The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  She looked over her shoulder. In the stairwell, on the railing, about six feet up the stairs on the way to the next floor, was another handprint.

  Tang’s voice echoed up the hall. “Call an ambulance, now. Beckett, get in here.”

  Petty had gone up the stairs because Jo and Tang had been below her in the stairwell, charging toward the sixth floor, and if she’d tried to run down she would have collided with them.

  And Jo smelled it again, Right Guard deodorant, and knew it wasn’t her imagination. Jesus on a pony, was Petty hiding right above her?

  “Tang.”

  “Beckett, hurry,” Tang yelled back.

  “She’s in the stairwell above us,” Jo yelled.

  She threw open the door, skin crawling, and tore down the hall to Lecroix’s suite. The concierge and security men were huddled in the doorway, jabbering into their walkie-talkies. Jo pushed past them.

  In the living room, on the floor, Tang knelt over Searle Lecroix. His feet were splayed, cowboy boots motionless. The blood was everywhere.

  Tang looked at Jo, her eyes liquid with desperation. She was pressing on Lecroix’s chest, hands spread. Lecroix was looking up at Tang, his eyes dark with a fear that went beyond pain, beyond shock, to clarity. Death was near. Death was closer than Tang’s frantic attempt to stanch the bleeding from multiple stab wounds.

  39

  SHOCK POURED DOWN ON JO LIKE WATER FROM A BROKEN DAM. FOR A second she couldn’t move. Don’t put this on me, God. Then she forcibly pushed herself past it and went to Lecroix’s side.

  She knelt down beside him. Tang looked at her, helpless and hopeful.

  The blood chugging from his abdomen through the sticky slices in his shirt was dark, almost brown. He’d been stabbed in the liver, more than once, with what had to have been a sharp knife.

  “Get the security men in here to help,” Jo said. “I’ve got him.”

  Tang didn’t seem to hear her.

  “Go,” Jo said. “Petty was hiding in the stairwell above this floor. But I left the landing. She’s bound to be running down the stairs to the lobby.”

  Tang blinked and snapped out of it. She stood, jumped over Lecroix, and charged out of the suite, shouting instructions at the security guards. If she could raise the cop in the lobby on the radio, they could cut Petty off.

  Jo ripped open Lecroix’s shirt and pressed a hand hard against the gushing wound in his side. “Paramedics are on their way.”

  His face was a mess of stark colors. White skin, bright blood running from his mouth and nose across both sides of his face, a Japanese imperial flag of disaster. His teeth chattered. He tried to speak but nothing came out.

  The second set of stab wounds had gone straight between his ribs into his right lung. When he inhaled Jo heard a sucking sound. Air bubbles formed in the pink blood along the violent gash in his chest.

  “Hold on. Look at me,” she said.

  His eyes moved. He looked at her.

  “Don’t look away.”

  He was terribly short of breath. She needed to put an occlusive dressing on the sucking chest wound and seal it.

  The security men appeared.

  “Bring everything you can find in the bathroom. Ransack it,” she said. “Cellophane, aluminum foil, shower cap, a candy wrapper, anything. And Vaseline. Lubricant.” She continued to press her hand to his chest. “Check the old room service tray down the hall. If there’s cling wrap, grab it. Hurry.”

  Lecroix’s lips moved. “Pain.”

  “I know. Keep looking at me. Hang on.”

  A uniformed police officer appeared in the doorway. “EMTs are downstairs.”

  Jo looked up. “Assist Lieutenant Tang. She ran to the stairwell. Attacker is armed with a knife and extremely dangerous.”

  Drawing his weapon, the cop spun and disappeared.

  Lecroix spat something that sounded like a word. Jo leaned close to his face.

  “What?”

  “Gun . . .”

  She looked at him, shocked. “Gun?”

  “Her.”

  “Who—Petty? The woman who stabbed you?” Jo said.

  His words weren’t even air, just clicks. “Took mine.”

  “She took your gun? You had a gun?”

  He blinked. Jo recalled him telling her, I carry all kinds of protection.

  “Officer,” Jo yelled. “Hey—the perpetrator has a gun.”

