All the Beautiful Lies

by Peter Swanson

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I watched him for a while.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was hiding behind a truck that was parked near the office.” His brow creased again like he wasn’t trusting his own words.

  “Could you see who it was?”

  “No, it was too dark and he definitely didn’t want to be seen. A car went by and he’d crouch so the headlights wouldn’t reach him through the trees.”

  Caitlin looked up at the cheap blinds in the window. They were pulled closed, but not tightly closed. There were some gaps between the plastic strips. Whoever had been watching might have been able to see her, and at the very least could see movement in the room.

  “Who do you think—”

  “It was whoever killed your sister, and probably my father. I don’t know who it is, but you need to leave. I don’t think you’re safe.”

  “How did you get hurt?”

  “Oh,” he said, removing the towel from the side of his head, and looking at the dark stain. “I chased him. He must have seen me behind the truck because he was suddenly leaving, heading around to the back of the motel, and I shouted ‘Hey’ and was running between parked cars, and came down funny on my ankle, and then I was on the pavement. And my head . . .”

  “What did you hit?”

  “A car, I guess. I don’t remember. Then I came to you.”

  “You were very brave.”

  Harry laughed, then grimaced. “I tripped and fell.”

  “What were you going to do if you caught him?”

  “I don’t know. See who he was.”

  “Did you get a better look at him when he took off?”

  “Not really, but he looked funny when he was running. He was flapping, like he was trying to take off or something.”

  “Flapping?”

  The window suddenly filled with intermittent red light. “The ambulance is here,” Caitlin said, and opened up the door. She stood as the two EMTs entered the room, one dropping to his knees to take a look at Harry.

  “I think he has a concussion,” she said. “He fell and hit himself on the head.”

  The crouching EMT was already asking questions. She heard him ask Harry if he knew what year it was, but couldn’t hear Harry’s answer.

  “What did he hit?” The slightly doughy EMT who was talking with Caitlin smelled like Bazooka chewing gum.

  “I don’t know. He thinks it was a car. He came here to see me, and he said there was someone lurking in the woods, or over by the trees, and he started to chase him and that’s when he fell.”

  “Uh-huh. Did you see this person?”

  “I didn’t. He did.”

  After they’d placed him on the gurney and wheeled him into the ambulance, Caitlin followed them—no sirens, just lights—as they drove what had to be less than two miles to a modern, rectangular block of a building that looked more like a building in an office park than a hospital. She parked in the visitors’ lot, then walked to the emergency room, where she was pointed toward a seat in the small, overly lit waiting area, a TV bolted into the wall playing CNN. She sat still for a moment, listening to the woman at the check-in desk talking quietly on her cell phone. One week ago, she was living in Boston, worried about how to tell her mother that her relationship with Dan was over, and wondering if her sister was going to spend the rest of her life chasing older men. And now she was here in Maine, waiting to fly with her sister’s body back to Michigan and accompanying a stranger to a hospital. And someone had been watching her room.

  She was so relieved when she saw Detective Dixon walk through the double doors that she almost began to cry. She stood up and waited for him as he talked briefly and quietly with the receptionist, then he came into the waiting area. “What happened?” he asked. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

  Caitlin sat back down and told the detective everything that had happened that night.

  “Why was he coming to your room in the first place?” the detective asked.

  “He was just coming to say good-bye.”

  “And he sounded sure that there was someone watching your room?”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “Have you felt watched at all, since being here in Kennewick? Any sense of being followed?”

  Caitlin thought for a moment. “No, not really.”

  Detective Dixon was scrolling through his phone for something, then showed Caitlin the screen. There was a photograph—a mug shot, actually—of a scruffy-looking man somewhere in his thirties. “Does he look familiar to you at all?”

  He didn’t, and Caitlin said so to the detective.

  “How about her?” He showed her another picture, more pixelated than the previous one, of a blond woman with a round face. The picture looked like it had been cropped from a larger shot.

  “No,” Caitlin said, shaking her head. “Who are they?”

