In the Company of Liars

by David Ellis

  “And this was Tuesday, February third?”

  “Umm—right. Yeah. I remember that day mostly because it was the last time Sam and I spoke. It was, what, less than a week before he was mur—”

  Benjamin’s face goes cold. The room is silent. McCoy tries to avoid his stare but she can’t; her eyes involuntarily move to the Flanagan-Maxx executive, staring at her, his mouth open.

  “Oh my God,” he mumbles.

  “Hold up.” McCoy waves her hand furiously. “Hold up. I’m only asking about Doctor Lomas because I need to know who you spoke to. That’s it, Mr. Benjamin. Don’t connect him with Sam Dillon’s death. Really. There’s no connection there.”

  There is such a thing as protesting too much, and McCoy wants to dance that fine line. This is what she feared when she brought up the topic, but it was too important not to address. She cannot let Walter Benjamin blame himself for this. She cannot ask him to bear that kind of a burden.

  She will bear it herself. The death of Sam Dillon was her fault.

  “Who have you spoken to in the company since this investigation began?” she asks.

  Walter Benjamin’s face is flushed. He is still grappling with the thought he has just had.

  “Did I get Sam ki—” His throat closes. He places a hand on his chest, as if struggling for breath. “Did I—”

  “No, you most certainly did not. Really, Mr. Benjamin. This had nothing to do with you. Now, could you answer my question?”

  “Who—have I spoken to at the company? Well, our CEO. Our chief counsel. That’s it.”

  “Doctor Lomas?”

  “No. I haven’t spoken to Neil. Should I—what do you want me to do?”

  “Don’t go out of your way to initiate conversation. What I would like for you to say is, ‘There’s something going on in my department. I’ve been instructed not to discuss it.’ Just something like that. To anyone who asks, not just Doctor Lomas. I’m sure Mr. Salters here has already given you that advice.”

  “Okay.” He nods. “Okay.”

  “You’ve been put on a paid leave, correct?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “You’ll be back soon, Mr. Benjamin. No one thinks you had anything to do with the bribing of those senators, and we’ll make that clear when the investigation is over.”

  Benjamin brings a trembling hand to his face. “That’s—very nice to hear.”

  “But you will comply with what I’ve asked?”

  At this point, Walter Benjamin looks like he just completed a marathon. He would probably agree to stand on his head if she asked. “I will repeat what you said. ‘It has something to do with my department. I’ve been instructed not to discuss it.’ I’m not talking to anyone, Agent McCoy. Believe me.”

  “Thank you, sir. Thanks, Mr. Salters. I think that’s all I have for you.”

  Benjamin and his attorney stand up, the former with some difficulty. He looks at McCoy as she gathers her things.

  “Neil?” he asks.

  “Doctor Lomas has nothing to do with this,” she assures him. “Forget about Neil.”

  She hopes that he will take her advice. She has thought enough about Doctor Neil Lomas for every man, woman, and child in this city.

  Harrick shows them out, then returns a moment later. McCoy has not left her spot at the table. He places a hand on her shoulder.

  “He’s been a good boy,” Harrick says. He’s referring to the wiretap of Walter Benjamin’s phone. They are taking no chances.

  “Walter Benjamin is a decent enough guy caught up in something ugly.” McCoy tries to get out of her chair but stops. She is weary, emotionally and physically exhausted, and this thing has hardly begun.

  “I didn’t mean to put that bug in his ear,” she says. “Now he thinks that what he told Doctor Lomas might have gotten Sam Dillon killed.”

  “You had no choice, Jane. We had to be thorough.”

  “You see the look on his face?” She shakes her head. “On the mere suggestion that he might be responsible for what happened to Dillon? I’ve never seen anyone so tortured.”

  Harrick takes the seat next to her. “I have,” he says. “I’ve seen it on your face every single day for the last month.”

