The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  “And I see that today we’re playing Outbreak,” Jo said.

  Mr. Peebles shook the thermometer like a pro. He squinted at it, bared his teeth, and cooed in alarm. He must have seen Ferd do the same a hundred times. He stuck the wrong end in his mouth and posed like FDR smoking from his cigarette holder. He pulled it out again. Jo crossed the room and grabbed it before he could insert it anyplace else.

  Welcome to Ferd’s palace of hypochondria.

  The little capuchin, officially Ferd’s “emotional support companion,” fixed her with an unnerving stare, like he was silently adding her to his shit list. And with a monkey, that term was literal.

  “Don’t get cocky,” she said. “I can outwit you just by counting to three.”

  Mr. Peebles scampered across the sofa and jumped onto Ferd’s shoulder. Jo sat on the edge of the sofa and rubbed Sophie’s arm.

  “Look like you hit rock bottom, champ. You hanging in?”

  Sophie shrugged. Jo put the back of her hand to the girl’s forehead.

  Ferd approached. “Her temp was a hundred one point three when I checked ten minutes ago.”

  Sophie turned her shining eyes to Jo. “When’s my dad going to get here?”

  “As soon as he can after he gets back.”

  “Gets back? Where’d he go?”

  Jo mentally slapped herself on the forehead. Don’t increase the kid’s anxiety, you dork. “He’s out with the Wing. But I know he’ll pick you up as soon as possible.” She brushed Sophie’s damp hair off her face. “Feel pretty lousy?”

  “Hideous.”

  Jo raised her eyebrows. “Not merely disgusting?”

  “H-i-d-e-o-u-s. It was on my vocabulary quiz today. I barfed on the test paper.”

  Jo smiled. Sophie’s sense of humor always took her by surprise. “I’ll vouch for your ability to use the word in conversation.”

  Jo’s smile waned. Her day was packed to the gills and she felt like a heavy stick was prodding her between the shoulder blades.

  “Think you can walk next door to my house? My guest room has a big warm bed. You can watch TV and sleep until your dad gets here.”

  Sophie nodded. Ferd got her backpack and Jo helped her on with her shoes. At the door Jo turned to thank Ferd, and saw the can of Lysol in his hand. She glared. He hid it behind his back.

  “Feel better, Sophie,” he said.

  She replied without expression. “Wilco.”

  Jo paused on the top step. “I’m glad you were home. Really.”

  “It was fortunate.”

  Ferd’s face, so often tangled with anxiety or dreamy with unrequited love for her, was sober. He didn’t have to say anything else. They were both thinking it. Nobody could count on good fortune.

  17

  JO TUCKED SOPHIE IN BED, UPSTAIRS IN HER GUEST ROOM. SHE PULLED A down comforter over the little girl and turned the television to Nickelodeon.

  “If you want, I can call your aunt Regina and see if she can pick you up.”

  “Aunt Regina’s at traffic school.”

  “Then we’ll wait for your dad.” She handed Sophie the remote. “I’ll be downstairs. Call if you need me.”

  “If I do, you’ll come back?” Sophie sounded like she was on a rickety bridge, crossing a canyon alone.

  “Of course I will. I know you’d rather be in your own bed, but look at this as a field trip to Dr. Jo’s House of No School and all the TV you can sleep through.”

  Sophie nodded tightly. Her lips were pressed together, white. Jo told herself: Get the anxiety out of your voice, your face, your posture. She sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the little girl’s hair back from her face.

  “Did you always know you wanted to be a doctor?” Sophie said.

  “Actually, I started thinking about it when I was a little older than you.”

  “Really?” Sophie’s eyes brightened. “Is it hard?”

  Jo thought about her answer. “It’s a challenge. But I think challenges are a good thing. Medicine is fascinating. And best of all, you get to help people. There’s a lot to learn, but lucky for me, I liked school.”

  “I do, too.”

  “Tell you what. When you feel better, I’ll tell you stories about medical school. Funny ones.”

  “And about gruesome diseases? Like flesh-eating bacteria.” Sophie was smiling. She turned serious. “I wouldn’t be afraid to talk about it. It would be fascinating.”

  Jo swallowed a smile, strangely touched. “Was that word also on your vocabulary test?”

