The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  Authority always did. He had to strike first.

  We’ll get “insights” into Tasia’s “tortured” mind. This psychiatrist will give us a sad, I’m-so-sorry face, and blame Tasia’s mother and American society for her “tragic suicide.” You know she will—she’s from San Francisco. She’s a gubmint lackey, a useful idiot.

  This is how tyrants plant their boot on our faces. Not always with a midnight knock on the door, but through the comforting lies of a quack.

  A chill curled down his arms. He would put out the call. Keyes, the ex-merc who now drove for Blue Eagle Security, would answer, and that atavistic white power groupie he worked with, Ivory.

  Tasia warned us. She came to the concert armed with the jackal’s gun. She raised it high. She could not have shouted a louder message: True Americans will not go quietly.

  To quote Thomas Paine: Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

  Who’s with me?

  Yes, Keyes and Ivory would be dying to ride to the rescue. The question was how many people could they take with them when they rode off the cliff?

  AFTER JO SAID good-bye to Vienna Hicks, she walked back to her truck along crowded streets. Businessmen’s ties writhed like snakes in the wind. Above skyscrapers, clouds fled across the blue sky. When she turned on her phone it beeped with multiple messages from Tang.

  But the message she wanted, one from Gabe saying he was safe on dry land, wasn’t there. Her breath snagged. Her emotions caught on a bramble, fear glinting in a corner of her mind.

  She shook loose from the feeling. He would call. She wouldn’t. She would wait, because that was the unspoken rule. Instead she called Tang, who sounded like she’d been chewing on sandpaper.

  “Give me joy, Beckett. I need progress.”

  “Tasia’s sister thinks it’s fully possible she committed suicide.”

  “ ‘Fully possible’ doesn’t work. I need concrete results.”

  “You sound like you’re sitting on a sharp rock.”

  “You been watching the news? ‘Still no information on the bizarre death of Tasia McFarland, and with each passing hour speculation grows that the police are incompetent, in on the conspiracy,’ blah blah repeat until nauseated. The sharp rock’s sitting on me.”

  Jo stopped at a corner for a red light. Taxis and delivery trucks jostled for space at two miles an hour, horns quacking.

  “I need Tasia’s medical and psychiatric records. All of them, including files from the years when she was married to Robert McFarland,” she said.

  “Army records, yeah. Getting paperwork from the military is going to be like pulling teeth from a chicken.”

  “You expect them to drag their feet?” The light changed and Jo crossed the street, dodging oncoming pedestrians. “Who’s got their thumb on your neck, Amy?”

  “You want the list alphabetically, or in order of political throw-weight? The White House wants this to go away. K. T. Lewicki called the mayor to express the administration’s support for our investigation. In other words, the president’s chief of staff wants us to turn off the gas and snuff this story out. Get me something we can use, or we’re going to get squashed.”

  “Still nothing on the search for the bullet?” Jo said.

  “The Tooth Fairy is more likely to put it under your pillow than I and the department are to find it.”

  “The Warren Commission found a magic bullet on a hospital stretcher in Dallas after JFK was assassinated.”

  “Beckett.” Tang’s next words were barked at her in sharply inflected Mandarin. “Don’t you dare inflict that conspiracy garbage on me.”

  “Political paranoia is as American as apple pie and obesity. We dine on it as a nation.”

  “The departmental powers want me to clear the case by the end of the week. Get me something solid, Jo. I need progress by tomorrow so I’ll at least have dog chow to feed to the brass.”

  “On it.”

  “Have you gone to Tasia’s house yet?”

  “Next stop.”

  “Step lively, chickie.”

  NMP—YOU ARE not Noel Michael Petty, you are NMP, the big bad bastard, the sword of truth—gazed down the hillside. He was invisible in the thick brush, hovering like an angel.

  A man was inside the house below. A man in a shiny blue blazer who had parked in the driveway and jogged to the door, sorting keys in his hand.

  Hours of surveillance were about to pay off. Hours of silent hovering, of waiting for the chance to get inside the house without breaking in, because break-ins brought the police, or left forensic evidence, and—Don’t tell, precious love, promise me—NMP was no fool. And now, finally, the property manager had shown up.

