In the Company of Liars

by David Ellis

  “There’s nothing to tell them, Owen.” The windows in their car are fogging up. McCoy recalls a time, years ago, when the windows fogged up for a much more enjoyable reason. “We can’t let them in on this.”

  “They won’t come up with Larry Evans as a suspect,” Harrick says. “His prints aren’t on any database, and I’m sure he was smart enough not to leave any, anyway.”

  “Yeah, he’s smart. A clock? A trophy? This thing looks like anything but a professional hit.”

  “But what I’m wondering,” Harrick says, “is whether the police will come up with someone else as a suspect.”

  “I don’t know,” says McCoy, her voice trailing off.

  “We can’t let someone else go down for this, Jane. Like Jessica Pagone, for one. She could have left ten different clues in there, pointing back to her.”

  McCoy pats her partner’s arm. “Let’s jump off that bridge when we come to it, okay?”

  7:56 P.M.

  Yes. She will call Jessica, Allison decides. She will meet with her and explain all of this. She will admit that it was she who demanded that Sam make that phone call and fire her. She will apologize for her misbehavior and use the apology as a segue, a bridge to fixing things between them. Telling Jessica about Sam will be a way of reintroducing herself as the same woman she’s always been, the same mother who loves her daughter dearly, but who now is single and has a new man in her life.

  Jessica’s an adult now. She has to be ready for this. She has to accept that people—even her own mother and father—sometimes drift apart, and it’s not one person’s fault. It’s not a question of fault at all.

  She hears the doorknob rattling and pops out of her chair, moves into the hallway. This is a relatively safe part of the city, but it’s still the city. And she lives alone now. The creaks and groans in the middle of the night take on a frighteningly new dimension, now that she doesn’t have a former middle linebacker sleeping next to her. No, it’s not exactly the middle of the night. It’s only a little after eight in the evening—

  She hears another noise—a key working the knob—and the door opens. Jessica rushes in and closes the door behind her quickly. She turns and sees Allison. Jessica’s face is washed-out, her mascara streaked down her cheeks. She is trembling, on the verge of collapse.

  Allison reaches her in an instant, takes her in her arms and eases her to the floor.

  “What happened?” Allison asks, holding Jessica’s head, inventorying her body for injuries out of instinct. “God, sweetheart, what happened?”

  8:04 P.M.

  McCoy turns off her cell phone and plugs it into the charger, attached to the cigarette lighter in the car. The team that reentered Sam Dillon’s home, after Jessica Pagone’s unexpected visit, has just reported back.

  “Well, at least she didn’t mess with anything,” McCoy says.

  “But she didn’t leave it clean, either,” Harrick says. He is referring to the single platinum earring on the carpet near Sam’s body.

  “She probably bent over the body.” McCoy shrugs. “Earrings fall off.”

  “We should retrieve it, Jane.”

  McCoy shakes her head. “I’m not going to have them tamper with a crime scene.”

  “It wouldn’t be tampering, Jane. The crime scene didn’t include an earring. And we know she didn’t kill him. She came in afterward. Hell, we have Larry Evans on video.”

  McCoy looks at Harrick.

  “I’m saying, this could put this girl in the soup,” he says forcefully.

  McCoy chews on her lip.

  “That’s a bad thing, by the way,” Harrick adds.

  “Maybe so, maybe not.”

  “Janey, listen to me. This has been a crazy night. I know that. Lot of things happening we didn’t expect, a lot of on-the-spot decisions. But we can’t let this girl get in trouble.”

  “Oh, we won’t,” she says absently.

  “Then tell them to get back in there and remove the damn earring.”

  McCoy shakes her head slowly.

  “Jane—”

  “Jessica Pagone is Allison Pagone’s daughter,” she says. “And Allison Pagone may be a part of this now, like it or not.”

  “What are you thinking here, Agent?”

  “Just thinking,” she says. “Thinking that Larry Evans must have been pretty worried about Sam Dillon, right? Enough to kill him. He’s got to be worried about Allison, too. He’s already monitoring her, right? So he’s worried about her, too.”

