Trust Me When I Lie

by Benjamin Stevenson

  He’d come into town to fix his mistakes, but before he left, he’d have to tear it apart again. Once he told the police about the shoe, tomorrow morning, he’d be in a cell. Only the truth would do now. He shoved the building plans in, grabbed a few more pieces of paper, invoices, forensics, and put them in too. The blueprint swirled in his head. He pictured the view from the top of Andrew’s silo, except this time the picturesque view was superimposed with lines and schematics. The door in his mind slammed shut.

  Could he be right?

  His breathing quickened as he started the car. The afternoon was waning. Creeping up to five. Vanessa Raynor’s current affairs show would play at half past seven. Ted Piper was clinging to the last bit of infamy with this interview. His last appearance on Raynor’s show had been interrupted by the breaking news of Alexis’s murder. Ted would sure be pissed off if Jack upstaged him again. Another bit of breaking news. Curtis Wade proven guilty; Jack Quick arrested and charged with obstruction. He had Vanessa’s number; he could call her. He caught his tiny smile in the rearview mirror, entertaining the idea. McCarthy could even bring him in. Slight redemption for Jack ruining his career. He’d be a hero cop. He’d like that.

  Jack shook it off. He was creating characters and narratives again. How to spin the story. Against Ted. In favor of Ian. Not this time. This time there was no story. Reality beckoned. He thought it finally made sense, but he had to be sure.

  He parked at the bottom of the Wades’ driveway and got out of the car.

  He was ready to tell Lauren everything, especially if his hunch was correct, but before that, he had one more confession to make.

  He dialed his father’s number.

  “Hi, Dad,” Jack said.

  “Jack,” his father said, “just turned the TV off. That horrible Vanessa Raynor show is about to come on.” Whether Peter believed that or was defiant in solidarity was unclear.

  “Can I talk to Liam?”

  “Hang on.” Peter offered no resistance, no: He can’t hear you, Jack. He must have heard the crack in Jack’s voice. The sound of footsteps, stairs. Sitting down. The usual routine. Peter’s voice now echoing: “Okay. You’re on.”

  “Liam, hey buddy. It’s Jack. Just wanted to say hi.”

  A moment’s absorption, while Jack pictured his words entering Liam through one of his tubes. Volume seeping into his skin. The scratching of the pencil in the background, the crinkling paper.

  “I wanted to tell you that I think we’ve finally figured it out.” Jack was walking across the vineyard now, having eschewed the driveway. “You would have gotten it faster than I did—you were always so clever—but I caught on eventually.”

  The soft rasp of a pencil.

  “I noticed that the schematic of the old restaurant lines up exactly with where Eliza was found.” He was there now; he tucked the phone between his shoulder and ear as he worked with his hands. “And Brett Dawson was paid thirty-five grand to fill that old cellar with concrete. But then why’d he call Curtis a stingy fuck?”

  The scrape of a pencil. The rustle of paper.

  “You got it, bro,” Jack said, fingers plunging deeper, digging. “Just like the windows. Smashing them so he’d be paid to repair them. Brett Dawson wanted to be paid for the same job twice. He took Whittaker’s money but didn’t do the job, then wanted to charge Curtis to do it again, fill it in, so the vines could grow. And the whole vine is dying, from the bottom of the field up to the new restaurant. Why? Because that’s how he goes in and out. Brett only put in three wine storage units. Not four. So there’s the answer. Couldn’t have done it without you, buddy. I wanted you to know that. We did it.”

  Scratch. Scratch.

  “And”—Jack’s breath caught in his throat—“I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”

  He was crying now, his dirt-caked hands rubbing soil on his cheeks, on his knees in Curtis Wade’s vineyard.

  “I’m so sorry, Bro. I should have been better. That day, at the Fist—”

  The pencil scratched.

  “After you fell…I told everyone I wasn’t up there. I told everyone that you climbed it on your own. I never told anyone that I went up with you.”

  Silence. No scratching.