  To Tasia’s house. The battle was about to be joined.

  Blue Blazer Man, quick and skinny, scurried inside the house and shut off a beeping alarm. He opened a window to let in fresh air. He came to the sliding glass patio door and opened it a crack, thank you very much. Then he disappeared.

  NMP waited. Inside that house lay proof, and the truth, and NMP was going to get it, because the truth will set you free.

  A minute later, the front door slammed. Blue Blazer Man got back in his car and sat there, making phone calls.

  NMP slipped down the hillside and ran across the backyard. Noel Michael Petty might have lumbered, or tripped and fallen, but not NMP. He glided inside through the sliding glass door.

  He stood there, dizzy.

  It looked like Tasia. It smelled like Tasia. Slowly he turned his bulk to take in the panorama. In the living room was a grand piano. Sheet music lay on top of it. He balled his fists and pressed them to his mouth.

  Don’t squeal. Don’t gasp. He saw the photos on the walls. Oh, the photos! So many famous people, all lined up to get their picture taken with Tasia.

  He crept along the wall and examined each in detail. He recognized many of them from TV and magazines. Red carpet shots. Awards ceremonies. Tasia singing the national anthem at the Indianapolis 500, wind blowing her hair across her face like a shroud—a portentous shot. To finally see those famous photos firsthand felt like coming home.

  See, Tasia: I know you. I’ve been this close to you, from the beginning.

  This hallway, this house, validated everything. All the hours, the days, the year NMP had spent gaining familiarity with Tasia’s background. Learning about her early life, her school days, her early forays into entertainment; they all showed here. The weekends NMP had spent at the library, the online all-nighters tracing her life through articles and links, images and videos, music downloads, chat room discussion threads about her, snarky comments by know-nothings . . . he had followed her lifeblood, from her beating heart to her fingertips. That’s how well Petty knew her.

  Petty.

  Stop calling yourself by your last name. You’re NMP. Out on the streets, you’re three letters, no more. No ID, no driver’s license or wallet, no way to identify you. You’re NMP, big bad bastard of the Tenderloin.

  NMP knocked a fist against the side of his head as a reminder to be careful.

  Then he fought down a giddy giggle. He was inside Tasia’s house. It was like exploring the heretofore- undiscovered tomb of an ancient ruler. And, oh, goodness—in the living room were photos that weren’t to be found on the Net. Private snapshots, albums showing Tasia with friends and family. Photos from the Bad Dogs and Bullets tour.

  NMP’s stomach soured. Who were those people? Entourage. Stage crew. Groupies, managers, hangers-on, bandmates, stuntmen. Why did they get backstage passes? NMP was the tour’s most fervent follower. Where was his backstage pass?

  Not fair. Not motherloving fair.

  He was seeing her soul, at last, and it was corrupt.

  Disgusted, NMP crept into the kitchen—and saw signs of Searle. The empty box of KFC in the trash. Searle Lecroix was an extra-crispy man; it was in US Weekly magazine. Up the stairs, creeping on tiptoe, big bad dude moving like Papa Bear sneaking up on Goldilocks, finding himself outside her bedroom door, h
er fantasyland, her center . . .

  Her clothes were draped across the bed, the nightstand, the chair, the floor—as if she had performed some debauched striptease. Guitar leaning against the chair. Boots by the bed.

  Petty gasped, a hard involuntary moan of pain.

  Outside, a car door slammed. Petty lurched to the window and peeked through the blinds. Somebody was here. Petty fled the bedroom.

  14

  TASIA MCFARLAND HADN’T BEEN SOLELY A SINGER. SHE HAD WRITTEN songs from the time she was a child. The melodies seemed to spin inside her head, growing louder and more insistent until they woke her at night and demanded that she play them on the piano. The music seemed to jump from her hands like sparks, and she would play until her fingers stung. By the time she finished high school she had written two hundred songs and a fully orchestrated rock cantata.

