The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  Lewicki had gone to high school with Rob McFarland. At the University of Montana, he wrestled on the college’s Division I NCAA squad. He was renowned for winning matches in which his opponents withdrew with dislocated joints. Later, as a lieutenant in the army, he served with McFarland overseas. After a decade in the House of Representatives, he’d been picked by McFarland as his right- hand man.

  Whereas McFarland was as smooth and cool as Gary Cooper, Lewicki was blunt and funny, and known to go for an opponent’s knees. He and McFarland had scrapped politically for years. His own aspirations for higher office had been bested by his friend, and then coopted when McFarland brought him into the White House as chief of staff—a move seen by pundits as a “team of rivals” tactic.

  But Lewicki had been the best man at Rob and Tasia McFarland’s wedding. He had devoted his entire adult life to public service. And he had shown enough humanity, and connection, even after all these years, to send Vienna Hicks a condolence card.

  A minion answered Lewicki’s office phone. Jo repeated her list of qualifications and requirements and alarming possibilities, intoning them like a spell. She gazed at Lewicki’s photo on the front page of the newspaper. He was built like a coil of steel cable. Sinewy, gray-eyed, built to take the tension, or to whiplash an enemy.

  “Connecting you,” the minion said.

  The connection clicked through. “K. T. Lewicki. How can I help you, Doctor Beckett?”

  His voice was clipped and nasal. He spoke like a man used to attacking in powerful bursts—wrestling opponents, Taliban strongholds, the Speaker of the House.

  Jo’s intake of breath was involuntary. “Yes. Thank you for taking my call, Mr. Lewicki.”

  Just breathe. This is your opening. Go for it. Dynamic.

  “I’m working with the SFPD to ascertain—”

  “Tasia McFarland’s cause of death. I know.”

  Ping, like a BB, hitting her in the side of the head. “I know it’s bold of me to ask, but it’s vital that I speak with President McFarland about his ex-wife’s state of mind.”

  “Bold? No, it’s ballsy. Obviously you’ve decided to go through me.”

  “You are the Point Man.”

  “So I’ll point out that the SFPD’s investigation into a tragic mishap at a concert is snuffling so exhaustively through minutiae that it’s becoming neurotic.”

  “It’s far from clear that Ms. McFarland’s death was an accident.”

  “Even so, whatever the circumstances, the president was three thousand miles away when it happened.”

  “And she met with him three days before being shot to death with a pistol he owns.”

  Lewicki was quiet a beat. Jo heard papers rustling on his end. “I’ve heard you’re tenacious, Doctor Beckett. But sometimes there’s a fine line between tenacity and obsession.”

  Now it was Jo’s turn to pause. “This is a matter of being thorough. This is due diligence, and it’s what I owe the criminal justice system, Ms. McFarland, and her family. And given the media attention, reaching a dispositive conclusion is vital, to quash rumor and misinformation.”

  “You know there’s no such thing as dispositive with the infotainment industry. And after a certain point, the investigation becomes less a thorough examination and more a fishing expedition with dynamite. That fine line? Sometimes it’s between tenacity and recklessness.”

  “I don’t want to harm the president. I want to determine the truth,” Jo said.

  There was another, longer pause, and she realized she’d stepped onto Lewicki’s turf. She’d played straight into his hands, like a wrestling opponent maneuvered for a crushing fall.

  “You do like to take chances, don’t you?” he said. “You raced BMX and mountain bikes in high school, I hear. Won some—is this correct, ‘bouldering’ competitions?—as Johanna Tahari. There’s a nice photo of you climbing in Yosemite, from Outside magazine. Glad you take advantage of our National Park system, Doctor.”

  The ping turned into a hail of BBs.

  “And I know you’ve been willing to risk yourself in aid of others. I’m sorry about your unfortunate loss a few years ago,” Lewicki said.

  The lobby of the hotel seemed to fill with a sound like rain pounding a tin roof. “I need to speak to the president,” she said. “If that’s a risk, I’m shocked.”

  Unfortunate loss. The bastard, bringing Daniel into this. Risk? What was he implying?

