Liars Anonymous

by Louise Ure

  Liars Anonymous

  Louise Ure

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 2009 by Louise Ure

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition December 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-464-6

  More from Louise Ure

  The Fault Tree

  To my sister, Lee Ure,

  who always recognized my lies,

  and called them a gift for fiction

  Acknowledgments

  Once again I’ve been blessed to have the help of a remarkable group of friends and experts in writing this book.

  I continue to owe a debt of gratitude to Judith Greber (aka Gillian Roberts) for her marvelous plotting and editing suggestions and for her friendship. I would not be writing without her. And to Brian Washington and David Arnold, whose expert advice about everything from tattoos and bodybuilding to guns and VW hubcaps made this a better book than it started out to be.

  To Eldon Dallas of Arizona and Robert Levin of New Mexico, my thanks for the use of their names and so much more.

  And special thanks to Dr. Jane McFarlane for her insight on the science of telematic services such as those I describe at the fictional HandsOn company. She provided the real technology. I twisted it to serve my own purposes here.

  To Philip Spitzer and Lukas Ortiz at the Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency: you two keep my heart afloat. And to Andrew Martin, Michael Homier, and the whole crew at St. Martin’s Press: my thanks for your enthusiasm and belief in me.

  Bruce, you are in my heart, as always.

  Chapter One

  I got away with murder once, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen again. Damn. This time I didn’t do it. Well, not all of it, anyway.

  The incoming call showed up as an alert on my computer screen at almost midnight Friday night. I balled up the paper wrapper from the cold burrito I’d called dinner and reached for the mouse. There were more than a hundred of us on the night shift, each sequestered in separate cubicles and hunched over our screens like penitents in a confessional. The room was supercooled to keep us awake. I laughed at the irony that, although it was September, it was probably still ninety degrees outside in the Arizona desert.

  According to the information on the screen, the client’s name was Markson and he was driving a 2007 Cadillac Seville. The HandsOn service he’d signed up for included automatic notification to the call center if his air bag had been triggered.

  “HandsOn Emergency. This is Jessie. Is there an emergency in the vehicle?”

  A muffled response. Coughing. He was probably still patting back the doughy folds of air bag that had assaulted him, reeling from the sting of the high-powered blast of the nylon bag on his cheeks and chest. His face would be dusted with white powder from the explosion. His nose might be broken.

  “I’m all right.” More coughing. “Just got rear-ended.”

  “Is anyone in your car injured? Do you want me to call an ambulance?” It must have been quite a hit; rear-enders rarely set off the air bag.

  There was something like a groan. Then the metal-on-metal snick of a car door shutting.

  “No, I’m okay. I’ll check with the other guy.”

  Another car door opened and shut, the sound closer this time.

  “Didn’t you see…” Markson’s voice trailed off in the distance.

  The map on my screen showed that the car was in Tucson. Weird. The call center was responsible for a thousand-mile section from Southern California to East Texas. Funny to get a call from just down the road.

  The blinking cursor showed Darren Markson’s car near Agua Caliente Wash on the east side of town. The “hot water” in the name of the arroyo was pure wishful thinking; it would only see water during the monsoon runoffs. Probably not even a paved road out there, if the map markings were right. More desert than city, really. The creosote would be taller than the Cadillac’s windows.

  The sound of scuffling came through my earpiece. I pushed the plastic ear bud tight to my head in concentration. Panting. A soft thud.

  “I told you…” A deeper voice, it carried the hot, dusty smell of Mexico in the slurred bridge between the words. Almost “toll Jew.”

  Something slammed against nearby metal, then the sound of breaking glass.

  “You lying sack of…” A different voice. English as a first language. Beer as a second.

  Deep, fight-for-air panting. Heavy thuds of elbows or boots against the Cadillac’s solid metal door. A long exhaled breath. Then silence. A kicked pebble ricocheted off metal as someone moved away.

  “Mr. Markson? Mr. Markson! Are you all right?”

  The silence was louder than the voices had been.

  Whatever was going on, it required the cops. I called the 911 operator in Tucson. In most cases, I’d make the connection and then let the client and 911 operator talk directly to each other, but Markson seemed to have his hands full right now.

  “This is HandsOn Emergency dispatcher Jessie Dancing. One of our clients is having some trouble. He’s been rear-ended out near Agua Caliente Wash, just north of Soldier Trail.”

  “Give me the details on the car.”

  “It’s a white Cadillac Seville, Arizona plates, David-Edward-Nora Zero Six Six. I heard what sounded like a fight, and now I’ve lost contact with Mr. Markson.”

  “We’ll send a patrol car.”

  I gave her my number and hung up, then flipped back to the open communications channel with Markson’s car. If it was a fight, who’d started it? Markson or the guy who’d crashed into him? And I thought I’d heard three voices.

  There was movement now—the susurration of fabric on fabric. And something that sounded like the glove box opening then clicking shut again.

  “Mr. Markson? Are you okay?”

  A grunted acknowledgment, then silence. The connection had gone dead.

