The King Of Lies

CHAPTER 16

I woke in the dark; I didn’t know where I was and I didn’t care. I held on to the dream: two hands entwined, passing over green fields, the sounds of a dog and of laughter; a flash of blue skies that refused to end, and blond hair, like silk, against my face.

The dream had been of Vanessa, and of things that would never be.

There had been a child, too, with golden skin and her mother’s cornflower eyes. She was four or five. She was radiant.

Tell me the story, Daddy… Skipping through tall grass.

What story?

She laughed. You know what story, Daddy. My favorite…

But I didn’t know. There was no story, no favorite; nor would there be. The dream was gone. I’d thought Vanessa would always be there. I’d thought that I had time. For some reason, I’d believed that things would simply work out.

What a fucking idiot.

Tell me the story, Daddy

I sat up and swung my legs off the couch, rubbed my hands across my face. It’s never too late, I told myself; but in the dark the words felt lame, and I thought of the boy I’d once been. Then I said it again, out loud, stronger. “It’s never too late.”

I looked at my watch. Five-fifteen. Monday. Three days ago, I’d stood above my father’s corpse. Now Ezra was gone, and so, too, the comfort of illusion; Vanessa had been so right about that. He’d been the structure and the definition, and I wondered where such power had come from. Was it a gift I’d made to him or something that he’d stolen? In the end, it didn’t matter. My life was a house of cards, and the wind of Ezra’s passing had knocked it flat.

I pulled on my shoes, thinking that the day already felt very much like Monday.

I found Bone on the overstuffed chair and guessed I’d been snoring. He was warm and loose as I carried him to the truck. At home, I put on a pot of coffee to perk while I showered and dressed. When I got out, Barbara was waiting. She sat on the counter, wrapped in the same fleece robe she’d worn the day before. She looked like hell.

“Good morning,” I said noncommittally. She watched me as I toweled off, and I wondered what she saw.

“Hardly,” she replied. “I didn’t really sleep.” I wrapped the towel around my waist, and she stated the obvious. “You didn’t come home.”

“No.” I felt the need to say more but decided not to.

“Were you…” She hesitated. “Were you at her place?”

She did not need to elaborate. “No,” I said.

“Then…”

“At the office.”

She nodded and then watched silently as I rummaged in the closet. I’d forgotten that I had no clean suit, so I pulled on khakis and a rumpled cotton button-down that I usually wore around the house. I could feel her eyes on me but didn’t know what to say, so I dressed in a silence made more awkward by our ten years of marriage.

“Work,” she finally said. “I don’t want to go on like this.” I heard the forced calm in her voice, so I matched it with my own. I looked at her as I spoke; it was required.

“Do you want a divorce?” I asked.

She came off the counter, startled. Her voice rose. “Good God. No! Why on earth would you think a thing like that?”

I tried to hide my disappointment, realizing only then how desperately I wanted to be rid of this marriage.

“Then what…?”

Barbara came to me and put her hands on my chest. She tried to smile, but it was pitiful to watch. Her breath explored my face, and I wanted to turn away. I’d been so sure. She took my hands and placed them around her waist, leaned into me.

“I want it to be like it was, Work. I want to fix things.” She squeezed me, trying to appear playful, and failing. “I want to make you happy. I want us to be happy.”

“Do you think that’s possible?” I asked.

“Of course it is.”

“We’re not the same people we were, Barbara. We’ve changed.” I removed my arms from around her waist and stepped back. Her voice, when she spoke, had an all too familiar edge. It was sharp and quick.

“People don’t change, Work, only circumstances.”

“Now, you see, that’s where we’re different.” I pulled on my coat. “I have to go,” I said. “I’ve got court this morning.”

She followed me through the house. “Don’t walk away from me, Work,” she shouted, and I saw my father’s face. I snatched my keys from the kitchen counter, ignoring the coffee, which suddenly smelled of bile. At the door, her hands found my arm and she pulled me to a stop. “Please. Wait just a minute.” I relented and leaned against the wall. “There’s still hope for this marriage, Work.”

“Why do you say that, Barbara?”

“Because there has to be.”

“That’s no answer.”

“Marriages have been made of less.” She put her hand to my face. “We can make this work.”

“Do you still love me, Barbara?”

“Yes,” she said immediately. “I still love you.” But I saw the lie in her eyes, and she knew it.

“We’ll talk later,” I said.

