In the Company of Liars

ONE DAY EARLIER
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8

Jane McCoy, sitting in her car, looks at her watch. It is close to one in the morning, Sunday, only forty-five minutes into a new day, and she prays that it is not as eventful as the Saturday that just passed. Normally, she would be asleep now. Instead, she is parked one street over from the home where Sam Dillon lives-lived-and where he was murdered only several hours ago.

She closes her eyes as she listens to her instructions through her cell phone. She still can’t believe that Dillon is dead. This is her fault. Her responsibility. She knew Dillon was at risk. She didn’t expectthis, though.

A fuck-up. A fuck-up times twelve. This thing has just gotten started, and already she’s lost a civilian.

“I will, sir,” she says into her cell phone to Irving Shiels. “You’ll be the first. Okay.”

She punches the cell phone off and looks at Harrick. “Jessica Pagone’s still at her mother’s house,” McCoy says. “I assume she’ll spend the night.”

“So what do we do now?” Harrick asks.

McCoy shrugs. This is her operation, she has to make the calls.

“We wait,” she tells her partner. “Somebody else is going to have to find Dillon’s body.”

“But what about Jessica?”

“We can’t just drive over and chat with her, this time of night. Remember, he’s got Allison’s place wired up, too. It’s one in the morning. We might as well raise a red flag if we go there now.”

“No, you’re right,” Harrick agrees. “Tomorrow.”

McCoy’s phone rings again. “McCoy. What? Are you-what-hang on.” She moves the phone from her mouth and turns to her partner. “Someone just left Allison’s house,” she says. “Not Jessica’s car. Allison’s.”

“AllisonPagone? Jesus Christ.” Harrick jumps in his seat. More action. What a night it’s been. A good part of an FBI agent’s job is watching, listening, waiting. Not so much this stuff, what they’ve seen tonight.

“Follow her,” McCoy says into the phone. “But for God’s sake, be invisible.”

She clicks the phone off and turns to Harrick. “None of our people are in Dillon’s house right now, right?”

“No, they’re out,” Harrick says. “I’ll confirm that. Why?” He turns to her. “You think Allison is cominghere?”

McCoy smiles. “Hell yes, she is.”

Allison brakes her Lexus SUV gently on Sam’s driveway and checks her watch. It is just after one in the morning. The front door was unlocked, Jessica said, so she should have no problem getting in.

The door is not even closed all the way. She pushes it open slowly, takes a breath, and walks in. With her shirt, she wipes the doorknob on both sides. Jessica swore that the doorknob was the only thing she touched.

She tells herself that she will not look at him-not directly-at least not until she is finished. But her instincts betray her, and she almost swoons as she sees him, lying motionless, face down, across the carpet. Her eyes move directly to the wound on the back of his head, to the statuette caked with blood and hair lying near him.

“Oh, Sam,” she whispers, but hearing her voice snaps her to attention.Do your job first. She walks past his body stoically, searching the carpet, until she finds it. The single platinum earring. She places it in her jeans pocket.

There. She is done.

But she thinks of her daughter. She remembers the phone call that she forced Sam to make on Friday-Sam’s call to Jessica, firing her from her position, shutting her out of his life, over an impersonal telephone line.

All I wanted to do was talk to him, Jessica told her, only hours ago.

Allison looks out the window. Most people don’t live up here by the lake year-round. Sam did, loved the tranquillity. Maybe, what, three or four people live up here right now on this street.

Meaning three or four potential eyewitnesses, at a minimum, who may have seen Jessica come here-including the widower next door, whose light was on in the front room when she passed it driving up here.

And whoknows who may have heard Jessica’s reaction when she was at Dillon & Becker’s offices in the city while Sam fired her from his office in the capital. Allison could hear, over the phone and sitting at a distance, Jessica’s protests; did anyone at Dillon & Becker hear her?

Jessica was here, in this house, on the night of the murder. She was upset the day before, after a phone call from Sam. Not a good combination.

And all of this is Allison’s fault.

Allison removes the single earring from her pocket and places it back near Sam’s body. She yanks a strand of hair from her head and lets it fall to the carpet near Sam. She writes crime fiction; she knows that a strand of hair must have the follicle attached to provide DNA.

What else?

