The Liar

by Bobby Adair

  Dawn was still a few hours away when they drove past the sheriff’s office on Main Street. The three-story structure had been built from that reddish-orange brick they used in constructing every public building through the fifties and sixties. It was blocky, with small aluminum-framed windows that looked like they didn't have a hope of letting enough light through for the sheriff's deputies and clerks who toiled inside. Covering an entire downtown block in Spring Creek, the building was oppressive in an apathetic way. It housed the county jail in the back half, though from the outside it was impossible to tell where the bureaucrat's offices stopped and the jail cells began.

  Four 704 men, one deputy, and one city policeman loitered in the predawn darkness outside the building’s main entrance.

  "Paydirt?" asked Summer, as she guided the police cruiser past.

  “Go around,” Tommy suggested, though Summer already had her turn signal on.

  With no traffic at all, she didn’t have to slow much to pull onto the side street. “There’s a fenced parking lot down here on the right where they keep the sheriff’s cars.”

  Tommy had already noticed an eight-foot fence topped with razor wire running along the sidewalk.

  As they got closer, Summer said, “Crosby drives a black Escalade. Lugenbuhl has a gray BMW.”

  “An SUV?” asked Tommy.

  “Sedan. A really expensive one.”

  Tommy noticed most of the cars inside the fenced area were civilian.

  “Spring Creek’s politically prominent pricks.” Summer slowed.

  “What are you doing?” asked Tommy. “We don’t want to draw attention.”

  “There’s a black Escalade right there,” said Summer, “can you see its rear bumper?”

  Tommy saw it over by the door, in a spot facing the building. “I can’t. Keep moving.”

  Summer craned her neck to peek between the cars blocking her view. “There’s a glare from the streetlights. I can’t tell.”

  “What are you looking—”

  “There.” Summer tapped the brakes, throwing Tommy toward the dashboard. He caught himself, and cursed.

  “What?” asked Tommy.

  “Lugenbuhl’s BMW. There, just by that big truck.”

  “I see it.” Tommy asked.

  “That’s got to be Crosby’s Escalade.”

  “What were you looking for on the bumper?”

  They were past the block, past the alley behind, and Summer was accelerating down to the next street. "Crosby has a cousin he helped finance a brewpub for. There's a sticker on the bumper for the pub. White on black. It’s hard to miss. Gilded Goat Alehouse or something.”

  “I know the place,” said Tommy. “Down by the Safeway.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Stop at the corner.”

  Summer slowed the car.

  Tommy swung the door open.

  “What are you doing?”

  Tommy stepped out. “I’ll walk back along the sidewalk. Don’t circle the block. If you pass by in front again, those guys will notice.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Tommy pointed south. “Pick me up on the next block over. I’ll come out of the alley behind that antique store.”

  “Tommy you—”

  He shut the car door and was already walking.

  Summer made a left turn instead of right and disappeared from view.

  Knowing she’d make it to the rendezvous quickly, Tommy hurried up the street. He tried not to look rushed. He wished he had a cigarette, not because he smoked, but because it gave him a reason to be outside, loitering, not just strolling in the dark, not just looking suspicious. Cigarettes gave him something to offer another man, a gift to make a bond, especially if the other man smoked.

  Tommy cursed his earlier mistake of not stealing the smokes from the guys he’d killed in the hospital parking lot.

  He looked around in the nighttime shadows, wondering whether he was being watched, trying to estimate how many 704 men and women and how many rogue deputies there were. He tried to guess how many zealous volunteers had joined up once they realized the country had entangled itself in political violence. How many were downtown still, or stationed on tactically essential corners? How many were in the sheriff's office holding down the fort, making their presence felt? How many were patrolling in squad cars? How many in personal vehicles? How many manning roadblocks? How many roadblocks were there and which streets were they on?

  Then there were the other detainment sites.

  As Tommy rang up the numbers in his head, he figured there had to be, at the very least, a hundred loyalists in town, but realistically more like three to five hundred. Which meant there might be a few thousand spread across Summit County. They had to have taken control of Frisco, Dillon, Silverthorne, and Breck, along with Spring Creek. And what about the little towns that weren't much more than ski resorts or tiny subdivisions nestled in the mountains? What was there even to take over in such places? Or was having a handful of armed men hanging around in sheriff's cars enough to mark the areas as pacified under 704 control?

  Tommy reached the corner of the fence. He scanned the cars inside. The Escalade wasn't hard to find again. At a walking pace, even in low light, it was easy to see the white goat skull logo pasted on the bumper. Crosby and Lugenbuhl were both in the station. The sheriff's office had to be Battalion 704 headquarters, not just for Spring Creek but for the whole county.

  Tommy crossed the street, turned into the alley, and hurried to the other end. Summer sat there in the car, waiting for him to emerge.

  ***

  Four blocks down, Tommy and Summer sat, parked on Hemlock near the corner of Third Street, in front of a little shed of a house built on a lot barely as wide as the police cruiser was long. It was one of hundreds of houses erected in the 1890s when the miners flocked into the valley to break their backs digging pyrite, cerussite, sphalerite, smithsonite, and a dozen other ore minerals out of the veins in the mountains above Spring Creek.