  Jo drove up winding streets through the Twin Peaks neighborhood where Tasia and Vienna Hicks had grown up. The city tumbled around her in all directions, houses and apartments stacked on ridges and crammed into valleys like dice. The view was one that sold the place to the world. The bay glittered. The Golden Gate anchored the city to the wild Marin Headlands to the north. Along the western edge of the city, the fog curled against the beach, cold and thick.

  As the hill rose higher and grew ridiculously steep, the streets became rustic. Eucalyptus groves grew in ravines, filling the depths with shadow. Manicured lawns bordered the snaking road. Neat homes boasted groomed gardens and rustling, well-tended pines. She followed the road past Sutro Tower. The radio mast rose almost a thousand feet above the peak. No matter how aggressive the fog became, Sutro Tower’s three gigantic prongs protruded above it. The mast was like a science fiction monster, awaiting the signal to awake and rampage through the city below. Or so Jo had imagined when she was nine.

  Tasia’s house was an Italian-style villa tucked against the hillside, gazing down on the Financial District and the bay. Jo got out of the Tacoma and a biting wind stung her cheeks. The driveway was so steep she nearly needed crampons.

  Behind her on the street a car door slammed. “Hang on, there.”

  Jo turned and saw a man walking toward her. “Are you the property manager?”

  He climbed the drive, shaking his head. He was in his mid-thirties, with a guileless face and boyish blond hair, dressed in jeans and a Bad Dogs and Bullets T-shirt. His hands were stuffed in his pockets but the nonchalant façade didn’t hide the red flush in his neck. He was out of shape.

  “You the psychiatrist I heard about?”

  “I’m Dr. Beckett. And you?”

  He stopped beside her. “Ace Chennault.”

  “Tasia’s autobiographer.”

  “The author is gone but the ghost remains.”

  He tried to sound jocular, but only managed forced. Belatedly he extended his hand.

  Jo shook it. “I’d like to interview you. I’m—”

  “Performing a psychological autopsy. I know. News travels fast.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Perhaps we can help each other out.”

  His cloudless smile and baby- fat cheeks must have gotten him interviews with kindly grandmothers and with rock singers who were needy for a big brother’s attention. His voice had a hint of jollity. But Jo sensed a practiced stratagem behind the sad clown’s eyes. Journalists, one had once told her, needed to connect instantly and deeply with people they interviewed. They needed the illusion of intimacy, of being a person’s best friend for a day or an hour, to get the really juicy quotes.

  And Ace Chennault was a journalist who’d just lost his biggest source—and source of income.

  “Can we set up a time later today?” Jo said.

  “I thought we could do some horse trading. You want to poke through my notes and listen to the stream-of-consciousness narration Tasia recorded?” He smiled again. “I’m willing to share it all with you. But be fair. Give me something in return.”

  “Such as?”

  “Your unique insights into her mind.”

  A mental warning light blinked red. “If my report becomes part of the public record, you’ll have access to it.”

  “That’s not what I was hoping.”

  “I figured not. But I’m working for the SFPD. They have dibs on my work.”

  The smile broadened. “No tit, no tattle?”

  She put on a practiced face of her own: neutral. “Can’t play it that way.”

  Behind her the front door opened. A man in a blue blazer extended his hand. “Dr. Beckett? I’m the property manager.”

  Jo stepped into the front hall. Chennault followed.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  He shrugged, gesturing no biggie. “I’ve been here before. Stayed in the guest room half a dozen times.”

  “Okay, but right now I’m the one with permission from the police to come inside. Sorry, Mr. Chennault.”

  He raised his hands. “Wouldn’t want to muddle the pack order, Alpha girl. Mr. Manager and I’ll wait while you take your tour.”

  Jo smiled firmly, neutrally, at him. “How about we grab coffee after this?”

  Hands still up, he retreated. When he reached the door, he put his hands together and bowed, like a Thai offering a wai.

  She watched him walk down the steps toward his car. To the property manager she said, “Have you seen him here before?”

  “No, but I’m not here very often.”

  “I’m going to survey the house. I may be a while.”

  “I’ll be in the car. Got calls to make.”

