The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  “Nothing’s going to happen, Tasia.” Rez raised his hands placatingly. “Please put it down.”

  “Do you think I’m an asshole? I won’t drop it.” Her eyes swam with a feverish heat. “God, you actually think it’s loaded.”

  For a moment her swirling hair took on the look of snakes. But the snakes were only in her head.

  From the chopper, Andreyev said, “Is the gun a prop? Rez?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tasia’s voice hit him low and sharp, like a blade. “No, you don’t. You have no idea what’s out there. What’s waiting. I’m talking about violence. I’m talking about propaganda of the deed. I’m talkin’ ’bout a revolution—yeah, you know, we all want to change the world.”

  In his ear, Rez heard the director. “What’s happening? Shirazi, for the love of Christ, what’s she doing?”

  “Tasia, put down the weapon.”

  She shook her head. “I put it down, and he gets me. Then it’s open season. Car bombs in cities. Death squads cutting down women and children.” She held the gun up, and turned it, seemingly checking that it had all its working pieces. “I used to think they wouldn’t dare. But I was naïve. I was a child. A freaking child, playing around. Round, round, get around.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Martyrdom.”

  Rez felt faint.

  “It ain’t always religious. Sometimes it’s ungodly, and sometimes it’s at the hands of the angels, not the devil. And this gun is from the source, the alpha and omega.”

  She grabbed her carabiner and clipped it to the trolley cable that hung from the zip line.

  Into his radio, Rez said, “Get security. Send them through the luxury suites on either side of us and grab her.”

  Tasia turned abruptly and stared at him. “I told him. Warned him. So he’s heard me. But he’s going to hear me again, right now, a whole lot louder.”

  Jesus. “Come on, T—”

  She waved the gun haphazardly in his direction. He flinched. She turned back to the crowd.

  “Secret Service would have scoped it out beforehand.”

  Oh, crap.

  “But they won’t protect me. Au contraire. Loose cannon, loose lips, loose woman. I am on my own and in their sights. So it’s just me and my music and the peacemaker here.”

  Onstage, the band segued into the intro to “Bull’s-eye.” On cue, the CO2 canisters rigged around the balcony began discharging. Clouds of white smoke swirled around Tasia.

  Shirazi stared at the barrel of the Colt. He had no way to determine whether the gun was loaded.

  “Tasia, if there’s a problem, come inside and let security handle it. You can’t take a gun onstage. You’ll terrify the crowd.”

  “No, I won’t.” She smiled again, darkly. “Watch me.”

  The director shouted in his ear. “Grab her.”

  “I’m trying. Did you call security?” Rez shook the plate-glass door one last time. He ran across the suite, opened the main door, and leaned into the hall. The corridor was crowded. A guard was loitering nearby.

  Rez waved at him. “Tasia’s locked on the balcony, freaking out. Go through the suite next door and grab her.”

  Behind him, she called, “Rez, you idiot. He’ll get in.”

  The security guard hustled to the adjoining suite and pounded on the door. Rez ran back to the plate- glass windows. Tasia looked manic and distraught, her face blurred by the swirling CO2.

  “I can’t let this happen.” She turned on her headset mike and began gesturing to the people sitting along the balcony in the adjoining suites. “Hey, everybody. Join the party.”

  People looked up, surprised. As if she were hosting a street party, she waved everybody toward her. They held back, unsure.

  “Come on!”

  “What the hell?” the director said.

  First one person, then another, stood up and climbed over the low barriers from the balconies of adjoining boxes. Then they all came. They swarmed over the barriers and mobbed her.

  “Damn,” Rez shouted into his radio. “She’s surrounding herself with people so the security guards can’t get to her.”

  More CO2 canisters lit off. Dozens of fans, hundreds, crowded around Tasia before they were lost in the white mist of carbon dioxide.

  And understanding swept through Shirazi. “Tasia, no.”

  He grabbed a chair and swung it into the plate glass. It bounced off. The pane was ultra- thick safety glass, and the blow left barely a mark.

  The first round of fireworks ignited. Tasia faced the stage and raised the Colt.

