The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  “Why not?” Tang said.

  “Tasia’s death is different from his.” The memory swelled in her vision. “Petty attacked him directly, and with a knife. You know full well that knife attacks are more intimate than gun attacks. She used subterfuge to get into his suite, but once he opened the door her assault was immediate and full frontal. She stabbed him repeatedly, while he stared her in the eye.”

  Tang didn’t disagree.

  “But Tasia’s death is equivocal. That’s the entire reason you drew me into the investigation. If it had been straightforward, Petty would have been seen and arrested at the ballpark,” Jo said. “But if Tasia’s death was murder, it was accomplished by stealth and guile. A killer had to gain access either to Tasia’s weapon or to areas of the ballpark that required an invitation or an access-all-areas pass. Petty had neither. And nobody who was within a hundred yards of Tasia that night saw anyone remotely like Petty, because if they had, you would have been hunting her from the get-go.”

  Tang grunted. “Absolutely right.”

  “The fatal shot was a contact wound, fired from the Colt forty-five Tasia had in her grip when she stepped onto the balcony. But Petty wasn’t in the stunt team’s hospitality suite. She wasn’t in the surrounding suites, which were holding private parties. She wasn’t visible on nearby balconies in any of the concert footage. The chance that Petty murdered Tasia is minuscule.”

  Tang stared at her, long and hard. “You can bet that all Petty’s venomous e-mails will be released by the department.”

  “You’re saying she’s going to be named as Tasia’s killer.” Jo held on to her beer bottle. “Somebody’s pressuring Bohr to close the investigation.”

  Tang’s eyes went hot. “I told you that from the beginning.”

  “And somebody’s pressuring you. Through your parents.”

  “Beckett, that’s—”

  “Crazy? It’s not. Tell me what happened.”

  Tang’s mouth hung half-open for a second. “The feds got a tip that my mom and dad were smuggling illegal weapons. Came into their import-export business with the bomb-sniffing dogs, put everybody on the floor with their hands behind their heads. My mom and pop.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Jo, they sell fireworks—they’re Chinese. Of course the bomb dogs found evidence of explosives. Gunpowder. Pyrotechnics. Christ.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Anonymous tip.”

  “Are your parents okay?”

  “Tough as barnacles. Those ATF agents can probably still hear Mom swearing at them.” She rubbed her temples. “Mistake, the feds say.”

  “And they’re pressuring me.” Jo’s face felt cold. “Gabe’s orders have been changed. He’s being deployed to Afghanistan.”

  Tang’s mouth slowly opened. “You okay?”

  Jo laughed uncontrollably. “No. I’m not within sight of okay, not even with a telescopic night scope. It’s all federal, Amy. It’s all too close and too scary to be coincidence. And I don’t know what to do, or whether to tell Gabe.”

  Tang seemed frozen. “We’ll never find proof.”

  “I know.” Jo’s eyes began to sting. “So I’ll file my report, saying I quit.”

  Tang leaned back.

  “Without further evidence, I can’t determine Tasia’s state of mind. And I’m not going to get it. No psychiatric records. No interview with the man who owns the weapon that killed her. I’m stymied.” The stinging in her eyes increased. “And Gabe’s going to pay the price.”

  Tang’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t blame you. I’m sorry, Beckett.”

  “Checkmate,” Jo said. “The bastards win.”

  Tang didn’t argue. And with her silence, so died Jo’s last scintilla of hope. There was no way to right this sinking ship. She wanted to hurl her beer bottle across the room.

  “Before I drove over here, I phoned the office of the White House chief of staff. I left a message asking K. T. Lewicki to phone me. Now I know for certain what I’ll tell him. We’re done.”

  At the bar, a group of men broke into friendly laughter. Tang glanced at them.

  “I’ll tell Vienna Hicks I’m wrapping things up,” Jo said. “I hate to let her down, but . . . what?”

  Tang looked like she’d just swallowed a glass of straight pins. “The news.”

