The Liar

by Steve Cavanagh

  Once inside the quiet, deserted night streets of Premier Point, Harper let the Charger go and steered the beast slowly, surely, touching the brake to make it through the bends then flooring it on the straights.

  “My dad ran an auto-shop. I was doing donuts in the back lot from the age of thirteen,” she said.

  Maybe because she was talking, or maybe because we were getting closer to the fire, but she misjudged the turning for the single-lane entrance to Howell’s place. The back of the Charger lost grip, slid to the right, and no amount of wheel spin from Harper could catch the asphalt before the rear passenger side of the car wiped out the For Sale sign.

  “Shit,” said Harper, as we hit the first pothole and she lost control – arms pumping to grab a straight line. Nobody could’ve held it, and she busted through the wooden fence on the right. It turned out to be a blessing. Ploughing the field with the V8 at fifty made better progress than winding through the holes in the single lane at twenty-five.

  Five hundred yards before the house we felt the heat. I’d never seen a fire so big. At least half of the damn house was ablaze. A black figure stumbled out of the front door.

  “Hold on,” said Harper.

  Palms on the ceiling, feet planted on the floor, back of my head buried in the head rest and I still managed to bang my head on the window when Harper punched the Charger through the fence again and the wheels took air before landing on the loose stone drive.

  She handbraked us to a stop and was already out and running toward the house before I’d gotten my door open.

  No sign of a fire truck anywhere.

  I caught up with Harper as she reached the silhouette on the gravel drive.

  A cop in uniform. He was bent over and coughing, his face black with soot, and what little skin I could see on his cheeks was red and puckered from the heat.

  “Is everyone out?” Harper said.

  The cop shook his head. He placed a hand on my shoulder and ducked, spitting out a glob of dirty sputum.

  “I fell asleep. Woke up when the floor ballooned and broke. The cripple and … the … the wife … upstairs,” he said.

  I looked at the house, the fire licking most of the ground floor rooms and some on the first floor – lighting them up like a candle in a jack-o-lantern. Every window had blown out, and the breeze was feeding the flames through the entire building. The cop had gotten out through the front door, and the fire hadn’t yet taken hold of the entrance. The noise of the blaze was horrific. It sounded like a living thing; like some kind of huge, fierce animal that consumed everything in its path mercilessly.

  Over the noise of the fire, I could hear sirens. The firemen would be here any second. I turned to tell Harper that I’d heard the fire trucks – but she was no longer standing beside me. Only then did I hear her boots thumping and I looked up just as she disappeared through the column of smoke that blew out of the front door.

  “Shit,” I said, as I put my toes to the stone and charged in after her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It felt like walking through the back door of hell. The marble entrance hall was a swirling black mass of smoke and in the rooms on either side – a wall of flame. I looked up and saw that the ceiling was on fire. The red and orange thing was eating the paint, and spreading like spilt mercury over every single surface.

  The enormous chandelier that hung above me was still swinging from whatever explosion had rocked the house. A chunk of plaster the size of a dining table fell from the ceiling and exploded on the tiles beside me. Whipping my jacket over my head, I started coughing and running up the marble stairs. They felt warm under my feet, but they were not on fire. Not yet.

  At the top of the first flight of stairs, I called for Harper. The corridor to the left was soaked in flame. Same to the right. It looked like an arbitrary choice between where I’d most like to burn to death. I bent low, and took in some air for the first time. It felt like I was inhaling burning gas.

  I had to think or die.

  Managing to stifle the cough, I closed my eyes and listened.

  Five seconds.

  The cracking of timbers, the fizzles and sparks from the electric cables and above it all – the growl from the fire as it ate through the building.

  Then something else. Heavy footfalls above me.

  I took the next set of stairs two at a time. The second floor wasn’t nearly as bad as the one below. Thin streams of flames poured from the electric sockets and the wires in the wall, but the fire had yet to take firm hold. I went right. The footsteps I’d heard from this floor had headed in this direction. Last door on the right of the corridor was ajar. I hit it with my shoulder, then managed to grab the top of the door frame before I fell twenty feet to the floor below.

