Three Truths and a Lie

by Brent Hartinger

  When she didn’t answer, I repeated, “Mia? Who did this?”

  “I don’t know,” Mia said, her voice hollow.

  I looked at Liam, but he didn’t know either. I glanced around for the weapon, but there was nothing I could see, no ski poles or croquet mallets lying in the moss.

  “How could you not know?” I said to Mia. “Weren’t you and Galen together?”

  “No,” she said. She stiffened, and her eyes found their focus on the trees around us. “We need to get back to our cabin. Whoever did this is still out here.”

  Mia was saying she hadn’t done this, and I was somehow seventy-five percent sure she was telling the truth. Which meant Liam had been wrong: there was someone stalking us after all. Was it the Brummits? Had they killed Galen? But where had they gone? If they’d done this, they had to still be nearby. Maybe they were planning on killing us too. Maybe they already had us in their crossbow sights.

  “Come on,” Mia said. “We need to go.”

  I jerked into motion, but now I felt Mia’s eyes on me. Somehow I knew that when she’d said “we,” she meant Galen too. So I slung him over my shoulders and lifted him. I’d expected him to be heavy, but still didn’t expect the body to be so limp, so obviously dead. His pants were wet, and at first I thought it was water from the ground, but then I smelled what it really was: he’d pissed himself. But it’s not like I could say anything about it.

  The farther I carried the body, the heavier it seemed to be. I staggered under the weight of it. Something hard in the breast of his jacket pressed into my back—his phone or his wallet. As we approached the bog, I saw the muddy pools in the road again. I tried stepping up onto the bulge in the middle of the road, but with Galen on my back, it was too narrow and I kept losing my balance. Finally, I just stepped back into the water, which splashed under my feet. It was cold and slimy, but I went slowly so I didn’t slip.

  All the way, I kept expecting to hear a shot or a snap from the trees around me, to feel a bullet or an arrow piercing me, but nothing ever did.

  We made it back to the clearing around the cabin at last. With the weight on my shoulders, I had a hard time stepping over the fishing line Mia had stretched all over the yard. It was a good defense against people carrying dead bodies at least.

  Once inside, I carried Galen back into the bedroom and laid him out on the bed. I arranged the body as respectably as I could, and I closed his eyes. Then I returned to the front room, softly closing the bedroom door behind me.

  I crossed to the front door to make sure it was locked, both the lock in the knob and also the dead bolt. Then I turned to Mia, who was kneeling in front of the fireplace lighting a fire. She or Liam had broken up one of the kitchen chairs for wood.

  “What happened over there?” I asked her.

  She didn’t answer right away, and I didn’t ask again. I stepped closer, watching while the wood in the fireplace caught. Then Mia jammed it with the iron poker until it flamed brightly. In spite of everything, I was glad for that fire, for a chance to keep the Big Bad Wolf away.

  Finally Mia peeled off her jacket and sat down in one of the chairs. It was only then that I realized how muddy my shoes were, how I wished I’d taken them off before coming back into the house, even with Galen on my shoulders. I’d left tracks everywhere. But it was too late to do anything about it now.

  “I broke into the cabin,” Mia said at last. The quiver in her voice was totally out of character. “I was looking for a gun, just like we said. I thought Galen was with me, but the next thing I knew, he was gone. Then I heard something outside”—she looked at Liam—“you calling for help. I went out, and found you. And Galen was dead. It all happened so fast. What did you see?”

  I looked over at Liam now too, sitting in the chair opposite her.

  “Well,” he said, “I was on the way to the cabin, and I heard a noise. A thud, almost a crack. It was perfectly clear through the trees. It came from the direction of the cabin, so I ran. I found Galen laying facedown on the ground. I was confused. The way he looked, the fact that he was there at all—it didn’t make any sense. I started calling for help, and a second later”—he looked at Mia—“you joined me.”

