  And now the authorities have thrown another curve ball. They can’t silence the outcry over Tasia’s assassination, so they’ve decided to smother us with psychobabble. They’ve hired a psychiatrist to analyze Tasia’s death.

  This is not a joke.

  Tasia’s murder had been bold, incredibly so. She was a fire, and she’d been put out. But much worse was coming, straight at him, unless he took action immediately. Government minions—Legion’s legions—would descend on him like demons. Robert McFarland could cry for the TV cameras, but his people certainly weren’t. They were thinking Finish the job. They would come for Tom Paine.