  The center of the floor had given way. I gazed down into the bedroom on the first floor. And through the thick smoke I saw Susan Howell lying face down on a bed of broken, smoking timber. Harper was beside her, trying to get up. She’d fallen through the hole in the floor. In the mass of wood and plaster, I saw George, unconscious.

  I turned and ran back the way I came, took the stairs one flight down and headed right, toward the room I’d seen from the floor above. I stopped dead.

  I couldn’t get to them. The corridor was a red tunnel. My suit was smoldering from the heat.

  Think.

  The door to my left was open and I saw a sink and toilet inside. I went in and was glad to see the room was not totally gone. The tiles on the wall had split, and a torch burned out of the electric socket on the wall. The drapes over the bathtub were smoking. I pulled them down, ran the faucet and soaked them, fast as I could.

  I was really coughing now. My chest was an acid burn.

  Swinging the dripping curtains over my head, I came out of the bathroom and sprinted down the corridor to the last room on the right. The door gave way and I came in on top of George.

  “Get up, let’s get out of here,” I said, tossing one of the curtains at Harper. She got Susan Howell up and over her shoulder, pulling the drape over them both with her right hand. I slapped George, got him awake and coughing. Unlike Susan, George’s face was white with plaster, and here and there I saw blood spots on his face.

  I got him up, but knew I couldn’t carry George and the wet curtain. I got him under my shoulder, covered his head with the drape and made for the door.

  Harper followed, slowly.

  “We gotta run,” I said.

  But we couldn’t. The thirty feet along the blazing corridor to the stairs took far too long. Before we’d made it halfway the drapes had dried out and caught fire.

  We tossed them and half tripped, half stumbled and dragged ourselves to the staircase, and some reprieve.

  None of us could speak, we choked, huddled together, all four of us at the top of the stairs. We didn’t make our way down to the hallway. Harper dropped Susan on the smoldering carpet and cried out.

  Below us, a huge fissure had erupted in the marble entrance hall. It was way too big to jump. The floor beneath our feet shifted and fell as the staircase cracked in two.

  Susan Howell awoke and spat black blood over the wall. Her face was swollen with the heat, and her eyelids were blistered and bleeding.

  Harper patted Susan’s face. Held her close.

  We couldn’t get down. We couldn’t get out. No air.

  And the flames came closer. I could feel them.

  I looked at the ground floor, trying to think, trying to figure out what the hell I should do. The cough was bad now. My body was in agony. It felt like the fire was burning from inside of me, and growing stronger every second, tearing at my skin, my muscles, the soles of my feet. Gasping, retching, I was no longer aware of anyone else. Just the drowning black smoke in my lungs and the hot tears streaming down my face.

  Then a pair of black boots appeared on the floor in front of me. My eyes grew heavy, and as I blacked out I felt strong hands pulling at my shoulders.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

&nb
sp; I came to on a soft bed. Something was clamped tightly across my face and I sat up, drinking in the air and listening to the shit rattling around in my chest. Another coughing fit and I tried to get whatever the hell it was off of my face.

  A firm hand on my solar plexus. Another grabbing my wrist.

  “Take it easy, it’s only an oxygen mask. You’re okay, fire service brought you out. You’re out,” said the paramedic. He was short and bald, and had a kind face. I lay down and turned my head around. Far as I could tell I was in the back of an ambulance, but we weren’t headed anywhere. I didn’t hear any sirens, didn’t feel the motion of the vehicle weaving through traffic.

  Across from me, on an identical gurney, I saw George. He was awake, and breathing better than me. I saw wet dirty phlegm in the nosepiece of his mask, and the steady rise and fall of his chest. Neither of us spoke. We just sucked in as much air as we could, and held our diaphragms tight, stifling the coughs, getting as much of the good stuff as we could. The paramedic must’ve washed George’s eyes. There was a band of pink skin around his eyes, but his cheeks, mouth and neck remained stained with soot.