  The security suit in the doorway looked frozen. Then he put a hand to his ear and ran from the room, walkie-talkie to his face.

  “Tell the cops,” Jo yelled. But she was shouting at an empty doorway.

  Beneath her, Lecroix shivered. She kept the pressure on his wounds, and still felt his life seeping between her fingers.

  Two security guards ran up and dumped supplies from the bathroom and room service tray on the carpet. With one hand Jo uncrumpled a ball of cling wrap, smeared it with K-Y, and pressed it against Lecroix’s chest wound to stop air leaking out of his lung.

  The security man said, “Steak dinner was on the room service tray, but no steak knife.”

  She glanced at the door. Had anybody managed to warn Tang that Petty was armed with a gun? The scene was so confused, the message might not have reached her. Jo needed to be sure Tang knew.

  She kept pressure on Lecroix’s wounds. She could do nothing except try to slow the bleeding.

  Blood foamed from his mouth. “Scared.”

  In his eyes she saw the depths of his confrontation with the irrevocable. He knew. He was hovering on the threshold. He was a soft breath away from stepping through.

  Lecroix, she feared, wasn’t going to survive. When she’d been a resident, she had moonlighted in emergency medicine. Wounds this severe taxed a fully equipped ER. The paramedics were going to have an almost insurmountable fight to get him into the ambulance alive.

  He put his hand on hers. It was cold. It was slick with blood. His eyes begged her to tell him what he wished to hear. Begged her to say the word live.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t do a goddamned thing.

  No, that was wrong. She could. She tried to swallow and her throat caught. “If I say the words to ‘Amazing Grace,’ can you sing them in your head?”

  He blinked.

  “Four verses,” she said. “Paramedics will be here by then.”

  Lecroix, she feared, wouldn’t.

  “‘Amazing grace,’ ” she said unsteadily. “ ‘How sweet the sound.’ ”

  With an effort of will that nearly crushed her heart, she pressed her hands against his wounds. And she forced her lips to speak words of life, hoping they were true.

  “ ‘I once was lost, but now am found,’ ” she said, barely above a whisper.

  He blinked, and a tear formed at the corner of his eye.

  “ ‘Was blind, but now I see,’ ” Jo said.

  She heard the elevator ding. The paramedics were coming. Had to be. Please, hurry. She couldn’t leave Lecroix by himself, wouldn’t. Come on, come on.

  His hand shook. She didn’t look up, wouldn’t look away. She leaned closer to his face. Second verse—what were the words? Any verse.

  “ ‘Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come,’ ” she said. Lecroix’s lips moved. What was next—Christ, what? The paramedics came through the door, accompanied by a cop. They hurried to Lecroix’s side.

  “Multiple stab wounds,” Jo said. “Five minutes ago. Apparent liver wound, probably to the hepatic vein. Pneumothorax and sucking chest wound. He’s not getting oxygen. Pulse one seventy and thready. He’s been conscious the whole time.”

  A male paramedic knelt at Lecroix’s side. “Got it.”

  Jo lifted her hand from the abdominal wound and moved back. She turned to get to her feet. She had to find Tang and warn her.

  Lecroix squeezed her hand. His lips formed the word Stay.

  Jo’s breath snagged. The depths of pain from which he was staring up at her were so monstrously apparent that she nearly bent
double.

  The paramedic said, “Doc?”

  Lecroix held on to her. She was all he had to hold on to.

  Jo knelt back down. She put a hand on Lecroix’s head and stroked his hair. Leaning near his ear, she said, “ ‘Tis grace . . .’ ”—she cleared her throat—“ ‘. . . that brought me safe thus far.’ ”

  He closed his eyes slowly and opened them. His gaze defocused.

  “ ‘And grace will lead me home,’ ” Jo said.

  His chest stilled and his grip on her hand released. His eyes stopped staring and became blue stones, glossy, reflecting her face but beyond sight.

  “Losing him,” the paramedic said. “Doc, we gotta bag him.”

  Jo stumbled back. She sat down hard on her ass and watched the paramedics intubate Lecroix so they could pump air into his quiet lungs. They pulled out the paddles and powered up the defibrillator.