  “The point being,” Harrick takes it, “that we might need her help.”

  “Yeah,” McCoy mumbles, thinking it through.

  Her cell phone rings. McCoy almost jumps out of her seat.

  “McCoy. Okay? Okay.” She looks at her partner. “Don’t do anything. Just make sure that house is safe. Whatever it takes.”

  She punches off, raises her eyebrows. “Jessica just arrived at her mother’s house.”

  “Allison’s house.” Harrick moans. “Okay. Jesus Christ, okay.”

  McCoy falls back in her seat.

  “She’s telling her mom that she just found Sam Dillon dead,” Harrick envisions. “She’s hysterical. Scared. Freaked out.”

  “All of those,” McCoy agrees. “And Allison is worried.”

  “Worried?” Harrick seems doubtful. “Grief-stricken, maybe.”

  “No,” McCoy says. “Worried.”

  Harrick touches Jane’s arm. “You think she’s wondering whether her daughter killed Dillon?”

  McCoy’s shoulders rise. “She can’t be sure she didn’t kill him.”

  “Jane, no,” Harrick says. “You can’t blackmail her.”

  “I’m not talking about blackmail, Agent.” McCoy grinds her teeth, a nervous habit when she’s thinking fast. “Allison Pagone is going to think what she thinks. Not putting her mind at ease is not the same thing as lying.”

  “She helps us out,” Harrick says, perhaps warming to the deal, not that McCoy really cares, “and we make sure Jessica isn’t implicated. And she’s never the wiser about whether her daughter is a killer.”

  “Something like that,” McCoy says. “Right about now, mother and daughter are probably discovering that Jessica left some evidence behind.” She looks at Harrick. “Let’s see what happens.”

  “Jane,” Harrick says. “You’d really do that to this lady? Make her think her own daughter is a murderer?”

  “She’ll think it,” McCoy says. “I won’t say that to her.”

  “Jeez.”

  “Oh, lighten the hell up, Owen. You’re in the big leagues now. I think what we’re doing is worth it, don’t you?” She waves at him. “When this is over, and everyone is safe and sound, I’ll tell her the truth, okay? I’ll give her a copy of the videotape of Larry Evans breaking into Dillon’s house. But for now, we use whatever we have.”

  Harrick stares at McCoy.

  “When this thing is all over,” she repeats, annoyed, “I will make it very clear to Allison that her daughter did not kill Sam Dillon. But until then, we use what we have. Relax. You want to stop an international terrorist operation or not?”

  8:38 P.M.

  Allison sits next to her daughter, who is finally beginning to calm. Allison has put a blanket over Jessica’s shoulders and given her some hot tea. They are sitting on the couch in the living room.

  Jessica has been home for half an hour now. It took her the better part of ten minutes to even tell Allison what had happened. The next twenty minutes were spent with Allison confirming, absolutely, that she heard her daughter correctly.

  Sam is dead.

  “I just wanted to talk to him,” she says. “I wanted to know why I was fired.”

  Sam is dead. She can’t believe she is hearing the words. She can’t believe it’s true. Her first instinct is to rush out of her home and go there, or at least to call his house. That is her first reaction, her second, her third, but still she has not made a move. She is more concerned about someone else at the mom
ent.

  “Does anyone else at Dillon and Becker know he fired you?” Allison asks.

  Jessica shakes her head. “No. I didn’t talk to anyone. I was like a zombie. I just left. I didn’t even pack my things.”

  “Good,” Allison says. “Good.”

  Jessica’s head whips around at Allison. “You think I might be blamed for this? Someone would think that I—”

  “No, honey, of course not,” Allison says quickly. “No one would think that.”

  “I was there,” she says ominously.

  “Yes, you were. Did anyone see you? Jess? Do you know if anyone saw you there tonight?”

  “I don’t—I don’t know, Mother. How could I know that?”

