The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  “It certainly was.”

  His eyes flashed. She hadn’t meant for her voice to carry undertones. She was trying not to shake, or go crazy klepto and steal an ashtray. He stared at her. She thought she’d never felt such a deliberative, concentrated gaze.

  “I want to talk about Tasia. In confidence,” he said.

  “Of course, Mr. President.”

  Please tell me about Tasia, and more, she thought. Would he say it, or would she have to ask? “Why did she come to see you in Virginia?”

  “I think you know.”

  “Ace Chennault sent her.”

  “Yes.”

  “She was off baseline,” Jo said. “Manic and poorly medicated.”

  “That was painfully obvious.” He leaned on his knees and examined his Waterford tumbler. “We married too young, but I loved her. She was a meteor. Neither of us knew about bipolar disorder. I don’t need to tell you that those years were a particular kind of hell for both of us. Her mood disturbances, my deployments . . . and we wanted to start a family. She miscarried five times.” He looked at her. “It was crushing.”

  Jo nodded.

  “She became suicidal. An army physician put her on antidepressants. MAOIs.”

  Monoamine oxidase inhibitors. They could cause birth defects.

  “And then she got pregnant again. Not planned. We were scared. We both knew that in her state she couldn’t possibly handle having a child.” His gaze held hers. “You understand?”

  “I do.”

  “She terminated the pregnancy.”

  Jo said nothing. McFarland assessed her.

  “I’ve always been pro-choice. Never run as anything but. However, Tasia begged me never to reveal the truth to the world. And I told her I never would. I mean to keep that promise.”

  “Tasia’s medical records have been removed from military files,” Jo said.

  “Making those records public would serve no purpose. And they’d kindle a political free-for-all.”

  No shit. “Undoubtedly.”

  “I’m keeping my promise to Tasia.”

  “I see.”

  His eyes flashed. He did hear her undertone. How fortunate that your political aspirations align with keeping Tasia’s abortion secret. How lucky you’re in a position to make military records disappear.

  She turned her glass. The crystal refracted the light. “Did Tasia persuade you to meet with her in Virginia by saying she wanted to talk about her autobiography?”

  Jo gauged his face. It had turned hard, and crafty. “She told you she was going to spill everything, didn’t she? You met with her to find out if she was going to reveal the truth about the pregnancy. You wanted to talk her out of it.”

  “That’s a good-percentage guess.”

  “Chennault wanted access to you. Tasia needed a compelling reason to persuade you to meet secretly with her. It’s the logical conclusion.”

  He leaned back. His eyes never left her.

  “On the way over here, I talked to Vienna,” Jo said.

  McFarland took a breath. He seemed to take half the oxygen in the cabin. And that reaction corroborated everything Vienna had told her on the phone, and explained the things she had seen during the attack on the law firm, and had heard from Searle Lecroix, Ace Chennault, Howell Waymire, and K. T. Lewicki.

  She leaped into it, all the way.

  “Lewicki was in love with Tasia,” she said.

  McFarland didn’t move.

  “He was your best man, but Vienna told me the two of them got stinking drunk at your wedding reception. He was drowning his sorrows,” she said.

  McFarland hadn’t let out the breath.

  “At Vienna’s office, before the attack, Lewicki said something strange. He said Tasia played games. ‘Love, life, war, it didn’t matter.’ He was angry and passionate. He said she played people against each other like they were toys in her playhouse of mania.”

  McFarland looked like he was going to crush his tumbler.

  “I didn’t understand the remark, or his vehemence. And I didn’t understand how Vienna shut him up with a crack about his wedding toast. But she just told me what Lewicki said to you that day. ‘I guess you win.’ ”

  He let silence roll for a moment. “That was Kel.”

  Jo shook her head. “It’s a hell of a toast.”

  She took a photo from her purse: McFarland and Lewicki in army fatigues, hoisting Tasia between them on their shoulders.

  “He loved her from the start and he never quit, even after you married. She got under Lewicki’s skin and he could never shake it.”