“I’ll make dinner tonight,” she said, suddenly smiling. “You’ll see. Everything will be fine.” Then she kissed my cheek and sent me off to work, like she had in the early days of our marriage. The smile was the same, as was the feel of her lips on my face, just like a thousand other times. I didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t be good.

I went out for breakfast and coffee. I had a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, which would have tasted great had I not found a copy of Sunday’s paper. The story of Ezra’s death and the ongoing investigation was still on page one, but there was not much else to say. For some reason, they showed a picture of his house. My house now. I scanned the article and was relieved to find my name absent. Another first.

I paid for the meal and walked outside. The day was crisp, with pewter skies and gusting winds. I shoved my hands into my pockets and watched the traffic pass. Somehow I was not surprised to see Detective Mills’s car turn into the parking lot. It was one of those things that just felt right, like it had been preordained. I leaned into her window when she rolled it down.

“Are you following me?” I asked her. She didn’t smile.

“Coincidence,” she said.

“Is it?”

She gestured at the restaurant behind me. “I eat here twice a week,” she said. “Wednesdays and Fridays.”

I studied her: She had on a tight brown sweater and jeans. Her weapon was on the seat next to her. I couldn’t smell her perfume. “Today is Monday,” I told her.

“It’s like I said. Coincidence.”

“Really?”

“No,” she said. “I stopped by your house. Your wife said she thought you might have come here.”

I felt a foreboding chill, and I didn’t know if it was because Detective Mills had been looking for me or because she and my wife had been breathing the same air.

“What do you want?”

“Douglas and I still want to get together with you about your father’s files. Have you had a chance to go through them?”

“I’m working on it.” A lie.

“Will you be in the office today?” Mills asked.

“I have court this morning. Then I’m going to the jail for an hour to see some clients. I’ll be in the office by noon.”

Mills nodded. “We’ll be in touch.” Then she drove away, and I stood watching after her. Eventually, I got into the truck and drove to the office. It was early still, and my secretary had not yet arrived, for which I was thankful. I could not bear her mournful eyes and the disappointment that seemed to shine from them whenever she looked at me. I ignored the stairs to the big office and settled into the chair in my own small office at the back corner of the building. The voice-mail light blinked at me until, with a small sigh, I pushed the button. It took ten minutes to get through all the messages, most of which were from various reporters. They all assured the utmost discretion… if I could just spare a moment to make a few comments about my deceased father. One, however, stood out. The call had come in that morning, about an hour before.

The reporter’s name was Tara Reynolds; I knew her well. She worked for the Charlotte Observer, had the criminal beat for North Mecklenburg and the counties that bordered Charlotte to the north… Cabarrus, Iredell, and Rowan. Our paths crossed from time to time. She never misquoted me or abused the initial trust I’d given her. Murder cases were often tried in the press, and I was not above using her when circumstances called for it. She operated the same way; and yet there was an invisible line that neither of us ever crossed. Call it mutual respect. Maybe even liking.

Tara was in her midfifties, heavyset, with brilliant green eyes and a smoker’s voice. She was beyond jaded, expected the worst of everyone, and believed that her job was the most important one in the world. She may have been right. She answered on the second ring.

“I want you to know that I never do this.”

That was the first thing she said to me.

“What?” I asked.

“Just listen. I’m going to tell you some things and then we’ll never mention this again.”

She had my attention, yet she seemed suddenly hesitant. “What is it, Tara?”

“Just a sec…” I could tell that her hand covered the mouthpiece. Muffled voices filtered through and then there was silence. “Sorry about that,” she said. “I’m going to make this quick. You know that I’ve got sources?”

“I know that.” Tara usually knew more about the murder cases in this county than everybody but the cops and the DA’s office. I never learned how she did it, but she did.

“The word from inside Salisbury PD is that your name’s coming up… a lot.”

“What?”

“There’s a lot of talk, Work. They’re looking at you pretty hard for the murder.” Her voice was low and urgent, as if she thought I’d not believe her.

“Somehow I’m not surprised.”

“Just listen. There are a few things you might not know. First, they’ve identified the ammunition that killed your father. The bullets were Black Talons-fairly rare, illegal for awhile now. In and of itself, no big deal, but they checked the local gun-store records. Your father bought three boxes of Black Talons just before they were taken off the market.”

“So…”

“So, it ups the odds that his gun was used. They think you had access to that gun.” A pause. “Has it turned up yet?”

She was testing me, probing for information. “I don’t know.”

“Well, it hasn’t, and until it does, that looks suspicious.”

