The King of Lies

by John Hart

  I told myself I should go to the hospital, but I knew from bitter experience that Jean would live or die whether I was there or not; and I was so tired, so unable to deal with Alex again. I thought of the big bed upstairs, pictured myself on its snowy sheets; I wanted to roll into them, touch their cleanness, and pretend that I was a child again and had no worries. But I could not; I was not that person anymore, not a child and not a deceiver. So I lay down on the carpet, next to the drying wasteland of my sister’s life.

  CHAPTER 22

  At the hospital, they told me that she would live. If I’d been a minute later, she would not have. That’s how thin the margin was, around seventy heartbeats. They would allow only one visitor at a time, so I had the nurse ask Alex for five minutes. We passed each other in the hall outside Jean’s room and both of us tried to be nice. It was awkward, and we looked like victims in the bright, clean light.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “They say she’ll make it.”

  “Brain damage?”

  Alex shook her head, pushed her hands farther into the pockets of her grubby jeans. I saw where Jean’s blood had dried between her toes. “They don’t think so, but they won’t swear to it.”

  “They sound like lawyers,” I said, but Alex did not smile.

  “Yeah.”

  “Has she regained consciousness?”

  “No.”

  “Listen, Alex. When Jean wakes up, she’ll need to see people who care about her, not people who hate each other. I’d like to give her that.”

  “You mean fake it.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll do it for Jean, but the line’s been drawn for us. Don’t let my act fool you. You’re bad for her, even if she doesn’t see it that way.”

  “All I care about is getting her better, and I want her to know that people love her.”

  Alex looked down the hall, away from Jean and from me. “I’m going for coffee. I’ll be ten minutes.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  She took two steps and turned. “I wouldn’t have shot you,” she said.

  Her statement surprised me. Until then, I’d forgotten all about the gun in her hand and how steady it had seemed. “Thank you,” I said.

  “I just wanted you to know that.”

  Jean’s hospital room was exactly like every other one in which she’d awakened after a failed suicide attempt. The bed was narrow and mean, with steel rails, stiff sheets, and a bright spread that somehow appeared colorless. Tubes snaked into her body, green in the light of her monitors, and the curtains were drawn. I walked around her bed and opened them. The morning light was warm, and in it Jean looked like a wax figure, pallid and incomplete. I wanted to mold her into something else, a survivor; but I lacked that qualification, and could still feel the barrel under my own chin. Only then did it occur to me how close we both had come, and standing above her, I tried to make sense of it all. I knew only that we lived, an immense but lonely truth. I sat and took her hand. When I looked at her face, I found her eyes open and watching me. Her lips moved, and I leaned closer.

  “Am I alive?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Yes,” I answered in a cracked voice. “You are.” I bit down on my lip. She was so weak. “It was a close thing.”

  She turned her head away from me, but not before I saw tears slip from beneath her tightly shut eyes. When Alex returned, she was asleep again, and I left without saying a word about it. Maybe I was selfish. I didn’t care.

  I leaned against the wall in the corridor for what felt like a long time. Before I left, I looked into the room, through the small window with wire in the glass. The curtains were pulled again, and Alex sat where I had, holding Jean’s hand. Jean had not moved; she faced the wall, and I wondered if she was still asleep. Would she turn from Alex as she had from me? Or was Alex truly her life, whereas I was welcome only at the ending of it?

  I almost left, but I saw Jean move; she turned, saw Alex, and covered her face with her hands. Alex said something and Jean began to tremble, the tubes dancing beneath her forearms. Then Alex was on her feet, leaning over her; she pressed her face to Jean’s and they both grew still. So I left, an unwelcome member of our sad little family.

  I had the elevator to myself, but when it opened into the lobby, I saw Detective Mills standing by the exit. She was looking out the window, but I knew she was waiting for me. I walked toward her and saw a marked patrol car idling at the curb. A uniformed officer leaned on the hood, his hand on the butt of his pistol. He was young and looked eager.

  “Are you here for me?” I asked. Mills turned at the sound of my voice and studied me. I was bloodstained and filthy. Next to me, she looked every inch the instrument of justice; her shoes shone and I could still see the crease in her pants. When she spoke, I smelled her mouthwash.

  “I am,” she said.

  “What about him?” I gestured at the young cop outside. Mills shrugged but did not respond.

  “Cheap theatrics,” I said. “There’s no need.”

  Outside, the cop got into his cruiser and left. He did not look at Mills or at me. Mills watched him drive away before she turned back to me.

  “A little jumpy, aren’t you, Work?”

  “Whatever.”

  She smiled. “I never said he was with me.”

  “How did you find me?” I asked.

  “I heard about your sister,” she said. “I figured you’d be here.”

  “Thanks for your consideration.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice.

  “Your sarcasm isn’t necessary.”

  “I’m not in the mood for you, Detective. Not this morning. Not in this hospital. So if you’ll excuse me.”

  I stepped around her, walked through the exit and into the parking lot. The morning had warmed and the sky was clear and blue. Traffic was loud from the road beyond the manicured hedge, and people moved around me, but I felt Mills behind me. She wore heels, and her footsteps were loud and fast. I knew she wouldn’t let me off the hook that easily, so I spun around to confront her.