  3

  STANDING CENTER STAGE, GUITAR IN HIS HANDS, SEARLE LECROIX HIT the high note at the end of the verse. The crowd reached toward him, swept up in his performance like wheat pulled forward by a prairie wind. He grinned and pushed the cowboy hat down on his forehead.

  In the stands behind home plate, carbon dioxide swirled around Tasia. Lecroix hit the downbeat. On cue, she began to sing.

  “Give me a shot of whiskey with a chaser of tears . . .”

  Her soprano filled the air like silver. The crowd cheered. Lecroix felt a rush.

  He hit the chord change to G major. Tasia’s voice gained power.

  “Give me a shot of courage, blow away all my fears . . .”

  Her magenta corset swam in and out of view through the smoke. The crowd was spilling onto the balcony around her. What on earth? And she had something in her hand. It caught the light.

  A gun.

  He lost the beat. The bass player glanced at him.

  Theatrically, like she was a gunfighter practicing a quick draw, she swung the gun up, aimed at the stage, and pretended to pull the trigger. The second round of fireworks whizzed into the air from the stage scaffolding. Tasia jerked her hand up, miming recoil. The fireworks burst with a crackle and poured red light on the crowd.

  It looked like Tasia had set them off. She raised the gun to her lips and blew on the barrel.

  Wow. The girl wanted to tie the crowd in knots. Indulging herself in some fake gunplay—Drive the guys crazy, why don’t you?

  More fireworks lit off, green and white. Again Tasia raised the gun, fake-fired, and blew on the barrel.

  “Fire away, hit me straight in the heart . . .”

  Lecroix’s own heart beat in double time. Above the stadium, two helicopters flew into view. The third round of fireworks burst, red, white, and blue. Tasia’s voice rocketed above them.

  “Baby, give me a shot.”

  She raised the gun again. Smoke obscured her.

  A sound cracked through the ballpark like cannon fire.

  BELOW THE BELL 212, the ballpark swept into view. Andreyev heard Rez yelling at him over the radio.

  “The weapon’s not a prop and—”

  A colossal bang cracked through Andreyev’s headphones.

  “Christ.” Ears ringing, he called to the pilot of the other helicopter. “Break off.”

  Was Tasia Goddamned McFarland firing at him? The second chopper veered right. Andreyev banked sharply, following it.

  Hack shouted, “Too close!”

  He’d banked too hard. He jerked the controls, but it was too late. His tail rotor hit the second chopper’s skids.

  The noise was sudden, loud, everywhere. The chopper shook like it had been hit with a wrecking ball. The tail rotor sheared off.

  Hack yelled, “Andreyev—”

  The chopper instantly spun, losing height. Andreyev fought with the controls. “Hang on.”

  The engines screamed. The view spun past Andreyev. Bay Bridge, downtown, sunset, scoreboard. God, clear the scoreboard, get past it and ditch in the bay and don’t auger into the crowd—

  “Hang, on, Hack.”

  The bay swelled in his windshield.

  ONSTAGE, LECROIX HEARD metal shearing. He glanced up. In the sky above the stadium, debris spewed from one of the stunt helicopters. The crowd gasped. The chopper spun in circles, engine whining. It keeled at a
sharp angle and dropped behind the scoreboard toward the bay.

  The security guards waved at the band. “Get down. Look out.”

  A slice of rotor blade buried itself in the stage like a hatchet.

  The drummer leaped up, knocked over his kit, and hit the stage with his hands over his head. Lecroix threw down his guitar and jumped into the crowd.

  A chunk of the chopper’s tail plunged like a meteor into the front row seats. Screaming, the crowd fled. Lecroix fought against the tide, aiming for the stands where CO2 canisters continued to spew white smoke.

  Lightning seemed to run through him. He knew where the first God-awful banging noise had come from. And why it was deafening, infinitely louder than the pyrotechnics or guitar solo.

  The gun had fired, next to Tasia’s headset mike.

  A gearbox slammed into the field. The flight of the crowd became a stampede. Lecroix struggled to stay upright. And from out of the smoke Tasia came sliding toward the stage on the zip line. She twirled, slow as a lariat, hanging by the harness around her hips. Her head was back, arms flung wide, as if offering herself to heaven. Blood saturated her hair. It dripped like fat tears onto the fleeing crowd. Lecroix tried to scream, but his voice was gone.