  Detective Dixon didn’t answer, because two more people had entered the waiting room: a curvy, middle-aged blonde that Caitlin instantly knew was Alice, Harry’s stepmother; and a much older man, maybe her father, with a bald head and a white mustache. Alice had her arm through his, as though she was unable to stand on her own. Definitely father, Caitlin thought, then remembered that Harry had mentioned an older man who worked at the bookstore, and she wondered if that was who it was, instead.

  Alice and the old man both looked across the room at Detective Dixon and then briefly at Caitlin. Alice, her mouth slightly open, her eyes blank, showed no reaction, but the old man seemed to look at Caitlin for a fraction longer than he should have. Maybe he’d met Grace, and he was confused by how much Caitlin looked like her. If it was the man from the bookstore, then he probably had met Grace. It was where she’d gone to meet Harry.

  The detective went to them, and the three talked quietly for a moment, then slid through the swinging doors into the emergency room, Dixon glancing back at Caitlin, mouthing the words Stay a moment and holding up a finger.

  Caitlin stayed, although the adrenaline from earlier had worn off, and she was now exhausted. Part of her just wanted to get up, go back to her car, and drive back to the motel. She had a big day tomorrow, flying back to Michigan, preparing for Grace’s funeral. But the detective had asked her to wait, and besides, she wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to go back to the motel alone.

  Thirty minutes later, the detective returned and crouched in front of her.

  “He’s going to be fine, but he has a bad concussion,” he said.

  “That seemed pretty clear.”

  “He wants to talk with you, but his doctor wants him to rest.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “He’s very insistent that you are in danger, though, so I’d like to have one of my officers escort you back to your motel room, if that’s okay?”

  “Okay,” she said. “That sounds good.”

  “Great. Five minutes, okay, Caitlin?”

  The uniformed officer that arrived at the hospital was about fifty years old. He had jowls, and a sparse, blond mustache. He followed Caitlin back to the Sea Mist Motel, parking the cruiser next to her car, then together they entered her motel room. There was a quarter-sized bloodstain on the patterned wall-to-wall carpet where Harry had sat. She rubbed at it with the toe of her clog, but it had dried.

  “You okay here by yourself?” the officer said.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Lock the door after I leave, and don’t open it for anyone who’s not a police officer, okay? And call immediately if you think something’s strange, okay? We’ll be swinging by all night for periodic checks. You’re going to be fine.”

  She thanked him, and he left. She showered, then got into bed, thinking there would be no way she could fall asleep. But after texting her mother and brother about her arrival time for the next day, she curled into the fetal position, tucking one hand under her head, and the other, wrist turned, between her breasts—the only way she cou
ld fall asleep—and within five minutes she was out.

  She was awakened at just past five by a soft, tentative rapping on the door. She opened her eyes, emerging from a dream in which she was swatting at a bee’s nest with a tennis racket, and, for a moment, had no idea where she was. Then she was up, and moving toward the door, worried suddenly that something else—something bad—had happened.

  She cracked the venetian blind and peered out into the hazy light of morning. She thought there’d be a police officer there, but instead, it was the old man from the hospital, the one who’d arrived with Harry’s stepmother. He saw her through the window, grinned, and waved, but with a little too much eagerness. Her stomach buckled. Something must have happened to Harry. She cracked the door, aware that she was wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Caitlin McGowan?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Sorry to show up like this . . . Harry sent me. He’s, uh . . .”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Fine, fine, we think, but he very much wants to see you, and so, I came. I’m John, by the way. I work with Harry at the bookstore.”

  “Oh, right,” Caitlin said, and opened the door a little bit more as the man inched forward. Did he want to come into the room? “I’ll go straight there as soon as I get dressed,” she said.

  “Oh, right,” he said, moving back a little. “I’ll let you do your thing. You don’t need a ride?”

  “No, I know where it is. I’ll be right there.”

