In the Company of Liars

by David Ellis

  “Agent McCoy,” he says, “we need Allison Pagone alive.”

  “Yes, sir.” McCoy nods.

  “This was your call, Agent.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “And I backed it up to Washington. I told them Jane McCoy’s the one they want in charge of this operation. I backed up everything you’ve done on this. You think I don’t get a call from Virginia every single day on this? You know how many people think the Bureau is the wrong agency for this?”

  “Sir, I won’t let you down. We’ll get them.”

  “Good enough.” Shiels moves back to his desk, takes a seat and puts on his reading glasses. This is his way of saying Get up, get out.

  And don’t screw this up.

  APRIL

  ONE DAY EARLIER

  FRIDAY, APRIL 30

  I work at the city office of Dillon and Becker,” says the witness, Veronica Silvers.

  Allison remembers her. This woman worked the reception at Sam’s firm in the city.

  “Let’s turn to Friday, February sixth of this year,” Roger Ogren begins. The day before Sam Dillon was murdered. Allison remembers this day all too well, remembers storming into Sam’s office. It’s hard, that memory, the state she was in, and now hearing it aired in public.

  “I’d say it was late morning,” the witness says. “After eleven.”

  Allison wishes she could curl up under the table.

  “She walked right past me. She was in a mood. She was looking for Mr. Dillon.”

  “Was Sam Dillon in the offices that day?”

  No.

  “No. He was at the capital. I tried to tell her.”

  “What did the defendant say?”

  “She didn’t seem to believe me. She walked past me and went through the entire suite. She really made quite a scene.”

  Allison closes her eyes.

  “She walked all the way through the offices, opening doors, calling out his name. I was following her, telling her she had to leave. But she wouldn’t, not until she was satisfied that Mr. Dillon was not there. I—was about to call security.”

  “And once she was satisfied that Mr. Dillon was not there, what did she do?”

  “She left. She didn’t say a word. She just walked out, very quickly.”

  “Very good, ma’am.”

  “And the next thing, she goes down to the capital to find Mr. Dillon.”

  Allison’s lawyer objects. This is outside this witness’s personal knowledge, but really, what’s the point? Everyone knows what Allison did next.

  “Thank you, ma’am. No more questions.”

  Allison chooses not to even look at Troy Thompson as he takes the witness stand. This was the guy down at Sam’s office in the state capital who caught Allison on her way in that Friday, after she had come from Sam’s city office. She hardly remembers what he looks like and doesn’t want to be reminded of anything that happened that day.

  Ogren starts with the basics. Thompson is a full-time legislative research assistant for Dillon & Becker who works exclusively at the office in the state capital. On Fridays, when the receptionist doesn’t work, Thompson also keeps an eye on the front door.

  Roger Ogren takes a breath. “Mr. Thompson, let me take you back to Friday, February sixth of this year. Do you recall working that day, that afternoon?”

  “I remember.”

  “Did your office have any visitors that afternoon?”

  “Yes. Jessica’s mom,” says Thompson. “Mrs. Pagone.”

  “We’ll stipulate to the identification,” says Ron McGaffrey.

  “Thank you, Counsel.” The prosecutor opens a hand to the witness. “Mr. Thompson, what time was this? When the defendant came to the firm.”

  “It was, oh, just after lunch. A little after one.”

  “And tell us, Mr. Thompson, if you can. How far a drive is it from the city to the state capital?”

  “It runs about ninety minutes, if you avoid rush hour.”

  Allison sighs. The point here, now clearly made, is that Allison went to Sam’s office downtown and then, when he wasn’t there, immediately drove straight down to the capital.

  And that is exactly how it happened.

  “It was just me and Mr. Dillon that day,” the witness says. “Y’know, Fridays, there isn’t much happening, and Mr. Dillon had been away most of that week so he was catching up.”

  “That’s fine, that’s fine. And what happened, sir?”