  Jo took out her digital camera and walked deeper into the house. It was compact and elegantly appointed. Food in the kitchen: organic arugula, an empty KFC bucket in the trash. Vitamins, herbal supplements, and a bottle of Stolichnaya on the counter.

  She wandered into the living room. The plate-glass windows overlooked a small backyard that rose steeply into bottlebrush trees and rhododendrons on the hillside.

  The police had been through the house already, and apparently hadn’t found any evidence of a crime. So Jo was looking for the contours of Tasia’s emotional landscape. And she was looking for traces of her final day.

  Two big bookcases were haphazardly piled with paranormal romance novels, old copies of Entertainment Weekly, and a country music Listeners’ Choice award.

  Mixed in with the spicy books about hot girl-on-werewolf love was a copy of Gerald Posner’s Case Closed. Jo picked it up, perplexed. The book was an anti-conspiracy text, considered an authoritative tome debunking conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination.

  Why was Tasia interested in JFK? Or presidential assassination?

  She snapped a photo of the bookshelf.

  The grand piano was covered with slumping piles of music manuscript paper. Jo was certain that the police had shuffled through them looking for a suicide note. They hadn’t found one. The manuscript paper was covered with Tasia’s compositions. Musical notes crowded the treble staff. The lyrics rushed across the page, as if Tasia had been gasping to keep up with the music that poured from her head.

  Propped on the music stand was “The Liar’s Lullaby.” Tasia had scored a complete arrangement for piano. At the top she’d scribbled Allegro. Counterpoint/Round. Dense chords packed the bass clef.

  Said you wanted me to be your choir Help you build the funeral pyre.

  Jo picked out the piece on the keyboard. The melody was minor key, droning, repetitive, sad. It sounded almost compulsive. From the evidence heaped on top of the Steinway, Tasia had been filled with desperation and obsession.

  Jo carefully photographed each sheet. Then she went upstairs.

  In Tasia’s bedroom she found disorder. The bed was unmade and clothes were strewn on the floor.

  Jo’s own wardrobe was functional. She wore tailored blouses and well-fitting pants that allowed her to simultaneously look professional and run for her life. No pencil skirts, no scarves that wrapped around her neck. Nothing that would prevent her from l
eaping out a window if a schizophrenic gangbanger heard voices telling him the bitch needed cutting, or a psychopathic convict decided, on a whim, to strangle her. She had combats for the weekend, sweats and shorts for climbing, and a black suit for testifying in court. If she wanted to go high fashion, she’d put on her paisley Doc Martens.

  The thought that Tasia McFarland, or anybody, would treat designer clothing—clothing that cost enough to put a teenager through college—like dishrags dropped on the floor to mop up spilled coffee, boggled her. Either Tasia had been inured to the privileges of fame, or she was so depressed that she couldn’t even pick up a . . . she looked at a label . . . Dolce & Gabbana dress from the bathroom floor.

  She took more photos. Then she turned to the bed. The covers were turned down on both sides. Two pillows had distinct impressions. A set of men’s boots sat beside it. Worn, well- loved red cowboy boots.

  On an easy chair, beneath a gauzy pile of women’s blouses, she found a man’s shirt that still smelled of aftershave. She checked inside the collar. A cleaner’s mark read SL. Leaning against the chair was an acoustic guitar.

  Searle Lecroix had, it seemed, been serenading Tasia shortly before her fateful trip to the concert.

  She headed into the bathroom. The wind sliced through the open window. Half a dozen prescription bottles sat on the counter.

  Tasia’s pharmaceutical cornucopia looked as colorful as confetti. Antianxiety drugs. Vicodin and Tylenol with codeine. Sleeping pills. Diet pills, aka amphetamines. Prozac.

  Lithium. From the scrip label, the prescription had been filled two months earlier, but the bottle was full.

  Off her meds.

  Jo lined up the bottles and took photos, making sure she got the labels and the prescribing physicians’ names. All these bottles would be checked by the medical examiner and cross-referenced for tox screening in connection with Tasia’s autopsy. But Jo wanted to verify their contents for herself.

  The wind whistled through the open window. She heard a car drive past the house. Men’s voices batted about on the wind.