  Allison takes her daughter’s hand, gets on her knees so she is face to face with Jessica.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” she says.

  “I didn’t—you think I killed him.” Jessica pulls away from her mother, gets to her feet. “You think I killed Sam?”

  “No, I don’t.” Allison follows, rising and moving to her daughter, who is backing away. “Of course I don’t. I’m only saying, you were there. There might be questions. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

  “Oh, God.” Jessica leans against the mantel over the fireplace for support.

  “This is my fault, Jess. And I’ll do anything to protect you from this.”

  Jessica’s eyes slowly move to her mother. “What do you mean, it’s your fault?”

  Allison takes a breath. She was going to tell her anyway. There is some notion to not throwing fuel on a fire, but she thinks better of it. Full disclosure seems warranted right now.

  “Sam and I have been seeing each other, Jess,” she says.

  Jessica’s eyes widen. “You and—and Sam?”

  “I know that you approached him a few months ago. He told me. You were interested in him. I can understand why.”

  “You and Sam, Mother?” She retreats from Allison.

  “Yes,” Allison says. “It happened after your father and I had split up. But yes.”

  Jessica’s eyes cast about the room. This is overload. This, on top of everything else.

  “This is my fault,” Allison says. “I’m the reason you were there tonight.”

  “What does that mean?” She walks toward her mother, emboldened.

  “You were fired,” Allison says, “at the request of an insecure, jealous woman who wasn’t thinking straight.”

  Jessica angles her face, looks hard at her mother. “You told him to fire me.”

  “I went down to the capital, yesterday, and made him call you.”

  “You told him—to fire me.”

  Allison nods. “I realized, today, how stupid I was. I was going to call you and talk to you about it. I swear to you, I was. You were going to get your job back.”

  Jessica does not seem capable of a response, another emotional outburst. Where to put this, on the list of tonight’s events? She tucks her hair behind her ear, a habit she formed during adolescence, a habit she got from Allison.

  Allison sees, looking at her daughter’s profile, the platinum earring on her ear, the earring she purchased not long ago. No big surprise. Allison had even noticed them absent from her jewelry box, over Christmas, and figured as much. Not the first time her daughter raided her jewelry or clothes. She always took a small pleasure in it, actually.

  Jessica is well dressed, Allison now notices. A violet blouse, black skirt and boots, more makeup than usual, however smeared across her face it may be now. And the earrings. She was dressed up to see Sam. She sees with her own eyes now, for the first time, what Sam told her. Jessica was carrying a torch for him.

  “I’m so sorry about this, honey.”

  Jessica continues to pace by the fireplace, fuming, the anger temporarily overcoming the horror.

  She couldn’t have done it, Allison says to herself. Not Jessica. She feels the heat burning in her chest, a moment of panic, however hard she tries to fight the logic working through her brain. She wouldn’t be so distraught that she’d kill him.

  They spend the remainder of the evening repeating this conversation. Allison interrogates Jessica on what, exactly, she did in the house, where she went, whether anyone saw her. She tries to cast aside the growing realization that Sam Dillon is dead, because she must focus on the young woman who might be charged with his murder.

  Jessica decides to have some wine, the first time she has done so in front of her mother, the legal limits of a twenty-year-old drinking alcohol notwithstanding. It’s a rebuke, Allison realizes, but she will certainly not object under the circumstances.

  Because either way, whether she killed him or she simply fears that she will be accused of doing so, Jessica needs to be calm now. A little wine won’t hurt. And Allison sees, finally, that her interrogation is beginning to cause a panic in her daughter.

  Oh, she is certainly behaving as if she were innocent. If she killed Sam, she is very talented at acting otherwise. So no, she couldn’t have done it.

  Right?

  There is no remorse, not even a hint, which is what Allison would expect to see. It is horror, revulsion, but not remorse, or even fear.

  So no, she couldn’t have done it.

