Trust Me When I Lie

by Benjamin Stevenson

  “You regret not going up with him?”

  “I go over all our choices that day. If we’d have gone swimming instead of climbing, if I’d been able to convince him to stay on the ground. Yeah, I regret whether I went up or not. So many forks in these roads though.” He offered her a grim smile. “I get lost in the labyrinth.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

  And, finally, it felt as if they’d agreed on something. Lauren thought she put her brother in a cell. So did Jack: Liam’s whole body was a prison. They sat in silence. A breeze chilled them, wafting through the silent, doorless house. Jack surprised himself by taking Lauren’s hand. Her skin was soft. The last woman’s hand Jack had held had been Alexis’s. Lauren’s was warm.

  “If Curtis killed anyone, that’s not a betrayal,” Jack said quietly.

  Lauren nodded.

  “So,” Jack said.

  “So.”

  “In the interest of sharing, help me look through these files.” Jack took the lid off the box.

  “What are they?”

  “My research from the case.”

  “The restaurant?” Lauren recognized a blueprint on a piece of paper. “Have a look at these.” She offered them to him for a closer look.

  “Not those,” Jack said, and passed her the stolen forensics.

  “Looks official.” She leafed through them. “Where’d you get them?”

  “Friend of mine.” Jack glanced away.

  “Wow,” she said, seeing through him. “Glad we’re not friends.”

  McCarthy’s files were a gold mine. The autopsy report identified the fatal wound as a severe blow to the base of the skull with a blunt object. The strangulation marks on the neck were made postmortem, pulled just tight enough and long enough to bruise and scar a still-warm body. Imagine strangling a dead person. Jack shivered. Lauren was having trouble looking at the photographs, so Jack took them back. There was Alexis, splayed on the cobblestones, on her back. Fingers in her mouth, pointing to the sky. Her limbs were twisted unevenly, as if she’d jumped from a balcony. The violence of her death bled out of the photos. There was no peace there.

  There were also more clinical photographs, close-ups of the finger wounds. Hers were cleaner cut than Eliza’s, Jack noticed immediately. The forensics expert had drawn small green circles where they thought there were unique markings. On Alexis’s wounds, these markings formed a small tilted diamond. Jack rifled through his box and found photos of Eliza’s wounds. Eliza’s knuckles were chewed and ragged, they looked like raw hamburger mince. Jack compared them to Alexis’s. They had been more neatly severed. A different kind of weapon.

  He wondered if Winter had checked Alexis’s kitchen thoroughly, if they’d found a knife missing. No, you had to saw with knives. There were no saw marks on the bone. Something like a…meat cleaver? He took out the photos of his independent silicon hand tests. They’d been comprehensive with those, more so than the police, at great expense. They’d used thick, molten silicon ladled into molds for the flesh. They’d made dozens of the hands and then systematically destroyed them all: slamming them in every door of the Wade household, severing them with every sharp object they could find. He found the meat cleaver report, the exact one from the Wade restaurant. On one side of the paper was a photo of the weapon, laid out on an evidence table next to a yellow ruler. On the other side, close-up images of the severed silicon fingers. An even cut, a fast chop. The cleaver was the perfect weapon for the job, but it wasn’t the right one. No match for the tilted diamond. Jack flicked through the rest of the reports on various weapons. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Lauren wandered across the hall. Jack could hear her singing from the bathroom: She’s having a piss, she’s having a piss, don’t come in, because she’s having a piss. When she ran out of lyrics to her own song, she sang to the tune of a pop song: This piss. This piss. Unstoppable.

  Jack smiled. Lauren’s ability to bounce back astounded him. She didn’t take things lightly, but she seemed able to not let them pin her down.

  Are you born with that resilience, he wondered, or do you have to go through some trauma to build up to it? He supposed all country women had thick skin. Ducks might have the market cornered on water bouncing off their backs, but Jack reckoned if Brett Dawson spat at Lauren, she’d use it to polish her boots. He was thinking about Lauren when he stopped on one photocopied page of a silicon hand. There was a constellation of markings. He grabbed Alexis’s report, turned his lamp on its side so the paper turned translucent, and held the two images over each other. The markings lined up.

