All the Beautiful Lies

by Peter Swanson

  Since the events that led to his death, more had come out about Jake Richter’s past, including from a schoolteacher from Albany named Joan Johnson who claimed that Jake Richter, back when he’d been a coworker of her mother’s, had seduced her when she was just a teenager. It also turned out that Jake Richter had lived for a number of years in the Fort Lauderdale area in Florida, where he’d been fired from a job at a beach resort because of “inappropriate behavior.” A picture emerged of a lifelong sexual predator.

  There was much speculation that when he’d been married to Alice Moss’s mother, he’d been sexually assaulting Alice, and that he’d most likely killed Bill Ackerson out of some form of jealousy. Alice hadn’t spoken publicly yet to dismiss any of these rumors, but Vivienne Bergeron, a longtime resident of Kennewick, sold a story to one of the tabloids in which she said she knew for a fact that Jake and Alice had been lovers. But she also said that Alice had murdered her daughter, an erroneous claim she had apparently been making for years.

  Harry had seen Alice just once since they’d been together in Jake’s condo. Chrissie had texted him to ask if he could get some more clothes from Grey Lady, plus Alice’s straightening iron, and deliver them to her (a ginormous favor, I know), and Harry had done it, going late at night back to the house to avoid news reporters, although one enterprising journalist had raced from his car when Paul and he emerged from the house with two suitcases filled with Alice’s things. They’d refused to answer the reporter’s shouted questions, and the next morning Harry went to the Herricks’ house. Alice had given him a short hug after he’d brought the suitcases into her bedroom. “I’ll leave you two alone for a while,” Chrissie said and disappeared.

  “How are you holding up?” Harry asked. Alice still held on to one of his hands, then let go and sat on the edge of the bed. Harry sat on a wicker chair that had been painted white.

  “I’m in shock, Harry. I’d known Jake my whole life.”

  “Why was he calling himself John Richards?”

  “I asked him, once, and he said he just wanted a fresh start. But now I think he was trying to escape something from his past, maybe something he did in Florida.”

  “And you’re sure that my father knew he was your stepfather?” Harry asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure he did,” Alice said quickly. “Still, it wasn’t a big thing. He and my mother were married barely any time at all. I just can’t believe . . . I had no idea he was capable . . .”

  “You must have thought it strange that he changed his name?”

  “It should have concerned me more, I know, but—”

  “I just wondered,” Harry said. It was bothering him, not so much that Jake was calling himself by a different name, but that Alice had gone along with it. He wondered if his father really knew who his employee was, but there was no way to find that out now.

  They spoke for just a little bit longer, Harry trying to read Alice’s emotions, her thoughts, but it was something he’d never been able to do. And he still couldn’t.

  “I should go,” he said.

  “Where are you going next?” Alice asked.

  “Paul rented a place near here, and I’m staying with him.”

  “No, I mean, after this is all over. Will you stay here in Maine?”

  “I don’t think so, Alice.”

  “No, I know. I understand.”

  “How about you?”

  “I’ll stay here. I don’t know where else I’d go.”

  They hugged good-bye, and Alice held on to Harry a little too long, her face buried in his neck, as though she was smelling him.

  “Jake probably killed my mother,” she said, as soon as they’d broken the embrace.

  “What do you mean?” Harry asked.

  “He probably killed my mother. She died of an overdose when I was in high school.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “I told them everything, but there’s nothing they can do about it now.”

  He walked back to his car, feeling as though he might never see her again.

  Harry spotted Caitlin at the funeral Mass before she saw him. He and Paul had arrived very early to St. Julia’s, a pretty stone church with a circular stained glass window, and taken a seat far at the back. The church was quiet, a few guests filtering in, whispering among themselves. The music began—Harry recognized it as Schubert’s “Ave Maria”—and a few minutes later, there was Caitlin, dressed in black, walking down the aisle on one side of a woman who was clearly her mother. On the other side was a tall, gangly boy, probably a brother. They walked toward the front of the church. A minute or so later a lone middle-aged man came down the aisle. Tears streaked his face, and Harry thought that was probably the estranged father. He sat in the second row, alone. Music continued to play as the church filled. Paul and Harry had to slide down their pew to allow room for late arrivals. When the Mass began, several people were standing toward the rear of the church.

