Trust Me When I Lie

by Benjamin Stevenson

  “You want me to be a murderer. I’ll be a fucking murderer.”

  “Curtis—”

  “Shut up, Lauren!” Curtis had been loud before, but he’d never cut into a full, booming yell, and it shocked both of them. “The way you’ve been acting—you’ve got no respect for this family, sneaking around with him. This is my property, Jack. You know what that means?”

  The gun was shaking slightly in Curtis’s hand, the tip tracing a jagged circle in the air with his breathing. He might miss, thought Jack. He wasn’t keen to take that chance.

  “It means you’re trespassing. I’ve been clear. No journalists.”

  “I’m not a journalist.”

  “Not for too much longer, anyway,” Curtis said. Then he took one hand off the stock, dug around in his pocket. He pulled out his phone. Held it out.

  “You can’t—”

  “This is my property. I can do what I want.”

  Jack didn’t want to get into the legalities of Australian property and trespass law with a man with a gun, but he was pretty sure Curtis watched far too much American television. He figured it was hard to be smug about a technicality while trying to stop his guts from dripping on Curtis’s carpet though, so he kept his mouth shut.

  “Let’s prove this once and for all. Call the number. Call Hush,” Curtis said, shaking his phone in his hand.

  “Why?”

  “If my phone rings, I’m Hush. I’m guilty.”

  “No, Curtis,” Lauren was shaking.

  “If it rings?” said Jack.

  “I’ll turn myself in. But I’ll shoot you first. May as well.”

  “Stop—” said Lauren.

  “Dial it.”

  Lauren looked over at Jack and gave him a slight nod. His hands were shaking as he pulled up Alexis’s contacts.

  “You better hope I’m innocent, Jack.”

  Jack pressed Dial. There were a few seconds of silence where Jack was sure he was about to die, that the last thing he’d hear was a ringing from Curtis’s hand. And then a bang so loud it would expand around him, fold him into it, until there was nothing but quiet. But there was nothing. Then a small burring noise from Alexis’s phone speaker. But the room stayed quiet. The house stayed quiet. No reciprocal ring. Jack put the call on speaker. The phone rang out. There was no voicemail. Click.

  “Damn,” said Curtis, “I almost convinced myself.” He hadn’t lowered the gun.

  “Okay, Curtis, put it down,” said Lauren.

  “Did you plant the phone?” Curtis said.

  Jack shook his head.

  “Get on your knees.”

  Jack obeyed. He put his hands behind his head. Curtis hadn’t asked him to. It just happened. A reflex. A doctor taps you on the knee, your leg kicks. A man with a gun asks you to kneel, and your elbows rise, right angled to your ears.

  “Did you plant this?”

  “You’re scaring him.” Lauren’s voice was high, pleading.

  “I should be.”

  Jack shook his head again. Lauren was frozen. Watching Curtis. She didn’t seem to fully understand. Curtis had his little fictional avatars in the people around him. The world in black and white. With him or against him. Jack had shown him doubt, and that meant he was against him now. Did that mean he deserved to die? The gun was now only moving up and down with Curtis’s breathing. He was calmer. More confident. He wouldn’t miss from this distance.

  “I think you killed her,” Curtis said. “What do you think about that? You need a second series. Gotta make it juicy, huh? That’s how TV goes. God. You reminded me that I missed out on Alexis. I’m jealous of whoever did it. I’m not a killer. But deep down, you know…seems like it might be up my alley. Imagine the press if I did just pop you one? Right here.”

  No one said anything. Jack could feel his heart pulsing in his throat. His feet had gone numb. His hair felt greasy under his fingers. Your life’s supposed to flash before your eyes, Jack thought. But for him there was no montage of the past, instead the opposite—everything reduced to this exact moment and nothing more. Nothing existed in the universe except this room. It was as if it had broken off from the earth and was floating in a vacuum. Nothing held Jack’s attention except the slow, hypnotic rise and fall of the gun barrel. Jack even imagined he saw the exact moment that Curtis made up his mind. Decided to kill him.