  A match.

  The typed report on the weapons test said it was a single blow with great force. A fast chop. Jack’s heart danced in his chest, his cold, thin fingers shaking as he turned the paper over. Saw it. The scanned picture of the weapon. Lauren was in the doorway now. Jack held up the two matching sheets of paper. Her face turned white.

  The photo of the weapon on the silicon hand report was in black and white, but they both immediately recognized the change in shading halfway up the wooden handle. Half-stained red. Unmistakable, this ax.

  Jack didn’t have to say anything; he could see Lauren already understood. Whoever they’d chased through the vineyard hadn’t been stealing the ax at all. They’d been trying to put it back.

  “We have to get back to Birravale,” he said. “Now.”

  Chapter 23

  Lauren was out the door and sprinting for the shed before the car had stopped. Jack had cut a half hour off the drive, only slowing for one set of well-known speed cameras on the highway, where Lauren had snapped at him: For fuck’s sake, Jack, you can afford it. They’d blown through Birravale’s lonely traffic light.

  How had he missed it? An ax head had two sides. The killer had flipped the ax, hit Alexis with the blunt end of the head. That would be like getting plugged by a hammer. Then the killer had turned her over, spread her fingers. Jack had seen the white scores in the cobblestone himself. Chip marks. Not made with pliers or knives. The ax was the only solution.

  “No police,” Lauren said on the drive back, and when Jack was silent, added more softly: “Give him a chance.”

  “Don’t call him.”

  “You can’t still think—”

  “Whatever else they planted, they want him to find it. If he touches anything, he’s fucked.”

  Had she known he wouldn’t call the police anyway? Surely she could see the television producer inside him wanting to see it for himself. First.

  In Birravale, Jack opened his door before he flicked the car off, everything still in motion. The car, with both doors splayed into a wingspan, shuddered to a stop. The car stalled as he got out, threatened to roll back but didn’t. Jack left his door open and hurried after Lauren, sprays of gravel flicking up at his calves. He could hear clanging, swearing, from the shed, then the sound of the homestead screen door rattling open behind him, but he kept running.

  Sunlight spilled in a glaring rectangle on the dusty concrete floor of the shed. The pickup was on the grass outside. The off-white hatchback had its hood up, innards exposed. Jack knew nothing about cars, but it looked like something was missing. The dirt bike was unmoved. A ride-on mower sat in the back. There were black stains on the floor, which had a long crack down the middle of the slab. A workbench on the left was covered in debris and scattered tools. Lauren was over by it, picking things up and throwing them to the floor. A heavy wrench sparked off the concrete.

  “Fuck,” she said, hair in clumps, the tips narrowed and dark with sweat, waxed ends of cut rope. “Fucking. Just. Fuck.” She saw him standing in the doorway. “Help me look.”

  Jack wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Anything really. Lauren had interrupted them before they could properly plant the ax, but who knew what else they’d managed to hide? Lauren had chased someone out from the shed, so if anything
was to be found, it was here. It wasn’t an overstuffed garage, so there weren’t many hiding places. He walked around the car, bent behind the mower. Lauren was now laying into a red-metal tool cabinet, pulling out drawers in desperation. She buried her shoulder into the side of the chest, pivoted it out from the wall. Jack checked under the hatchback. While he was stooped, the light in the room changed. Someone was standing in the doorway.

  “Is he here?” Curtis said.

  “Curtis, I need you to tell me—”

  “Is he here?”

  “Jack,” Lauren said loudly, clearing her throat.

  Jack stood, dusting the front of his suit, registering that he hadn’t changed from the funeral. At least if things went south, he was dressed for his own. Curtis was a silhouette against the cube of daylight.

  “Where was the ax before Alexis died, Curtis?” Lauren asked.

  “Are you kidding me? It should have been in here.”