  I zapped an audio copy of the Markson conversation over to Mad Cow. Madeleine Cowell was her real name, but I treasured the friendship that allowed me to use the shortened honorific. She was on the concierge team tonight—the HandsOn operators that made hotel and restaurant reservations for clients—not the emergency dispatch group. Take a listen to this, I typed. Easy enough to walk right over to her cubicle and ask her myself, but this way I didn’t have to leave my computer screen unattended.

  Mad Cow’s return e-mail popped into view. Is this going to be one of the Dumb Questions? Mad Cow and I had adapted comedian Bill Engvall’s “Here’s Your Sign” skits to life at HandsOn. You know the ones. “Tire go flat?” “No. The other three just swelled right up on me.” The current pick for the dumbest incoming call was the guy who phoned last week and asked if I could tell him if his car was running.

  Not this time. I thought this guy was in trouble, but I’m not sure.

  I thought it sounded like a couple of guys at a kegger, she answered.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe I’d imagined the threat in those voices.

  I tried to put the sounds in the most positive light. Say Markson wandered into this patch of trackless desert—got stuck in the sand—and somehow got tapped by another car that was trying to help push him out. The “I told y
ou” and sounds of a scuffle could just be a couple of guys trying to dislodge a car from deep sand.

  But I couldn’t get around the third voice. The one that had said “you lying sack of” something. That made it more serious than a couple of guys straining their calf muscles and debating whose insurance was going to cover the damage.

  Now that Markson’s first call had been disconnected I couldn’t initiate another call to his car—well, not legally. Our customers frowned on the notion that we might listen in whenever we wanted to.

  His personal cell phone information was listed on the screen, too. I listened through five rings and an even-tempered voicemail greeting, then left my number for him to call back.

  I turned the volume all the way up and replayed his incoming call. There was a breath of desert air and the scritch of creosote branches on metal, sounds I hadn’t heard the first time around. Markson must have had the windows open. And I heard the same words as before, although Markson’s voice sounded more nasal than I’d first thought. Maybe the airbag really had broken his nose.

  There were at least three voices—one born in a big city in the East, one nurtured on the stony mesas of Mexico, and one coming straight from a bar. And there was definitely a fight.

  I’d never had a call drop like this before. The satellite communications system we used was much more powerful than a regular cell phone, so it wasn’t likely that he’d gone out of range or lost the connection. More likely, somebody inside the car had pushed the button to disconnect.

  Fuck the privacy laws. I shut off the automatic recording system and pinged the car. It was still in the same spot.

  I opened the phone channel to allow me to hear what was going on. Voices muttered in the distance—the cadence and consonants sounding more like Spanish than English. I couldn’t tell how many voices or what they were saying. The sound of something dragged across brittle vegetation, and a rasping sound that I couldn’t place. Heavy, smacking thumps of wood against something softer. A grunt of air with the effort. A scream and a groan in response.

  I didn’t say anything, unwilling—even though I was almost a hundred miles away—to let them know that I was a witness to the scene. A coward, hiding on the other end of a satellite phone.

  The heavy thuds continued but the moaned responses stopped.

  I called the cops back, but didn’t tell them about listening in again on Markson’s car. What good would that do anyway? It was against the law, it wasn’t recorded, and I didn’t have anything but a scary premonition to tell them about.

  “Have your officers found the car yet?”

  “They’re on their way. We had a delay here with a drive-by shooting.”

  “Call me when you find him. Okay?”

  It was almost two a.m. before I got a call back.

  “This is Officer Painter.”

  Thank God it wasn’t anybody I knew on the Tucson PD. I’d changed my name to Dancing—it was my middle name and my mother’s maiden name—but there had been plenty of headlines back then that included it. Hopefully this guy wouldn’t make the connection. “Did you find the Cadillac?”

  “Yeah, just where you said it would be.” He sounded young.

  “How’s Mr. Markson?”

  “There’s no one here.”

  Maybe Markson got a ride from the other driver or went to get a tow truck. But he wouldn’t have needed to; I could have done that for him. HandsOn clients knew that. It’s why they paid as much as my monthly food bill for the service.

  “But…ma’am?”

  This kid was making me feel decades older than my thirty-two years.

  “There’s blood everywhere.”

  Chapter Two

  “The car got rammed from behind, that’s for sure,” the officer continued, “but the blood’s on the ground, not in the vehicle.”

  I told him about the three voices and the fight I thought I’d heard, then couldn’t keep from asking, “A lot of blood?”

  “It was no nosebleed. We’ll have officers check the tow companies and emergency rooms. See if they’ve heard from him.”

  “Will you have somebody stop by his house, too? His wife’s name is Emily.” She was listed as another driver on the policy. I hadn’t heard a woman’s voice on the call, but I wanted to make sure she was okay.

  “An officer’s on his way there now.”

  I alerted Denny, the shift supervisor, and he had me send a copy of our data to the Tucson PD. Maybe there was something in the taped conversation or the location information that would help them find Mr. Markson.