  “And I never told Dad. I never told him that I said it was too slippery, but we argued, and you insisted I come with you, and I caved. So I went up with you. And we were mucking around. And that’s how you fell. I never told Dad that.”

  Last chance—you coming up or not?

  Liam’s fingers, reaching out, slipping past his. Then his body slowly leaning backward until there was nothing but air. Whump. So close. The graze of his brother’s fingertips burned onto his hands. Just another scar for his fingers.

  And Jack had been so sure he’d get in trouble that when the orange-jumpsuited rescue worker had asked him what happened, he said Liam had gone up without him. And then when the doctor had asked him, he’d said the same thing. And Peter, Peter had sat him down and asked him too.

  Part of him, even then, realized that his story was the only truth that mattered. He controlled it. It didn’t matter what was true—it only mattered what you told them. And he’d given everyone who’d asked the same consistent answer and built a fortress of half-truths. It wasn’t the first time he’d told a lie. But it was the first time he’d told one he couldn’t un-tell. And then he’d gone and made a career out of it.

  Alexis had been wrong. The line isn’t drawn between the lies you can live with and the lies you can’t. They aren’t so well defined. The lies you can live with, sometimes they turn into the ones you can’t. Not this one. Not anymore.

  Peter’s pencil was quiet. Crossword discarded.

  “I’m sorry, Liam.” It kept spewing out of him. “I’m so fucking sorry. And if I had the courage to tell Dad this too, I’d tell him the same thing.”

  There was silence. No movement of anything in the room, even Liam’s constant metronomic beeping seemed to take a deeper breath. Then Peter’s voice came from a distance, the corner of the room, picked up gently on the speaker.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Dad—”

  “Of course you went up there,” Peter said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Jack heard the creaking of springs, which meant Peter had moved to the bed next to Liam. His voice was slightly louder, up close. “You were twelve years old. Liam was everything to you—you followed him everywhere. But I understand. What you saw. You wouldn’t have been able to process that. Hell, grown adults lie to make themselves look better. You, just a boy, trying to digest what happened to your brother. Of course you lied. Of course. It doesn’t matter.”

  “You knew?”

  “Watching you punish yourself all this time, that was the hardest. But I thought I’d make it worse if I brought it up. I almost did. But then you got—started getting—better. I wished I could tell you it wasn’t your fault. But you just never seemed ready.”

  Jack’s nose was wet. He used his forearm, gelling the hairs on his arm to his skin.

  “Tomorrow,” Jack said, out of breath, “it’s going to be a tough day. Some things will hit the press.”

  “They’re all tough days,” said Peter.

  And Jack imagined Liam, silent on speakerphone, agreeing.

  Then one of his fingers sunk into something soft. A dent. The rim of something. He told his dad he had to go, put the phone on the grass beside him. He dragged his finger down in a straight line. Across. Up. Across. He’d marked out a crude square carving in the ground, less than a meter square.

  A hatch.

  That was how there was barely a trace of her. So she fell from the sky, Lauren had mocked him. No. The opposite. She’d come from the earth.

  Jack’s heart galloped. The old restaurant and the old cellar. The hole in the ground that Brett Dawson was supposed to have filled
with concrete but hadn’t. This, the old entrance to that cellar, unnoticed by everyone, walking back and forth over the top of it, because it was supposed to be filled in. That was why the vines weren’t growing here—not because of concrete—there wasn’t any soil. How could they have missed it? The first time, the murder had been solved slam dunk. So quickly, there was no real need to pick holes. Besides, Ian McCarthy had parked right on top of it, pushing the already overgrown door back into the ground, sealing it with two tons of incompetence. And everyone in town knew it had been filled with concrete; they’d all told him. Jack could hardly blame the police, because he hadn’t taken a second look either: it was like punching a rock with the expectation it was hollow. You just didn’t need to check things like that: the solidity of the earth, the color of the sky. The difficulty was that the real investigation was four years later. The evidence was overgrown, Jack had often thought. How true that had been. The entrance to the cellar, unopened for four years, would have overgrown too. When the serious investigation had begun, there was nothing but dirt and grass. Eliza’s tomb had sealed itself shut.

