The Liar

by Steve Cavanagh

  For Chloe

  Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part II

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Part III

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Acknowledgements

  Ask Steve Cavanagh …

  Also by Steve Cavanagh

  Copyright

  ‘I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the State of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of attorney and counselor-at-law, according to the best of my ability.’

  Section 1 of Article XIII of the New York State Constitution; oath of office for a new lawyer.

  ‘A liar is full of oaths.’

  From Le Menteur by Pierre Corneille

  PART

  I

  August 2nd 2002

  Upstate New York

  The child had been screaming for twenty minutes. She had been fed, changed, winded, rocked, sung to, even held. Julie had read half a dozen books during the latter stages of her pregnancy and that day she was attempting, for the fifth time, “controlled crying”. The book said to leave the baby to settle down on its own. This was an important part of sleep training, according to the author. It was tough, and Julie hadn’t managed to last the recommended two minutes without going into the nursery and picking up the baby. In the hazy recesses of her memory, Julie could not recall ever being held by her mother. When her baby was born, she’d felt awkward at first; holding that precious life in her hands felt wrong. It felt like she shouldn’t be trusted with something so new, so pure, and so fragile.

  Julie pushed open the door to the nursery and began to make “cooing” sounds as she approached the cot. The child settled almost immediately. The blackout blinds were pulled down, and only the night light gave a muted glow to Julie’s face. It was enough for the child to see her mother, and hear her voice. Julie continued to hum, softly, smiling all the while as the baby gently drifted to sleep.

  Silently, Julie began retreating from the nursery, first making sure the baby monitor was switched on before she left and closed the door.

  The clock hit ten oh five.

  Julie made her way to a makeshift studio in what would have been the utility room of the house. A half-finished canvas stood, accusingly, on an easel. Tucking the portable speaker from the baby monitor into her jeans, she looked around for her apron. She found it lying in a corner, put it on and began to work. The first half-hour went well, then, as the shakes began, her brush strokes became stilted, heavy. Where before she could produce smooth, delicate lines, they became jittery and uneven. The tremors got worse and she felt that familiar, guilty hunger. The day before she had painted the red roof tiles in a single, smooth stroke, but now they came pitter patter, awkward and skewed.

  Julie needed a fix.

  She took off her apron, threw it into the same corner of the studio where she’d found it earlier, and went in search of relief. Down the hallway, opposite the nursery. She reached the den, opened the door, closed and locked it behind her. A switch on the wall ignited the ceiling fan, and she set it to the highest speed and opened the windows. From the desk, she took a glass pipe and filled it with small white rocks that were kept in an old tobacco tin.

  She lit the pipe. Inhaled.

  Another hit.

  That sweet, saccharine ecstasy flowed through Julie’s body. Her heartbeat quickened, and the wave of euphoria brought heat with it – like being smothered in a warm blanket.

  The sound of the front door closing startled her. At last, Scott was back. Crack made her sweat, pretty much instantly, and she wiped her forehead. She placed the pipe on the study desk and opened the door to the hallway.

  But there was no one there. Her senses were muddled. Noises seemed both louder and muted. As if the source of the sounds were closer to her but she was now underwater and listening through a fog of liquid. She listened, hard. And there it was again. A soft creak from the loose floorboard in the nursery. Julie crossed the hall, and slowly opened the nursery door.

  Light from the hallway spilled into the room.

  A man stood in the nursery.

  A stranger. Dressed in black. Standing over the cot. The room tilted. With the curtains drawn and the blackout blind pulled down for the child’s nap, the man’s features were not clear. The more her eyes became accustomed, the more of him she was able to see.

  He wore black gloves. Shiny, leather ones. And his face and head were somehow misshapen. She stepped into the nursery and saw that he was wearing a mask.

  The vision before her had been so arresting, so violating, so unreal and yet so visceral, that at first she hadn’t noticed the scent. It came to her now. Strong. Overwhelming. All too familiar.

  Gasoline. The entire room had been soaked in gasoline.

  Before panic, all of her senses kicked into high gear. And in that same paralyzing moment, she realized that her child’s cries had ceased.

  For a moment, Julie thought she was falling. The dark in the room seemed to rush toward her. And then she was falling. Just before she hit the floor the pain in her forehead kicked in. She felt something wet in her eyes. Something stingy. She wiped her face and looked at the blood on her hands. Julie scrambled to her feet and instantly
the darkness took her again. Black gloves took her shoulders and pushed her backwards out of the nursery, across the hall.

