The Liar

by Bobby Adair

  Summer dialed as they walked. “Malcolm’s house is ten miles in the other direction. Yet if he’s really one of the commanders, you can bet he’s not at home.”

  Barry didn’t pick up.

  They arrived at the trailhead, a dirt patch with room enough for a dozen cars to park off the road at the T-intersection of Granite and Fifth.

  Tommy scanned the streets for 704 patrols before he stepped out of the trees.

  “Do you see anything?” asked Summer.

  “Nobody at all. You?”

  “I’ll bet they imposed a curfew.”

  Tommy scanned the skyline, looking for the glow of house fires. He saw none. He listened for the sound of gunfire, but heard it only in the distance, and then only an occasional shot. “Your war may be about over.”

  “All the more reason for us to hurry.” Summer strode boldly across the road, leaving Tommy to catch up. “We’re in uniform.” She hung her AR-15 over her shoulder in the way most of the militants tended to. She carried herself with an air of authority.

  Coming along beside her as they started to pass houses, Tommy glanced at windows and doors, looking for signs of anyone.

  "Half of these have to be good people," mused Summer. “No, most of them have to be. Only half of all Americans even bother to go to the polls. Did you know that, Tommy?”

  He’d heard numbers like it before.

  “A third to nearly half of those who vote aren’t affiliated with any party,” continued Summer. “What’s that leave, maybe a quarter or a third of the rest tied to one of the parties?”

  The math sounded right to Tommy. “You’re suggesting that what—ten to twenty percent of voters make up the party loyalists on each side?”

  Summer was caught up in the analysis. “Take out the people too young to vote, felons, and non-citizen residents, and I’ll bet the party loyalists make up ten percent of all Americans. Ten percent for each part. Roughly.”

  “So ninety percent of the people in these houses,” Tommy glanced from one side of the street to the other, “are against this Battalion 704 or they don’t care one way or the other as long as the electricity and the cable stay on.”

  Summer had already moved on to the next conclusion. “The militants can’t be the whole ten percent. How many party zealots could be so rabid as to take up arms to gain control of the government? How many would be willing to exterminate the opposition?”

  “It can’t be many,” agreed Tommy. “This isn’t the kind of work most people have the stomach for, overthrowing the government and rounding up neighbors. Yet the longer this goes on, the more the news of violence and the atrocities comes out, the more people will be willing to pick up a rifle and shoot the asshole across the street.”

  “People have been killing each other over politics since the beginning of time,” said Summer. “It’s the stuff real wars are made of.”

  “It’s not the only ingredient,” argued Tommy.

  "We have to take control back, and we have to do it quickly, before this thing—whatever it is—turns into all-out civil war.” Summer redialed her phone, trying to call Barry.

  Again, no answer.

  “You got the number right?” asked Tommy.

  Summer nodded.

  “Do you think something’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you try another number?” asked Tommy.

  “We left Barry’s hideaway in a bit of a hurry. We weren’t supposed to go.”

  Tommy didn’t see what that had to do with anything.

  “These phones have numbers programmed in—not with any names. This one has just six numbers in the contacts list, all with pairs of initials instead of names. The call history only shows calls to those six numbers.”

  “Sounds like 704s were pretty disciplined with their sat-phone communications,” observed Tommy.

  “When I got this phone from Allen—”

  “Allen?” asked Tommy.

  “You didn’t meet him,” responded Summer. “He’s one of Barry’s tech guys. It doesn’t matter. He gave me this phone before we left.”

  “Did he know why you were leaving?”

  "I had to tell him, but it doesn't matter. Not right now. The point is, I got him to put in the number for Barry’s phone, the one he was supposed to be using. We tested it. It’s the only number I have.”

  “Have you tried the others?” asked Tommy. “One of them might be for a phone you confiscated in the ambush this morning.”

  “I tried,” she said. “Back at the ranch house. Either there’s no answer or somebody picks up who I don't know, so I hang up again. I don't answer when they call back.”

  “Because you don’t want them to know their communications are compromised?”

  “Exactly,” said Summer. “Well, not exactly. We don’t have access to their comms, but since they cut the landlines and blew the cell towers, they think they have the only communications in the valley. That should give them a significant advantage. If they don’t know we can communicate, we can turn that advantage into our gain.”

  “Only we can’t,” concluded Tommy.

  “I can’t,” corrected Summer. “As far as we know, the rest of Barry’s little army is using the stolen phones just fine.”

  Tommy didn’t agree, not at all. “We don’t know that, either.”

  ***

  Spring Creek sat on the flat valley floor between the lake on the east side and the steep slopes of the mountains to the west. Through the years, growth sprawled the town up the valley, past the end of the lake and down past the highway, leaving central Spring Creek a well-defined grid of square blocks that only became urban-messy on the north and south ends of town.

  Tommy and Summer were in the grid. Organized though it was, it was still an area too large to comb on foot. They needed an improvement to their plan. Tommy said, “Now’s the time for you to put your Summer Corrigan insight to work.”

  “The high school gym,” suggested Summer. “Let’s start with that.”