  “I would have got a star, except for the barf.” She became thoughtful. “What’s gorilla warfare?”

  Jo went still. “I’m sorry?”

  “Do monkeys fight people?”

  “No. Where’d you get that idea?”

  Sophie shrugged. “I heard the teachers talking about gorilla warfare.”

  “It’s g-u-e-r-r-i-l-l-a. People—rebels. Don’t worry about the monkeys.”

  Or about your dad, going away to battle.

  Sophie nodded. Jo snugged the comforter around her and went downstairs.

  In her office she sat down at the desk, leaned on her elbows, and rubbed her forehead. Anger served neither her nor Sophie. She told herself to let it go.

  She told herself to watch out for Dawn Parnell.

  Her cell phone rang. It seemed to ring all the way through her like a fire alarm.

  She grabbed it. On the display, she saw Tina. “Yo.”

  “Try not to sound so thrilled to hear from me.”

  Jo cleared her throat. “Yo, my sistah.”

  “Be that way, then.”

  “Sorry. This day has exploded like a cherry bomb. The case is treacherous and Sophie’s here, sick, and”—she got up and shut the office door—“Sophie’s mother practically drop-kicked her out the door of her car, poor kid. And Gabe’s been on a rescue since last night and if I don’t hear from him soon I am going to have a psychotic break. I mean I’m going to crawl up the wall and across the ceiling.”

  “Jo, I’m sorry. What kind of rescue?”

  “Sea rescue. A tanker’s on fire five hundred miles offshore. That means midair refueling of the Pave Hawk.”

  “Sit down. Put your head between your knees. Don’t eat the wallpaper.”

  “They should be back.”

  “They will be.”

  “It’s been fourteen hours.”

  “Jo, listen to me. Gabe’s a pro, and strong. And so are you. Strong. I mean it.”

  The conviction in Tina’s voice brought her up short. She exhaled.

  “Thanks. Sorry.” She sat down and ran a hand through her hair. “Let’s start again. Yo, my sistah, what’s up?”

  “Are you watching the news?”

  Jo’s landline rang. This time the buzz she felt was low and anxious. “No.”

  “You’re on it.”

  “Hang on, my other phone’s ringing.”

  “Of course it is,” Tina said.

  Jo picked up the landline. Amy Tang said, “If this crap goes viral we may not have till the end of the week to clear the case.”

  “What crap?” Jo told Tina good-bye, took the landline to the living room, and turned on the television.

  “I tried to keep your name out of things, but some numb nuts leaked it.”

  The local news bulletin was on. A reporter was standing outside Tasia McFarland’s house. Behind her, two police officers guarded the front door.

  “. . . have not confirmed the identity of the man attacked by the intruder, but our sources are telling us it’s”—she glanced at her notes—“Ace Chennault, a music journalist who was traveling on assignment with Tasia’s tour.”

  “I hear your TV. That’s Triple A ball. Flip it to the majors,” Tang said. “The Freakout News Network.”

  Jo changed to a national news channel. Behind a neon-blue desk, a blond correspondent was interviewing a guest straight off the cliché shelf. Plump, disheveled, wearing a tweed jacket and bow tie—markers that s
aved the network the trouble of writing out a name tag saying PROF. Jo wondered if they’d sent an intern on a scavenger hunt to the nearest college campus with a list that read, Neanderthal skull from Anthropology Dept; Cheerleaders’ spanky pants; Absent-minded professor.

  “. . . no indication that she was so depressed that she was likely to commit suicide. I’ve analyzed videotape from the three performances preceding the concert in San Francisco, and the evidence is simply not there.”

  “What’s this?” Jo said.

  “This,” Tang said, “is the clock starting on your fifteen minutes.”

  On-screen, the blond correspondent nodded thoughtfully at the professor. “What warning signs would Tasia have given if she had in fact been suicidal?”

  “Oh, boy,” Jo said.

  Tang said, “I’m guessing it takes ninety seconds before you scream for somebody to hand you a band saw, so you can slice either the television, the professor, or yourself in half.”

  The professor threaded his fingers together. “Let’s examine what she didn’t do. She didn’t leave a suicide note. She didn’t seem what in lay terms we call ‘blue.’ She was headlining a successful tour. She was in the limelight, receiving the accolades of adoring fans.”