“What else?” I asked, knowing there had to be more. I could hear her breathing on the other end, the click of a lighter and the sharp inhale as she lit up.

“They’re saying your alibi won’t hold up.” Another drag. “They’re saying that you lied about your whereabouts.”

There it was.

“Why do they believe that?” I asked, amazed that my voice sounded as calm as it did.

“I don’t know, but it’s firm. Add the money factor into it and it looks solid.”

“You’re talking about…”

“Yeah, yeah. The fifteen million.”

“Word spreads fast,” I said.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Are there other suspects?” I asked.

“You know, I’d have been worried if you’d not asked that question.”

“Are there?” I pressed.

“Yeah. There are. There were several business deals where the other guy got the short end. Forgive me for saying this, but your father was a real ass. He was sharp but not exactly scrupulous. He screwed over a lot of people.”

“Anybody in particular?”

“A few. But nobody else with such an obvious incentive. Some criminal defendants who got out around the time he was killed. They’re being checked out. The DA was pulling out all the stops until some question came up about your alibi. Now Mills has forced his hand. He’s not backing you anymore.”

I was not surprised. Mills must have been all over Douglas about my going to the crime scene. She’d let me be there because he’d asked her to. Nobody would care about that if the case was shot because of it. In the end, it was her call. She’d swing if the wind blew the wrong way on this one. Normally, I’d have felt badly for Douglas, because our friendship had caused this problem, but not now. Now I couldn’t have cared less.

Douglas would prosecute the case, whoever they arrested. Jean or me. That meant that Douglas was coming after the family, and the past was irrelevant. I remembered him from the parking lot, the way his face had hung so slackly around his ripe-plum nose. I was meat to him now; he’d swallow me or spit me out, just like anybody else.

“Who says my alibi is no good?” I asked, knowing she couldn’t help me.

“Don’t know. But it’s somebody with a reason to know different. The cops believe it. Mills says she liked you from the get-go. She’s all but accused you of hampering her investigation. But the pressure’s on her. Everybody knows she let you onto the crime scene. Now she sees cracks in your story, and word is, she’s like a kid in a candy store.”

“Mills is a bitch.”

“I try not to go there, but I can’t disagree. I know she hates lawyers, but I can’t blame her for that, either.” She said it jokingly, but it fell flat. “Sorry,” she said. “Just trying to cheer you up.”

“My wife can swear that I was with her all night.” I just wanted to try the alibi on, see what she would make of it.

“Biased testimony, Work. Any prosecutor worth a lick could shoot holes in it before breakfast.”

She was right. Barbara’s testimony was better than nothing, but not by much, especially in light of Ezra’s will. A jury could well imagine a wife would lie for her husband. Throw in fifteen million dollars and it was a given.

“There’s a bright side to all this,” Tara told me. “Want to hear it?” She went on before I could answer. “Do you know this lawyer, Clarence Hambly?”

“Yes.”

“He’s saying that you knew nothing about the will. That your father gave explicit instructions that you not know of it under any circumstances. That’s taken some of the wind out of Mills’s sails. Hambly is very credible.”

I pictured the old man staring down at me from his lofty height, a twist of distaste on his patrician mouth. But just because Hambly believed it didn’t make it so. That’s what Douglas would argue to the jury. I could hear him: I would never doubt the word of this upstanding gentleman. He would beam at the jury and place a hand on the old man’s shoulder to show that they were on the same side. I am quite certain that he never discussed the will with this defendant. He’d stop and point his meaty finger, damning me. But there are other ways, ladies and gentlemen. And the defendant is a smart man, an educated man. Here he’d raise his voice. A lawyer! Who for ten years shared an office with the decedent. Who for thirty-five years had access to the poor man’s home… His own father!

That’s how he’d play it. It’s how I would. He’d need a motive.

Fifteen million dollars, ladies and gentlemen. A lot of money…

“And don’t forget the obvious,” the reporter said. “They still don’t have a murder weapon. It’s a big hole.”

Not as big as the one in my father’s head, I thought, amazed at my own callousness. If anything, my dislike for the man had grown since his death. “Is there anything else?” I asked.

“One more thing,” she told me. “It’s important.”

“What?”

“I don’t think you did it. That’s why we’re talking. Don’t make me regret it.”

I understood what she meant. If word escaped that she’d told me these things, her sources would dry up. She could face criminal charges.

“I understand,” I told her.

“Listen, Work. I like you. You’re like a little boy playing dress-up. Don’t get caught with your pants down. It wouldn’t be the same without you. I mean that.”

