The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  Jo glanced back at her screen. “Did it work?”

  Ferd looked at her computer. “We’ll find out.”

  WHAT WAS THIS?

  NMP stopped typing. The wireless signal had dropped out. The page wouldn’t load, wouldn’t send the comment to the board.

  “Stupid . . .” Pounding the keys. No joy. Tried logging in again—got an error message.

  What was going on?

  NMP leaned back. Were they watching? Somebody monitoring the boards?

  Damn, was the government tracking NMP’s digital warnings about Tasia?

  NMP, Big Bad Bastard, Archangel X, felt his heart beat faster. He looked around with just his eyes. He felt his mask begin to slip. Noel Michael Petty peeped out for a second, mewling like a kitten.

  Somebody had tattled. And with wrenching insight, like fat hands grabbing a rib cage and tearing it open, NMP knew who had told. It cut like a knife. Proof, the finale. The last betrayal.

  Petty had been so careful, watching every word, taking on the disguise of NMP, moderating all comments behind the digital avatar of Archangel X. Protecting Noel Michael Petty. But also protecting Noel Michael Petty’s idol.

  For nothing. NMP closed the laptop. Felt the antenna, broken and sharp, waiting.

  32

  EDIE WILSON STOPPED PACING AND POINTED AT THE TELEVISION screen. “That car. The SUV.”

  In the studio at the network’s San Francisco affiliate, she and a news producer huddled in an editing suite, watching the video her cameraman had shot outside the police shrink’s house. The producer paused the playback. It showed the black Toyota 4Runner, caught driving away from Edie and the rest of the press herd.

  “And?” the producer said.

  Edie waved at the screen. “The shrink went with this guy. If we find him, we’re one step ahead of everybody else next time we want a quote from her.”

  “Did you try contacting her through the SFPD’s media relations people? Set up an interview?”

  “Tranh, the police department is never going to let us talk to her. And now she’s had a warning. She’ll guard herself from saying anything revealing.”

  “Isn’t that her job?” the producer said. “Keeping things confidential?”

  Edie sat down next to him. “She’s trained not to spill things her patients tell her. But that’s consciously. The trick will be to work on her unconscious. Get her to let down her guard. That’s the fun of this job.”

  “And to what end?” Tranh said.

  Edie threw her hands in the air. “You kidding? This is the story of a lifetime. We have to attack it.” She pointed at the screen. “This psychiatrist knows what’s going on. And she’s hiding it from the public. It’s our responsibility as journalists to bring it to light.”

  “The public has the right to know.”

  “Don’t give me that little postmodern millennial sneer. They do.” She scooted her chair closer to Tranh and lowered her voice. “Look at the SUV. Handsome young guy at the wheel—probably her boyfriend. She’ll stick close to him.” She nodded at the screen. “Advance a few frames.”

  When Tranh advanced the video, Edie tapped the screen with one of her bitten-down nails. “Stop. That. See?”

  Tranh paused the video. Edie pointed to the SUV. In the back window was a sticker. She didn’t need to ask him to zoom in.

  “Isn’t that interesting,” she said.

  “ ‘My kid is an honor student at Saint Ignatius School’?”

  “No, the other one. It’s military.”

  He worked on the focus. “Air National Guard. Moffett Field.”

  “So maybe there’s a connection with the government,” Edie said.

  This time, she didn’t bother telling Tranh to wipe the sneer off his face. He knew he was in a losing game. She was a woman on the rise, and if she wanted to play the story from this angle, he couldn’t stop her.

  “Just make it worth our time,” he said. “It needs to be good television.”

  She smiled. “Great. Zoom out. Get the tag number on the SUV.”

  Tranh did.

  Smiling, Edie called her researcher. “I need you to find somebody in the California DMV who can run a license plate. I don’t care who or how, but get me the name and address of the owner.”

  She hung up. “You won’t regret this, Tranh.”

  “Be sure I don’t.”

  33

  FERD TYPED ON JO’S LAPTOP. HE BIT HIS CHEEK AND GLANCED AROUND the Starbucks.

