State of Lies

by Siri Mitchell

  “Did they catch him?”

  “No.”

  “He get inside?”

  “In the crawl space. That’s where I heard him.”

  “Want me to take a look?”

  “I don’t have time right now. I’ve got a meeting at work. Can’t be late.” Not to another one.

  “Doesn’t take two people. I’ll check it out for you while you get your things.”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “’Course not!”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Hey, kid, I want to, okay?”

  By the time I’d made a lunch for myself, exchanged my yoga pants for a pair of jeans, and grabbed my attaché, Jim was nailing the door shut. “I’ll swing by Cherrydale Hardware and pick up a lock later in the morning. But this should do the trick for now. Once I get that lock on, I’ll leave the key on your dining room table, okay? I’ll let myself in with your spare.”

  “You don’t have to do all this, Jim.”

  “Maybe not, but I want to.”

  “Thank you. I can’t even tell you—” I couldn’t finish my sentence. I felt too much like crying.

  He patted me on the shoulder. “Hang in there, kid. It’ll be okay.”

  * * *

  It didn’t feel okay. It didn’t feel okay all day long. And it still didn’t feel okay when I picked up Sam from school. But I tried not to let it show.

  “Mom!” He ran over, backpack bouncing, when he saw me. “Mom! Ms. Hernandez wants to know what you do. She’s looking for parents to talk about their jobs. I told her you were a fizziest. She didn’t know what that was, so I told her you’re a scientist. And now she needs to know what kind.”

  “A physicist.”

  “That’s what I told her. I told her you work with holes. She said she needs to talk to you.”

  “It’s wormholes. Although they’re not really what I work on.”

  “But that’s what I told her.”

  Because that’s what I’d told him. What kid wants to know that their parent just sits around all day and thinks really hard? So I’d told him about parallel universes and wormholes and black holes. “I’m a special kind of scientist. I try to explain things that are hard to understand. Kind of like magic.”

  “So maybe I can tell Ms. Hernandez that you do magic tricks!”

  “It’s not really magic tricks.”

  “You could say it was. And I’d let you wear my cape.”

  I stopped walking, pulled my son close, and kissed him on top of the head. Hard. It was easier to keep from crying that way. “Thanks.”

  * * *

  Jim came over that evening to make sure I’d found the key on the table. After he’d gone, I left Sam playing in his room with Legos, grabbed a flashlight, and went to see what Jim had installed for the crawl space.

  A large Keep Out sign was nailed to the door, and it had been secured with a very big, very formidable-looking padlock.

  I unlocked it and opened the door. Then I clicked on the flashlight and squatted, peering inside, just to make sure everything looked okay.

  Nothing to note except a glint. Back in the corner.

  Were they eyes?

  I beat the flashlight against the wall, hoping whatever it was would scurry away, but it didn’t move. I shifted the flashlight up and down, back and forth.

  Still glinted. Still didn’t move.

  I so didn’t want to crawl around down there. I was fine with electricity and motors and machines and lasers, but I was not fine with spiders. Or mice or rats or other things.

  “I’m coming in!” I said it with a confidence I didn’t feel.

  23

  “I’m coming in there right this second.” I paused, listening for any noise that would require an actual, certified pest removal expert.

  Nothing.

  Crouching, I stepped over the threshold and swept the space with the flashlight. I hadn’t been down there in a long time. Outside had been Sean’s domain.

  At least it wasn’t musty. It smelled of damp earth and old wood.

  Duckwalking, I headed toward the corner where I’d seen the glint. My light bounced around as I tried not to let any part of my body or clothing touch the ceiling or the dirt floor.

  Huh.

  There weren’t any cobwebs.

  And it wasn’t all dirt at my feet. Here and there, bits of sawdust powdered the ground.

  Termites?

  I hoped not. Not on top of everything else.

  I swept the arc of light up to the ceiling. Was that . . . ? I took one duck-step closer and put a hand to the ground to get a better look at a shadowed area between two long wooden support beams.

  I didn’t see any evidence of termites, but there was a cable running along the length of the crawl space, right up against one of those beams. Following it with my light, I traced it back to where it took a right-angled turn and headed down the outer wall toward the door.

  Taking a look outside, I saw where it went up the side of the house and then joined a set of other cables that ran from the house to the electricity and telephone poles along the street.

  Back in the crawl space, I traced it in the other direction toward the other side of the house. Exploring further, I could see where that long central cable was joined by another that came from the basement.

  A circuit?

  But we’d had the house rewired after we’d bought it. And there was no reason why any of those new wires would have been routed through the crawl space.

  I shined the light up toward that cable again.

  Definitely a puzzle.

  My flashlight hand sagged and something caught the light, reflecting it.

  The glint.

  Setting the flashlight on the ground, I rolled forward from my feet onto my knees. One hand on the ground, I reached out toward the object with the other, fingers closing on it. I brought my prize into the flashlight’s beam.

  Then I brought a trembling hand to my mouth.

  Sean’s Leatherman.

  I closed my eyes as I remembered.

  * * *

  “Ow.” I shifted positions on the couch, placing space between my hip and whatever it was that had gouged me. “What is that?”