  A bony finger seemed to scratch at Jo’s stomach. “Who is this guy?”

  “Read the screen,” Tang said.

  Jo’s eyes twitched. Gaspar Hellman, forensic psychiatrist.

  “So you’re saying that Tasia didn’t appear suicidal?” the blonde said.

  “That’s correct.”

  The blonde nodded ponderously. Her hair, elaborately windblown and lacquered, moved like a wig Jo had last seen on the singer from the B-52s. Her blue eyes gazed from a heart- shaped face, kitten sweet, with neat white teeth. Her name was Edie Wilson.

  “So you’re saying the police psychiatrist has it wrong,” she said.

  “We know nothing about the qualifications of this ‘psychiatrist,’ ”—air quotes—“if that is in fact what Dr. Beckett is. We know only that she has been retained by a police department that has a direct interest in shifting blame for Tasia’s death away from those who might have profited from it.”

  Edie Wilson nodded vociferously. “Cui bono.”

  Professor Herr Forensic Psychiatrist Hellman lowered his face to peer at Wilson over his tortoiseshell frames. “You know your Latin. And what it implies.”

  “No,” Jo said, “she knows what’s on the teleprompter and she’s spouting the crap the producers whisper in her earpiece. Gah. Jeez.”

  This was surreal. On the crawl at the bottom of the screen, she swore she saw Russian mail-order brides win World Cup and Unicorns discovered, seek power-sharing deal with My Little Pony.

  Edie Wilson frowned. “Women don’t shoot themselves. It’s well-known.” Thoughtful pause. “Could it be possible that she was playing Russian Roulette?”

  “I can’t . . . women do shoot themselves . . . this is . . . oh, crap,” Jo said.

  “That’s it, Beckett. Let it all out,” Tang said.

  The bony finger spun around Jo’s midsection again, and in her head she heard a spectral voice saying, Neener-neener-neener.

  Tang wasn’t laughing, however. She sounded deadly serious. “You may reach the same conclusion Dr. TV is pontificating about. Are you sure you want to contradict him?”

  “He’s mouthing off without any evidence. Spouting shallow, uninformed opinions about suicidality. About a woman he knows nothing about, hasn’t examined . . . about my case.”

  Gaspar Hellman stroked his goatee. “You’re exactly right, Edie. Cui bono. Who benefits? By claiming that Tasia ended her own life, who gains?”

  “That’s a frightening question, professor,” the blonde said.

  “Frightening? These people don’t understand—or don’t care—how uninformed speculation upsets the victim’s family.” Jo clawed a hand into her hair. “Tang, this can mess up my work.”

  Cui bono?—It benefited the bottom-feeders who preyed on public tragedy. Witnesses might begin to demand money from Jo before they talked, because the tabloids and E! were paying them. They might say, “I can’t talk to you until next week . . . TMZ has an exclusive with me until then.” By which time, they’d have shaped their story for maximum tabloid sensationalism and personal publicity.

  She heard a sharp knock on her front door. Phone to her ear, she stalked down the hall to answer it. “They’re playing Machiavelli for sport. Making me look like a tool, like this is a board game. They’re in it for entertainment but it’s not funny.”

  She grabbed the doorknob. “Hang on, somebody’s here. If it’s the Clownface News Network, they’re going to get a jaw full of my fist.”

  “Beckett, you shock me.”

  “Metaphorically speaking. Bozos.”

  She opened the door. There stood Gabe.

  18

  HE TOOK IN HER FEROCITY AND PUT UP HIS HANDS. “WHAT DID I do?”

  For a moment she stood motionless. Then she unwound and jumped into his arms. Threw herself against him, hugged him fiercely.

  She held on to the phone. “Later, Tang.”

  Hanging up, she put her hand against Gabe’s chest. She tried to calm down. Failed heroically. He swept her back inside.

  “Welcome back to dry land, Sergeant.” She was smiling. She fought the urge to jump up and down. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

  He swept her down the hall. “Where’s Sophie?”

  “In bed in the guest room.”

  He glanced up the stairs. He had a baseball cap in his hand. He slapped it against his thigh. “I never told Dawn where you live. That’s a promise.”