  On the television above the bar, the bloodbath at the St. Francis dominated the headlines. Helicopter shots of Union Square. Manic speculation about Noel Michael Petty. Lecroix’s last music video played repeatedly. But this was a break from the Cirque du Searle.

  Edie Wilson was on-screen, her expression jubilant. “Startling new information has come to light regarding psychiatrist Dr. Johanna Beckett.”

  The shot switched to news footage: Jo in Gabe’s 4Runner, driving away from the news scrum outside her house.

  “I’ve learned that Dr. Beckett has some unsavory connections. This police psychiatrist has a boyfriend with a dicey past.”

  Jo stood up. “Jesus Christ.”

  Flash to a grainy shot of Gabe’s face, captured through the window of the 4Runner. His black eye was visible.

  “Sources tell me Gabriel Miguel Quintana, currently a civilian employee of the California Air National Guard, has a history of violent assault.”

  Jo kicked her chair into the next table as she walked toward the television.

  “Quintana’s criminal record, I’m told, includes assault with a deadly weapon,” Wilson said.

  Dawn Parnell appeared on-screen. Jo thought her hair was going to ignite.

  “Maybe the record is officially sealed for some reason,” Dawn said. “Maybe the military decided it could use somebody with his tendencies. I can’t explain it. But all I care about is protecting my daughter.”

  Tang caught Jo. “Forget it.”

  “I’m climbing up on the bar and I’m ripping that TV off its mount,” Jo said.

  On a split screen, an anchor appeared. His supercilious expression suggested that his biggest investigation had been whether the Easter Bunny left hard-boiled eggs in the basket, or just the chocolate bunnies. “What are the security implications, Edie?”

  Edie nodded. “That’s the real question. Rumors persist that the police were not informed that Searle Lecroix was in danger until it was too late to warn him.”

  “Rumors . . .” Jo stepped toward the bar. Tang pulled her back.

  “The question people seem afraid to ask is whether this psychiatrist led the police to think the threat was lower than it actually was. And is the military lax about monitoring its civilian employees? Quintana works at Moffett Federal Airfield, which puts him in close proximity to a number of Special Forces units.”

  “Scary stuff, Edie.”

  The channel went to commercial. Jo rushed outside and called Gabe.

  “Did Sophie see that?” she said.

  “Can’t talk now. I’ll call you back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know.”

  He hung up. Jo lowered her hand and the phone rang again.

  “K. T. Lewicki.” The White House chief of staff sounded energized. “You called?”

  44

  THE DOORS WERE LOCKED. THE WINDOWS WERE BOLTED, SHUTTING out the run-down Daly City neighborhood outside. Yellow light soaked through the blinds into the living room. Keyes stood in front of the television, mesmerized by Edie Wilson’s report. Ivory paced back and forth. A cigarette dangled between her fingers, ash grown an inch long.

  “They shot her,” she said. “They killed Searle and then they shot her. They shot her dead, Keyes.”

  “I know. It’s on.”

  Ivory’s swan-white hair, tangled and dirty, stuck up like torn feathers. It had been in a mess since she heard the news and pulled on it and started screaming. Her white nail polish looked tarnished in the light. She was barefoot, her tattoos blue like ice, her underwear revealing the scorpion tattoo at the base of her back.

  “Searle knew too much about Tasia. He was bound
to talk. So they killed him. The cops”—she pointed at the television screen—“they killed him and then they shot her fucking dead and blamed it on her.”

  Keyes stared at the television. “Oswald. She’ll go down as a scapegoat, just like Lee Harvey.” He shook his head. “And McFarland has operatives in the National Guard—this greaser Quintana, working at Moffett. Mexican name, what a coincidence.”

  Ivory’s mascara had run across her cheeks. Her white lipstick was smeared. The cigarette burned down to her skin, and she jerked. Dropped it, ground it out with her heel, and sucked on her fingers.

  “They shot her. What are we gonna do?” she said.

  “You know what we’re gonna do.”

  On the kitchen table were the Desert Eagle pistol he’d bought at a gun fair in Yuma, and the MAC- 10 machine pistol and Glock he and Ivory had taken off a drug dealer’s wife when they robbed her house outside El Paso. All reliable weapons, all untraceable, all ready and waiting.