  “I—well, the front door to our office opened, so I stuck my head out. I saw Mrs. Pagone. I started to say hi and she said to me—”

  “Where is he?” Allison demanded. “Where’s Sam Dillon? Don’t lie to me, I know he’s here.”

  “I told her that he was in the back office and I would tell him she was here.”

  “How did she respond?”

  “She didn’t. She just started walking back there. Walking very fast.”

  “Can you describe the defendant’s appearance, Mr. Thompson?”

  “She was—well, out of breath, I’d say. Her face was all red. Her eye makeup was smeared. She was moving very quickly. She looked—really upset, actually.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, I followed her back there—y’know, so I could tell Mr. Dillon. But by the time I got back there, she was slamming the door behind her.”

  “She slammed the door,” Ogren repeats. “And so what did you do?”

  “I—nothing at first. I didn’t want to stand outside the door or anything. I heard some yelling. It was her voice but I don’t know what she said, exactly. I wasn’t standing right by the door or anything. So—the whole thing was kind of awkward. I walked away and went back to what I had been doing.”

  “What happened next, sir?”

  Allison peeks at the witness for the first time. His face is colored slightly, his eyes downcast.

  “Then I—I probably shouldn’t have, but I went back to the door. Y’know, it was like, part concern and part natural curiosity.” He takes a breath. “I stood with my ear next to the door of Mr. Dillon’s office and listened.” The witness blushes. No one likes admitting such things.

  “What did you hear?”

  “I heard Mr. Dillon.”

  “What was he saying?”

  “He was saying, ‘It isn’t going to work out. Mat’s a friend. This is crazy. You know that.’ That kind of thing. That’s the best I remember.”

  Allison looks forward, trying to remind herself that the judge may be watching her. The witness, surprisingly, got it almost right. Most witnesses think they recall dialogue verbatim and events with a photographic memory, but it isn’t so, there have been studies on such things, and Allison’s job, when she was a public defender, often consisted of hammering home minor inconsistencies and elevating them to major discrepancies.

  But this man on the witness stand came pretty close. Allison will never forget the words awkwardly spilling from Sam Dillon’s mouth. His slumped posture in his chair behind the desk, a hand on his forehead, his eyes on Allison.

  This isn’t going to work out. Mat—Mat’s a friend. You know this is crazy. It always was.

  “Mr. Thompson, you mentioned the name ‘Mat.’ ‘Mat’s a friend,’ you said. Let me ask you, do you happen to know the name of the defendant’s ex-husband?”

  “His name is Mat,” he answers. “I know him ’cause he’s a lobbyist, too.”

  “Okay. What did you do next? What happened?”

  “I moved away from the door. Because, I mean, it was a personal thing. It was none of my business. What can I say? I eavesdropped. I mean—she seemed so mad, I didn’t know. You hear stories, people coming into an office and opening fire or something, irate clients, that sort of thing. But once I realized—it was, like, personal, he was breaking up with her—I moved away.” He raises his hands. “I—didn’t even know they were dating.”

  Ronald McGaffrey rises.

  “I was there like a few seconds and then went back to my office,�
� the witness concludes.

  “Objection,” McGaffrey calls out. “Move to strike any characterization that the decedent was ‘breaking up’ with my client or that they were dating.”

  “Sustained,” the judge says, without bothering to hear Roger Ogren’s response. “That comment is stricken from the record.”

  “What happened next, Mr. Thompson?”

  “Mrs. Pagone came out about—gosh—maybe a minute later. She walked straight out of the office.”

  “Did you speak with Mr. Dillon about it?”

  The witness thinks about that a moment, his eyes drifting off. “No. I left about five—maybe a little before five. I went by his office. He was looking out his window. I said I was leaving. He said, ‘Have a good weekend,’ without turning around. That was—” Troy Thompson swallows on that sentence.

  “That was the last time you saw Mr. Dillon alive.”

  The witness nods.

  Detective Czerwonka,” asks Roger Ogren, “did you in fact speak with the defendant?”

  “Yes, we did. This was Wednesday, the eleventh of February.”

  “Where did you speak with her?”