  “I never doubted that.”

  He slapped the ball cap against his leg again. “Maybe she got it out of Sophie somehow. I don’t even want to think that she may have followed me here.”

  “It’s moot now.”

  Jo wanted to grab him and bury her face in the warmth of his shirt. But he was stalking the hall like a hungry cat.

  “Did she pester you?” he said.

  “She was mostly concerned about getting to work on time. That’s why she brought Sophie over.”

  “Dumped her.” He stopped. “That’s what she did. Dumped her little girl.”

  Hot patches washed his cheeks and neck, as if painted with a burning brush.

  “Thank God you happened to be home. I hate to think what she would have done if you weren’t here.” He ran a hand roughly through his hair. Looked at her. “What?”

  All Jo’s training in psychology, her understanding of the dynamics of family splinter groups, whisked around her like moths. Cautioning her to keep her mouth shut. Warning: Don’t insert yourself into a sharp and rickety relationship. But she had to tell him. And she had to keep her own anger out of it. Mouth off, feed his ire, and she’d only worsen the situation.

  “I wasn’t home,” she said. “Ferd was.”

  She had occasionally seen Gabe look like he could kill a man barehanded. It was his stance, his expression, the unremitting fierceness of his gaze. The utter self-confidence that transmitted, silently and with complete conviction, Do not fuck with me.

  She saw it then. Really saw it, for the first time. Her skin went cold. She resisted the compulsion to step back from him.

  He opened his mouth, and closed it. His gaze distilled. For a long moment he held as still as a stone carving.

  “Was she high?” he said.

  “Not in any obvious way.”

  His gaze traveled the hallway, but Jo knew he wasn’t seeing anything in front of him, least of all her.

  “She’s not going to do this again. I won’t have it.”

  Jo lowered her voice to a murmur. “Gabe, I don’t know if you can control it.”

  From upstairs came a girlish call. “Daddy?”

  Gabe’s gaze broke from Jo’s. He took the stairs at a jog, gripping the banister like a neck he was wringing.

  Jo stayed put. The black heat in Gabe’s eyes
had run through her, so hot she nearly shivered.

  She had never truly seen him. She’d only thought she had. She had seen the veneer, the practiced glare that served as a warning to foes.

  But a moment earlier, she had seen him exposed. She had seen a molten core. She had glimpsed him out of control. She had glimpsed real violence.

  And she didn’t want to follow him up the stairs.

  She walked into the living room. The news had moved on from sticking pins in her to analyzing old photos of Tasia with Robert McFarland. The crawl at the bottom of the screen now read, Controversy over police psychiatrist in Tasia McFarland case.

  She turned off the television. Stared out the bay window at shadows scrubbing the sidewalk in the breeze.

  A minute later Gabe carried Sophie down the stairs. Her head lay against his shoulder, eyes sunk with fever.

  “Feel better, girl,” Jo said.

  Sophie smiled.

  Gabe headed straight for the door. “Let’s get you home, cricket.”

  Jo opened the door. His expression was so fiercely protective, and openly pained, that Jo’s breath caught.

  And she saw for the first time the bruises that ran down his neck, and the black eye that was developing. And, with his sleeve ruched up from lifting Sophie, the bandage that was wound around his forearm. Betadine stretched out from beneath it. She saw his exhaustion, which was only being kept at bay by the heat of his anger.

  He curled past her and out the door. “Thanks. I’ll call you.”

  “Gabe.” She followed him outside and down the steps. “Everybody . . .”

  Something warned her to stop herself. Don’t ask, not with Sophie listening. And he finally did turn, and gave her the raw, disintegrated stare of truth.

  Things were not all right. Not everybody had come back to shore alive.

  19

  AT SIX P.M. JO WALKED THROUGH THE VAULTING MARBLE LOBBY OF the Art Deco office building at the bottom of Sacramento Street in the Financial District. She climbed the fire stairs to the fifth floor and stepped into the plush lobby of Waymire & Fong LLP.

  The receptionist stood behind her desk applying pearly pink lipstick, about to bolt the office for the evening. When the fire door closed behind Jo, she looked up like a startled hare. The lipstick swerved across her chin.