Allison grabs her finger, painted with red polish, and breaks off a substantial piece of her nail. She makes the motion in the air of swinging something, trying to figure where a fingernail might break off. Oh, who knows? She lets the fingernail drop to the carpet as well.

She can’t be too obvious. It can’t look staged. Maybe this is enough, to draw their attention to her.

What else?

Allison looks at the statuette, on the carpet near Sam’s body. Plenty of blood on it, almost dried now. She touches it with her finger, thick like syrup now, and wipes a stain across her maroon sweatshirt. A trace of Sam’s blood, on her sweatshirt.

What else?

The Alibi.She remembers it, from the novel she is writing. The novel she hates.Best Served Cold.

She knows where his computer is, upstairs. She takes the stairs carefully, lest she lose her balance and fall on her wobbly legs, and goes to his office.

She is lucky, she thinks, thoughlucky hardly seems the word, that Sam does not use a password to protect the screen saver on his computer. The screen is black with asteroids and stars moving about. With one push of the computer mouse, the screen returns to his e-mail’s in-box. She hits the “compose” icon and pulls up a new mail message. She types in the words-murky, fuzzy words, that she comes up with off the top of her head-and addresses the message to her own web address,allison@allison-pagone.com:

A:

NEED TO DISCUSS FURTHER. GETTING WORRIED. MANY WOULD BE UNHAPPY WITH MY INFO. NEED ADVICE ASAP.

S

She wipes down the keyboard and mouse after she sends the e-mail. She will wipe down the banister, too, and the front doorknob. No, she is not looking to guarantee herself a conviction. She is not going to write her name in blood on his bathroom mirror. What she has done is insurance, nothing more. They won’t necessarily be able to make a case against Allison, or even suspect her. But after her work here, they certainly won’t be able to make a case against Jessica, either, and that is her principal goal. If it ever gets close to Jessica, Allison will be able to hold herself out, plausibly, as the suspect. After her work here, her daughter will never be accused of this crime.

She checks her watch. It is close to twenty after one. Having sat down for even a minute, she feels intense exhaustion sweep over her. But she resists. Now is no time to get weary. She only has to get back home now.

She will retrieve that novel she’s working on and delete it from her computer. If they come looking for her, they will undoubtedly seize the laptop. Another benefit of writing crime fiction-she knows, at least generally speaking, of the government’s powers to retrieve deleted material from a computer’s hard drive. They will find it. And they will find it very interesting that she deleted this document from her computer only minutes after returning from Sam’s house.

Now for the hard part. She will see him one last time. She thinks of what she wants to say. Yes, she knows it’s foolish, she knows he can’t hear her now any more than he would be able to hear her later, in the privacy of her home.

She comes back down the stairs and moves to Sam, gets on her knees and begins to cry.

At this moment, she is sure that she loves him. At this moment, her feelings for Sam have crystallized, have moved from an intense passion, from a reawakening of feelings dormant for so many years, to love.

“I love you,” she says to him through a full throat. She reaches for him but it seems inappropriate. Her hand is only inches from his head. She wants him to see her one more time, even if he can’t. She wants to look into his eyes, but she will not move him. His face is surprisingly peaceful, if defeated, his eyes closed but his mouth open ever so slightly.

“I’m so very-Sam, I’m so sorry,” she whispers.

But he is dead, and she has Jessica to protect. She rises to her feet and heads to the kitchen, removes a freezer bag from a drawer and grabs a paper towel off the roll. She returns to the living room and picks up the award from the manufacturers’ association, wipes it down as well as she can, grips it firmly with her own hand, then puts it in the freezer bag. She turns her head away as she does so, avoiding the blood and hair caked against the marble base, stifling her tears because so much of the night remains.

“Talk to me,” McCoy says into her collar, as she keeps a safe distance from Allison’s SUV, heading south now, away from Sam Dillon’s house. McCoy left Harrick at Dillon’s house to work with the team, now that Allison is gone.

“I don’t know,” Harrick says through her earpiece. “I’m looking. What-hang on.”

McCoy can hear muffled voices now. A team of federal agents are back in Dillon’s home, trying to figure out what the hell Allison Pagone did while she was there.

Maybe, McCoy thinks,she just came to say good-bye. To see for herself. But probably not.