  So Mia had gone into the cabin, and somehow Galen had disappeared, gone outside. Someone had come up behind him and hit him on the head, hard enough to break his skull, at least that’s what it looked like. Liam had heard the sound through the trees and run to investigate, but by the time he got there, the killer was gone. That must have been Liam’s gasp I’d heard, when he’d seen Galen’s dead body. Then Liam had shouted for help, and Mia had heard him and gone outside.

  Something was wrong. It was like what Liam had said before: the story didn’t add up. Why had Liam heard the sound, but Mia hadn’t? She was inside, true, but she was also a lot closer.

  “We can’t just stay here,” Mia said, now more agitated than upset. “We need to do something. We need to go.” In her nervousness, she returned to the fire and prodded it with the poker. The flames erupted again.

  That’s when I realized she was poking it with her left hand.

  Mia was left-handed?

  The wound on Galen’s head had been on the left side. Exactly where it would be if he’d been hit from behind by someone left-handed.

  16

  Mia had killed Galen? Her version of events was a lie?

  But why would she do it? Because he’d attacked her first? Or maybe she’d realized he was the one terrorizing us and somehow lost her temper. But either way, why wouldn’t she just tell us? Why make up the story about how Galen had suddenly slipped away from her?

  Unless . . .

  Unless she was the one doing everything in the first place. Why had Liam assumed it was Galen anyway? Because he was mechanical and liked to tease gay guys? What kind of evidence was that?

  And Mia had already killed someone. Or at least let someone die. She said she’d been upset about it, but she hadn’t been so upset that she’d done anything, not even make an anonymous phone call when she got home. And that was when she was thirteen years old.

  But still, why would she do it? Not killing Galen—I could imagine a couple of different reasons for that. Why would she spend this whole weekend tormenting Liam and me? Liam was her best friend, and I was his boyfriend. She got the two of us together. She really seemed to care about Liam, and she liked me too, unless our conversation the night before had all been a complete lie.

  A complete lie?

  Mia loved lies. She’d said as much during Three Truths and a Lie. And the more complicated the lie, the more devious the teller was, the more she liked it. Maybe even her story about her killing the biker had been a lie. Not as part of any party game, but a bigger lie, one that sounded true, so I’d ask her about it later and she could stoically confess to everything and make me think we were bonding. It was a lie within a lie within a lie. Maybe this whole weekend was nothing but a game of lies, and I’d been a big, gullible idiot to fall for it all.

  “How?” I said, questioning Mia’s sudden desire to leave. “We still have no way out. There’s no car, and it’s too far to walk. The whole point was to wait here until your parents realize you’re not home and call the cops.” I turned on my phone and checked the clock. “That should only be about seven hours now.” But even as I was saying this, I wondered if staying here was still the best idea. If Mia had killed Galen and done all those other things, did we want to stay in this cabin with her? On the other hand, if we started for the highway with her, maybe she’d lead us off track, deeper into the woods—somewhere her parents didn’t know about, where the sheriff would never find us. It was a maze back here, and Liam and I didn’t know these old logging roads at all. We’d have to go along with whatever Mia told us, even if it meant her leading us somewhere where she could torment us in peace.

  “I can’t believe he’s dead,” Mia said. She’d sunk down to the floor in front of the fire, awkwardly clutching the shaft of the poker even though it w
as probably covered with soot. She was back to being in shock. If she had killed Galen, she was a good actor, I had to give her that.

  What if she didn’t mean to do anything to Liam and me at all? What if this whole weekend had been all about Galen? About something in their relationship, something I didn’t know anything about? In that case, the horrible part was over.

  “I need to be with him,” Mia said. She stood. There was soot all over her hands, but I wasn’t one to talk, not with all the mud on my shoes.

  “Go,” Liam said comfortingly. “Take your time.”

  She nodded somberly. Then she walked to the bedroom door so tenderly that her feet didn’t even make a creak on the floor. She closed the door behind her just as quietly.

  I immediately turned to Liam. “It was Mia!” I whispered. “I think she killed Galen!”