  McFarland stared at the photo. Though he had taken only two sips of his Jameson, he got up for a refill. His reaction substantiated Jo’s suspicions. Her qualms faded. She braced herself.

  “And it wasn’t an unrequited love, was it?” she said.

  “What’s your point?”

  “Vienna told me that when Tasia was manic, she jumped into bed with every man in arm’s reach. She also said that Lewicki had a soft spot for Tasia, and understood her mental health issues before you did. Vienna was also alarmed when Chennault said Tasia’s autobiography would feature ‘explosive’ revelations about your marriage.”

  McFarland poured himself a measure of whiskey and began to pace.

  “Searle Lecroix told me that Tasia identified with Jackie Kennedy’s lost babies. More than that, mentioning pregnancy made Tasia angry,” Jo said.

  “Yes. Miscarriage and abortion can have that effect.”

  “Lecroix also said Tasia would never be satisfied with a mere entertainer when she’d had more powerful men in love with her. Men, plural.”

  He paused. “Kel was my friend.”

  “And rival,” Jo said. “He lost Tasia as well as his own hope for political supremacy. It motivated him to ruin you, and eventually to want to kill you.”

  McFarland turned and stared at her.

  “The press called him the Guard Dog, but he felt like a lap dog. He thought he deserved the presidency himself. He decided to get rid of you and position himself as your successor.”

  She held tight to her glass. “Lewicki hired Chennault to get rid of you. And he told him to use Tasia as his scapegoat. If it looked like murder-suicide, and that crazy Tasia was the killer, there would be no hint that it was a political assassination; no congressional hearings, no special prosecutors looking into it. Just a sordid mess.”

  His gaze nearly knocked her over. He was daring her to back up her accusation.

  “Chennault had partners—a former mercenary and a white supremacist. He had extensive dossiers on both of them. He got the information from a government source.”

  “You have to do better than that.”

  “In the first moments of the attack on the law firm, Lewicki did things that seemed strange, but I had no time to stop and examine them. The receptionist described Ivory as having hair ‘as white as soap.’ It was a distinctive feature—I mean wild. Lewicki seemed shocked. But now I think he wasn’t surprised by the description—he was shocked because he knew who she was.”

  McFarland sipped his whiskey, eyeing her as he drank.

  “Then, twice—not once, but twice—when I was on rappel, Lewicki did things that might have killed me. First, he let go of the cable. It nearly knocked me loose. He leaned out the window and believe me, his shock at seeing me was huge. He even said, ‘I thought you fell.’ Second, he sent Dana Jean out the window even though I’d yelled more than once that I wasn’t ready, that it was dangerous.”

  “Panic.”

  “That’s what I thought, until I spoke to Howell Waymire.” Jo took a breath. “When I saw him in the ER, he took my hand and said, ‘I just wanted to see with my own eyes that you’re alive.’ I said I was lucky. He said, ‘No, that bastard dropped you.’ ”

  Jo leaned forward. “Lewicki tried to kill me. I was the only person who knew about Chennault and the plan to assassinate you. He let me go out the window first, to see if the cable would h
old. Then he tried to force me to fall.” She paused. “When he saw I’d made it to safety, he looked . . . irate. And a second later, he realized that he needed me to pull him inside the window. But it was too late. He and Keyes fell.”

  McFarland sat down. He stared at his hands. When he looked up, he seemed unconvinced.

  Jo said, “Have you ever been to Hoback, Wyoming?”

  He went as still as a sniper.

  “Chennault sent both Tasia and Noel Michael Petty matchbooks from a truck stop in Hoback.”

  He waited a long moment. “Kel had a lodge in the mountains not far from there.”

  Jo let the silence settle. When she spoke again, McFarland didn’t interrupt or contradict her.

  “Lewicki wanted to destroy you. And he hated Tasia because she left him for you.” She leaned forward. “And Lewicki’s involvement explains why the government tried to suppress the investigation into Tasia’s death by intimidating those of us looking into it. He was behind that.”

