“Ready?” Liz asked.
“No.”
“It’ll be fine. We’ll do it together.”
Max nodded. He got out of the car and closed the door. Liz joined him.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Max introduced Liz to Katie, calling her his friend. Katie gave him a disapproving look, as if Liz might actually be his girlfriend but Max was simply too afraid to commit to it. When he thought about it, friend seemed an odd term. He considered Liz a friend, but it seemed that friendships typically were built over years. The friendship between Max and Liz had been building over the course of only a few days.
They had, however, compressed a hell of a lot of experiences into a very short time period.
“You look good,” Max said, unsure of why he’d said it. It wasn’t that she didn’t look good—she looked great—but it smacked of forced conversation. He supposed that’s what it was, forced. Might as well embrace it.
“Thanks.” Katie didn’t comment on how good Max looked. Then he remembered the busted nose Gabe had given him. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but this is…odd meeting you like this.”
Max opened his mouth to reply but found no words to fill it. He tried to wrap his mind around all that had happened. Where should he even begin? How much did he leave out? If he left out the wrong pieces of information then maybe she wouldn’t agree to his plan. Or maybe she’d end up dead. Despite what had happened between them, Max had loved Katie once. He still did in a way. Maybe if she ever loved him in the same way she’d do what he planned to ask.
Max decided to start at the beginning. He found the words easily after that, like telling a story in a confession booth. He felt as if he’d been carrying a load of bricks on his shoulders and with each sentence another brick was removed. He hadn’t been much of a talker during their marriage; he didn’t see much sense in sharing too many feelings and burdening another person with this problems and baggage. Today, however, he’d simply uncorked the bottle and let it all flow out.
The only part he left out was Liz killing Detective Smith. That he would take to his grave.
When he finished, Katie sat for a few moments, the gears turning in her head. She looked at Liz. “Is all this true?”
“You don’t believe me?” Max asked.
Katie shook her head. “It’s not that, it’s just this all sounds so incredible. It’s a lot to lay on a person at once.”
Max nodded. “Fair enough.”
“You have to go to the cops.”
Max shook his head. “They’re dirty. The guy we found hanging in the cabin and this Smith guy who disappeared. We don’t know how many others we might find.”
“Then go to the F.B.I.”
“We don’t have enough proof,” Liz said. “If these men killed my daughter and your son then we need that proof; otherwise, we’ll be ignored.”
“And if we don’t get enough proof to lock these guys up they’ll come after us,” Max said. He looked her in the eye. “I’m afraid they’ll come after you and your new husband too.”
Katie’s eyes narrowed. “His name is Denny.”
Liz seemed to notice the tension thickening in the room and stepped in. “We’re not asking you to move away or to go underground for months. Just give us a week. Take the money, check into a hotel where they take cash and don’t ask questions.”
“This is crazy.”
“Just a week,” Max continued. “If we don’t have something solid by then we’ll go to the F.B.I. or whoever. Maybe the police in the next county. We won’t draw this out, I promise.”
Katie sighed. “This is reckless. You could get yourself killed, both of you.”
Max met Katie’s eyes. “I know that.”
Katie’s expression changed. It seemed as if she saw something in Max’s eyes, something that told her that he knew very well the situation he’d gotten himself into. That he knew very well the course of action he’d committed himself to take.
“If we get them, then we can make sure you’re safe,” Max continued. “Or if they get to me then you’re safe that way too. They don’t want you, they want me.”
Katie’s face changed again, this time to disbelief. “Max, be reasonable.”
“Take the money, talk to Danny and convince him.”
“Denny.”
“Denny, whatever. Talk to him.” Max paused. “If he really loves you, he’ll agree to the plan.”
Katie looked at him and for a moment, Max saw the woman he married. Then the moment passed and she was gone, replaced by someone new. “I’ll think about it.”
“Why won’t you go?” Max said. “Just do it.”
Liz placed a hand on Max’s shoulder. “Max—”
“Answer me. Why won’t you just do this for me?”
Anger flared in Katie’s eyes. “You don’t just get to waltz in here with your new girlfriend and start barking orders, Max. Those days are over.”
Max reeled, incredulous. “I never ordered you around.”
Katie glared. “No, Max, you didn’t. You didn’t do anything at all, that’s the problem.”
“What does that mean?”
“You were checked out. Gone. Working or whatever.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I thought maybe you were having an affair at first, you know? The way you’d be at the office late. Do you know how many dinners you missed?”
Max didn’t answer.
“You were absentee, Max.”
“I worked hard for our family.”
“You worked hard, but not for us.”
“You fucking take that back.”
“You didn’t do it for us. You did it for yourself.”
“You sure liked the house and the money.”
Katie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. “I’d have been happy living in a studio apartment, as long as I could have actually lived there with you. Josh and me, we just got in your way.”