  Jack wished he had a shovel. He scrabbled with his hands, pulling the surface covering of dirt and grass away. He cleared the ground around it, wriggled his fingers under a jagged edge, stood up, and pulled.

  The hole in the ground yawned before him. A mouth, ready to swallow him whole.

  Chapter 37

  If Eliza Dacey had only had the common decency to wear shoes when she was murdered, Jack Quick’s life would have been a lot easier.

  At the very least, he wouldn’t have been lowering himself into a hole in the ground.

  When he’d pulled, the ground had bent upward, toward him. It was slow, heavy, but when it gave, it gave quickly. Jack stumbled. The door fell open, past its axis, coming to rest at a forty-five-degree angle. Dirt sprinkled from the vertices, rained into the black hole. The hatch was heavy, solid steel. Nestled neatly in a metal rim. It wasn’t designed to be opened from the outside, and, even freshly opened and closed, the disturbance wouldn’t necessarily be noticeable. Especially if you thought it was just concrete beneath. And, four years later, more invisible still. Under the earth or in the back of a closet, evidence in this case seemed to bury itself. Jack noticed rust on the sharp edges of the metal rim.

  Not rust. Blood.

  The hatch was heavy. Heavy enough to amputate two fingers if slammed. Jack swallowed.

  Jack picked up his phone and turned the flashlight on. The floor below about two meters down. No ladder. Jack hung his legs over the dark hole and lowered himself in. The metal rim lifted the tail of his shirt, scratched up his lower back. Not much farther and he had no choice—elbows square, strength fading—he pushed outward and let go.

  He landed awkwardly, hitting something soft and spring-loaded, which sent him spinning sideways to the floor. He looked up, saw the dim glint of stars, the first brush of night through the square hole above. He stood. He’d twisted his knee. He’d dropped his phone. He winced. Limped over to pick it up.

  In its light, he saw the room was about the size of a garage. Ten strides across and deep. He saw that he’d landed on an old bed. It had a flatbread of a mattress and no pillow. A cord hung from the roof in the middle of the room. He pulled it. A single light bulb flared dully, but it was enough to see better. To see the scratch marks in the floor where the bed had been dragged from one side of the room to where it stood now, under the hatch. To see the regular door at one end of the room. Riveted, strong. Clearly locked. Jack had already guessed this led to a passageway through to the modern cellar. To see the pile of clothes on the floor. A T-shirt. A pair of jeans. Worn and moldy. One running shoe.

  To see the walls. Streaked with dried red. Stained. As if they’d bled.

  The cord swung back and forth in front of him. Hung down to his chest. It was blue and yellow woven together. Polyester rope.

  It started to come together in Jack’s mind. He shone his light under the bed. It was spattered, but there was a neater pattern too. Almost as if the drips had come in a square.

  Eliza, down here for eight months, believing that locked, submarine-esque door to be her only in or out. Maybe she’d tried to get out through there. And after eight months, there was nothing left to do but wait to die. And then Curtis had gone up and buried his ax in Andrew Freeman’s silos. And, behold, the roof started to bleed. After it stopped, Eliza would have had a red floor with a clear square in the middle of it. She was clever; she would have figured out that the formation of droplets equaled an entrance above. The wine marked it out. So she’d dragged the bed over, those scratch marks. Stood on it. Maybe she was just tall enough, or perhaps she balanced on the edge of the frame to push up with all her strength. A little bit of light. Fresh air. She’d have been excited, shoved harder. Squeeze through it. Run. Run. Run. The Wade homestead light coming on. Andrew Freeman’s light above. She’d have jumped up and down. Screamed for help. Andrew’s beacon flickering off. Nothing seen. Nothing said. Curtis grabbing her. Hauling her back to the new restaurant, to that cellar, and back into this room.