  “What?” he said. “What are you talking about?”

  “It wasn’t Galen. It never was. All along, I think it’s been Mia. The fire, the satellite phone, the car. She was the one who ‘misplaced’ the phone in the first place, and the one who conveniently found it again the next day.”

  “Rob,” Liam said, “this is crazy. It wasn’t Mia.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Are you kidding? Didn’t you see how broken up she was? You think that was an act?”

  “Maybe!” I said. “She’s left-handed.” I explained about the wound on Galen’s head.

  “You’ve been watching too many detective shows. It’s probably not even true that if someone left-handed attacks someone else, they leave an injury on that side of their body. It probably totally depends.”

  “But her story doesn’t make sense,” I said. I remembered how thin the walls to the bedroom were, and I lowered my voice even softer. “She said she didn’t hear anything until you called for help, but you heard something. You heard the crack on Galen’s head, even though you were a lot farther away.”

  “That’s true,” he said, and for the first time I heard hesitation in his voice. “But maybe Mia had her head in a closet or something.”

  “Then who?” I said, suddenly angry. “You were the one who said there wasn’t anyone else harassing us, that the idea it was the Brummits was dumb, that it had to be one of us. So if it wasn’t Galen and it wasn’t Mia, who was it? And who killed Galen? Where did they go?”

  “Maybe it was Galen all along,” he said. “And then . . .”

  “What?” I said, annoyed. “He fell and accidentally hit his head so hard you heard it, and then he died?” Even now, after everything that had happened, Liam was still trying to find a way to blame Galen.

  “Okay, okay, it’s stupid,” Liam said. “So what’s your explanation?”

  I didn’t say anything, I just glared at him. I’d already told him my explanation.

  “It’s not Mia,” Liam said. “She’s my best friend.”

  “Maybe he did attack her, like we were worried about,” I said, “and she fought back.”

  “And she didn’t say anything to us?”

  “Maybe she’s scared the police will blame her for what happened. Or maybe it was the two of them together, playing pranks, but something went wrong and Galen was going to tell us the truth, and Mia lost her temper.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Mia I know at all,” Liam said.

  The Mia he knew didn’t keep secrets and tell lies? She wasn’t a loose cannon? Did he and I know the same Mia?

  “Think back,” I said. “Where was Mia exactly when you found Galen’s body?”

  “In the cabin. Just like she said.”

  “How long before she appeared?”

  “As soon as I shouted.”

  “Did she have anything in her hand?”

  “Rob—”

  “Liam, just think, okay? Anything you remember.”

  He mulled it over, but then shook his head. “She wasn’t carrying anything. You would’ve seen it too. You showed up right after she did. And doesn’t that prove she didn’t do it? She didn’t have anything to do it with.”

  “So maybe she attacked him, but then went back inside the cabin to hide the weapon. Or threw it in the woods.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all,” he said. “She didn’t know we were following them. She thought you and I were still back here. At that point, she didn’t have any reason to hide the weapon. The only thing that fits is exactly what she told us.”

  I stared at him, thinking. All this crazy speculation, trying to get everything right in my mind, had given me a headache. But Liam was definitely making sense again. It didn’t make me angry this time. Mia not being the killer, that was a good thing. I’d jumped to another conclusion.

  “So what then?” I said. There was no point to this whole conversation unless we figured out what to do next.

  “You should change your clothes. You’re all muddy. And you smell like piss.”

  I sighed and crossed to my bag, near the base of the ladder to the sleeping loft. I kicked off my shoes and changed my shirt.

  Something nagged at me.

  I turned and looked over at Mia’s jacket, the one she’d taken off after poking the fire. She’d laid it over the back of the chair.

  I glanced over at the door to the bedroom, where Mia had gone to be with Galen’s body. It was still closed, with Mia inside.

  I stepped toward the jacket. I was already fifty percent sure of what I’d find there.

  “What are you doing?” Liam said.