“The award is gone,” Harrick says. “She took the fucking murder weapon!”

“The earring, too?” McCoy asks.

“Hang on.” More muffled noise. “No, no, but it’s closer to Dillon’s body.”

“Okay. Okay. You know what she’s doing.”

“Hang on,” Harrick says. “There’s gotta be more.”

“Get back to me when you know everything. I’ll see where she goes.”

“She’s going home, Jane.”

“I’m not so sure,” McCoy says. “Let’s see.”

Yellow like lemon. She remembers it like it was yesterday, her utter relief when she found her five-year-old daughter outside the back of the Countryside Grocery Store, pointing at the yellow pole in the ground. She no longer shops at this store on Apple and Riordan; it was the place she shopped way back when, back when she and Mat lived around the corner. Now she lives several miles away, but she always smiles when she passes this particular store.

It’s still here, the post, and still yellow. But her daughter is no longer five years old.

Allison has a shovel that she keeps in her SUV for snow removal, so it takes her little time to dig up the earth. She pushes the statuette into the ground. Now for the hard part, returning the earth to its previous form. She does the majority of the work with the shovel, but she is finally forced to bend down and use her hands to smooth the ground over. When she is finished, she wipes her forehead with her hands.

She gets up and turns to leave. A flashlight shines in her face. There is illumination out here but it’s still relatively dark. The flashlight blinds her. She freezes. Her body goes cold. But if it has to start right here, so be it.

“I’m a federal agent, Mrs. Pagone. Please put down that shovel.”

A federal agent?

“Mrs. Pagone, you didn’t kill Sam Dillon with that trophy and I assume you won’t try to kill me with that shovel. Now please, put down the shovel and back up ten steps.”

Allison complies, dropping the shovel and back-pedaling.

“I’m Special Agent Jane McCoy.” The agent shines the flashlight on her credentials, which she holds out. “FBI.”

“I don’t understand what this is about,” Allison says. “I don’t understand what you mean about Sam Dillon.”

“No?” McCoy asks. “And that trophy from the Midwest Manufacturers’ Association you just buried? No idea whatthat is, either?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Let me see your hands, please.”

Allison raises her hands.

“Turn them around, palms facing you.”

Allison reverses her hands.

“I wonder if that broken fingernail matches a nail my partner just found by Sam Dillon’s body,” McCoy says. “What other clues did you leave, Mrs. Pagone? A business card on the kitchen table?”

“Whoever you are, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know about Jessica, Mrs. Pagone. I know what happened. I was there.”

Allison closes her eyes.They even know her name.

“You broke a nail, you moved that earring next to Sam’s body. You disposed of the murder weapon.”

“She didn’t mean to kill him,” Allison says.

The federal agent is silent.

“Please,” Allison says, realizing how ridiculous her plea must sound.

“Mrs. Pagone, we have a lot to talk about. We can help each other.”

Allison’s heart pounds. What is happening?

“We have a lot to discuss. Will you come with me to my car around the corner, so I don’t freeze my butt off out here?”

Allison slowly moves toward the federal agent. The agent is trying to put her at ease. “What about the shovel?” she asks.

“I’ll take it. Please walk past me and stop.”

Allison passes the shovel, passes the federal agent, who moves well out of her way, and stops. She hears the agent pick up the shovel, iron scraping against pavement.

“Mrs. Pagone,” the agent says, “I’m prepared to agree with you. I’m prepared to swear that your daughter didn’t kill Sam Dillon. But I need your help.”

Allison drives around Jessica’s two-door coupe parked on the driveway and parks her own car in the garage. She leaves the garage door open and stands next to her car.

She looks at her watch. It’s almost three in the morning. She spent over an hour talking with Agent McCoy. Almost three in the morning, Jessica could very well have fallen asleep, overwhelmed emotionally.

Allison is hoping not.

She waits one, two minutes. Maybe Jessica did fall asleep. That will make this tougher.

The interior door from the garage opens. Jessica sticks her head out.

Allison brings a finger to her mouth, shakes her head slowly.

Jessica doesn’t speak, which is the point here. She waits a moment, trying to understand.

Allison backs up onto the driveway and waves a cupped hand to Jessica.

Jessica slowly closes the door and walks out to her mother. She looks Allison over as she gets closer, her eyes slowly growing in horror.