  JO RAN FROM the snack bar toward the shouts and wailing. She heard metal slicing metal. She rounded a corner and saw mayhem.

  People were racing away from the stage. Debris was raining from the sky like bright metallic confetti. Beyond the right field wall, smoke rose from the bay.

  “Oh Jesus.”

  A chopper had gone down. Nausea spiked her stomach. She dropped her popcorn and ran toward the field.

  “Tina,” she said.

  A chunk of debris smashed into the stanchion at the back of the stage that anchored the zip line. With a twanging sound, the steel cable snapped loose. It dropped like a heavy whip into the crowd.

  “Dear God.”

  A woman was on the zip line. Jo saw her plunge helplessly into the crowd.

  People poured toward her. They pushed, stumbled, fell, piled on top of one another. She tried to fight her way through them. Then, like a top note, she heard her name being called.

  “Jo, here.”

  Tina was running in her direction. Jo pushed through the surging crowd and grabbed her.

  “The helicopters collided,” Tina said.

  Jo pulled Tina against a pillar and watched, eyes stinging. The stampede flowed toward the right field stands. People poured over the railings and fell into the dugout.

  A stadium official took the microphone and begged for calm. The screams turned into wailing and an eerie quiet in the upper reaches of the ballpark.

  “What just happened?” Tina said.

  “The worst stunt catastrophe in entertainment history,” Jo said.

  She wasn’t even close.

  4

  TWILIGHT VEILED THE SKY, BLUE AND STARRY, WHEN JO AND TINA walked from the ballpark onto Willie Mays Plaza. But the stadium lights blazed. Police cruisers lined the street. On the bay, searchlights on a salvage barge illuminated the rough waters where the helicopter had crashed. Third Street was lit by television spotlights. The night was whiter than a starlet’s red-carpet smile.

  Jo hung her arm across Tina’s shoulder. Exhausted and numb, they headed toward her truck.

  Ahead, leaning against an unmarked SFPD car, was Amy Tang.

  The young police lieutenant had a phone to her ear and a cigarette pinched between her thumb and forefinger. A uniformed officer stood before her, getting instructions. Her coal-colored suit matched her hair, her glasses, and, it seemed, her mood. Barely five feet tall, she was tiny against the Crown Vic. She looked like a disgruntled hood ornament.

  Jo veered toward her. Tang looked up. Surprise brushed her face. She ended her call and dismissed the uniformed officer.

  “You were at the concert?” Tang said.

  “Tina was on the field.”

  Tang’s mouth thinned. She glanced at her watch. Two hours had passed since the stunt disaster.

  “Fire Department and paramedics were swamped. We stuck around,” Jo said.

  Tang nodded slowly. “Lucky thing you love country rock so much.”

  Tina pulled off her straw cowboy hat. Her curls were lank. “Yeah, every stadium should have a barista and a shrink on emergency standby.”

  “Brewing coffee and listening to people’s problems—I’m sure that’s what you did, and well,” Tang said.

  Jo and Tina had helped ferry supplies and comfort distraught concertgoers. But Jo didn’t want to talk about that.

  “Congratulations on your transfer to the Homicide Detail, Amy. Why are you here?”

  Tang’s sea-urchin hair spiked in the breeze. She didn’t answer.

  Jo stepped closer. “A body’s lying on the field, covered by a tarp. And tonight came close to being a remake of the Twilight Zone disaster, starring my sister as Woman Hit by Crashing Chopper. I want to know what happened.”

  “It’s Tasia McFarland.” Tang’s face turned pensive. “And I want you to know what happened. I think I want your professional opinion on it.”

  Jo felt a frisson. “Her death is equivocal?”

  “Fifty points for the deadshrinker.”

  Jo was a forensic psychiatrist who consulted for the SFPD. She performed psychological autopsies in cases of equivocal death—cases in which the authorities couldn’t establish whether a death was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide.