  "It's on the other end of town.” Tommy didn't relish the idea of walking that far with so many other places in between where Crosby could be sitting in whatever kind of hole wicked men occupy while scheming vulgar mayhem.

  "704 has some kind of operation at the high school that's more than victim services.” Summer glanced at Tommy. "You had first-hand experience with that. I don't know if they'd use it as headquarters or not. It's large enough. Did you see anyone there who looked like they were in charge?”

  “It was hard to tell who the boss was. What’s this guy Crosby look like?”

  “Six-one, maybe six-two,” answered Summer. “Heavy-set. Soft.”

  “Soft?” asked Tommy.

  “I don’t know a better word. He looks like he was never an athlete. Never made any effort to go to a gym or anything. He’s not obese, just chubby—soft.”

  Tommy had a picture in his mind. "Like the Pillsbury Doughboy?"

  Summer laughed. “Yeah, exactly the same shape.”

  “That could be a bunch of men. What else?”

  “Black mustache. Black hair. I’m pretty sure he dyes it.”

  “So older, but not narrowing it down a ton,” said Tommy.

  “He always smiles. He’s quick with a laugh. He’s got a big voice, always sounds like your friend. Very likable,” said Summer. “Lots of charisma. You’d know him if you saw him.”

  Tommy didn't know what to make of that. "He doesn't sound like a bad guy."

  “That’s his talent,” said Summer. “He can screw you out of every dime in your pocket and every principle you thought you believed in, all while bowling you over with that big, happy voice. Because he doesn’t seem to have any misgivings about using his talent to get his way, he’s an evil man. At least he is in my book.”

  “I didn’t see anyone who looked like that at the gym. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t there, though. What about this Lugenbuhl character? How well do you know him?”


  Summer shuddered. “Creep.”

  “More specific?”

  “He used to be some big football star at the high school. Six years ahead of me, I think. So he’d have been a senior when I was in sixth grade.” They came to an intersection and Summer indicated they go left.

  “And?” asked Tommy, though he didn’t feel like he needed to hear a long history. He just wanted to know what the guy looked like.

  "After high school, he went to some podunk junior college that gave him an athletic scholarship. In the summer between eighth and ninth grade, I was out a the skating rink with some friends—"

  “There’s a skating rink in Spring Creek?” asked Tommy.

  “Back then, there was,” answered Summer. “Him and some of his buddies from high school came to the rink one Saturday night with all of us kids who weren’t too cool yet to be seen there.” Summer looked over at Tommy. “Sorry, I’m boring you.”

  Tommy shrugged it off. They had a long way to walk. They had plenty of time to talk, even if it was about high school romance.

  "He and his friends took some of us girls out to one of the parks to drink. We were all in eighth and ninth grade and to us it was a big deal, you know, hanging out with older boys, so of course, we went along.” Summer still seemed to carry the guilt of that choice. "There were maybe eight of us there altogether. To make a long story short, he got me drunk and tried to—"

  “Rape you?” guessed Tommy.

  “No.” Summer shivered again. “It wasn’t rape. It was aggressive, though. We were in his car and kissing, and before I could stop him, his hands were in my pants and—”

  “You don’t have to tell me this,” said Tommy.

  “I don’t think he ever intended to rape me. And he didn’t. I managed to get out of the car before things went too far. He didn’t chase me or anything, but I was fourteen then. He was twenty. I barely had breasts then. I looked more like a kid than a woman.”

  "You think he's a pedophile?"

  "I don't know what he is. Later on, I heard things from the other girls in school. I've heard rumors through the years. All I know for sure is it's not normal for twenty-year-old men to be attracted to fourteen-year-old girls. And he used his size to intimidate those who were vulnerable."

  “Evil in my book.” Tommy didn’t need any more explanation than that. “One more reason to kill him. What’s he look like?”

  “Big man,” said Summer. "Six-two, six-three. He looks like an aging football player. He's bald on top but keeps what hair he has cropped close. He has bad skin. Lots of acne scarring. He spends a lot of time outdoors, so he's always tanned. He struts around like he's in charge. He has a deep voice and likes to order people around whether they work for him or not."

  Once Tommy figured Summer was done, he said, “I didn’t see anyone at the gym like that, either. Maybe the high school isn’t 704 headquarters. Does Lugenbuhl have a place in town?”

  “He owns a few apartment buildings over off Pitken. His construction yard is near the highway, but his house is up in the mountains.”

  Still walking, Tommy made a guess. “Why not the sheriff’s office or the police station? I’ve noticed some of them side-by-side with the 704 guys.”

  “The deputy at that roadblock we hit just after the bombs went off Friday night, he was working with two of them.”

  “They were all over the high school, working together—” said Tommy, “704, sheriff’s deputies, city police. There’s got to be some sort of connection, at least with some of them.”

  “I’ll bet Sheriff Bingham and Chief Price were targets right along with Mayor Casey when they bombed the town council meeting. There can’t be any doubt it was 704 who did it to legitimize this takeover in the eyes of the 90% of Americans who don’t care.”