“Mother-what did you do?” Jessica whispers.

“Everything’s fine,” Allison says, drawing close to her daughter but not touching her. “Something is going on that neither of us knew about. Something about Sam.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know, Jess, and you can’t-”

“Tell me, Mother. Tell me what happened.”

“This is what I can tell you. Nobody is going to connect you to this. Sam was-there was something we know nothing about. Sam was involved.”

“Sam was involved in what? How do you know this?”

“Jess, I don’t know, either, not the details. I just-you have to understand. I talked to somebody. Don’t ask me who because I won’t tell you. No one is going to say you killed him.”

“Ididn’t kill him, Mother.” Jessica stands back. “You don’t believe me.”

“Of course, I believe you.”

Allison believes Jessica because she has to believe her. She cannot fathom not believing in Jessica’s innocence. There is no other acceptable alternative.

“I’m prepared to have three federal agents swear, under oath, that Jessica didn’t kill Sam Dillon,” the agent, McCoy, told her an hour ago. “We’re prepared to say that this other man did it.”

Allison had been in no position to protest, because the federal agent was agreeing with her-Jessica didn’t kill Sam. But her mind told her what her heart tried desperately to ignore: Jane McCoy wasn’tagreeing with Allison, exactly. She was saying she was willing to agree, if Allison helped her.

“Of course I believe you,” Allison repeats.

“Did you go to the house?” Jessica asks.

“Yes.”

“Did you get the earring?”

“I left it there, Jess.”

“Youleft it-”

“It’smy earring, Jessica.Mine, not yours. And you have never, ever borrowed them. Okay?”

“I don’t understand what you’re doing, Mother. I don’t understand who you talked to or what they told you. I don’t understand why we’re standing outside instead of going inside.”

Yes, it is cold, very cold outside, and Jessica is only wearing a blouse.

“This is what you need to know,” Allison says. “And this isall you can know, for now. Sam was involved in something else. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, but he had some knowledge, or at least some people thought he did. And our government is interested in that other thing. They are willing to say that this is the reason he was killed. Nothing to do with you or me. They’re going to say that. But I have to help them out.”

“You’re going to help them how?”

“Keep your voice down,” Allison says. “They think my house might be bugged.”

“What?” Jessica shivers, looks back at the house.

“Voice down, Jessica. It’s okay. I’m going to be fine. I’m being protected.”

“This is-this is related to what Sam knew about?”

“Yes. They’re afraid that I might know, too. I don’t. But that’s why my house is bugged.”

“This iscrazy, Mother.”

“It is what it is,” she tells her daughter. “We deal with it.” She reaches for her daughter’s shoulders but pulls back, doesn’t want to touch her with her dirty hands. “Jess, the police will probably think that I killed Sam.”

“No.”

“It’s okay. I’m covered. It’s all being worked out. But you have to understand what is going to happen. They’re going to come to me, the police. They’re probably going to charge me. People are going to think I’m a killer. It’s going to be tough for you. But I’m going to be okay. I’m not going to prison. You’ll have to trust me on that. It’s going to be hard.”

“Because you went to his house?” Jessica’s face deteriorates into tears. “Mother,” she manages, her voice breaking, “what did you do there?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to tell you anything else. You can’t know what’s going on, Jess. You can’t. You have to trust me. You trust me, don’t you?”

“I-of course.”

“Okay. Did you-have you spoken to anyone tonight? Make any calls or anything like-”

“No,” she says. “I’ve been sitting here freaked out. You were gone so long.”

“I know, baby. I’m sorry.” She motions to the house. “We have to get back inside. Now, listen. I’m going to tell you inside, for the benefit of whoever’s listening, that I killed Sam. Just refuse to believe it. That’s fine. We’ll talk for a few minutes, then you’ll go to bed. Try to sleep, Jess. I promise you we’re going to be fine. Then, in the morning, you have to leave. You have to leave and not come back to this house until this thing is over. You can’t speak to your dad about this, either. I’m going to talk to him, okay? But you can’t. When this is over, you’ll understand why.”

Jessica looks back at the house. “We have to go in,” she says.

“Yes.” Allison steers her daughter, whispers in her ear. “This is going to turn out fine, Jess,” she promises.