  She analyzed victims’ lives to discover why they had died. She shrank the souls of the departed.

  But the cops normally requested Jo’s expertise only when a death remained indecipherable even after a long investigation. If the SFPD already considered the death of Tasia McFarland—notorious, splashy, icon-of-Americana Tasia McFarland—to be equivocal, this case was going to be tricky, as well as inconceivably high profile. Jo had a brief image of her professional life igniting like a matchstick.

  And she saw her sister beside her: tired, lovely, lucky to be breathing.

  She handed Tina the keys to her truck. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  Tina kissed her cheek and whispered, “I’m fine. There was no instant replay. Don’t dwell on it.”

  Jo blinked. Tina squeezed her hand and headed off.

  Tang flicked her cigarette away. “Come on.”

  They headed back into the ballpark. Tang said, “Pilot of the first helicopter’s missing, presumed dead. Stuntman who was in the back of the chopper survived, barely.”

  Jo ran her fingers across her forehead. Her face was stinging. Tang glanced at her, and hesitated.

  “Sorry, Beckett. This must hit close to home.”

  “That score’s already on the board. I can’t take it down.”

  Her husband had been killed in the crash of a medevac helicopter. But she couldn’t avoid discussing aircraft accidents, any more than she could rewind her life three years and get a second swing at the day Daniel died.

  “Keep talking,” she said. But as they walked, she sent a text message to Gabriel Quintana. Am OK. With Tang, will call.

  “The second chopper managed to crash-land at McCovey Point with no fatalities,” Tang said.

  They passed through a tunnel and emerged onto the bottom deck of the stands. The ballpark’s jeweled views, of San Francisco and the bay, were the greatest in Major League Baseball, and Jo usually met her parents at the stadium for a Giants game at least once a summer. Now forensic teams, photographers, and the medical examiner were working the scene. The yellow tarp stood out, as bright as a warning sign.

  “I saw her drop,” Jo said. “Debris hit the stanchion where the zip line was anchored. It collapsed and she fell like . . .” A ribbon of nausea slid through her. “She fell.”

  “The fall didn’t kill her,” Tang said. “She had a gunshot wound to the head.”

  Jo turned, lips parting. “Somebody shot her? She shot herself? What’s confusing about her death?”

  Tang walked do
wn the aisle toward the field. “Aside from the fact that she slid down the zip line with half her throat blown away?”

  “Aside from that.”

  “And that at least seventy-five people in the crowd were hit by falling debris or trampled in the stampede?”

  “And that.”

  “And the fact that Fawn Tasia McFarland, age forty-two, born and bred in San Francisco, was the ex-wife of the president of the United States?”

  Jo slowed to a stop. “No, that, without a doubt, most definitely covers it.”

  5

  TANG TURNED TO JO. “TASIA’S DEATH COULD BE AN ACCIDENT. COULD be suicide.”

  “Could be murder?” Jo said. “Somebody may have just shot the president’s ex to death?”

  Tang nodded.

  Jo felt an electric tremor of excitement. “You want me to perform a psychological autopsy on Ms. McFarland?”

  “This is going to be an alphabet soup investigation. SFPD, NTSB, DA’s office. Join the lineup. I want you to turn on your radar and cut through the clutter. Will you?”

  Jo thought of reasons a fast-rising lieutenant might want the assistance of a forensic psychiatrist: ass covering, running up the score on the opposition, positioning a scapegoat to take the arrows. But Amy Tang had always played straight with her.

  The cops called Jo when they could identify how a person had died—a fall, an overdose, a collision—but could not determine why. Jo investigated a victim’s state of mind, and retraced his final hours, to pinpoint whether he had tripped from the roof or jumped; overdosed on barbiturates accidentally or deliberately; stepped carelessly in front of the bus, or been pushed.

  Some police officers dealt reluctantly with Jo, seeing her as a sorceress who cast bones to divine a victim’s fate. Some, like Tang, treated her as an investigative teammate who could uncover the emotional and psychological factors that led to victims’ deaths. Working with Tang was like holding a cactus-covered live grenade. But Tang cared about putting the good guys first, and bad guys behind bars. She didn’t play games.