Max felt his heart rate skyrocket. The anger washed over him and he felt himself shaking under the weight of it. “Why do you say such awful things? When did you turn into this person? Somebody who enjoys ramming a knife in my gut and twisting it?”
“Is that what you think? You think this is some kind of sour grapes on my part? That this is some kind of revenge talk?”
“What the hell else could it be then, Katie?”
“It’s the truth, Max! That’s what it is. It’s the reality of what our life became, the reality that you never could own. You never took responsibility for the end of our marriage.”
Max sat, thinking desperately, trying hard for some kind of barbed comeback that would really defeat her. But the words just wouldn’t come. He put his hands to his face and dropped his head toward the floor.
“Losing Josh almost killed me,” Katie said.
Max looked up at Katie. “You think it didn’t almost kill me too?”
“I know it did. But we lost him years before he died.”
“How could you say that?”
“Because I paid attention. I knew something was wrong. He was distant. He wouldn’t talk to me anymore. He became defensive, even aggressive.” Katie looked Max in the eye. “There came a point where I was afraid of our son. Do you know what that does to a mother? Do you know how hard that was for me? I blame myself every day.”
Max shook his head. “You knew? You saw this? Why didn’t you say something?”
“I did. I tried talking to you. You blew it off. You always had an excuse for him.”
Max thought back and remembered a few of those conversations. It had all seemed so simple then, so discountable. Hormones, puberty, the pressures of high school. Had he really listened when Katie came to him? Or did he simply blow her off as she suggested?
“I stuck around for the family,” Katie continued. “For the three of us. I didn’t want to abandon that. But when Josh died, there didn’t seem to be a reason to stay anymore. If you were checked out before we lost Josh, the
n you were all but a ghost after he died. I felt like we were two people who were sharing the same space but unable to see each other; like we were on two different planes of existence at the same time.”
It was all too much for Max to take in on top of everything else. He’d come as far as he could and had done all that he could do for now. He removed the five hundred dollars cash and placed it on the coffee table in the living room.
“Max, keep your money.”
Max shook his head. “Take it. Keep yourself safe.” He stood before she could argue and headed for the door. Liz, who’d been silent throughout the conversation, followed.
Katie followed them to the door as well, but she left the money on the table. That made Max feel a little better. She opened the door for them.
Liz stopped at the door and looked at Katie. “It was nice meeting you.”
Katie smiled in return.
Liz walked out of the house, followed by Max. As he stepped onto the front porch, he turned back to face his ex-wife. “Be safe,” was all he could get out.
Katie smiled at him. Tears welled in her eyes. “Take care of yourself, Max.”
She closed the door. Max followed Liz to her car and slid into the passenger seat. Liz got in, started the car and pulled away without a word.
Chapter Fifty
Liz guided the Honda onto the highway, following the directions spoken by her phone. They had a two-hour drive ahead of them. As the car ramped up to cruising speed and the tires began their lulling drone, the sun had already begun its descent toward the horizon. By the GPS estimates, they’d arrive at the address a couple of hours before nightfall. Max didn’t know exactly what they’d find when they arrived at the mystery address, but he decided that he’d rather face whatever it was in the light of day.
A half-hour into the trip, Liz broke the silence. “Do you think she’ll take the money and get a room?”
“How should I know?”
“You know her better than I do.”
“I don’t know her at all. Not anymore.”
“Did you? Once?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What she said back there, she didn’t sound like she was making stuff up. She sounded sincere.”
“Drop it.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Don’t. It’s none of your business.”
Liz’s face went cold. “You know what? Fuck you, Max. This is my business now, like it or not.”
Max turned toward her and saw the anger in her face. “You’re right.”
“Don’t shut me out. We have to be honest with each other.”
“I’m sorry.”
Liz relaxed a little. A few silent moments passed. “It’s fine.”
Max sighed. “It’s not fine. I’m sorry. Really. It’s just this whole thing is such a clusterfuck.”
“Clusterfuck is an understatement. Maybe thermonuclear grudge fuck?”
Max chuckled. “I think that sums it up nicely. You have a way with words, Elizabeth Potter.”
Liz paused, thinking. “So the stuff she said, have you given it any thought?”
Max nodded. “Yeah. Too much thought.” He looked out the passenger window. “She’s probably right.”
“You think?”
“Pride tells me no, but logic tells me yes. I’ve told myself exactly what Katie told me, but the words I use with myself come out sounding a lot nicer.”
“We go easier on ourselves. I read about it. Our brains make us blind to a lot of our own imperfections. It’s how we live with ourselves for sixty or seventy years without growing to hate who we are.”
“That’s what a spouse is for.”
Liz laughed. “Yeah. They’re a good litmus test for how incorrigible we can become.”
“We need someone to tell us the emperor has no clothes.”