  “So convince me,” Lewicki said.

  “Before her death Tasia was being stalked.”

  Quiet on the line.

  “It appears that an obsessed fan was cyberstalking her, at the least. Maybe in person. What worries me is that this person’s messages occasionally mention the president.”

  “You need to speak to the police and the Secret Service.”

  “Done. I spoke to Agent Zuniga,” Jo said. “This investigation is now working on two levels. One, to ascertain the manner of Ms. McFarland’s death. To do that I need to reconstruct her last few weeks. And to determine her state of mind, I need to talk to the president.”

  “Why?”

  “She left a recorded message. In it, she expresses a fear for her life. She mentions the president. It made no sense until the photos surfaced from the hotel in Reston. Now it makes only partial sense. The only person who can clarify and explain is Mr. McFarland.”

  Another long pause. “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  The click on Lewicki’s end sounded final, like a nail being hammered into her chances.

  The noisy echoes in the hotel lobby filled the silence. Jo put away the phone. She felt the marble floor shift beneath her feet. She had a strange feeling that she’d just undermined herself.

  She walked to the door. The doorman opened it before she could touch the handle.

  Outside, she put on her sunglasses. A brisk breeze lifted her hair. Strands of mist skirted across the blue sky. A cable car rolled by, crowded with office workers and tourists, brakeman pulling on the lever. When it had passed, she saw the photographer across the street in the square. His camera was lifted to his face, aimed at the door of the St. Francis, catching her.

  After a second he lowered the camera. Stared. When she didn’t look away, he took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and turned his back to light up.

  People swept past Jo on the sidewalk. Traffic jangled and sunlight bounced off car windshields. Jo turned and walked south toward Market Street. She kept her eyes on the photographer. He glanced over his shoulder at the door of the St. Francis, took out his phone, and made a call.

  She kept walking. The photographer looked up and down the street, as though searching to see where she’d gone.

  Maybe paranoia was infectious.

  At the corner she stopped and waited with the crowd for the light to change. The buildings around the square rose above her. The city was a buzzing hive. Within half a mile were Chinatown, Financial District skyscrapers, and the soup kitchens of the Tenderloin. Protecting the president in such a dense urban area had to be a nightmare.

  K. T. Lewicki’s creepy recital of her own history had caused her fingertips to tingle, like she’d stuck a pin in a wall socket. She couldn’t call it a threat. Nothing was overt. But the warning had been in every syllable Lewicki spoke.

  Back off. Declare Tasia’s death an accident.

  “Prick,” she said.

  The light changed. She strode with the crowd across the crowded intersection. Sunlight slanted between buildings and the wind shirred across her skin.

  Tasia could no longer speak for herself. But perhaps somebody else could speak for her. She called Ace Chennault, Tasia’s ghost.

  IN UNION SQUARE, Keyes held the phone to his ear and turned away to block out the noise from the salsa band.

  Ivory answered. “News?”

  “I just saw the police shrink come out of the Saint Francis and walk away.”

  “You sure?”

  “I got her p
hoto. E-mail Paine. Tell him she was there to talk to Searle Lecroix.” He started walking. “I’ll send him the photos within the next half hour.”

  He snapped the phone shut.

  27

  ACE CHENNAULT HAD BEEN RELEASED FROM THE HOSPITAL, AND JO arranged to meet him for coffee near the Civic Center. She took off at a brisk walk.

  The straightest route between the swanky designer stores of Union Square and the grandeur of the Civic Center took Jo through the demimonde of the Tenderloin. The neighborhood began suddenly: Under blue skies, with ultramodern hotels and skyscrapers visible a block away, the streets seemed to empty of traffic. Men shambled along the sidewalk. They were skinny. They wore saggy jeans and beanies. They were white, they were black, they had few teeth. Among the few vehicles in sight were a decrepit parked pickup and an electric wheelchair driven by a gent with a bushy white beard, whose bandanna was tied pirate-style over his ponytail.

  Jo jogged across a street, holding tight to her satchel. On the far corner, a man in crooked aviator shades strutted by, hands fidgeting at his sides.