  “Words will make you famous,” said Curtis, his finger feathering the trigger, “but guns will make you famous too. Faster.”

  A loud ding cut through the room.

  Everyone stopped. It had come from Jack’s left hand. He moved it slowly from behind his head. Something was glowing in his tightly squeezed fist. Alexis’s phone. He’d almost forgotten he was holding it. Curtis lowered the gun. If he’d psyched himself into a murderous trance, the noise had broken it. Jack slowly brought the phone up.

  A text message. From HUSH.

  Who is this?

  He lifted the phone so Curtis and Lauren could read it.

  Two seconds later, another ding.

  You’re supposed to be dead.

  S01E05

  The Fall

  Exhibit D:

  Steel-headed ax with a hickory handle. Retrieved from the Wade property garage on second search. Head is painted red, chipped to silver on the blade. Handle is two toned, maroon fading into light brown. Fingerprints: Curtis Wade, Lauren Wade, Vincent Wade, several unmatched, see Exhibits M–O. Blood: Not found.

  Markings on the victim’s finger wounds do not match ax head.

  Chapter 24

  Previously

  Eliza sat on the bed and watched the wine run down the walls.

  After her initial panic wore off and the fruity, fermented smell worked its way through her synapses, the scene had transformed from nightmarish to absurd. She actually wondered for a second if the place might fill up and mercifully drown her, but the flood had tapered off to a steady drip. A droplet had sizzled on the single swinging light globe.

  She’d lifted her mouth skyward to catch a few drips, to prove to herself it wasn’t a delusion. The first few droplets shocked her with taste and delight. He fed her, but it was plain. Once he brought a pizza, slid the cardboard box across to her, but she’d been too scared to eat it (Why pizza now? Had he put something in it?), and he must have taken offense because she hadn’t been given anything special since. She didn’t actually know if he fed her regularly or well because of the way time came to her down here. Some days, she was convinced he’d forgotten, that she’d gone weeks without food, but then he’d come with a piece of toast and a bottle of water, and she wondered if it was only a few hours after all.

  The pizza had come a few days after he stopped asking her what she knew. She’d told him everything. He hadn’t killed her yet, but he hadn’t let her go yet either. A survivalist stalemate. A single, powerless pawn dancing a lone king around a board.

  She put one of her shoes under the heaviest drip and watched as it slowly filled up. It sloshed as she brought it back to her bed. It was the only vessel she had in here. There were droplets on the floor in an odd, almost rigid, pattern.

  Some days she wished he would hurry up. Others, she was thankful for the tiniest events. The rush of fresh air when he opened the door. A vivid dream, a memory, of her friends or family. A glass of wine.

  She sat back on the bed, propped on her elbows so she wouldn’t have to lean against the sticky wall. She took refuge in those moments. Just get through one more day. That was her philosophy. And then get through the next one. Then the next one.

  She had her shoe-full of wine and was determined to enjoy it. She lifted it up to the speckled roof in cheers. It would be some time before the wine dried and the dyed-red pattern began to tell her another story.

  But for now, happy hour.

  Chapter 25

  September />
  You’re supposed to be dead.

  Alexis’s second phone was faceup on the coffee table. Jack, Lauren, and Curtis had settled in around it. Lauren and Jack were together, scooted forward on the ravenous couch. Curtis had taken a chair opposite. The hunting rifle was propped against the chair’s arm, with the stock on the floor, the barrel pointed to the roof. Someone had plugged the phone back into the charger as the sliver of battery waned, but Jack couldn’t remember who. It wouldn’t have been Curtis, who treated it like a hot coal, refusing to touch it.

  “Hush.” Lauren rolled it around her mouth like a candy.

  “Asian name,” Curtis muttered. “Must be.”

  “It’s not a name, Curtis,” Lauren said. “It’s an adjective.”

  “Each letter stands for something?”

  “That’s an acronym,” Jack said.

  “Don’t talk down to me.” Curtis ground his jaw.