  Ivory went to the window, stuck her finger through the blinds, and squinted out. She saw broken concrete and a dead yucca tree and the chain-link fence. How long until the cops showed up?

  “They shot her, Keyes.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Shot her in the head. And I’m next.”

  Keyes crossed the room and grabbed her arm. “Shut up. You’re hysterical.”

  She tore his hand from her arm. “Of course I am. She was my sister.”

  She shoved him aside, raked her fingers into her hair again, and stalked across the room. “What am I gonna do? All my ID has her name on it. Driver’s license, employee ID, the damned TV cable bill, they all say ‘Noel Michael Petty.’ ”

  She turned. Keyes’s eyes were flat. He knew they were cornered. He couldn’t deny it.

  “Blue Eagle’s gonna hear her name on the news and wonder why the hell it’s the same as one of their drivers, and they’re gonna call to ask me and when I don’t answer, they’re gonna call the police.”

  Everybody at work thought Ivory was just a nickname. They didn’t know their snow-white driver had taken the identity of Noel Michael Petty from her crackpot sister. Her sister who only cared about country music, her sister with the money from her slip-and-fall settlement, who wouldn’t share a cent with Ivory, even when Ivory got out of prison and needed cash. Her sister, Noel, who didn’t deserve a breath of mercy.

  “Jesus, they shot her. In the head.”

  “And she was a night crawler. A creep.”

  “Who cares now? She was my sister.” Ivory looked at him. “Contact Paine.”

  They stared at each other. This was the moment Keyes could bolt if he wanted.

  “ ‘We must hang together, or we’ll hang separately.’ Thomas Paine. You buying it?” she said.

  He didn’t move, for a long, cool moment. Then he brushed past her and got on the computer. He logged in to the Webmail site Paine had set up for him, and drafted a new message. She watched him type.

  “You using that quote?” she said.

  “No. Somebody else who meant what he said.”

  Ivory leaned over his shoulder. He wrote, “Isn’t it kind of scary that one man could wreak this kind of hell?”

  Timothy McVeigh. She slid to her knees, sank her fingers into Keyes’s shirt, and kissed the back of his neck with gratitude. Her heart filled with brilliant intent.

  45

  JO PACED THE LOBBY OF WAYMIRE & FONG LLP. THE WORKDAY WAS nearing an end, and the reception area was empty. She stared at the Wyeth prints on the wall. Two attorneys came through, chatting amiably. They didn’t give her a second glance.

  They couldn’t tell. Jo guessed that being slapped around over the phone by the White House chief of staff didn’t leave visible marks.

  She turned and paced along the windows. She tried to work out what she was going to tell Vienna Hicks. On the windowsill outside, a sparrow landed and sheathed its wings.

  The door behind the receptionist’s desk blew open and Vienna swept through. Her face was flushed. The gold and black scarf that flew around her neck gave her the look of a giant, ferocious monarch butterfly.

  She crushed Jo in a hug. “Bless you. Poor girl, bless you.”

  Jo resisted, stunned, as she was gathered to a giant, neon- bright bosom.

  “God love you, it must have been horrible.” Vienna squeezed her tight. “You tried, honey. You tried to save him.”

  Jo gulped. For a second, she nearly surrendered to Vienna’s outpouring of compassion. But she couldn’t let Lecroix’s death puncture her defenses and lay her flat. She couldn’t lower the walls. To do so would be unprofessional and self-destructive. She screwed down the font of sadness that was welling.

  Vienna exhaled. “I’m verklempt, excuse me. This has been a hell of a day.” She took Jo’s elbow and led her down the hall. “Who would have believed—a stalker. Poor Searle.” She swept into her office and sat down with a thump. “The conspiracy theorists had it half right.”

  Jo put on her look of studied neutrality. It didn’t stick.

  “The police have told me they expect to close their investigation into my sister’s death. They’re with the wackos—they think Tasia was murdered. And they don’t expect to look in any other direction for her killer. They got Petty.”

