The King of Lies

by John Hart

  “Why did you let me go to the crime scene?” I asked.

  Douglas looked uncomfortable. His eyes darted at the surrounding lawyers, then settled back on me. His voice dropped.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “The day they found his body, when I asked for permission to go to the crime scene. I didn’t think you’d agree; no reasonable district attorney would have. But you did. You almost ordered Mills to show me the body. Why did you do that?”

  “You know why I let you go,” he said.

  “For Jean.”

  “For Jean. That’s right.”

  A silence stretched in the wake of his words. For both of us, Jean had that power, which was probably the only thing that remained common to us both.

  “It won’t help you as much as you think,” he said, referring to my presence at the crime scene. “I won’t allow it to.”

  “Maybe it already has.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that a man has a lot of time to think in jail, Douglas. A whole lot of time.”

  I was taunting him, and he finally realized it. But I’d scored a point; I’d made him doubt, if just for an instant. His face closed down like a carnival ride. The power just drained away, leaving everything still. For an instant, we had an eye thing going, the kind of unspoken communication I’d only had once or twice in my life. It was not so much a message as a feeling, one of cold, the kind I’d expected to find in jail yet, strangely, had not. But like that cell, his eyes were empty, dark, and timeless. Then some unfathomable emotion twisted his mouth into a cruel smile, and with a nod to the bailiffs, he sent me away.

  The next hours dragged, as I waited, perhaps in vain, for someone to bail me out. They’d given me a phone again, and I’d called the only person I could. But Barbara was not there, or she chose not to answer. So I left a message for my wife and waited to see if she would leave me to rot.

  They put me in a padded detox cell down the hall from central processing. The judge’s doing, I guessed. At some time, the walls may have been white. Now they were a mixture of browns, like burled wood. At times, I wanted to throw myself at them, scream as if I were indeed strung out. I’d never lived a longer day. The room seemed to shrink with each passing hour, and I came to wonder just how much my wife had come to loathe me. Would she leave me in jail out of spite? I honestly couldn’t say.

  Eventually, they came for me, processed me in reverse. I tipped the stained manila envelope onto the counter. My watch spilled out, followed by my wallet, which contained money, credit cards, identification. All present and accounted for; I signed the little piece of paper that said so. They gave me back my clothes—wrinkled, my belt, my shoes. And as I put them on, I felt the change come upon me. I became a human being again, and again I passed through the jailhouse doors, this time walking into the musty lobby, where normal people waited for people like me. What did I expect? Barbara? A faceless bail bondsman? Truthfully, I had not thought about it, not since I’d first felt underwear against my skin. In the mounting excitement of my rebirth into the human race, I expected to walk beneath blue skies, breathe fresh air, and eat a decent meal. My future was so uncertain, that was all I could expect. I did not expect Hank Robins. I did not expect what he would eventually tell me.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  He gave me a crooked smile, one that showed his chipped front tooth. “I should ask you.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  There were two other people in the room. One was a washed-out woman who could have been thirty or could have been fifty. She sat on the hard plastic chair, head tilted against the wall, mouth open; she reeked of tobacco and hard living, all wrinkle and no laugh line. Her sunburned thighs hung loosely under cutoffs too short for a teenager. She clutched her purse like a talisman, and I wondered how long she’d been waiting, and for whom. The other person was a uniformed cop. I watched him sign in at the bulletproof window, then check his weapon into one of the steel lockboxes mounted on the wall. He never turned his back on us, not completely, and Hank watched him with ill-concealed distress. I knew that Hank did not wish to be associated with me under my current circumstances, and I wondered what could have brought him to see me.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s talk outside. I’ve had enough of this place.”

  Hank nodded around another smile. “You don’t have to tell me twice. Place gives me the screamin’ willies.”

  Outside, the air was a tonic, and we leaned against the chest-high concrete wall and watched the traffic crawl along Main Street. It was late afternoon, the sun low and golden in the sky. Two of the district criminal courts were still in session and there were a few defendants lingering about, waiting for their cases to be disposed of. I’d seen two attorneys in the hall as we left, but there were none outside, a fact for which I was grateful.

  “You don’t have a cigarette, do you?” I asked.

  “No, sorry. But hang on a sec.” Before I could tell him not to worry about it, Hank had approached one of the few people scattered along the wall. When he returned, he had a crumpled pack of Marlboros and a book of matches. He handed them to me.

  “Guy over there,” he said and gestured with his thumb, “he was in court today, same as you. He said, ‘Give ’em hell.’ ”

  I lit a cigarette and wondered briefly what the guy’s crime had been. I tucked the pack in my shirt pocket.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Hank. But you’re not the person I expected to see.”

  He leaned against the wall, back to the passing traffic, and crossed his arms. He didn’t look at me right away.

  “I was in court this morning, too,” he finally said. “Came up to talk to you and caught your performance. I figured somebody ought to call your wife, seeing as how she wasn’t there. Thought somebody should tell her to arrange for bail.”

  “I tried to call her.”