  TWO DAYS EARLIER

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3

  The firm’s party after veto session: Sam was a bit drunk but shy, nevertheless, as he broached the idea of dating me. It felt weird but exciting. Even feeling weird, itself, was exciting. It made me realize how boring my life had become.

  Meet for a drink at Roy’s: Our first date! Sam had a Jack and coke. I had a glass of wine. We approached it up front, the issue with Mat. Sam brought it up. We lost track of time and missed our dinner reservation. We ended up going to a diner, The Mad Hatter, for a late-night dinner. I wanted to invite him home but didn’t.

  The lake: The next day, I had done so much talking about jogging, he invited me to his place and we ran around his lake. It was freezing but beautiful. He made me breakfast afterward and really screwed it up. The eggs were runny and the bacon soggy. It was the best breakfast I ever had. I wanted to sleep with him so badly but I left in the afternoon.

  Allison pulls away from the desk and leaves the room. She feels dizzy. She lowers herself to a crouch and takes a moment. “Do you remember that?” she mumbles to him. “Do you remember that moment, after breakfast, and we were all sweaty from the run, and you mentioned the shower? Do you have any idea how much I wanted to get in there with you?”

  She feels the pain in her stomach. She needs to eat today, or it will be forty-eight hours without food. She also needs to get back to her original purpose for coming upstairs and working on the computer, not the memories she was composing, and certainly not whispering sweet nothings to a man who is dead.

  He is dead. She needs that fact to penetrate her skull.

  The problem is, she has no pictures of Sam. Not a single photo. It’s probably because they were so covert, initially, not wanting to flaunt a relationship in Mat’s face, and photography was a form of documentation. She has nothing to look at but what’s in her mind’s eye, and that will fade like everything else.

  So this is her scrapbook, her reminder of every day they spent together. But now she needs to get back to it. She switches screens, from the memorial she is composing to her dialogue.

  MAT: You know what you should do. You should blame me. You should say I killed Sam. Blame the empty chair.

  ALLISON: Don’t be silly.

  MAT: I mean, at trial. Your lawyer should point at me. Put me on the stand. I’ll refuse to answer. Take the Fifth.

  ALLISON: It would never work, Mat. The judge would never buy it.

  MAT: It’s worth a shot.

  ALLISON: What about your career? Your reputation?

  MAT: I don’t have a career anymore.

  ALLISON (pondering, troubled): We can’t do it. Pointing at you would be pointing at Jessica.

  Allison arches her back, stretches her arms. This is too forced. Not natural enough. That’s what dialogue is all about, right? Writing how people talk.

  She goes back to the other screen, but she can’t get Sam out of her head.

  “There are things you don’t know, Allison,” Sam had told her. This was—what?—maybe two weeks before he died. Yes. Two weeks. The following week was the phone call. She had pushed him to elaborate. Things had been going so well, and now—now they seemed different.

  “It’s something I’m going to have to—I guess you could say I’m having an ethical dilemma,” he told her, sighing through the phone.

  And the next week—a Wednesday, she remembers. The Wednesday before he died. Another phone call, even though Sam was in the city.

  “I—I can’t explain what’s going on, Allison.”

  “This is that ‘ethical dilemma’ you were talking about?”

  “I really—I can’t talk to you about it.”

  “Something’s going on,” she said.

  “Yes. You’re right. And w
hen the time comes, I’ll tell you. Not now.”

  “I’m worried about you,” she told him.

  “Oh, Jesus.” Allison wipes the sweat from her forehead. She can’t keep doing this, torturing herself like this. However difficult it may be, she must focus.

  ONE DAY EARLIER

  TUESDAY, MARCH 2

  I promise not to make a habit out of having you come to my house,” Allison says to Paul Riley. She stretches, after two hours of preparation for the preliminary hearing this coming Thursday, March 4.

  “Not a problem,” Paul says. They are in the living room. Allison told Paul that she didn’t want to spread out at the kitchen or dining-room tables. She wanted something more comfortable, she told him. For the most part, they just talked, anyway, didn’t cover many documents, so the living room worked just fine.