  The whole house and the one next door looked like it would fit in Tommy’s garage, or, that’s to say, Tommy’s father-in-law’s garage, in the house down the valley by the golf course. At least that’s the way it looked in the geometry problem working its way through Tommy’s idle thoughts as he tried to busy his brain enough to keep himself from falling asleep.

  Inside the house, the walls had been freshly painted, and the natural wood floors shined in the slanting morning light. The windows, big and clean, looked to be period wrought and had that weird old glass flow that made it look like it might one day dribble down the windowsill and puddle on the floor. If a long enough string of future owners cared for and preserved the little shed against dry rot and broken pipes.

  Only glass didn’t really flow—despite rumors to the contrary—and this generation of diggers had moved off to work in the factories down in Denver when the mineral veins played out and the mines shut down, and Spring Creek was trying to figure out how to steer its economy away from dirty, sweaty breadwinners so it could cater to the fickle whims of the weekend trail hikers and flatland photo tourists.

  Now, a realtor sign advertised the little house’s availability to anyone willing to strap an oversized mortgage on their backs and husband it through another generation of harsh winters and short summers. Or until an unexpected pink slip showed up one payday, dick-punched their retirement dreams, and forced the house into foreclosure.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Summer.

  Tommy jerked upright, and he looked down the street again to where the sheriff’s fenced parking lot emptied onto Hemlock four blocks down. “How long have you been awake?”

  “Five minutes?” guessed Summer.

  “You should have said something.”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I’m not,” Tommy told her. “Just staring.”

  “And?” asked Summer.

  “And nothing. We should have picked up some coffee.”

  “C
rosby hasn’t left yet, has he?”

  Tommy looked at the time on the sat-phone. 8:45. "To tell you the truth, I dozed off for a bit."

  Summer’s shoulders sagged. “We should drive down and—”

  “Don’t need to. After I woke up, I walked down and checked. Crosby and Lugenbuhl are still there. Their cars are, anyway.”

  “You walked down?” Summer seemed a little put off by that choice.

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “With the cars coming and going?”

  She was right about that. Vehicles, some civilian, some police, had been stopping by since before sunup. 704s, police, sheriff’s deputies, and ununiformed people had gone inside, generally stayed a while, and came back out to drive away. “I wasn’t noticed by anyone.”

  Expecting things to escalate into some kind of debate, she surprised Tommy by accepting his word without pushing back. Instead, she yawned. "I need to pee."

  Tommy nodded at the little house they were parked in front of. “This place is empty. Maybe one of the realtors left the back door unlocked or something?”

  Summer looked around, quickly evaluated her options, and swung the driver’s door open, and she stopped. Somewhere in the valley, a gunfight was raging. Not close, but it was hard to tell. “I’ll be right back.”

  ***

  10:20, Tommy’s stomach was rumbling. With the non-stop adrenaline and urgency of the past few days replaced by boredom and anxiety, Tommy’s body was reminding him he hadn’t eaten since—he had to think about it. At the ranch? No, his appetite never surfaced while they were there. Too much death in the air and on the floor.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Summer.

  “I’m thinking this question never turns out well.”

  Summer almost laughed, yet her eyes were still full of the weekend’s unresolved troubles. “Sometimes you’re almost charming. I can see what Faith saw in you.”

  “But?” Tommy asked.

  “I wasn’t going to add a ‘but’.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” answered Tommy. “You know the things I’ve done. Faith will know soon enough and—”

  “I won’t tell her. I’ve decided I’m staying out of it.”

  “I’m telling her,” said Tommy. “She needs to know.”

  Summer shook her head as though she were imagining how badly that could go. "And Emma? Honestly, Tommy. Your instincts were right on that. You shouldn't say anything to her. Not until she's older."

  “I don’t know what I’ll do about Emma.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments before Summer said, “You can talk to me about it if you want. Your decision. If, you know, it helps.”

  “I saw her speech.” Tommy looked over at Summer to gauge her reaction.

  Summer smiled. “You should be proud.”

  “Proud?” Tommy was put off. “I didn’t find it as inspirational as you did.”

  “Really?” Summer sat up straight in her seat. “That surprises me. How did it make you feel?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  “Repulsed.”

  “Jesus, Tommy.” Summer couldn’t believe it. “How can you say that?”

  Tommy looked for the right words. “I don’t know when Emma got so angry. She was full of hate.”

  “Hate? How can you even say that?”

  “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “It’s like we’re not even talking about the same speech.”

  “Eye of the beholder,” figured Tommy.

  Summer pulled her cellphone out of a pocket in her jeans. She activated it and started working the screen with her finger.

  “No signal,” Tommy reminded her.

  “I’m looking for the video,” said Summer. “I was there. I recorded it.”

  “I don’t need to see it again.”

  “I’m not sure you ever saw it the first time.” Summer handed Tommy the phone with the video starting to run.

  ***

  When it was over, Tommy was speechless.