  Hank nodded, looked at me with something like pity. “Me, too. No answer. But I wasn’t in stir, so I went to see her.” Hank looked up at the roofline of the jail, where it connected to the courthouse. “She didn’t answer when I rang the doorbell, so I went around back. I found her on the patio, sipping iced tea and reading Cosmo.”

  A silence fell between us, and I knew that telling me this made Hank uncomfortable. “Maybe she didn’t know,” I said, meaning my court appearance.

  “She knew,” Hank said. “She looked guilty as hell when she saw me.”

  “She knew, and she wasn’t going to bail me out?”

  “Not as bad as all that. She’d made some calls, she said, and was waiting for the money to be put together.”

  “What calls?” I asked. Hank shrugged.

  “Didn’t ask. Don’t know. But she asked me if I would meet you.”

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  Hank twitched and then patted his pocket. “I almost forgot. She asked me to give you this.” He handed me a note, folded twice. I recognized her stationery. She used to spray perfume on it. Because she loved me, she said. I opened the note and read it. It was brief and unscented.

  “She wants me to know that she still loves me, very much, and that some dirty bum stole my dog.”

  “I know,” Hank said. “I read it.”

  I refolded the note and put it in my pocket.

  “I’m sorry, man,” Hank said. “Life’s a bitch.”

  I nodded.

  “So is your wife.”

  “Why are you here, Hank?” I asked again.

  “Maybe to save your ass,” he said, and I looked up from my shoes, searching his face for the punch line. “I’m serious,” he said. “Look. I had my doubts, okay? I mean, who wouldn’t? Fifteen million dollars is a lot of jack. So, sure, I thought you might have popped him. But I told you I’d check up on Alex, and I did.”

  Had I been walking, I would have stumbled. Driving, I would have wrecked. “What does Alex have to do with any of this?”

&nb
sp; “Maybe nothing. Maybe something. That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “Let’s back this up, Hank. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Hank took my arm, turned me toward the wide, shallow stairs that led off the concrete platform. “Not here, okay? In the car.”

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Raleigh,” he said.

  “Raleigh,” I repeated.

  “To ask a few questions.”

  “Of whom?” I asked. We reached the top of the stairs. Beneath us, the sidewalk beckoned. I hesitated, wanting answers. Hank’s hand settled on my shoulder, seeming to urge me down the stairs.

  “Just keep walking,” he said, and something in his voice made me turn. He was looking back over his shoulder, and I followed his gaze to the courthouse door. Sunlight gilded the glass, and I did not understand. I almost missed it. Then a thin tissue of cloud blotted the sun’s face, and I saw him there, behind the glass: Douglas, watching us, a frown of concentration on his heavy features.

  “Forget about him,” Hank told me. “He’s tomorrow’s problem.”

  I turned away, let the private investigator lead me down the stairs. “I’m parked over here,” Hank told me. We walked down the hill, past three parked sheriff’s cars, the secure judge’s entrance, and a street crew that worked with loud, foul-smelling equipment that ripped at a small section of asphalt. Hank gestured down the narrow side street that ran along the unmarked cemetery where free blacks had been buried almost two hundred years earlier. We turned left, and the noise dwindled behind us. I started to feel like myself again, less like a punch-drunk fighter. We separated at his car, a dark green Buick sedan, and I stepped off the curb and walked to the passenger door. He unlocked the doors, but I caught his eye over the roof before I got in.

  “Alex?” I asked, but he ignored me, and I felt his door slam shut. The car rocked, as if agitated; so I got in, and took my question with me.

  “It’s not her real name,” Hank told me five seconds later. “That’s why I couldn’t find a record of her at the hospital in Charlotte. Jean was in the system, plain as day, but no Alex Shiften. To me, that stank of something, but I couldn’t tell what. Not until I went back with that picture you gave me.”

  “So you got the picture?” I asked numbly, dealing with the little detail because I could not focus on the great big one that sat like an elephant on my lap.

  “Early,” Hank responded. “A little after five, and then I drove back to Charlotte in time for the shift change at the hospital. I flashed the photo, asked my questions, and eventually found the right guy, an orderly with a deep appreciation for Benjamin Franklin.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He knew Alex all right, but not by that name. According to him, her name is Virginia Temple. She’d been at Charter Hills for three months before Jean showed up. Apparently, they hit it off pretty quick. For a couple months there, your sister spoke to no one but her.”

  “Virginia,” I repeated. The name felt made up. Alex Shiften was too hard to be a Virginia, too sharp, like calling a razor blade a butter knife.

  “It gets worse,” Hank said. “She transferred in from Dorothea Dix.”

  “The hospital in Raleigh?”

  “The state hospital in Raleigh. The place where they keep the criminally insane.”

  “Not everybody there is a criminal,” I said. “Just some.”

  “That’s right. Just some. But some of those eventually get out, and usually they’re transferred to a place like Charter Hills. A stepping-stone to normal living, like a halfway house.”

  “And you think that may be the case with Alex?”

  Hank shrugged.

  “Well shit,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Hank replied, and started the car. “That’s exactly what I thought.”

  He dropped the transmission into drive.