  Harry had never been to a Catholic funeral before, and he found it disconcertingly formal but comforting, as though the rote prayers and the familiar hymns connected Grace’s death to all the other deaths within her faith. Paul went up to receive Communion, but Harry stayed put, suddenly wishing he hadn’t come. He felt a little like an impostor; he’d barely known Grace, and he barely knew Caitlin. Why was he here?

  After the service, Grace’s body was carried out of the church, accompanied by a modern-sounding hymn about being raised up on eagle’s wings. Something about the corny song, and the slow procession of mourners, and Harry was crying, Paul’s arm around him. They were among the last to leave the church. The family had already departed, and several groups of young people lingered outside. Cigarette smoke wafted through the air.

  “Bar?” Harry said to Paul.

  “You don’t want to go to the reception?”

  “Not really.”

  “Bar it is.”

  They walked into downtown Ann Arbor, a wide street flanked by square brick buildings, and numerous college bars, and picked a place called the Library that turned out to be much more of a sports bar than its name implied. They each got a shot of Jameson and a Guinness, Paul saying there was no other drink choice after a Catholic funeral, then loaded the jukebox with as much 1980s music as they could find, and claimed a booth next to a Big Buck Hunter video game. Harry checked his phone.

  “I’m not complaining,” Paul said, “but we came a long way for this. Are you not planning on trying to see her?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t just come for her. I came to go to the funeral, and we’ve done that.”

  “Okay, then. It’s your call.”

  They stayed a couple of hours as the place filled up. Paul got a lesson from a group of fraternity brothers on how to play Big Buck Hunter and ended up, as usual, with a bunch of new best friends. Three rounds in, Harry was drunk enough to text Caitlin, saying how he’d been to the funeral, and wished he’d had a chance to say hello. To his surprise, she texted back right away.

  I thought I saw you at the back. Come to Kildare’s Pub tonight if you’re up for it. It’s a gathering of all our high school friends. I’ll be there at nine but can’t promise I’ll stay more than one drink.

  Harry wrote that he’d be there, and he told Paul to make him go, no matter what. They left the Library at dusk and went back to the motel and changed. Then they walked back toward downtown, getting dinner at a family-run Italian restaurant. They made it to Kildare’s at just around nine thirty. It was a typical faux Irish pub: dark red walls, unvarnished wood floor, the Dropkick Murphys playing on the speakers. There was a separate alcove on the opposite side of the bar, and it was crammed with young people, some still in funeral wear, suits and black dresses. Harry’s stomach hurt at the thought of navigating his way into the crowd to try to find Caitlin, but he knew he should do it. He went with Paul to the bar for a beer and, just before he was about to order, saw Caitlin, in jeans and a black sweater, come out from the crowd, scanning the room.
She spotted Harry and came right over.

  “You came,” she said, and something about the way she was standing stopped Harry from trying to hug her.

  “I did. This is my friend Paul Roman.”

  Paul turned from the bar, and took Caitlin’s hand in his, leaning in and saying something Harry couldn’t hear over the music. Caitlin smiled, showing a lot of gum.

  “I’m leaving, actually,” Caitlin said. “Harry, can you walk me home?”

  Chapter 34

  Now

  They walked past a succession of crowded bars and restaurants, then hooked left onto a residential side street.

  “It’s about two miles. You sure you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I couldn’t stand being there. Everyone’s saying all the right things, but it still just feels like life is going on without her. Which it is.”

  “The funeral Mass was nice. I’d never been to one.”