  The state will call a forensic pathologist to confirm death by homicide and to fix the time of death near seven p.m. on the night of February seventh of this year. Roger Ogren will call the two detectives who interrogated her and searched her house—the first time, not just recently—to authenticate the physical evidence and to testify that she lied to them about being linked romantically to Sam Dillon. There will be testimony linking the hair follicle, the fingernail, and the single platinum earring to Allison and the blood on her sweatshirt to Sam. The judge will hear about Allison storming into Sam’s office in the capital the day before his death.

  The state’s second search of Allison’s home, which took place over this past weekend, was directed at looking for what the prosecutors believe to be the murder weapon, a small gold statuette with a marble base, presented to Sam Dillon by the Midwest Manufacturers’ Association only two years ago. An award, authorities have finally figured out, that has been missing from Sam Dillon’s mantel since the night of the murder.

  It was a sufficiently small item that it could have been hidden anywhere, which meant that the prosecutors had leave to literally take her house apart looking for it.

  “They find that trophy,” she tells Paul, “and I’m finished.”

  “Well, then, let’s hope they don’t.” Paul is not looking at her as he says this. It must be difficult to hear a client acknowledge such things. Even someone who has spent his entire adult life in criminal law must find some revulsion in representing people who have done wrong. It is harder to focus on your important role in the system of criminal justice when your client all but tells you that she bludgeoned a man to death.

  “Paul,” she says, “I’ve been in your shoes. I want you to know, I don’t expect the impossible. At the end of the day, I did what I did. If I can’t beat this, it won’t be for lack of having a good lawyer.”

  “I appreciate that, Allison. But obviously, it won’t stop me one beat from doing everything I can.”

  “Oh, I know that. I have no doubt. But doing everything you can is different from being able to sleep at night. I killed him, Paul. I wish I could take it back but I can’t. The truth is, I loved him, and I’d do anything to bring him back. But without him”—she takes a breath—“this may sound like an odd thing to say, but life just isn’t the same without him. I’ve had almost a month to think about this. I am more or less resigned to whatever happens. I want to fight this with everything I have, and I will. I don’t want to go to prison. It’s just—if things go badly, I don’t want you losing sleep over this. I don’t want you thinking an innocent person is rotting in jail. Because that wouldn’t be the case.”

  “You are something else, Allison Pagone.” He closes up his briefcase. “I appreciate you trying to put me at ease, but believe me, I’m a professional. I’ll tell you what would keep me from sleeping at night,” he adds.

  “Not doing the best you can.”

  “Exactly.”

  She gets up to see him out. “The judge is going to find probable cause, isn’t she?”

  Paul nods. “Yes, she is,” he says.

  ONE DAY EARLIER

  MONDAY, MARCH 1

  Allison sits in her living room, stirring a cup of tea aimlessly, as the workers go through each of her rooms. There are actually companies that specialize in cleanups of crime scenes. This doesn’t qualify, exactly; there is no blood or guts here, but the place has been tossed to the state of being almost unrecognizable since the county sheriff’s deputies searched her house Saturday.

  Men and women in blue uniforms are restoring everything to where it was, leaving the obvious question of how they would know where everything was. She imagines that when they are finished, she will have to improve on their work. But it’s still preferable to give them the first shot, picking up everything off the floor and putting things back in drawers.

  Okay, to be fair: The cops tried not to obliterate the place when they came through. The sheriff’s deputies didn’t whip clothes out of drawers but just felt around. A marble statuette hidden in a lingerie drawer could be detected without having to pull out all of her bras. But they pulled the drawers out, moved furniture, pulled up the edges of some of the carpeting, even took a loose floorboard in her hallway and yanked it out. Plus, they didn’t wipe their shoes very well when they came in. The place was a mess. At the end of it all, they walked away empty-handed.

  What, she’s dumb enough to hide that trophy in her house?