  Julie couldn’t scream. She wanted to scream. She needed to scream. Her throat had closed in panic and her heart was thumping like a football in a washing machine. One of the hands let go, and Julie wriggled, trying to free her other arm.

  Something very hard came down fast on top of her head. This time she felt the pain instantly; the fire inside her brain spread over her skull and she felt the pinpricks of agony spilling down her neck and into her shoulders. The figure in black let go of her other arm and for the briefest of moments, she thought it was all over. He was letting her go. She was wrong.

  She felt strong hands thump against her chest. Julie catapulted backwards and heard the thump from the side of her head meeting the corner of the desk. The darkness had followed her and all turned black.

  Silence. Stillness. Sleep.

  Something inside Julie woke up.

  It sounded like someone pounding on a door. The noise grew louder. A dull pain began in her head and quickly got worse and worse. It felt like someone turning a dial, increasing intensity until it became ice-hot agony.

  Her eyes opened and her body lurched. She didn’t know if she was standing or falling. Dizzy. Julie’s hands found the floor beneath her and she pushed up onto her knees. She tried to take a breath but there was no air. Just thick, black smoke. As the coughing fit took her, Julie used the desk to climb to her feet. Two words were on her lips.

  My baby.

  She managed to turn around, and saw that the door was closed over, but not fully shut. She opened it to a wall of angry flame. The heat hit her skin with incredible force. It was like running into a flaming brick wall. The fire was roaring out of the nursery. It had taken hold of the hall ceiling and the carpet. Julie held up her hands and pushed into the hallway, but she could not get into the nursery. She couldn’t see inside. The nursery was an inferno. Even with the smoke choking her lungs, and her tears evaporating on her cheek from the heat, Julie screamed. A long, scorching scream.

  She didn’t know how long she stood there with her flesh searing and the noise of the burning house drowning her voice. The ceiling let out a fierce crack and plaster, dust and then a heavy beam fell from the floor above and landed on top of Julie.

  She lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness. The blood seeping from her scalp cooled her skin. She knew that before the beam fell on her she had a strong desire to go somewhere in the house, to get something, but what that was she couldn’t remember. When the fire truck pulled up outside, Julie knew that she was upset, that she had lost something or someone.

  And then Julie fell asleep.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Past midnight, fairly sober, I stood outside my office building wearing my best black suit, white shirt and green tie, my shoes polished and hair brushed, as I waited for a car to take me into the middle of a living nightmare.

  West 46th Street seemed quiet with the bar on the corner already closed up for the night. Any restaurant stragglers that remained were avoiding the outside tables. Instead they stayed inside, praising God for the invention of AC. I’d only been on the street for five minutes and the back of my clean shirt was soaked through. July in New York City meant that everything and everyone on the street was hot and wet.

  Crime went up in the summer as people went a little crazy. Usually people who weren’t crazy any other time of the year. The dip in the crime figures for the regular offenders, who were often too damn hot to do themselves or anyone else serious damage, was made up for by the regular men and women who lost it in the terrible heat, their hands wet with blood and sweat. One human being for a flashing red moment does something unthinkable to another. And July was the crazy season.

  We were two weeks into a record-breaking heat wave and even the darkness brought no relief.

  Unlike most lawyers, I didn’t carry a briefcase. Or a notepad. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I had a pen with me. In my jacket pocket was a single document. Four pages long. Single spaced. My retainer agreement. There was a space at the bottom of the agreement for the signature of my new client. I didn’t need anything else. The benefit of being a one-man law practice was that I didn’t have to keep a lot of notes in case somebody else had to pick up one of my cases. Witness statements, police interviews, court dates, juror selection – apart from the odd scribble, I kept it all in my head. The exceptions were those cases that we all try to forget.

  As I sweated it out in my suit, I wondered if the case I was about to take on would be one of those that I’d try to forget in years to come.

  The phone call came around twenty minutes ago, direct to the office landline, not my cell phone. So I didn’t pick up at first. Only a select few had my cell. My best clients knew it, together with a couple of friends and the desk sergeants in half a dozen precincts who gave me a heads-up on any juicy arrests that came in.

  It was after midnight so I knew it wasn’t my wife or daughter. Whatever the caller wanted, it could wait.

  I let the answer machine kick in.