  On his phone, Jo read the running blog commentary between Ferd and his dozen sock puppets and Archangel X.

  Talented, I grant you. Tasia could sing. But so can a humpback whale, or a factory siren. And those last two aren’t sluts. Tasia spread her legs and swallowed half the men in the western United States. She was so greedy that she didn’t leave anybody for the rest of the country’s women.

  Ferd had replied, Is that your best imitation of a political statement?

  Archangel X: Greed and rapacity ARE political statements. Possession is political. Hoarding is political. Exclusion is political. And Tasia collected trophies, hoarded them, created a barrier that was totally binary. In or out. Some of us were fooled for a while, and even thought of ourselves as fans. But she screwed us, figuratively if not literally.

  Then, farther down the page: None of this shit matters. She ended everything for me. There’s only one thing left to do.

  The air seemed to grow cooler. “Dear God. He’s going to go out in a blaze of glory.”

  “What?” Ferd looked at Jo with deep worry, and then at her computer. His voice rose with excitement. “I’m on. I got it. I’m in as Archangel X. We’ve locked him out.”

  Jo gestured for him to quiet down, and called Chuck Bohr. “Archangel’s here. Verified that he’s in the Starbucks, and I think he’s planning something violent. Where’s your plainclothes guy?”

  “You have him identified?”

  “Not physically, just digitally. But—”

  “I need more. I can’t have a police officer charge into Starbucks and demand to see everybody’s e-mails. I have no probable cause.”

  Frustrated, she tried Tang again. This time she got hold of her. “Amy, I need help.”

  “I’m in the middle of a situation. This isn’t a good time,” Tang said.

  Jo explained what was happening. There was a lengthy, strained silence on Tang’s end. “Okay. I’ll get there. Keep him online.”

  Tang hung up before Jo could reiterate that they’d just kicked Archangel X offline and made that tactic impossible.

  Jo scrolled through Archangel’s blog comments. Sure, everybody idolizes the dead. But face facts, she used men and ruined them for everybody else.

  Fear? Fear of women? Of sex?

  And at the end it wasn’t enough for her to have the president of the united states she had to have the number 1 billboard country singer too.

  Jealousy?

  She had to have Searle Lecroix. Didn’t she know that mere mortals were waiting? That what she was doing ruined it for us?

  Vast, egomaniacal presumption.

  We wait, still, but she made it all impossible. NMP.

  Jo stared at the message. “When he’s been in touch with you, has he ever signed a message NMP?”

  Ferd nodded. “The first couple of times.”

  She handed him back his phone. “Search for those initials in connection with Tasia McFarland, with the president, and with Searle Lecroix.”

  She got up and walked to the counter and poured milk into her lukewarm coffee. Archangel X, who are you? And what was so out of kilter about the messages?

  Behind her, the baby screeched. Two men scraped their chairs back and stood up. At the counter the woman in the green hat complained that her coffee was the wrong blend. Jo walked back to the table.

  Ferd said, “Got it. Jo, look at this.” He showed her the tiny screen. A comment thread on a political message board, right after Tasia’s death.

  She took the
m all. All the men in the west. And look where it got her. Dead.

  The comment was signed. The name jumped out at Jo.

  Her vision pinged. “Got you.”

  There was no way to see if the commenter was writing from the Archangel X e-mail address, but from the structure and tone and vocabulary of his messages, this was NMP. And NMP was Archangel X.

  She called Tang back.

  Tang answered. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Hold your horses.”

  “Noel Michael Petty,” Jo said.

  34

  JO GAZED AROUND THE STARBUCKS. AT A TABLE NEAR THE DOOR, A chunky man with deep acne scars frowned at his cell phone. He lumbered to his feet and turned to go.

  “Is it him?” Ferd said.

  “Maybe.” For a second, she held back. “Come on.”

  Hoisting her satchel, she strolled toward the door. She scrounged in the satchel and brought out a crumpled piece of notepaper.

  “Sir? Excuse me, I think you dropped this.”

  The man turned. Jo held out the crumpled paper, her pulse ticking like rats’ feet running across a wooden floor. His cigarettes were in his hand, one protruding, ready for insertion once he stepped onto the sidewalk.

