The Second Lie

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Like he knows stuff that she doesn’t know.”

  Which could merely mean that he was more educated.

  “Do you know what he does for a living?”

  “Not really. Just that it’s business. He’s always dressed nice.”

  “So you see him a lot?”

  “No, hardly at all.” And then. “This stuff that I tell you. It’s confidential, right? Because I’m not saying anything else if it isn’t.”

  “Why? Is something wrong with this man? Is there something you’re hiding?”

  “No! I just don’t want trouble, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong. Nothing happening. And I don’t want to get anyone in trouble just because I told you I kinda, you know, thought someone was hot.”

  “If a thirty-year-old man is romantically involved with a fourteen-year-old girl, there is something wrong, Maggie. It’s against the law. Period.”

  “He’s not romantically involved.”

  “That’s not what you said last time we spoke.”

  “I said he likes me. That’s all. He’s not… There’s nothing, you know, physical or anything…”

  “He’s never touched you? Kissed you?”

  “No! Mac wouldn’t do that. I’ve run into him a couple of times in the park, is all. We say hello. That’s it.”

  Pen in hand, I was shaking too much to write. I believed the girl.

  Maggie sounded far too offended to be lying to me.

  But I was listening to a fourteen-year-old’s perspective. What about the man? Did he know Maggie had a crush on him?

  Was he doing anything to avert the situation?

  Or was he a pedophile creep who was wooing a vulnerable and naive young girl?

  “He’s never asked you to do anything physical for him?”

  “He asked me to dress more conservatively,” Maggie said, her tone as defensive as the look on her face. “He says girls that wear so much makeup and tight clothes are sending out the wrong signals. He says that I need to protect myself so that I’m not taken advantage of.”

  Things I should have told her when I saw her last. This mystery man, this Mac, was keeping Maggie safer than we were.

  “And you’re sure he didn’t make any advances.”

  “Mac isn’t like that. I’m telling you. If he did like me that way, he’d wait until I was older. He doesn’t break laws.”

  “You sound sure about that.”

  “I am sure.”

  We’d overreacted.

  “So, these feelings you were telling me about having, the kind of attraction you felt, the being curious about sex…they were all just you.”

  “Yeah. That’s what we were talking about, right? Me?”

  Out of the mouths of babes. And teenagers.

  “Do you have a crush on Mac?”

  “Yeah.” Maggie sounded relieved, as though now that she figured we understood each other, she could speak freely.

  “So how about if you call him and ask him to meet you in the park. Let me meet him.”

  “I don’t have his number. Heck, I don’t even know his last name.”

  “Or what kind of car he drives?”

  “Nope.”

  Then she hadn’t been in it.

  So maybe it was just as Maggie said. A crush.

  A schoolgirl crush. We’d all been expending valuable hours investigating a schoolgirl crush.

  Wait until Sam got a load of this one. She’d really be after me to pay up with the sleeping-pill prescription.

  Maybe I was the one who should be worried about obsessing.

  Especially considering the fact that I wasn’t going to tell Sam. Not yet. I wasn’t ready to call off the watch.

  19

  Sam had spent the day driving county roads, pointing a speed gun, watching for unusual traffic or activity on farming property and thinking about the Mac names she had yet to investigate. She’d also been thinking about the local pharmacy records she’d obtained a warrant for, and was now perusing one by one on her own time, looking for suspicious purchases of pseudoephedrine drugs. Or the kind of plastic tubing used for IV drips. She was also thinking about the girl who’d approached Nicole at school. And how to find her.

  About tennis clubs and drugs and pedophiles.

  And Kyle. Whoever had been dumping chemicals on his property had stopped.

  Chuck and Todd Williams had checked every inch of his land.

  But there were neighboring farms. She had to speak to James and Millie and some of the others. If Kyle wasn’t dumping on his own land, surely a neighbor had noticed something on the property.

  The same went for the missing chemicals. Hard to believe someone had managed to steal that much hazardous material without being seen.

  She just couldn’t figure how someone could get into Kyle’s locked barn without alerting Kyle or Zodiac.

  She’d stopped for lunch with Pierce and her mother and had used up what extra energy she had chatting about the weather and local football scores, not leaving a breath for them to jump in and ask a single question about her career.

  She was tired of her family thinking she was still a child, needing their protection. Tired of them making her feel as though she couldn’t think clearly, do her job thoroughly. Tired of having babysitters.

  Thirty-three was a little old to still be requiring child care.

  By Monday evening all she could think about was Arabica beans and milk and cinnamon, with a touch of nutmeg. And a bagel laden with fresh vegetables.

  If she had the vegetables.

  Coffee was the most important part of the menu.

  She was using decaffeinated beans after five these days.

  Anything to get some sleep.

  Exchanging her uniform for the long white terry robe her mother had bought her for Christmas, she stretched out on the couch in front of an I Love Lucy rerun as soon as dinner was done. At least she was resting. And Lucy could sometimes hold her attention all the way through to commercial break.

  Unless her scanner, which was always on, bleeped with something important. Or her phone rang.