  “What do you want, Detective?”

  She stopped a few feet away from me, a safe distance, and I saw the pistol butt hanging from beneath her jacket. She gave me the same cold smile.

  “I hoped we might have a chance to talk. There are some things I need to discuss. Maybe there are some things you’d like to say. Either way, I’ve got nothing better to do right now.”

  “I do,” I said, and turned.

  “What happened to your face?” Mills asked.

  “What?” I turned back.

  “Your face. It’s cut.”

  My fingers moved to my face as if guilty of some sin. “Scratches,” I said. “Just scratches.”

  “How’d you get ‘em?” Mills asked lightly.

  “I went for a walk in the woods.”

  She looked away and nodded. “Is that where you got so muddy?” she asked.

  “Is there some point to this?”

  “Why were you in the woods?”

  “I was burying bodies.”

  “More sarcasm,” Mills noted disapprovingly.

  This time, I shrugged.

  “Maybe we should have this discussion at the station.”

  “The station,” I repeated flatly.

  Mills looked around the parking lot and up at the scrubbed blue sky as if she found it all slightly distasteful. When her eyes settled back on me, the expression remained.

  “It might be more productive,” she said.

  “Do you have an arrest warrant?” I asked. Mills shook her head. “Then the answer is no.”

  “So you claim you’ve never seen your father’s will?”

  The sudden question threw me; it was unexpected, and a veil dropped over her face as she posed it. I sensed danger. “Why do you ask?”

  Mills shrugged. “It’s what you told me before. I just want to make sure that all my facts are straight. You said that you’d never seen the will, knew nothing of its
contents. Is that about right?”

  I knew what she wanted. Knowledge of the will meant motive, and alarm bells started ringing in the back of my head. Cops were like lawyers. The best questions were the ones to which they already knew the answers.

  “I’m not prepared to discuss this. My sister just tried to kill herself. I’m still covered in her blood. Does this make sense to you?”

  “I just want the truth, Work. Like everybody else.”

  “I know what you want, Detective.”

  She ignored my hostility. “Is that right?”

  “If you want the truth, then why don’t you look into the mall foreclosure? There were millions at stake there, too—angry investors, and my father in the middle of it. For Christ’s sake, he was killed in the damn mall. Or is that not relevant to you?”

  Mills frowned. “I didn’t know that you were aware of that.”

  “There may be other things of which you’re unaware. Are you looking into it or not? Do you even know who the investors are?”

  “I’ll run this investigation as I see fit.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Work. It’s not worth it.”

  “Then take your blinders off and do your job!”

  Her voice dropped. “Your father was just the messenger. Killing him wouldn’t stop the foreclosure. You’re a lawyer. You know that.”

  “Murder is rarely cold-blooded; people kill in emotional states. Hate, anger, revenge, lust. If you don’t know the players, how can you rule it out? There could be a thousand other reasons out there.”

  “You forgot one,” Mills said.

  “What?”

  “Greed,” Mills said.

  “Are we done?” I demanded.

  “Yeah. For now.”

  “Good,” I said. “I need a bath.” I turned away.

  “Don’t leave town,” Mills called after me. I spun on my heels and stalked back to her.

  “Don’t play your little power games with me, Detective. I know the system, too. Arrest me or don’t, but until you do, I’ll come and go as I please.”

  Something glinted in her eyes, but she said nothing; so I walked to my truck and slammed the door against Mills and all she represented. The small space stank of mud, gasoline, and blood, yet the smell of her sickly sweet mouthwash overrode it all. I cranked the engine and drove out of the parking lot. I turned toward home, not realizing until I was almost there that Mills was behind me. I got her point: I could come and go as I pleased, but the last word was hers.

  I parked at the top of my driveway and climbed out. Mills had stopped on the street, next to my mailbox. She honked twice and pulled away, but she didn’t leave; she drove around the block and parked on the side street next to the lake. I saw her and she saw me, and that’s how it was until I went inside.

  In the kitchen, I gripped the counter until my arms shook, and anger made the room tremble. When I let go, the last of my strength had fled. In my body I was dead, yet my mind had resolved on a single purpose. Right or wrong, good or bad, I knew what I needed.

  The phone was warm against my ear and for an instant I felt her beating heart, as if my head were on her chest. I sat on the floor and dialed her number. It rang, and I could hear it, as if I were there instead of in my own home—shrill in the kitchen, soft in the hall. I pictured her rushing to answer it, across the front porch, screen door banging, the smell of turned earth and the soap she used. I saw the curve of her lips as they crafted my name. But she never came, just her voice on the machine, and it was not the same. Not even close. I could not bring myself to leave a message.

  So I replaced the phone on its cradle and climbed wearily up from the floor. I spent half an hour in the shower but could not get warm. When I ran out of hot water, I toweled off and climbed into bed. I thought I was too scared to sleep. I was wrong.