  I wasn’t even aware of the paramedic working on me, bandaging a burn to my right hand. Seeing the burn made it sing and I arched my back, willing it to stop; praying to go back in time before I’d seen the burn and triggered the pain receptors in my brain to launch into overdrive.

  “I’ll give you something for the pain,” said the paramedic, disappearing out of my line of view. He returned with a vial and a syringe. He measured a shot, and leaned over me. I felt a tugging sensation and saw that he had an IV set up on my left wrist. The shot was bliss, and instantly numbed my hand and chest.

  It was like submersing myself in an ice-cold pool.

  Gloriously numb, I tried to speak. The words fell apart and my eyes closed.

  What the hell had I done? Running into a burning building? Some would call it foolishness, and they were probably right. But I knew exactly why I’d done it. Same reason I’d agreed to help Howell.

  It was the right thing to do.

  Images of burning cars and burning houses swam in the morphine. And then I saw a blonde seventeen-year-old, not quite Caroline Howell, nor quite my own daughter at that age – but perhaps a mixture of the two. She sat in a smoke-filled room.

  And all around the girl were piles of burning money.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Around ten a.m. I dressed in a pair of jeans and an old tee-shirt behind the screen of my hospital bed. My throat felt like I’d been sucking on a tail pipe and my hand hurt like hell. Every few minutes I hocked up black spit, and drank more water. I’d been pouring water down my throat for most of the night. First thing I did when I woke up a few hours ago was call Harry. He’d managed to get another judge to take over his docket of cases for the day, swung by my apartment, picked up some clothes and drove out to see me.

  While Harry waited on the other side of my hospital bed screen, I’d made a call to my wife, Christine. The hospital had contacted her earlier that morning. She was my next of kin and the call from the nurse scared the crap out of her. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help feeling good knowing that Christine worried about me. We’d split up some time ago and she took Amy and moved out of our rented house in Queens.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You don’t sound fine. I’ve been worried sick. What the hell were you doing last night?” she said, urgently.

  I heard a voice on the other end of the line. Somebody talking in the background. A male voice. I checked my watch. It was ten-fifteen.

  “Is Amy at school?” I said.

  “Yes, of course. Why?”

  “Just thought I heard her in the background, that’s all.”

  “Oh, no, that’s Kevin.”

  “Who is Kevin?” I said, with a little more punch in my tone than I’d expected.

  “He’s a friend,” she said.

  I was about to say something when I started coughing. Another paper cup of tepid water eased my throat.

  “You still there?” I said.

  “I’m here. You were supposed to come see us tomorrow. I made up a bed in the back room. Amy’s been looking forward to that boating trip. I don’t suppose …”

  “No. I can’t. I’m really sorry. I’ll make it up to Amy, I promise.”

  “I’ll tell her. Jesus, Eddie, these cases you take on …”

  “I know. I can’t help it. So who is this friend, Kevin?”

  “A friend,” she said, then hung up.

  We were on a break, technically. Separated was a complex word. Seemed like we’d been on and off for a few years now. First it was the job, eating at me and making me hit the bottle like there was no tomorrow. And when I got clean, somehow I still managed to mess things up. The work that I did put my family at risk. I wanted to fix things, make us a proper family again once I got my firm off the ground and maybe take cases with less of a risk. Until then, we remained separated. If Christine wanted to date somebody, that was okay. Only it wasn’t okay. Not by a long shot. She’d moved to her parents’ place in the Hamptons to get Amy out of the city, and away from me. I seemed to have a habit of taking cases that somehow came back to bite me and those closest to me. So I decided it would be better if there was some distance between me and my family. For their own sake. After a few months Christine got a job as a litigator in a small law firm in Riverhead. She got her own place and seemed to be setting up a new life.