  Or headlights shone through her front window as they did just now. Living in a trailer park meant that cars went by frequently. The lights only shone in her bay window when someone was pulling onto her lot.

  Not dressed for company, Sam peeked through the partially closed blinds and didn’t bother running for clothes when she recognized Kyle’s truck.

  Undressed with Kyle. Exactly what she’d have ordered up as a stress reliever.

  “Hey,” she said, standing there with the door already open by the time Kyle climbed the steps onto her porch.

  She saw his gaze take in the gap at the front of her robe, showing more cleavage than anyone but Kyle was allowed to see. And then he looked away.

  Hmmm.

  “Come on in.”

  He did. And stood, hands in his pockets, just inside the door. Like he didn’t know what to do with himself.

  It hadn’t been that long since he’d been there. Six weeks, maybe.

  “Take off your jacket.” The temperature had dropped down to the fifties, but was expected to go back up to near seventy before winter finally set in.

  Throwing his denim jacket on the back of her rocker, Kyle settled on an end of the couch, sitting upright, his hands on his knees.

  “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “A beer?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “You been in town?” Maybe he’d already had his two-beer driving limit.

  “No. I came in the back way.”

  “James and Millie with Grandpa?”

  He shook his head. “Clara’s there tonight. Monitoring his blood pressure every hour.”

  “His usual quarterly check?”

  Kyle shrugged, and Sam took the answer as a yes.

  She eased back on the couch, not quite at the other end, but not too close to Kyle, either, and tucked her feet up underneath her r
obe.

  On the TV, Lucy was trying to sell Vitameatavegamin. Of all the episodes, this one was Sam’s favorite.

  “It’s so tasty, too!”

  Sam laughed out loud at Lucy’s loud and perky sales pitch.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me about your mother?”

  She blinked. Looked over at Kyle. If he wanted to have an attitude because she’d had to search his place, that was fine.

  But he’d better not talk to her in that accusatory tone, trying to make her feel guilty for withholding information.

  She wasn’t the one who’d done that.

  “What about my mother?” she asked, watching Lucy continue shooting a commercial, taking sips of the magic potion she was trying to sell, unaware that she was getting drunker by the minute.

  Pretty soon she’d be asking the audience if they “popped out at parties.”

  “Her rape.”

  Not a Lucy topic. Not even close.

  And not something that anyone needed to know about.

  Old news. History. Long before Sam was born.

  “Who told you?”

  “Pierce.”

  That made no sense.

  She and Pierce knew about the attack. Their parents had been so obsessed with their children’s safety that they felt the need to instill fear in them in order to keep them safe.

  But she and Pierce didn’t speak about the rape. Ever. Their mother was afraid of her own shadow—she didn’t need anyone reminding her why.

  Yep. Lucy was really drunk now. She asked if someone was “unpoopular.” The line was Sam’s personal favorite.

  “He told me how your father died.”

  “I told you how my father died,” she said, her attention still on the television set. Or at least she pretended it was. “He was killed in the line of duty.”

  “Attacking a man who was horsing around with his daughter in his front yard.”

  “It was after dark. The girl screamed.”

  “And your father jumped the man without telling them he was a cop.”

  “He had on his uniform.”

  “Like you said, it was dark. And he jumped the guy from behind.”

  “Pierce gave you the long version.”

  Her brother was really starting to piss her off.

  “Did he tell you how the mother saw it all? How she called the police, and that the county tried to use the recording of the 9-1-1 call to avoid paying my mother the money allotted to widows of officers killed in the line of duty since he hadn’t followed procedure?”

  “No.”

  “But then he didn’t need to, did he? You guys weren’t talking about money. My brother was enlisting your help in getting me to drop this ‘meth thing.’” She mocked Pierce’s voice.

  Flipping the television off, Sam threw down the remote and turned to the man who alternately invigorated and infuriated her. “Let’s get one thing straight, Kyle. I’m a good cop, following up on a hunch. I’m not off on some misguided mission.

  “And for the record, I don’t think my father was, either. He heard a scream and saw a potential attack. Adrenaline pumping, he made the decision to act first and ask questions later. The same decision I would have made. If that man really had been attacking that girl, her neck could have snapped in the time it took for my father to announce himself.

  “Any cop involved in any case gets caught up in it to some extent,” she continued, because Kyle seemed to be giving her words serious consideration and she so badly wanted him to understand. “The art of good police work is to be all in, and remain outside at the same time. To get inside the minds of those who break the law in order to predict their moves so that you can get a step ahead of them and stop them, without becoming one of them. Take that night my father died. Had he pulled his gun and shot the man on the spot, without announcing himself or giving the guy a chance to put his hands up, he’d have become a criminal. He’d have saved the girl, though. Instead, he risked his life to save her in the way he thought best after assessing the situation.”

  “Your father made a mistake that cost him his life, Sam. And it cost you and Pierce your father. Your mother her husband. You think like him, by your own admission. So how do you know you aren’t making the same mistake now?”