  “Or who would care,” Tommy suggested, “if they believed it was a coup. But as part of a constitutionally valid response? Governors imposing martial law to combat subversive NonCons? If the populace believed that, then they'd support what they saw the government—the people in the police cars—doing, even if they did so grudgingly. And I think that's the whole point. It's the same reason the militant groups went after the capitol buildings and federal buildings down in Denver. They're not looking to overthrow the government so much as to shove the leadership out of the way so they can sit on the throne. They kick this thing off on Friday night, and on Monday morning when everybody goes back to work, there's a new governor, a new mayor, new police chief, and anybody who would be inclined to make a bunch of noise about it is in sitting on the edge of a cliff with a pistol at the back of his or her head or burned to a crisp in a barn.”

  “We don’t know they’re all dead, Tommy. Don’t give up now.”

  Tommy hadn't even realized he'd done that—spouted off like Emma's death was a foregone conclusion, like he wasn't on a rescue mission at all, but on a revenge binge.

  “Tommy?”

  “Sorry. I haven’t given up hope.”

  “It’s okay to be afraid of what we might discover, but—”

  Careful to manage his feelings down to neutral, Tommy said, “I’m fine.”

  Summer didn’t press the point anymore. Instead, she went back to their conclusions. “I know Sheriff Bingham and Chief Price. We both know Mayor Casey.”

  “Knew,” Tommy corrected.”

  Ignoring Tommy’s tense change, Summer went on, “None of them would have gone along with a coup. There had to be extremist elements in both departments and probably the city government that would have. You know how our national political feud has poisoned every level of government in this country. I don’t know how many bad apples we’re talking about, yet they’re the ones responsible. Which means there had to be good cops who wouldn’t support this kind of thing. Probably most of them—they were blindsided right along with the rest of us.”

  “What do you think they did with them?” Tommy asked.

  “Detainment,” guessed Summer.

  “Would they kill them?” asked Tommy.

  “Cops killing other cops?” asked Summer. “That’s a hard one to swallow.”

  “They did murder Bingham and Price,” argued Tommy.

  "We don't know it was the police who set the bomb. They might be victims, right along with the rest of us."

  Tommy shook his head. “No, this was planned out before the bomb ever detonated. Remember how that deputy at the roadblock told us it was NonCons? That was what, fifteen minutes after the blast? And suddenly every cop in town is badmouthing this bunch of homegrown terrorists nobody ever heard of. No, this was planned. Those cops were all in on it. At least the ones still on the street. Any good ones are either detained, dead, or soon to be. Whoever's running this war may be a misguided, amoral stooge, yet they just started down the road to toppling the most powerful country in the world and installing a new government, and whatever that government is, I can guarantee you one thing, it won't be for or of the people. And that makes you right about one thing for sure—and not to be overly dramatic—if the good guys don't win this, it will be the end of America as we know it. So as far as the good cops go, 704 is too smart to leave them alive. Nothing good can come of it for them.”

  “Then finding them and freeing them has to be our number-one priority,” suggested Summer. “With real cops back on the streets, not only do we have a better chance of defeating 704, and the rogue police elements, but we take away their mask of legitimacy.” Summer stopped and tugged Tommy’s arm to pull him around to face her. “I’m serious about this, Tommy. We need to find out if the good cops are still alive. We need to find out where they’re being held and we need to bust them out.”

  Chapter 15

  Stepping into an intersection, Tommy looked left, then right, and left again, because there was something here he’d hoped not to see. “Cops.”

  Summer gasped.

  "Keep walking," Tommy told her. "It was your plan to act natural.” He waved at the car sitting halfway down the block, parked by
the curb, windows so dark it was hard to see the silhouettes of two heads inside.

  Summer focused her eyes ahead. “Are they doing anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is there anyone inside?”

  “I think so. Keep walking.”

  Without incident, they made it past the point where anyone down the cross street could see them. “Here,” Tommy pointed to a dense hedge just to the right of the road. He rushed in, half-pushing Summer with him.

  Catching her balance after being manhandled, Summer asked, “What now?”

  “Transportation?”

  It took Summer a moment to understand. "You want to steal a police car with two cops inside?"

  Tommy nodded.

  "Can't we just hotwire any car on the street? Or don't they teach that skill in juvie?"

  Tommy didn't rise to the taunt. "I don't know how to hotwire a car."

  “I know people in this part of town.” Summer thought for a second, and pointed down the street. “My friend Naomi lives—”

  "What happens if you and I get caught," Tommy asked, "driving one of your friend's cars? What happens to Naomi when they figure out we didn't hotwire it but we have the keys?"

  Summer deflated.

  “It was a good idea, though.”

  "No, it wasn't," Summer admitted with a sigh. “How will we get the car from those policemen? Are you going to shoot them? Can we know for sure they aren’t good police?”

  “Do you honestly believe any good guy police would be sitting in a car on a dark road in this part of town, doing apparently nothing with all we know is going on? Those guys are enforcing the curfew. They’re part of the problem. They’re not with us.”

  “Maybe they don’t all know,” suggested Summer. “Maybe—”

  "Stop," Tommy told her. "Do you think we're right about what's going on? Do you have any reason to doubt that the militants are mounting a nationwide military takeover on the pretense of protecting the country from this phantom NonCon group, and that they've co-opted local law enforcement agencies with the complicity of rogue officers?"