In the Company of Liars

by David Ellis

  She takes a deep breath. “Mat, don’t say a word to the FBI. They don’t have anything on you. You hear me? They don’t have anything. Just keep your mouth shut. You can’t help me now so don’t make this worse and talk to them. And take—take good care of our—”

  Her voice cuts off. She lets out a low wail. She hangs up the phone quietly and puts her face in her hands, ignoring the man seated across from her.

  “That was very good, Allison. Now just one more.”

  Allison looks up at the man, then inhales deeply, composes herself. This is the end now, she knows it. She picks up the phone and dials the numbers, reading them off the business card.

  You have reached Special Agent Jane McCoy . . .

  She waits for the beep and reads from the paper. “Jane McCoy, this is Allison Pagone. I want you to know that I will not be used. I will not let you rip the last shreds of dignity from my family. You have me. It’s over for me. If you have a hint of decency in you, you will not deny my daughter both of her parents. I want you to know that you can’t toy with people’s lives like this. I won’t let you turn me against my family. Your little plan didn’t work. So live with that.”

  She hangs up the phone and looks up at the man sitting on the ottoman opposite her, training a revolver on her. He is dark in every way—Middle Eastern with jet-black hair, dark eyes, a menacing smile, the way he can look pleasant during all of this.

  “Excellent,” the man says. “Your flair for drama has paid off.”

  “You said you’d leave,” says Allison. “I did what you wanted.”

  The man stands but keeps the firearm directed at Allison. “Please stand up,” he says.

  An hour later. Ram Haroon checks his watch. It is after 11:45 at night. He looks at Allison Pagone, lying in the bathtub, motionless. He looks over the scene. He is reluctant to go back into the bathroom, to step on the tile, so he leans in from his spot in the bedroom. The scene looks entirely clean. Nothing has been disturbed. There is no reason to suspect that this was anything other than a suicide.

  He walks to the study and unzips his gym bag. The statuette—it’s more like a trophy—is wrapped in plastic. He sets it on the desk near her computer and leaves it in the plastic, still covered with the dirt from behind the grocery store, where it was buried.

  Perfect. Better than a suicide note confessing to the murder. This is the proof, the trophy used to bludgeon Sam Dillon in February.

  He walks back through the house, careful not to change anything. If the light was on, it stays on; nothing can be altered. If the timing of her death were ever fixed by the authorities, and someone saw a light turn off afterward, it would ruin the impression.

  He walks down the basement stairs. He came in through a basement window and returns to it now, jumps back up onto the sill. Once out, he sets the window back into place as if he never were there. He makes it through the backyard, over the fence, into the neighbor’s yard. He walks to his car and begins to drive without hitting his headlights.

  He looks at his watch. It is exactly two minutes before midnight, before Wednesday. He wonders when she will be found. Some time tomorrow morning, because her trial will resume and she will not show. Someone will rush to her door. Maybe the federal agent whom Allison called—McCoy—panicking.

  He picks up his cell phone and hits a speed button. “Done,” he says, and hangs up.

  He has to get home now. Final exams start in a couple of weeks and he’s fallen behind.

  ONE DAY EARLIER

  MONDAY, MAY 10

  Ram Haroon already jogged today, so he is annoyed that he has to don the outfit and run again, at the ungodly hour of eleven at night. He is surprised to find that he’s not alone out here, that a few other lunatics are running in the cool air. There is a path that winds around a park near the university, a one-mile loop that begins—and ends—at a marker with a couple of benches and a drinking fountain made of stone.

  A runner is kneeling near the fountain, tying a shoe. Ram can hardly make the runner out in the darkness but there’s no doubt. The runner stands and stretches, then starts down the path, presumably for another mile, though Ram is sure that his contact will veer off to a nearby car.

  Left in the runner’s wake, on the grass, is an envelope. Ram does not immediately rush over to it, because as long as no other runner approaches, there is no need to act with such swiftness. After a moment of stretching, he makes his way over to the drinking fountain and takes a sip of the icy water. He bends down to tie a shoe that is not untied, and slips the envelope off the grass and into the pocket of his sweatpants.

  He is in his student dormitory thirty minutes later. Student housing might not have been the wisest choice, because the courts in America have allowed law enforcement more freedom to search school-subsidized facilities, on the theory that students have a diminished expectation of privacy in government-provided housing. But it made sense, in the end. First, because he lacks the money for a nicer place in the city, but more importantly, because he wants to fit in. He wants nothing out of the ordinary. Besides, there’s nothing for them to find in this room.

  Except this envelope. He opens it and reads:

  Sorry for the short notice. We have had a tremendous break. The FBI is pressing her for information about Operation Public Trust. They want her to provide information that she very much does not want to provide. She is tough but not when it comes to her family. She is at the breaking point. No need to give too many details. The FBI has put her in a corner. I believe she is contemplating this herself. She will do anything to protect her family. I am sure of this. But we cannot assume she will save us the trouble and take her own life.

  Do it Tuesday night. The FBI is coming back to her on Wednesday. MUST BE TUESDAY NIGHT. I have included two scripts. She should make these two phone calls. I leave it to you whether you can force her to do this. Your decision. If you can get her to cooperate, you will convince the whole world that she did this to herself. I think she will make these calls willingly, because she will want to say these things, anyway. I leave that to you.