  He wasn’t coming back.

  She hung her arms on her knees. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t tell the EMTs to call it. They had to try. She looked at her hands. They were slick to the wrists with Lecroix’s blood.

  “Clear,” the male paramedic said.

  A lump lodged in Jo’s throat. She climbed to her feet and rushed from the room to warn Tang.

  40

  A SECURITY SUIT STOOD OUTSIDE THE CLOSED DOOR TO THE SIXTH-FLOOR stairwell. He turned in alarm when he heard Jo running toward him. He seemed loath to touch the door, with its bloody toward him. He seemed loath to touch the door, with its bloody handprint.

  “Did you tell the cops the suspect has a gun?” she yelled.

  He waved his walkie-talkie at her. “Tried—called downstairs and told them to alert the cops in the lobby.”

  She ran to the door. “So you don’t know if Lieutenant Tang got the message?”

  “We shut down the elevators. The suspect hasn’t emerged in the lobby and won’t be able to exit except through this stairwell.”

  “She’s still in there?” Jo said.

  He nodded. “Has to be. All the elevators are locked out, and we have security people on all floors between here and the lobby, monitoring the fire doors, so if the suspect exits we’ll spot her.”

  “You haven’t yet?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “She already got out of the stairwell,” Jo said. “Otherwise they’d have boxed her in.”

  She reached for the door. The security man put an arm out to stop her.

  “She could be right on the other side,” he said.

  “And she could be coming up behind several police officers who don’t know she’s armed with a gun.”

  Behind her Jo heard footsteps and equipment jostling. A cop was jogging toward her from Lecroix’s suite. His radio buzzed with voices. He waved Jo and the suit away from the fire door.

  “Back.”

  On the radio, a voice said, “She ran back into the stairwell. Third floor. She’s heading up.”

  Jo heard footsteps inside the stairwell, fast and light. Heading down.

  “I’m at six, heading toward her,” Tang called.

  Jo bulled past the security guard and pushed the door open. Tang sped past her, weapon drawn, and flew down the stairs.

  “Amy, Petty has a gun,” Jo called.

  Tang’s head swiveled. She caught Jo’s eye, just for a second, then pummeled down the stairs out of sight.

  The security man grabbed Jo’s arm and pulled her back. The door shut with a heavy click.

  In the stairwell a woman shrieked. The noise echoed through the fire door, a high, sustained scream. And then came the crack of gunfire.

  The security guard jumped clear of the doorway and threw himself to the floor by an elegant table. He rolled and hit it and knocked an expensive lamp to the floor. The cop pulled Jo clear of the door and pushed her against the wall.

  A second shot echoed from the stairwell, deeper. Then a crack, the sound of the first gun.

  More gunfire, dulled by the door frame and walls, pinging with ricochets. No more screams.

  The cop drew his weapon. “Stay here.”

  Jo didn’t move. The air in her lungs felt heavy. The cop threw open the door and charged into the stairwell.

  Footsteps. Echoes. A second passed, and more.

  “Clear. Stand down.”

  Jo bolted into the stairwell. Two floors down she stopped. Below her, the cop stood holstering his weapon. Down the twisting stairs, Jo heard metal skitter across concrete. She inched down the stairs until she got a view.

  Noel Petty sat sprawled in a corner of the stairwell, imposing, implacable, and completely dead. Blood was pouring from a gunshot wound in her forehead, over her eyeglasses and down her chin. Three feet away, weapon still aimed at her center of mass, stood Tang.

  Jo put a hand against the wall.

  Tang uncocked her weapon and holstered it. She told everybody to clear out. Asked one officer to secure the scene.

  She stepped back. Her shoulders were heaving. She looked like a bird, tiny compared to the beast it had just fought off, half- crazed with adrenaline and unable to calm down. She looked up and saw Jo.

  “Lecroix?” she said.

  Jo shook her head.

  For a moment Tang simply stared. Then she turned, pushed past the other cops in the stairwell, and fled through the fire door.

  41

  JO FOUND TANG AT THE END OF THE THIRD-FLOOR HALLWAY. SHE WAS leaning, arms stiff, against the wall. She looked like she was trying to keep it from collapsing on top of her.