  He said indistinctly, “Sorry, could you repeat?”

  He had two hearing aids. He’d also clearly had a stroke at some point. He was wall-eyed and his mouth drooped on one side. He wasn’t the attacker who had so nimbly raced away from Tasia’s house.

  “Sorry, my mistake,” she said.

  He turned and left. She went to the counter. In a strident voice, she said, “I’m having trouble staying online. Is something wrong with your Wi-Fi today?”

  Ferd looked around, waiting to see who looked up. Nobody did.

  And Jo smelled Right Guard deodorant.

  She stilled. Right Guard and perfumed fabric softener—the same sharp odors she had smelled when the intruder fell on top of her. Her skin prickled.

  “He’s close,” she said.

  She scanned the crowded room. The scents lingered but were quickly swallowed up by others—coffee, sugar, sour baby spit-up.

  “He’s here. No question.”

  Her palms itched. Bohr’s plainclothes officer and Tang were still miles away.

  How could she narrow it down? “May I see your phone again?”

  Ferd handed it over, and she scrolled back through the e-mails and messages left by her quarry—as Archangel, as NMP, and as Noel Michael Petty.

  His descriptions of Tasia. Greedy for men . . . voracious . . . selfish . . . Queen bee, hoarding all for herself . . .

  All the talk was of possession, consumption, ownership, and entitlement. It pulsed with jealousy. And yet it did not sound possessive of Tasia. Not in the way violent stalkers often talked.

  And Jo realized what had sounded wrong to her about Archangel’s messages. The subtext didn’t lie in Archangel’s words, but in what was missing from them.

  Archangel never talked about Tasia being his, of her belonging to him. He talked about her taking others away, of hoarding men and locking him out.

  “Oh, man,” she whispered.

  Archangel was enraged at Tasia, but not because she had spurned him. He didn’t think she belonged to him. He never spoke about her as though they had a relationship.

  He spoke about all the men she took and kept for herself.

  Archangel hadn’t wanted Tasia for himself. He resented her for taking another man away from him. We wait, still, but she made it all impossible.

  In the crowded coffee bar, the mother with the stroller nudged past. The baby was howling. The stroller bumped Jo’s shins. The woman mumbled, “Excuse me.”

  Jo reset her thoughts. She’d been looking at everything from the wrong angle. Archangel was obsessed, and blamed Tasia for ruining his life. But he never expressed fantasies or delusions that they had a relationship. She saw that now.

  Was he gay, and obsessed with another man?

  Her palms began to sweat. The mom struggled to open the door. Another woman, the one in the green beanie, squeezed through it ahead of her.

  “Well, it’s not like I have anything else to do,” the mom said, snark breaking through her composure. The woman in the beanie flipped her the bird and walked off.

  Jo smelled it again, the scent of Right Guard men’s deodorant.

  “Oh no.”

  She redialed Tang as she hurried for the door.

  Ferd trailed behind her. “What?”

  She looked out through the plate-glass windows. The women had disappeared from sight.

  “It’s Archangel.” She rushed toward the door. “It’s not a man. It’s a woman.”

  It was the woman in the beanie. And she was gone.

  35

  NOEL MICHAEL PETTY STORMED UP KEARNY STREET. HEAD DOWN, lips tight, shoes slapping the sidewalk. Anger jangled in the air, sharp as shards of red glass.

  Who was after Archangel? It was not coincidence that wireless access had been cut off at the Starbucks. Somebody had done it deliberately. Tasia’s people? Robert McFarland? The police?

  They’d silenced Archangel. Halfway through the grand finale, the ultimate truth telling, Archangel’s digital throat had been cut.

  They were on to Archangel. That meant they were on to NMP. The disguise hadn’t held up.

  Petty pulled off the beanie and threw it in the gutter. Kept walking. Took off the jean jacket and stuck it under a parked car. Pulled hard at the buttons on the man’s denim shirt, trying to rip them off. Big Bad Bastard hadn’t worked. Thinking of NMP as the meanest man in the Tenderloin, so nobody would see little Noel inside the coat and hat and attitude, hadn’t worked. Somebody must have told on her.