  What next?

  Eliza wasn’t a quitter. She’d have tried again. Maybe quickly. Before Curtis figured out what to do. Before he came back. He knew she could escape now, which meant she had become a liability.

  In front of Jack, the floor was stained with wine, but there were darker blemishes too. Pooled under the swinging light.

  Jack’s mind filled in the blanks. Maybe Curtis had come back while she was halfway out. Her legs, slithering up and out into the light. He imagined Curtis yanking her ankles. Eliza grabbing at what she could as she fell backward, two fingers grabbing the lip just as the hatch slammed closed. Falling on the floor. Clutching her hand. Hatch not closed. Jammed with something. Her screaming. Sound siphoning through the thin slit of sky. Curtis roughly shoving the hatch up, dislodging the block, fingers scattered on the floor, closing the hatch properly now. Dragging Eliza up. The light bulb cord. Blue and yellow. Polyester rope. Curled around her neck. Toes skating on the floor, no purchase. The light blinking on and off as Curtis pulled on the cord. Fight going out of her. Like Andrew Freeman’s light, flickering out.

  The only question was why Curtis had dumped her in his field. He could have kept her down here and never been discovered. Why?

  There was a metallic groan. The crunch of a bolt being slid back. Jack backed up, hobbling on his bad knee toward the bed. Sat. The tip of the rifle came first, then the man.

  At least, before he died, Jack would get to ask Curtis himself.

  “Who’d have thought,” Curtis said, locking the door behind him, “us in a cell together?”

  Jack didn’t say anything. Curtis flicked the gun up. Rise. Jack stood. Patted a hand in the air, in what he hoped was a calming gesture. Took a step forward.

  “We could’ve been a team, Jack. Hell, we could’ve been a good one. You pretend like I’m the bad guy. You knew what this was.”

  “I did.”

  Curtis nodded at the clothes.

  “I was gonna burn those. Then”—he shrugged—“well, you know.”

  “I don’t, actually.”

  “I didn’t have time. I took them off her. I was figuring out what to do with the body. But then she got up, I guess. Stupid of me to leave her here, but I didn’t think she was getting up, to be honest.”

  Jack had an image of Eliza waking up. Half-dead. Undressed. Just enough life in her to crawl out of that hole a final time before collapsing. But why were her fingers in her mouth? A flash of the simplest answer. What do people do when their hands are full? Surely not. But maybe she didn’t want to leave a part of herself behind. Just while she needed both hands to climb out of the hole. Courageous Eliza, dragging herself from the mouth of the earth, her own fingers in her mouth.

  The most salacious part of his documentary was nothing but pure coincidence. The bareness
of the truth didn’t suit TV. Of course it was Curtis the whole time. There had never been any truly convincing argument otherwise, just a competition to see who could shout the loudest on television. As with Liam’s accident, you got to be the truth teller if no one was there to contradict you. Worse still, Jack had told the story enough times that he’d wound up believing it himself.

  “I listened to you while you fed me bullshit. Now I want you to tell me something real. What happened the night you killed Alexis?”

  Curtis looked like he was watching a season finale loaded with fan-service moments. One hand left the barrel. Went to his mouth. You won’t believe it. “Fuck. Wow. Jack. Wow.” He wiggled the gun one-handed. “You are endlessly entertaining.”

  Jack didn’t say anything. Curtis returned his hand to the rifle.

  “I didn’t feed you anything. I told you exactly what you wanted to hear. You should have seen your eyes when I gave you something dramatic; it was like a drug to you.”

  “Just tell me why.”

  “Because of Sam Culver,” Curtis said, as if it were all so simple. “Because she left that message about Andrew’s stupid wine. I overheard it. Then, when she told me what she knew, and it wasn’t as much as I thought she did, well, I’d already got her down here. Roughed her up. I didn’t have the heart to kill her, but I couldn’t let her go either. She made me do it, in the end.”