  Sean was already reaching for me, pulling me back into his embrace. After a month of dating, it had become my favorite place to be. “What is what?”

  I slid a hand up under his shirt and around his waist.

  He cringed. “Cold hand!”

  “Warm heart.” I smiled, pulling my hair away from my face as I pushed away from him. “What is this thing that keeps poking me?”

  I edged up his shirt and grabbed at whatever it was near his belt.

  He glanced down. “My Leatherman.” He sat halfway up, wrapped an arm around my waist, and pulled me back beside him, nuzzling my neck.

  “Your Leatherman?”

  He sat up, adjusted himself, then pulled it off his belt, offering it to me.

  “It’s a pocketknife.”

  He scoffed. “Does it look like a pocketknife?”

  It was shaped like a pocketknife, albeit quite a bit larger. And it had all those metal pull-outs on both sides, with slits in them like a pocketknife. I started pulling them out. A saw. A knife. A wire cutter. Pliers. Some sort of little brush. All the kinds of things that would come in handy in a research lab. I’d figured out what to ask for at Christmas!

  “Why do you wear this?” He didn’t work in a lab. He was a historian. He worked in an office. And spent a lot of time going through files in archives.

  “Why do I—” He snatched it from me as if worried I might break it. “It’s an old habit. From my army days. Any soldier worth his rank wears one of these. I mean—” He broke off as if he couldn’t find the words. “Okay. Before we go any further, we don’t wear them. We carry them.”

  I tried my best not to laugh.

  He turned to face me. “They do a hundred things.” Now he was sounding like a used-car salesman. “Yo
ur father must have one of these.”

  It was my turn to scoff. “My father has people to carry one of those for him.”

  He smiled. “Fair enough.”

  I kept on pulling out tools. A wire stripper. An awl. A screwdriver. Several of them. “A wire crimper?”

  “For crimping wire.” He took it from me, folding everything back up.

  I learned something new about myself. Men with pocketknives. It was kind of dorky. And adorable.

  * * *

  Sean had never gone anywhere without his Leatherman.

  Ever.

  It could be considered a weapon, granted. So he couldn’t take it anywhere there was a metal detector or a security checkpoint. But anyplace he could take it, he did.

  On the weekends it was one of the first things he put on in the morning and one of the last things he took off at night.

  He’d shoved it into his pocket as he left the house the night he was killed, hadn’t he? I was sure he had, but maybe I was wrong.

  I had to be wrong because I was holding it in my hand.

  But then, the Leatherman had been listed on the inventory from the morgue, even though it hadn’t made it back to me in the box of Sean’s effects.

  How did any of that make sense?

  I put a fingernail to one of the slits and pulled out a tool.

  Screwdriver.

  Maybe the medical examiner had been mistaken. Maybe the Leatherman had never been among Sean’s effects.

  I discounted that theory almost before I’d finished thinking it. That didn’t make any sense either. Some things, almost anybody brought into the morgue might have: keys, a wallet, shoes. But a Leatherman?

  You wouldn’t make a mistake about something like that.

  So somehow the Leatherman had disappeared between the medical examiner’s office and the cardboard box. Then reappeared.

  In my crawl space?

  Like I’d told Sam, my job was trying to explain things that are hard to understand.

  But the disappearance and reappearance of the Leatherman just wasn’t possible. Not in our universe. Not without the presence of something like a wormhole.

  24

  I tucked the Leatherman into my pocket, took one last look around, and backed out of the space. I pushed the door shut with a scrape and closed the padlock.

  Then I went inside and performed an inspection of my basement.

  I’d found a cable of unknown origin. That much was clear. Its function, however, was a complete mystery. As was the date of installation. It looked new . . . ish. But how new was new? Had Sean had something put in that I hadn’t been aware of?

  I called both the phone company and our cable TV/internet provider. Nothing had been recently installed.

  In frustration, I grabbed a pair of wire cutters and stood staring at it with indecision.

  There was no reason for the cable company to install a wire that ran from the basement into the crawl space. The only point in that would be to provide either service or access. I discounted service. Obviously there were no computers or TVs in the crawl space and there never had been.

  Access? Possible. But why go all the way out there and then to the street, when the cable box was easily accessible on the outside of the house?

  I heard the thump of small feet across the floor above my head. “Mom?” The call floated down the stairs.

  “Down here.”

  “Mommy?”

  “I’m down—” I raised my voice. “I’m in the basement!” I reached up and snipped the piece of the cable that ran through the wall and into the crawl space. No green lights flickered on the router. No red lights appeared. It hadn’t made any difference. “Coming!”

  * * *

  Later that night, after sleep had finally claimed Sam, I tested all my cable connections. In spite of my having cut that cable, my internet, TV, and Wi-Fi were all up and running.

  Someone who was not the gas company, the telephone company, or the cable company had a very odd interest in my basement. A very marked interest in keeping tabs on what?

  On information being accessed by my computer?

  Was that why the not-gas-company people had wanted access to the basement?

  A cold sweat of fear broke out on my forehead.