  “Jack thinks that—” Jack coughed in protest as if to say don’t pin this on me, so she restarted. “We’ve discovered the forensics match Alexis’s wounds. To your ax.”

  “My ax?”

  “We’re ahead of the police.”

  “Why are you all so fucking dressed up? Are there cameras? There’s a very good explanation, and that is that someone took it two nights ago. Come on.”

  “Alexis died a week ago, Curtis.”

  “I don’t bloody know where it was a week ago, Lauren.” He spoke her name through his teeth as he stepped into the room, materializing out of the dimness. “Someone took it. I don’t know. I am not in possession of any weapon,” he said, as if he were testifying in court.

  “How’d they get in here?” Lauren said.

  “You on his side now?”

  “I should call the police,” said Jack.

  “Do it,” said Curtis.

  “Don’t,” said Lauren, holding out her palm. “Curtis, if we call the police, they might find something else in here. Even if it is planted, they won’t believe you. It’s better that we search first. Think about it.”

  Curtis breathed out through his nose. “Even if it’s planted?” Jack saw Lauren’s face fall at her badly chosen phrasing. “Even. If?”

  “No one’s saying—” Lauren started.

  “Everyone’s saying a lot.” Curtis’s voice rose. “First, if Alexis was killed with my ax, how are you ahead of the police forensics?”

  “Jack’s research—”

  “Jack’s research, as we’re calling it, has no one checking it, no one to answer to.” He shook his head. Jack wasn’t sure if it was genuine frustration or his surprise that after all his insistence of framing, he actually might be right for once. Then he turned to Jack: “You say what you want, you put it on TV, and everyone believes it. I’m glad you got me out of jail, but it’s bullshit that put me in and bullshit that got me out. I don’t trust your research. Fuck that.”

  Curtis canvassed the two of them, decided it wasn’t worth it. He turned and left. The light came back in from the doorway, scarring the concrete. Jack could hear him crunching down the driveway.

  “My research isn’t flimsy.” Jack found his voice.

  “I’m so confused,” Lauren said, mostly to herself as she started rifling through the tool cabinet again. “This fucks your boyfriend theory.”

  True. Whoever murdered Alexis had to have planned to kill her. They’d come to the winery, broken into the shed, headed back into the city, weapon in the trunk. Premeditated.

  “Is this shed locked?” Jack said.

  “Sometimes.”

  “So the police now know the ax is the murder weapon. We can tell them what we think, but I doubt it’ll help,” Jack said. “Your problem is when the police come out here and don’t find the murder weapon. It’ll look like Curtis got rid of it.”

  Jack went to check behind sheets of plywood on the far wall. A wooden handle excited him, an irrational flicker inside him that it might be the ax returned, but it was just a stiff-brushed broom. From across the shed, Lauren said, “Oh fuck.” Then a puttering of repetition, an engine kicking into gear. “Fuck-fuck-fuckity-fuck.”

  By the time Jack looked up, Lauren was sprinting to the door, the drawers of the tool cabinet left hanging open. “Curtis! Curtis!”

  Jack followed her outside, but she was already on the veranda. Something small and black was in her hand. She banged on the door, flat-palmed, then wrestled with the knob. Curtis must have locked it from the inside.

  “Open the door!” she yelled.

  It swung inward so suddenly she almost fell over the threshold. Curtis looked uninterested, until Lauren showed him what was in her hand and his mouth seemed to cave inward. He asked her a question and then guided her into the house. Jack was only a few steps behind; he followed through the still-open door. He could hear them arguing in the lounge room, Curtis protesting something. The curtains were still all closed, the walls tinged mold yellow by the setting sun.

  “I haven’t seen that before. I swear,” Jack heard clearly, louder than the rest. Then Lauren said something about “charge.” Settle down. No one’s going to charge you with murder.