  “One of my friends”—Lauren’s calm, even voice tempered the room—“changed the name of her ex-boyfriend in her phone to Do Not Call Him. So it doesn’t mean anything, Curtis, except that she didn’t want to put her boyfriend’s name in her phone.”

  “Why not?” Curtis asked, still figuring it out.

  “Don’t know,” said Jack. “Why wouldn’t she want to put her boyfriend’s name in her secret phone?”

  “Stop being a smart-arse,” said Lauren.

  “Devil’s advocate,” said Jack. He saw a flicker of a smile.

  “It’s weird to us because she’s dead,” Lauren said, scrolling through the messages again. “But to her, maybe it wasn’t so suspect. There’s no pass code. Then again, there must have been some reason for keeping her relationship discreet. He’s the only one in there. And his messages only go back to June.”

  June. Just before the retrial.

  “She told me it was her second phone. Just until her other one stopped blowing up.”

  “Okay,” said Lauren, thinking. “That could be why she never bothered with a password. If it was only meant to be temporary.”

  “If the killer planted this,” Curtis said, “they’d have deleted anything incriminating. Agreed?” Everyone nodded. “So that means they left Hush in there on purpose. Why plant a phone with your details in it? Why hasn’t her boyfriend gone to the police? They’re trying to guide us to him. Right? I never thought I’d say this, but we should go to the police.”

  “You think you’re being set up as part of a setup now?” Jack said, talking Curtis down for his own benefit. Jack couldn’t go to the police. They’d tear apart his house. They’d find the shoe. Potential jail time aside, that was a career ender.

  “You could hand this in. But if the killer even gets a whiff that you’re colluding, they will find a way to plant that ax on you,” Lauren said. “It won’t matter that he’s in the phone. All he’ll have to do is admit to sleeping with her. You’ll still be hit with this. Point is”—she blithely dismissed Curtis’s concerns—“she’s used a little smiley picture. That’s not real secrecy; that’s cute more than anything. See?”

  Curtis recoiled as if she’d thrust a snake at him.

  “I’m not fucking touching that.”

  “It’s still a secret,” said Jack. “Otherwise, she would have used his name.”

  “Unless it’s an aneurism,” said Curtis.

  “Acronym,” said Lauren and Jack together.

  “Whatever.”

  “He’s got a point,” said Lauren. “Hush-hush.” She held a finger to her lips. “This was, at the very least, someone she wanted to keep under wraps.”

  “Someone married?” suggested Curtis.

  “Someone she knew she shouldn’t be seeing.” Jack tapped a finger on his chin.

  He must have been unconsciously sizing up Curtis, because Curtis flung both hands upward. “Seriously?”

  “I didn’t even—”

  “Jack, lay off,” said Lauren.

  “Someone she shouldn’t be seeing,” Curtis repeated smugly. “I’d say that’s everyone in this fucking town. Even you.”

  Jack took a moment to appreciate the absurdity of them all sitting in Curtis’s lounge room throwing theories at a dartboard. Their own little crime-solving trio. Winter would have a stroke.

  “You’re right.” Jack tried to look sincere. “Sorry.”

  Lauren looked over to Curtis, as if to encourage him to play nice, and he acknowledged her with a grunt. Her skyward eye roll back to Jack was clear: That’s as good as it gets.

  “That explains why he wouldn’t go to the police. If it was an affair or whatever. The secrecy must be more important to him than finding her killer,” said Jack.

  Jack was aware both Curtis and Lauren were examining him as if they knew he’d played the truth fast and loose during his own interactions with the police. Of course they did. Curtis had guessed that whatever evidence he had, had been planted. Even Lauren had asked him numerous times: Are you telling me everything? And not a single time had she looked like she believed him when he’d said he had. Good radar on her.

  “So what do we know?” Jack said. “Someone wanted Alexis dead. And they realized the easy way out was to frame Curtis for it. So they come here, take the ax, drive back to Sydney, and—” He clicked his tongue. Enough said.