  I dreamed in black and white, of shadows on the floor that stretched like bars across bare feet. My toes were dark with blood; I was running, in pain, and the shadows spun across me as if a giant fan stood between the sun and me. Light, then dark, faster and faster, and then there was only dark. I stopped running. I was blind. I was deaf. But still I felt it. Something approached.

  “Hello, Barbara,” I said without turning over.

  “It’s three o’clock,” she said.

  “I didn’t sleep much last night,” I told her.

  “I know,” Barbara said.

  Reluctantly, I turned. She was wearing a pink Chanel suit with a pillbox hat. Her face was perfect, but the diagonal light cut tiny shadows at the corners of her mouth.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  She put her purse on the dresser and began switching on lights. She moved as she spoke, as if she did not want me to see her face.

  “When you didn’t pick up the phone, I came over. At about four o’clock, I should say. I was worried. I felt bad that I was not here for you.” She turned on the last light and stood uncertainly, smoothing her skirt as if it were wrinkled. She still could not look at me. “You can’t imagine how surprised I was to find an empty house.”

  “Barbara,” I began, not knowing what to say.

  “I don’t want to hear your excuses, Work. I couldn’t bear the insult. I can accept that you went to her because I was not here for you; in that regard, I share some of the blame. But I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t want you to lie to me about it. You’re not that good a liar.”

  I propped myself against the headboard. “Sit down, Barbara.” I patted the bed beside me.

  “Just because I’m talking to you doesn’t mean that I’ve forgiven you. I’m here to tell you how things are going to be, so that we can get through this as an intact family unit. First, I don’t think you killed your father.”

  I interrupted. “Well, thank you for that.”

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic. Please let me finish.”

  “Okay, Barbara. Go ahead.”

  “You will not see this Vanessa person again, and I will stay here and help you get through this. Whatever has to be faced, we will face together. I will swear with my dying breath that you were with me when they say Ezra was killed.” She finally looked at me. A strange light burned in her eyes, and her voice, when she continued, was as brittle and hard as shale. “We will smile at our neighbors. We will not hide as if in shame. When people ask how we are, we shall tell them. Splendid. We are splendid. I will cook for you and eventually I will sleep with you. All this will pass, and when it does, we will still have to live in this town.”

  Her voice had not changed, an unshakable monotone, and I watched her in disbelief as she continued to outline the way it was going to be.

  “We’ll stay in for the most part, but occasionally we’ll go out, for appearances’ sake. Everything will be as it always was. Glena has made some calls. Things are bad, but they’ll get better. Once this blows over, we’ll be okay.”

  “Barbara,” I said.

  “No,” she shouted. “You do not interrupt me. Not now. Not after this.” She pulled herself together, looked down on me, and painted a smile onto her face. “I am offering you a chance, Work. Once this is over, we can go back.”

  “Back to what?” I asked.

  “To normalcy.”

  She chose that moment to sit and place a hand upon my leg. I started to laugh, a shabby noise, devoid of even rudimentary joy. I sounded crazy, even to myself, and I watched as if from behind plate glass as Barbara recoiled in confusion.

  “ ‘Normalcy,’ ” I parroted. “Our old life. That’s no gift, Barbara. Or are you too wired into the program to even see that?”

  She stood. “What are you saying?”

  I climbed slowly from the bed, naked and not quite myself. I looked at this woman, this wife of mine. I thought of our past, felt the emptiness of our shallow joys and trivial dreams. I put my hands on her shoulders.

  “There are few things that I know right now, and one of them is this: I’ll never go back to the w
ay things were.” I thought of the shadow bars from my dream. “It’s just another kind of prison.” I stepped back and my hands fell to my side. Barbara’s mouth hung open, then snapped shut. I looked down at myself. “I’m going to find some clothes,” I said, and walked past her. She followed me into the bathroom.

  “It’s her, isn’t it?”

  “Who?”

  “That bitch has already turned you against me.”

  I turned and said coldly, “To which bitch are you referring?”

  “Don’t play games with me. I won’t be made a laughingstock and I won’t lose you to some inbred country slut.”

  “I don’t know anybody that matches that description, and if I did, this would have nothing to do with her. This is about me! This is about us! About choices and priorities. It’s about opening your fucking eyes and seeing the truth we’re drowning in! Our life is a joke. We are a joke. Can’t you see that? Can’t you admit it, even to yourself? We’re together out of habit, because we can’t admit the mistake we made and because the truth is too damn hard.”

  “Truth!” she said. “You want truth? Well, here it is. You think you don’t need me anymore. All this money’s coming your way, so now you can go and run off with your little country whore.”

  “What money?”

  “That’s funny, Work. We live in poverty for ten years and now that the end is around the corner, I’m not good enough for you. I read the papers. I know about the fifteen million that Ezra left you.”

  I laughed at the absurdity of it. “First of all, only you could think that we’ve been living in poverty, and never mind that I’ve given you every dime I’ve ever made. As for Ezra’s will, I’ll never see any of that money.”

  “That’s right, because I’m your alibi and you’re pissing me off.”

  “I don’t want an alibi. I don’t need it. Go keep up your own fucking appearances. Leave me out of it.”