  When he got to the lounge room, he propped himself against the doorframe, where Lauren had stood two days ago. Lauren was pacing back and forth in front of the window, while Curtis was standing beside the bookcase, the butt of the rifle visible on the shelf above, running his hands through his hair.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Loz.” Jack knew he was begging because he’d never heard Lauren’s nickname before. “But I don’t know where it came from.”

  “It’s planted, is it? Everything’s fucking planted with you, Curtis.” She stepped up to him, paused on the balls of her feet, and Jack thought she might be about to hit him, but she changed her mind and dropped back on her heels. “The sheer absurdity of the conspiracy behind this… This is literally your last chance. Just own up to something.”

  “Lauren. This is what they want. Alexis’s killer knows that it’s not sticking to me. They’re getting desperate.”

  Lauren crinkled her nose.

  Curtis kept up his impassioned defense. “Why would I keep it? And why would I keep it in my own toolbox? I was in prison for four years. I’ve mopped floors with people who’ve jacked off to things that this…this fucking Nail-Biter killer…couldn’t stomach. Jim Harrison, fuck, he’d tell you some stories. Amputated fingers, ha, that’s fucking cute. Trust me, this is shoptalk. It’s all you get inside. I spent four years listening to people talk about how they got busted. Little things. And you found this in my goddamn shed? This isn’t the work of an ex-con. This is the work of someone who wants to get caught.”

  “It must be ready,” Lauren said.

  Jack still didn’t know what they were talking about. Then he saw the coffee table. It still had the Lions football mugs on it, a skin of milk on top of both half-finished teas. But it was what was between them that caught his eye. A thin black cable squirreled its way up one of the coffee table legs from a plug into the wall. It was plugged into a touchscreen phone. Its screen cracked.

  Lauren hadn’t been talking about Curtis being charged with murder. They’d been talking about charging a phone.

  “Is that—” Jack said from the door, and both of them looked up. Curtis looked like he wanted to pile-drive Jack through the drywall, but then there was a faint, distracting bell noise.

  Alexis’s second phone had turned on.

  “No pass code,” said Lauren, picking it up and looking at it.

  “Go to messages,” said Curtis.

  “Go to calls,” said Jack.

  “Shut up.”

  Lauren scrolled through the phone for what felt like an eternity. Curtis peered over her shoulder. Jack couldn’t see anything.

  “Interesting,” Curtis said.

 
“What is it?” Jack said.

  Lauren unplugged the phone and tossed it to him. Midway through the air, he had a panic about fingerprints and tried to pull his jacket sleeve over his hand, but that led to a clumsy fumble and it landed in his bare hands. Fuck it, he thought. Lauren had touched it too; at least they were in it together now. Besides, now wasn’t the time to take a stance on evidence tampering. He went to calls first. All the same contact—saved as HUSH with a small emoji, a yellow face with a finger to its lips. The last one the night of her murder. Just after midnight. There was only one contact saved: HUSH. Jack checked the messages. Again, only the one contact. Some messages. Some pictures. Some sent: Alexis, undressed, the flash warping her face in a bedroom mirror but unmistakably her. Some received: a penis, close up, hotel bathroom. Boyfriend, definitely.

  “This is her phone,” Jack said quietly. “Why do you have it?”

  “We think it’s planted.” Curtis spoke over her.

  “Of course you do,” muttered Jack.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I do believe you, Curtis, but if literally everything is planted, whoever’s doing this to you must be some kind of”—Jack was about to say mastermind, but then remembered Lauren hated that—“very lucky.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Curtis to Lauren, though he tilted his head at Jack like he was sizing up a meal. “Things got a whole lot worse when you started hanging around with him.”

  “Stop it, Curtis,” Lauren said.

  “Was he in the shed with you?”

  “Stop. You know he was.”

  “Did you bring this with you?”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Jack.

  “Wouldn’t ya? What’d you say to me in prison? About words?”

  “I told you words will make you famous.”

  “Do text messages count?”

  “I guess.”

  “That’s enough.” Curtis patted the top of the bookcase, dragged something from the top. By the time Jack realized it was the rifle, it was already aimed at him. Lauren screamed.