  Caitlin almost shut the door, but not wanting to be rude, she opened it a little bit wider, and said, “Thank you, John, for coming to get me. I appreciate it.”

  He was still smiling, but his eyes were darting quickly from Caitlin’s face to the frame of the door and back, almost as though he were measuring something. “Okay, then,” she said, all her instincts telling her to slam the door. Instead, she began to push it gently shut, but before it closed, the man shoved against the door and caused her to stagger back, surprised, as he swung something at her and hit her in the throat. She took a ragged, painful breath, and he stepped inside and swung again. She reared back, and something hard clipped her nose. Next thing she knew she was on her back, the world swimming before her eyes.

  She heard the door of the motel room shut, and then he was crouching above her. He touched her face, and she flinched. He said, “Did he see me?”

  “I don’t . . . Who?”

  Like a slightly exasperated teacher, he said, slowly, “Did Harry see me last night? Did he tell you who it was he saw?”

  Blood was flowing from Caitlin’s nose and pooling into her mouth. She tried to scream and began to choke.

  The old man was looking over his shoulder, then he turned back, and said, “We’ll talk later.”

  For one moment she actually, blissfully, thought he was going to leave her, but he lifted his arm. She tried to scream again, and then it was blackness.

  Chapter 28

  Then

  Killing Bill had been easy.

  Jake Richter, going by John Richards now, had asked him where he’d been walking recently, and Bill, ever the explainer, told him how most days he walked down to Kennewick Beach then followed the cliff path along to Kennewick Harbor, then back home.

  “You see the same people every day?”

  “No, I hardly see anyone. Except in July and August, but then I usually do a different walk.”

  A few days later, on a Wednesday, Bill asked Jake if he minded staying a little longer and doing the closing up. He was going to try to get a walk in before it got too dark. Jake had told him it wasn’t a problem, then followed Bill outside into the cool evening and watched as he made his way down toward Kennewick Beach. Jake locked the front door and left out the back—in case anyone was looking, even though it was highly doubtful—and took Captain Martin Lane down toward Kennewick Harbor. He walked casually—just out for some fresh air, he kept telling himself—then passed by the Kennewick Inn, its east wing covered by scaffolding while it got a fresh coat of paint before tourist season began.

  He found the southern starting point of the cliff walk, realized he was breathing heavily, and slowed his pace. If he timed this right, he’d meet Bill coming from the opposite direction. While walking he fiddled with the homemade cosh in the pocket of his suit pants. He had made it a few days ago by putting a handful of quarters into one of his nylon socks. He hadn’t learned much from his father, but he’d learned how to make a cosh, something his father insisted on carrying in his jacket pocket at all times. His father’s had been filled with ball bearings, but quarters worked almost as well.

  The path ascended, views opening up, so that all of York Harbor and even some of Buxton Point to the north were visible in the grey, dusky light. He stumbled slightly on a slick rock and looked down, noticing that the laces were loose on one of his walking shoes. He was about to bend down (never an easy thing to do these days) and rectify the situation when he realized that he could use the untied laces to his benefit.

  He walked another quarter mile—the path had reached its highest point, and decided to wait for Bill to arrive.

  He’d killed before, of course.

  Edith Moss died so he could be with Alice. That moment marked the beginning of the best period of Jake Richter’s life, but it was also the beginning of the end. He realized that later. Watching her mother die had obviously awakened something in Alice, because only a few years later she let her friend Gina die in the ocean, then got away with telling the police that she’d had nothing to do with it. Jake had known the truth, though, and he’d revealed that to Alice, thinking it would make them closer. It hadn’t.

  Over the following few months after Gina died, Alice had grown distant and cold. She’d moved back into her old bedroom and started work as an office manager at a real estate company. Then, one day, she informed Jake that she had signed a lease on her own apartment.

  “You can always move back here if you need to,” Jake said.

  “I won’t need to,” she said, then added: “But thanks for letting me stay as long as I did.”