  “At headquarters. We called her and asked her to come.”

  “Did she come with a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “Did you advise her of her rights?”

  “We did. She waived her right to counsel in writing.”

  Roger Ogren admits into evidence Allison’s signed waiver.

  “What did you ask her?”

  “We asked her if she was aware that Sam Dillon was dead. She said that she was. We asked her if she was involved in a romantic relationship with Sam Dillon. She said that she was not.”

  Roger Ogren looks at Judge Wilderburth. His Honor must be sure, at this point in the trial, that this was a lie.

  “She denied being romantically involved with Sam Dillon?”

  “Yes. In fact, I asked her that question at both interviews. Wednesday the eleventh and Friday the thirteenth. Both times, she denied being involved with Mr. Dillon.”

  “Okay. Let’s stay with the eleventh. Did you follow up with her?”

  “We asked her if she had gone to Sam Dillon’s offices, looking for him, the previous Friday.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t answer, initially.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her that there were witnesses. That people had seen her at both the city and capital offices of Dillon and Becker that day, Friday the sixth. And that she had been seen going into Sam Dillon’s office at the capital and slamming the door shut, and she’d been heard yelling at him.”

  “What did she say to that?”

  “She didn’t speak for a while. I would say about five minutes. Then she said, ‘It’s complicated.’ That’s all she said. She got up and left.” The detective shrugs. “We had no basis at that time to hold her.”

  “Was there anything about her personal appearance that struck you as significant?”

  “Yes,” says Czerwonka, holding up a hand. “She had nails. They weren’t particularly long but they were there. But the left-hand index finger—that finger had almost no nail. It was broken down past the fingertip.”

  Allison curls her left hand into a fist.

  “Were her fingernails painted?”

  “Not at that time, no.”

  “All right, Detective. What did you do next? After the defendant left the police station after that brief visit.”

  “We got a search warrant.”

  Roger Ogren shows Detective Czerwonka the search warrant and admits it into evidence.

  “You searched the defendant’s home?”

  “Yes. The following day. The twelfth of February.”

  “Can you tell us what you found, Detective?”

  “We looked in her jewelry box. I did it myself.”

  “What did you find?”

  “We found one platinum earring—”

  The judge takes notice of this. Chin lifting, mouth parting.

  “—with a gold fastener.”

  “Pure platinum,” the jeweler told Allison. “A polished finish. The post is fourteen-karat yellow gold. It’s our finest.”

  They were beautiful. Allison favored platinum, and she wanted to give herself something. Her novel had just been published. Mat had been generous with jewelry over the years, but it was always gold, and no matter how many hints she dropped, he never bought her platinum.

  She put them on and looked into the small mirror on the counter. She had never bought herself jewelry before. But something felt right about it. Something about the very fact that she was doing it for herself. She had begun to do such things, as the separation from Mat was becoming more pronounced. It was with a small thrill, mixed with a deepening sadness, that she set down her credit card.

  Roger Ogren walks from the evidence table to the witness, holding a bag containing the single earring.

  “Is this the earring you found in the defendant’s jewelry box, Detective?”

  “That’s it,” he says with assurance. “It obviously stood out.”

  “And why did it stand out?”

  “It stood out,” says the detective, “because it is identical to the earring that we found in Sam Dillon’s house at the crime scene. It’s the second earring of the set.”

  Ogren shows the detective the other platinum earring, in a separate evidence bag.

  “That’s the one we found near Sam Dillon’s body,” Czerwonka confirms.

  “And as a reminder to the judge,” says Ogren, going back to the evidence desk placed behind the prosecution table, “this is a credit-card receipt for this pair of platinum earrings, purchased by the defendant eighteen months ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Did you find anything else, Detective, in your search of the home?”

  “Yes. We searched the defendant’s garbage, of course. We found cotton balls that contained fingernail polish and nail polish remover.”

  “What color?”

  “Red. We ran a check on it.” Czerwonka looks at the notepad on his lap. “The actual color is ‘Saturday Night Red.’ It was made by Evelyn Masters. It’s pretty pricey.”