  She hears two vacuum cleaners shut off, almost in sync, upstairs. There must be ten of them, which makes their work go quickly. It’s not yet noon, and the leader—foreman?—approaches her with an invoice. He doesn’t look her directly in the face. He knows who she is. It’s hard to live in this city right now and not recognize the name Allison Pagone.

  “All done, ma’am,” the man says.

  “Please don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ It makes me feel old.”

  “You don’t look old—Ms. Pagone.” He smiles at her as he hands her the invoice on a clipboard. “Five hundred even.”

  “Can I pay with a credit card?”

  “Oh—yeah, okay. We prefer checks.”

  “I prefer credit.”

  “It’s out in my truck.”

  “I’ll go with you. Anything to be out of the house for two minutes.”

  She goes without a coat and instantly regrets it. She walks up to the white van, with the name AAA-AFTERMATH emblazoned on the side, and smiles to herself. These guys will do anything to be first in the phone book.

  “Door’s unlocked,” he says. She gets into the passenger seat, he takes the driver’s side.

  Once inside, the man leans in to her. “It’s what’s called an Infinity transmitter,” he says to her. “Very, very high-tech stuff. There’s one in your bedroom and one in your living room. Right where you were sitting just now, on that purple couch.”

  Allison’s mother, God rest her soul, would hate to hear that couch described as purple. “What does that mean?” Allison asks, gathering her arms around herself. “What’s an Infinity transmitter?”

  “Well, for your purposes—think of it two ways. First, anything you say on your phone will be overheard. But it’s a dual-purpose—think of it as a microphone, too. They can hear anything you say in the house, pretty much. It can probably cover about three, four hundred feet. So I’d say”—the man raises his chin, purses his lips—“the living room and the kitchen. Anything you say in either of those rooms, and obviously anything you say on the phone in there, will be heard and probably recorded. Then, your bedroom. Anything you say in the bedroom or the master bath, they can hear. I can’t give you a guarantee beyond that. The hallways, the foyer, I don’t know. But they’ve got both phones covered. And they’ve got the main places in your house where they’d expect you to have conversations. You really want to talk in private, go outside, and even then, keep your voice down.” The man nods. “These guys know what they’re doing.”

  “So let me make sure I understand this.” Allison stares at her house as if it’s a prison. “If I talk on either phone, or talk in my living room, or kitchen, or master bedroom—they will hear everything I say.�
�

  “Yes. And record it, no doubt. They can listen to it contemporaneously or later, at their convenience.”

  “Okay,” Allison says, a chill coursing through her. “They can’t see me, though, right?”

  “Correct. It’s only audio.”

  “Super.”

  “The bad news is, you have a serious loss of privacy here. But the good news is, you know about it. You can work it to your advantage. They’re wearing a blindfold, Ms. Pagone. And they can only hear what you let them hear.”

  “Okay.” Allison sighs, braces herself for the cold outside. “Only what I let them hear,” she repeats.

  FEBRUARY

  TWO DAYS EARLIER

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28

  Allison puts on her coat and goes outside, to avoid having to watch them scour her house. The warrant is limited to a search for a gold statuette with a marble base, an award given to Samuel Dillon by the Midwest Manufacturers’ Association two years ago.

  At least they were specific, she thinks.

  They’ve been in there almost three hours. She sat in the kitchen but finally couldn’t bare it. She’s second-guessing herself, given the weather today. It’s teeth-chatteringly cold outside, single digits. She wishes to God they could have had the decency to conduct this search last week, when the temps were north of freezing. She can see them turning over chair cushions, going through all the cabinets in the kitchen, removing all the china—God, she hopes they don’t break anything—even looking through the freezer.

  Someone finally got a good look at the empty spot on Sam’s mantel and had the sense to ask, What used to be here?

  She wonders what other surprises lay in store for her. She senses that Roger Ogren is not to be underestimated. He suffered a rather embarrassing loss in a big trial a few years back, a trial in which Paul represented the accused. She assumes Ogren will be especially teed-up to have another shot at one of Paul Riley’s clients.