  “Vicodin. Vicodin,” he chanted.

  She jogged past.

  “Hey, baby. Vicodin.”

  No thanks. At the St. Anthony Dining Room, the kitchen must have been about to open. Outside its doors people stood in line behind ropes that ran around the block, as if the mission were a trendy club. Across the street the Islamic Center was open as well, but the sidewalk outside it was empty. The Catholics, it seemed, had more popular food.

  She passed a low- rent hotel with a buzzing neon sign. Near the door, an employee was scrubbing the sidewalk with a bucket of soapy water and a broom. On the sign, several letters were out. THEMORAL flickered on and off. Jo didn’t know whether that should be taken as a promise, or a warning.

  After a few blocks she emerged onto the broad plaza that led to the Civic Center. The people of the Tenderloin thinned out, like eddies along a shore. The golden dome of City Hall shone in the distance. On the plaza, an antiques fair was set up, farmers’-market style. She walked toward the Federal Building, looking for the Starbucks, and heard a man call her name.

  “Over here.”

  From a bench in the distance, Ace Chennault waved at her. When she approached, he held out a cup of coffee. “Didn’t know how you take it, so it’s black.”

  She sat down beside him. “Thanks. How are you feeling?”

  He shrugged. His broken left arm hung in the sling. Blue cast, blue sling, blue mood. The black sutures crept along his scalp like a crusty centipede.

  His boyish face looked haggard. “I was a micro-celeb for ninety seconds. But the reporters are gone and the painkillers have worn off.”

  Walk around the corner, Jo thought. Mr. Vicodin will fix you right up.

  He looked at his feet. “Actually, I’m damned lucky. I just came from the funeral home. Paying my respects to Tasia. Pretty awful.”

  Jo gave him a moment. At the end of the plaza beyond the antiques market, City Hall was framed by the green boughs of trees that stood like a military honor guard.

  She got her notebook. “Ready to talk?”

  He took out a digital audio recorder. “Mind if I record this?”

  “Not at all.”

  She was surprised, yet not. She’d never had an interviewee record a psychological autopsy interview. But then, she’d never interviewed a writer facing the collapse of his high-profile publishing deal.

  Chennault fiddled with buttons, struggling because of the cast. “Journalists get quotes wrong all the time. You’d be amazed. Reporters write down stuff that never came out of people’s mouths. Usually in demeaning ways.”

  “I need facts, and your impressions. I have no reason to want to demean you.”

  “Good. Excuse my suspicious nature, but I did just get attacked by a rock-wielding caveman.”

  He pressed Play and held the recorder up, staring at her intensely.

  “For the record,” Jo said, “is Ace your legal name?”

  “You accusing me of using an alias?”

  “Getting the quote right.”

  He smiled. “Sorry. Ace is a nom de plume.” The smile turned charmingly rueful. “Anson isn’t a great name for a rock ’n’ roll journo.”

  “And Chennault?”

  “All mine.”

  She wrote it down. “Did Tasia talk to you about her marriage?”

  The smile mutated again. “You’ll have to wait to read about it in the book.”

  She flattened her expression. “Please.”

  “Sorry, Doctor. Journalistic privilege. I will tell you two things. Tasia was off her rocker, and the revelations will be explosive.”

  “Would you like that phrase to go in my report?”

  Now he flashed his teeth. “Please.”

  She guessed that this was a new form of viral marketing. She hated it.

  “Did Tasia ever speak about a stalker?” she said.

  He blinked sharply, as if he’d been poked in the eye with a stick. “Who was after her?” He pointed to his crusty sutures. “This guy?”

  “I don’t know. The police are trying to piece it together. Did she ever talk about somebody threatening her? Somebody, that is, within the realm of what we call consensus reality.”

  “Besides ‘They,’ you mean. No.” He leaned back, pensive. “Wait. There was this one time.”

  A man approached them. “No sitting, folks.”

  He was a rent-a-cop dressed in black tactical gear. He waved them along like a couple of vagrants.