  McFarland sat unmoving in the hushed light. “What else did Vienna tell you?”

  Jo paused. She downed the rest of her scotch for courage. “Tasia became pregnant while you were deployed overseas. The baby couldn’t have been yours.”

  Outside, a jet took off.

  “The child was Lewicki’s,” she said.

  In the cabin, the suffocating silence was an admission, without doubt the only one she was going to get.

  “That was why you hid Tasia’s medical records,” she said.

  He must have wondered who Tasia had cheated with, and dreaded the possibility that she was about to reveal it in her autobiography. Jo recalled Vienna saying, She broke his heart.

  “Lewicki’s animus wasn’t just political. It was deeply personal,” she said.

  It was the deepest possible animosity. McFarland had persuaded Tasia to abort Lewicki’s child.

  Jo needed more scotch. She needed the entire bottle. McFarland sat silent for a full minute. Then he set down his glass.

  “I’ll lie through my teeth and deny this conversation ever took place. Don’t doubt that.”

  “I believe you.” She quieted. “I won’t put any of this in my report.”

  Then, rising to the occasion, rising beyond anything Jo could have predicted, he said, “But thank you for digging so hard to understand Tasia’s death. She deserved that.”

  “I appreciate your saying so, Mr. President.”

  He looked at her, long, slow, carefully. “Rough week. Anything else I can do before you head home?”

  “Actually, now that I’m getting a chance to see Air Force One, I have a question about military procedure.”

  He spread his hands expansively. “I was in the army. Ask away.”

  She opened her purse and took out a copy of Gabe’s military orders.

  She handed them to McFarland. He leaned back. Slowly, his face neutral, the president read through them. The cabin was silent.

  “Does Quintana know his orders might have been changed because of political—”

  “No. And he doesn’t know I’m showing them to you. He would never request deferment or redeployment.” Her voice caught. “And I’m not requesting it. He’s ready to go.”

  She steadied herself. “But I wanted you to know.”

  He looked Jo straight in the eye. “I’m going to check this out.”

  He stood up. Jo did too. They shook hands.

  There was a knock on the door. An aide stuck her head in. “We’re ready for the broadcast, Mr. President.”

  THE DARK SUITS were waiting for Jo by the open door of the jet. Behind her, television sets broadcast McFarland’s voice as he addressed the nation.

  “My fellow Americans, tonight I want to speak about the courage of those people who yesterday, in the face of grave danger, saved my life. Sergeant Gabriel Quintana of the California Air National Guard, Lieutenant Amy Tang of the San Francisco Police Department, Officer Declan McNamara of the SFPD . . .”

  Jo wondered what would happen next—Congressional hearings? A commission to investigate the assassination plot? Would Lewicki’s role be explained as a quest for power?

  She paused at the door of the jet.

  “. . . and especially my lifelong friend, K. T. Lewicki, who gave his own life not only to rescue others from the siege at Waymire and Fong, but to protect and defend the office of the president. There is no greater act of public service than to sacrifice oneself for his country.”

  The wind buffeted Jo through the open door. She gazed across the tarmac. The evening sun shone gold in her eyes, failing and constant. She put on her sunglasses and turned to the Secret Service.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Acknowledgments

  For their superb advice and tireless support, my thanks go to my editors, Ben Sevier at Dutton and Patrick Janson-Smith at Blue Door; my literary agents, Sheila Crowley and Deborah Schneider; and a host of others who have helped make this novel the best it could be: Paul Shreve, Sara Gardiner, M.D., John Plombon, Ph.D., Lloyd Wood, Mary Albanese, Suzanne Davidovac, Adrienne Dines, Kelly Gerrard, Susan Graunke, and Kathy Montgomery.

  About the Author

  Meg Gardiner is the author of The Memory Collector as well as the Evan Delaney novels, including the Edgar award-winner China Lake. Originally from Santa Barbara, California, she now lives in London.