  “They’ll put me on desk duty for ten days,” she said. “Protocol for an officer-involved shooting.”

  “You hanging in?” Jo said.

  “The main attraction will be here in a few minutes. Homicide Detail—they’ll take my weapon, drive me someplace quiet and official to find out whether I shot Petty in self-defense, or lost it and went Dirty Harry on her.”

  “I heard multiple gunshots.”

  Tang turned and leaned over a potted palm. Hands on her knees, she fought down a dry heave.

  “Got any gum?” she said.

  “In my front pocket. You don’t want me to reach for it.”

  Tang noticed the blood, tacky and smeared, on Jo’s hands. Jo turned her hip and Tang dug the pack of gum from her jeans.

  “They won’t want me to confer with anybody. So I have about two minutes to tell you what just happened.” Without touching the gum itself, she popped a piece from the package into her mouth. “It was suicide by cop.”

  “Petty fired on you?”

  “Realized she was cornered. Uniforms were running up the stairs from the lobby. I was running down from above. All the elevators were locked. She stopped on the landing, screamed, and began firing. I returned fire.”

  “Then you’re going to be exonerated,” Jo said.

  “Yes. And I’m so far off this case that I’ll never see its backside disappearing over the horizon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was already under orders to pull you back. To figure out how to wind it down quietly.”

  “You just killed a homicidal stalker. There’s no way this case can be wound down quietly.”

  “I came over here at your request. I was . . . acting independently of my superiors’ guidance. They won’t be happy. When my desk duty ends, I’ll be assigned to other cases.”

  “Chuck Bohr won’t—”

  “Chuck Bohr won’t care. He’s got his own problems.”

  “What?”

  “IRS audit.” Tang waved dismissively, as if to swat away an irrelevance.

  “No, Amy. You just ended this.”

  “Not fast enough.”

  And the tough, predatory bird faltered. Tang’s head dropped and she crumpled against the wall.

  Jo put an arm around her. Instantly Tang stiffened and shook Jo off. She spun and punched a framed oil painting. Her fist drove the canvas into the wall.

  She grabbed her hand. “Crap. Jesus, that hurts.”

  She
shook her fist. Blinked as though her eyes stung. Jo was sure they did. Her own eyes certainly did.

  “You weren’t late getting here. I was,” Jo said.

  “Lecroix didn’t answer the phone. He let Petty in. Not your fault.”

  “Did the press know Lecroix was staying at this hotel? Because if they didn’t, how did Petty find out?”

  The elevator dinged. Two men in blue suits stepped out and glanced around.

  “Here we go,” Tang said.

  The departmental suits looked as grim and gray as dead fish. “Lieutenant Amy Tang?”

  She unholstered her pistol and handed it to them, butt first. “I fired the fatal round, with this weapon. Once I determined that the scene was secure and everybody was safe, I holstered the weapon. Nobody else has handled it.”

  They nodded. They mentioned that the Crisis Incident Response Team was being assembled to debrief her. “Come this way, Lieutenant.”

  She followed them. Halfway down the hall, she looked back at Jo. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Jo said.

  Lie of the afternoon. The first of many.

  Tang shook her head. “And to think—on the drive here, I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.”

  Jo gave her a funny look. “What?”

  “My parents have been raided by the ATF.”

  THERENTED SILVERVOLVO SUV crept up the street through Noe Valley. The neighborhood was tidy, slightly ramshackle—a comfortable place for striving families, Edie Wilson guessed. Small houses stacked one right next to the other on hilly streets. Bright colors. People in San Francisco had a thing for homes painted like M&M’S.

  “Quirky place,” she said.

  Tranh, behind the wheel, gave her a distinctly unpleasant look. Just a fraction of a second, but she saw it. She was highly attuned to other people’s vibrations. And she was from suburban Dallas, so she had a far better sense of what was normal and what was quirky than did a Californian like Tranh.

  From the backseat, Andy said, “That’s it.”

  Tranh slowed. They all looked at the compact Craftsman house with the green-painted trim, shaded by a live oak.

  “His SUV’s not in the driveway,” Andy said.