Unsure what to say, I thanked her.

“And when the time is right,” she said, “you talk to me and me only. If there’s a story, I want an exclusive.”

“Whatever you want, Tara.”

I heard her light another cigarette. She muttered something under her breath. Then her voice firmed.

“This last bit’s going to hurt, Work, and I apologize. But it’s out of my hands.”

A horrible pit opened in my stomach, and I felt my heart drop through it. I knew what she was going to say before she said it. “Don’t, Tara,” I said. “Don’t do it.”

“It’s my editor’s call, Work. The story’s going to run. It won’t be specific, if that helps. Sources close to the investigation say… that sort of thing. It won’t say you’re a suspect, just that you’re being questioned in connection with the murder.”

“But you’ll use my name?”

“I can buy you a day, Work, maybe two, but don’t count on it. It’s going to run and it will be front page.”

I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Thanks for nothing.”

After a long silence, Tara said, “I didn’t have to tell you at all.”

“I know. It doesn’t make it any easier.”

“I gotta go, Work. Take care.” She hung up.

I sat in silence for a long time, thinking of what she’d said. I tried to picture it, the train wreck that was now bearing down on me, but I couldn’t. The next day, or the day after that. It was too huge, too intense. I thought of the other things she’d said-because I had to. I absolutely had to.

Black Talons. They were hard to come by. That Ezra’s own gun had been used against him now seemed a certainty. I thought of my last visit to his house, of the bed upstairs and the place where someone had curled up to rest or to weep. Jean had been there, looking for some kind of peace, I guessed. It was where it had started, on the night that now seemed so long ago. She would have gone there for the gun; we all knew that’s where he kept it. How many times, I wondered, had she returned to that place, and what did she think while there? Would she undo the past if she could?

Then there was the fifteen million. No one would believe I had no use for it. It would appear to be an obvious and self-serving lie. And the cops knew that I’d not been home with Barbara. That presented a huge question. Where had that information come from? Suddenly, I thought of Jean, how her mouth had worked wetly beneath those kaleidoscope eyes… Done is done… Daddy’s dead and done is done.

But I couldn’t keep my mind off Tara. Why was she helping me? What was it she’d said? That I was like “a little boy playing dress-up.” That’s how she saw me, a little boy in his father’s suit. She was right, I realized, but for the wrong reasons. It looked like dress-up because my father’s suit would never fit. The problem, however, was not the size of the man, but the choice of suit, a truth I was gradually coming to accept. The vultures were circling, looking for a carcass, a body to feed the clanking machine that was justice. And I knew for fact that my father could never have put himself in the sights. He could never have made that sacrifice. I prayed that I would be strong enough to do what had to be done. I pictured my sister, and found that it helped. But the panic was still there, waiting, and I pushed the thoughts away, pounded them down with something like hatred.

Jean was right. The old man was dead, and done is done. Only one thing mattered now.

I leaned back in the chair I’d used for so many years and studied the walls, where diplomas and my law license hung; I saw the office as if for the first time. There were no personal touches, no paintings or photographs, not even of my wife. It was as if a part of me had never accepted my life, and saw this all as merely temporary. Yet if that were true, it was a small part of me indeed. Until that moment, it had all seemed normal enough. Yet I knew I could move out of that office in five minutes, and it would be as if the past ten years had never been. The room would show little change. Like a prison cell, I thought. The building wouldn’t miss me, and part of me wanted to torch the place. For what could it matter now? One cell was much the same as another.

There should be pictures on the walls, I thought, then placed a call to Stolen Farm. I told myself I was calling to apologize, to try one more time to set the past to rights, but that was not the whole truth. I needed to hear her voice. I wanted to hear her say that she loved me, just one more time.

No one answered.

By the time I left for court, the day had closed in on itself; the sky was shuttered with heavy clouds that threatened rain. I seemed to bow under the pressure of that sky, and I was bent by the time I walked into court. I’d expected to be treated differently, like everyone knew, but that didn’t happen. I’d imagined the worst, a public shunning, but in the end it was just another day in court. So I sat through calendar call in near silence, addressing the court when my cases were called off the docket: one for plea, one for trial. Then I went to meet my clients in the crowded hallway.

They were petty cases, misdemeanors; I had to glance at the files to remember what my clients were charged with. It was typical Monday bullshit, except I had one guy who I thought might be innocent. I’d take his case to trial.