  “And did you find such a fingernail polish in the defendant’s home?”

  “Yes. There was a bottle of it in her drawer in the bathroom.”

  “And remind us, Detective. The broken fingernail you found in Sam Dillon’s house after his death.” Roger Ogren holds up the evidence bag and approaches the witness. “What was the color of that fingernail?”

  “It was the same. ‘Saturday Night Red’ by Evelyn Masters.”

  “And yet, by the time you spoke with the defendant at the police station, a few days after the death of Sam Dillon—”

  “Her nails had no polish on them,” Czerwonka finishes. “She had removed the polish.”

  “Very good, Detective. Now let me ask, did you find anything else of significance?”

  “We did,” he answers. “We found, in Mrs. Pagone’s laundry, a maroon sweatshirt. A Champion sweatshirt with the name ‘Mansbury College’ on it.”

  “All right.” Ogren retrieves another evidence bag. “Is this that sweatshirt?”

  “It is.”

  “And did you find anything of significance on it?”

  “We found blood.”

  “Blood that has been matched through DNA testing to Sam Dillon’s blood?” Ogren asks. This is a leading question, but these are only foundational questions. Ogren, yesterday, called a forensic scientist to the stand to confirm that the blood on Allison’s sweatshirt was Sam Dillon’s blood. Technically, the evidence was presented out of order—it had not yet been established that the sweatshirt was found in Allison’s house—but this is a trial by judge, not jury, and the judge accommodated the scheduling needs of the witnesses by hearing the evidence out of order.

  So now, Detective Czerwonka is confirming that he found the sweatshirt in Allison’s
laundry during his search of the house.

  “Yeah,” the detective says, “the sweatshirt we found in the defendant’s laundry had Sam Dillon’s blood on it.”

  ONE DAY EARLIER

  THURSDAY, APRIL 29

  So let’s summarize all of this for the Court,” says Roger Ogren. He is directing a deputy medical examiner, an elderly man named Ernest McCabe, on the second day of trial. “What was the cause of death?”

  “The cause of death was blunt trauma to the skull,” says the doctor. “Four independent blows to the head, from two different sources. One of the sources we know about. The clock that was on the mantel. The other source, which was in all likelihood a much heavier and sturdier object, was not recovered.”

  Yes, it was a much sturdier object. The prosecution knows what the murder weapon is. The award from the Midwest Manufacturers’ Association was conspicuously absent from the mantel above Sam’s fireplace. It didn’t take the police long to discover what had been removed from the mantel. The MMA gives out an award annually, so law enforcement had no trouble finding a replica, had no difficulty seeing how easily it could have been used to kill Sam Dillon.

  But they can’t find it, not the one used to kill Sam. They dragged the lake near Sam’s house. They searched Allison’s home and her yard. They searched every waste-disposal facility in the county and dragged every river. They figure Allison killed Sam around seven that night and drove around for hours before returning to Sam’s house at close to one in the morning. They assume she has hidden the weapon somewhere. But they couldn’t possibly guess where. They would never think to look in the back of a grocery store where Allison shopped before the family moved to their current house.

  “The manner of death, Doctor?” Roger Ogren asks.

  “The manner of death was unquestionably homicide. The number, angle, and severity of the blows, as well as common sense, rule out any possibility of self-infliction.”

  “And the time of death?”

  “I would estimate time of death at seven in the evening, on Saturday, February seventh of this year. That is based on several things. The rate of decomposition. The contents of the victim’s stomach. We know from the receipt that he had food delivered to his house at six-twenty that evening. Assuming that he ate the food relatively soon after receiving it, the digestion of the food was at such a stage that digestion had ceased somewhere around seven o’clock. And we can look at the time that was frozen on the clock that was partially broken over his head. The time on that clock was six minutes after seven p.m. That doesn’t conclusively prove that Sam Dillon was murdered at seven-oh-six p.m., but all other evidence would certainly corroborate that point.”