Liz glanced in the rearview. She went silent, gathering her thoughts. “I don’t know how David and I grew apart. I guess we became different people. Nobody tells you when you get married that you’re going to change and that you have to plan for it. I learned the hard way that if you don’t change together, you’re going to change apart. Eventually, I woke up beside somebody I didn’t know. I suppose David felt the same way.”
Max nodded. “I wonder sometimes if maybe I just didn’t want to see what was happening. Denial, or something like that. I guess I’m the type that just disappears inside his own head. Things go bad slowly, so slowly that before you know it you’re already gone, you know?”
“I do.”
A road sign appeared on the horizon, promising gas, food, and lodging at the next exit. Max felt his stomach growl in response. “I could use a cheeseburger.”
Liz glanced at him and smiled. “You could stand to gain ten pounds, so I agree.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s eat.”
Chapter Fifty-One
After a quick dinner, they found the address easily with the phone’s GPS. Max was old enough to remember struggling with paper maps, so he could really appreciate a soothing robot voice coaching them as they went. Besides, folding up those maps after they’d been unfurled was an undertaking akin to cracking Enigma.
They pulled up in front of an apartment complex in an area of town that looked somewhere between middle-class and ghetto. Daylight remained, but the sun had taken on an orange glow that bathed everything around them with the color of fire, promising it would be gone soon enough.
“Apartment 2C,” Liz said, looking at the writing on the back of the Peekies receipt. “Ready?”
“Of course I’m not.”
“That makes two of us.”
Max picked up the pistol he’d taken from the cabin, the revolver that had belonged to the dearly departed Detective Andrew Paul. “Maybe we should have tested this thing first,” he said, looking over the gun. “What’s the likelihood that it still works?”
“High.” Liz opened her purse and looked inside. She paused, staring. Max knew what she was looking at: the gun that she’d used to kill Smith.
“You okay?” Max asked.
Liz nodded. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ve had time to really process it yet. It’s not every day that I shoot a man in the head.”
“Are you religious?”
“It’s not hellfire and brimstone that I’m worried about, it’s looking at myself in the mirror every day and knowing what I’m capable of.”
“What do you think you did exactly?”
“You know what I did.”
“That’s not what I mean. How you say it makes a difference.”
“I killed a man, Max.”
Max shook his head. “You saved a man. You saved me.”
“Max…”
“You also saved yourself. Let’s say Smith attacked you in a parking garage and you put a bullet in him. No jury in the world would charge you with anything. If he’d broken into your house, then castle law would exonerate you. It’s self-defense, Liz, plain and simple.”
“Can we just do this? I’m not trying to be a bitch or anything, but if I keep talking about this I’m going to chicken out.”
“Sure.” Max stuffed the pistol in his waistband and opened the passenger door. They met in front of the car. Max looked up at the second floor of the complex, wondering just what they’d find there. He had a feeling that things would get worse before they got better—if they ever did.
He took a deep breath and looked at Liz. “Let’s do this.”
She nodded and they headed toward the complex together.
* * *
Liz arrived at the door first, followed by Max. 2C in silver letters and numbers had been tacked onto the door, like all the other doors around it. Max glanced at Liz and she nodded. He reached out and knocked on the door three times. The sound of feet shuffling came from behind the closed door. The footsteps sounded light, like those made by a woman, or so Max thought.
A moment later a female’s voice came through the door, confirmin
g Max’s suspicions. “Who is it?”
“Brandi sent us,” Max said, glancing toward Liz and shrugging. “She gave us this address. We’d like to talk if that’s possible.”
A few silent seconds passed with no response. Max and Liz looked at each other in thick anticipation.
“Brandi?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” Max replied.
“Just a minute,” the woman replied. She unlocked at least three deadbolts before removing a chain lock and opening the door.
“Come in,” the woman said.
Max entered first, followed by Liz. The apartment was spartan, with a cheap couch placed in the center of the living room and an old tube television placed upon an equally ancient stand. No pictures adorned the walls. The carpet was a nondescript and boring tan, just dark enough to hide the average stain. Colors only a landlord could love.
Max heard the door close behind him, followed by a man’s voice. “Stay right where you are, assholes.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
The owner of the voice cocked the hammer back on a pistol. “Hands up.”
Max raised his hands. He felt the barrel of a pistol on the back of his neck.
The man with the gun reached around Max’s waist and took his pistol. Next, he took Liz’s purse. Then he patted them both down from top to bottom. “You two better start talking,” the man with the gun said. “Who are you and who really sent you?”
Max looked at the woman standing before them. She looked away, toward the floor. She was slight, naturally blonde and very pretty.
“How did you get this address?” the unseen man asked. “Why are you here?”
“Slow down,” Max said. “That’s a lot of questions all at once. Which one do you want answered first?”
The man behind them paused, thinking. “Who sent you?”
“A woman named Brandi gave us this address. She didn’t necessarily send us, we came on our own.”
“How do you know Brandi?”
“We questioned her,” Liz said.
“You cops?”
Familiar Lies Page 15