  “I told you,” said Summer.

  “I saw some excerpts online,” said Tommy. “That night at the gym.”

  “Disinformation,” said Summer. “You’d be shocked what they can do with video these days.”

  Tommy felt ashamed. “I believed—what was in that other video, even though it seemed off. Like it wasn’t really her.”

  Summer put a hand on Tommy’s leg. “You can’t blame yourself for it. Look around. This whole country has been sucked into a propaganda nightmare. And now we’re killing each other over it.”

  Still off-balance from the revelation, Tommy asked, “How do you even know what to believe anymore? How do you know what’s true?”

  “I don’t have that answer,” replied Summer, “but I know Emma has gift for speaking. And I know she says the right things. We’re going to need people like her when this is all over.”

  “You don’t think she can save us from this anymore?” asked Tommy.

  Summer shook her head. “I think I’m with you now. We’ve come too far.”

  They sat in silence for a long time after that, until Tommy checked the time on the sat-phone again. “We probably need to talk about how long we’re going to wait.”

  “As long as it takes is what I thought.”

  “What if they don’t come out? What if they’ve left their cars here for safekeeping and they’re off conquering Copper Mountain’s ski runs or something?”

  Summer sighed. “I felt sure, since they were here.” She shook her head as she thought it through and debated some question silently in her head. “They have to have a headquarters. This has to be it. For all the reasons we talked about.”

  “With all the activity, it probably is,” Tommy agreed. “Still, what if they don’t come out? How long should we stay here before we try Plan B?”

  “We have a Plan B?”

  They didn’t, but that wasn’t the point. “The clock is ticking.”

  “You mean on Faith and Emma.”

  Tommy nodded. “And on those detained policemen. We need to find them before Lugenbuhl realizes what a risk it is to keep them alive.”

  “What should we try instead?”

  Looking down the street, Tommy said, “With the 704s coming and going, it would be a cinch to follow a pair.” He reached over to the car’s control panel mounted shoddily on the console and hovered a finger over the button that turned the flashing blue and red lights on. “Convince them to pull over and then have a chat.”

  “Chat?” Summer knew it was a euphemism. Anybody listening would know.

  Still, she seemed to want to have it spelled out. “Torture them for what they know,” said Tommy. “Kill them when we’re through.”

  “Torture?” Summer looked like another part of her soul had just died, and her eyes glassed up again.

  “You don’t have to be there.”

  “Is this the vicious part you talked about? A lesson from your personal war?”

  “Yeah,” answered Tommy.

  “We don’t have time to torture people.”

  “It’s not as dramatic as it looks in the movies. If somebody will talk, you find out pretty quick. The ones who don’t want to talk right away, they aren’t worth messing with. You never know what they’re going to say anyway.”

  “You mean you don’t know if they’re going to lie.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How do you know whether somebody’s lying to you?”

  Tommy smiled grimly. “You don’t get killed when you act on what you’ve learned.”

  Summer's mouth fell open. "You have to be joking."

  “We’re not doing investigative journalism here. We won’t have time to corroborate information. Sometimes you have to go with your gut and take your chances.”

  "And you're still alive?" Summer suddenly seemed to find that fact surprising.

  Tommy shrugged. “I’ve made good choices.”

  “Good?” S
ummer didn’t like that word, either.

  “It’s a relative term.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Tommy asked, “Are we going to start bickering again?”

  “No. Sorry.” Summer looked over the hood and down the street. “One o’clock. Let’s give it until—”

  Tommy didn’t need to ask why Summer stopped herself. He saw it, too. The black Escalade was pulling out.

  Summer started the engine.

  Chapter 18

  They pulled up close enough behind the Escalade to confirm the presence of the Gilded Goat Alehouse sticker on the bumper, and then backed off. Or tried to. Crosby didn’t speed through downtown. And they could only go so slow.

  Not many cars were on the road. Not even a Sunday morning. It made Tommy nervous to be so exposed.

  “What should I do?” asked Summer.

  "Hang back. Hopefully, he's headed out of town.” Only two major roads ran through Spring Creek, the east-west interstate, and the two-lane north-south highway that ran up and down the valley. The main road through the town turned into that highway once it took motorists past the city limits.

  “Maybe he’s going home for a shower and a nap?” suggested Summer.

  “Or going to a detainment camp to make sure everybody’s been exterminated,” countered Tommy.

  “Do we take him on the way or wait until he gets home?”

  “We can’t know where he’s going,” Tommy told her. “We take him at the first opportunity.”

  “Okay.”

  The road ahead curved into a hard right, and Summer followed it around. A block farther, the road made a hard left, because that's the way the state highway planners had laid it out when they'd built it forever ago. Why they decided to change from one already-made road to another in town was anybody's guess. In fact, Tommy had never given it a thought. It was just the way it was, another bendy road in Colorado. And then Summer followed the curve to the left, and they saw the checkpoint blocking the road a quarter-mile ahead.

  “Oh, no,” cried Summer.

  “Don’t hit the brakes,” Tommy told her, as she took her foot off the accelerator. “Drive normal.”