  “I’m not supposed to leave the county,” I said. “It’s part of the standard bail arrangement.”

  He put the car back into park and turned to face me. “Your call, Work. I can drive you home if you want and check it out myself. No sweat at all.”

  I didn’t want the judge to regret her kindness, but this was too important to play by the rules; and rules, I had recently decided, weren’t necessarily good. I’d played my whole life by the book, and that life wasn’t looking very pretty right now. “Screw it. Let’s go.”

  “That’s my boy.”

  “But we have to make a couple stops on the way out of town.”

  “It’s your life,” Hank said, accelerating away from the curb. “I’m just driving.”

  CHAPTER 27

  It was a short drive to Clarence Hambly’s office. Like most lawyers in town, he worked close to the courthouse. Hank pulled into his parking lot, a crowded space, its brick accents designed to make the cracked concrete look less austere. The building itself was over two hundred years old, a four-over-four antebellum structure with a large addition in back, hidden from the street.

  “So, what are we doing?” Hank asked.

  “I have to ask some questions. It won’t take long.”

  The lobby was crowded with criminal defendants whom Hambly would shuck off on some junior associate for a buck twenty-five an hour or a flat fee, based on the charge and the likelihood of their taking a plea. He had a rear entrance and private stairwell for his more august clients. They’d go straight up, to the personal assistant who guarded his office. I knew that I’d never get past her unannounced, so I didn’t even bother. Instead, I cut through the crowd in the main lobby and put my hands on the gleaming cherry-wood counter. One of Hambly’s assistants, an older woman, asked if she could be of some assistance, then stepped back once she looked up and recognized me.

  “I’d like to see Clarence,” I said.

  “That’s not possible,” she replied.

  “I’d like to see him now. And I’m very willing to raise my voice. So please just let him know that I am here.”

  She looked me up and down, thinking about it. I knew for a fact that she’d handled hundreds of frustrated, angry clients, so she had to size me up. After a few seconds, she picked up the phone and told Hambly’s assistant that I was there to see him. It took a good minute.

  “You can go up,” she said.

  Hambly met me at his office door and stepped aside to let me in. The office was long and elegant, with views of the courthouse on the other side of Main Street. He did not ask me to sit, just studied me from above his paisley bow tie.

  “Most people make an appointment,” he said.

  “This won’t take long,” I replied, closing the door. I took a step closer to him and planted my feet widely. “I want to know how a copy of my father’s will came to be in my house.”

  “I didn’t realize that one had.”

  “Who had a copy?”

  “This conversation is highly inappropriate,” Hambly said.

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “Very well. I gave two originals to your father and kept one here. If he made copies, that was his own business. I have no idea how one ended up in your house.”

  “You’ve seen the one that the police have in their custody?”

  “I have, but I cannot say for certain that it is the one found in your house. They asked me to identify it and I did.”

  I pushed. “Yet, it is an accurate copy. You verified that for them.”

  “Yes,” he conceded.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Ezra was going to cut me out of his will?”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Mills,” I said.

  Hambly smiled tightly, a gleam in his eyes. “If Mills told you that, she did so for her own reasons. Yes, your father contemplated some minor changes, but he never intended to remove you as a beneficiary. He was quite firm on that. I suspect that Mills was trying to trick you into some indiscretion.”

  “What changes?”

  “Nothing significant and not
hing that was ever put into place. Ergo, nothing that concerns you as the beneficiary of his estate.”

  “Is your copy of the original accounted for?” I asked.

  “Filed with the probate court. I’m certain that they would show it to you, if you asked.”

  “Yet you made copies.”

  “Of course, I made copies. This is a law office. I represent the estate.”

  “Who else did you give copies to? Mills? Douglas? Who else?”

  “Don’t raise your voice to me, young man. I won’t tolerate it.”

  “Try this on then, Clarence. If I am convicted of Ezra’s murder, can I inherit under the laws of North Carolina?”

  “You know that the state will not allow a killer to profit from his crime in that way.”

  “Then who retains control of Ezra’s assets?”

  “What are you implying?” Hambly demanded.

  “Who?”

  “All of your father’s assets pass to the foundation.”

  “And who controls that foundation?”

  “I do not appreciate your insinuation.”

  “You would have control of the entire forty million dollars. Isn’t that correct?”

  Hambly stared at me, his face tight with barely contained fury. “I find you and your petty machinations insufferable, Work. Get out of my office.”

  “You were in my house. For the first time ever since I bought it, you were in my house. Why?”

  “I was there because Barbara invited me to be there. And because it was the respectful thing to do. I should not have to explain that to you. Now, get out,” he said, and took me by the arm. Outside of his office, before the pretty young assistant who had come suddenly to her feet, I jerked my arm free.

  “Somebody planted that document in my house, Clarence. It had to come from somewhere.”

  Hambly straightened to his full height and looked down the length of his nose. I saw color in his face, and the pulse of blood in the big veins that ran down his neck. “Earlier today, I held some pity for you, Work. But that’s gone. I will look forward to your trial date.” He pointed a thin arm toward the stairwell, and I saw that it trembled. “Now, please leave.”