  I assume you have the trophy now. It might make sense for you to leave it at her house. People would see her guilt.

  This has always been your idea, not mine. I still believe it is too risky. But if you insist on doing this, now is the time.

  I must warn you, if there is the slightest hint that this has not worked out to our satisfaction, WE will be the ones who walk away.

  Ram Haroon rereads the note, then looks at the other sheet of paper. It is a script of what Allison Pagone is supposed to say. The first phone call will be to Mateo, her ex-husband. Don’t say a word to the FBI and words to that effect.

  The second phone call will be to an FBI agent named Jane McCoy. Haroon does not know all the details, but he can gather enough from the script: Your plan didn’t work. Live with that. Vague without more context, but Haroon understands well enough. The FBI is trying to make the ex-husband talk to save the ex-wife, and the ex-wife, by taking her own life, removes the FBI’s leverage.

  Excellent. Better than a suicide note, especially the call to the agent, McCoy—blaming her for placing Allison in this corner. A plausible explanation for why Allison Pagone would choose to take her own life.

  Yes. This is the perfect cross of the final t, the final jagged piece of a difficult puzzle. It must be a part of this plan.

  And he has no doubt that he will be able to persuade Allison Pagone to go along.

  ONE DAY EARLIER

  SUNDAY, MAY 9

  I’ve never known anyone like you,” he told her, and she wanted to say the same thing to him. He came up behind her, cupped a hand around her throat, ran the other hand lazily up the side of her body, caressed her stomach. She felt a chill, a welcome chill, closed her eyes and let him unbutton her blouse, bring his lips to the back of her neck, bring his hands to her breasts.

  “There are things you don’t know, Allison,” he told her later.

  And The Look.
The single defining moment, at that cocktail party only days before his death. The expression of utter wanting on his face, fixating on her, imagining unspeakable acts, as he stood among others at the party, unable to move his eyes off her—

  “Shit,” Allison says, looking down at her hand. The wineglass has shattered in her grip. She looks at the pieces before taking note of the two shards stuck into her palm. Searing pain as she pulls the glass out, unable to look, wincing, cursing herself. She walks, palm up, to the sink and runs cold water over her hand. It’s everywhere, blood on her nightshirt, the floor, but it’s all she can do to wrap a towel around her hand. Then she loses her balance and falls to the floor hard.

  “Get a grip, Allison,” she mumbles. She sits up, rests her head against the cabinet below the sink, and holds her breath.

  Bring Sam to me just one more time. Defy logic, the laws of nature, and bring him back to me just this once.

  She hears her alarm clock going off upstairs. It automatically resets, and she forgot to deactivate it, for the second day in a row. Her mind has been like that recently, uncannily sharp and focused on the minutiae of her case, even the big picture, but inattentive to many of the general details of everyday living.

  She didn’t sleep. Only about four hours over the last two days. She’s been in the kitchen since midnight, nursing a glass of wine and staring into the emptiness of her backyard. She watched the sky lighten, watched the first rays of the day skitter across the yard, furious at how casually everything was passing her by.

  She gets back to her feet and heads outside. She walks through the living room, opens the back door, and the house alarm goes off, blending with the sounds of the clock alarm upstairs.

  She finds the alarm pad, deactivates it, and fights a bout of nausea. She heads outside and is unprepared for the cold air but takes it in, embraces the discomfort, wraps her arms around herself and watches the day begin.

  “You should see this,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

  Maybe he can see it. Maybe he’s looking down on her, smiling with that assurance, winking at her, blowing her a kiss. She is religious, but it’s been a while. Mat was never much for church so she fell out of practice. She feels hypocritical but she finds herself pleading.

  Just let me hear your voice. Just once.

  Tell me you forgive me.

  Tell me you love me.

  Today is Mother’s Day, a holiday that will not be celebrated by the Pagone family this year. There are obvious reasons. Having the family to this home is out of the question. The house is like a prison both literally and figuratively. Nor is there any conceivable reason for celebrating anything today.

  Good reasons, both of them. But the truth is that Allison can’t summon the strength for a façade, anyway. Not another one.

  In a little while she finds that the grocery store is not as busy as it typically would be on a Sunday. Before the recent turn of events, Allison had frequented an upscale grocer, not because of its exclusivity, but because it was the only store in this part of the city with some of the exotic ingredients she often sought. And they knew her, because she shopped often, preferring fresh food. But since her arrest, she has noticed the discomfort in virtually every acquaintance. The averted glances, the awkward silences. It’s gotten to the point where she avoids them as much as they avoid her. So now she shops at a chain store, where she is relatively unknown. Say that much for the city. One in a million is actually an understatement. It provides her relative freedom.

  Very relative. She has to stay within five miles of her home at all times, a condition of her bond. She had to get permission to get a tire changed last week.