  I kept replaying the sounds and my actions until, like water on hard-packed caliche, they’d worn a thin, deep rut in my mind. Was there anything else I should have done? Should I have called out “Stop! I’m calling the cops!” over the speaker phone when I heard the beating? Would that have mattered to them at all?

  Another call came in; a remote door unlock, this time from Albuquerque.

  “My baby’s in the car!”

  She sounded like she’d been drinking, and I didn’t like the notion of helping her get back behind the wheel.

  “How old is your little one?” Keep her calm. Keep her talking.

  “Almost eleven.”

  I’d have to tell Mad Cow. We may have another candidate in the Dumb Question competition.

  “Are you talking about a dog?”

  “A teacup poodle. Her name’s Lillet, like the drink, you know?”

  I knew. And I bet Mrs. Teacup Poodle Owner had more than a passing acquaintance with the beverage as well. The locked car wouldn’t be a problem, but a drunk driver might be.

  “Tell you what. I can get the door open right away, but it’s going to take a while to recode the car before you’ll be able to start it up again.” So it was a lie. Sue me. “Is there a coffee shop or a deli around there somewhere? By the time you’ve finished a big cup of coffee, the car will be all ready to go.”

  I clicked the door open and heard the happy mother-and-dog reunion through the headset. She thanked me again, promising to wait at least the “required” thirty minutes before trying to start the car.

  The call volume dropped off now that the bars were closed and Denny let me go home a few minutes early. I waved good-bye to Mad Cow, pantomimed “call me” so that we could make plans to get together the next day; then folded into my old pickup and cranked the windows down. Three forty-five in the morning, that shadowed netherworld between the freaks and the regulars. Too late to be out drinking, too early for normal folks to be going to work. I was alone on the road, the late summer warmth of the desert air lulling me to inattention. I coasted right through the stop sign near my house and had to circle back.

  I’d signed up with Mind Your Manors house-sitting service not long after the trial ended, and this was the best house ever. A full acre of land between me and the neighbors and only five miles from the HandsOn office in Mesa; it was a fantasy-oasis of a house, with Saltillo tiles, a decent home gym, and a lap pool. Pickings were always better during the summer months: few of Arizona’s snowbirds wanted to stay through the Fourth Circle of Hell that Phoenix became in July. I only had the house for another few weeks. By the middle of October, I’d be vying for the privilege of house-sitting in one of the lousy two-bedroom condos downtown.

  Mind Your Manors liked me. I looked good on the application: a former nun, a nondrinker, with an allergy to pet dander. The nun part always got me the best houses, but it was no more true than the rest of the description. Sure, they could have checked out my story, but I guess I looked trustworthy. Shows what they know.

  At least I had correctly answered the question on the form about whether I’d ever been convicted of a felony.

  I pulled halfway around the U-shaped driveway and was greeted by the hollow-bong welcome of the copper-pipe wind chimes on the front porch. Leaving my bag on the chair inside the front door, I kicked off my shoes to enjoy the momentary chill of the earthen tiles on bare feet.

  The house belon
ged to a couple from Minneapolis. In their late fifties, they still headed the dot-com business they’d started fifteen years ago, but they now took off four months a year to kick back and hit a little ball around Phoenix’s two-hundred-plus golf courses. “We can play a different course every day we’re here!” the wife had said. I lied: I told her how much fun I thought that would be. Lazy, sleepin mornings and then free weights and an incline bench were more my speed.

  Today was supposed to be my cardio day, so I did forty minutes in the lap pool, then a quick hundred sit-ups. I’d go back to the real strength training tomorrow.

  After I’d cleaned up, I made a combo plate of spinach, eggs, and ground beef and took the food and a beer out to the patio. Sunrise was still an hour away, but the sky was already fringed with pink behind the Superstition Mountains to the east. I finished the dinner-cum-breakfast, pushed the chair back, and stuck my legs out straight. Like a tough piece of gristle between the teeth, I couldn’t get Markson’s phone call out of my head.

  I was no more than a bystander here, but I was taking it personally, as if someone I was talking to on the sidewalk had tripped as they turned away. Had I distracted Markson to the point where he didn’t see the danger of those other two men approaching? Hopefully the cops would find him on the road somewhere, nothing but his pride and his bumper damaged, looking to hitch a ride home.

  I woke at noon to a ringing phone.

  “I understand that you handled that call from Darren Markson last night,” Nancy Horowitz started.

  Nancy supervised the day shift at HandsOn and I had interviewed with her when I first applied for the job. Her teeth had click-clacked with nervous energy while she filled out the paperwork, like a sleeping rabbit dreaming of carrots. Phoenicians are too city-centric to bother with news from Tucson, so neither my name nor my face had registered with her.

  “Did the police find him yet?”

  “No. They talked to his wife and she says he was supposed to be on his way to a business meeting in New Mexico.”

  “Driving there? Does she know if he’s okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I waited through the silence and the clack-clack of rabbit teeth. So far I hadn’t heard a good enough reason for Nancy to call me on my day off.