We stood in the burned tobacco smell by the outside door, a trash can for my desk. I dealt with the plea first. He was forty-three years old, overweight, and divorced. He nodded compulsively as I spoke, his lower lip loose over tobacco-stained teeth, his shirt already soaked through with sickly sweet perspiration. The “fear sweats” we called them. I saw it all the time. For most, criminal court was a foreign place, something that would never really happen. Then suddenly, it became real, and you heard your name called out in that room full of criminals, armed bailiffs, and the stiff-faced judge who sat above it all. By noon, the hall would be ripe, the courtroom even worse. There were 540 cases on the docket that day, a microcosm of greed, anger, jealousy, and lust. Just pick an emotion, and you’d find the crime to embody it. And they moved around us, an endless sea, each looking for his lawyer, his witness, or his lover. Some just looking for a smoke to kill the hours until their case was called. Many had been through the system so often, it was old hat. Others, like my guy, had the sweats.

He’d been charged with assault on a female, a class-A1 misdemeanor, just shy of a felony. He lived across the street from a very attractive young woman who’d been having marital problems with her pastor husband. How had my client known this? For several months, he’d used a scanner to intercept their cordless phone calls. During this time, he’d convinced himself that the cause of their problems was her infatuation with him, an assertion that anyone with working eyes could tell was absurd. And yet he believed it. He believed it now, just as he had six weeks ago, when he’d forced his way into her trailer, pinned her against the kitchen counter, and rubbed his crotch all over her. There’d been no rape, no penetration; the clothes had stayed on. He was reticent about why he finally left. I suspected premature ejaculation.

At our first meeting, he’d wanted to go to trial. Why? Because she’d wanted him to do what he did. He should not be punished for that. Should he? “It ain’t right, I tell you. She loves me. She wanted it,” he’d said.

I hated the sweaters. They’d listen to you, but they always wanted to get too close, as if you could truly save them. Three weeks before, we’d met in my office, and he’d told me his side of the story. The victim’s side of it was unsurprising. She barely knew his name, found him physically repulsive, and had not slept through the night since the day it happened. I found her entirely credible. One look at her and the judge would drop the hammer on my guy. No question about it.

Eventually, I convinced my client that a plea of simple assault would be in his best interest. It was a lesser charge, and I’d worked a deal with the DA. He’d do community service. No time.

In the hallway, he licked his lips, and I saw dried spit at the corners of his mouth. I wanted to explain what was expected and how to address the court. All he wanted to talk about was her. What did she say about him? How did she look? What was she wearing?

He had all the makings of a client for life. The next time, it might be worse.

I warned him that the judge would order him to stay away from the victim, that going near her would be a violation of the terms of the plea. He didn’t get it, or if he did, he didn’t care; but I’d done my job, as disgusting as it was, and he could go back to his little hole and his dark fantasies of the preacher’s wife.

The second client was a young black man, charged with resisting arrest. The cop said he’d hampered an arrest, that he’d incited a watching crowd by yelling at the cops to fuck off. My client had a different story. It had taken four white cops to catch the lone black man who had been arrested. When the charging officer had walked past my client, he’d been smoking a cigarette, at which point my client had said, “That’s why you can’t catch nobody, ’cause you smoking.” The cop had stopped, said, “You want to go to jail?” My client had laughed. “You can’t arrest me for that,” he’d told him.

The cop had cuffed him and tossed him in the patrol car. And here we were.

This client, I believed, mainly because I knew the cop. He was fat, mean, and a chain-smoker. The judge knew it, too. I thought we had a good chance at acquittal.

The trial took less than an hour. My client walked. Sometimes reasonable doubt is easy to find. Sometimes it’s not. As I was shaking his hand, moving away from the defense table, I looked over his shoulder and saw Douglas standing in the shadowed alcove at the back of the courtroom. He never came to district court, not without reason. I lifted my hand out of habit, but his arms remained crossed over his fat man’s chest. I looked away from his hooded eyes to say good-bye to my beaming client, and when I looked back, Douglas was gone.

Like that, the last of my delusions fell away, leaving me naked before the truths I’d denied all morning. The room tilted and sudden dampness warmed my face and palms-the fear sweats, this time from the inside. I stumbled from court on weak legs, passed other lawyers without hearing or seeing them. I plowed through packed humanity in the hall, groping my way like a blind man. I almost fell through the bathroom door, and didn’t take time to close the stall. Files slipped unheeded to the floor as my knees struck the damp, urine-stained tile. Then, in one unending clench, I vomited into the stinking toilet.