  Who were they? Why would anyone be interested in me? And why now? Whatever Sean had been involved in, whomever he’d been involved with, they had to know he was dead.

  My computer, and quite possibly my Wi-Fi, had been compromised. I’d severed the connection, but that didn’t mean whoever they were wouldn’t try again. If I assumed they would, then I would keep myself from doing anything stupid.

  I rebooted my router, then reset my password and renamed the network. I adjusted the Wi-Fi settings on my phone.

  Phone!

  My phone was even more susceptible. Every time it was turned on it could function as a tracking device. And every time I made a phone call, it pinged a cell tower. Of course, monitoring my cell phone required a court order. Or a personal decision on my part to download an app that would share my phone’s location with family and friends or help me find my phone if I lost it. I went to my phone settings and app manager and made sure I hadn’t granted those permissions.

  I could power off my phone when I didn’t absolutely need it, but that would risk me missing emergency texts from the school or a call about Sam or even a phone call from Sam. My phone number was the only one he’d memorized. Considering how often he mixed up his words, I didn’t trust that he could memorize a new phone number without mixing it up with the old one. I needed to know he could reach me in an emergency situation.

  One thing was certain: I also needed to figure out what Sean had been involved in. Because, apparently, it now involved me. And soon, whoever they were would figure out I’d blocked their access.

  I took advantage of the window of opportunity to do one more search on Paul Conway. I was hoping it would jog my memory. There were hundreds of Paul Conways, but I got a hit on a local internet news site. The link led to an article on a hit-and-run fatality that had happened the previous night.

  Paul Conway was the victim.

  25

  I had a lunch meeting the next day in Ballston and decided to swing by home on the way back to work. I could hear Alice whimpering even before I opened the door. Once I stepped inside, it took me a minute to understand what I was seeing.

  And another minute to take it all in.

  Alice had been muzzled with a Velcro tie around her snout; her legs had been zip-tied together. And the living room?

  There was no place left for Sam to hide from the bad guys.

  The sofa cushions had been sliced, the pillows punctured. The curtains had been torn from their rod.

  Sean’s campaign desk had been overturned. My hovering Bluetooth speaker had been grounded; a dent marred its smooth surface. And my replica da Vinci clock was shattered.

  A hole had been punched through the plaster wall by the fireplace.

  The TV had been knocked over.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing was as I had left it that morning.

  A white-hot rage swept over me.

  Alice was eyeing me with a look of profound shame. I knelt beside her and freed her from the muzzle. For her legs I needed scissors. Or a knife. But as I moved toward the dining room, intent on finding one, she barked and let out a long, rolling growl.

  I froze.

  So intent had I been on freeing her that I hadn’t stopped to consider that whoever had ransacked the house might still be there. I retreated to the door and then, leaving Alice, I fled to Jim and June’s.

  * * *

  “What?” Jim put a hand to my forearm. “Just slow down. One thing at a time.”

  “I need a knife.” I also needed to find some way to keep my teeth from chattering.

  June had come from the kitchen to join us. “What kind do you need? Paring knife? Bread knife? I’ve got this great—”

  “They tied up Alice a
nd I have to get her free.”

  Jim and June exchanged a glance. “Tied up Alice?” Jim peered down at me, concern etched between his eyes. “Back up and start again from the beginning.”

  By the time I’d finished, June was calling the police. Jim had retrieved a gun from somewhere and was shoving it into his waistband. He saw me watching him. “Don’t worry. I know how to use it.”

  Over June’s protests, I went back to the house with Jim. While I freed Alice, he inspected the rooms. We were standing together on the front porch when the police pulled up.

  Though the living room had been vandalized and Sean’s study was a complete wreck, I couldn’t say for certain that anything had been taken.

  “Did you check your jewelry, ma’am?” The officer paused in her writing while she waited for my answer.

  “I don’t have any.” Aside from my wedding ring. My mother had given me lots of jewelry over the years. Necklaces. Bracelets. Earrings. As soon as she sent them, I’d donated them to local charity silent auctions.

  “Any cash in the house? Credit cards?”

  “No.”

  “Electronics? Any of those missing?”

  “Missing? No. Broken? Yes.”

  “Anything else of value?”

  Memories? Souvenirs of my life with Sean? A sense of security that would take a long time to restore? “No.”

  She told me she would file a report. After she left, I got in touch with my insurance company. Then I called a locksmith to come change out all my locks and add deadbolts, agreeing to pay extra for immediate service.

  June and Jim helped me clean up the mess. I didn’t want Sam to see anything out of place when he got home. I found an old college poster down in the basement to tack over the hole in the wall. While June ran the vacuum cleaner up and down the hall, Jim duct-taped the sofa cushions back together. When he was done, I fit them back into the couch, wrong sides up. I crossed my fingers that Sam wouldn’t notice.

  I sent June and Jim home with a promise that I would call them if I noticed anything suspicious.

  I knew I should call my parents. I knew I should tell them what had happened to the house. They would have wanted to know. But if I did, they’d swoop in and make us stay with them. All my reasons for not moving in with them would be moot.