  Caitlin’s phone was buzzing, and she stopped, apologized, then rapidly texted to someone on her phone. “My friend who brought me to the bar is freaking out that I left.” She texted some more, then put the phone away. They kept walking.

  “Tell me what happened between your stepmother and Jake Richter,” she said. “I know what the police told me, but that’s it. She stabbed him before you got there?”

  Harry told her everything that had happened after he’d been admitted to the hospital. He told her about waking up and thinking that the man he’d seen outside of the motel was John Richards, and how Alice told him that John had once been her stepfather. He told her about going home and using Phone Finder on his phone to learn that Alice was at John’s house, and deciding that he needed to see him one more time just to be sure. He told her in detail what Alice had looked like, the blood on her neck, that he’d seen Jake dead in the kitchen, and that before the police came, Alice told him Jake had said Caitlin was in the trunk of the car.

  “You must have thought I was dead,” she said.

  “I did. And then when I opened the trunk you were just laying there, not moving at all.”

  “I told myself to pretend I was dead, to just be still. For some reason, even though I knew it was you in the garage, I couldn’t make myself move.”

  “Why didn’t he kill you, do you think?” Harry asked.

  “He came to the motel to find out if you knew it was him, I think. That’s what he was asking me, anyway, and when I didn’t tell him anything, he hit me again and put me in the trunk of his car. I remember that he was gentle, and some part of me was thankful.”

  “I think he was insane,” Harry said.

  “Ya think?”

  Harry laughed. “He didn’t say anything?”

  “He did. He said something about being tired after he put me in the trunk, and then he took a tie from his jacket pocket and he rolled me onto my side and bound my hands together. And I let him do it.”

  “You’d been knocked out, right?”

  “Not really. A little. He’d hit me twice, and my nose was broken. I could have fought back, but I didn’t.”

  “Maybe that was the smart move. Maybe if you’d fought back, then he would have killed you.”

  “I know. That’s what everyone tells me, but I still can’t stop thinking about it. I just gave up. I think I was telling myself that it was my best chance, that he had somehow changed his mind about killing me, and I didn’t want to do anything that would make him change his mind again.”

  “It was a good instinct.”

  “After he shut the trunk he drove back to his house, I guess. I could tell he parked in a garage by the way the engine sounded in there, and then I heard him pulling down the garage door. I thought he was just going to let me die in there. I didn’t move. I didn’t even try to see if there was a way out of the trunk, a release lever or something.”

  “There probably wasn’t,” Harry said. “His car was pretty old.”

  “It’s not that . . . Sorry, I know. You’re right. I still wish I’d tried. I just lay there, praying that the next person who came along wasn’t him, and then my prayer came true. It was you.”

  “Do you remember telling me his name, that it was John Richards who did that to you? You could barely talk.”

  “I do remember that. Of course, it wasn’t his real name.”

  She shivered a little, even though it was still pretty warm out, the sky purple hued and filled with stars.

  “It was the name he was going by. And it was a smart thing to do,” Harry said. “Remembering his name. Telling me right away.”

  “Do you keep thinking about it?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Harry said. “Every minute of every day. It’s a loop in my head. What he did to my father and to your sister, and then to you.”

  “What he almost did to me.”

  “Yeah, I think about that, as well. He could have killed you, then killed my stepmother.”

  “He could have killed you.”

  “He could have, yes.”

  They were quiet for a few steps. They’d taken several turns, and the houses were now larger and spread farther apart. “It’s not far, now,” Caitlin said. “This was good. I needed to talk about what happened with someone who was there. Everyone keeps tiptoeing around me.”

  “They’re just worried.”

  “I know they are.”

  They turned again, down a street lined with tall trees, their leaves bristling in the light breeze. “I’m right down here,” Caitlin said, and pointed toward a white Colonial, lights on in all the windows. “Want to walk around the block? I don’t want to stop talking.”

  “Okay.”

  As they walked, Caitlin asked Harry about his plans, and he told her he didn’t have any, except that he wasn’t going to stay in Maine.