  “Nothing,” I said as I reached for a pocket. “Just a hunch.”

  Almost as soon as I touched the jacket, I felt the weight of something in that pocket, something heavy.

  I reached in and pulled out a handgun, big and heavy.

  I turned it around in my hand, holding it by the muzzle, showing it to Liam. The butt of the handle was circular, about the size of a quarter.

  Exactly the size of the wound on the back of Galen’s head.

  17

  “What are you doing?” came a voice from the bedroom door.

  Of course it was Mia, and of course she’d seen me finding the gun. Liam looked back and forth between us.

  “You have a gun,” I said. It was black, sleek, and sort of blocky, with a grip on the handle that was made out of some kind of rubber padding. I assumed the gun had some kind of safety, but even so I kept my finger as far from the trigger as possible. I didn’t want to accidently set it off.

  “Sure,” she said as if it was incredibly obvious. “That’s why we went over to the Brummits’ cabin, remember?”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “What do you mean?” She stepped away from the bedroom, leaving the door open behind her.

  “You found a gun,” I said. “You don’t think that was kind of important information?”

  “Well, it’s not like I had anything else on my mind—like, oh, the fact that I’d just found my boyfriend dead.”

  I blushed. So much for my playing Sherlock Holmes.

  “There was a rifle,” she said, “but it was locked up in a case. I found the pistol in the nightstand.”

  “Is it loaded?” Liam asked.

  “It is now,” Mia said. She pulled something from her back pocket and tossed it onto the kitchen table with the other equipment—it landed with a bright rattle, almost like a jingle bell. A Ziploc plastic bag full of more ammo. “What?” she said, looking at Liam now.

  He and I both had the same questions on our faces. Even with Galen dead, why didn’t Mia tell us she’d found a gun? If she was armed, why had she acted all freaked out about someone being out there in the woods? If nothing else, why hadn’t she put the gun on the kitchen table with the rest of our defenses? It almost seemed like she’d been hiding it. On the other hand, she really did have a lot on her mind. And if she was deliberately hiding it, wouldn’t she have taken it into the bedroom with her?

  But he didn’t say any of this. Neither of us did.

  Mia looked at me. “The rea
l question,” she said, “is what were you doing going through my jacket?”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, any way to explain.

  “It’s just so strange,” Liam said, “the way Galen died.”

  “So you think I did it?” The fuse to Mia’s temper had instantly been lit.

  “I don’t know,” Liam said. At first it surprised me that Liam didn’t deny it, that he was being so open with her, but then it occurred to me that maybe honesty was the best policy. There had already been too much skulking around, too many secrets. Maybe it was time to get it all out into the open. No more lies.

  Mia seemed to sense this too. Her short fuse quickly burned itself out. The explosion never came.

  Liam explained how he and I thought that Galen had been the one pulling the pranks. As he talked, I glanced at the open door to the bedroom and thought about how Galen’s dead body was still in there stretched out on the bed, growing colder by the minute.

  Mia listened to Liam. She never once nodded, but she didn’t get mad either.

  “So?” Liam said once he was done. “What really happened over at that cabin?”

  She hesitated. “Exactly what I told you,” she said. “I didn’t lie.” Her body swayed slightly, like she was standing at the edge of a tall cliff. “Except for maybe one thing.”

  The floor creaked as Liam and I both shuffled our feet at the same time.

  “Galen shoots up,” she said. “He’s been doing it as long as I’ve known him. I’ve told him I want him to stop, and I know he’s going to, but he hasn’t yet.”

  She was talking about him in the present tense, which was exactly what a person would do if they weren’t that person’s murderer. Then again, if a person was smart enough to pull off all the things that had happened, they were also probably smart enough to know that.

  “Heroin?” Liam said.

  “He called it antifreeze,” Mia said. “But yeah.”

  “I didn’t see any drugs,” I said.

  “Then you missed them,” she said defiantly. “Or they’re still in his pocket.”