  “The office of Eddie Flynn, Attorney at Law, is now closed, please leave a message …”

  “Mr Flynn, I know you’re listening to this. Please pick up the phone.” A male voice. Not young, maybe in their forties of fifties. An effort was being made to enunciate properly and hide an old, working class New York brogue; Brooklyn Irish.

  A pause while he waited for me to grab the receiver. I poured a little more water into my bourbon and sat on my bed. I slept in a small room in the back of my office. With a couple of recent, really good paychecks I was getting closer to saving enough for a deposit on an apartment. For now, the pull-out bed in the back room sufficed.

  “I don’t have much time, Mr Flynn. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’ll tell you my name and you’ll have ten seconds to pick up the phone. If you don’t I’ll hang up and you will never hear from me again.”

  From the sounds of it, this guy I could do without. He was messing with my nightcap. One drink a day was all I allowed myself these days. My gut wanted it at six o’clock, but I found that I needed it just before I turned in for the night. A large glass, taken slowly, helped me sleep and sometimes even took the edge off the nightmares. No, I’d decided no matter what this punk said his name was, I would not pick up that phone.

  “Leonard Howell,” said the voice.

  The name was instantly familiar but at that time of night I wasn’t thinking straight. A long day in arraignment court, client meetings, and not much to eat in between meant I was punchy at this hour. I might not remember my own name.

  After four seconds I remembered how I knew the caller’s name.

  “Mr Howell, it’s Eddie Flynn.”

  “It’s good to hear your voice. You probably know why I’m calling.”

  “I’ve watched the news, and read the papers. I’m so very sorry for …”

  “Then you’ll know I don’t want to talk on the phone. I want to know if you might be available later? I think I’m going to need some legal advice. Sorry to be so blunt, I don’t have a lot of time,” he said.

  I had a million questions. None I could ask over the phone. An old family friend needed help. That was all I needed to know for now.

  “You available at four a.m.?” he said. He didn’t need to spell it out. Something was going down.

  “I am. But I’m not coming at four. If there’s something I can do then I’d rather come see you right now. Like I said, I’ve been following the news. I remember you from the old neighborhood, running football bets for my dad. He always liked you. Look, I’m really sorry about your daughter. If it’s any use, I’ve been there. I know what you’re going through.”

  He didn’t say anything. He hadn’t been expecting this.

  “I remember your dad. And you. That’s kind of why I’m calling. I need someone I can trust. Someone that understands my situation,” he said.

  “I understand. I wis
h I didn’t, but I do. My daughter was ten when she was taken.”

  “And you got her back,” said Howell.

  “I did. I’ve played this game before. If you want my help, I need to be there, now. Where are you?”

  He sighed and said, “I’m at home. I’ll send a car. Where do you want to be picked up?”

  “My office. I’ll be waiting out front.”

  “Driver will be there in a half hour,” said Howell, and with that, I heard the click as he ended the call. I thought about Lenny Howell. He didn’t like anyone calling him Lenny these days. He was a lot older than me and his reputation was well known in my old neighborhood. He’d been a hoodlum at first. Petty crimes and burglaries. His family were poor and he grew up hard. His old man used to beat him on the front steps of his building. Until my dad saw it happen one day and took Lenny’s father to one side for a man-to-man conversation. Lenny never got hit again. He never committed another burglary either. Instead he worked as a runner for my father’s illegal bookmaking business. Lenny learned how to run a book from my father. I knew him a little; Lenny was the first person to ever teach me a con. One day Lenny got a little too rough with a marine that couldn’t pay his Tuesday blues – the debt from a bad bet on Monday night football. The marine kicked Lenny’s ass, then told him he should join up. The marine liked young Lenny, and took him under his wing. Joining the navy saved Lenny from the life. He’d left his old ways behind. I knew the feeling, I’d been a con artist in my early twenties and gave it up for a career in the law. But what I’d begun to realize in the last few years was that you can never truly leave your past behind.

  Three days ago I’d watched Lenny Howell give a press conference. All the major news channels carried the story. The chief of police sat on his left, his new wife, Susan, sat on his right, wearing a wedding ring barely four years old. The rock that she wore below that ring sparkled for the camera flashes and considering the size of the thing, I wondered how she managed to wear it without breaking her slender finger. If I’d been advising Howell I would’ve told him to go on TV alone.

  He’d barely spoken. No need, really. When he took off his glasses and looked straight into the camera the ravaged look in his eyes had said it all. When he did speak, his voice was broken and strained. His words had stayed with me, because I’d been in his situation and I knew that pain.