  Jake lived for a few years alone in the condo, occasionally allowing himself a fantasy in which Alice, tired of living by herself, asked to return. But he knew, down deep, that their relationship was over, had been over before she ever moved out. Nearing sixty, he decided to retire early from the bank. His mortgage was paid off, and he bought a used, forty-six-foot cabin cruiser. He sublet his condo and took the boat down to Florida, where he decided that he didn’t like boating as much as he thought he would. He docked the boat in the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, and got a job renting beach chairs and umbrellas at the Atlantic Club. His hair had been thinning for a few years, and he’d been keeping it long to conceal the loss, but down in Florida he got a buzz cut and grew a mustache. It transformed him, and he told himself he was a new person, a retiree who deserved some enjoyment in the remainder of his life. From his concrete bunker where the chairs and umbrellas were kept, he could see out onto a strip of packed beach. There was the occasional teenage girl, but most of the clients of the Atlantic Club were middle-aged or older, and none of them, not even the occasional enthusiastic widow, could begin to erase the memory of Alice Moss.

  He’d been in Florida three years when the Atlantic Club let him go. They told him that they thought he should enjoy more leisure time in his retirement years, but he pressed them for the real reason, and was told that one of the guests had complained that he’d been staring at her thirteen-year-old daughter. He left without a fuss, finally sold the cruiser, and rented a cheap one-bedroom apartment in North Lauderdale. He bought a personal computer and, through various message boards, made contact with a slew of other men all interested in younger women, teenage girls mostly. He even messaged with some older women who were interested in younger boys. At least he thought he was chatting to women. You never really knew on the Internet. He spent an enormous amount of time on the computer, b
ut in the end it turned out to be an empty enterprise. He’d been looking for someone more like him, someone who felt that being with someone younger, teaching them all you knew, was the way to a better, larger life. It wasn’t all about sex, it was about generosity, about the sharing of one’s life force. No one really understood him. The other men just wanted to share pictures, and talk about the beauty of teen girls. No one understood what Jake understood—that what he’d briefly found with Alice was akin to the fountain of youth, and that you could pass it along. Emma Codd had gifted it to him, and he had gifted it to Alice.

  He still had the pictures of Alice. They were his prized possession, and he’d handled them so many times throughout the years that they’d gone thin and ragged on the edges. He kept them flat and protected in the pages of a hardcover copy of Moby-Dick on his bedside table. Sometimes he wondered if the pictures were a way back into Alice’s life. She’d probably forgotten all about them. Maybe he could get in touch, remind her of their existence, maybe ask if she’d like to come down and visit him sometime in Florida. It would be blackmail, he realized, but it would be worth losing the pictures if he could just spend a little more time with her. He thought about it a lot, but it was only a fantasy. When he did finally get in touch with her, via her work e-mail, he just asked her questions about her life. She was getting married, she told him. Another older man, and one with a young son. She still lived in Kennewick. They e-mailed back and forth, Alice’s responses so rote and formal, it was as though they had never meant anything to each other.

  Years passed, and Jake began to feel old. He became sexually involved with a teenage girl, a runaway from Miami named Valeria who spent a week with him in his apartment until one day a man showed up at the door, claiming to be the girl’s brother (they looked nothing alike) and demanding a thousand dollars or he’d go to the police. He claimed Valeria was fifteen years old, even though she’d told Jake she was seventeen. He’d paid up, reluctantly and shamefully. The incident haunted him for several months—Jake deciding to leave Florida altogether—until he spotted the “brother” entering a nearby apartment complex. Jake began to watch him regularly, discovered his name was Edgar Leon, and determined that he lived alone. One night, after staking out the Jacaranda Estates for several hours, Jake followed Edgar up to his second-floor apartment, knocking on the door one minute after Edgar entered. It was two in the morning. He worried that Edgar, because of the time of night, would be armed when he came to the door, but he wasn’t. He was shirtless and yawning and opened the door wide. Jake’s first strike with his cosh put Edgar on the floor. Jake straddled him and repeatedly hit Edgar in the head until it was clear he was dead.