  She carries a small basket and places a few vegetables in it. She eats meat, used to love it, but these days the idea of being a carnivore seems ironic. She walks past the bakery, past the butcher, toward the drugstore. There is a small coffee shop in the corner, the grocery chain’s attempt at modernization. She finds Larry Evans reading a newspaper at a small table. Two steaming paper cups of black coffee sit on the table. He looks over his glasses at her and smiles. She recognizes it for what it is, not a happy-go-lucky grin but an attempt at warmth. Not very many people smile at Allison Pagone these days.

  “How you holding up?” he asks.

  She puts down the groceries and sits across from him. “How do I look like I’m holding up?”

  He sets down the newspaper. “Honestly?”

  She sighs. “Don’t start lying to me now, Larry. You’re the only one I can trust.”

  “You look tired. Did you sleep at all?”

  He’s being honest, if not entirely forthcoming; he is omitting a few other adjectives. Allison has forced herself to look in the mirror lately. She has seen the damage.

  Larry flicks at his hair. He is dishwater blond, has a rugged, lined face. He has a good-sized frame, not a body-builder but a guy who keeps in shape. He hasn’t shaved today; his facial hair is darker than the hair on top of his head. She would probably find him handsome under other circumstances—very, very different circumstances.

  She takes a sip of the coffee, steaming hot on her tongue. Something nutty, she assumes. Cinnamon hazelnut, she guesses, then looks over at the small chalkboard next to the counter, where the coffee of the day is revealed in colored chalk: Cinn-ful Walnut. Clever.

  “You look like someone who’s conceding defeat,” he says. “And I don’t like that. I don’t get it, Allison. I just don’t get you.”

  “What’s not to get? I’m going to be convicted.” She averts her eyes. She looks at the other shoppers, immediately envying their carefree lives. An employee is pushing turkey sausage, pierced with toothpicks, on shoppers. The next aisle down, it’s hummus, about ten different kinds offered with pita chips. Little kids hanging on carts, women moving seriously through the aisles. They don’t know anything about serious. She would change places with any of them.

  “That doesn’t have to—”

  “Oh, don’t deny it, Larry. Please,” she adds, more softly.

  He reaches for her, then recoils. “What happened to your hand?”

  Allison holds up her right hand, wrapped in gauze. “Lost a fight with a wineglass.”

  Larry peers into her eyes. “You sure you’re okay?”

  She nods. “I’ll be fine as long as you don’t tell me I’m going to win my case.”

  Larry looks away, exhales with disgust. “Did you even show your lawyer what I found?” he asks. “Did you think at all about all that stuff I found? You show that to a judge and you’ll be acquitted—”

  “Look.” Allison scoots her chair from the table, holds her hands up. “Look. I’m not going to debate you, Larry. Okay?”

  Larry watches her. She can only imagine the package she’s presenting today. She showered before coming but she’s still a train wreck in every way. She almost caused an accident on the way to this store. Her eyes are heavy from sleep deprivation and worry. Her stomach is in knots, having been deprived of food for more than twenty-four hours.

  “Please don’t tell me that things look grand,” she says. “They have me all over Sam’s house. They have that damn alibi. And they have me, the day before, barging into his office like some deranged maniac—”

  She stops herself as Larry’s look softens.

  “Kind of like now,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay.” Larry has played the advocate in this relationship. Originally a biographer, now a reporter bent on showing that Allison did not kill Sam Dillon. But he has always been good about this. As much as he has tried to help Allison’s defense, shown an unwavering belief in her cause, fought his exasperation at her unwillingness to use his assistance—always, he has deferred to her, the woman on trial for her life.

  “You’ve tried to help me, Larry. I know that. And I hope I’ve given you enough material back.”

  “You’ve been great.”

  “I don’t know about great, but—” She runs her hands over her f
ace. “The book you’re writing, Larry? Please go easy on my family. That’s what I came here to ask.”

  Larry’s smile is eclipsed, his expression hardening just like that. “You want me to be quiet about what I know.”

  “Larry, this book is going to sell no matter what. ‘By Allison Pagone, as told to Larry Evans.’ You’ll get a great print run. Just stick to the basics. You don’t need the sensationalist stuff.”

  “So?” He opens his hands. “You want me to back off what I know.”

  “You don’t ‘know’ anything, Larry.”

  Larry Evans shifts in his chair, directs a finger at the table. “I know you didn’t kill Sam Dillon,” he says.

  “Stop saying that. You don’t know that.”

  “Then I believe it. And I think you’re protecting someone.”

  Allison looks around helplessly. She recognizes her lack of leverage.

  “What’s happened?” he asks. “Where’d the fighter go? Why are you giving up all of a sudden? What’s happened since the last time I talked to you, that now you’re acting so resigned to defeat?”

  She looks into his eyes briefly. He is challenging her. But she will not tell him.

  “Promise me you’ll be fair to my family.” She recognizes that, from Larry’s perspective, she has no bargaining position here. She will not be able to enforce any promise. Allison gets to her feet, takes a moment to gain her equilibrium. She picks up the basket of vegetables, stares at them as if they are hazardous materials, and drops the basket.

  “Tell me what happened,” Larry pleads. “Something’s happened. I can tell. New evidence or something?”

  “Something,” she says to him. “Look—thanks for everything. For being there.”