  “It’s a park bench in Federal Plaza,” Jo said.

  He looked away. “Not during the antiques market. Private event.”

  He had a buzz cut and a pierced eyebrow. His black flak jacket said MONDO SWAT. He was about eighteen years old.

  Chennault pulled a face and gestured to his sling. “No mercy for the wounded?”

  Still looking away, the kid waved again. “Everybody has to keep walking. Those are the rules.”

  Chennault spat a laugh. “Jawohl, Herr Himmler.”

  He stood up. “Doesn’t matter I got these stitches from chasing down the intruder at Tasia McFarland’s house, does it? That we’re trying to get to the bottom of the biggest case in the United States? Gotta follow those orders.”

  The rent-a-cop looked at him with sharp surprise. Chennault ambled away from the bench toward City Hall. Jo followed him.

  He shook his head. “See what public education hath wrought. Clueless about the irony of booting citizens out of a public place.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, now he’s regretting it. I gave him something to think about.” He eyed Jo. “And if you think Tasia liked me because I’m not scared to speak up, you’re right.”

  Touchy, touchy, Jo thought. And needy for attention. Also in physical pain.

  “Is that why you gave her a copy of Case Closed?” she said.

  “Tasia had the celebrity habit of believing every conspiracy theory she heard. I wanted to educate her about the Kennedy assassination. And the moon landing, and other fake ‘conspiracies,’ but she mostly cared about Jackie.”

  “You said somebody might have threatened her,” she said.

  “Concert in Tucson, last month. I was watching the show from the wings. Right after she made her entrance on the zip line, there was this guy in the front row. Just standing there, while everybody else was cheering and clapping. Staring at her. It was creepy.”

  That was less than nothing. “Just staring?”

  “Yeah. Until he climbed the barrier and tried to rush the stage. Pulling off his clothes.”

  “Security stopped him?”

  “Yeah. White guy, pudgy, maybe late twenties. They tossed him back, he melted into the crowd.”

  If that’s all the incident amounted to, Jo doubted there would be any record of it. She also noticed that as Chennault answered questions, his memory for detail improved remarkably. She wondered if he was exaggerating. Overly helpful witnesses were an occupatio
nal hazard. She listened to everything people told her with a high index of suspicion.

  “I hear that you stopped by Tasia’s house the night before she died, and she refused to speak to you.”

  His poked-in-the-eye look returned. “It ever occur to you that Searle Lecroix might have an ulterior motive for saying that?”

  “Such as?”

  “Trying to scotch an autobiography that might not portray him in the most flattering light. Making me look bad to help his own cause.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I think nobody’s considered the possibility that Searle wanted out of his relationship with Tasia, but couldn’t do it while they were on tour. I think nobody’s figured out how convenient it was that Tasia died and Searle didn’t have to break up with her. And that he played the heartbroken hero that night on the baseball field, begging people for help, but actually did nothing to save her.”

  Jo held her counsel. Chennault’s eyes cut back and forth, avoiding her gaze. The light in his eyes was injured and sly.

  “Maybe you ought to ask Lecroix about that fat fan who rushed the stage in Tucson. The answers he gives you might surprise you,” he said.

  A man shuffled past them, shirtless, white hair blowing in the wind like wild flames. His bare back was the canvas for a green tattoo.

  Chennault gestured at him. “See that? Semper Fidelis. It means ‘always faithful.’ ”

  Jo ignored Chennault’s condescension. As if a physician would be unfamiliar with Latin phrases, or most Americans with the motto of the United States Marine Corps.

  “Your tattoo says something similar,” she said.

  He nodded, his sad eyes reddening. “Know how few people can abide by those words these days? Ask Lecroix about that. I think that’s what Tasia’s death is about.” He turned to go. “Semper. Think about that. Always is what counts.”

  IN THE MUSTY HOTEL ROOM, above red neon letters spitting THEMORAL, Noel Michael Petty put on a jean jacket and watch cap. Oakley sports sunglasses, like Major League Baseball players wore. Looked in the dingy mirror, made two fists and shook them.