  “They’re satisfied that your sister’s case can be closed. That’s why I came by. I want to talk to you about the psychological autopsy.”

  Vienna’s brows drew down. “Let me guess. The police department sees no need to pay you for your services any longer. They want you to shelve your report.”

  “The police would like me to summarize the information I’ve gathered, but don’t want me to pursue it any further.”

  “You’re dropping it?”

  Jo didn’t answer.

  Vienna shifted in her chair. “So what does your report say?”

  “If I submitted it tonight? It would be inconclusive. I haven’t had the opportunity to review your sister’s medical and psychiatric records, or to interview everybody on my list.” She held her voice steady. “Right now I cannot draw any conclusion about the cause of Tasia’s death. And I regret that.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Were the conspiracy theorists right?”

  “Meaning, did Noel Petty shoot your sister—”

  “Or are the police closing the case because of political pressure?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Vienna leaned forward. “Rob lied about meeting with Tasia a few days before she died. She wrote a goddamned song about being assassinated. I don’t want the police to close the case until they investigate that angle. I don’t think you want them to close it, either.”

  “What I want the police to do won’t have much effect at this point,” Jo said.

  “What’s bugging you?” Vienna spread her hands. “Same thing that’s bugging me. Right? Petty killed Searle. But I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that the cops are rushing to close the case and shout booya! Claim the win and tell everybody to move along, there’s nothing more to see.” She drummed her fingers on the desk. “What do you really think?”

  “First, a comment. Then a question,” Jo said. “Don’t over-rely on my ability to lay your questions to rest. Sometimes the best I can do is to offer an opinion as to the likely mental state of the victim before death. I don’t have a crystal ball.”

  “Damn it. Are you quitting?”

  Jo raised a hand. “Now, my question. Tasia’s ghostwriter claims that her autobiography will feature explosive revelations about her marriage. Does that sound like marketing hype, or does it ring true to you?”

  Vienna’s eyes widened with alarm. “What revelations?”

  “He refuses to say.”

  Vienna tamped down her emotions and shook her head. “The only explosive thing in that marriage was Tasia. She blew up all the time. She was impossible to live with. You want the sad reality? She swept Rob away. He thought she was wild about him—because she was
so up, so vital, so thrilled whenever she saw him. But she was just manic. What she loved was being the center of attention. It wasn’t him. It was all about her.” Vienna quieted. “She broke his heart.”

  Jo nodded. Bipolar people, while often charismatic and winning, sometimes engaged others only on a superficial level.

  Vienna crossed his arms. “Your turn. Are you punting on your investigation?”

  “To the contrary,” Jo said. “I came to tell you about the talk I just had with your ex-brother-in-law’s right-hand man.”

  K. T. LEWICKI’S VOICE, with its clipped and nasal, go- for-the-viscera tone, had carried a different tenor this time. Jo hadn’t been able to pin it down.

  “I heard what happened at the Saint Francis,” he said. “Are you all right? You weren’t harmed?”

  Standing outside Mijita, shivering in the breeze, she told him, “I’m all right. The police officers involved are all right.”

  “I’ve seen some information about the suspect. It sounds as though Petty was a classic model of the obsessed celebrity stalker.”

  “No such thing as a classic, but I’ll go out on a limb and say she was obsessed with Searle Lecroix and stabbed him to death in a homicidal rage. It was an ugly scene, Mr. Lewicki.”

  “As I said, I’m relieved to hear you and the officers involved are unharmed.”

  The breeze, rushing toward the bay, chilled her face. She held her tongue. Everything she wanted to scream, she clamped down. She wanted to play this, to hear what he had to say.

  It wasn’t good.

  “I appreciate your taking the time to phone me earlier. In a way, it must seem a relief,” he said.

  “How’s that?”

  “That the suspect’s actions were so overt. Counterintuitive though it may seem, it’s lifted a burden from your shoulders.”

  She kept quiet.

  “There’s no need for you to continue your probe now, is there?”

  And Jo recognized the new top note in his voice. Knew how he sounded.