  Jessica is wiped out by eleven-thirty, and a bit tipsy, after nearly three hours of conversation. They may go to the police together, tomorrow, they decide. Explain all of this. Allison is not so sure. She envisions a picture painted by local cops: a young, confused woman with a crush on a man; he dumps her; the woman goes to the house the next night and bludgeons him. There could be people, regardless of what Jessica thinks, who could attest to each and every one of these facts.

  She is not so sure how this will look. She considers going to Sam’s home now. She admits that in part it is because she wants to see him, to touch him again. To say good-bye.

  But that is not the only reason. She wants to see how her daughter left things. She wants to see how things look before she marches her daughter into a police station to admit that she was there tonight.

  Jessica goes off to bed. Allison watches her daughter take the stairs slowly. Jessica is utterly exhausted. Allison hopes that she will be able to sleep.

  Allison returns to the living room and takes a bit of wine for herself. Yes, she wants so much to see him again. It hasn’t even registered yet. He is gone. Like something she has read about someone else, the anonymous victims in the news every day. Not Sam.

  No, Jessica could not have killed him. No. Impossible.

  “Oh, shit.” She hears her daughter upstairs. “Shit.”

  Allison stands and moves to the hallway. Jessica rushes down the stairs and through the living room, scanning the carpet, overturning cushions, cursing as she goes along.

  “What?” Allison asks in a panic. “What?”

  Jessica continues her inventory, moving from the living room to the kitchen, running her hands over the counter-tops, even opening the refrigerator, then racing outside, leaving the front door wide open.

  Allison follows, calling after her. Jessica runs to the driveway, jerks open her car door, and looks through the car even more thoroughly than the house.

  “Jessica, for God’s sake, what?” she asks. She sees the fear now, for the first time, on her daughter’s face. She feels the fear in herself, too, followed immediately by a sense of calm. A mother’s defense mechanism. She knows how much she loves the daughter who has felt betrayed by her. She knows that she would do anything for her.

  “Tell me it’s not at Sam’s,” Jessica mumbles urgently to herself, searching the floorboards of the car. “Please tell me I didn’t leave it—”

  “Jessica,” Allison says calmly. “Tell me.”

  Jessica gets out of the car slowly and looks at Allison with tears in her eyes, searching her mother’s face for some kind of comfort, no differently than she has looked at Allison so many times, for so many reasons, over the years.

  “Mother,�
� Jessica says, her throat full, “I’m missing one of my earrings.”

  ELEVEN YEARS EARLIER

  Ram Haroon squints into the light of the room, after traveling blindfolded in a dark sedan, then up several flights of stairs. His father is next to him, patting his arm protectively.

  “Everything is fine, Zulfi,” he says to him.

  “Not Zulfi,” says the man behind the desk, an American speaking the native Pakistani language rather well. “Now it’s Ram, I thought.”

  “Yes, Ram,” says his father.

  The man across the desk is wearing a light blue shirt and glasses. He is about Ram’s father’s age, but sun has damaged his Caucasian skin.

  “Zulfi,” the man says to Ram, “is a bit too, uh ‘democratic,’ let’s say. Fine for Baluchistan, but here in Peshawar, not so good.”

  Ram—born Zulfikar Ali Haroon—was named after the first democratically elected prime minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was ultimately overthrown by the first of several dictators who have controlled Pakistan since its birth. Ram’s dead sister, Benazir, was named after Zulfikar’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who later was elected to the same post herself.

  “Your mother liked freedom,” says the man.

  Ram stares at the man.

  The man nods. “Your mother worked for Central Intelligence for several years.”

  “I know that,” Ram says defiantly. Ram has known this, to be precise, for all of forty-eight hours, after he confronted his father about what he had been doing in secret, all of the late-night business he had been conducting. He had figured that Father was running guns for the mujahedin, that he was probably connected to one of the militant groups, but he hadn’t figured that Father was doing so at the request of American intelligence.

  That was something that none of the militants knew, either.

  “Your father is an undercover operative,” says the man.

  “I know that also.”

  “Good. So you know that if you ever released that information, he would be immediately killed. And so, probably, would you.”