  “Will your stepmother be upset?”

  “I’m sure, but I can’t go back to living with her. I feel for her, because of what she went through, but there’s still a part of me . . . It’s hard to explain, but I don’t entirely trust her. I feel like there’s more to the story between her and Jake than I’ll ever know.”

  “You think she was in on it?”

  “No, not really. I don’t know.”

  When they reached the front of Caitlin’s house again, Caitlin said, “Can I ask a favor?”

  “Sure, anything.”

  “Will you come in and spend the night? Not with me, but there’s a guest room you can sleep in.”

  Harry hesitated, but Caitlin’s eyes, dark in the moonlight, were large with fear and anticipation, and he said, “Of course.”

  Inside, she introduced him to her mother, who was standing in the kitchen, wearing a robe, and drinking a cup of tea. “Oh, Harry,” she said. “I’m so sorry about your father.” She looked like both of her daughters, but more like Grace, Harry thought, with her firm jawline and upturned nose. She had kind eyes. Harry told her how sorry he was about Grace, about how much he’d liked her in the short time he had known her.

  “She was troubled, but she’d have turned it around. I know it.”

  “She would have, Mom,” Caitlin said, and rolled her eyes slightly so that only Harry could see.

  The guest room was on the second floor. Caitlin, suddenly hostess-like, showed him where the spare blankets were in the closet, and brought him a pair of pajamas that belonged to her brother, plus an unused toothbrush. “Pajamas are clean, I promise,” she said. “This is weird, me wanting you to stay here, isn’t it?”

  “No, it really isn’t.”

  “When do you think we’ll feel normal again?”

  “I don’t know,” Harry said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever feel normal, but I think we’ll feel better.”

  Caitlin shut the door of the guest room almost all the way closed, and kissed him. Her sweater was thin cashmere, and he could feel her ribs through the fabric, her heartbeat, the ridge of a bra strap. They kept kissing until there were footsteps on the stairs, and Caitlin opened the door wider, s
tepped out into the hall, and said to Harry, “Breakfast will be at the crack of dawn, unfortunately.”

  “I heard that,” Mrs. McGowan said from the hall.

  “Perfect,” Harry said.

  After she left, he changed into the pajamas, texted Paul to let him know where he was, and slid into the unfamiliar bed. After turning the lamp off, he thought, There’s no way I’ll ever fall asleep here, but then the next thing he knew there was faint light coming through the curtains on the window, and he could smell bacon being cooked. He sat up a little in bed, and listened to the sounds of the house coming alive. He had slept through the entire night—a dreamless abyss of sleep. It was definitely strange that he was suddenly here, in Caitlin’s childhood home, but it was no stranger than anywhere else he might be right now. He had no real home.

  He was about to get out of bed when his phone on the bedside table began to vibrate. He checked the screen. It was a Kennewick number.

  “Harry, it’s Detective Dixon. Sorry to bother you so early.”

  “It’s okay. What’s happened?”

  “I was wondering if you knew where your stepmother was.”

  “Is she missing?”

  “She is, actually.”

  “I don’t know where she is. I’m actually not in Maine right now. What do you mean, she’s missing?”

  “Well, she never came home to her friend’s house last night, and no one can find her. Her car’s at Jake Richter’s condo, but she’s not there.”

  “I’m sorry. I have no idea where she might be.”

  “We’ll keep looking. I’m sure she’s fine, but call me if you hear from her, okay, Harry?”

  Harry promised he would, and ended the call. The mention of Alice jarred loose a dream he’d had the night before last. Alice, naked, in the window of Grey Lady, Harry watching from the driveway. She was tapping on the glass, but it wasn’t making any sound. His father was there as well, changing a tire on his old Volvo, not paying a whole lot of attention to anyone. The house was stirring, and the dream disappeared. Harry sat for a moment longer in the bed, knowing, somehow instinctively, and with complete certainty, that Alice, despite what Detective Dixon had just said, was not going to be fine.