  She knew who.

  She tore at the denim shirt, popped a button, pulled it off and stuffed it in a trash can. Her T- shirt was thin and the misty breeze curled around her, cooling her to sheer, reflective rage. She squinted through the cloudy lenses of her glasses. She had only minutes to get out of sight before the rest of the world found her. She had to get out of the Financial District. She had to become somebody else, fast. She broke into a run, cut across Kearny and headed west on Sutter. She knew who to blame. She knew who to punish.

  JO BURST THROUGH the door of the Starbucks onto the sidewalk. Ferd stumbled out behind her.

  “What do you mean, a woman?” he said.

  “Where’d she go?”

  Jo looked up and down Kearny. The mother with the iPhone baby was halfway up the block, fumbling with her purse and her to-go cup.

  Jo put a hand on her head. “Archangel’s a woman. I should have seen it before.”

  Ferd’s mouth slowly opened. “That big woman in the beanie?”

  “We have to find her.” She pointed north on Kearny. “You go that way.”

  Ferd took off, lumbering up the street.

  “Don’t approach her,” Jo called. “If you see her, phone me and we’ll tell the cops.”

  She ran the other way, redialing Tang as she went.

  “I’m coming, Beckett.”

  “It’s a woman. Noel Michael Petty. We missed it.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.”

  She jogged down Kearny past her truck. At the corner with Sutter she stopped and looked around. Old brick buildings, wild with fire escapes. Overhead electrical wires for the Muni buses. Down Sutter, sleek glass and granite skyscrapers. Chic retail stores.

  No sign. Then she spied, in the gutter, the green beanie.

  “She’s dumping the clothes she had on. She knows something’s wrong.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Tang said.

  “As positive as I can be without seeing her in a lineup and reading her driver’s license. Same deodorant, same fabric softener. Same size as the guy who tackled me at Tasia’s. Amy, we presumed it was a man because of the intruder’s size and because all Archangel’s e-mails to Tasia sounded so jealous and possessive. And the overwhelming majority of stalkers are
heterosexual. My mistake.”

  “No, not a mistake. You’ve caught it. If this is for real, Petty was disguising herself. She wanted everybody to think she was a man.”

  “She’s wearing a jean jacket and green combats. But if she’s dumping the disguise, she’s trying to get away. I think she’s gone out to do something bad.”

  “What kind of bad?”

  “I think Tasia isn’t her only target.”

  Scanning the street, she caught a flash of green. Up a block on Sutter, a person in combats was running away. A bus passed in front of Jo. When it went by, the figure was gone.

  “She’s heading west. Can you get a patrol unit to look for her?” she said.

  “On it.”

  Jo took a step back in the direction of her truck, and hesitated. Kearny was a one-way street, and by the time she could drive around the block and turn around to head in the direction Archangel had gone, the woman could take a dozen different paths.

  “I’m going to follow her on foot,” Jo said.

  “Don’t get near her,” Tang said sharply.

  Jo darted across the street and headed up Sutter.

  “Tang, I’m worried. I saw a message she was writing before she took off. It was an obituary.”

  36

  THE STORES ON UNION SQUARE WERE BRIGHT AND FLASHY, HUGE boxes where advertising posters in the front windows showed perfect young people airbrushed and half undressed. Noel Michael Petty hustled through the doors at Gap and grabbed the first shirt off the rack that was extra large. She grabbed a pair of tan slacks from a pile. Wiping her brow, she stormed to a dressing room. She changed and ripped the tags off.

  At the cash register, the sales girl, a twig with breath like spearmint gum, looked at her funny.

  “What?” Petty said.

  “Nothing, ma’am. That’s eighty-nine fifty.”

  She shoved a hundred- dollar bill at the twig. “It’s important to look well-groomed. You should think about that.”

  Petty smoothed down her hair. Pushed her glasses up her nose. Stop looking at me, she thought. Everybody wanted to look at her, and that wasn’t good.