  Kevin was definitely new. I didn’t know the guy, and maybe he was just a friend, but even so I had a strong desire to put my foot through his face. I needed to go see Amy as soon as I could. She would tell me about Mom’s new friend.

  I put my watch back on and drew back the screen around my bed. Harry looked me over now that I was dressed.

  “You could’ve brought me some underwear, you know?” I said.

  “Eddie, I’ve done three tours in Vietnam, I was one of the first African Americans to reach the rank of Captain in the US Army, I’ve been pelted with rocks and spat on in a half dozen civil rights marches, I’ve conducted twenty capital murder cases, and I’ve lost count of the amount of death threats I’ve accumulated in my lifetime – but let me tell you, opening your underwear drawer is frankly beyond the limits of my courage,” said Harry.

  The laughter brought on a coughing fit, and Harry patted my back.

  “Damn stupid thing you did, going in there.”

  “You would’ve done the same,” I said.

  He shrugged, and then adjusted the jacket of his suit. Harry always wore the best of clothes. A navy two-piece suit, pale blue shirt and navy tie with red diagonal slashes. Only his shock of white hair looked untidy. I knew that by ten o’clock that evening, the tie would be wrapped around a lampshade, the shirt would be open and Harry would have a drink in his hand. At least he always started the day looking his best. It goes with the territory – New York Superior Judges always turned themselves out well. Even though he’d showered, shaved, and put on his usual suave outfit, Harry didn’t look so fresh. The bags under his eyes appeared to be bigger, and his voice was hoarse.

  “What did you find out?” I said.

  “Susan Howell is still suffering from smoke inhalation. Minor burns. She’s okay. Same for the other guy, George Vindico. Nobody would tell me anything about Agent Harper, other than she got treatment and left early this morning. I got in contact with Agent Lynch, he wouldn’t confirm Agent Harper’s condition, but he said that everyone was accounted for and nobody was seriously injured in the fire. Still no word or sign of Leonard Howell.”

  I nodded. “And thanks for taking care of the hospital bill. I’ll pay you back.”

  Harry waved away my offer. I’d found out this morning that my medical insurance didn’t cover me if I ran into a burning building. And people think con artists are crooked. Harry had settled up for me, and I would pay him back, despite what he’d said.

  I called Howell’s cell. It must’ve b
een switched off. Part of me thought I should call the feds. What if Howell, McAuley and Marlon were lying in a ditch somewhere, dead, and the ransom missing? I swore under my breath, and decided to give him more time. Maybe it all went according to plan, but he had to hide out somewhere while things calmed down. I doubted that severely, but I couldn’t rule it out. Not yet.

  We took the elevator to the parking lot, and I climbed into Harry’s British sports car. It was like an American sports car, except it went around corners without trying to kill you and it looked as though it had been built for people a lot smaller than me. My knees bit into the dash, and Harry took us out of the lot and onto the highway.

  “You sure you want to go to Howell’s?” he said.

  “I want to talk to the feds. See what they’ve found out about the fire,” I said.

  Harry tutted.

  “What’s the real reason?”

  I smiled, there wasn’t much I could get past Harry. “If I stay close to the feds I might find out what really went down last night. The fire, the train station, it’s all been carefully set up by somebody. I want to know who is pulling the strings here.”

  I tried to get Howell on his cell half a dozen times, without success. I needed to see him, to tell him what I’d seen in the video feed from the rail station. I’d asked Harry to check the papers, and the news channels, but there was nothing on the kidnapping story – it was all about the fire.

  The shirt, with that slogan written across the chest.

  Howell murdered her in the basement.

  I’d spent only a short time with Howell, but from what I’d seen he was no murderer. He wouldn’t touch a hair on his daughter’s head. The shirt in the locker gave me chills just thinking about it.

  The MG struggled to fifty-five on the freeway, and despite having the top down, the July humidity made us sweat it out in the car. This was particularly uncomfortable for me. My right hand was burning like hell, and the sweat made my forehead sting. I hadn’t showered and every now and then I caught the smell of the fire from my hair.