  And she’d actually thought he might understand? But she was mostly angry at herself for needing something from Kyle he wasn’t able to give her. “I’m guessing Pierce called you this afternoon, after I was there for lunch and wouldn’t give him a chance to harass me.”

  “No. I haven’t spoken with your brother since he was out to play darts Saturday night.”

  Saturday night. She’d seen Pierce twice since then. Today and Sunday, when she’d joined her brother and mother for dinner.

  As she did every single Sunday she wasn’t working.

  Pierce hadn’t mentioned visiting Kyle either time. But then Pierce had had a friend over for dinner the day before. A male friend. Their mother had been comfortable with the guy, joking with him, as if she’d been around him a lot.

  Sam had never seen the man before in her life, but she’d liked him.

  She’d wanted to ask her brother if he and Paul were more than friends. But hadn’t.

  If she’d opened that door, he’d have felt entitled to interrogate her in return.

  “I get that you and Pierce hate what I do for a living,” she said now, using every ounce of self-control she had to keep her voice level. Calm. “Personally, I think the better cop I am, the more you guys hate it. I even get why. My job is sometimes dangerous. And I’m a woman. I know that you both think you’re looking out for my own good. But have either one of you ever looked at me? Really seen me, the person I am, not the person you want me to be? Being a cop makes me happy, Kyle. It fulfills me. Why can’t you guys just accept that and love me for who I am?”

  “You’re a cop and I think it’s fairly obvious that I love you.”

  His words silenced her. Instantly.

  Kyle hadn’t spoken of his feelings since the day he’d come to tell her he was marrying a girl who’d been four years behind them in school. A girl he’d only dated for a few months. A girl too eager to get out from under her father’s control and who thought farm life seemed like a hoot.

  Amy Wilson hadn’t been in love with Kyle, but then, Sam had never believed that Kyle loved her, either, though he’d tried to convince himself he did. Kyle had been in love with the fantasy life he’d imagined for himself. A wife working side by side with him on the farm, day in and day out. Delivering animals and birthing babies, cooking and cleaning and helping bring in the crops.

  With his mother dying so young, Kyle had never had a woman around. He’d built a fantasy of the ideal farm wife and thought Amy could fulfill it.

  But once Amy had gotten a taste of real farm life, she’d decided it wasn’t what she wanted at all. She’d only lasted a few months.

  Soon after the divorce, when Sam had ended up back in Kyle’s bed, they’d made love—but he’d never spoken of love.

  And not in the thirteen years they’d been sleeping together since then, either.

  “I love you, too, Kyle. You know that.” She should be holding him. Feeling his arms around her.

  “James and Millie stopped by this afternoon,” he said. “They said you’d been to see them.”

  “We have to find out who dumped those chemicals on your land.”

  “They seem to think I’m in some kind of trouble.”

  “I never said anything like that.”

  “Maybe not, but the questions you asked led them to conclude I’m a suspect, not a victim.”

  She’d asked the questions she’d had to ask.

  “What did you find out?”

  “Nothing. But I’m not done looking. Until we find out who’s dumping the waste, and perhaps stole chemicals from you, it’s an open case, Kyle. I’ve been granted a subpoena to look at your bank records.”

  Kyle stood, an imposing figure in her relatively small
living room. “Just in case you decide I’m a bad guy, I’m lawyering up. If you have any further questions, call David Abrams.”

  He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t trust her any more than she trusted him. The truth was looking straight at her from the eyes of the only man she’d ever loved.

  But she heard his voice again, telling her that he loved her.

  “I know your lawyer, Kyle. As a matter of fact, I spoke with him a couple of weeks ago.”

  She couldn’t let it end like this. He’d just admitted, after thirteen years of silence on the subject, that he loved her. And they’d get through this case. One way or the other, no matter what, she’d do what she could to protect him.

  She wanted to tell him that, but knew he’d just throw the words back at her. He wouldn’t believe her.

  “Susan’s pregnant again,” she said instead, grasping for a more neutral topic

  “I know.”

  Kyle had always wanted a house full of kids. Sam hadn’t wanted any—not while she was working the streets. She’d never have been able to make the tough decisions if she knew she had babies at home who needed her.

  “Are you envious?” she asked.

  “You want the truth, Sam?” His gaze bored holes into her heart, and she could see the tension he barely held in check. “I ran into David early Wednesday morning at the grocery store a few weeks ago. He was there getting diapers after having been up all night with a sick toddler. He’d spent the past thirty-six hours at home tending to the boy. And had to be in court at eight. He looked like hell. And I’d have given my right arm to be him.”

  Alarm bells rang in Sam’s brain. A Wednesday morning a few weeks ago…

  “Was that the first? You always stock up on the first of the month….”

  “Yeah,” Kyle said. “Clara was there early, running a test on Grandpa.”

  She’d followed Maggie Winston to David’s house on Tuesday, August 31. The day David was at home with his son. But when she’d asked him about the girl on Thursday, the second, he’d said he’d never heard of her.

  Of course, she could have her dates wrong.

  But she didn’t think so.

  20

  “Come here.”

  She was beautiful today. More so than ever before. Makeup improved some women. On her it had only messed with perfection.