  Everyone stayed in silence considering this. The only sound was the slow synthetic clicking as Lauren scrolled back through the text messages. It was too coincidental to not involve Curtis Wade at all. Jack again realized he only thought this because he wanted the crimes to be related. Curtis couldn’t have sent the text message; his hands had been steadying a rifle. Jack wondered if the irony of it escaped Curtis. That he was innocent of murder only because he was busy preparing to kill someone else.

  “Nothing else in here,” Lauren said, putting the phone down at last. “Though they do stop texting each other…hmm…a few weeks before she died. Their texts are all discreet; it’s like business meetings. Dates and times and places. That’s it. They don’t talk about their days at all. There are some photos. Only close-ups though, and mostly her. He’s white, by the way.”

  “Can I have a look?” said Jack. Lauren passed it to him. He scrolled through. There weren’t a lot of messages, so it didn’t take long. Lauren was right. Everything was organized and perfunctory: 7:00 p.m., Frankie’s Café. If it dried up a few weeks before she died, did this indicate a breakup? Or was Curtis right, and whoever had planted this had cleared just the right amount of information to make it look that way?

  “He’s not Jewish,” Jack said, “if that helps.”

  “What’s the number?” asked Curtis. “We should write it down.”

  The shared look between them said, In case the police take it. The mutual understanding, that they would keep this evidence to themselves, hung in the room. They wore their motives clear on their faces. Curtis, who knew it would make him look guilty. Lauren, wanting to stick up for her brother. And Jack, here for himself.

  Lauren read out the number. Jack keyed it into his phone and saved it under HUSH. Curtis jotted it down on a piece of paper and put it in his pocket. Curtis was the most animated Jack had seen him, motivated by something other than hurt or anger. Curtis wanted to solve this murder as much as Jack did. Clear his name.

  “We should call it,” said Curtis.

  “We called it already,” said Jack.

  “On our own phones,” said Curtis. “Of course they won’t pick up when a dead woman calls.”

  “I don’t know if I want a murderer to have my phone number,” Jack said, simply because he didn’t want to admit it was actually a pretty good idea.

  “Man up.”

  “You do it, then.”

  “I can’t. My number in a murderer’s call logs? That’ll play badly with the cops. And on TV.” Curtis added the last two words with acidity, a raised eyebrow.<
br />
  “Block the number,” said Lauren to Jack. “You can hide behind that.”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “Then call them,” said Curtis. “We know the phone’s on.”

  “Why don’t we text them back?”

  “And say what?” said Lauren.

  “Dunno.” Jack thought a second. “‘Who is this?’”

  “Of course,” said Curtis, smacking his forehead. He tapped an imaginary phone with his thumbs, speaking stilted as if typing each word. “Thanks for asking. My name is Gary Murderson, and I live at 123 Confession Street.”

  “Well, fuck, he’s not going to tell us who he is on the phone either, is he?”

  “But we’ll hear his voice. We might know him,” Lauren said.

  “Shit,” Jack said. “How do I block my number?”

  When Lauren had masked his phone, Jack hit Call and put it on speaker. Again, the tinny hum thrummed from the small speakers. Again, there was no reciprocal noise in the house. They all clustered forward, waiting. Each pause between rings was near interminable. Implausibly, it seemed each pause was a fraction longer, as if someone had picked up. But then the burr would return, and they’d wait again. The phone rang out with a click. No voicemail.

  “Well,” Jack said, pocketing his phone, “Gary Murderson lives on in secrecy.”

  “Maybe he’s not picking up a blocked number,” said Curtis.

  “I’m not giving him my real number, Curtis.”

  “Lauren?” Curtis looked over to her.

  “I’m your sister. The call logs would be just as incriminating.”

  And Jack finally realized why Curtis had let him on their property at all. Jack was Curtis’s alibi. Curtis was letting him stick his fingers in places Curtis couldn’t, at risk of incriminating himself. Jack’s fingerprints were on the phone. He’d underestimated Curtis again.

  “Fine,” said Jack.

  “Fine?”

  “Fucking fine, Curtis.”

  Lauren showed Jack how to unmask his number. Again, he placed the phone in the center of the table, put it on speaker. Again, they hunched forward. Ring. Ring. Click. No voicemail.